Under the Dome

“Maybe,” Chef allowed, “but I think it’ll be sooner. Sanders!”

“What, Chef?”

“Take you a gun. You’re in the Lord’s army now. You’re a Christian soldier. Your days of licking that apostate son of a bitch’s ass are over.”

Andy took an AK and laid it across his bare thighs. He liked the weight of it and the warmth of it. He checked to make sure the safety was on. It was. “What apostate son of a bitch are you talking about, Chef?”

Chef fixed him with a look of utter contempt, but when Andy reached for the bong, he handed it over willingly enough. There was plenty for both of them, would be from now until the end, and yea, verily, the end would not be long. “Rennie. That apostate son of a bitch.”

“He’s my friend—my pal—but he can be a hardass, all right,” Andy admitted. “My goodness but this is good shit.”

“It is,” Chef agreed moodily, and took the bong (which Andy now thought of as the Smokeum Peace Pipe) back. “It’s the longest of long glass, the purest of the pure, and what is it, Sanders?”

“A medicine for melancholy!” Andy returned smartly.

“And what is that?” Pointing at the new black mark on the Dome.

“A sign! From God!”

“Yes,” Chef said, mollified. “That’s exactly what it is. We’re on a God-trip now, Sanders. Do you know what happened when God opened the seventh seal? Have you read Revelation?”

Andy had a memory, from the Christian camp he’d attended as a teenager, of angels popping out of that seventh seal like clowns from the little car at the circus, but he didn’t want to say it that way. Chef might consider it blasphemous. So he just shook his head.

“Thought not,” Chef said. “You might have gotten preaching at Holy Redeemer, but preaching is not education. Preaching is not the true visionary shit. Do you understand that?”

What Andy understood was that he wanted another hit, but he nodded his head.

“When the seventh seal was opened, seven angels appeared with seven trumpets. And each time one blew the boogie, a plague smote down on the earth. Here, toke this shit, it’ll help your concentration.”

How long had they been out here smoking? It seemed like hours. Had they really seen a plane crash? Andy thought so, but now he wasn’t completely sure. It seemed awfully farfetched. Maybe he should take a nap. On the other hand, it was wonderful to the point of ecstasy just to be out here with Chef, getting stoned and educated. “I almost killed myself, but God saved me,” he told Chef. The thought was so wonderful that tears filled his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s obvious. This other stuff isn’t. So listen.”

“I am.”

“First angel blew and hailed down blood on the earth. Second angel blew and a mountain of fire was cast into the sea. That’s your volcanoes and shit.”

“Yes!” Andy shouted, and inadvertently squeezed the trigger of the AK-47 lying across his lap.

“You want to watch that,” Chef said. “If the safety hadn’t been on, you would have blown my tickle-stick into yonder pine tree. Hit on this shit.” He handed Andy the bong. Andy couldn’t even remember giving it back to him, but he must have done. And what time was it? It looked like midafternoon, but how could that be? He hadn’t gotten hungry for lunch and he always got hungry for lunch, it was his best meal.

“Now listen, Sanders, because this is the important part.”

Chef was able to quote from memory because he had made quite a study of the book of Revelations since moving out here to the radio station; he read and reread it obsessively, sometimes until dawn streaked the horizon. “ ‘And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven! Burning as if it were a lamp!’ ”

“We just saw that!”

Chef nodded. His eyes were fixed on the black smutch where Air Ireland 179 had met her end. “ ‘And the name of the star is called Wormwood, and many men died because they were made bitter.’ Are you bitter, Sanders?”

“No!” Andy assured him.

“No. We’re mellow. But now that Star Wormwood has blazed in the sky, bitter men will come. God has told me this, Sanders, and it’s no bullshit. Check me out and you find I’m all about zero bullshit. They’re gonna try to take all this away from us. Rennie and his bull-shit cronies.”

“No way!” Andy cried. A sudden and horribly intense paranoia swept over him. They could be here already! Bullshit cronies creeping through those trees! Bullshit cronies driving down Little Bitch Road in a line of trucks! Now that Chef had brought it up, he even saw why Rennie would want to do it. He’d call it “getting rid of the evidence.”

“Chef!” He gripped his new friend’s shoulder.

“Let up a little, Sanders. That hurts.”

He let up a little. “Big Jim’s already talked about coming up and getting the propane tanks— that’s the first step!”

Chef nodded. “They’ve already been here once. Took two tanks. I let em.” He paused, then patted the grenades. “I won’t let em again. Are you down with that?”

Andy thought of the pounds of dope inside the building they were leaning against, and gave the answer Chef had expected. “My brother,” he said, and embraced Chef.

Chef was hot and stinky, but Andy hugged with enthusiasm. Tears were rolling down his face, which he had neglected to shave on a weekday for the first time in over twenty years. This was great. This was… was…

Bonding!

“My brother,” he sobbed into Chef’s ear.

Chef thrust him back and looked at him solemnly. “We are agents of the Lord,” he said.

And Andy Sanders—now all alone in the world except for the scrawny prophet beside him—said amen.

23

Jackie found Ernie Calvert behind his house, weeding his garden. She was a little worried about approaching him in spite of what she’d told Piper, but she needn’t have been. He gripped her shoulders with hands that were surprisingly strong for such a portly little man. His eyes shone.

“Thank God someone sees what that windbag’s up to!” He dropped his hands. “Sorry. I smudged your blouse.”

“That’s all right.”

“He’s dangerous, Officer Wettington. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And clever. He set up that damned food riot the way a terrorist would plant a bomb.”

“I have no doubt of it.”

“But he’s also stupid. Clever and stupid is a terrible combination. You can persuade people to go with you, you see. All the way to hell. Look at that fellow Jim Jones, remember him?”

“The one who got all his followers to drink poison. So you’ll come to the meeting?”

“You bet. And mum’s the word. Unless you want me to talk to Lissa Jamieson, that is. Glad to do it.”

Before Jackie could answer, her cell phone rang. It was her personal; she had turned in the one issued to her by the PD along with her badge and gun.

“Hello, this is Jackie.”

“Mihi portatoe vulneratos, Sergeant Wettington,” an unfamiliar voice said.

The motto of her old unit in Wurzburg—bring us your wounded—and Jackie responded without even thinking: “On stretchers, crutches, or in bags, we put em together with spit and rags. Who the hell is this?”

“Colonel James Cox, Sergeant.”

Jackie moved the phone away from her mouth. “Give me a minute, Ernie?”