“Because sooner or later, one of them won’t bounce back. And when that happens, I’m going to get up and walk away and never see this farm again. Never milk another cow. What’s the air like out there?”
“Good. Chilly, though. I’m from South Cah’lina. It ain’t like this in South Cah’lina in October, I can tell you that.”
Where Ollie was, less than three yards from the southern boy, it was hot. Also stinky.
The Army guy pointed beyond Ollie. “Why don’t y’all quit on the rocks and do somethin about those cows?” He said it
“We don’t need to herd them. They know where to go. Only now they don’t need to be milked, and they don’t need any Bag Balm, either. Their udders are dry.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. My dad says something’s wrong with the grass. He says the grass is wrong because the air’s wrong. It doesn’t smell good in here, you know. It smells like crap.”
“Yeah?” The Army guy looked fascinated. He gave the tops of the back-to-back signs a tap or two with his hammer, although they already looked well seated.
“Yeah. My mother killed herself this morning.”
The Army guy had raised his hammer for another hit. Now he just dropped it to his side. “Are you shittin me, kid?”
“No. She shot herself at the kitchen table. I found her.”
“Oh fuck, that’s rough.” The Army guy approached the Dome.
“We took my brother to town when he died last Sunday, because he was still alive—a little—but my mom was dead as dead can be, so we buried her on the knoll. My dad and me. She liked it there. It was pretty there before everything got so
“Jesus, kid! You been through hell!”
“Still there,” Ollie said, and as if the words had turned a valve somewhere inside, he began to weep. He got up and went to the Dome. He and the young soldier faced each other, less than a foot apart. The soldier raised his hand, wincing a little as the transient shock whipped through him and then out of him. He laid his hand on the Dome, fingers spread. Ollie lifted his own and pressed it against the Dome on his side. Their hands seemed to be touching, finger to finger and palm to palm, but they weren’t. It was a futile gesture that would be repeated over and over the following day: hundreds of times, thousands.
“Kid—”
Private Ames jumped like a kid who’s been caught stealing jam.
“Hang in there, kid,” Private Ames said, and ran off to get his scolding. Ollie imagined it had to be a scolding, since you couldn’t very well demote a private. Surely they wouldn’t put him in the stockade or whatever for talking to one of the animals in the zoo.
For a moment he looked up at the cows that no longer gave milk—that hardly even cropped grass—and then he sat down by his pack. He searched for and found another nice round rock. He thought about the chipped polish on the nails of his dead mother’s outstretched hand, the one with the still-smoking gun beside it. Then he threw the rock. It hit the Dome and bounced back.
10
At four o’clock on that Thursday afternoon, while the overcast held over northern New England and the sun shone down on Chester’s Mill like a bleary spotlight through the sock-shaped hole in the clouds, Ginny Tomlinson went to check on Junior. She asked if he needed something for headache. He said no, then changed his mind and asked for some Tylenol or Advil. When she came back, he walked across the room to get it. On his chart she wrote,
When Thurston Marshall poked his head in forty-five minutes later, the room was empty. He assumed Junior had gone down to the lounge, but when he checked there it was empty except for Emily Whitehouse, the heart attack patient. Emily was recovering nicely. Thurse asked her if she’d seen a young man with dark blond hair and a limp. She said no. Thurse went back to Junior’s room and looked in the closet. It was empty. The young man with the probable brain tumor had dressed and checked himself out without benefit of paperwork.
11
Junior walked home. His limp seemed to clear up entirely once his muscles were warm. In addition, the dark keyhole shape floating on the left side of his vision had shrunk to a ball the size of a marble. Maybe he hadn’t gotten a full dose of thallium after all. Hard to tell. Either way, he had to keep his promise to God. If he took care of the Appleton kids, then God would take care of him.
As he left the hospital (by the back door), killing his father had been first on his to-do list. But by the time he actually got to the house—the house where his mother had died, the house where Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins had died—he had changed his mind. If he killed his father now, the special town meeting would be canceled. Junior didn’t want that, because the town meeting would provide good cover for his main errand. Most of the cops would be there, and that would make gaining access to the Coop easier. He only wished he had the poisoned dog tags. He’d enjoy stuffing them down
Big Jim wasn’t at home, anyway. The only living thing in the house was the wolf he’d seen loping across the hospital parking lot in the small hours of the morning. It was halfway down the stairs, looking at him and growling deep in its chest. Its fur was ragged. Its eyes were yellow. Around its neck hung Dale Barbara’s dog tags.
Junior closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them, the wolf was gone.
“I’m the wolf now,” he whispered to the hot and empty house. “I’m the werewolf, and I saw Lon Chaney dancing with the queen.”
He went upstairs, limping again but not noticing. His uniform was in the closet, and so was his gun—a Beretta 92 Taurus. The PD had a dozen of them, mostly paid for with federal Homeland Security money. He checked the Beretta’s fifteen-round mag and saw it was full. He put the gun into its holster, cinched the belt around his shrinking waist, and left his room.
At the top of the stairs he paused, wondering where to go until the meeting was well under way and he could make his move. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t even want to be seen. Then it came to him: a good hiding place that was also close to the action. He descended the stairs carefully—the goddam limp was all the way back, plus the left side of his face was so numb it might have been frozen—and lurched down the hall. He stopped briefly outside his father’s study, wondering if he should open the safe and burn the money inside. He decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He vaguely remembered a joke about bankers marooned on a desert island who’d gotten rich trading each other their clothes, and he uttered a brief yapping laugh even though he couldn’t exactly recall the punchline and had never completely gotten the joke, anyway.
The sun had gone behind the clouds to the west of the Dome and the day had grown gloomy. Junior walked out of the house and disappeared into the murk.
12
At quarter past five, Alice and Aidan Appleton came in from the back yard of their borrowed house. Alice
