Under the Dome

They had to be, because the sons of bitches were laughing.

Then he was back in the gym in Fallujah. It was hot because there was no air-conditioning, just overhead fans that paddled the soupy, jock-smelling air around and around. They had let all the interrogation subjects go except for two Abduls who were unwise enough to snot off a day after two IEDs had taken six American lives and a sniper had taken one more, a kid from Kentucky everyone liked—Carstairs. So they’d started kicking the Abduls around the gym, and pulling off their clothes, and Barbie would like to say he had walked out, but he hadn’t. He would like to say that at least he hadn’t participated, but he had. They got feverish about it. He remembered connecting with one Abdul’s bony, shit-speckled ass, and the red mark his combat boot had left there. Both Abduls naked by then. He remembered Emerson kicking the other one’s dangling cojones so hard they flew up in front of him and saying That’s for Carstairs, you fucking sandnigger. Someone would soon be giving his mom a flag while she sat on a folding chair near the grave, same old same old. And then, just as Barbie was remembering that he was technically in charge of these men, Sergeant Hackermeyer pulled one of them up by the unwinding remains of the keffiyeh that was now his only clothing and held him against the wall and put his gun to the Abdul’s head and there was a pause and no one said no in the pause and no one said don’t do that in the pause and Sergeant Hackermeyer pulled the trigger and the blood hit the wall as it’s hit the wall for three thousand years and more, and that was it, that was goodbye, Abdul, don’t forget to write when you’re not busy cherrypopping those virgins.

Barbie let go of the box and tried to get up, but his legs betrayed him. Rusty grabbed him and held him until he steadied.

“Christ,” Barbie said.

“You saw them, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are they children? What do you think?”

“Maybe.” But that wasn’t good enough, wasn’t what his heart believed. “Probably.”

They walked slowly back to where the others were clustered in front of the farmhouse.

“You all right?” Rommie asked.

“Yes,” Barbie said. He had to talk to the kids. And Jackie. Rusty, too. But not yet. First he had to get himself under control.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Rommie, is there more of that lead roll at your store?” Rusty asked.

“Yuh. I left it on the loading dock.”

“Good,” Rusty said, and borrowed Julia’s cell phone. He hoped Linda was home and not in an interrogation room at the PD, but hoping was all he could do.

8

The call from Rusty was necessarily brief, less than thirty seconds, but for Linda Everett it was long enough to turn this terrible Thursday a hundred and eighty degrees toward sunshine. She sat at the kitchen table, put her hands to her face, and cried. She did it as quietly as possible, because there were now four children upstairs instead of just two. She had brought the Appleton kids home with her, so now she had the As as well as the Js.

Alice and Aidan had been terribly upset—dear God, of course they had been—but being with Jannie and Judy had helped. So had doses of Benadryl all around. At the request of her girls, Linda had spread sleeping bags in their room, and now all four of them were conked out on the floor between the beds, Judy and Aidan with their arms wrapped around each other.

Just as she was getting herself under control again, there was a knock at the kitchen door. Her first thought was the police, although given the bloodshed and confusion downtown, she hadn’t expected them so soon. But there was nothing authoritative about that soft rapping.

She went to the door, pausing to snatch a dish towel from the end of the counter and wipe her face. At first she didn’t recognize her visitor, mostly because his hair was different. It was no longer in a ponytail; it fell to Thurston Marshall’s shoulders, framing his face, making him look like an elderly washerwoman who has gotten bad news—terrible news—after a long, hard day.

Linda opened the door. For a moment Thurse remained on the stoop. “Is Caro dead?” His voice was low and hoarse. As if he screamed it out at Woodstock doing the Fish Cheer and it just never came back, Linda thought. “Is she really dead?”

“I’m afraid she is,” Linda said, speaking low herself. Because of the children. “Mr. Marshall, I’m so sorry.”

For a moment he continued to just stand there. Then he grabbed the gray locks hanging on either side of his face and began to rock back and forth. Linda didn’t believe in May-December romances; she was old-fashioned that way. She would have given Marshall and Caro Sturges two years at most, maybe only six months—however long it took their sex organs to stop smoking—but tonight there was no doubting the man’s love. Or his loss.

Whatever they had, those kids deepened it, she thought. And the Dome, too. Living under the Dome intensified everything. Already it seemed to Linda that they had been under it not for days but years. The outside world was fading like a dream when you woke up.

“Come in,” she said. “But be quiet, Mr. Marshall. The children are sleeping. Mine and yours.”

9

She gave him sun-tea—not cold, not even particularly cool, but the best she could do under the circumstances. He drank half of it off, set the glass down, then screwed his fists into his eyes like a child up long past his bedtime. Linda recognized this for what it was, an effort to get himself under control, and sat quietly, waiting.

He pulled in a deep breath, let it out, then reached into the breast pocket of the old blue workshirt he was wearing. He took out a piece of rawhide and tied his hair back. She took this as a good sign.

“Tell me what happened,” Thurse said. “And how it happened.”

“I didn’t see it all. Someone kicked me a good one in the back of my head while I was trying to pull your… Caro… out of the way.”

“But one of the cops shot her, isn’t that right? One of the cops in this goddam cop-happy, gun-happy town.”

“Yes.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “Someone shouted gun. And there was a gun. It was Andrea Grinnell’s. She might have brought it to the meeting with the idea of assassinating Rennie.”

“Do you think that justifies what happened to Caro?”

“God, no. And what happened to Andi was flat-out murder.”

“Caro died trying to protect the children, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Children that weren’t even her own.”

Linda said nothing.

“Except they were. Hers and mine. Call it fortunes of war or fortunes of Dome, they were ours, the kids we never would have had otherwise. And until the Dome breaks—if it ever does—they’re mine.”

Linda was thinking furiously. Could this man be trusted? She thought so. Certainly Rusty had trusted him; had said the guy was a hell of a good medic for someone who’d been out of the game so long. And Thurston hated those in authority here under the Dome. He had reasons to.

“Mrs. Everett—”