Under the Dome

one of the high windows struck across his face, making him look older than he was. Making him look eighty. “I edited the current issue of Ploughshares, ” he said. His voice quivered with indignation and sorrow. “That is a very good literary magazine, one of the best in the country. They had no right to punch me in the stomach, or laugh at me.”

“No,” Barbie said. “Of course not. Take good care of those kids.”

“We will,” Carolyn said. She took the man’s arm and squeezed it. “Come on, Thurse.”

Barbie waited until he heard the outer door close, then went in search of the stairs leading to the Town Hall conference room and kitchen. Julia had said the fallout shelter was half a flight down from there.

7

Piper’s first thought was that someone had left a bag of garbage beside the road. Then she got a little closer and saw it was a body.

She pulled over and scrambled out the car so fast she went to one knee, scraping it. When she got up she saw it wasn’t one body but two: a woman and a toddler. The child, at least, was alive, waving its arms feebly.

She ran to them and turned the woman onto her back. She was young, and vaguely familiar, but not a member of Piper’s congregation. Her cheek and brow were badly bruised. Piper freed the child from the carrier, and when she held him against her and stroked his sweaty hair, he began to cry hoarsely.

The woman’s eyes fluttered open at the sound, and Piper saw that her pants were soaked with blood.

“Li’l Walter,” the woman croaked, which Piper misheard.

“Don’t worry, there’s water in the car. Lie still. I’ve got your baby, he’s okay.” Not knowing if he was or not. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Li’l Walter,” the woman in the bloody jeans said again, and closed her eyes.

Piper ran back to her car with her heart beating hard enough for her to feel it in her eyeballs. Her tongue tasted coppery. God help me, she prayed, and could think of nothing else, so she thought it again: God, oh God help me help that woman.

The Subaru had air-conditioning, but she hadn’t been using it in spite of the heat of the day; rarely did. Her understanding was that it wasn’t very eco-friendly. But she turned it on now, full blast. She laid the baby on the backseat, rolled up the windows, closed the doors, started back toward the young woman lying in the dust, then was struck by a terrible thought: what if the baby managed to climb over the seat, pushed the wrong button, and locked her out?

God, I’m so stupid. The worst minister in the world when a real crisis comes. Help me not to be so stupid.

She rushed back, opened the driver’s door again, looked over the seat, and saw the boy still lying where she had put him, but now sucking his thumb. His eyes went to her briefly, then looked up at the ceiling as if he saw something interesting there. Mental cartoons, maybe. He had sweated right through the little tee-shirt beneath his overall. Piper twisted the electronic key fob back and forth in her fist until it broke free of the key ring. Then she ran back to the woman, who was trying to sit up.

“Don’t,” Piper said, kneeling beside her and putting an arm around her. “I don’t think you should—”

“Li’l Walter,” the woman croaked.

Shit, I forgot the water! God, why did You let me forget the water?

Now the woman was trying to struggle to her feet. Piper didn’t like this idea, which ran counter to everything she knew of first aid, but what other option was there? The road was deserted, and she couldn’t leave her out in the blaring sun, that would be worse and more of it. So instead of pushing her back down, Piper helped her to stand.

“Slow,” she said, now holding the woman around the waist and guiding her staggering steps as best she could. “Slow and easy does it, slow and easy wins the race. It’s cool in the car. And there’s water.”

“Li’l Walter!” The woman swayed, steadied, then tried to move a little faster.

“Water,” Piper said. “Right. Then I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“Hell… Center.”

This Piper did understand, and she shook her head firmly. “No way. You’re going straight to the hospital. You and your baby both.”

“Li’l Walter,” the woman whispered. She stood swaying, head down, hair hanging in her face, while Piper opened the passenger door and then eased her inside.

Piper got the bottle of Poland Spring out of the center console and took off the cap. The woman snatched it from her before Piper could offer it, and drank greedily, water overspilling the neck and dripping off her chin to darken the top of her tee-shirt.

“What’s your name?” Piper asked.

“Sammy Bushey.” And then, even as her stomach cramped from the water, that black rose began to open in front of Sammy’s eyes again. The bottle dropped out of her hand and fell to the floormat, gurgling, as she passed out.

Piper drove as fast as she could, which was pretty fast, since Motton Road remained deserted, but when she got to the hospital, she discovered that Dr. Haskell had died the day before and the physician’s assistant, Everett, was not there.

Sammy was examined and admitted by that famed medical expert, Dougie Twitchell.

8

While Ginny was trying to stop Sammy Bushey’s vaginal bleeding and Twitch was giving the badly dehydrated Little Walter IV fluids, Rusty Everett was sitting quietly on a park bench at the Town Hall edge of the common. The bench was beneath the spreading arms of a tall blue spruce, and he thought he was in shade deep enough to render him effectively invisible. As long as he didn’t move around much, that was.

There were interesting things to look at.

He had planned to go directly to the storage building behind the Town Hall (Twitch had called it a shed, but the long wooden building, which also housed The Mill’s four snowplows, was actually quite a bit grander than that) and check the propane situation there, but then one of the police cars pulled up, with Frankie DeLesseps at the wheel. Junior Rennie had emerged from the passenger side. The two had spoken for a moment or two, then DeLesseps had driven away.

Junior went up the PD steps, but instead of going in, he sat down there, rubbing his temples as if he had a headache. Rusty decided to wait. He didn’t want to be seen checking up on the town’s energy supply, especially not by the Second Selectman’s son.

At one point Junior took his cell phone out of his pocket, flipped it open, listened, said something, listened some more, said something else, then flipped it closed again. He went back to rubbing his temples. Dr. Haskell had said something about that young man. Migraine headaches, was it? It certainly looked like a migraine. It wasn’t just the temple-rubbing; it was the way he was keeping his head down.

Trying to minimize the glare, Rusty thought. Must have left his Imitrex or Zomig home. Assuming Haskell prescribed it, that is.

Rusty had half-risen, meaning to cut across Commonwealth Lane to the rear of the Town Hall—Junior clearly not being at his most observant—but then he spotted someone else and sat down again. Dale Barbara, the short- order cook who had reputedly been elevated to the rank of colonel (by the President himself, according to some), was standing beneath the marquee of the Globe, even deeper in the shadows than Rusty was himself. And Barbara also appeared to be keeping an eye on young Mr. Rennie.

Interesting.

Barbara apparently came to the conclusion that Rusty had already drawn: Junior wasn’t watching but waiting. Possibly for someone to pick him up. Barbara hustled across the street and—once he was blocked from