Under the Dome

“Probably overconcern. Occupational hazard.”

“You’re totally forgiven. This has been the craziest weekend in the history of the world. Chalk it up to that.”

“You bet. And if you need me, check the hospital or the Health Center.” He pointed in the direction of Cathy Russell, which would be visible through the trees once the rest of the leaves fell. If they fell.

“Or this bench,” she said, still smiling.

“Or this bench, right.” Also smiling.

“Caro!” Thurse sounded impatient. “Come on!”

She gave Rusty a little wave—no more than a twiddle of the fingertips—then ran after the others. She ran lightly, gracefully. Rusty wondered if Thurse knew that girls who could run lightly and gracefully almost always ran away from their elderly lovers, sooner or later. Maybe he did. Maybe it had happened to him before.

Rusty watched them cut across the common toward the spire of the Congo church. Eventually the trees screened them from sight. When he looked back at the PD building, Junior Rennie was gone.

Rusty sat where he was for a moment of two, drumming his fingers on his thighs. Then he came to a decision and stood up. Checking the town storage shed for the hospital’s missing propane tanks could wait. He was more curious about what The Mill’s one and only Army officer was doing in the Town Hall.

9

What Barbie was doing as Rusty crossed Comm Lane to the Town Hall was whistling appreciatively through his teeth. The fallout shelter was as long as an Amtrak dining car, and the shelves were fully stocked with canned goods. Most looked pretty fishy: stacks of sardines, ranks of salmon, and a lot of something called Snow’s Clam Fry-Ettes, which Barbie sincerely hoped he would never have to sample. There were boxes of dry goods, including many large plastic canisters marked RICE, WHEAT, POWDERED MILK, and SUGAR. There were stacked flats of bottles labeled DRINKING WATER. He counted ten large cartons of U.S. GOV’T SURPLUS CRACKERS. Two more were labeled U.S. GOV’T SURPLUS CHOCOLATE BARS. On the wall above these was a yellowing sign reading 700 CALORIES A DAY KEEPS HUNGER AT BAY.

“Dream on,” Barbie muttered.

There was a door at the far end. He opened it on Stygian blackness, felt around, found a light switch. Another room, not quite so big but still large. It looked old and disused—not dirty, Al Timmons at least must know about it because someone had been dusting the shelves and dry-mopping the floors, but neglected for sure. The stored water was in glass bottles, and he hadn’t seen any of those since a brief stint in Saudi.

This second room contained a dozen folded cots plus plain blue blankets and mattresses that had been zipped into clear plastic covers, pending use. There were more supplies, including half a dozen cardboard canisters labeled SANITATION KIT and another dozen marked AIR MASKS. There was a small auxiliary generator that could supply minimal power. It was running; must have started up when he turned on the lights. Flanking the little gennie were two shelves. On one was a radio that looked as if it might have been new around the time C. W. McCall’s novelty song “Convoy” had been a hit. On the other shelf were two hotplates and a metal box painted bright yellow. The logo on the side was from the days when CD stood for something other than compact disc. It was what he had come to find.

Barbie picked it up, then almost dropped it—it was heavy. On the front was a gauge labeled COUNTS PER SECOND. When you turned the instrument on and pointed the sensor at something, the needle might stay in the green, rise to the yellow center of the dial… or go over into the red. That, Barbie assumed, would not be good.

He turned it on. The little power lamp stayed dark and the needle lay quiet against 0.

“Battery’s dead,” someone said from behind him. Barbie almost jumped out of his skin. He looked around and saw a tall, heavyset man with blond hair standing in the doorway between the two rooms.

For a moment the name eluded him, although the guy was at the restaurant most Sunday mornings, sometimes with his wife, always with his two little girls. Then it came to him. “Rusty Evers, right?”

“Close; it’s Everett.” The newcomer held out his hand. A little warily, Barbie walked over and shook it. “Saw you come in. And that”—he nodded to the Geiger counter—“is probably not a bad idea. Something must be keeping it in place.” He didn’t say what he meant by it and didn’t need to.

“Glad you approve. You almost scared me into a goddam heart attack. But you could take care of that, I guess. You’re a doc, right?”

“PA,” Rusty said. “That means—”

“I know what it means.”

“Okay, you win the waterless cookware.” Rusty pointed at the Geiger counter. “That thing probably takes a six-volt dry cell. I’m pretty sure I saw some at Burpee’s. Less sure anybody’s there right now. So… maybe a little more rekkie?”

“What exactly would we be reconning?”

“The supply shed out back.”

“And we’d want to do that because?”

“That depends on what we find. If it’s what we lost up at the hospital, you and I might exchange a little information.”

“Want to share on what you lost?”

“Propane, brother.”

Barbie considered this. “What the hell. Let’s take a look.”

10

Junior stood at the foot of the rickety stairs leading up the side of Sanders Hometown Drug, wondering if he could possibly climb them with his head aching the way it was. Maybe. Probably. On the other hand, he thought he might get halfway up and his skull would pop like a New Year’s Eve noisemaker. The spot was back in front of his eye, jigging and jagging with his heartbeat, but it was no longer white. It had turned bright red.

I’d be okay in the dark, he thought. In the pantry, with my girlfriends.

If this went right, he could go there. Right now the pantry of the McCain house on Prestile Street seemed like the most desirable place on earth. Of course Coggins was there, too, but so what? Junior could always push that gospel-shouting asshole to one side. And Coggins had to stay hidden, at least for the time being. Junior had no interest in protecting his father (and was neither surprised nor dismayed at what his old man had done; Junior had always known Big Jim Rennie had murder in him), but he did have an interest in fixing Dale Barbara’s little red wagon.

If we handle this right, we can do more than get him out of the way, Big Jim had said that morning. We can use him to unify the town in the face of this crisis. And that cotton-picking newspaperwoman. I have an idea about her, too. He had laid a warm and hammy hand on his son’s shoulder. We’re a team, son.

Maybe not forever, but for the time being, they were pulling the same plow. And they would take care of Baaarbie. It had even occurred to Junior that Barbie was responsible for his headaches. If Barbie really had been overseas—Iraq was the rumor—then he might have come home with some weird Middle Eastern souvenirs. Poison, for instance. Junior had eaten in Sweetbriar Rose many times. Barbara could easily have dropped a little sumpin-sumpin in his food. Or his coffee. And if Barbie wasn’t working the grill personally, he could have gotten Rose to do it. That cunt was under his spell.

Junior mounted the stairs, walking slowly, pausing every four steps. His head didn’t explode, and when he