Under the Dome

mother and baby lying beside the road was a bag of garbage. And that, of course, was what they’d been to whoever did this. She stood up. “I’m going to talk to her.”

“That might not be such a good idea right now,” Ginny said. “She’s had a sedative, and—”

“Let her take a shot,” Twitch said. His face was pale. His hands were knotted between his knees. The knuckles cracked repeatedly. “And make it a good one, Rev.”

13

Sammy’s eyes were at half-mast. They opened slowly when Piper sat down beside her bed. “You… were the one who…”

“Yes,” Piper said, taking her hand. “My name is Piper Libby.”

“Thank you,” Sammy said. Her eyes began to drift closed again.

“Thank me by telling me the names of the men who raped you.”

In the dim room—warm, with the hospital’s air-conditioning shut down—Sammy shook her head. “They said they’d hurt me. If I told.” She glanced at Piper. It was a cowlike glance, full of dumb resignation. “They might hurt Little Walter, too.”

Piper nodded. “I understand you’re frightened,” she said. “Now tell me who they were. Give me the names.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Looking away from Piper now. “They said they would hurt —”

Piper had no time for this; the girl would zone out on her. She grasped Sammy’s wrist. “I want those names, and you’re going to give them to me.”

“I don’t dare. ” Sammy began to ooze tears.

“You’re going to do it because if I hadn’t come along, you might be dead now.” She paused, then drove the dagger the rest of the way in. She might regret it later, but not now. Right now the girl in the bed was only an obstacle standing between her and what she needed to know. “Not to mention your baby. He might be dead, too. I saved your life, I saved his, and I want those names. ”

“No.” But the girl was weakening now, and part of the Reverend Piper Libby was actually enjoying this. Later she’d be disgusted; later she’d think You’re not that much different from those boys, forcing is forcing. But now, yes, there was pleasure, just as there had been pleasure in tearing the treasured poster from the wall and ripping it to shreds.

I like it because it is bitter, she thought. And because it is my heart.

She leaned over the crying girl. “Dig the wax out of your ears, Sammy, because you need to hear this. What they’ve done once they’ll do again. And when they do, when some other woman shows up here with a bloody snatch and possibly pregnant with a rapist’s child, I will come to you, and I will say—”

“No! Stop!”

“‘You were part of it. You were right there, cheering them on.’”

“No!” Sammy cried. “Not me, that was Georgia! Georgia was the one cheering them on!”

Piper felt cold disgust. A woman. A woman had been there. In her head, the red fissure opened wider. Soon it would begin to spew lava.

“Give me the names,” she said.

And Sammy did.

14

Jackie Wettington and Linda Everett were parked outside Food City. It was closing at five PM instead of eight. Randolph had sent them there thinking the early closing might cause trouble. A ridiculous idea, because the supermarket was almost empty. There were hardly a dozen cars in the parking lot, and the few remaining shoppers were moving in a slow daze, as if sharing the same bad dream. The two officers saw only one cashier, a teenager named Bruce Yardley. The kid was taking currency and writing chits instead of running credit cards. The meat counter was looking depleted, but there was still plenty of chicken and most of the canned and dry-goods shelves were fully stocked.

They were waiting for the last customers to leave when Linda’s cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and felt a little stab of fear in her stomach. It was Marta Edmunds, who kept Janelle and Judy when Linda and Rusty were both working—as they had been, almost nonstop, since the Dome came down. She hit callback.

“Marta?” she said, praying it was nothing, Marta asking if it was okay for her to take the girls down to the common, something like that. “Everything all right?”

“Well… yes. That is, I guess so.” Linda hating the worry she heard in Marta’s voice. “But… you know that seizure thing?”

“Oh God—did she have one?”

“I think so,” Marta said, then hurried on: “They’re perfectly okay now, in the other room, coloring.”

“What happened? Tell me!”

“They were on the swings. I was doing my flowers, getting them ready for winter—”

“Marta, please!” Linda said, and Jackie laid a hand on her arm.

“I’m sorry. Audi started to bark, so I turned around. I said, ‘Honey, are you all right?’ She didn’t answer, just got out of the swing and sat down underneath—you know, where there’s a little dip from all the feet? She didn’t fall out or anything, just sat down. She was staring straight ahead and doing that lip- smacking thing you told me to watch for. I ran over… kind of shook her… and she said… let me think…”

Here it comes, Linda thought. Stop Halloween, you have to stop Halloween.

But no. It was something else entirely.

“She said ‘The pink stars are falling. The pink stars are falling in lines.’ Then she said, ‘It’s so dark and everything smells bad.’ Then she woke up and now everything’s fine.”

“Thank God for that,” Linda said, and spared a thought for her five-year-old. “Is Judy okay? Did it upset her?”

There was a long pause on the line and then Marta said, “Oh.”

“Oh? What does that mean, oh?”

“It was Judy, Linda. Not Janelle. This time it was Judy.”

15

I want to play that other game you said, Aidan had told Carolyn Sturges when they had stopped on the common to talk to Rusty. The other game she had in mind was Red Light, although Carolyn had only the slightest recollection of the rules—not surprising, since she hadn’t played it since she was six or seven.

But once she was standing against a tree in the commodious backyard of the “passionage,” the rules came back to her. And, unexpectedly, to Thurston, who seemed not only willing to play, but eager.

“Remember,” he instructed the children (who somehow seemed to have missed the pleasures of Red Light themselves), “she can count to ten as fast as she wants to, and if she catches you moving when she turns around, you have to go all the way back.”

“She won’t catch me, ” Alice said.