Under the Dome

1

The female officers standing by Big Jim’s H3 were still talking—Jackie now nervously puffing a cigarette—but they broke off as Julia Shumway stalked past them.

“Julia?” Linda asked hesitantly. “What did—”

Julia kept on. The last thing she wanted while she was still boiling was to talk to any more representatives of law and order as it now seemed to exist in Chester’s Mill. She walked halfway to the Democrat’s office before she realized that anger wasn’t all she was feeling. It wasn’t even most of what she was feeling. She stopped under the awning of Mill New & Used Books (CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, read the hand-lettered sign in the window), partly to wait for her racing heart to slow, mostly to look inside herself. It didn’t take long.

“Mostly I’m just scared,” she said, and jumped a little at the sound of her own voice. She hadn’t meant to speak aloud.

Pete Freeman caught up with her. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” It was a lie, but it emerged stoutly enough. Of course, she couldn’t tell what her face was saying. She reached up and tried to flatten the sleepstack of hair at the back of her head. It went down… then sprang up again. Bed head on top of everything else, she thought. Very nice. The finishing touch.

“I thought Rennie was actually going to have our new Chief arrest you,” Pete said. He was big-eyed and at that moment looked much younger than his thirtysomething years.

“I was hoping.” Julia framed an invisible headline with her hands. “DEMOCRAT REPORTER SCORES EXCLUSIVE JAILHOUSE INTERVIEW WITH ACCUSED MURDERER.”

“Julia? What’s going on here? Aside from the Dome, that is? Did you see all those guys filling out forms? It was kinda scary.”

“I saw it,” Julia said, “and I intend to write about it. I intend to write about all this. And at town meeting on Thursday night, I don’t think I’ll be the only one with serious questions for James Rennie.”

She laid a hand on Pete’s arm.

“I’m going to see what I can find out about these murders, then I’ll write what I have. Plus an editorial as strong as I can make it without rabble-rousing.” She uttered a humorless bark of laughter. “When it comes to rousing rabble, Jim Rennie’s got the home court advantage.”

“I don’t understand what you—”

“That’s okay, just get busy. I need a couple of minutes to get hold of myself. Then maybe I can figure out who to talk to first. Because there isn’t a helluva lot of time, if we’re going to go to press tonight.”

“Photocopier,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Go to photocopier tonight.”

She gave him a shaky smile and shooed him on his way. At the door to the newspaper office he looked back. She tossed him a wave to show she was okay, then peered through the dusty window of the bookstore. The downtown movie theater had been shut for half a decade, and the drive-in outside of town was long gone (Rennie’s auxiliary car lot stood where its big screen had once towered over 119), but somehow Ray Towle had kept this dirty little emporium galorium crutching along. Part of the window display consisted of self-help books. The rest of the window was heaped with paperbacks featuring fogbound mansions, ladies in distress, and barechested hunks both afoot and on horseback. Several of said hunks were waving swords and appeared to be dressed in just their underpants. GET THE HOTS FOR DARK PLOTS! the sign on this side read.

Dark plots indeed.

If the Dome wasn’t bad enough, weird enough, there’s the Selectman from Hell.

What worried her the most, she realized—what scared her the most—was how fast this was happening. Rennie had gotten used to being the biggest, meanest rooster in the farmyard, and she would have expected him to try to strengthen his hold on the town even-tually—say after a week or a month cut off from the outside world. But this was only three days and change. Suppose Cox and his scientists cracked through the Dome tonight? Suppose it even disappeared on its own? Big Jim would immediately shrink back to his former size, only he’d have egg on his face, too.

“What egg?” she asked herself, still looking in at the DARK PLOTS. “He’d just say he was doing the best he could under trying circumstances. And they’d believe him.”

That was probably true. But it still didn’t explain why the man hadn’t waited to make his move.

Because something went wrong and he had to. Also—

“Also, I don’t think he’s completely sane,” she told the heaped-up paperbacks. “I don’t think he ever was.”

Even if true, how did you explain people who still had fully stocked pantries rioting at the local supermarket? It made no sense, unless—

“Unless he instigated it.”

That was ridiculous, the Blue Plate Special at the Paranoid Café. Wasn’t it? She supposed she could ask some of the people who’d been at Food City what they’d seen, but weren’t the murders more important? She was the only real reporter she had, after all, and—

“Julia? Ms. Shumway?”

Julia was so deep in thought she almost lifted out of her loafers. She wheeled around and might have fallen if Jackie Wettington hadn’t steadied her. Linda Everett was with her, and it was she who had spoken. They both looked scared.

“Can we talk to you?” Jackie asked.

“Of course. Listening to people talk is what I do. The downside is that I write what they say. You ladies know that, don’t you?”

“But you can’t use our names,” Linda said. “If you don’t agree to that, forget the whole thing.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Julia said, smiling, “you two are just a source close to the investigation. Does that work?”

“If you promise to answer our questions, too,” Jackie said. “Will you?”

“All right.”

“You were at the supermarket, weren’t you?” Linda asked. Curiouser and curiouser.

“Yes. So were you two. So let’s talk. Compare notes.”

“Not here,” Linda said. “Not on the street. It’s too public. And not at the newspaper office, either.”

“Take it easy, Lin,” Jackie said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“You take it easy,” Linda said. “You’re not the one with the husband who thinks you just helped railroad an innocent man.”

“I don’t have a husband,” Jackie said—quite reasonably, Julia thought, and lucky for her; husbands were so often a complicating factor. “But I do know a place we can go. It’s private, and always unlocked.” She considered. “At least it was. Since the Dome, I dunno.”

Julia, who had just been considering whom to interview first, had no intention of letting these two slip away. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll walk on opposite sides of the street until we’re past the police station, shall we?”

At this, Linda managed a smile. “What a good idea,” she said.

2

Piper Libby lowered herself carefully in front of the altar of the First Congo Church, wincing even though she had put down a pew-pad for her bruised and swollen knees. She braced herself with her right hand, holding her recently dislocated left arm against her side. It seemed okay—less painful than her knees, in fact—but she had no intention of testing it unnecessarily. It would be all too easy to get it out of joint again; she had been informed of that (sternly) after her soccer injury in high school. She folded her hands and closed her eyes. Immediately her tongue went to the hole where there had been a tooth up until yesterday. But there was a worse hole in her life.

“Hello, Not-There,” she said. “It’s me again, back for another helping of Your love and mercy.” A tear trickled from beneath one swollen eyelid and ran down one swollen (not to mention colorful) cheek. “Is my dog anywhere around? I only ask because I miss him so much. If he is, I hope you’ll give him the spiritual equivalent of a chewbone. He deserves one.”

More tears now, slow and hot and stinging.

“Probably he’s not. Most major religions agree that dogs don’t go to heaven, although certain offshoot sects—and The Reader’s Digest, I believe—disagree.”

Of course if there was no heaven, the question was moot, and the idea of this heavenless existence, this heavenless cosmology, was where what remained of her faith seemed more and more at home. Maybe oblivion; maybe something worse. A vast trackless plain under a white sky, say—a place where none was always the hour, nowhere the destination, and nobody your companions. Just a big old Not-There, in other words: for bad cops, lady preachers, kids who accidentally shot themselves, and galoot German shepherds who died trying to protect their mistresses. No Being to sort the wheat from the chaff. There was something histrionic about praying to such a concept (if not downright blasphemous), but occasionally it helped.

“But heaven’s not the point,” she resumed. “The point right now is trying to figure out how much of what happened to Clover was my fault. I know I have to own some of it—my temper got the best of me. Again. My religious teaching suggests You put that short fuse in me to begin with, and it’s my job to deal with it, but I hate that idea. I don’t completely reject it, but I hate it. It makes me think of how, when you take your car to get repaired, the guys in the shop always find a way to blame the problem on you. You ran it too much, you didn’t run it enough, you forgot to release the handbrake, you forgot to close your windows and the rain got in the wiring. And you know what’s worse? If You’re Not-There, I can’t shove even a little of the blame off on You. What does that leave? Fucking genetics?”

She sighed.

“Sorry about the profanity; why don’t You just pretend it Wasn’t-There? That’s what my mother always used to do. In the meantime, I have another question: What do I do now? This town is in terrible trouble, and I’d like to do something to help, only I can’t decide what. I feel foolish and weak and confused. I suppose if I was one of those Old Testament eremites, I’d say I need a sign. At this point, even YIELD or REDUCE SPEED IN SCHOOL ZONE would look good.”

The moment she finished saying this, the outside door opened, then boomed shut. Piper looked over her shoulder, half-expecting to see an angel, complete with wings and blazing white robe. If he wants to wrestle, he’ll have to heal my arm first, she thought.

It wasn’t an angel; it was Rommie Burpee. Half his shirt was untucked, hanging down his leg almost to mid-thigh, and he looked almost as downcast as she felt. He started down the center aisle, then saw her and stopped, as surprised to see Piper as she was him.

“Oh, gee,” he said, only with his Lewiston on parle accent, it came out Oh, shee. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you was dere. I’ll come back later.”

“No,” she said, and struggled to her feet, once more using just her right arm. “I’m done, anyway.”

“I’m actually a Cat’lick,” he said (No shit, Piper thought), “but there isn’t a Cat’lick church in The Mill… which acourse you know, bein a minister… and you know what they say bout any port in a storm. I thought I’d come in and say a little prayer for Brenda. I always liked dat woman.” He rubbed a hand up one cheek. The rasp of his palm on the beard-stubble there seemed very loud in the hollow silence of the church. His Elvis ‘do was drooping around his ears. “Loved her, really. I never said, but I t’ink she knew.”

Piper stared at him with growing horror. She hadn’t been out of the parsonage all day, and although she knew about what had happened at Food City—several of her parishioners had called her—she had heard nothing about Brenda Perkins.

“Brenda? What happened to her?”

“Murdered. Others, too. They’re sayin that guy Barbie did it. He been arrested.”

Piper clapped a hand over her mouth and swayed on her feet. Rommie hurried forward and put a steadying arm around her waist. And that was how they were standing before the altar, almost like a man and woman about to be married, when the vestibule door opened again and Jackie led Linda and Julia inside.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good place, after all,” Jackie said.

The church was a soundbox, and although she didn’t speak loudly, Piper and Romeo Burpee heard her perfectly.

“Don’t leave,” Piper said. “Not if it’s about what happened. I can’t believe Mr. Barbara… I would have said he was incapable. He put my arm back in after it was dislocated. He was very gentle about it.” She paused to think about that. “As gentle as he could be, under the circumstances. Come down front. Please come down front.”

“People can fix a dislocated arm and still be capable of murder,” Linda said, but she was biting her lip and twisting her wedding ring.

Jackie put a hand on her wrist. “We were going to keep this quiet, Lin—remember?”

“Too late for that,” Linda said. “They’ve seen us with Julia. If she writes a story and those two say they saw us with her, we’ll get blamed.”

Piper had no clear idea what Linda was talking about, but she got the general gist. She raised her right arm and swept it around. “You’re in my church, Mrs. Everett, and what’s said here stays here.”

“Do you promise?” Linda asked.

“Yes. So why don’t we talk about it? I was just praying for a sign, and here you all are.”

“I don’t believe in stuff like that,” Jackie said.

“Neither do I, actually,” Piper said, and laughed.

“I don’t like it,” Jackie said. It was Julia she was addressing. “No matter what she says, this is too many people. Losing my job like Marty is one thing. I could deal with that, the pay sucks, anyway. Getting Jim Rennie mad at me, though…” She shook her head. “Not a good idea.”

“It isn’t too many,” Piper said. “It’s just the right number. Mr. Burpee, can you keep a secret?”

Rommie Burpee, who had done any number of questionable deals in his time, nodded and put a finger over his lips. “Mum’s the word,” he said. Word came out woid.

“Let’s go in the parsonage,” Piper said. When she saw that Jackie still looked doubtful, Piper held out her left hand to her… very carefully. “Come, let us reason together. Maybe over a little tot of whiskey?”

And with this, Jackie was at last convinced.

3

The three men crammed into the cab of the rumbling Public Works truck looked at this cryptic message with some wonder. It had been painted on the storage building behind the WCIK studios, black on red and in letters so large they covered almost the entire surface.

The man in the middle was Roger Killian, the chicken farmer with the bullet-headed brood. He turned to Stewart Bowie, who was behind the wheel of the truck. “What’s it mean, Stewie?”

It was Fern Bowie who answered. “It means that goddam Phil Bushey’s crazier than ever, that’s what it means.” He opened the truck’s glove compartment, removed a pair of greasy work gloves, and revealed a .38 revolver. He checked the loads, then snapped the cylinder back into place with a flick of his wrist and jammed the pistol in his belt.

“You know, Fernie,” Stewart said, “that is a goddam good way to blow your babymakers off.”

“Don’t you worry about me, worry about him,” Fern said, pointing back at the studio. From it the faint sound of gospel music drifted to them. “He’s been gettin high on his own supply for most of a year now, and he’s about as reliable as nitroglycerine.”

“Phil likes people to call him The Chef now,” Roger Killian said. They had first pulled up outside the studio and Stewart had honked the PW truck’s big horn—not once but several times. Phil Bushey had not come out. He might be in there hiding; he might be wandering in the woods behind the station; it was even possible, Stewart thought, that he was in the lab. Paranoid. Dangerous. Which still didn’t make the gun a good idea. He leaned over, plucked it from Fern’s belt, and tucked it under the driver’s seat.

“Hey!” Fern cried.

“You’re not firing a gun in there,” Stewart said. “You’re apt to blow us all to the moon.” And to Roger, he said: “When’s the last time you saw that scrawny motherfucker?”

Roger mulled it over. “Been four weeks, at least—since the last big shipment out of town. When we had that big Chinook helicopter come in.” He pronounced it Shinoook. Rommie Burpee would have understood.

Stewart considered. Not good. If Bushey was in the woods, that was all right. If he was cowering in the studio, paranoid and thinking they were Feds, probably still no problem… unless he decided to come out shooting, that was.

If he was in the storage building, though… that might be a problem.

Stewart said to his brother, “There’s some goodsize junks of wood in the back of the truck. Get you one of those. If Phil shows and starts cuttin up rough, clock im one.”

“What if he has a gun?” Roger asked, quite reasonably.

“He won’t,” Stewart said. And although he wasn’t actually sure of this, he had his orders: two tanks of propane, to be delivered to the hospital posthaste. And we’re going to move the rest of it out of there as soon as we can, Big Jim had said. We’re officially out of the meth business.

That was something of a relief; when they were shut of this Dome thing, Stewart intended to get out of the funeral business, too. Move someplace warm, like Jamaica or Barbados. He never wanted to see another dead body. But he didn’t want to be the one who told “Chef” Bushey they were closing down, and he had informed Big Jim of that.

Let me worry about The Chef, Big Jim had said.

Stewart drove the big orange truck around the building and backed it up to the rear doors. He left the engine idling to run the winch and the hoist.

“Lookit that,” Roger Killian marveled. He was staring into the west, where the sun was going down in a troubling red smear. Soon it would sink below the great black smudge left by the woods-fire and be blotted out in a dirty eclipse. “Don’t that just beat the dickens.”

“Quit gawking,” Stewart said. “I want to do this and get gone. Fernie, get you a junk. Pick out a good one.”

Fern climbed over the hoist and picked out a leftover piece of planking about as long as a baseball bat. He held it in both hands and gave it an experimental swish. “This’ll do,” he said.

“Baskin-Robbins,” Roger said dreamily. He was still shading his eyes and squinting west. The squint was not a good look for him; it made him resemble a fairy-tale troll.

Stewart paused while unlocking the back door, a complicated process that involved a touchpad and two locks. “What are you pissing about?”

“Thirty-one flavors,” Roger said. He smiled, revealing a rotting set of teeth that had never been visited by Joe Boxer or probably any dentist.

Stewart had no idea what Roger was talking about, but his brother did. “Don’t think that’s an ice cream ad on the side of the buildin,” Fern said. “Unless there’s Baskin-Robbins in the book of Revelations.”

“Shut up, both of you,” Stewart said. “Fernie, stand ready with that junk.” He pushed the door open and peered in. “Phil?”

“Call im Chef,” Roger advised. “Like that nigger cook on South Park. That’s what he likes.”

“Chef?” Stewart called. “You in there, Chef?”

No answer. Stewart fumbled into the gloom, half expecting his hand to be seized at any moment, and found the light switch. He turned it on, revealing a room that stretched about three-quarters the length of the storage building. The walls were unfinished bare wood, the spaces between the laths stuffed with pink foam insulation. The room was almost filled with LP gas tanks and canisters of all sizes and brands. He had no idea how many there were in all, but if forced to guess, he would have said between four and six hundred.

Stewart walked slowly up the center aisle, peering at the stenciling on the tanks. Big Jim had told him exactly which ones to take, had said they’d be near the back, and by God, they were. He stopped at the five municipal-size tanks with CR HOSP on the side. They were between tanks that had been filched from the post office and some with MILL MIDDLE SCHOOL on the sides.

“We’re supposed to take two,” he said to Roger. “Bring the chain and we’ll hook em up. Fernie, go you down there and try that door to the lab. If it ain’t locked, lock it.” He tossed Fern his key ring.

Fern could have done without this chore, but he was an obedient brother. He walked down the aisle between the piles of propane tanks. They ended ten feet from the door—and the door, he saw with a sinking heart, was standing ajar. Behind him he heard the clank of the chain, then the whine of the winch and the low clatter of the first tank being dragged back to the truck. It sounded far away, especially when he imagined The Chef crouching on the other side of that door, red-eyed and crazy. All smoked up and toting a TEC-9.

“Chef?” he asked. “You here, buddy?”

No answer. And although he had no business doing so—was probably crazy himself for doing so—curiosity got the better of him and he used his makeshift club to push open the door.

The fluorescents in the lab were on, but otherwise this part of the Christ Is King storage building looked empty. The twenty or so cook-ers—big electric grills, each hooked to its own exhaust fan and propane canister—were off. The pots, beakers, and expensive flasks were all on their shelves. The place stank (always had, always would, Fern thought), but the floor was swept and there was no sign of disarray. On one wall was a Rennie’s Used Cars calendar, still turned to August. Probably when the motherfucker finished losing touch with reality, Fern thought. Just flooaated away. He ventured a little farther into the lab. It had made them all rich men, but he had never liked it. It smelled too much like the funeral parlor’s downstairs prep room.

One corner had been partitioned off with a heavy steel panel. There was a door in the middle of it. This, Fern knew, was where The Chef’s product was stored, long-glass crystal meth put up not in gallon Baggies but in Hefty garbage bags. Not shitglass, either. No tweeker scruffing the streets of New York or Los Angeles in search of a fix would have been able to credit such stocks. When the place was full, it held enough to supply the entire United States for months, perhaps even a year.

Why did Big Jim let him make so fucking much? Fern wondered.And why did we go along? What were we thinking of? He could come up with no answer to this question but the obvious one: because they could. The combination of Bushey’s genius and all those cheap Chinese ingredients had intoxicated them. Also, it funded the CIK Corporation, which was doing God’s work all up and down the East Coast. When anyone questioned, Big Jim always pointed this out. And he would quote scripture: For the laborer is worthy of his hire—Gospel of Luke—and Thou shalt not muzzle the ox while he is threshing—First Timothy.

Fern had never really gotten that one about the oxes.

“Chef?” Advancing in a little farther still. “Goodbuddy?”

Nothing. He looked up and saw galleries of bare wood running along two sides of the building. These were being used for storage, and the contents of the cartons stacked there would have interested the FBI, the FDA, and the ATF a great deal. No one was up there, but Fern spied something he thought was new: white cord running along the railings of both galleries, affixed to the wood by heavy staples. An electrical cord? Running to what? Had that nutball put more cookers up there? If so, Fern didn’t see them. The cord looked too thick to be powering just a simple appliance, like a TV or a ra—

“Fern!” Stewart cried, making him jump. “If he ain’t there, come on and help us! I want to get out of here! They said there’s gonna be an update on TV at six and I want to see if they’ve figured anything out!”

In Chester’s Mill, “they” had more and more come to mean anything or anyone in the world beyond the town’s borders.

Fern went, not looking over the door and thus not seeing what the new electrical cords were attached to: a large brick of white clay-like stuff sitting on its own little shelf. It was explosive.

The Chef’s own recipe.

4

As they drove back toward town, Roger said: “Halloween. That’s a thirty-one, too.”

“You’re a regular fund of information,” Stewart said.

Roger tapped the side of his unfortunately shaped head. “I store it up,” he said. “I don’t do it on purpose. It’s just a knack.”

Stewart thought: Jamaica. Or Barbados. Somewhere warm, for sure. As soon as the Dome lets go. I never want to see another Killian. Or anyone from this town.

“There’s also thirty-one cards in a deck,” Roger said.

Fern stared at him. “What the fuck are you—”

“Just kiddin, just kiddin with you,” Roger said, and burst into a terrifying shriek of laughter that hurt Stewart’s head.

They were coming up on the hospital now. Stewart saw a gray Ford Taurus pulling out of Catherine Russell.

“Hey, that’s Dr. Rusty,” Fern said. “Bet he’ll be glad to get this stuff. Give im a toot, Stewie.”

Stewart gave im a toot.

5

When the Godless ones were gone, Chef Bushey finally let go of the garage door opener he’d been holding. He had been watching the Bowie brothers and Roger Killian from the window in the studio men’s room. His thumb had been on the button the whole time they were in the storage barn, rummaging around in his stuff. If they had come out with product, he would have pushed the button and blown the whole works sky-high.

“It’s in your hands, my Jesus,” he had muttered. “Like we used to say when we were kids, I don’t wanna but I will.”

And Jesus handled it. Chef had a feeling He would when he heard George Dow and the Gospel-Tones come over the sat-feed, singing “God, How You Care for Me,” and it was a true feeling, a true Sign from Above. They hadn’t come for long glass but for two piddling tanks of LP.

He watched them drive away, then shambled down the path between the back of the studio and the combination lab–storage facility. It was his building now, his long-glass, at least until Jesus came and took it all for his own.

Maybe Halloween.

Maybe earlier.

It was a lot to think about, and thinking was easier these days when he was smoked up.

Much easier.

6

Julia sipped her small tot of whiskey, making it last, but the women cops slugged theirs like heroes. It wasn’t enough to make them drunk, but it loosened their tongues.

“Fact is, I’m horrified,” Jackie Wettington said. She was looking down, playing with her empty juice glass, but when Piper offered her another splash, she shook her head. “It never would have happened if Duke was still alive. That’s what I keep coming back to. Even if he had reason to believe Barbara had murdered his wife, he would’ve followed due process. That’s just how he was. And allowing the father of a victim to go down to the Coop and confront the perp? Never. ” Linda was nodding agreement. “It makes me scared for what might happen to the guy. Also…”

“If it could happen to Barbie, it could happen to anyone?” Julia asked.

Jackie nodded. Biting her lips. Playing with her glass. “If something happened to him—I don’t necessarily mean something balls-to-the-wall like a lynching, just an accident in his cell—I’m not sure I could ever put on this uniform again.”

Linda’s basic concern was simpler and more direct. Her husband believed Barbie innocent. In the heat of her fury (and her revulsion at what they had found in the McCain pantry), she had rejected that idea—Barbie’s dog tags had, after all, been in Angie McCain’s gray and stiffening hand. But the more she thought about it, the more she worried. Partly because she respected Rusty’s judgment of things and always had, but also because of what Barbie had shouted just before Randolph had Maced him. Tell your husband to examine the bodies. He must examine the bodies!

“And another thing,” Jackie said, still spinning her glass. “You don’t Mace a prisoner just because he’s yelling. We’ve had Saturday nights, especially after big games, when it sounded like the zoo at feeding time down there. You just let em yell. Eventually they get tired and go to sleep.”

Julia, meanwhile, was studying Linda. When Jackie had finished, Julia said, “Tell me again what Barbie said.”

“He wanted Rusty to examine the bodies, especially Brenda Perkins’s. He said they wouldn’t be at the hospital. He knew that. They’re at Bowie’s, and that’s not right.”

“Goddam funny, all right, if they was murdered,” Romeo said. “Sorry for cussin, Rev.”

Piper waved this away. “If he killed them, I can’t understand why his most pressing concern would be having the bodies examined. On the other hand, if he didn’t, maybe he thought a postmortem would exonerate him.”

“Brenda was the most recent victim,” Julia said. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” Jackie said. “She was in rigor, but not completely. At least it didn’t look to me like she was.”

“She wasn’t,” Linda said, “And since rigor starts to set in about three hours after death, give or take, Brenda probably died between four and eight AM. I’d say closer to eight, but I’m no doctor.” She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. “Rusty isn’t either, of course, but he could have nailed down the TOD a lot closer if he’d been called in. No one did that. Including me. I was just so freaked out… there was so much going on…”

Jackie pushed her glass aside. “Listen, Julia—you were with Barbara at the supermarket this morning, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“At a little past nine. That’s when the riot started.”

“Yes.”

“Was he there first, or were you? Because I don’t know.”

Julia couldn’t remember, but her impression was that she had been there first—that Barbie had arrived later, shortly after Rose Twitchell and Anson Wheeler.

“We cooled it out,” she said, “but he was the one who showed us how. Probably saved even more people from being seriously hurt. I can’t square that with what you found in that pantry. Do you have any idea what the order of the deaths were? Other than Brenda last?”

“Angie and Dodee first,” Jackie said. “Decomp was less advanced with Coggins, so he came later.”

“Who found them?”

“Junior Rennie. He was suspicious because he saw Angie’s car in the garage. But that’s not important. Barbara ’s the important thing here. Are you sure he arrived after Rose and Anse? Because that doesn’t look good.”

“I am, because he wasn’t in Rose’s van. Just the two of them got out. So if we assume he wasn’t busy killing people, then where would he…?” But that was obvious. “Piper, can I use your phone?”

“Of course.”

Julia briefly consulted the pamphlet-sized local phone book, then used Piper’s cell to call the restaurant. Rose’s greeting was curt: “We’re closed until further notice. Bunch of assholes arrested my cook.”

“Rose? It’s Julia Shumway.”

“Oh. Julia.” Rose sounded only a shade less truculent. “What do you want?”

“I’m trying to check out a possible alibi timeline for Barbie. Are you interested in helping?”

“You bet your ass. The idea that Barbie murdered those people is ridiculous. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know if he was at the restaurant when the riot started at Food City.”

“Of course.” Rose sounded perplexed. “Where else would he be right after breakfast? When Anson and I left, he was scrubbing the grills.”

7

The sun was going down, and as the shadows grew lengthened, Claire McClatchey grew more and more nervous. Finally she went into the kitchen to do what she had been putting off: use her husband’s cell phone (which he had forgotten to take on Saturday morning; he was always forgetting it) to call hers. She was terrified it would ring four times and then she’d hear her own voice, all bright and chirrupy, recorded before the town she lived in became a prison with invisible bars. Hi, you’ve reached Claire’s voice mail. Please leave a message at the beep.

And what would she say? Joey, call back if you’re not dead?

She reached for the buttons, then hesitated. Remember, if he doesn’t answer the first time, it’s because he’s on his bike and can’t get the phone out of his backpack before it goes to voice mail. He’ll be ready when you call the second time, because he’ll know it’s you.

But if she got voice mail the second time? And the third? Why had she ever let him go in the first place? She must have been mad.

She closed her eyes and saw a picture of nightmare clarity: the telephone poles and storefronts of Main Street plastered with photos of Joe, Benny, and Norrie, looking like any kids you ever saw on a turnpike rest area bulletin board, where the captions always contained the words LAST SEEN ON.

She opened her eyes and dialed quickly, before she could lose her nerve. She was preparing her message—I’m calling back in ten seconds and this time you better answer, mister—and was stunned when her son answered, loud and clear, halfway through the first ring.

“Mom! Hey, Mom!” Alive and more than alive: bubbling over with excitement, from the sound.

Where are you? she tried to say, but at first she couldn’t manage anything. Not a single word. Her legs felt rubbery and elastic; she leaned against the wall to keep from falling on the floor.

“Mom? You there?”

In the background she heard the swish of a car, and Benny, faint but clear, hailing someone: “Dr. Rusty! Yo, dude, whoa!”

She was finally able to throw her voice in gear. “Yes. I am. Where are you?”

“Top of Town Common Hill. I was gonna call you because it’s gettin near dark—tell you not to worry—and it rang in my hand. Surprised the heck out of me.”

Well that put a spoke in the old parental scolding-wheel, didn’t it? Top of Town Common Hill. They’ll be here in ten minutes. Benny probably wanting another three pounds of food. Thank You, God.

Norrie was talking to Joe. It sounded like Tell her, tell her. Then her son was in her ear again, so loudly jubilant that she had to hold the receiver away from her ear a little bit. “Mom, I think we found it! I’m almost positive! It’s in the orchard on top of Black Ridge!”

“Found what, Joey?”

“I don’t know for sure, don’t want to jump to conclusions, but probably the thing generating the Dome. Almost gotta be. We saw a blinker, like the ones they put on radio towers to warn planes, only on the ground and purple instead of red. We didn’t go close enough to see anything else. We passed out, all of us. When we woke up we were okay, but it was starting to get la—”

“Passed out?” Claire almost screamed this. “What do you mean, you passed out? Get home! Get home right now so I can look at you!”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Joe said soothingly. “I think it’s like… you know how when people first touch the Dome they get a little shock, then they don’t? I think it’s like that. I think you pass out the first time and then you’re like, immunized. Good to go. That’s what Norrie thinks, too.”

“I don’t care what she thinks or what you think, mister! You get home right now so I can see you’re all right or I’m going to immunize your ass!”

“Okay, but we have to get in touch with that guy Barbara. He’s the one who thought of the Geiger counter in the first place, and boy, he was right on the money. We should get Dr. Rusty, too. He just drove by us. Benny tried to wave him down, but he didn’t stop. We’ll get him and Mr. Barbara to come to the house, okay? We hafta figure out our next move.”

“Joe… Mr. Barbara is…”

Claire stopped. Was she going to tell her son that Mr. Barbara—whom some people had begun referring to as Colonel Barbara—had been arrested on multiple murder charges?

“What?” Joe asked. “What about him?” The happy triumph in his voice had been replaced by anxiety. She supposed he could read her moods as well as she could read his. And he had clearly pinned a lot of hope on Barbara—Benny and Norrie had too, probably. This wasn’t news she could keep from them (much as she would have liked to), but she didn’t have to give it to them on the phone.

“Come home,” she said. “We’ll talk about it here. And Joe—I’m awfully proud of you.”

8

Jimmy Sirois died late that afternoon, as Scarecrow Joe and his friends were tearing back toward town on their bikes.

Rusty sat in the hallway with his arm around Gina Buffalino and let her cry against his chest. There was a time when he would have felt exceedingly uncomfortable about sitting this way with a girl who was barely seventeen, but times had changed. You only had to look at this hallway—lit now with hissing Coleman lanterns instead of by fluorescents shining calmly down from the paneled ceiling—to know that times had changed. His hospital had become an arcade of shadows.

“Not your fault,” he said. “Not your fault, not mine, not even his. He didn’t ask to have diabetes.”

Although, God knew, there were people who coexisted with it for years. People who took care of themselves. Jimmy, a semi-hermit who had lived by himself out on the God Creek Road, had not been one of those. When he had finally driven himself in to the Health Center—last Thursday, this had been—he hadn’t even been able to get out of his car, just kept honking until Ginny came out to see who it was and what was wrong. When Rusty got the old fellow’s pants off, he had observed a flabby right leg that had turned a cold, dead blue. Even if everything had gone right with Jimmy, the nerve damage probably would have been irreversible.

“Don’t hurt at all, Doc,” Jimmy had assured Ron Haskell just before slipping into a coma. He had been in and out of consciousness ever since, the leg getting worse, Rusty putting off the amputation even though he knew it had to come if Jimmy were to have any chance at all.

When the power went out, the IVs feeding antibiotics to Jimmy and two other patients continued to drip, but the flowmeters stopped, making it impossible to fine-tune the amounts. Worse, Jimmy’s cardiac monitor and respirator failed. Rusty disconnected the respirator, put a valve mask over the old man’s face, and gave Gina a refresher course on how to use the Ambu bag. She was good with it, and very faithful, but around six o’clock, Jimmy had died anyway.

Now she was inconsolable.

She lifted her tear-streaked face from his chest and said, “Did I give him too much? Too little? Did I choke him and kill him?”

“No. Jimmy was probably going to die anyway, and this way he’s spared a very nasty amputation.”

“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” she said, beginning to weep again. “It’s too scary. It’s awful now.”

Rusty didn’t know how to respond to this, but he didn’t have to. “You’ll be okay,” a raspy, plugged-up voice said. “You have to be, hon, because we need you.”

It was Ginny Tomlinson, walking slowly up the hallway toward them.

“You shouldn’t be on your feet,” Rusty said.

“Probably not,” Ginny agreed, and sat down on Gina’s other side with a sigh of relief. Her taped nose and the adhesive strips running beneath her eyes made her look like a hockey goalie after a difficult game. “But I’m back on duty, just the same.”

“Maybe tomorrow—” Rusty began.

“No, now.” She took Gina’s hand. “And so are you, hon. Back in nursing school, this tough old RN had a saying: ‘You can quit when the blood dries and the rodeo’s over.’”

“What if I make a mistake?” Gina whispered.

“Everybody does. The trick is to make as few as possible. And I’ll help you. You and Harriet both. So what do you say?”

Gina gazed doubtfully at Ginny’s swollen face, the damage accented by an old pair of spectacles Ginny had found somewhere. “Are you sure you’re up to it, Ms. Tomlinson?”

“You help me, I help you. Ginny and Gina, the Fighting Females.” She raised her fist. Managing a little smile, Gina tapped Ginny’s knuckles with her own.

“That’s all very hot shit and rah-rah,” Rusty said, “but if you start to feel faint, find a bed and lie down for a while. Orders from Dr. Rusty.”

Ginny winced as the smile her lips were trying on pulled at the wings of her nose. “Never mind a bed, I’ll just hosey Ron Haskell’s old couch in the lounge.”

Rusty’s cell phone rang. He waved the women away. They talked as they went, Gina with an arm around Ginny’s waist.

“Hello, this is Eric,” he said.

“This is Eric’s wife,” a subdued voice said. “She called to apologize to Eric.”

Rusty walked into a vacant examining room and closed the door. “No apology necessary,” he said… although he wasn’t sure that was true. “Heat of the moment. Have they let him go?” This seemed to him a perfectly reasonable question, given the Barbie he was coming to know.

“I’d rather not discuss it on the phone. Can you come to the house, honey? Please? We need to talk.”

Rusty supposed he could, actually. He’d had one critical patient, who had simplified his professional life considerably by dying. And while he was relieved to be on speaking terms again with the woman he loved, he didn’t like the new caution he heard in her voice.

“I can,” he said, “but not for long. Ginny’s back on her feet, but if I don’t monitor her, she’ll overdo. Dinner?”

“Yes.” She sounded relieved. Rusty was glad. “I’ll thaw some of the chicken soup. We better eat as much as the frozen stuff as we can while we’ve still got the power to keep it good.”

“One thing. Do you still think Barbie’s guilty? Never mind what the rest of them think, do you?”

A long pause. Then she said, “We’ll talk when you get here.” And with that, she was gone.

Rusty was leaning with his butt propped against the examination table. He held the phone in his hand for a moment, then pressed the END button. There were many things he wasn’t sure of just now—he felt like a man swimming in a sea of perplexity—but he felt sure of one thing: his wife thought somebody might be listening. But who? The Army? Homeland Security?

Big Jim Rennie?

“Ridiculous,” Rusty said to the empty room. Then he went to find Twitch and tell him he was leaving the hospital for a little while.

9

Twitch agreed to keep an eye on Ginny and make sure she didn’t overdo, but there was a quid pro quo: Rusty had to examine Henrietta Clavard, who had been injured during the supermarket melee, before leaving.

“What’s wrong with her?” Rusty asked, fearing the worst. Henrietta was strong and fit for an old lady, but eighty-four was eighty-four.

“She says, and I quote, ‘One of those worthless Mercier sisters broke my goddam ass.’ She thinks Carla Mercier. Who’s Venziano now.”

“Right,” Rusty said, then murmured, apropos nothing: “It’s a small town, and we all support the team. So is it?”

“Is it what, sensei?”

“Broken.”

“I don’t know. She won’t show it to me. She says, and I also quote, ‘I will only expose my smithyriddles to a professional eye.’”

They burst out laughing, trying to stifle the sounds.

From beyond the closed door, an old lady’s cracked and dolorous voice said: “It’s my ass that’s broke, not my ears. I hear that.”

Rusty and Twitch laughed harder. Twitch had gone an alarming shade of red.

From behind the door, Henrietta said: “If it was your ass, my buddies, you’d be laughing on the other side of your faces.”

Rusty went in, still smiling. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Clavard.”

She was standing rather than sitting, and to his immense relief, she smiled herself. “Nah,” she said. “Something in this balls-up has got to be funny. It might as well be me.” She considered. “Besides, I was in there stealing with the rest of them. I probably deserved it.”

10

Henrietta’s ass turned out to be badly bruised but not broken. A good thing, because a smashed coccyx was really nothing to laugh about. Rusty gave her a pain-deadening cream, confirmed that she had Advil at home, and sent her away, limping but satisfied. As satisfied, anyway, as a lady of her age and temperament was ever likely to get.

On his second escape attempt, about fifteen minutes after Linda’s call, Harriet Bigelow stopped him just short of the door to the parking lot. “Ginny says you should know Sammy Bushey’s gone.”

“Gone where?” Rusty asked. This under the old grade-school assumption that the only stupid question was the one you didn’t ask.

“No one knows. She’s just gone.”

“Maybe she went down to Sweetbriar to see if they’re serving dinner. I hope that’s it, because if she tries to walk all the way back to her place, she’s apt to bust her stitches.”

Harriet looked alarmed. “Could she, like, bleed to death? Bleeding to death from your woo-woo… that would be bad. ”

Rusty had heard many terms for the vagina, but this one was new to him. “Probably not, but she could end up back here for an extended stay. What about her baby?”

Harriet looked stricken. She was an earnest little thing who had a way of blinking distractedly behind the thick lenses of her glasses when she was nervous; the kind of girl, Rusty thought, who might treat herself to a mental breakdown about fifteen years after graduating summa cum laude from Smith or Vassar.

“The baby! Omigod, Little Walter!” She dashed down the hall before Rusty could stop her and came back looking relieved. “Still here. He’s not very lively, but that seems to be his nature.”

“Then she’ll probably be back. Whatever other problems she might have, she loves the kid. In an absentminded sort of way.”

“Huh?” More furious blinking.

“Never mind. I’ll be back as soon as I can, Hari. Keep em flying.”

“Keep what flying?” Her eyelids now appeared on the verge of catching fire.

Rusty almost said, I mean keep your pecker up, but that wasn’t right, either. In Harriet’s terminology, a pecker was probably a wah-wah.

“Keep busy,” he said.

Harriet was relieved. “I can do that, Dr. Rusty, no prob.”

Rusty turned to go, but now a man was standing there—thin, not bad-looking once you got past the hooked nose, a lot of graying hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked a bit like the late Timothy Leary. Rusty was starting to wonder if he was going to get out of here, after all.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Actually, I was thinking that perhaps I could help you.” He stuck out a bony hand. “Thurston Marshall. My partner and I were weekending at Chester Pond, and got caught in this whatever-it-is.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Rusty said.

“The thing is, I have a bit of medical experience. I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam mess. Thought about going to Canada, but I had plans… well, never mind. I registered as a CO and did two years as an orderly at a veterans’ hospital in Massachusetts.”

That was interesting. “Edith Nourse Rogers?”

“The very one. My skills are probably a bit out-of-date, but—”

“Mr. Marshall, do I have a job for you.”

11

As Rusty headed down 119, a horn blew. He checked his mirror and saw one of the town’s Public Works trucks preparing to turn in at Catherine Russell Drive. It was hard to tell in the red light of the lowering sun, but he thought Stewart Bowie was behind the wheel. What he saw on second glance gladdened Rusty’s heart: there appeared to be a couple of LP tanks in the bed of the truck. He’d worry about where they came from later, maybe even ask some questions, but for now he was just relieved to know that soon the lights would be back on, the respirators and monitors online. Maybe not for the long haul, but he was in full one-day-at-a-time mode.

At the top of Town Common Hill he saw his old skateboarding patient, Benny Drake, and a couple of his friends. One was the McClatchey boy who’d set up the live video feed of the missile strike. Benny waved and shouted, obviously wanting Rusty to stop and shoot the shit. Rusty waved back, but didn’t slow. He was anxious to see Linda. Also to hear what she had to say, of course, but mostly to see her, put his arms around her, and finish making up with her.

12

Barbie needed to take a piss but held his water. He had done interrogations in Iraq and knew how it worked over there. He didn’t know if it would be the same here just yet, but it might be. Things were moving very rapidly, and Big Jim had shown a ruthless ability to move with the times. Like most talented demagogues, he never underestimated his target audience’s willingness to accept the absurd.

Barbie was also very thirsty, and it didn’t surprise him much when one of the new officers showed up with a glass of water in one hand and a sheet of paper with a pen clipped to it in the other. Yes, it was how these things went; how they went in Fallujah, Takrit, Hilla, Mosul, and Baghdad. How they also now went in Chester’s Mill, it seemed.

The new officer was Junior Rennie.

“Well, look at you,” Junior said. “Don’t look quite so ready to beat guys up with your fancy Army tricks right now.” He raised the hand holding the sheet of paper and rubbed his left temple with the tips of his fingers. The paper rattled.

“You don’t look so good yourself.”

Junior dropped his hand. “I’m fine as rain.”

Now that was odd, Barbie thought; some people said right as rain and some said fine as paint, but none, as far as he knew, said fine as rain. It probably meant nothing, but—

“Are you sure? Your eye’s all red.”

“I’m fucking terrific. And I’m not here to discuss me.”

Barbie, who knew why Junior was here, said: “Is that water?” Junior looked down at the glass as if he’d forgotten it. “Yeah. Chief said you might be thirsty. Thursday on a Tuesday, you know.” He laughed hard, as if this non sequitur was the wittiest thing to ever come out of his mouth. “Want it?”

“Yes, please.”

Junior held the glass out. Barbie reached for it. Junior pulled it back. Of course. It was how these things went.

“Why’d you kill them? I’m curious, Baaarbie. Wouldn’t Angie fuck you no more? Then when you tried Dodee, you found out she was more into crack-snacking than cock-gobbling? Maybe Coggins saw something he wasn’t supposed to? And Brenda got suspicious. Why not? She was a cop herself, you know. By injection!”

Junior yodeled laughter, but underneath the humor there was nothing but black watchfulness. And pain. Barbie was quite sure of it.

“What? Nothing to say?”

“I said it. I’d like a drink. I’m thirsty.”

“Yep, I bet you are. That Mace is a bitch, idn’t it? I understand you saw service in Iraq. What was that like?”

“Hot.”

Junior yodeled again. Some of the water in the glass spilled on his wrist. Were his hands shaking a little? And that inflamed left eye was leaking tears at the corner. Junior, what the hell’s wrong with you? Migraine? Something else?

“Did you kill anybody?”

“Only with my cooking.”

Junior smiled as if to say Good one, good one. “You weren’t any cook over there, Baaaarbie. You were a liaison officer. That was your job description, anyway. My dad looked you up on the Internet. There isn’t a lot, but there’s some. He thinks you were an interrogation guy. Maybe even a black ops guy. Were you like the Army’s Jason Bourne?”

Barbie said nothing.

“Come on, did you kill anybody? Or should I ask, how many did you kill? Besides the ones you bagged here, I mean.”

Barbie said nothing.

“Boy, I bet this water is good. It came from the cooler upstairs. Chilly Willy!”

Barbie said nothing.

“You guys come back with all sorts of problems. At least that’s what I breed and see on TV. Right or false? True or wrong?”

It isn’t a migraine making him do that. At least not any migraine I ever heard of.

“Junior, how bad does your head hurt?”

“Doesn’t hurt at all.”

“How long have you been having headaches?”

Junior set the glass carefully down on the floor. He was wearing a sidearm this evening. He drew it and pointed it through the bars at Barbie. The barrel was trembling slightly. “Do you want to keep playing doctor?”

Barbie looked at the gun. The gun wasn’t in the script, he was quite sure—Big Jim had plans for him, and probably not nice ones, but they didn’t include Dale Barbara being shot in a jail cell when anybody from upstairs could rush down and see that the cell door was still locked and the victim unarmed. But he didn’t trust Junior to follow the script, because Junior was ill.

“No,” he said. “No doctoring. Very sorry.”

“Yeah, you’re sorry, all right. One sorry shack of sit.” But Junior seemed satisfied. He holstered the gun and picked up the glass of water again. “My theory is that you came back all fucked up from what you saw and did over there. You know, PTSS, STD, PMS, one of those. My theory is that you just snapped. That about right?”

Barbie said nothing.

Junior didn’t seem very interested, anyway. He handed the glass through the bars. “Take it, take it.”

Barbie reached for the glass, thinking it would be snatched away again, but it wasn’t. He tasted it. Not cold and not drinkable, either.

“Go on,” Junior said. “I only shook half a shaker in, you can deal with that, can’t you? You salt your bread, don’t you?”

Barbie only looked at Junior.

“You salt your bread? Do you salt it, motherfucker? Huh?”

Barbie held the glass out through the bars.

“Keep it, keep it,” Junior said magnanimously. “And take this, too.” He passed the paper and pen through the bars. Barbie took them and looked the paper over. It was pretty much what he’d expected. There was a place for him to sign his name at the bottom.

He offered it back. Junior backed away in what was almost a dance step, smiling and shaking his head. “Keep that, too. My dad said you wouldn’t sign it right away, but you think about it. And think about getting a glass of water with no salt in it. And some food. Big old cheeseburger in paradise. Maybe a Coke. There’s some cold in the fridge upstairs. Wouldn’t you like a nice cone Cole?”

Barbie said nothing.

“You salt your bread? Go on, don’t be shy. Do you, assface?” Barbie said nothing.

“You’ll come around. When you get hungry enough and thirsty enough, you will. That’s what my dad says, and he’s usually right about those things. Ta-ta, Baaaarbie. ”

He started down the hall, then turned back.

“You never should have put your hands on me, you know. That was your big mistake.”

As he went up the stairs, Barbie observed that Junior was limping a tiny bit—or dragging. That was it, dragging to the left and pulling on the banister with his right hand to compensate. He wondered what Rusty Everett would think about such symptoms. He wondered if he’d ever get a chance to ask.

Barbie considered the unsigned confession. He would have liked to tear it up and scatter the pieces on the floor outside the cell, but that would be an unnecessary provocation. He was between the cat’s claws now, and the best thing he could do was be still. He put the paper on the bunk and the pen on top of it. Then he picked up the glass of water. Salt. Seeded with salt. He could smell it. Which made him think about how Chester’s Mill was now… only hadn’t it already been this way? Even before the Dome? Hadn’t Big Jim and his friends been seeding the ground with salt for some time now? Barbie thought yes. He also thought that if he got out of this police station alive, it would be a miracle.

Nonetheless, they were amateurs at this; they had forgotten the toilet. Probably none of them had ever been in a country where even a little ditchwater could look good when you were carrying ninety pounds of equipment and the temperature was forty-six Celsius. Barbie poured out the salt water in the corner of the cell. Then he pissed in the glass and set it under the bunk. Then he knelt in front of the toilet bowl like a man at his prayers and drank until he could feel his belly bulging.

13

Linda was sitting on the front steps when Rusty pulled up. In the backyard, Jackie Wettington was pushing the Little Js on the swings and the girls were urging her to push harder and send them higher.

Linda came to him with her arms out. She kissed his mouth, drew back to look at him, then kissed him again with her hands on his cheeks and her mouth open. He felt the brief, humid touch of her tongue, and immediately began to get hard. She felt it and pressed against it.

“Wow,” he said. “We should fight in public more often. And if you don’t stop that, we’ll be doing something else in public.”

“We’ll do it, but not in public. First—do I need to say again that I’m sorry?”

“No.”

She took his hand and led him back to the steps. “Good. Because we’ve got stuff to talk about. Serious stuff.”

He put his other hand over hers. “I’m listening.”

She told him about what had happened at the station—Julia being turned away after Andy Sanders had been allowed down to confront the prisoner. She told about going to the church so she and Jackie could talk to Julia in private, and the later conversation at the parsonage, with Piper Libby and Rommie Burpee added to the mix. When she told him about the beginning rigor they had observed in Brenda Perkins’s body, Rusty’s ears pricked up.

“Jackie!” he called. “How sure are you about the rigor?”

“Pretty!” she called back.

“Hi, Daddy!” Judy called. “Me’n Jannie’s gonna loop the loop!”

“No you’re not,” Rusty called back, and stood to blow kisses from the palms of his hands. Each girl caught one; when it came to kiss-catching, they were aces.

“What time did you see the bodies, Lin?”

“Around ten-thirty, I think. The supermarket mess was long over.”

“And if Jackie’s right about the rigor just setting in… but we can’t be absolutely sure of that, can we?”

“No, but listen. I talked with Rose Twitchell. Barbara got to Sweetbriar at ten minutes to six. From then until the bodies were discovered, he’s alibied. So he would’ve had to kill her when? Five? Five thirty? How likely is that, if rigor was just setting in five hours later?”

“Not likely but not impossible. Rigor mortis is affected by all sorts of variables. The temperature of the body-storage site, for one. How hot was it in that pantry?”

“Warm,” she admitted, then crossed her arms over her breasts and cupped her shoulders. “Warm and smelly. ”

“See what I mean? Under those circumstances, he could have killed her someplace at four AM, then taken her there and stuffed her into the—”

“I thought you were on his side.”

“I am, and it’s really not likely, because the pantry would have been much cooler at four in the morning. Why would he have been with Brenda at four in the morning, anyway? What would the cops say? That he was boffing her? Even if older women—much older—were his thing… three days after her husband of thirty-plus years was killed?”

“They’d say it wasn’t consensual,” she told him bleakly. “They’d say it was rape. Same as they’re already saying for those two girls.”

“And Coggins?”

“If they’re framing him, they’ll think of something.”

“Is Julia going to print all this?”

“She’s going to write the story and raise some questions, but she’ll hold back the stuff about rigor being in the early stages. Randolph might be too stupid to figure out where that information came from, but Rennie would know.”

“It could still be dangerous,” Rusty said. “If they muzzle her, she can’t exactly go to the ACLU.”

“I don’t think she cares. She’s mad as hell. She even thinks the supermarket riot might have been a setup.”

Probably was, Rusty thought. What he said was, “Damn, I wish I’d seen those bodies.”

“Maybe you still can.”

“I know what you’re thinking, hon, but you and Jackie could lose your jobs. Or worse, if this is Big Jim’s way of getting rid of an annoying problem.”

“We can’t just leave it like this—”

“Also, it might not do any good. Probably wouldn’t. If Brenda Perkins commenced rigor between four and eight, she’s probably in full rigor by now and there isn’t much I can tell from the body. The Castle County ME might be able to, but he’s as out of reach as the ACLU.”

“Maybe there’s something else. Something about her corpse or one of the others. You know that sign they have in some postmortem theaters? ‘This is where the dead speak to the living?’”

“Long shot. You know what would be better? If someone saw Brenda alive after Barbie reported to work at five fifty this morning. That would put a hole in their boat too big to plug.”

Judy and Janelle, dressed in their pajamas, came flying up for hugs. Rusty did his duty in this regard. Jackie Wettington, following along behind them, heard Rusty’s last comment and said, “I’ll ask around.”

“But quietly,” he said.

“You bet. And for the record, I’m still not entirely convinced. His dog tags were in Angie’s hand.”

“And he never noticed they were gone during the time between losing them and the bodies being found?”

“What bodies, Dad?” Jannie asked.

He sighed. “It’s complex, honey. And not for little girls.”

Her eyes said that was good. Her younger sister, meanwhile, had gone off to pick a few late flowers but came back empty-handed. “They’re dying,” she reported. “All brown and yucky at the edges.”

“It’s probably too warm for them,” Linda said, and for a moment Rusty thought she was going to cry. He stepped into the breach.

“You girls go in and brush your teeth. Get a little water from the jug on the counter. Jannie, you’re the designated water-pourer. Now go.” He turned back to the women. To Linda in particular. “You okay?”

“Yes. It’s just that… it keeps hitting me in different ways. I think, ‘Those flowers have no business dying,’ and then I think, ‘None of this has any business happening in the first place.’”

They were silent for a moment, thinking about this. Then Rusty spoke up.

“We should wait and see if Randolph asks me to examine the bodies. If he does, I’ll get my look without any risk of hot water for you two. If he doesn’t, it tells us something.”

“Meanwhile, Barbie’s in jail,” Linda said. “They could be trying to get a confession out of him right now.”

“Suppose you flashed your badges and got me into the funeral parlor?” Rusty asked. “Further suppose I found something that exonerates Barbie. Do you think they’d just say ‘Oh shit, our bad’ and let him out? And then let him take over? Because that’s what the government wants; it’s all over town. Do you think Rennie would allow—”

His cell phone went off. “These things are the worst invention ever,” he said, but at least it wasn’t the hospital.

“Mr. Everett?” A woman. He knew the voice but couldn’t put a name to it.

“Yes, but unless this is an emergency, I’m a little busy right n—”

“I don’t know if it’s an emergency, but it’s very, very important. And since Mr. Barbara—or Colonel Barbara, I guess—has been arrested, you’re the one who has to deal with it.”

“Mrs. McClatchey?”

“Yes, but Joe’s the one you need to talk to. Here he is.”

“Dr. Rusty?” The voice was urgent, almost breathless.

“Hi, Joe. What is it?”

“I think we found the generator. Now what are we supposed to do?”

The evening went dark so suddenly that all three of them gasped and Linda seized Rusty’s arm. But it was only the big smoke-smudge on the western side of the Dome. The sun had gone behind it.

“Where?”

“Black Ridge.”

“Was there radiation, son?” Knowing there must have been; how else had they found it?

“The last reading was plus two hundred,” Joe said. “Not quite into the danger zone. What do we do?”

Rusty ran his free hand through his hair. Too much happening. Too much, too fast. Especially for a smalltown fixer-upper who had never considered himself much of a decision-maker, let alone a leader.

“Nothing tonight. It’s almost dark. We’ll deal with this tomorrow. In the meantime, Joe, you have to make a promise. Keep quiet about this. You know, Benny and Norrie know, and your mom knows. Keep it that way.”

“Okay.” Joe sounded subdued. “We have a lot to tell you, but I guess it can wait until tomorrow.” He took a breath. “It’s a little scary, isn’t it?”

“Yes, son,” Rusty agreed. “It’s a little scary.”

14

The man in charge of The Mill’s fate and fortunes was sitting in his study and eating a corned beef on rye in big snaffling bites when Junior came in. Earlier, Big Jim had caught a forty-five-minute power nap. Now he felt refreshed and once more ready for action. The surface of his desk was littered with sheets of yellow legal paper, notes he would later burn in the incinerator out back. Better safe than sorry.

The study was lit with hissing Coleman lanterns that threw a bright white glare. God knew he had access to plenty of propane—enough to light the house and run the appliances for fifty years—but for now the Colemans were better. When people passed by, he wanted them to see that bright white glare and know that Selectman Rennie wasn’t getting any special perks. That Selectman Rennie was just like them, only more trustworthy.

Junior was limping. His face was drawn. “He didn’t confess.”

Big Jim hadn’t expected Barbara to confess so soon and ignored this. “What’s wrong with you? You look peaky as hell.”

“Another headache, but it’s letting go now.” This was true, although it had been very bad during his conversation with Barbie. Those blue-gray eyes either saw too much or seemed to.

I know what you did to them in the pantry, they said. I know everything.

It had taken all his will not to pull the trigger of his gun after he’d drawn it, and darken that damnable prying stare forever.

“You’re limping, too.”

“That’s because of those kids we found out by Chester Pond. I was carrying one of them around and I think I pulled a muscle.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is? You and Thibodeau have a job to do in”—Big Jim looked at his watch—“in about three and a half hours, and you can’t mess it up. It has to go off perfectly.”

“Why not as soon as it’s dark?”

“Because the witch is putting her paper together there with her two little trolls. Freeman and the other one. The sports reporter who’s always down on the Wildcats.”

“Tony Guay.”

“Yes, him. I don’t particularly care about them being hurt, especially her”—Big Jim’s upper lip lifted in his doglike imitation smile—“but there must not be any witnesses. No eyeball witnesses, I mean. What people hear… that’s a very different kettle of cod.”

“What do you want them to hear, Dad?”

“Are you sure you’re up to this? Because I can send Frank with Carter instead.”

“No! I helped you with Coggins and I helped you with the old lady this morning and I deserve to do this!”

Big Jim seemed to measure him. Then he nodded. “All right. But you must not be caught, or even seen.”

“Don’t worry. What do you want the… the earwitnesses to hear?”

Big Jim told him. Big Jim told him everything. It was good, Junior thought. He had to admit it: his dear old dad didn’t miss a trick.

15

When Junior went upstairs to “rest his leg,” Big Jim finished his sandwich, wiped the grease from his chin, then called Stewart Bowie’s cell. He began with the question everybody asks when calling a cell phone. “Where are you?”

Stewart said they were on their way to the funeral home for a drink. Knowing Big Jim’s feeling about alcoholic beverages, he said this with a workingman’s defiance: I did my job, now let me take my pleasure.

“That’s all right, but make sure it’s only the one. You aren’t done for the night. Fern or Roger, either.”

Stewart protested strenuously.

After he’d finished having his say, Big Jim went on. “I want the three of you at the Middle School at nine-thirty. There’ll be some new officers there—including Roger’s boys, by the way—and I want you there, too.” An inspiration occurred. “In fact, I’m going to make you fellows sergeants in the Chester’s Mill Hometown Security Force.”

Stewart reminded Big Jim he and Fern had four new corpses to deal with. In his strong Yankee accent, the word came out cawpses.

“Those folks from the McCains’ can wait,” Big Jim said. “They’re dead. We’ve got an emergency situation on our hands here, in case you didn’t notice. Until it’s over, we’ve all got to pull our weight. Do our bit. Support the team. Nine thirty at the Middle School. But I’ve got something else for you to do first. Won’t take long. Put Fern on.”

Stewart asked why Big Jim wanted to talk to Fern, whom he regarded—with some justification—as the Dumb Brother.

“None of your beeswax. Just put him on.”

Fern said hello. Big Jim didn’t bother.

“You used to be with the Volunteers, didn’t you? Until they were disbanded?”

Fern said he had indeed been with this unofficial adjunct to the Chester’s Mill FD, not adding that he had quit a year before the Vols had been disbanded (after the Selectmen recommended no money be allocated to them in the 2008 town budget). He also did not add that he found the Volunteers’ weekend fund-raising activities were cutting into his drinking time.

Big Jim said, “I want you go to the PD and get the key to the FD. Then see if those Indian pumps Burpee used yesterday are in the barn. I was told that was where he and the Perkins woman put them, and that better be right.”

Fern said he believed the Indian pumps had come from Burpee’s in the first place, which sort of made them Rommie’s property. The Volunteers had had a few, but sold them on eBay when the outfit disbanded.

“They might have been his, but they aren’t anymore,” Big Jim said. “For the duration of the crisis, they’re town property. We’ll do the same with anything else we need. It’s for the good of everyone. And if Romeo Burpee thinks he’s going to start up the Vols again, he’s got another think coming.”

Fern said—cautiously—that he’d heard Rommie did a pretty good job putting out the contact fire on Little Bitch after the missiles hit.

“That wasn’t much more than cigarette butts smoldering in an ashtray,” Big Jim scoffed. A vein was pulsing in his temple and his heart was beating too hard. He knew he’d eaten too fast—again—but he just couldn’t help it. When he was hungry, he gobbled until whatever was in front of him was gone. It was his nature. “Anyone could have put it out. You could have put it out. Point is, I know who voted for me last time, and I know who didn’t. Those who didn’t get no cotton-picking candy.”

Fern asked Big Jim what he, Fern, was supposed to do with the pumps.

“Just make sure they’re in the firebarn. Then come on over to the Middle School. We’ll be in the gym.”

Fern said Roger Killian wanted to say something.

Big Jim rolled his eyes but waited.

Roger wanted to know which of his boys was goin on the cops.

Big Jim sighed, scrabbled through the litter of papers on his desk, and found the one with the list of new officers on it. Most were high-schoolers, and all were male. The youngest, Mickey Wardlaw, was only fifteen, but he was a bruiser. Right tackle on the football team until he’d been kicked off for drinking. “Ricky and Randall.”

Roger protested that them was his oldest and the only ones who could be reliably counted on for chorin. Who, he asked, was going to help out with them chickens?

Big Jim closed his eyes and prayed to God for strength.

16

Sammy was very aware of the low, rolling pain in her stomach—like menstrual cramps—and much sharper twinges coming from lower down. They would have been hard to miss, because another one came with each step. Nevertheless, she kept plodding along 119 toward the Motton Road. She would keep on no matter how much it hurt. She had a destination in mind, and it wasn’t her trailer, either. What she wanted wasn’t in the trailer, but she knew where it could be found. She’d walk to it even if it took her all night. If the pain got really bad, she had five Percocet tablets in her jeans pocket and she could chew them up. They worked faster when you chewed them. Phil had told her that.

Do her.

We’d come back and really fuck you up.

Do that bitch.

You better learn to keep your mouth for when you’re on your knees.

Do her, do that bitch.

No one would believe you, anyway.

But the Reverend Libby had, and look what happened to her. Dislocated shoulder; dead dog.

Do that bitch.

Sammy thought she would hear that pig’s squealing, excited voice in her head until she died.

So she walked. Overhead the first pink stars glimmered, sparks seen through a dirty pane of glass.

Headlights appeared, making her shadow jump long on the road ahead. A clattery old farm truck pulled up and stopped. “Hey, there, climb in,” the man behind the wheel said. Only it came out Hey-yere-lime-in, because it was Alden Dinsmore, father of the late Rory, and Alden was drunk.

Nevertheless, Sammy climbed in—moving with an invalid’s care.

Alden didn’t appear to notice. There was a sixteen-ounce can of Bud between his legs and a half-empty case beside him. Empties rolled and rattled around Sammy’s feet. “Where you goin?” Alden asked. “Porrun? Bossum?” He laughed to show that, drunk or not, he could make a joke.

“Only out Motton Road, sir. Are you going that way?”

“Any way you want,” Alden said. “I’m just drivin. Drivin and thinkin bout my boy. He died on Sarraday.”

“I’m real sorry for your loss.”

He nodded and drank. “M’dad died las’ winner, you know it? Gasped himself to death, poor old fella. Empha-seeme. Spent the last year of his life on oxygen. Rory used to change his tanks. He loved that ol’ bassid.”

“I’m sorry.” She’d already said that, but what else was there to say?

A tear crept down his cheek. “I’ll go any way you want, Missy Lou. Gonna keep drivin till the beer’s gone. You wa’m beer?”

“Yes, please.” The beer was warm but she drank greedily. She was very thirsty. She fished one of the Percs out of her pocket and swallowed it with another long gulp. She felt the buzz hit her in the head. It was fine. She fished out another Perc and offered it to Alden. “Want one of these? They make you feel better.”

He took it and swallowed it with beer, not bothering to ask what it was. Here was the Motton Road. He saw the intersection late and swung wide, knocking the Crumleys’ mailbox flat. Sammy didn’t mind.

“Grab another, Missy Lou.”

“Thank you, sir.” She took another beer and popped the top.

“Wa’m see my boy?” In the glow of the dashboard lights, Alden’s eyes looked yellow and wet. They were the eyes of a dog who’d stepped in a hole and went legbroke. “Wa’m see my boy Rory?”

“Yes, sir,” Sammy said,

“I sure do. I was there, you know.”

“Everybody was. I rented my fiel. Prolly helped to kill im. Din know. We never know, do we?”

“No,” Sammy said.

Alden dug into the bib pocket of his overalls and pulled out a battered wallet. He took both hands off the wheel to pull it open, squinting and flipping through the little celluloid pockets. “My boys gay me this warret,” he said. “Ro’y and Orrie. Orrie’s still ’live.”

“That’s a nice wallet,” Sammy said, leaning across to take hold of the steering wheel. She had done the same for Phil when they were living together. Many times. Mr. Dinsmore’s truck went from side to side in slow and somehow solemn arcs, barely missing another mailbox. But that was all right; the poor old guy was only doing twenty, and Motton Road was deserted. On the radio, WCIK was playing low: “Sweet Hope of Heaven,” by the Blind Boys of Alabama.

Alden thrust the wallet at her. “There e is. There’s my boy. Wif his grampa.”

“Will you drive while I look?” Sammy asked.

“Sure.” Alden took the wheel back. The truck began to move a little faster and a little straighter, although it was more or less straddling the white line.

The photograph was a faded color shot of a young boy and an old man with their arms around each other. The old man was wearing a Red Sox cap and an oxygen mask. The boy had a big grin on his face. “He’s a beautiful boy, sir,” Sammy said.

“Yeah, beauful boy. Beauful smart boy.” Alden let out a tearless bray of pain. He sounded like a donkey. Spittle flew from his lips. The truck plunged, then came right again.

“I have a beautiful boy, too,” Sammy said. She began to cry. Once, she remembered, she had taken pleasure in torturing Bratz. Now she knew how it felt to be in the microwave herself. Burning in the microwave. “I’m going to kiss him when I see him. Kiss him once more.”

“You kiss im,” Alden said.

“I will.”

“You kiss im and hug im and hold im.”

“I will, sir.”

“I’d kiss my boy if I could. I’d kiss his cole-cole cheek.”

“I know you would, sir.”

“But we burrit him. This morning. Right on the place.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Have another beer.”

“Thank you.” She had another beer. She was getting drunk. It was lovely to be drunk.

In this fashion they progressed as the pink stars grew brighter overhead, flickering but not falling: no meteor showers tonight. They passed Sammy’s trailer, where she’d never go again, without slowing.

17

It was about quarter to eight when Rose Twitchell knocked on the glass panel of the Democrat’s door. Julia, Pete, and Tony were standing at a long table, creating copies of the newspaper’s latest four-page broadside. Pete and Tony put them together; Julia stapled them and added them to the pile.

When she saw Rose, Julia waved her in energetically. Rose opened the door, then staggered a little. “Jeez, it’s hot in here.”

“Turned off the AC to save juice,” Pete Freeman said, “and the copier gets hot when it’s overused. Which it has been tonight.” But he looked proud. Rose thought they all looked proud.

“Thought you’d be overwhelmed at the restaurant,” Tony said.

“Just the opposite. Could’ve shot deer in there tonight. I think a lot of people don’t want to face me because my cook’s been arrested for murder. And I think a lot of people don’t want to face each other because of what happened at Food City this morning.”

“Come on over here and grab a copy of the paper,” Julia said. “You’re a cover girl, Rose.”

At the top, in red, were the words FREE DOME CRISIS EDITION FREE. And below that, in sixteen-point type Julia had never used until the last two editions of the Democrat:

The picture was of Rose herself. She was in profile. The bullhorn was to her lips. An errant lock of hair lay on her forehead and she looked extraordinarily beautiful. In the background was the pasta and juices aisle, with several bottles of what looked like spaghetti sauce smashed on the floor. The caption read: Quiet Riot: Rose Twitchell, owner and proprietor of Sweetbriar Rose, quells food riot with the help of Dale Barbara, who has been arrested for murder (see story below and Editorial, p. 4).

“Holy God,” Rose said. “Well… at least you got my good side. If I can be said to have one.”

“Rose,” Tony Guay said solemnly, “you look like Michelle Pfieffer.”

Rose snorted and flipped him the bird. She was already turning to the editorial.

“Phew,” Rose said, looking up. “You’re really going to print this?”

Julia gestured to the stacked copies. “It’s already printed. Why? Do you object?”

“No, but…” Rose was rapidly scanning the rest of the editorial, which was very long and increasingly pro-Barbie. It ended with an appeal for anyone with information about the crimes to come forward, and the suggestion that when the crisis ended, as it surely would, the behavior of the residents regarding these murders would be closely scrutinized not just in Maine or the United States, but all over the world. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get in trouble?”

“Freedom of the press, Rose,” Pete said, sounding remarkably unsure himself.

“It’s what Horace Greeley would have done,” Julia said firmly, and at the sound of his name, her Corgi—who had been asleep on his dogbed in the corner—looked up. He saw Rose and came over for a pat or two, which Rose was happy to provide.

“Do you have more than what’s in here?” Rose asked, tapping the editorial.

“A little,” Julia said. “I’m holding it back. Hoping for more.”

“Barbie could never have done a thing like this. But I’m afraid for him, just the same.”

One of the cell phones scattered on the desk rang. Tony snared it. “Democrat, Guay.” He listened, then held out the phone to Julia. “Colonel Cox. For you. He doesn’t sound like a happy camper.”

Cox. Julia had forgotten all about him. She took the telephone.

“Ms. Shumway, I need to talk to Barbie and find out what sort of progress he’s making in taking administrative control there.”

“I don’t think that will be happening anytime soon,” Julia said. “He’s in jail.”

“Jail? Charged with what?”

“Murder. Four counts, to be exact.”

“You’re joking.”

“Do I sound like I’m joking, Colonel?”

There was a moment of silence. She could hear many voices in the background. When Cox spoke again, his voice was low. “Explain this.”

“No, Colonel Cox, I think not. I’ve been writing about it for the last two hours, and as my mother used to say when I was a little girl, I don’t chew my cabbage twice. Are you still in Maine?”

“Castle Rock. Our forward base is here.”

“Then I suggest that you meet me where we met before. Motton Road. I can’t give you a copy of tomorrow’s Democrat, even though it’s free, but I can hold it up to the Dome and you can read it for yourself.”

“E-mail it to me.”

“I won’t. I think e-mail is antithetical to the newspaper business. I’m very old-fashioned that way.”

“You’re an irritating piece of work, dear lady.”

“I may be irritating, but I’m not your dear lady.”

“Tell me this: is it a frame job? Something to do with Sanders and Rennie?”

“Colonel, in your experience, does a bear defecate in the woods?” Silence. Then he said, “I’ll meet you in an hour.”

“I’ll be bringing company. Barbie’s employer. I think you’ll be interested in what she has to say.”

“Fine.”

Julia hung up the phone. “Want to take a little ride with me out to the Dome, Rose?”

“If it’ll help Barbie, sure.”

“We can hope, but I’m kind of thinking we’re on our own here.” Julia shifted her attention to Pete and Tony. “Will you two finish stapling those? Stack em by the door and lock up when you leave. Get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow we all get to be news-boys. This paper’s getting the old-school treatment. Every house in town. The close-in farms. And Eastchester, of course. Lots of new people out there, theoretically less susceptible to the Big Jim mystique.”

Pete raised his eyebrows.

“Our Mr. Rennie’s the home team,” Julia said. “He’s going to climb onto the stump at the emergency town meeting Thursday night and try to wind this town up like a pocketwatch. The visitors get first ups, though.” She pointed at the newspapers. “Those are our first ups. If enough people read that, he’ll have some tough questions to answer before he gets to speechifying. Maybe we can disrupt his rhythm a little.”

“Maybe a lot, if we find out who did the rock-throwing at Food City,” Pete said. “And you know what? I think we will. I think this whole thing was put together on the fly. There’s got to be loose ends.”

“I just hope Barbie’s still alive when we start pulling them,” Julia said. She looked at her watch. “Come on, Rosie, let’s take a ride. You want to come, Horace?”

Horace did.

18

“You can let me off here, sir,” Sammy said. It was a pleasant ranch-style in Eastchester. Although the house was dark, the lawn was lit, because they were now close to the Dome, where bright lights had been set up at the Chester’s Mill–Harlow town line.

“Wa’m nuther beer for the road, Missy Lou?”

“No, sir, this is the end of the road for me.” Although it wasn’t. She still had to go back to town. In the yellow glow cast by the domelight, Alden Dinsmore looked eighty-five instead of forty-five. She had never seen such a sad face… except maybe for her own, in the mirror of her hospital room before she set out on this journey. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. The stubble there prickled her lips. He put his hand to the spot, and actually smiled a little.

“You ought to go home now, sir. You’ve got a wife to think about. And another boy to take care of.”

“I s’pose you’re right.”

“I am right.”

“You be okay?”

“Yes, sir.” She got out, then turned back to him. “Will you?”

“I’ll try,” he said.

Sammy slammed the door and stood at the end of the driveway, watching him turn around. He went into the ditch, but it was dry and he got out all right. He headed back toward 119, weaving at first. Then the taillights settled into a more or less straight line. He was in the middle of the road again—fucking the white line, Phil would have said—but she thought that would be okay. It was going on eight thirty now, full dark, and she didn’t think he’d meet anyone.

When his taillights winked out of sight, she walked up to the dark ranch house. It wasn’t much compared to some of the fine old homes on Town Common Hill, but nicer than anything she’d ever had. It was nice inside, too. She had been here once with Phil, back in the days when he did nothing but sell a little weed and cook a little glass out back of the trailer for his own use. Back before he started getting his strange ideas about Jesus and going to that crappy church, where they believed everybody was going to hell but them. Religion was where Phil’s trouble had started. It had led him to Cog-gins, and Coggins or someone else had turned him into The Chef.

The people who had lived here weren’t tweekers; tweekers wouldn’t be able to keep a house like this for long, they’d freebase the mortgage. But Jack and Myra Evans had enjoyed a little wacky tobacky from time to time, and Phil Bushey had been happy to supply it. They were nice people, and Phil had treated them nice. Back in those days he’d still been capable of treating people nice.

Myra gave them iced coffee. Sammy had been seven or so months gone with Little Walter then, showing plenty, and Myra had asked her if she wanted a boy or a girl. Not looking down her nose a bit. Jack had taken Phil into his little office-den to pay him, and Phil had called to her. “Hey, honey, you should get a load of this!”

It all seemed so long ago.

She tried the front door. It was locked. She picked up one of the decorative stones that bordered Myra’s flowerbed and stood in front of the picture window, hefting it in her hand. After some thought, she went around back instead of throwing it. Climbing through a window would be difficult in her current condition. And even if she was able (and careful), she might cut herself badly enough to interfere with the rest of her plans for the evening.

Also, it was a nice house. She didn’t want to vandalize it if she didn’t have to.

And she didn’t. Jack’s body had been taken away, the town was still functioning well enough for that, but no one had thought to lock the back door. Sammy walked right in. There was no generator and it was darker than a raccoon’s asshole, but there was a box of wooden matches on the kitchen stove, and the first one she lit showed her a flashlight on the kitchen table. It worked just fine. The beam illuminated what looked like a bloodstain on the floor. She switched it away from that in a hurry and started for Jack Evans’s office-den. It was right off the living room, a cubby so small that there was really room for no more than a desk and a glass-fronted cabinet.

She ran the beam of the flashlight across the desk, then raised it so that it reflected in the glassy eyes of Jack’s most treasured trophy: the head of a moose he’d shot up in TR-90 three years before. The moosehead was what Phil had called her in to see.

“I got the last ticket in the lottery that year,” Jack had told them. “And bagged him with that.” He pointed at the rifle in the cabinet. It was a fearsome-looking thing with a scope.

Myra had come into the doorway, the ice rattling in her own glass of iced coffee, looking cool and pretty and amused—the kind of woman, Sammy knew, she herself would never be. “It cost far too much, but I let him have it after he promised he’d take me to Bermuda for a week next December.”

“Bermuda,” Sammy said now, looking at the moosehead. “But she never got to go. That’s too sad.”

Phil, putting the envelope with the cash in it into his back pocket, had said: “Awesome rifle, but not exactly the thing for home protection.”

“I’ve got that covered, too,” Jack had replied, and although he hadn’t shown Phil just how he had it covered, he’d patted the top of his desk meaningfully. “Got a couple of damn good handguns.”

Phil had nodded back, just as meaningfully. Sammy and Myra had exchanged a boys will be boys look of perfect harmony. She still remembered how good that look had made her feel, how included, and she supposed that was part of the reason she had come here instead of trying someplace else, someplace closer to town.

She paused to chew down another Percocet, then started opening the desk drawers. They were unlocked, and so was the wooden box in the third one she tried. Inside was the late Jack Evans’s extra gun: a .45 Springfield XD automatic pistol. She took it, and after a little fumbling, ejected the magazine. It was full, and there was a spare clip in the drawer. She took that one, too. Then she went back to the kitchen to find a bag to carry it in. And keys, of course. To whatever might be parked in the late Jack and Myra’s garage. She had no intention of walking back to town.

19

Julia and Rose were discussing what the future might hold for their town when their present nearly ended. Would have ended, if they had met the old farm truck on Esty Bend, about a mile and a half from their destination. But Julia got through the curve in time to see that the truck was in her lane, and coming at her head-on.

She swung the wheel of her Prius hard left without thinking, getting into the other lane, and the two vehicles missed each other by inches. Horace, who’d been sitting on the backseat wearing his usual expression of oh-boy-going-for-a-ride delight, tumbled to the floor with a surprised yip. It was the only sound. Neither woman screamed, or even cried out. It was too quick for that. Death or serious injury passed them by in an instant and was gone.

Julia swung back into her own lane, then pulled onto the soft shoulder and put her Prius in park. She looked at Rose. Rose looked back, all big eyes and open mouth. In back, Horace jumped onto the seat again and gave a single bark, as if to ask what the delay was. At the sound, both women laughed and Rose began patting her chest above the substantial shelf of her bosom.

“My heart, my heart,” she said.

“Yeah,” Julia said. “Mine, too. Did you see how close that was?”

Rose laughed again, shakily. “You kidding? Hon, if I’d had my arm cocked out the window, that sonofabitch would have amputated my elbow.”

Julia shook her head. “Drunk, probably.”

“Drunk assuredly, ” Rose said, and snorted.

“Are you okay to go on?”

“Are you?” Rose asked.

“Yes,” Julia said. “How about you, Horace?”

Horace barked that he had been born ready.

“A near-miss rubs the bad luck off,” Rose said. “That’s what Granddad Twitchell used to claim.”

“I hope he was right,” Julia said, and got rolling again. She watched closely for oncoming headlights, but the next glow they saw was from the spots set up at the Harlow edge of the Dome. They didn’t see Sammy Bushey. Sammy saw them; she was standing in front of the Evans garage, with the keys to the Evans Malibu in her hand. When they had gone by, she raised the garage door (she had to do it by hand, and it hurt considerably) and got behind the wheel.

20

There was an alley between Burpee’s Department Store and the Mill Gas & Grocery, connecting Main Street and West Street. It was used mostly by delivery trucks. At quarter past nine that night, Junior Rennie and Carter Thibodeau walked up this alley in almost perfect darkness. Carter was carrying a five-gallon can, red with a yellow diagonal stripe on the side, in one hand. GASOLINE, read the word on the stripe. In the other hand he held a battery-powered bullhorn. This had been white, but Carter had wrapped the horn in black masking tape so it wouldn’t stand out if anyone looked their way before they could fade back down the alley.

Junior was wearing a backpack. His head no longer ached and his limp had all but disappeared. He was confident that his body was finally beating whatever had fucked it up. Possibly a lingering virus of some kind. You could pick up every kind of shit at college, and getting the boot for beating up that kid had probably been a blessing in disguise.

At the head of the alley they had a clear view of the Democrat. Light spilled out onto the empty sidewalk, and they could see Freeman and Guay moving around inside, carrying stacks of paper to the door and then setting them down. The old wooden structure housing the newspaper and Julia’s living quarters stood between Sanders Hometown Drug and the bookstore, but was separated from both—by a paved walkway on the bookstore side and an alley like the one in which he and Carter were currently lurking on the drugstore side. It was a windless night, and he thought that if his father mobilized the troops quickly enough, there would be no collateral damage. Not that he cared. If the entire east side of Main Street burned, that would be fine with Junior. Just more trouble for Dale Barbara. He could still feel those cool, assessing eyes on him. It wasn’t right to be looked at that way, especially when the man doing the looking was behind bars. Fucking Baaarbie.

“I should have shot him,” Junior muttered.

“What?” Carter asked.

“Nothing.” He wiped his forehead. “Hot.”

“Yeah. Frankie says if this keeps on, we’re all apt to end up stewed like prunes. When are we supposed to do this?”

Junior shrugged sullenly. His father had told him, but he couldn’t exactly remember. Ten o’clock, maybe. But what did it matter? Let those two over there burn. And if the newspaper bitch was upstairs—perhaps relaxing with her favorite dildo after a hard day—let her burn, too. More trouble for Baaarbie.

“Let’s do it now,” he said.

“You sure, bro?”

“You see anyone on the street?”

Carter looked. Main Street was deserted and mostly dark. The gennies behind the newspaper office and the drugstore were the only ones he could hear. He shrugged. “All right. Why not?”

Junior undid the pack’s buckles and flipped back the flap. On top were two pairs of light gloves. He gave one pair to Carter and put on the other. Beneath was a bundle wrapped in a bath towel. He opened it and set four empty wine bottles on the patched asphalt. At the very bottom of the pack was a tin funnel. Junior put it in one of the wine bottles and reached for the gasoline.

“Better let me, bro,” Carter said. “Your hands are shakin.”

Junior looked at them with surprise. He didn’t feel shaky, but yes, they were trembling. “I’m not afraid, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Never said you were. It ain’t a head problem. Anybody can see that. You need to go to Everett, because you got somethin wrong with you and he’s the closest thing we got to a doctor right now.”

“I feel fi—”

“Shut up before someone hears you. Do the fuckin towel while I do this.”

Junior took his gun from its holster and shot Carter in the eye. His head exploded, blood and brains everywhere. Then Junior stood over him, shooting him again and again and ag—

“Junes?”

Junior shook his head to clear away this vision—so vivid it was hallucinatory—and realized his hand was actually gripping the butt of his pistol. Maybe that virus wasn’t quite out of his system yet.

And maybe it wasn’t a virus after all.

What, then? What?

The fragrant odor of gas smacked his nostrils hard enough to make his eyes burn. Carter had begun filling the first bottle. Glug glug glug went the gas can. Junior unzipped the side pocket of the backpack and brought out a pair of his mother’s sewing scissors. He used them to cut four strips from the towel. He stuffed one into the first bottle, then pulled it out and stuck the other end inside, letting a length of gasoline-soaked terry cloth hang. He repeated the process with the others.

His hands weren’t shaking too badly for that.

21

Barbie’s Colonel Cox had changed from the last time Julia had seen him. He had a good shave for going on half past nine, and his hair was combed, but his khakis had lost their neat press and tonight his poplin jacket seemed to be bagging on him, as if he had lost weight. He was standing in front of a few smudges of spray paint left over from the unsuccessful acid experiment, and he was frowning at the bracket shape like he thought he could walk through it if he only concentrated hard enough.

Close your eyes and click your heels three times, Julia thought. Because there’s no place like Dome.

She introduced Rose to Cox and Cox to Rose. During their brief getting-to-know-you exchange, Julia looked around, not liking what she saw. The lights were still in place, shining at the sky as if signaling a glitzy Hollwood premiere, and there was a purring generator to run them, but the trucks were gone and so was the big green HQ tent that had been erected forty or fifty yards down the road. A patch of flattened grass marked the place where it had been. There were two soldiers with Cox, but they had the not-ready-for-prime-time look she associated with aides or attachés. The sentries probably weren’t gone, but they had been moved back, establishing a perimeter beyond hailing distance of any poor slobs who might wander up on The Mill side to ask what was going on.

Ask now, plead later, Julia thought. “Fill me in, Ms. Shumway,” Cox said.

“First answer a question.”

He rolled his eyes (she thought she would have slapped him for that, if she’d been able to get at him; her nerves were still jangled from the near miss on the ride out here). But he told her to ask away.

“Have we been abandoned?”

“Absolutely not.” He replied promptly, but didn’t quite meet her eye. She thought that was a worse sign than the queerly empty look she now saw on his side of the Dome—as if there had been a circus, but it had moved on.

“Read this,” she said, and plastered the front page of tomorrow’s paper against the Dome’s unseen surface, like a woman mounting a sale notice in a department store window. There was a faint, fugitive thrum in her fingers, like the kind of static shock you could get from touching metal on a cold winter morning, when the air was dry. After that, nothing.

He read the entire paper, telling her when to turn the pages. It took him ten minutes. When he finished, she said: “As you probably noticed, ad space is way down, but I flatter myself the quality of the writing has gone up. Fuckery seem to bring out the best in me.”

“Ms. Shumway—”

“Oh, why not call me Julia. We’re practically old pals.”

“Fine. You’re Julia and I’m JC.”

“I’ll try not to confuse you with the one who walked on water.”

“You believe this fellow Rennie’s setting himself up as a dictator? A kind of Downeast Manuel Noriega?”

“It’s the progression to Pol Pot I’m worried about.”

“Do you think that’s possible?”

“Two days ago I would have laughed at the idea—he’s a used-car salesman when he isn’t running selectmen’s meetings. But two days ago we hadn’t had a food riot. Nor did we know about these murders.”

“Not Barbie,” Rose said, shaking her head with stubborn weariness. “Never.”

Cox took no notice of this—not because he was ignoring Rose, Julia felt, but because he thought the idea was too ridiculous to warrant any attention. It warmed her toward him, at least a little. “Do you think Rennie committed the murders, Julia?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Everything he’s done since the Dome appeared—from shutting down alcohol sales to appointing a complete dope as Police Chief—has been political, aimed at increasing his own clout.”

“Are you saying murder isn’t in his repertoire?”

“Not necessarily. When his wife passed, there were rumors that he might have helped her along. I don’t say they were true, but for rumors like that to start in the first place says something about how people see the man in question.”

Cox grunted agreement.

“But for the life of me I can’t see how murdering and sexually abusing two teenage girls could be political.”

“Barbie would never, ” Rose said again.

“The same with Coggins, although that ministry of his—especially the radio station part—is suspiciously well endowed. Brenda Perkins, now? That could have been political.”

“And you can’t send in the Marines to stop him, can you?” Rose asked. “All you guys can do is watch. Like kids looking into an aquarium where the biggest fish takes all the food, then starts eating the little ones.”

“I can kill the cellular service,” Cox mused. “Also Internet. I can do that much.”

“The police have walkie-talkies,” Julia said. “He’ll switch to those. And at the meeting on Thursday night, when people complain about losing their links to the outside world, he’ll blame you.”

“We were planning a press conference on Friday. I could pull the plug on that.”

Julia grew cold at the thought. “Don’t you dare. Then he wouldn’t have to explain himself to the outside world.”

“Plus,” Rose said, “if you kill the phones and the Internet, no one can tell you or anyone else what he’s doing.”

Cox stood quiet for a moment, looking at the ground. Then he raised his head. “What about this hypothetical generator that’s maintaining the Dome? Any luck?”

Julia wasn’t sure she wanted to tell Cox that they had put a middle-school kid in charge of hunting for it. As it turned out, she didn’t have to, because that was when the town fire whistle went off.

22

Pete Freeman dropped the last stack of papers by the door. Then he straightened up, put his hands in the small of his back, and stretched his spine. Tony Guay heard the crackle all the way across the room. “That sounded like it hurt.”

“Nope; feels good.”

“My wife’ll be in the sack by now,” Tony said, “and I’ve got a bottle ratholed in my garage. Want to come by for a nip on your way home?”

“No, I think I’ll just—” Pete began, and that was when the first bottle crashed through the window. He saw the flaming wick from the corner of his eye and took a step backward. Only one, but it saved him from being seriously burned, perhaps even cooked alive.

The window and the bottle both shattered. The gasoline ignited and flared in a bright manta shape. Pete simultaneously ducked and pivoted from the hips. The fire-manta flew past him, igniting one sleeve of his shirt before landing on the carpet in front of Julia’s desk.

“What the FU—” Tony began, and then another bottle came arcing through the hole. This one smashed on top of Julia’s desk and rolled across it, spreading fire among the papers littered there and dripping more fire down the front. The smell of burning gas was hot and rich.

Pete ran for the water cooler in the corner, beating the sleeve of his shirt against his side. He lifted the water bottle awkwardly against his middle, then held his flaming shirt (the arm beneath now felt as if it were developing a bad sunburn) under the bottle’s spouting mouth.

Another Molotov cocktail flew out of the night. It fell short, shattering on the sidewalk and lighting a small bonfire on the concrete. Tendrils of flaming gasoline ran into the gutter and went out.

“Dump the water on the carpet!” Tony shouted. “Dump it before the whole place catches fire!”

Pete only looked at him, dazed and panting. The water in the cooler bottle continued to gush onto a part of the carpet that did not, unfortunately, need wetting.

Although his sports reporting was always going to be strictly junior varsity, Tony Guay had been a three-letter man in high school. Ten years later, his reflexes were still mostly intact. He snatched the spouting cooler bottle from Pete and held it first over the top of Julia’s desk and then over the carpet-blaze. The fire was already spreading, but maybe… if he was quick… and if there was another bottle or two in the hallway leading to the supply closet…

“More!” he shouted at Pete, who was gaping at the smoking remains of his shirtsleeve. “Back hall!”

For a moment Pete didn’t seem to understand. Then he got it, and booked for the hall. Tony stepped around Julia’s desk, letting the last pint or two of water fall on the flames trying to get a foothold there.

Then the final Molotov cocktail came flying out of the dark, and that was the one that really did the damage. It made a direct hit on the stacks of newspapers the men had placed near the front door. Burning gasoline ran beneath the baseboard at the front of the office and leaped up. Seen through the flames, Main Street was a wavering mirage. On the far side of the mirage, across the street, Tony could see two dim figures. The rising heat made them look like they were dancing.

“FREE DALE BARBARA OR THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING!” an amplified voice bellowed. “THERE ARE PLENTY OF US, AND WE’LL FIREBOMB THE WHOLE DAMN TOWN! FREE DALE BARBARA OR PAY THE PRICE!”

Tony looked down and saw a hot creek of fire run between his feet. He had no more water with which to put it out. Soon it would finish eating through the carpet and taste the old dry wood beneath. Meanwhile, the whole front of the office was now involved.

Tony dropped the empty cooler bottle and stepped back. The heat was already intense; he could feel it stretching his skin. If not for the goddam newspapers, I might’ve—

But it was too late for might’ves. He turned and saw Pete standing in the doorway from the back hall with another bottle of Poland Spring in his arms. Most of his charred shirtsleeve had dropped away. The skin beneath was bright red.

“Too late!” Tony shouted. He gave Julia’s desk, which was now a pillar of fire shooting all the way to the ceiling, a wide berth, raising one arm to shield his face from the heat. “Too late, out the back!”

Pete Freeman needed no further urging. He heaved the bottle at the growing fire and ran.

23

Carrie Carver rarely had anything to do with Mill Gas & Grocery; although the little convenience store had made her and her husband a pretty good living over the years, she saw herself as Above All That. But when Johnny suggested they might go down in the van and take the remaining canned goods up to the house—“for safekeeping” was the delicate way he put it—she had agreed at once. And although she was ordinarily not much of a worker (watching Judge Judy was more her speed), she had volunteered to help. She hadn’t been at Food City, but when she’d gone down later to inspect the damage with her friend Leah Anderson, the shattered windows and the blood still on the pavement had frightened her badly. Those things had frightened her for the future.

Johnny lugged out the cartons of soups, stews, beans, and sauces; Carrie stowed them in the bed of their Dodge Ram. They were about halfway through the job when fire bloomed downstreet. They both heard the amplified voice. Carrie thought she saw two or three figures running down the alley beside Burpee’s, but wasn’t sure. Later on she would be sure, and would up the number of shadowy figures to at least four. Probably five.

“What does it mean?” she asked. “Honey, what does it mean?”

“That the goddam murdering bastard isn’t on his own,” Johnny said. “It means he’s got a gang.”

Carrie’s hand was on his arm, and now she dug in with her nails. Johnny freed his arm and ran for the police station, yelling fire at the top of his lungs. Instead of following, Carrie Carver continued loading the truck. She was more frightened of the future than ever.

24

In addition to Roger Killian and the Bowie brothers, there were ten new officers from what was now the Chester’s Mill Hometown Security Force sitting on the bleachers of the middle-school gymnasium, and Big Jim had only gotten started on his speech about what a responsibility they had when the fire whistle went off. The boy’s early, he thought. I can’t trust him to save my soul. Never could, but now he’s that much worse.

“Well, boys,” he said, directing his attention particularly to young Mickey Wardlaw—God, what a bruiser! “I had a lot more to say, but it seems we’ve got ourselves a little more excitement. Fern Bowie, do you happen to know if we have any Indian pumps in the FD barn?”

Fern said he’d had a peek into the firebarn earlier that evening, just to see what sort of equipment there might be, and there were almost a dozen Indian pumps. All full of water, too, which was convenient.

Big Jim, thinking that sarcasm should be reserved for those bright enough to understand what it was, said it was the good Lord looking out for them. He also said that if it was more than a false alarm, he would take charge with Stewart Bowie as his second-in-command.

There, you noseyparker witch, he thought as the new officers, looking bright-eyed and eager, rose from the bleachers. Let’s see how you like getting in my business now.

25

“Where you going?” Carter asked. He had driven his car—with the lights off—down to where West Street T’d into Route 117. The building that stood here was a Texaco station that had closed up in 2007. It was close to town but offered good cover, which made it convenient. Back the way they had come, the fire whistle was honking six licks to a dozen and the first light of the fire, more pink than orange, was rising in the sky.

“Huh?” Junior was looking at the strengthening glow. It made him feel horny. It made him wish he still had a girlfriend.

“I asked where you’re going. Your dad said to alibi up.”

“I left unit Two behind the post office,” Junior said, taking his eyes reluctantly away from the fire. “Me’n Freddy Denton’s together. And he’ll say we were together. All night. I can cut across from here. Might go back by West Street. Get a look at how it’s catchin on.” He uttered a high-pitched giggle, almost a girl’s giggle, that caused Carter to look at him strangely.

“Don’t look too long. Arsonists are always gettin caught by goin back to look at their fires. I saw that on America’s Most Wanted. ”

“Nobody’s wearing the Golden Sombrero for this motherfucker except Baaarbie, ” Junior said. “What about you? Where you going?”

“Home. Ma’ll say I was there all night. I’ll get her to change the bandage on my shoulder—fuckin dogbite hurts like a bastard. Take some aspirin. Then come on down, help fight the fire.”

“They’ve got heavier dope than aspirin at the Health Center and the hospital. Also the drugstore. We ought to look into that shit.”

“No doubt,” Carter said.

“Or… do you tweek? I think I can get some of that.”

“Meth? Never mess with it. But I wouldn’t mind some Oxy.”

“Oxy!” Junior exclaimed. Why had he never thought of that? It would probably fix his headaches a lot better than Zomig or Imitrix. “Yeah, bro! You talk about it!”

He raised his fist. Carter bumped it, but he had no intention of getting high with Junior. Junior was weird now. “Better get goin, Junes.”

“I’m taillights.” Junior opened the door and walked away, still limping a little.

Carter was surprised at how relieved he was when Junior was gone.

26

Barbie woke to the sound of the fire whistle and saw Melvin Searles standing outside his cell. The boy’s fly was unzipped and he was holding his considerable cock in his hand. When he saw he had Barbie’s attention, he began to piss. His goal was clearly to reach the bunk. He couldn’t quite make it and settled for a splattery letter S on the concrete instead.

“Go on, Barbie, drink up,” he said. “You gotta be thirsty. It’s a little salty, but what the fuck.”

“What’s burning?”

“As if you didn’t know,” Mel said, smiling. He was still pale—he must have lost a fair amount of blood—but the bandage around his head was crisp and unstained.

“Pretend I don’t.”

“Your pals burned down the newspaper,” Mel said, and now his smile showed his teeth. Barbie realized the kid was furious. Frightened, too. “Trying to scare us into letting you out. But we… don’t… scare. ”

“Why would I burn down the newspaper? Why not the Town Hall? And who are these pals of mine supposed to be?”

Mel was tucking his cock back into his pants. “You won’t be thirsty tomorrow, Barbie. Don’t worry about that. We’ve got a whole bucket of water with your name on it, and a sponge to go with it.”

Barbie was silent.

“You seen that waterboarding shit in I-rack?” Mel nodded as if he knew Barbie had. “Now you’ll get to experience it firsthand.” He pointed a finger through the bars. “We’re gonna find out who your confederates are, fuckwad. And we’re gonna find out what you did to lock this town up in the first place. That waterboarding shit? Nobody stands up to that.”

He started away, then turned back.

“Not fresh water, either. Salt. First thing. You think about it.”

Mel left, clumping up the basement hallway with his bandaged head lowered. Barbie sat on the bunk, looked at the drying snake of Mel’s urine on the floor, and listened to the fire whistle. He thought of the girl in the pickemup. The blondie who almost gave him a ride and then changed her mind. He closed his eyes.