Under the Dome

But Mickey Wardlaw only stood gaping as Junior pumped five bullets into Piper Libby's cousin. His left hand was numb, but his right was still okay; he didn't even need to be a particularly good shot, with a stationary target just seven feet away. The first two rounds went into Rupe's belly, driving him against Stacey Moggin's desk and knocking it over. Rupe doubled up, holding himself. Junior's third shot went wild, but the next two went into the top of Rupe's head. He went down in a grotesquely balletic posture, his legs splaying out to either side and his head—what remained of it—coming to rest on the floor, as if in a final deep bow.

Junior limped into the ready room with the smoking Beretta held out in front of him. He couldn't remember exactly how many shots he had fired; he thought seven. Maybe eight. Or eleventy-nine—who could know for sure? His headache was back.

Mickey Wardlaw raised his hand. There was a frightened, placatory smile on his large face. 'No trouble from me, bro,' he said. 'You do what you got to do.' And made the peace sign.

'I will,'Junior said. 'Bro.'

He shot Mickey.The big boy went down, peace sign now framing the hole in his head that had lately held an eye. The remaining eye rolled up to look at Junior with the dumb humility of a sheep in the shearing pen. Junior shot him again, just to be sure. Then he looked around. He had the place to himself, it appeared.

'Okay,' he said. 'Oh… kay!

Hje started toward the stairs, then went back to Stacey Moggin's body. He verified the fact that she was carrying a Beretta Taurus like his, and ejected the mag from his own gun. He replaced it with a full one from her belt.

Junior turned, staggered, went to one knee, and got up again. The black spot on the left side of his vision now seemed as big as a manhole cover, and he had an idea that meant his left eye was pretty much fucked. Well, that was all right; if he needed more than one eye to shoot a man locked in a cell, he wasn't worth a hoot in a henhouse, anyway. He walked across the ready room, slipped in the late Mickey Wardlaw's blood, and almost fell again. But he caught himself in time. His head was thumping, but he welcomed it. It's keeping me sharp, he thought.

'Hello, Baaarbie,' he called down the stairs. 'I know what you did to me and I'm coming for you. If you've got a prayer to say, better make it a quick one.'

27

Rusty watched the limping legs descend the metal stairs. He could smell gunsmoke, he could smell blood, and he understood perfectly well that his time of dying had come round. The limping man was here for Barbie, but he would almost certainly not neglect a certain caged physician's assistant on his way by. He was never going to see Linda or the Js again.

Junior's chest came into view, then his neck, then his head. Rusty took one look at the mouth, which was dragged down on the left in a frozen leer, and at the left eye, which was weeping blood, and thought: Very far gone. A wonder he's still on his feet and a pity he didn't wait just a little longer. A little longer and he wouldn't have been capable of crossing the street.

Faintly, in another world, he heard a bullhorn-amplified voice from the Town Hall: 'DO NOT RUN! DO NOT PANIC! THE DANGER IS OVER! THIS IS OFFICER HENRY MORRISON, AND I REPEAT: THE DANGER IS OVER!'

Junior slipped, but by then he was on the last stair. Instead of falling and breaking his neck, he only went to one knee. He rested that way for a few moments, looking like a prizefighter waiting for the mandatory eight-count to rise and resume the bout. To Rusty everything seemed clear, near, and very dear. The precious world, suddenly grown thin and insubstantial, was now only a single gauze wrapping between him and whatever came next. If anything.

Go all the way down, he thought at Junior. Fall on your face. Pass out, you motherfucker.

But Junior laboriously rose to his feet, gazed at the gun in his hand as if he had never seen such a thing before, then looked down the corridor to the cell at the end, where Barbie stood with his hands wrapped around the bars, looking back.

'Baaarbie,' Junior said in a crooning whisper, and started forward. Rusty stepped backward, thinking that perhaps Junior would miss him on his way by. And perhaps kill himself after finishing with Barbie. He knew these were craven thoughts, but he also knew they were practical thoughts. He could do nothing for Barbie, but he might be able to survive himself.

And it could have worked, had he been in one of the cells on the left side of the corridor, because that was Junior's blind side. But he had been put in one on the right, and Junior saw him move. He stopped and peered in at Rusty, his half-frozen face simultaneously bewildered and sly.

'Fusty,' he said. 'Is that your name? Or is it Berrick? I can't remember.'