Under the Dome

Chef was somewhere with the bong, but he’d left Andy a supply of fat hybrid cigarettes he called fry-daddies. “You want to be careful with these, Sanders,” he said. “They are dynamite. ‘For thee not used to drinking must be gentle.’ First Timothy. It also applies to fries.”

Andy nodded solemnly, but smoked like a demon once Chef was gone: two of the daddies, one after the other. He puffed until they were nothing but hot nubs that burned his fingers. The roasting cat-pee smell of the glass was already rising to the top of his aromatherapy hit parade. He was halfway through the third daddy and still conducting like Leonard Bernstein when he sucked in a particularly deep lungful and instantly blacked out. He fell to the floor and lay twitching in a river of sacred music. Spitfoam oozed between his clenched teeth. His half-open eyes rolled around in their sockets, seeing things that weren’t there. At least, not yet.

Ten minutes later he was awake again, and lively enough to go flying along the path between the studio and the long red supply building out back.

“Chef!” he bawled. “Chef, where are you? THEY’RE COMING!”

Chef Bushey stepped from the supply building’s side door. His hair stood up from his head in greasy quills. He was dressed in a filthy pair of pajama pants, pee-stained at the crotch and grass-stained at the bottoms. Printed with cartoon frogs saying RIBBIT, they hung precariously from the bony flanges of his hips, displaying a fluff of pubic hair in front and the crack of his ass in back. He had his AK-47 in one hand. On the stock he had carefully painted the words GOD’S WARRIOR. The garage door opener was in his other hand. He put God’s Warrior down but not God’s Door Opener. He grasped Andy’s shoulders and gave him a smart shake.

“Stop it, Sanders, you’re hysterical.”

“They’re coming! The bitter men! Just like you said!”

Chef considered this. “Did someone call and give you a heads-up?”

“No, it was a vision! I blacked out and had a vision!”

Chef’s eyes widened. Suspicion gave way to respect. He looked from Andy to Little Bitch Road, and then back to Andy again. “What did you see? How many? Is it all of them, or just a few, like before?”

“I… I… I…”

Chef shook him again, but much more gently this time. “Calm down, Sanders. You’re in the Lord’s army now, and—”

“A Christian soldier!”

“Right, right, right. And I’m your superior. So report.”

“They’re coming in two trucks.”

“Only two?”

“Yes.”

“Orange?”

“Yes!”

Chef hitched up his pjs (they subsided to their former position almost immediately) and nodded. “Town trucks. Probably those same three dumbwits—the Bowies and Mr. Chicken.”

“Mr.—?”

“Killian, Sanders, who else? He smokes the glass but doesn’t understand the purpose of the glass. He’s a fool. They’re coming for more propane.”

“Should we hide? Just hide and let them take it?”

“That’s what I did before. But not this time. I’m done hiding and letting people take things. Star Wormwood has blazed. It’s time for men of God to hoist their flag. Are you with me?”

And Andy—who under the Dome had lost everything that had ever meant anything to him—did not hesitate. “Yes!”

“To the end, Sanders?”

“To the end!”

“Where-at did you put your gun?”

As best as Andy could recollect, it was in the studio, leaning against the poster of Pat Robertson with his arm around the late Lester Coggins.

“Let’s get it,” Chef said, picking up GOD’S WARRIOR and checking the clip. “And from now on you carry it with you, have you got that?”

“Okay.”

“Box of ammo in there?”

“Yep.” Andy had toted one of these crates in just an hour ago. At least he thought it had been an hour ago; fry-daddies had a way of bending time at the edges.

“Just a minute,” Chef said. He went down the side of the supply building to the box of Chinese grenades and brought back three. He gave two to Andy and told him to put them in his pockets. Chef hung the third grenade from the muzzle of GOD’S WARRIOR by the pull-ring. “Sanders, I was told that you get seven seconds after you yank the pin to get rid of these cocksuckers, but when I tried one in the gravel-pit back yonder, it was more like four. You can’t trust your Oriental races. Remember that.”

Andy said he would.

“All right, come on. Let’s get your weapon.”

Hesitantly, Andy asked: “Are we going to take them out?”

Chef looked surprised. “Not unless we have to, no.”

“Good,” Andy said. In spite of everything, he didn’t really want to hurt anyone.

“But if they force the issue, we’ll do what’s necessary. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” Andy said.

Chef clapped him on the shoulder.

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