Under the Dome

“Ambien,” she said, and was gratified the voice emerging from her dry throat and mouth sounded normal. “Hers. Although I’d guess she shared it last night.”

“Is there a note?”

“Not here,” she said. “Maybe inside.”

But there wasn’t, at least not in any of the obvious places, and neither of them could think of a reason to hide a suicide note. Buddy followed them from room to room, not howling but whining deep in his throat.

“I guess I’ll bring him back t’house with me,” Henrietta said.

“You’ll have to. I can’t take him to the hospital. I’ll call Stewart Bowie to come and get… them.” He hooked a thumb back over his shoulder. His stomach was roiling, but that wasn’t the bad part; the bad part was the depression that came stealing into him, putting a shadow across his normally sunny soul.

“I don’t understand why they would do it,” Henrietta said. “If we’d been a year under the Dome… or even a month… yes, maybe. But less than a week? This is not how stable people respond to trouble.”

Twitch thought he understood, but didn’t want to say it to Henrietta: it was going to be a month, it was going to be a year. Maybe longer. And with no rain, fewer resources, and fouler air. If the most technologically hip country in the world hadn’t been able to get a handle on what had happened to Chester’s Mill by now (let alone solve the problem), it probably wasn’t going to happen soon. Will Freeman must have understood that. Or maybe it had been Lois’s idea. Maybe when the generator had died, she’d said Let’s do it before the water in the hot tub gets cold, honey. Let’s get out from under the Dome while our bellies are still full. What do you say? One more dip, with a few drinks to see us off.

“Maybe it was the plane that pushed them over the edge,” Twitch said. “The Air Ireland that hit the Dome yesterday.”

Henrietta didn’t answer with words; she hawked back and spat snot into the kitchen sink. It was a somehow shocking gesture of repudiation. They went back outside.

“More people will do this, won’t they?” she asked when they had reached the end of the driveway. “Because suicide gets in the air sometimes. Like a cold germ.”

“Some already have.” Twitch didn’t know if suicide was painless, as the song said, but under the right circumstances, it could certainly be catching. Maybe especially catching when the situation was unprecedented and the air started to smell as foul as it did on this windless, unnaturally warm morning.

“Suicides are cowards,” Henrietta said. “A rule to which there are no exceptions, Douglas.”

Twitch, whose father had died a long and lingering death as a result of stomach cancer, wondered about that but said nothing.

Henrietta bent to Buddy with her hands on her bony knees. Buddy stretched his neck up to sniff her. “Come next door, my furry friend. I have three eggs. You may eat them before they go bad.”

She started away, then turned back to Twitch. “They are cowards,” she said, giving each word its own special emphasis.

5

Jim Rennie checked out of Cathy Russell, slept soundly in his own bed, and woke refreshed. Although he would not have admitted it to anyone, part of the reason was knowing Junior was out of the house.

Now, at eight o’clock, his black Hummer was parked a door or two up from Rosie’s (in front of a fire hydrant, but what the hell; currently there was no fire department). He was having breakfast with Peter Randolph, Mel Searles, Freddy Denton, and Carter Thibodeau. Carter had taken up what was becoming his usual station, at Big Jim’s right hand. He wore two guns this morning: his own on his hip, and Linda Everett’s recently returned Beretta Taurus in a shoulder rig.

The quintet had taken over the bullshit table at the back of the restaurant, deposing the regulars without a qualm. Rose wouldn’t come near; she sent Anson to deal with them.

Big Jim ordered three fried eggs, double sausage, and home toast fried in bacon grease, the way his mother used to serve it. He knew he was supposed to be cutting down on his cholesterol, but today he was going to need all the energy he could pack in. The next few days, actually; after that, things would be under control. He could go to work on his cholesterol then (a fable he had been telling himself for ten years).

“Where’s the Bowies?” he asked Carter. “I wanted the goshdarn Bowies here, so where are they?”

“Had to roll on a call out to Battle Street,” Carter said. “Mr. and Mrs. Freeman committed suicide.”