Under the Dome

“Maybe.” Barbie had no idea how much information was going to come out of or into Chester’s Mill if this situation didn’t resolve quickly, and with some rational explanation. Probably not much. He thought Maxwell Smart’s fabled Cone of Silence would descend soon, if it hadn’t already.

Anson came back to the table where Barbie and Rose were sitting. He had his jacket on. “Is it okay for me to go now, Rose?”

“Sure,” she said. “Six tomorrow?”

“Isn’t that a little late?” He grinned and added, “Not that I’m complaining.”

“We’re going to open late.” She hesitated. “And close between meals.”

“Really? Cool.” His gaze shifted to Barbie. “You got a place to stay tonight? Because you can stay with me. Sada went to Derry to visit her folks.” Sada was Anson’s wife.

Barbie in fact did have a place to go, almost directly across the street.

“Thanks, but I’ll go back to my apartment. I’m paid up until the end of the month, so why not? I dropped off the keys with Petra Searles in the drugstore before I left this morning, but I still have a dupe on my key ring.”

“Okay. See you in the morning, Rose. Will you be here, Barbie?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Anson’s grin widened. “Excellent.”

When he was gone, Rose rubbed her eyes, then looked at Barbie grimly. “How long is this going to go on? Best guess.”

“I don’t have a best guess, because I don’t know what happened. Or when it will stop happening.”

Very low, Rose said: “Barbie, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m scaring myself. We both need to go to bed. Things will look better in the morning.”

“After this discussion, I’ll probably need an Ambien to get to sleep,” she said, “tired as I am. But thank God you came back.”

Barbie remembered what he’d been thinking about supplies.

“One other thing. If Food City opens tomorrow—”

“It’s always open on Sundays. Ten to six.”

“If it opens tomorrow, you need to go shopping.”

“But Sysco delivers on—” She broke off and stared at him dismally. “On Tuesdays, but we can’t count on that, can we? Of course not.”

“No,” he said. “Even if what’s wrong suddenly becomes right, the Army’s apt to quarantine this burg, at least for a while.”

“What should I buy?”

“Everything, but especially meat. Meat, meat, meat. If the store opens. I’m not sure it will. Jim Rennie may persuade whoever manages it now—”

“Jack Cale. He took over when Ernie Calvert retired last year.”

“Well, Rennie may persuade him to close until further notice. Or get Chief Perkins to order the place closed.”

“You don’t know?” Rose asked, and at his blank look: “You don’t. Duke Perkins is dead, Barbie. He died out there.” She gestured south.

Barbie stared at her, stunned. Anson had neglected to turn off the television, and behind them, Rose’s Wolfie was again telling the world that an unexplained force had cut off a small town in western Maine, the area had been isolated by the armed forces, the Joint Chiefs were meeting in Washington, the President would address the nation at midnight, but in the meantime he was asking the American people to unite their prayers for the people of Chester’s Mill with his own.

3

“Dad? Dad?”

Junior Rennie stood at the top of the stairs, head cocked, listening. There was no response, and the TV was silent. His dad was always home from work and in front of the TV by now. On Saturday nights he forwent CNN and FOX News for either Animal Planet or The History Channel. Not tonight, though. Junior listened to his watch to make sure it was still ticking. It was, and what it said sort of made sense, because it was dark outside.

A terrible thought occurred to him: Big Jim might be with Chief Perkins. The two of them could at this minute be discussing how to arrest Junior with the least possible fuss. And why had they waited so long? So they could spirit him out of town under cover of darkness. Take him to the county jail over in Castle Rock. Then a trial. And then?

Then Shawshank. After a few years there, he’d probably just call it The Shank, like the rest of the murderers, robbers, and sodomites.

“That’s stupid,” he whispered, but was it? He’d awakened thinking that killing Angie had just been a dream, must have been, because he would never kill anyone. Beat them up, maybe, but kill? Ridiculous. He was… was… well… a regular person!

Then he’d looked at the clothes under the bed, seen the blood on them, and it all came back. The towel falling off her hair. Her pussypatch, somehow goading him. The complicated crunching sound from behind her face when he’d gotten her with his knee. The rain of fridge magnets and the way she had thrashed.

But that wasn’t me. That was…

“It was the headache.” Yes. True. But who’d believe that? He’d have better luck if he said the butler did it.

“Dad?”

Nothing. Not here. And not at the police station, conspiring against him, either. Not his dad. He wouldn’t. His dad always said family came first.