Under the Dome

Instead of commenting on the olfactory association he had made between sardines and deceased female sex organs, he asked what seemed to be the logical question.

“What are we going to do, boss?”

Big Jim removed the key from the bottom of the can, inserted it in the tab, and unrolled the top to expose a fresh squadron of dead fish. They gleamed greasily in the glow of the emergency lights. “Wait for the air to clear, then go topside and start picking up the pieces, son.” He sighed, placed a dripping fish on a Saltine, and ate it. Cracker crumbs stuck to his lips in beads of oil. “It’s what people like us always do. The responsible people. The ones who pull the plow.”

“What if the air doesn’t clear? The TV said—”

“Oh dear, the sky is falling, oh dear, the sky is falling!” Big Jim declaimed in a strange (and strangely disturbing) falsetto. “They’ve been saying it for years, haven’t they? The scientists and the bleeding-heart liberals. World War III! Nuclear reactors melting down to the center of the earth! Y2K computer freezes! The end of the ozone layer! Melting ice caps! Killer hurricanes! Global warming! Chickendirt weak-sister atheists who won’t trust in the will of a loving, caring God! Who refuse to believe there is such a thing as a loving, caring God!”

Big Jim pointed a greasy but adamant finger at the younger man.

“Contrary to the beliefs of the secular humanists, the sky is not falling. They can’t help the yellow streak that runs up their backs, son—‘the guilty man flees where none pursueth,’ you know, book of Leviticus—but that doesn’t change God’s truth: those who believe on Him shall not tire, but shall mount up with wings as eagles—book of Isaiah. That’s basically smog out there. It’ll just take awhile to clear out.”

But two hours later, at just past four o’clock on that Friday afternoon, a shrill queep-queep-queep sound came from the alcove that held the fallout shelter’s mechanical support system.

“What’s that?” Carter asked.

Big Jim, now slumped on the couch with his eyes partly closed (and sardine grease on his jowls), sat up and listened. “Air purifier,” he said. “Kind of like a big Ionic Breeze. We’ve got one of those in the car showroom down at the store. Good gadget. Not only does it keep the air nice and sweet, it stops those static electricity shocks you tend to get in cold wea—”

“If the air in town’s clearing, why did the air purifier start up?”

“Why don’t you go upstairs, Carter? Crack the door a little bit and see how things are. Would that ease your mind?”

Carter didn’t know if it would or not, but he knew just sitting here was making him feel squirrelly. He mounted the stairs.

As soon as he was gone, Big Jim got up himself and went to the line of drawers between the stove and the little refrigerator. For such a big man, he moved with surprising speed and quiet. He found what he was looking for in the third drawer. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure he was still alone, then helped himself.

On the door at the top of the stairs, Carter was confronted by a rather ominous sign:

DO YOU NEED TO CHECK THE RADIATION COUNT?

THINK!!!

Carter thought. And the conclusion he came to was that Big Jim was almost certainly full of shit about the air clearing out. Those folks lined up in front of the fans proved that the air exchange between Chester’s Mill and the outside world was almost nil.

Still, it wouldn’t do any harm to check.

At first the door wouldn’t budge. Panic, sparked by dim thoughts of being buried alive, made him push harder. This time the door moved just a little. He heard bricks falling and lumber scraping. Maybe he could open it wider, but there was no reason to. The air coming in through the inch-wide gap he’d opened wasn’t air at all, but something that smelled like the inside of an exhaust pipe when the motor it was attached to was running. He didn’t need any fancy instruments to tell him that two or three minutes outside the shelter would kill him.

The question was, what was he going to tell Rennie?

Nothing, the cold voice of the survivor inside suggested. Hearing something like that will only make him worse. Harder to deal with.

And what exactly did that mean? What did it matter, if they were going to die in the fallout shelter when the generator ran out of fuel? If that was the case, what did anything matter?

He went back down the stairs. Big Jim was sitting on the sofa. “Well?”

“Pretty bad,” Carter said.

“But breathable, right?”

“Well, yeah. But it’d make you damn sick. We better wait, boss.”