Under the Dome

Al Timmons should have done it on his own initiative, he told himself. For God’s sake, is a little initiative too much to ask? Isn’t that part of what we pay the maintenance staff for? He could have gone to that frog Burpee and asked for them as a donation, for heaven’s sake. That’s what I would have done.

He connected the tank to the generator. Then his heart stuttered again. His hand jerked, and he knocked the flashlight into the storage bin, where it clanged against one of the remaining tanks. The lens shattered and he was left once more in total darkness.

“No!” he screamed. “No, goddammit, NO!”

But from God there was no answer. The quiet and the dark pressed in on him as his overstrained heart choked and struggled. Traitorous thing!

“Never mind. There’ll be another flashlight in the other room. Matches, too. I’ll just have to find them. If Carter had stockpiled them to begin with, I could go right to them.” It was true. He had overestimated that boy. He had thought the kid was a comer, but in the end he had turned out to be a goer. Big Jim laughed, then made himself stop. The sound in such total darkness was a little spooky.

Never mind. Start the generator.

Yes. Right. The generator was job one. He could double-check the connection once it was running and the air purifier was queeping away again. By then he’d have another flashlight, maybe even a Coleman lantern. Plenty of light for the next tank switchover.

“That’s the ticket,” he said. “If you want something done right in this world, you have to do it yourself. Just ask Coggins. Just ask the Perkins rhymes-with-witch. They know.” He laughed some more. He couldn’t help it, because it really was rich. “They found out. You don’t tease a big dog if you only have a little stick. Nosir. Nosirree.”

He felt around for the starter-button, found it, pushed it. Nothing happened. Suddenly the air in the room seemed thicker than ever.

I pushed the wrong button, that’s all.

Knowing better but believing it because some things have to be believed. He blew on his fingers like a crap-shooter hoping to heat up a cold pair of dice. Then he felt around until his fingers found the button.

“God,” he said, “this is Your servant, James Rennie. Please let this darned old thing start. I ask it in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ.”

He pushed the starter-button.

Nothing.

He sat in the dark with his feet dangling in the storage compartment, trying to push back the panic that wanted to descend and eat him raw. He had to think. It was the only way to survive. But it was hard. When you were in the dark, when your heart was threatening full revolt at any second, thinking was hard.

And the worst of it? Everything he’d done and everything he’d worked for during the last thirty years of his life seemed unreal. Like the way people looked on the other side of the Dome. They walked, they talked, they drove cars, they even flew in airplanes and helicopters. But none of it mattered, not under the Dome.

Get hold of yourself. If God won’t help you, help yourself.

Okay. The first thing was light. Even a book of matches would do. There had to be something on one of the shelves in the other room. He would just feel along—very slowly, very methodically—until he found it. And then he would find batteries for the cotton-picking starter-motor. There were batteries, of that he was sure, because he needed the generator. Without the generator he would die.

Suppose you do get it started again? What happens when the propane runs out?

Ah, but something would intervene. He wasn’t meant to die down here. Roast beef with Jesus? He’d pass on that meal, actually. If he couldn’t sit at the head of the table, he’d just as soon skip the whole thing.

That made him laugh again. He made his way very slowly and carefully back to the door leading into the main room. He held his hands out in front of him like a blind man. After seven steps they touched the wall. He moved to the right, trailing his fingertips over the wood, and… ah! Emptiness. The doorway. Good.

He shuffled through it, moving more confidently now in spite of the blackness. He remembered the layout of this room perfectly: shelves to either side, couch dead ahea—

He tripped over the goddam cotton-picking kid again and went sprawling. He hit his forehead on the floor and screamed—more in surprise and outrage than in pain, because there was a carpet to pad the blow. But oh God, there was a dead hand between his legs. It seemed to be clutching at his balls.