Under the Dome

“They make the hardshell Baptists look soft. I go to the Congo, myself. Can’t stand Lester Coggins, hate all the ha-ha-you’re-going-to-hell-and-we’re-not stuff. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Although I have often wondered how they afford a fifty thousand-watt radio station.”

“Love offerings?”

She snorted. “Maybe I ought to ask Jim Rennie. He’s a deacon.”

Julia drove a trim Prius Hybrid, a car Barbie would not have expected of a staunch Republican newspaper owner (although he supposed it did fit a worshipper at the First Congregational). But it was quiet, and the radio worked. The only problem was that out here on the western side of town, CIK’s signal was so powerful it wiped out everything on the FM band. And tonight it was broadcasting some holy accordion shit that hurt Barbie’s head. It sounded like polka music played by an orchestra dying of bubonic plague.

“Try the AM band, why don’t you?” she said.

He did, and got only nighttime gabble until he hit a sports station near the bottom of the dial. Here he heard that before the Red Sox–Mariners playoff game at Fenway Park, there had been a moment of silence for the victims of what the announcer called “the western Maine event.”

“Event,” Julia said. “A sports-radio term if ever I heard one. Might as well turn it off.”

A mile or so past the church, they began to see a glow through the trees. They came around a curve and into the glare of lights almost the size of Hollywood premiere kliegs. Two pointed in their direction; two more were tilted straight up. Every pothole in the road stood out in stark relief. The trunks of the birches looked like narrow ghosts. Barbie felt as if they were driving into a noir movie from the late nineteen forties.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he said. “This is as close as you want to go. Looks like there’s nothing there, but take my word for it, there is. It would likely blow the electronics in your little car, if nothing else.”

She stopped and they got out. For a moment they just stood in front of the car, squinting into the bright light. Julia raised one hand to shield her eyes.

Parked beyond the lights, nose to nose, were two brown canvas-back military trucks. Sawhorses had been placed on the road for good measure, their feet braced with sandbags. Motors roared steadily in the darkness—not one generator but several. Barbie saw thick electrical cables snaking away from the spotlights and into the woods, where other lights glared through the trees.

“They’re going to light the perimeter,” he said, and twirled one finger in the air, like an ump signaling a home run. “Lights around the whole town, shining in and shining up.”

“Why up?”

“The up ones to warn away air traffic. If any gets through, that is. I’d guess it’s mostly tonight they’re worried about. By tomorrow they’ll have the airspace over The Mill sewn up like one of Uncle Scrooge’s moneybags.”

On the dark side of the spotlights, but visible in their back-splash, were half a dozen armed soldiers, standing at parade rest with their backs turned. They must have heard the approach of the car, quiet as it was, but not one of them so much as looked around.

Julia called, “Hello, fellas!”

No one turned. Barbie didn’t expect it—on their way out, Julia had told Barbie what Cox had told her—but he had to try. And because he could read their insignia, he knew what to try. The Army might be running this show—Cox’s involvement suggested that—but these fellows weren’t Army.

“Yo, Marines!” he called.

Nothing. Barbie stepped closer. He saw a dark horizontal line hanging on the air above the road, but ignored it for the time being. He was more interested in the men guarding the barrier. Or the Dome. Shumway had said Cox called it the Dome.

“I’m surprised to see you Force Recon boys stateside,” he said, walking a little closer. “That little Afghanistan problem over, is it?”

Nothing. He walked closer. The grit of the hardpan under his shoes seemed very loud.

“A remarkably high number of pussies in Force Recon, or so I’ve heard. I’m relieved, actually. If this situation was really bad, they would have sent in the Rangers.”

“Pogeybait,” one of them muttered.

It wasn’t much, but Barbie was encouraged. “Stand easy, fellas; stand easy and let’s talk this over.”

More nothing. And he was as close to the barrier (or the Dome) as he wanted to go. His skin didn’t rash out in goosebumps and the hair on his neck didn’t try to stand up, but he knew the thing was there. He sensed it.

And could see it: that stripe hanging on the air. He didn’t know what color it would be in daylight, but he was guessing red, the color of danger. It was spray paint, and he would have bet the entire contents of his bank account (currently just over five thousand dollars) that it went all the way around the barrier.

Like a stripe on a shirtsleeve, he thought.

He balled a fist and rapped on his side of the stripe, once more producing that knuckles-on-glass sound. One of the Marines jumped.