Under the Dome

1

They started seeing the glow on the other side of a rusty old bridge that now spanned nothing but a mudslick. Barbie leaned forward between the front seats of the van. “What’s that? It looks like the world’s biggest Indiglo watch.”

“It’s radiation,” Ernie said.

“Don’t worry,” Rommie said.

“We’ve got plenty of lead roll.”

“Norrie called me on her mother’s cell phone while I was waiting for you,” Ernie said. “She told me about the glow. She says Julia thinks it’s nothing but a kind of… scarecrow, I guess you’d say. Not dangerous.”

“I thought Julia’s degree was in journalism, not science,” Jackie said. “She’s a very nice lady, and smart, but we’re still going to armor this thing up, right? Because I don’t much fancy getting ovarian or breast cancer as a fortieth birthday present.”

“We’ll drive fast,” Rommie said. “You can even slide a piece of dat lead roll down the front of your jeans, if it’ll make you feel better, you.”

“That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” she said… then did just that when she got an image of herself in lead panties, fashionably high-cut on the sides.

They came to the dead bear at the foot of the telephone pole. They could have seen it even with the headlights off, because by then the combined light from the pink moon and the radiation belt was almost strong enough to read a newspaper by.

While Rommie and Jackie covered the van’s windows with lead roll, the others stood around the rotting bear in a semicircle.

“Not radiation,” Barbie mused.

“Nope,” Rusty said. “Suicide.”

“And there are others.”

“Yes. But the smaller animals seem to be safe. The kids and I saw plenty of birds, and there was a squirrel in the orchard. It was just as lively as can be.”

“Then Julia’s almost certainly right,” Barbie said.

“The glow-band’s a scarecrow and the dead animals are another. It’s the old belt-and -suspenders thing.”

“I’m not following you, my friend,” Ernie said.

But Rusty, who had learned the belt-and-suspenders approach as a medical student, absolutely was. “Two warnings to keep out,” he said. “Dead animals by day, a glowing belt of radiation by night.”

“So far as I know,” Rommie said, joining them at the side of the road, “radiation only glows in science fiction movies.”

Rusty thought of telling him they were living in a science fiction movie, and Rommie would realize it when he got close to that weird box on the ridge. But of course Rommie was right.

“We’re supposed to see it,” he said. “The same with the dead animals. You’re supposed to say, ‘Whoa—if there’s some kind of suicide ray out here that affects big mammals, I better stay away. After all, I’m a big mammal.’”

“But the kids didn’t back off,” Barbie said.

“Because they’re kids,” Ernie said. And, after a moment’s consideration: “Also skateboarders. They’re a different breed.”

“I still don’t like it,” Jackie said, “but since we have noplace else to go, maybe we could drive through yonder Van Allen Belt before I lose what’s left of my nerve. After what happened at the cop-shop, I’m feeling a little shaky.”

“Wait a minute,” Barbie said. “There’s something out of kilter here. I see it, but give me a second to think how to say it.”

They waited. Moonlight and radiation lit the remains of the bear. Barbie was staring at it. Finally he raised his head.

“Okay, here’s what’s troubling me. There’s a they. We know that because the box Rusty found isn’t a natural phenomenon.”

“Damn straight, it’s a made thing,” Rusty said. “But not terrestrial. I’d bet my life on that.” Then he thought how close he’d come to losing his life not an hour ago and shuddered. Jackie squeezed his shoulder.

“Never mind that part for now,” Barbie said. “There’s a they, and if they really wanted to keep us out, they could. They’re keeping the whole world out of Chester’s Mill. If they wanted to keep us away from their box, why not put a mini-Dome around it?”

“Or a harmonic sound that would cook our brains like chicken legs in a microwave,” Rusty suggested, getting into the spirit of the thing. “Hell, real radiation, for that matter.”

“It might be real radiation,” Ernie said. “In fact, the Geiger counter you brought up here pretty much confirmed that.”

“Yes,” Barbie agreed, “but does that mean that what the Geiger counter’s registering is dangerous? Rusty and the kids aren’t breaking out in lesions, or losing their hair, or vomiting up the linings of their stomachs.”

“At least not yet,” Jackie said.

“Dat’s cheerful,” Rommie said.

Barbie ignored the byplay. “Surely if they can create a barrier so strong it bounces back the best missiles America can throw at it, they could set up a radiation belt that would kill quickly, maybe instantly. It would even be in their interest to do so. A couple of grisly human deaths would be a lot more apt to discourage explorers than a bunch of dead animals. No, I think Julia’s right, and the so-called radiation belt will turn out to be a harmless glow that’s been spiced up to register on our detection equipment. Which probably seems pretty damn primitive to them, if they really are extraterrestrial.”

“But why?” Rusty burst out. “Why any barrier? I couldn’t lift the damn thing, I couldn’t even rock it! And when I put a lead apron on it, the apron caught fire. Even though the box itself is cool to the touch!”

“If they’re protecting it, there must be some way of destroying it or turning it off,” Jackie said. “Except…”

Barbie was smiling at her. He felt strange, almost as if he were floating above his own head. “Go on, Jackie. Say it.”

“Except they’re not protecting it, are they? Not from people who are determined to approach it.”

“There’s more,” Barbie said. “Couldn’t we say they’re actually pointing at it? Joe McClatchey and his friends were practically following a trail of bread crumbs.”

“Here it is, puny Earthlings,” Rusty said. “What can you do about it, ye who are brave enough to approach?”

“That feels about right,” Barbie said. “Come on. Let’s get up there.”

2

“You better let me drive from here,” Rusty told Ernie. “Up ahead’s where the kids passed out. Rommie almost did. I felt it too. And I had a kind of hallucination. A Halloween dummy that burst into flames.”

“Another warning?” Ernie asked.

“I don’t know.”

Rusty drove to where the woods ended and open, rocky land sloped up to the McCoy Orchard. Just ahead, the air glowed so brightly they had to squint, but there was no source; the brightness was just there, floating. To Barbie it looked like the sort of light fireflies gave off, only magnified a million times. The belt appeared to be about fifty yards wide. Beyond it, the world was again dark except for the pink glow of the moonlight.

“You’re sure that faintness won’t happen to you again?” Barbie asked.

“It seems to be like touching the Dome: the first time vaccinates you.” Rusty settled behind the wheel, dropped the transmission into drive, and said: “Hang onto your false teeth, ladies and germs.”

He hit the gas hard enough to spin the rear tires. The van sped into the glow. They were too well armored to see what happened next, but several people already on the ridge saw it from where they had been watching—with increasing anxiety—from the edge of the orchard. For a moment the van was clearly visible, as if centered in a spotlight. When it ran out of the glow-belt it continued to shine for several seconds, as if the stolen van had been dipped with radium. And it dragged a fading cometary tail of brightness behind it, like exhaust.

“Holy shit,” Benny said. “It’s like the best special effect I ever saw.”

Then the glow around the van faded and the tail disappeared.

3

As they passed through the glow-belt, Barbie felt a momentary lightheadedness; no more than that. For Ernie, the real world of this van and these people seemed to be replaced by a hotel room that smelled of pine and roared with the sound of Niagara Falls. And here was his wife of just twelve hours coming to him, wearing a nightgown that was really no more than a breath of lavender smoke, taking his hands and putting them on her breasts and saying This time we don’t have to stop, honey.

Then he heard Barbie shouting, and that brought him back.

“Rusty! She’s having some kind of fit! Stop!”

Ernie looked around and saw Jackie Wettington shaking, her eyes rolled up in their sockets, her fingers splayed.

“He’s holding up a cross and everything’s burning!” she screamed. Spittle sprayed from her lips. “The world is burning! THE PEOPLE ARE BURNING!” She let loose a shriek that filled the van.

Rusty almost ditched the van, pulled back into the middle of the road, leaped out, and ran around to the side door. By the time Barbie slid it open, Jackie was wiping spit from her chin with a cupped hand. Rommie had his arm around her.

“Are you all right?” Rusty asked her.

“Now, yes. I just… it was… everything was on fire. It was day, but it was dark. People were b-b-burning….” She started to cry.

“You said something about a man with a cross,” Barbie said.

“A big white cross. It was on a string, or a piece of rawhide. It was on his chest. His bare chest. Then he held it up in front of his face.” She drew in a deep breath, let it out in little hitches. “It’s all fading now. But… hoo. ”

Rusty held two fingers up in front of her and asked how many she saw. Jackie gave the correct answer, and followed his thumb when he moved it first from side to side, then up and down. He patted her on the shoulder, then looked mistrustfully back at the glow-belt. What was it Gollum had said of Bilbo Baggins? It’s tricksy, precious. “What about you, Barbie? Okay?”

“Yeah. A little lightheaded for a few seconds, that’s all. Ernie?”

“I saw my wife. And the hotel room we stayed in on our honeymoon. It was as clear as day.”

He thought again of her coming to him. He hadn’t thought of that in years, and what a shame to neglect such an excellent memory. The whiteness of her thighs below her shortie nightgown; the neat dark triangle of her pubic hair; her nipples hard against silk, almost seeming to scrape the pads of his palms as she darted her tongue into his mouth and licked the inner lining of his lower lip.

This time we don’t have to stop, honey.

Ernie leaned back and closed his eyes.

4

Rusty drove up the ridge—slowly now—and parked the van between the barn and the dilapidated farmhouse. The Sweetbriar Rose van was there; the Burpee’s Department Store van; also a Chevrolet Malibu. Julia had parked her Prius inside the barn. Horace the Corgi sat by its rear bumper, as if guarding it. He did not look like a happy canine, and he made no move to come and greet them. Inside the farmhouse, a couple of Coleman lanterns glowed.

Jackie pointed at the van with EVERY DAY IS SALE DAY AT BURPEE’S on the side. “How’d that get here? Did your wife change her mind?”

Rommie grinned. “You don’t know Misha if you ever t’ink dat. No, I got Julia to thank. She recruited her two star reporters. Dose guys—”

He broke off as Julia, Piper, and Lissa Jamieson appeared from the moonlit shadows of the orchard. They were stumbling along three abreast, holding hands, and all of them were crying.

Barbie ran to Julia and took her by the shoulders. She was on the end of their little line, and the flashlight she had been holding in her free hand dropped to the weedy dirt of the dooryard. She looked up at him and made an effort to smile. “So they got you out, Colonel Barbara. That’s one for the home team.”

“What happened to you?” Barbie asked.

Now Joe, Benny, and Norrie came running up with their mothers close behind them. The kids’ shouts cut short when they saw the state the three women were in. Horace ran to his mistress, barking. Julia went to her knees and buried her face in his fur. Horace sniffed her, then suddenly backed away. He sat down and howled. Julia looked at him and then covered her face, as if in shame. Norrie had grabbed Joe’s hand on her left and Benny’s on her right. Their faces were solemn and scared. Pete Freeman, Tony Guay, and Rose Twitchell came out of the farmhouse but did not approach; they stood clustered by the kitchen door.

“We went to look at it,” Lissa said dully. Her usual gosh-the-world-is-wonderful brightness was gone. “We knelt around it. There’s a symbol on it I’ve never seen before… it’s not kabbalah…”

“It’s awful,” Piper said, wiping at her eyes. “And then Julia touched it. She was the only one, but we… we all…”

“Did you see them?” Rusty asked.

Julia dropped her hands and looked at him with something like wonder. “Yes. I did, we all did. Them. Horrible.”

“The leatherheads,” Rusty said.

“What?” Piper said. Then she nodded. “Yes, I suppose you could call them that. Faces without faces. High faces.”

High faces, Rusty thought. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it was true. He thought again of his daughters and their friend Deanna exchanging secrets and snacks. Then he thought of his best childhood friend—for a while, anyway; he and Georgie had fallen out violently in second grade—and horror rolled over him in a wave.

Barbie grabbed him. “What?” He was almost shouting. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Only… I had this friend when I was little. George Lathrop. One year he got a magnifying glass for his birthday. And sometimes… at recess we…”

Rusty helped Julia to her feet. Horace had come back to her, as if whatever had scared him was fading like the glow had faded on the van.

“You did what?” Julia asked. She sounded almost calm again. “Tell.”

“This was at the old Main Street Grammar. Just two rooms, one for grades one to four, the other for five to eight. The playground wasn’t paved.” He laughed shakily. “Hell, there wasn’t even running water, just a privy the kids called—”

“The Honey House,” Julia said. “I went there, too.”

“George and I, we’d go past the monkey bars to the fence. There were anthills there, and we’d set the ants on fire.”

“Don’t take on about it, Doc,” Ernie said. “Lots of kids have done that, and worse.” Ernie himself, along with a couple of friends, had once dipped a stray cat’s tail in kerosene and put a match to it. This was a memory he would share with the others no more than he would tell them about the details of his wedding night.

Mostly because of how we laughed when that cat took off, he thought. Gosh, how we did laugh.

“Go on,” Julia said.

“I’m done.”

“You’re not,” she said.

“Look,” said Joanie Calvert. “I’m sure this is all very psychological, but I don’t think this is the time—”

“Hush, Joanie,” Claire said.

Julia had never taken her eyes from Rusty’s face.

“Why does it matter to you?” Rusty asked. He felt, at that moment, as though there were no onlookers. As if it were only the two of them.

“Just tell me.”

“One day while we were doing… that… it occurred to me that ants also have their little lives. I know that sounds like sentimental slop—”

Barbie said, “Millions of people all over the world believe that very thing. They live by it.”

“Anyway, I thought ‘We’re hurting them. We’re burning them on the ground and maybe broiling them alive in their underground houses.’ About the ones who were getting the direct benefit of Georgie’s magnifying glass there was no question. Some just stopped moving, but most actually caught fire.”

“That’s awful,” Lissa said. She was twisting her ankh again.

“Yes, ma’am. And this one day I told Georgie to stop. He wouldn’t. He said, ‘It’s jukular war.’ I remember that. Not nuclear but jukular. I tried to take the magnifying glass away from him. Next thing you know, we were fighting, and his magnifying glass got broken.”

He stopped. “That’s not the truth, although it’s what I said at the time and not even the hiding my father gave me could make me change my story. The one George told his folks was the true one: I broke the goddam thing on purpose.” He pointed into the dark. “The way I’d break that box, if I could. Because now we’re the ants and that’s the magnifying glass.”

Ernie thought again of the cat with the burning tail. Claire McClatchey remembered how she and her third-grade best friend had sat on a bawling girl they both hated. The girl was new in school and had a funny southern accent that made her sound like she was talking through mashed potatoes. The more the new girl cried, the harder they laughed. Romeo Burpee remembered getting drunk the night Hillary Clinton cried in New Hampshire, toasting the TV screen and saying, “Dat’s it for you, you goddam baby, get out the way and let a man do a man’s job.”

Barbie remembered a certain gymnasium: the desert heat, the smell of shit, and the sound of laughter.

“I want to see it for myself,” he said. “Who’ll go with me?” Rusty sighed. “I will.”

5

While Barbie and Rusty were approaching the box with its strange symbol and brilliant pulsing light, Selectman James Rennie was in the cell where Barbie had been imprisoned until earlier this evening.

Carter Thibodeau had helped him lift Junior’s body onto the bunk. “Leave me with him,” Big Jim said.

“Boss, I know how bad you must feel, but there are a hundred things that need your attention right now.”

“I’m aware of that. And I’ll take care of them. But I need a little time with my son first. Five minutes. Then you can get a couple of fellows to take him to the funeral parlor.”

“All right. I’m sorry for your loss. Junior was a good guy.”

“No he wasn’t,” Big Jim said. He spoke in a mild just-telling-it-like-it-is tone of voice. “But he was my son and I loved him. And this isn’t all bad, you know.”

Carter considered. “I know.”

Big Jim smiled. “I know you know. I’m starting to think you’re the son I should have had.”

Carter’s face flushed with pleasure as he trotted up the stairs to the ready room.

When he was gone, Big Jim sat on the bunk and lowered Junior’s head into his lap. The boy’s face was unmarked, and Carter had closed his eyes. If you ignored the blood matting his shirt, he could have been sleeping.

He was my son and I loved him.

It was true. He had been ready to sacrifice Junior, yes, but there was precedent for that; you only had to look at what had happened on Calvary Hill. And like Christ, the boy had died for a

cause. Whatever damage had been caused by Andrea Grinnell’s raving would be repaired when the town realized that Barbie had killed several dedicated police officers, including their leader’s only child. Barbie on the loose and presumably planning new deviltry was a political plus.

Big Jim sat awhile longer, combing Junior’s hair with his fingers and looking raptly into Junior’s reposeful face. Then, under his breath, he sang to him as his mother had when the boy was an infant lying in his crib, looking up at the world with wide, wondering eyes. “Baby’s boat’s a silver moon, sailing o’er the sky; sailing o’er the sea of dew, while the clouds float by… sail, baby, sail… out across the sea…”

There he stopped. He couldn’t remember the rest. He lifted Junior’s head and stood up. His heart did a jagged taradiddle and he held his breath… but then it settled again. He supposed he would eventually have to get some more of that verapa-whatsis from Andy’s pharmacy supplies, but in the meantime, there was work to do.

6

He left Junior and went slowly up the stairs, holding the railing. Carter was in the ready room. The bodies had been removed, and a double spread of newspapers was soaking up Mickey Wardlaw’s blood.

“Let’s go over to the Town Hall before this place fills up with cops,” he told Carter. “Visitors Day officially starts in”—he looked at his watch—“about twelve hours. We’ve got a lot to do before then.”

“I know.”

“And don’t forget my son. I want the Bowies to do it right. A respectful presentation of the remains and a fine coffin. You tell Stewart if I see Junior in one of those cheap things from out back, I’ll kill him.”

Carter was scribbling in his notebook. “I’ll take care of it.”

“And tell Stewart that I’ll be talking to him soon.” Several officers came in the front door. They looked subdued, a little scared, very young and green. Big Jim heaved himself out of the chair he’d been sitting in while he recovered his breath. “Time to move.”

“Okay by me,” Carter said. But he paused.

Big Jim looked around. “Something on your mind, son?”

Son. Carter liked the sound of that son. His own father had been killed five years previous when he crashed his pickup into one of the twin bridges in Leeds, and no great loss. He had abused his wife and both sons (Carter’s older brother was currently serving in the Navy), but Carter didn’t care about that so much; his mother had her coffee brandy to numb her up, and Carter himself had always been able to take a few licks. No, what he hated about the old man was that he was a whiner, and he was stupid. People assumed Carter was also stupid—hell, even Junes had assumed it—but he wasn’t. Mr. Rennie understood that, and Mr. Rennie was sure no whiner.

Carter discovered that he was no longer undecided about what to do next.

“I’ve got something you may want.”

“Is that so?”

Big Jim had preceded Carter downstairs, giving Carter a chance to visit his locker. He opened it now and took out the envelope with VADER printed on it. He held it out to Big Jim. The bloody footprint stamped on it seemed to glare.

Big Jim opened the clasp.

“Jim,” Peter Randolph said. He had come in unnoticed and was standing by the overturned reception desk, looking exhausted. “I think we’ve got things quieted down, but I can’t find several of the new officers. I think they may have quit on us.”

“To be expected,” Big Jim said. “And temporary. They’ll be back when things settle and they realize Dale Barbara isn’t going to lead a gang of bloodthirsty cannibals into town to eat them alive.”

“But with this damned Visitors Day thing—”

“Almost everyone is going to be on their best behavior tomorrow, Pete, and I’m sure we’ll have enough officers to take care of any who aren’t.”

“What do we do about the press con—”

“Do you see I happen to be a little busy here? Do you see that, Pete? Goodness! Come over to the Town Hall conference room in half an hour and we’ll discuss anything you want. But for now, leave me the heck alone. ”

“Of course. Sorry.” Pete backed away, his body as stiff and offended as his voice.

“Stop,” Rennie said.

Randolph stopped.

“You never offered me condolences on my son.”

“I… I’m very sorry.”

Big Jim measured Randolph with his eyes. “Indeed you are.”

When Randolph was gone, Rennie pulled the papers out of the envelope, looked at them briefly, then stuffed them back in. He looked at Carter with honest curiosity. “Why didn’t you give this to me right away? Were you planning to keep it?”

Now that he’d handed over the envelope, Carter saw no option but the truth. “Yuh. For a while, anyway. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

Carter shrugged.

Big Jim didn’t pursue the question. As a man who routinely kept files on anyone and everyone who might cause him trouble, he didn’t have to. There was another question that interested him more.

“Why did you change your mind?”

Carter once again saw no option but the truth. “Because I want to be your guy, boss.”

Big Jim hoisted his bushy eyebrows. “Do you. More than him?” He jerked his head toward the door Randolph had just walked out of.

“Him? He’s a joke.”

“Yes.” Big Jim dropped a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “He is.

Come on. And once we get over there to the Town Hall, burning these papers in the conference room woodstove will be our first order of business.”

7

They were indeed high. And horrible.

Barbie saw them as soon as the shock passing up his arms faded. His first, strong impulse was to let go of the box, but he fought it and held on, looking at the creatures who were holding them prisoner. Holding them and torturing them for pleasure, if Rusty was right.

Their faces—if they were faces—were all angles, but the angles were padded and seemed to change from moment to moment, as if the underlying reality had no fixed form. He couldn’t tell how many of them there were, or where they were. At first he thought there were four; then eight; then only two. They inspired a deep sense of loathing in him, perhaps because they were so alien he could not really perceive them at all. The part of his brain tasked with interpreting sensory input could not decode the messages his eyes were sending.

My eyes couldn’t see them, not really, even with a telescope. These creatures are in a galaxy far, far away.

There was no way to know that—reason told him the owners of the box might have a base under the ice at the South Pole, or might be orbiting the moon in their version of the starship Enterprise—but he did. They were at home… whatever home was for them. They were watching. And they were enjoying.

They had to be, because the sons of bitches were laughing.

Then he was back in the gym in Fallujah. It was hot because there was no air-conditioning, just overhead fans that paddled the soupy, jock-smelling air around and around. They had let all the interrogation subjects go except for two Abduls who were unwise enough to snot off a day after two IEDs had taken six American lives and a sniper had taken one more, a kid from Kentucky everyone liked—Carstairs. So they’d started kicking the Abduls around the gym, and pulling off their clothes, and Barbie would like to say he had walked out, but he hadn’t. He would like to say that at least he hadn’t participated, but he had. They got feverish about it. He remembered connecting with one Abdul’s bony, shit-speckled ass, and the red mark his combat boot had left there. Both Abduls naked by then. He remembered Emerson kicking the other one’s dangling cojones so hard they flew up in front of him and saying That’s for Carstairs, you fucking sandnigger. Someone would soon be giving his mom a flag while she sat on a folding chair near the grave, same old same old. And then, just as Barbie was remembering that he was technically in charge of these men, Sergeant Hackermeyer pulled one of them up by the unwinding remains of the keffiyeh that was now his only clothing and held him against the wall and put his gun to the Abdul’s head and there was a pause and no one said no in the pause and no one said don’t do that in the pause and Sergeant Hackermeyer pulled the trigger and the blood hit the wall as it’s hit the wall for three thousand years and more, and that was it, that was goodbye, Abdul, don’t forget to write when you’re not busy cherrypopping those virgins.

Barbie let go of the box and tried to get up, but his legs betrayed him. Rusty grabbed him and held him until he steadied.

“Christ,” Barbie said.

“You saw them, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are they children? What do you think?”

“Maybe.” But that wasn’t good enough, wasn’t what his heart believed. “Probably.”

They walked slowly back to where the others were clustered in front of the farmhouse.

“You all right?” Rommie asked.

“Yes,” Barbie said. He had to talk to the kids. And Jackie. Rusty, too. But not yet. First he had to get himself under control.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Rommie, is there more of that lead roll at your store?” Rusty asked.

“Yuh. I left it on the loading dock.”

“Good,” Rusty said, and borrowed Julia’s cell phone. He hoped Linda was home and not in an interrogation room at the PD, but hoping was all he could do.

8

The call from Rusty was necessarily brief, less than thirty seconds, but for Linda Everett it was long enough to turn this terrible Thursday a hundred and eighty degrees toward sunshine. She sat at the kitchen table, put her hands to her face, and cried. She did it as quietly as possible, because there were now four children upstairs instead of just two. She had brought the Appleton kids home with her, so now she had the As as well as the Js.

Alice and Aidan had been terribly upset—dear God, of course they had been—but being with Jannie and Judy had helped. So had doses of Benadryl all around. At the request of her girls, Linda had spread sleeping bags in their room, and now all four of them were conked out on the floor between the beds, Judy and Aidan with their arms wrapped around each other.

Just as she was getting herself under control again, there was a knock at the kitchen door. Her first thought was the police, although given the bloodshed and confusion downtown, she hadn’t expected them so soon. But there was nothing authoritative about that soft rapping.

She went to the door, pausing to snatch a dish towel from the end of the counter and wipe her face. At first she didn’t recognize her visitor, mostly because his hair was different. It was no longer in a ponytail; it fell to Thurston Marshall’s shoulders, framing his face, making him look like an elderly washerwoman who has gotten bad news—terrible news—after a long, hard day.

Linda opened the door. For a moment Thurse remained on the stoop. “Is Caro dead?” His voice was low and hoarse. As if he screamed it out at Woodstock doing the Fish Cheer and it just never came back, Linda thought. “Is she really dead?”

“I’m afraid she is,” Linda said, speaking low herself. Because of the children. “Mr. Marshall, I’m so sorry.”

For a moment he continued to just stand there. Then he grabbed the gray locks hanging on either side of his face and began to rock back and forth. Linda didn’t believe in May-December romances; she was old-fashioned that way. She would have given Marshall and Caro Sturges two years at most, maybe only six months—however long it took their sex organs to stop smoking—but tonight there was no doubting the man’s love. Or his loss.

Whatever they had, those kids deepened it, she thought. And the Dome, too. Living under the Dome intensified everything. Already it seemed to Linda that they had been under it not for days but years. The outside world was fading like a dream when you woke up.

“Come in,” she said. “But be quiet, Mr. Marshall. The children are sleeping. Mine and yours.”

9

She gave him sun-tea—not cold, not even particularly cool, but the best she could do under the circumstances. He drank half of it off, set the glass down, then screwed his fists into his eyes like a child up long past his bedtime. Linda recognized this for what it was, an effort to get himself under control, and sat quietly, waiting.

He pulled in a deep breath, let it out, then reached into the breast pocket of the old blue workshirt he was wearing. He took out a piece of rawhide and tied his hair back. She took this as a good sign.

“Tell me what happened,” Thurse said. “And how it happened.”

“I didn’t see it all. Someone kicked me a good one in the back of my head while I was trying to pull your… Caro… out of the way.”

“But one of the cops shot her, isn’t that right? One of the cops in this goddam cop-happy, gun-happy town.”

“Yes.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “Someone shouted gun. And there was a gun. It was Andrea Grinnell’s. She might have brought it to the meeting with the idea of assassinating Rennie.”

“Do you think that justifies what happened to Caro?”

“God, no. And what happened to Andi was flat-out murder.”

“Caro died trying to protect the children, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Children that weren’t even her own.”

Linda said nothing.

“Except they were. Hers and mine. Call it fortunes of war or fortunes of Dome, they were ours, the kids we never would have had otherwise. And until the Dome breaks—if it ever does—they’re mine.”

Linda was thinking furiously. Could this man be trusted? She thought so. Certainly Rusty had trusted him; had said the guy was a hell of a good medic for someone who’d been out of the game so long. And Thurston hated those in authority here under the Dome. He had reasons to.

“Mrs. Everett—”

“Please, Linda.”

“Linda, may I sleep on your couch? I’d like to be here if they wake up in the night. If they don’t—I hope they don’t—I’d like them to see me when they come downstairs in the morning.”

“That’s fine. We’ll all have breakfast together. It’ll be cereal. The milk hasn’t turned yet, although it will soon.”

“That sounds good. After the kids eat, we’ll be out of your hair. Pardon me for saying this if you’re a homegirl, but I’ve had a bellyful of Chester’s Mill. I can’t secede from it entirely, but I intend to do the best I can. The only patient at the hospital in serious condition was Rennie’s son, and he checked himself out this afternoon. He’ll be back, that mess growing in his head will make him come back, but for now—”

“He’s dead.”

Thurston didn’t look particularly surprised. “A seizure, I suppose.”

“No. Shot. In the jail.”

“I’d like to say I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

“Neither am I,” Linda said. She didn’t know for sure what Junior had been doing there, but she had a good idea of how the grieving father would spin it.

“I’ll take the kids back to the pond where Caro and I were staying when this happened. It’s quiet there, and I’m sure I’ll be able to find enough comestibles to last for a while. Maybe quite a while. I may even find a place with a generator. But as far as community life goes”—he gave the words a satiric spin—“I’m quits. Alice and Aidan, too.”

“I might have a better place to go.”

“Really?” And when Linda said nothing, he stretched a hand across the table and touched hers. “You have to trust someone. It might as well be me.”

So Linda told him everything, including how they’d have to stop for lead roll behind Burpee’s before leaving town for Black Ridge. They talked until almost midnight.

10

The north end of the McCoy farmhouse was useless—thanks to the previous winter’s heavy snow, the roof was now in the parlor—but there was a country-style dining room almost as long as a railroad car on the west side, and it was there that the fugitives from Chester’s Mill gathered. Barbie first questioned Joe, Norrie, and Benny about what they had seen, or dreamed about, when they passed out on the edge of what they were now calling the glow-belt.

Joe remembered burning pumpkins. Norrie said everything had turned black, and the sun was gone. Benny at first claimed to remember nothing. Then he clapped a hand over his mouth. “There was screaming,” he said. “I heard screaming. It was bad.”

They considered this in silence. Then Ernie said, “Burnin punkins doesn’t narrow things down much, if that’s what you’re trying to do, Colonel Barbara. There’s probably a stack of em on the sunny side of every barn in town. It’s been a good season for em.” He paused. “At least it was.”

“Rusty, what about your girls?”

“Pretty much the same,” Rusty said, and told them what he could remember.

“Stop Halloween, stop the Great Pumpkin,” Rommie mused.

“Dudes, I’m seeing a pattern here,” Benny said.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Rose said, and they all laughed.

“Your turn, Rusty,” Barbie said. “How about when you passed out on your way up here?”

“I never exactly passed out,” Rusty said. “And all of this stuff could be explained by the pressure we’ve been under. Group hysteria—including group hallucinations—are common when people are under stress.”

“Thank you, Dr. Freud,” Barbie said. “Now tell us what you saw.”

Rusty got as far as the stovepipe hat with its patriotic stripes when Lissa Jamieson exclaimed, “That’s the dummy on the library lawn! He’s wearing an old tee-shirt of mine with a Warren Zevon quote on it—”

“‘Sweet home Alabama, play that dead band’s song,’” Rusty said. “And garden trowels for hands. Anyway, it caught on fire. Then, poof, it was gone. So was the lightheadedness.”

He looked around at them. Their wide eyes. “Relax, people, I probably saw the dummy before all this happened, and my subconscious just coughed it back up.” He leveled a finger at Barbie. “And if you call me Dr. Freud again, I’m apt to pop you one.”

“Did you see it before?” Piper asked. “Maybe when you went to pick up your girls at school, or something? Because the library’s right across from the playground.”

“Not that I remember, no.” Rusty didn’t add that he hadn’t picked up the girls at school since very early in the month, and he doubted that any of the town’s Halloween displays had been up then.

“Now you, Jackie,” Barbie said.

She wet her lips. “Is it really so important?”

“I think it is.”

“People burning,” she said. “And smoke, with fire shining through it whenever it shifted. The whole world seemed to be burning.”

“Yeah,” Benny said. “The people were screaming because they were on fire. Now I remember.” Abruptly he put his face against Alva Drake’s shoulder. She put her arm around him.

“Halloween’s still five days away,” Claire said.

Barbie said, “I don’t think so.”

11

The woodstove in the corner of the Town Hall conference room was dusty and neglected but still usable. Big Jim made sure the flue was open (it squeaked rustily), then removed Duke Perkins’s paperwork from the envelope with the bloody footprint on it. He thumbed through the sheets, grimaced at what he saw, then tossed them into the stove. The envelope he saved.

Carter was on the phone, talking to Stewart Bowie, telling him what Big Jim wanted for his son, telling him to get on it right away. A good boy, Big Jim thought. He may go far. As long as he remembers which side his bread’s buttered on, that is. People who forgot paid a price. Andrea Grinnell had found that out tonight.

There was a box of wooden matches on the shelf beside the stove. Big Jim scratched one alight and touched it to the corner of Duke Perkins’s “evidence.” He left the stove door open so he could watch it burn. It was very satisfying.

Carter walked over. “Stewart Bowie’s on hold. Should I tell him you’ll get back to him later?”

“Give it to me,” Big Jim said, and held out his hand for the phone.

Carter pointed at the envelope. “Don’t you want to throw that in, too?”

“No. I want you to stuff it with blank paper from the photocopy machine.”

It took a moment for Carter to get it. “She was just having a bunch of dope-ass hallucinations, wasn’t she?”

“Poor woman,” Big Jim agreed. “Go down to the fallout shelter, son. There.” He cocked his thumb at a door—unobtrusive except for an old metal plaque showing black triangles against a yellow field—not far from the woodstove. “There are two rooms. At the end of the second one there’s a small generator.”

“Okay…”

“In front of the gennie there’s a trapdoor. Hard to see, but you will if you look. Lift it and look inside. There should be eight or ten little canisters of LP snuggled down in there. At least there were the last time I looked. Check and tell me how many.”

He waited to see if Carter would ask why, but Carter didn’t. He just turned to do as he was told. So Big Jim told him.

“Only a precaution, son. Dot every i and cross every t, that’s the secret of success. And having God on your side, of course.”

When Carter was gone, Big Jim pushed the hold button… and if Stewart wasn’t still there, his butt was going to be in a high sling.

Stewart was. “Jim, I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said. Right up front with it, a point in his favor. “We’ll take care of everything. I’m thinking the Eternal Rest casket—it’s oak, good for a thousand years.”

Go on and pull the other one, Big Jim thought, but kept silent.

“And it’ll be our best work. He’ll look ready to wake up and smile.”

“Thank you, pal,” Big Jim said. Thinking, He damn well better.

“Now about this raid tomorrow,” Stewart said.

“I was going to call you about that. You’re wondering if it’s still on. It is.”

“But with everything that’s happened—”

“Nothing’s happened,” Big Jim said. “For which we can thank God’s mercy. Can I get an amen on that, Stewart?”

“Amen,” Stewart said dutifully.

“Just a clustermug caused by a mentally disturbed woman with a gun. She’s eating dinner with Jesus and all the saints right now, I have no doubt, because none of what happened was her fault.”

“But Jim—”

“Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking, Stewart. It was the drugs. Those damn things rotted her brain. People are going to realize that as soon as they calm down a little. Chester’s Mill is blessed with sensible, courageous folks. I trust them to come through, always have, always will. Besides, right now they don’t have a thought in their heads except for seeing their nearest and dearest. Our operation is still a go for noon. You, Fern, Roger. Melvin Searles. Fred Denton will be in charge. He can pick another four or five, if he thinks he needs them.”

“He the best you can do?” Stewart asked.

“Fred is fine,” Big Jim said.

“What about Thibodeau? That boy who’s been hanging around with y—”

“Stewart Bowie, every time you open your mouth, half your guts fall out. You need to shut up for once and listen. We’re talking about a scrawny drug addict and a pharmacist who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. You got an amen on that?”

“Yeah, amen.”

“Use town trucks. Grab Fred as soon as you’re off the phone—he’s got to be around there someplace—and tell him what’s what. Tell him you fellows should armor up, just to be on the safe side. We’ve got all that happy Homeland Security crappy in the back room of the police station—bulletproof vests and flak jackets and I don’t know whatall—so we might as well make use of it. Then you go in there and take those fellows out. We need that propane.”

“What about the lab? I was thinking maybe we should burn it—”

“Are you crazy?” Carter, who had just walked back into the room, looked at him in surprise. “With all those chemicals stored there? The Shumway woman’s newspaper is one thing; that storage building is an entirely different kettle of chowder. You want to look out, pal, or I’ll start thinking you’re as stupid as Roger Killian.”

“All right.” Stewart sounded sulky, but Big Jim reckoned he would do as told. He had no more time for him, anyway; Randolph would be arriving any minute.

The parade of fools never ends, he thought.

“Now give me a big old praise God,” Big Jim said. In his mind he had a picture of himself sitting on Stewart’s back and grinding his face into the dirt. It was a cheering picture.

“Praise God,” Stewart Bowie muttered.

“Amen, brother,” Big Jim said, and hung up.

12

Chief Randolph came in shortly thereafter, looking tired but not unsatisfied. “I think we’ve lost some of the younger recruits for good—Dodson, Rawcliffe, and the Richardson boy are all gone—but most of the others stuck. And I’ve got some new ones. Joe Boxer… Stubby Norman… Aubrey Towle… his brother owns the bookstore, you know…”

Big Jim listened to this recitation patiently enough, if with only half an ear. When Randolph finally ran down, Big Jim slid the VADER envelope across the polished conference table to him. “That’s what poor old Andrea was waving around. Have a look.”

Randolph hesitated, then bent back the clasps and slid out the contents. “There’s nothing here but blank paper.”

“Right you are, right as rain. When you assemble your force tomorrow—seven o’clock sharp, at the PD, because you can believe your Uncle Jim when he says the ants are going to start trekking out of the hill mighty early—you might make sure they know the poor woman was just as deluded as the anarchist who shot President McKinley.”

“Isn’t that a mountain?” Randolph asked.

Big Jim spared a moment to wonder which dumbtree Mrs. Randolph’s little boy had fallen out of. Then he pressed ahead. He wouldn’t get a good eight hours’ sleep tonight, but with the blessing he might manage five. And he needed it. His poor old heart needed it.

“Use all the police cars. Two officers to a car. Make sure everyone has Mace and Tasers. But anyone who discharges a firearm in sight of reporters and cameras and the cotton-picking outside world… I’ll have that man’s guts for garters.”

“Yessir.”

“Have them drive along the shoulders of 119, flanking the crowd. No sirens, but lights flashing.”

“Like in a parade,” Randolph said.

“Yes, Pete, like in a parade. Leave the highway itself for the people. Tell those in cars to leave them and walk. Use your loudspeakers. I want them good and tired when they get out there. Tired people tend to be well-behaved people.”

“You don’t think we should spare a few troops to hunt for the escaped prisoners?” He saw Big Jim’s eyes flash and raised one hand. “Just asking, just asking.”

“Well, and you deserve an answer. You’re the Chief, after all. Isn’t he, Carter?”

“Yup,” Carter said.

“The answer is no, Chief Randolph, because… listen closely now… they can’t escape. There’s a Dome around Chester’s Mill and they absotively… posilutely… cannot escape. Now do you follow that line of reasoning?” He observed the color rising in Randolph’s cheeks and said, “Be careful how you answer, now. I would, anyway.”

“I follow it.”

“Then follow this, as well: with Dale Barbara on the loose, not to mention his co-conspirator Everett, the people will look even more fervently to their public servants for protection. And hard-pressed though we may be, we’ll rise to the occasion, won’t we?”

Randolph finally got it. He might not know that there was a president as well as a mountain named McKinley, but he did seem to grasp that a Barbie in the bush was in many ways more useful to them than a Barbie in the hand.

“Yes,” he said. “We will. Damn straight. What about the press conference? If you’re not going to do it, do you want to appoint—”

“No, I do not. I will be right here at my post, where I belong, monitoring developments. As for the press, they can darn well conference with the thousand or so people that are going to be grubbed up out there on the south side of town like gawkers at a construction site. And good luck to them translating the babble they’ll get.”

“Some folks may say things that aren’t exactly flattering to us,” Randolph said.

Big Jim flashed a wintery smile. “That’s why God gave us the big shoulders, pal. Besides, what’s that meddling cotton-picker Cox going to do? March in here and turn us out of office?”

Randolph gave a dutiful chuckle, started for the door, then thought of something else. “There are going to be a lot of people out there, and for a long time. The military’s put up Porta-Potties on their side. Should we do something like that on ours? I think we’ve got a few in the supply building. For road crews, mostly. Maybe Al Timmons could—”

Big Jim gave him a look that suggested he thought the new Chief of Police had gone mad. “If it had been left up to me, our folks would be safe in their homes tomorrow instead of streaming out of town like the Israelites out of Egypt.” He paused for emphasis. “If some of them get caught short, let them poop in the goshdarn woods.”

13

When Randolph was finally gone, Carter said: “If I swear I’m not brown-nosing, can I tell you something?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I love to watch you operate, Mr. Rennie.”

Big Jim grinned—a great big sunny one that lit his whole face. “Well, you’re going to get your chance, son; you’ve learned from the rest, now learn from the best.”

“I plan on it.”

“Right now I need you to give me a lift home. Meet me promptly at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We’ll come down here and watch the show on CNN. But first we’ll sit up on Town Common Hill and watch the exodus. Sad, really; Israelites with no Moses.”

“Ants without a hill,” Carter added. “Bees without a hive.”

“But before you pick me up, I want you to visit a couple of people. Or try; I’ve got a bet with myself that you’ll find them absent without leave.”

“Who?”

“Rose Twitchell and Linda Everett. The medico’s wife.”

“I know who she is.”

“You might also take a check for Shumway. I heard she might be staying with Libby, the preacher-lady with the badnatured dog. If you find any of them, question them about the whereabouts of our escapees.”

“Hard or soft?”

“Moderate. I don’t necessarily want Everett and Barbara captured right away, but I wouldn’t mind knowing where they are.”

On the step outside, Big Jim breathed deeply of the smelly air and then sighed with something that sounded like satisfaction. Carter felt pretty satisfied himself. A week ago, he’d been replacing mufflers, wearing goggles to keep the sifting rust flakes from salt-rotted exhaust systems out of his eyes. Today he was a man of position and influence. A little smelly air seemed a small price to pay for that.

“I have a question for you,” Big Jim said. “If you don’t want to answer, it’s okay.”

Carter looked at him.

“The Bushey girl,” Big Jim said. “How was she? Was she good?”

Carter hesitated, then said: “A little dry at first, but she oiled up a-country fair.”

Big Jim laughed. The sound was metallic, like the sound of coins dropping into the tray of a slot machine.

14

Midnight, and the pink moon descending toward the Tarker’s Mills horizon, where it might linger until daylight, turning into a ghost before finally disappearing.

Julia picked her way through the orchard to where the McCoy land sloped down the western side of Black Ridge, and was not surprised to see a darker shadow sitting against one of the trees. Off to her right, the box with the alien symbol engraved on its top sent out a flash every fifteen seconds: the world’s smallest, strangest lighthouse.

“Barbie?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “How’s Ken?”

“Gone to San Francisco to march in the Gay Pride parade. I always knew that boy wasn’t straight.”

Julia laughed, then took his hand and kissed it. “My friend, I’m awfully glad you’re safe.”

He took her in his arms, and kissed her on both cheeks before letting her go. Lingering kisses. Real ones. “My friend, so am I.”

She laughed, but a thrill went straight through her, from neck to knees. It was one she recognized but hadn’t felt in a long time. Easy, girl, she thought. He’s young enough to be your son.

Well, yes… if she’d gotten pregnant at thirteen.

“Everyone else is asleep,” Julia said. “Even Horace. He’s in with the kids. They had him chasing sticks until his tongue was practically dragging on the ground. Thinks he died and went to heaven, I bet.”

“I tried sleeping. Couldn’t.”

Twice he’d come close to drifting off, and both times he found himself back in the Coop, facing Junior Rennie. The first time Barbie had tripped instead of jigging to the right and had gone sprawling to the bunk, presenting a perfect target. The second time, Junior had reached through the bars with an impossibly long plastic arm and had seized him to make him hold still long enough to give up his life. After that one, Barbie had left the barn where the men were sleeping and had come out here. The air still smelled like a room where a lifelong smoker had died six months ago, but it was better than the air in town.

“So few lights down there,” she said. “On an ordinary night there’d be nine times as many, even at this hour. The streetlights would look like a double strand of pearls.”

“There’s that, though.” Barbie had left one arm around her, but he lifted his free hand and pointed at the glow-belt. But for the Dome, where it ended abruptly, she thought it would have been a perfect circle. As it was, it looked like a horseshoe.

“Yes. Why do you suppose Cox hasn’t mentioned it? They must see it on their satellite photos.” She considered. “At least he hasn’t said anything to me. Maybe he did to you.”

“Nope, and he would’ve. Which means they don’t see it.”

“You think the Dome… what? Filters it out?”

“Something like that. Cox, the news networks, the outside world—they don’t see it because they don’t need to see it. I guess we do.”

“Is Rusty right, do you think? Are we just ants being victimized by cruel children with a magnifying glass? What kind of intelligent race would allow their children to do such a thing to another intelligent race?”

“We think we’re intelligent, but do they? We know that ants are social insects—home builders, colony builders, amazing architects. They work hard, as we do. They bury their dead, as we do. They even have race wars, the blacks against the reds. We know all this, but we don’t assume ants are intelligent.”

She pulled his arm tighter around her, although it wasn’t cold. “Intelligent or not, it’s wrong.”

“I agree. Most people would. Rusty knew it even as a child. But most kids don’t have a moral fix on the world. That takes years to develop. By the time we’re adults, most of us have put away childish things, which would include burning ants with a magnifying glass or pulling the wings off flies. Probably their adults have done the same. If they notice the likes of us at all, that is. When’s the last time you bent over and really examined an anthill?”

“But still… if we found ants on Mars, or even microbes, we wouldn’t destroy them. Because life in the universe is such a precious commodity. Every other planet in our system is a wasteland, for God’s sake.”

Barbie thought if NASA found life on Mars, they would have no compunctions whatever about destroying it in order to put it on a microscope slide and study it, but he didn’t say so. “If we were more scientifically advanced—or more spiritually advanced, maybe that’s what it actually takes to go voyaging around in the great what’s-outthere—we might see that there’s life everywhere. As many inhabited worlds and intelligent life-forms as there are anthills in this town.”

Was his hand now resting on the sideswell of her breast? She believed it was. It had been a long time since there had been a man’s hand there, and it felt very good.

“The one thing I’m sure of is that there are other worlds than the ones we can see with our puny telescopes here on Earth. Or even with the Hubble. And… they’re not here, you know. It’s not an invasion. They’re just looking. And… maybe… playing.”

“I know what that’s like,” she said. “To be played with.”

He was looking at her. Kissing distance. She wouldn’t mind being kissed; no, not at all.

“What do you mean? Rennie?”

“Do you believe there are certain defining moments in a person’s life? Watershed events that actually do change us?”

“Yes,” he said, thinking of the red smile his boot had left on the Abdul’s buttock. Just the ordinary asscheek of a man living his ordinary little life. “Absolutely.”

“Mine happened in fourth grade. At Main Street Grammar.”

“Tell me.”

“It won’t take long. That was the longest afternoon of my life, but it’s a short story.”

He waited.

“I was an only child. My father owned the local newspaper—he had a couple of reporters and one ad salesman, but otherwise he was pretty much a one-man band, and that was just how he liked it.

There was never any question that I’d take over when he retired. He believed it, my mother believed it, my teachers believed it, and of course I believed it. My college education was all planned out. Nothing so bush-league as the University of Maine, either, not for Al Shumway’s girl. Al Shumway’s girl was going to Princeton. By the time I was in the fourth grade, there was a Princeton pennant over my bed and I practically had my bags packed.

“Everyone—not excluding me—just about worshipped the ground I walked on. Except for my fellow fourth-graders, that was. At the time I didn’t understand the causes, but now I wonder how I missed them. I was the one who sat in the front row and always raised my hand when Mrs. Connaught asked a question, and I always got the answer right. I turned in my assignments ahead of time if I could, and volunteered for extra credit. I was a grade-grind and a bit of a wheedler. Once, when Mrs. Connaught came back into class after having to leave us alone for a few minutes, little Jessie Vachon’s nose was bleeding. Mrs. Connaught said we’d all have to stay after unless someone told her who did it. I raised my hand and said it was Andy Manning. Andy punched Jessie in the nose when Jessie wouldn’t lend Andy his art-gum eraser. And I didn’t see anything wrong with that, because it was the truth. Are you getting this picture?”

“You’re coming in five-by.”

“That little episode was the last straw. One day not long afterwards, I was walking home across the Common and a bunch of girls were laying for me inside the Peace Bridge. There were six of them. The ringleader was Lila Strout, who’s now Lila Killian—she married Roger Killian, which serves her absolutely right. Don’t ever let anyone tell you children can’t carry their grudges into adulthood.

“They took me to the bandstand. I struggled at first, but then two of them—Lila was one, Cindy Collins, Toby Manning’s mother, was the other—punched me. Not in the shoulder, the way kids usually do, either. Cindy hit me in the cheek, and Lila punched me square in the right boob. How that hurt! I was just getting my breasts, and they ached even when they were left alone.

“I started crying. That’s usually the signal—among kids, at least—that things have gone far enough. Not that day. When I started screaming, Lila said, ‘Shut up or you get worse.’ There was nobody to stop them, either. It was a cold, drizzly afternoon, and the Common was deserted except for us.

“Lila slapped me across the face hard enough to make my nose bleed and said, ‘Tattle-tale tit! All the dogs in town come to have a little bit!’ And the other girls laughed. They said it was because I told on Andy, and at the time I thought it was, but now I see it was everything, right down to the way my skirts and blouses and even my hair ribbons matched. They wore clothes, I had outfits. Andy was just the last straw.”

“How bad was it?”

“There was slapping. Some hair-pulling. And… they spit on me. All of them. That was after my legs gave out and I fell down on the bandstand. I was crying harder than ever, and I had my hands over my face, but I felt it. Spit’s warm, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“They were saying stuff like teacher’s pet and goody-goody-gumdrops and little miss shit-don’t-stink. And then, just when I thought they were done, Corrie Macintosh said, ‘Let’s pants her!’ Because I was wearing slacks that day, nice ones my mom got from a catalogue. I loved them. They were the kind of slacks you might see a coed wearing as she crossed the Quad at Princeton. At least that’s what I thought then.

“I fought them harder that time, but they won, of course. Four of them held me down while Lila and Corrie pulled off my slacks. Then Cindy Collins started laughing and pointing and saying, ‘She’s got frickin Poohbear on her underpants!’ Which I did, along with Eeyore and Roo. They all started laughing, and… Barbie… I got smaller… and smaller… and smaller. Until the bandstand floor was like a great flat desert and I was an insect stuck in the middle of it. Dying in the middle of it.”

“Like an ant under a magnifying glass, in other words.”

“Oh, no! No, Barbie! It was cold, not hot. I was freezing. I had goosebumps on my legs. Corrie said, ‘Let’s take her pannies, too!’ but that was a little farther than they were prepared to go. As the next best thing, maybe, Lila took my nice slacks and threw them onto the roof of the bandstand. After that, they left. Lila was the last one to go. She said, ‘If you tattle this time, I’ll get my brother’s knife and cut off your bitch nose.’ ”

“What happened?” Barbie asked. And yes, his hand was definitely resting against the side of her breast.

“What happened at first was just a scared little girl crouching there on the bandstand, wondering how she was going to get home without half the town seeing her in her silly baby underwear. I felt like the smallest, dumbest Chiclet who ever lived. I finally decided I’d wait until dark. My mother and father would be worried, they might even call the cops, but I didn’t care. I was going to wait until dark and then sneak home by the sidestreets. Hide behind trees if anyone came along.

“I must have dozed a little bit, because all at once Kayla Bevins was standing over me. She’d been right in there with the rest, slapping and pulling my hair and spitting on me. She didn’t say as much as the rest, but she was part of it. She helped hold me while Lila and Corrie pantsed me, and when they saw one of the legs of my slacks was hanging off the edge of the roof, Kayla got up on the railing and flipped it all the way up, so I wouldn’t be able to reach it.

“I begged her not to hurt me anymore. I was beyond things like pride and dignity. I begged her not to pull my underwear down. Then I begged her to help me. She just stood there and listened, like I was nothing to her. I was nothing to her. I knew that then. I guess I forgot it over the years, but I’ve sort of reconnected with that particular home truth as a result of the Dome experience.

“Finally I ran down and just lay there sniffling. She looked at me a little longer, then pulled off the sweater she was wearing. It was an old baggy brown thing that hung almost to her knees. She was a big girl and it was a big sweater. She threw it down on top of me and said, ‘Wear it home, it’ll look like a dress.’

“That was all she said. And although I went to school with her for eight more years—all the way to graduation at Mills High—we never spoke again. But sometimes in my dreams I still hear her saying that one thing: Wear it home, it’ll look like a dress. And I see her face. No hate or anger in it, but no pity, either. She didn’t do it out of pity, and she didn’t do it to shut me up. I don’t know why she did it. I don’t know why she even came back. Do you?”

“No,” he said, and kissed her mouth. It was brief, but warm and moist and quite terrific.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because you looked like you needed it, and I know I did. What happened next, Julia?”

“I put on the sweater and walked home—what else? And my parents were waiting.”

She lifted her chin pridefully.

“I never told them what happened, and they never found out. For about a week I saw the pants on my way to school, lying up there on the bandstand’s little conical roof. Every time I felt the shame and the hurt—like a knife in my heart. Then one day they were gone. That didn’t make the pain all gone, but after that it was a little better. Dull instead of sharp.

“I never told on those girls, although my father was furious and grounded me until June—I could go to school but nothing else. I was even forbidden the class trip to the Portland Museum of Art, which I’d been looking forward to all year. He told me I could go on the trip and have all my privileges restored if I named the kids who had ‘abused’ me. That was his word for it. I wouldn’t, though, and not just because dummying up is the kids’ version of the Apostles’ Creed.”

“You did it because somewhere deep inside, you thought you deserved what happened to you.”

“Deserved is the wrong word. I thought I’d bought and paid for it, which isn’t the same thing at all. My life changed after that. I kept on getting good grades, but I stopped raising my hand so much. I never quit grade-grinding, but I stopped grade-grubbing. I could have been valedictorian in high school, but I backed off during the second semester of my senior year. Just enough to make sure Carlene Plummer would win instead of me. I didn’t want it. Not the speech, not the attention that went with the speech. I made some friends, the best ones in the smoking area behind the high school.

“The biggest change was going to school in Maine instead of at Princeton… where I was indeed accepted. My father raved and thundered about how no daughter of his was going to go to a land-grant cow college, but I stood firm.”

She smiled.

“Pretty firm. But compromise is love’s secret ingredient, and I loved my dad plenty. I loved them both. My plan had been to go to the University of Maine at Orono, but during the summer after my senior year, I made a last-minute application to Bates—what they call a Special Circumstances application—and was accepted. My father made me pay the late fee out of my own bank account, which I was glad to do, because there was finally a modicum of peace in the family after sixteen months of border warfare between the country of Controlling Parents and the smaller but well-fortified principality of Determined Teenager. I declared a journalism major, and that finished the job of healing the breach… which had really been there ever since that day on the bandstand. My parents just never knew why. I’m not here in The Mill because of that day—my future at the Democrat was pretty much foreordained—but I am who I am in large part because of that day.”

She looked up at him again, her eyes shining with tears and defiance. “I am not an ant, however. I am not an ant.”

He kissed her again. She wrapped her arms around him tightly and gave back as good as she got. And when his hand tugged her blouse from the waistband of her slacks and then slipped up across her midriff to cup her breast, she gave him her tongue. When they broke apart, she was breathing fast.

“Want to?” he asked.

“Yes. Do you?”

He took her hand and put it on his jeans, where how much he wanted to was immediately evident.

A minute later he was poised above her, resting on his elbows. She took him in hand to guide him in. “Take it easy on me, Colonel Barbara. I’ve kind of forgotten how this thing goes.”

“It’s like riding a bicycle,” Barbie said.

Turned out he was right.

15

When it was over, she lay with her head on his arm, looking up at the pink stars, and asked what he was thinking about.

He sighed. “The dreams. The visions. The whatever-they-are. Do you have your cell phone?”

“Always. And it’s holding its charge nicely, although for how much longer I couldn’t say. Who are you planning to call? Cox, I suppose.”

“You suppose correctly. Do you have his number in memory?”

“Yes.”

Julia reached over for her discarded pants and pulled the phone off her belt. She called COX and handed the phone to Barbie, who started talking almost at once. Cox must have answered on the first ring.

“Hello, Colonel. It’s Barbie. I’m out. I’m going to take a chance and tell you our location. It’s Black Ridge. The old McCoy orchard. Do you have that on your… you do. Of course you do. And you have satellite images of the town, right?”

He listened, then asked Cox if the images showed a horseshoe of light encircling the ridge and ending at the TR-90 border. Cox replied in the negative, and then, judging from the way Barbie was listening, asked for details.

“Not now,” Barbie said. “Right now I need you to do something for me, Jim, and the sooner the better. You’ll need a couple of Chinooks.”

He explained what he wanted. Cox listened, then replied.

“I can’t go into it right now,” Barbie said, “and it probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense if I did. Just take it from me that some very dinky-dau shit is going on in here, and I believe that worse is on the way. Maybe not until Halloween, if we’re lucky. But I don’t think we’re going to be lucky.”

16

While Barbie was speaking with Colonel James Cox, Andy Sanders was sitting against the side of the supply building behind WCIK, looking up at the abnormal stars. He was high as a kite, happy as a clam, cool as a cucumber, other similes may apply. Yet there was a deep sadness—oddly tranquil, almost comforting—running beneath, like a powerful underground river. He had never had a premonition in his whole prosy, practical, workaday life. But he was having one now. This was his last night on earth. When the bitter men came, he and Chef Bushey would go. It was simple, and not really all that bad.

“I was in the bonus round, anyway,” he said. “Have been ever since I almost took those pills.”

“What’s that, Sanders?” Chef came strolling along the path from the rear of the station, shining a flashlight beam just ahead of his bare feet. The froggy pajama pants still clung precariously to the bony wings of his hips, but something new had been added: a large white cross. It was tied around his neck on a rawhide loop. Slung over his shoulder was GOD’S WARRIOR. Two grenades swung from the stock on another length of rawhide. In the hand not holding the flashlight, he carried the garage door opener.

“Nothing, Chef,” Andy said. “I was just talking to myself. Seems like I’m the only one who listens these days.”

“That’s bullshit, Sanders. Utter and complete bullshit-aroonie. God listens. He’s tapped into souls the way the FBI’s tapped into phones. I listen too.”

The beauty of this—and the comfort—made gratitude well up in Andy’s heart. He offered the bong. “Hit this shit. It’ll get your boiler lit.”

Chef uttered a hoarse laugh, took a deep drag on the glasspipe, held the smoke in, then coughed it out. “Bazoom!” he said. “God’s power! Power by the hour, Sanders!”

“Got that right,” Andy agreed. It was what Dodee always said, and at the thought of her, his heart broke all over again. He wiped his eyes absently. “Where did you get the cross?”

Chef pointed the flashlight toward the radio station. “Coggins has got an office in there. The cross was in his desk. The top drawer was locked, but I forced it open. You know what else was in there, Sanders? Some of the skankiest jerk-off material I have ever seen.”

“Kids?” Andy asked. He wouldn’t be surprised. When the devil got a preacher, he was apt to fall low, indeed. Low enough to put on a tophat and crawl under a rattlesnake.

“Worse, Sanders.” He lowered his voice. “Orientals.”

Chef picked up Andy’s AK-47, which had been lying across Andy’s thighs. He shone the light on the stock, where Andy had carefully printed CLAUDETTE with one of the radio station’s Magic Markers.

“My wife,” Andy said. “She was the first Dome casualty.”

Chef gripped him by the shoulder. “You’re a good man to remember her, Sanders. I’m glad God brought us together.”

“Me too.” Andy took back the bong. “Me too, Chef.”

“You know what’s apt to happen tomorrow, don’t you?”

Andy gripped CLAUDETTE’s stock. It was answer enough.

“They’ll most likely be wearing body armor, so if we have to go to war, aim for the head. No single-shot stuff; just hose em down. And if it looks like they’re going to overrun us… you know what comes next, right?”

“Right.”

“To the end, Sanders?” Chef raised the garage door opener in front of his face and shone the flashlight on it.

“To the end,” Andy agreed. He touched the door opener with CLAUDETTE’s muzzle.

17

Ollie Dinsmore snapped awake from a bad dream, knowing something was wrong. He lay in bed, looking at the wan and somehow dirty first light peeping through the window, trying to persuade himself that it was just the dream, some nasty nightmare he couldn’t quite recall. Fire and shouting was all he could remember.

Not shouting. Screaming.

His cheap alarm clock was ticking away on the little table beside his bed. He grabbed it. Quarter of six and no sound of his father moving around in the kitchen. More telling, no smell of coffee. His father was always up and dressed by five fifteen at the very latest (“Cows won’t wait” was Alden Dinsmore’s favorite scripture), and there was always coffee brewing by five thirty.

Not this morning.

Ollie got up and pulled on yesterday’s jeans. “Dad?”

No answer. Nothing but the tick of the clock, and—distant—the lowing of one disaffected bossy. Dread settled over the boy. He told himself there was no reason for it, that his family—all together and perfectly happy only a week ago—had sustained all the tragedies God would allow, at least for awhile. He told himself, but himself didn’t believe it.

“Daddy?”

The generator out back was still running and he could see the green digital readouts on both the stove and the microwave when he went into the kitchen, but the Mr. Coffee stood dark and empty. The living room was empty, too. His father had been watching TV when Ollie turned in last night, and it was still on, although muted. Some crooked-looking guy was demonstrating the new and improved ShamWow. “You’re spending forty bucks a month on paper towels and throwing your money away,” the crooked-looking guy said from that other world where such things might matter.

He’s out feeding the cows, that’s all.

Except wouldn’t he have turned off the TV to save electricity? They had a big tank of propane, but it would only last so long.

“Dad?”

Still no answer. Ollie crossed to the window and looked out at the barn. No one there. With increasing trepidation, he went down the back hall to his parents’ room, steeling himself to knock, but there was no need. The door was open. The big double bed was messy (his father’s eye for mess seemed to fall blind once he stepped out of the barn) but empty. Ollie started to turn away, then saw something that scared him. A wedding portrait of Alden and Shelley had hung on the wall in here for as long as Ollie could remember. Now it was gone, with only a brighter square of wallpaper to mark where it had been.

That’s nothing to be scared of.

But it was.

Ollie continued on down the hall. There was one more door, and this one, which had stood open for the last year, was now closed. Something yellow had been tacked to it. A note. Even before he was close enough to read it, Ollie recognized his father’s handwriting. He should have; there had been enough notes in that big scrawl waiting for him and Rory when they came home from school, and they always ended the same way.

Sweep the barn, then go play. Weed the tomatoes and beans, then go play. Take in your mother’s washing, and mind you don’t drag it in the mud. Then go play.

Playtime’s over, Ollie thought dismally.

But then a hopeful thought occurred to him: maybe he was dreaming. Wasn’t it possible? After his brother’s death by ricochet and his mother’s suicide, why wouldn’t he dream of waking to an empty house?

The cow lowed again, and even that was like a sound heard in a dream.

The room behind the door with the note on it had been Grampy Tom’s. Suffering the slow misery of congestive heart failure, he had come to live with them when he could no longer do for himself. For a while he’d been able to hobble as far as the kitchen to take meals with the family, but in the end he’d been bedridden, first with a plastic thingie jammed up his nose—it was called a candelabra, or something like that—and then with a plastic mask over his face most of the time. Rory once said he looked like the world’s oldest astronaut, and Mom had smacked his face for him.

At the end they had all taken turns changing his oxygen tanks, and one night Mom found him dead on the floor, as if he’d been trying to get up and had died of it. She screamed for Alden, who came, looked, listened to the old man’s chest, then turned off the oxy. Shelley Dinsmore began to cry. Since then, the room had mostly been closed.

Sorry was what the note on the door said. Go to town Ollie. The Morgans or Dentons or Rev Libby will take you in.

Ollie looked at the note for a long time, then turned the knob with a hand that didn’t seem to be his own, hoping it wouldn’t be messy.

It wasn’t. His father lay on Grampy’s bed with his hands laced together on his chest. His hair was combed the way he combed it when he was going to town. He was holding the wedding picture. One of Grampy’s old green oxygen tanks still stood in the corner; Alden had hung his Red Sox cap, the one that said WORLD SERIES CHAMPS, over the valve.

Ollie shook his father’s shoulder. He could smell booze, and for a few seconds hope (always stubborn, sometimes hateful) lived in his heart again. Maybe he was only drunk.

“Dad? Daddy? Wake up!”

Ollie could feel no breath against his cheek, and now saw that his father’s eyes weren’t completely closed; little crescents of white peeped out between the upper and lower lids. There was a smell of what his mother called eau de pee.

His father had combed his hair, but as he lay dying he had, like his late wife, pissed his pants. Ollie wondered if knowing that might happen would have stopped him.

He backed slowly away from the bed. Now that he wanted to feel like he was having a bad dream, he didn’t. He was having a bad reality, and that was something from which you could not wake. His stomach clenched and a column of vile liquid rose up his throat. He ran for the bathroom, where he was confronted by a glare-eyed intruder. He almost screamed before recognizing himself in the mirror over the sink.

He knelt at the toilet, grasping what he and Rory had called Grampy’s crip-rails, and vomited. When it was out of him, he flushed (thanks to the gennie and a good deep well, he could flush), lowered the lid, and sat on it, trembling all over. Beside him, in the sink, were two of Grampy Tom’s pill bottles and a bottle of Jack Daniels. All the bottles were empty. Ollie picked up one of the pill bottles. PERCOCET, the label said. He didn’t bother with the other one.

“I’m alone now,” he said.

The Morgans or Dentons or Rev Libby will take you in.

But he didn’t want to be taken in—it sounded like what his mom would have done to a piece of clothing in her sewing room. He had sometimes hated this farm, but he had always loved it more. The farm had him. The farm and the cows and the woodpile. They were his and he was theirs. He knew that just as he knew that Rory would have gone away to have a bright and successful career, first at college and then in some city far from here where he would go to plays and art galleries and things. His kid brother had been smart enough to make something of himself in the big world; Ollie himself might have been smart enough to stay ahead of the bank loans and credit cards, but not much more.

He decided to go out and feed the cows. He would treat them to double mash, if they would eat it. There might even be a bossy or two who’d want to be milked. If so, he might have a little straight from the teat, as he had when he was a kid.

After that, he would go as far down the big field as he could, and throw rocks at the Dome until the people started showing up to visit with their relatives. Big doins, his father would have said. But there was no one Ollie wanted to see, except maybe Private Ames from South Cah’lina. He knew that Aunt Lois and Uncle Scooter might come—they lived just over in New Gloucester—but what would he say if they did? Hey Unc, they’re all dead but me, thanks for coming?

No, once the people from outside the Dome started to arrive, he reckoned he’d go up to where Mom was buried and dig a new hole nearby. That would keep him busy, and maybe by the time he went to bed, he’d be able to sleep.

Grampy Tom’s oxygen mask was dangling from the hook on the bathroom door. His mother had carefully washed it clean and hung it there; who knew why. Looking at it, the truth finally crashed down on him, and it was like a piano hitting a marble floor. Ollie clapped his hands over his face and began to rock back and forth on the toilet seat, wailing.

18

Linda Everett packed up two cloth grocery sacks’ worth of canned stuff, almost put them by the kitchen door, then decided to leave them in the pantry until she and Thurse and the kids were ready to go. When she saw the Thibodeau kid coming up the driveway, she was glad she’d done so. That young man scared the hell out of her, but she would have had much more to fear if he’d seen two bags filled with soup and beans and tuna fish.

Going somewhere, Mrs. Everett? Let’s talk about that.

The trouble was, of all the new cops Randolph had taken on, Thibodeau was the only one who was smart.

Why couldn’t Rennie have sent Searles?

Because Melvin Searles was dumb. Elementary, my dear Watson.

She glanced out the kitchen window into the backyard and saw Thurston pushing Jannie and Alice on the swings. Audrey lay nearby, with her snout on one paw. Judy and Aidan were in the sandbox. Judy had her arm around Aidan and appeared to be comforting him. Linda loved her for that. She hoped she could get Mr. Carter Thibodeau satisfied and on his way before the five people in the backyard even knew he’d been there. She hadn’t acted since playing Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire back in junior college, but she was going onstage again this morning. The only good review she wanted was her continued freedom and that of the people out back.

She hurried through the living room, fixing what she hoped was a suitably anxious look on her face before opening the door. Carter was standing on the WELCOME mat with his fist raised to knock. She had to look up at him; she was five-nine, but he was over half a foot taller.

“Well, look at you,” he said, smiling. “All brighteyed and bushy-tailed, and it’s not even seven thirty.”

He did not feel that much like smiling; it hadn’t been a productive morning. The preacher lady was gone, the newspaper bitch was gone, her two pet reporters seemed to have disappeared, and so had Rose Twitchell. The restaurant was open and the Wheeler kid was minding the store, but said he had no clue as to where Rose might be. Carter believed him. Anse Wheeler looked like a dog who’s forgotten where he buried his favorite bone. Judging by the horrible smells coming from the kitchen, he had no clue when it came to cooking, either. Carter had gone around back, checking for the Sweetbriar van. It was gone. He wasn’t surprised.

After the restaurant he’d checked the department store, hammering first in front, then in back, where some careless clerk had left a bunch of roofing material rolls out for any Light-Finger Harry to steal. Except when you thought about it, who’d bother with roofing material in a town where it no longer rained?

Carter had thought Everett’s house would also be a dry hole, only went there so he could say he’d followed the boss’s instructions to the letter, but he had heard kids in the backyard as he walked up the driveway. Also, her van was there. No doubt it was hers; one of those stick-on bubble-lights was sitting on the dash. The boss had said moderate questioning, but since Linda Everett was the only one he could find, Carter thought he might go on the hard side of moderate. Like it or not—and she wouldn’t—Everett would have to answer for the ones he hadn’t been able to find as well as herself. But before he could open his mouth, she was talking. Not only talking, but taking him by the hand, actually pulling him inside.

“Have you found him? Please, Carter, is Rusty okay? If he’s not…” She let go of his hand. “If he’s not, keep your voice down, the kids are out back and I don’t want them any more upset than they are already.”

Carter walked past her into the kitchen and peered out through the window over the sink. “What’s the hippie doctor doing here?”

“He brought the kids he’s taking care of. Caro brought them to the meeting last night, and… you know what happened to her.”

This speed-rap babble was the last thing Carter had expected. Maybe she didn’t know anything. The fact that she’d been at the meeting last night and was still here this morning certainly argued in favor of the idea. Or maybe she was just trying to keep him off-balance. Making a what-did-you-call-it, preemptive strike. It was possible; she was smart. You only had to look at her to see that. Also sort of pretty, for an older babe.

“Have you found him? Did Barbara…” She found it easy to put a catch in her voice. “Did Barbara hurt him? Hurt him and leave him somewhere? You can tell me the truth.”

He turned to her, smiling easily in the diluted light coming in through the window. “You go first.”

“What?”

“You go first, I said. You tell me the truth.”

“All I know is he’s gone.” She let her shoulders slump. “And you don’t know where. I can see you don’t. What if Barbara kills him? What if he’s killed him alre—”

Carter grabbed her, spun her around as he would have spun a partner at a country dance, and hoisted her arm behind her back until her shoulder creaked. It was done with such eerie, liquid speed that she had no idea he meant to do it until it was done.

He knows! He knows and he’s going to hurt me! Hurt me until I tell—His breath was hot in her ear. She could feel his beard-stubble tickling her cheek as he spoke, and it made her break out in shivers.

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Mom.” It was little more than a whisper. “You and Wettington have always been tight—hip to hip and tit to tit. You want to tell me you didn’t know she was going to break your husband out? That what you’re saying?”

He jerked her arm higher and Linda had to bite her lip to stifle a scream. The kids were right out there, Jannie calling over her shoulder for Thurse to push her higher. If they heard a scream from the house—

“If she’d told me, I would have told Randolph,” she panted. “Do you think I’d risk Rusty getting hurt when he didn’t do anything?”

“He did plenty. Threatened to withhold medicine from the boss unless he stepped down. Fucking blackmail. I heard it.” He jerked her arm again. A little moan escaped her. “Got anything to say about that? Mom? ”

“Maybe he did. I haven’t seen him or talked to him, so how would I know? But he’s still the closest thing this town has to a doctor. Rennie never would have executed him. Barbara, maybe, but not Rusty. I knew it, and you must know it, too. Now let me go.”

For a moment he almost did. It all hung together. Then he had a better idea, and marched her to the sink. “Bend over, Mom.”

“No!”

He jerked her arm up again. It felt like the ball of her shoulder was going to tear right out of its socket. “Bend over. Like you’re going to wash that pretty blond hair.”

“Linda?” Thurston called. “How are you doing?”

Jesus, don’t let him ask about the groceries. Please, Jesus.

And then another thought struck her: Where were the kids’ suitcases? Each of the girls had packed a little traveling case. What if they were sitting in the living room?

“Tell him you’re fine,” Carter said. “We don’t want to bring the hippie into this. Or the kids. Do we?”

God, no. But where were their suitcases?

“Fine!” she called.

“Almost finished?” he called.

Oh, Thurse, shut up!

“I need five minutes!”

Thurston stood there looking like he might say something else, but then went back to pushing the girls.

“Good job.” He was pressing against her now, and he had a hardon. She could feel it against the seat of her jeans. It felt as big as a monkey wrench. Then he pulled away. “Almost finished with what?”

She almost said making breakfast, but the used bowls were in the sink. For a moment her mind was a roaring blank and she almost wished he’d put his damn boner on her again, because when men were occupied with their little heads, their big ones switched to a test pattern.

But he jerked her arm up again. “Talk to me, Mom. Make Dad happy.”

“Cookies!” she gasped. “I said I’d make cookies. The kids asked!”

“Cookies with no power,” he mused. “Best trick of the week.”

“They’re the no-bake kind! Look in the pantry, you son of a bitch!” If he looked, he would indeed find no-bake oatmeal cookie mix on the shelf. But of course if he looked down, he would also see the supplies she had packed. And he might well do that, if he registered how many of the pantry shelves were now half or wholly empty.

“You don’t know where he is.” The erection was back against her. With the throbbing pain in her shoulder, she hardly registered it. “You’re sure about that.”

“Yes. I thought you knew. I thought you came to tell me he was hurt or d-d—”

“I think you’re lying your pretty round ass off.” Her arm jerked up higher, and now the pain was excruciating, the need to cry out unbearable. But somehow she did bear it. “I think you know plenty, Mom. And if you don’t tell me, I’m going to rip your arm right out of its socket. Last chance. Where is he?”

Linda resigned herself to having her arm or shoulder broken. Maybe both. The question was whether or not she could keep from screaming, which would bring the Js and Thurston on the run. Head down, hair dangling in the sink, she said: “Up my ass. Why don’t you kiss it, motherfucker? Maybe he’ll pop out and say hi.”

Instead of breaking her arm, Carter laughed. That was a good one, actually. And he believed her. She would never dare to talk to him like that unless she was telling the truth. He only wished she wasn’t wearing Levi’s. Fucking her probably still would have been out of the question, but he certainly could have gotten a good deal closer to it if she’d been in a skirt. Still, a dry hump wasn’t the worst way to start Visitors Day, even if it was against a pair of jeans instead of some nice soft panties.

“Hold still and keep your mouth shut,” he said. “If you can do that, you may get out of this in one piece.”

She heard the jingle of his belt-buckle and the rasp of his zipper. Then what had been rubbing against her was rubbing again, only now with a lot less cloth between them. Some faint part of her was glad that at least she’d put on a fairly new pair of jeans; she could hope he’d give himself a nasty rug rash.

Just as long as the Js don’t come in and see me like this.

Suddenly he pressed tighter and harder. The hand not holding her arm groped her breast. “Hey, Mom,” he murmured. “Hey-hey, my-my.” She felt him spasm, although not the wetness that followed such spasms as day follows night; the jeans were too thick for that, thank God. A moment later the upward pressure on her arm finally loosened. She could have cried with relief but didn’t. Wouldn’t. She turned around. He was buckling his belt again.

“Might want to change those jeans before you go making any cookies. At least, I would if I were you.” He shrugged. “But who knows—maybe you like it. Different strokes for different folks.”

“Is this how you keep the law around here now? Is this how your boss wants the law kept?”

“He’s more of a big-picture man.” Carter turned to the pantry, and her racing heart seemed to stop. Then he glanced at his watch and yanked up his zipper. “You call Mr. Rennie or me if your husband gets in touch. It’s the best thing to do, believe me. If you don’t, and I find out, the next load I shoot is going straight up the old wazoo. Whether the kids are watching or not. I don’t mind an audience.”

“Get out of here before they come in.”

“Say please, Mom.”

Her throat worked, but she knew Thurston would soon be checking on her, and she got it out. “Please.”

He headed for the door, then looked into the living room and stopped. He had seen the little suitcases. She was sure of it.

But something else was on his mind.

“And turn in the bubble light I saw in your van. In case you forgot, you’re fired.”

19

She was upstairs when Thurston and the kids came in three minutes later. The first thing she did was look in the kids’ room. The traveling cases were on their beds. Judy’s teddy was sticking out of one.

“Hey, kids!” she called down gaily. Toujours gai, that was her. “Look at some picture-books, and I’ll be down in a few!”

Thurston came to the foot of the stairs. “We really ought to—”

He saw her face and stopped. She beckoned him.

“Mom?” Janelle called. “Can we have the last Pepsi if I share it out?”

Although she ordinarily would have vetoed the idea of soda this early, she said: “Go ahead, but don’t spill!”

Thurse came halfway up the stairs. “What happened?”

“Keep your voice down. There was a cop. Carter Thibodeau.”

“The big tall one with the broad shoulders?”

“That’s him. He came to question me—”

Thurse paled, and Linda knew he was replaying what he’d called to her when he thought she was alone.

“I think we’re okay,” she said, “but I need you to make sure he’s really gone. He was walking. Check the street and over the back fence into the Edmundses’ yard. I have to change my pants.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Nothing!” she hissed. “Just check to make sure he’s gone, and if he is, we are getting the holy hell out of here.”

20

Piper Libby let go of the box and sat back, looking at the town with tears welling in her eyes. She was thinking of all those late-night prayers to The Not-There. Now she knew that had been nothing but a silly, sophomoric joke, and the joke, it turned out, was on her. There was a There there. It just wasn’t God.

“Did you see them?”

She started. Norrie Calvert was standing there. She looked thinner. Older, too, and Piper saw that she was going to be beautiful. To the boys she hung with, she probably already was.

“Yes, honey, I did.”

“Are Rusty and Barbie right? Are the people looking at us just kids?”

Piper thought, Maybe it takes one to know one.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure, honey. Try it for yourself.” Norrie looked at her. “Yeah?”

And Piper—not knowing if she was doing right or doing wrong—nodded. “Yeah.”

“If I get… I don’t know… weird or something, will you pull me back?”

“Yes. And you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s not a dare.”

But to Norrie it was. And she was curious. She knelt in the high grass and gripped the box firmly on either side. She was immediately galvanized. Her head snapped back so hard Piper heard the verte-brae in her neck crack like knuckles. She reached for the girl, then dropped her hand as Norrie relaxed. Her chin went to her breast-bone and her eyes, which had squeezed shut when the shock hit her, opened again. They were distant and hazy.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why?”

Piper’s arms broke out in gooseflesh.

“Tell me!” A tear fell from one of Norrie’s eyes and struck the top of the box, where it sizzled and then disappeared. “Tell me!”

Silence spun out. It seemed very long. Then the girl let go and rocked backward until her butt sat on her heels. “Kids.”

“For sure?”

“For sure. I couldn’t tell how many. It kept changing. They have leather hats on. They have bad mouths. They were wearing goggles and looking at their own box. Only theirs is like a television. They see everywhere, all over town.”

“How do you know?”

Norrie shook her head helplessly. “I can’t tell you, but I know it’s true. They’re bad kids with bad mouths. I never want to touch that box again. I feel so dirty. ” She began to cry.

Piper held her. “When you asked them why, what did they say?”

“Nothing.”

“Did they hear you, do you think?”

“They heard. They just didn’t care.”

From behind them came a steady beating sound, growing louder. Two transport helicopters were coming in from the north, almost skimming the TR-90 treetops.

“They better watch out for the Dome or they’ll crash like the airplane!” Norrie cried.

The copters did not crash. They reached the edge of safe airspace some two miles distant, then began to descend.

21

Cox had told Barbie of an old supply road that ran from the McCoy orchard to the TR-90 border, and said it still looked passable. Barbie, Rusty, Rommie, Julia, and Pete Freeman drove along it around seven thirty Friday morning. Barbie trusted Cox, but not necessarily pictures of an old truck-track snapped from two hundred miles up, so they’d taken the van Ernie Calvert had stolen from Big Jim Rennie’s lot. That one Barbie was perfectly willing to lose, if it got stuck. Pete was sans camera; his digital Nikon had ceased to work when he got close to the box.

“ETs don’t like the paparazzi, broha,” Barbie said. He thought it was a moderately funny line, but when it came to his camera, Pete had no sense of humor.

The ex–phone company van made it to the Dome, and now the five of them watched as the two huge CH-47s waddled toward an overgrown hayfield on the TR-90 side. The road continued over there, and the Chinooks’ rotors churned dust up in great clouds. Barbie and the others shielded their eyes, but that was only instinct, and unnecessary; the dust billowed as far as the Dome and then rolled off to either side.

The choppers alit with the slow decorum of overweight ladies settling into theater seats a tad too small for their bottoms. Barbie heard the hellish screeee of metal on a protruding rock, and the copter to the left lumbered thirty yards sideways before trying again.

A figure jumped from the open bay of the first one and strode through the cloud of disturbed grit, waving it impatiently aside. Barbie would have known that no-nonsense little fireplug anywhere. Cox slowed as he approached, and put out one hand like a blindman feeling for obstructions in the dark. Then he was wiping away the dust on his side.

“It’s good to see you breathing free air, Colonel Barbara.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cox shifted his gaze. “Hello, Ms. Shumway. Hello, you other Friends of Barbara. I want to hear everything, but it will have to be quick—I’ve got a little dog-and-pony show going on across town, and I want to be there for it.”

Cox jerked a thumb over his shoulder where the unloading had already begun: dozens of Air Max fans with attached generators. They were big ones, Barbie saw with relief, the kind used for drying tennis courts and racetrack pit areas after heavy rains. Each was bolted to its own two-wheeled dolly-platform. The gennies looked twenty-horsepower at most. He hoped that would be enough.

“First, I want you to tell me those aren’t going to be necessary.”

“I don’t know for sure,” Barbie said, “but I’m afraid they might be. You may want to get some more on the 119 side, where the townspeople are meeting their relatives.”

“By tonight,” Cox said. “That’s the best we can do.”

“Take some of these,” Rusty said. “If we need them all, we’ll be in extremely deep shit, anyway.”

“Can’t happen, son. Maybe if we could cut across Chester’s Mill airspace, but if we could do that, there wouldn’t be a problem, would there? And putting a line of generator-powered industrial fans where the visitors are going to be kind of defeats the purpose. Nobody would be able to hear anything. Those babies are loud. ” He glanced at his watch. “Now how much can you tell me in fifteen minutes?”