by Stephen King
For a moment she didn’t. Then she realized what he was talking about, and laughed.
“Something amusing, Ms. Shumway?”
“In The Mill, folks call that one Little Bitch Road. Because in mud season, it’s one little bitch.”
“Very colorful.”
“No crowds out on Little Bitch, I take it?”
“No one at all right now.”
“All right.” She put the pad in her pocket and picked up the camera. Horace continued waiting patiently by the door.
“Good. When may I expect your call? Or rather, Barbie’s call on your cell?”
She looked at her watch and saw it had just gone ten. How in God’s name had it gotten that late so early? “We’ll be out there by ten thirty, assuming I can find him. And I think I can.”
“That’s fine. Tell him Ken says hello. That’s a—”
“A joke, yes, I get it. Will someone meet us?”
There was a pause. When he spoke again, she sensed reluctance. “There will be lights, and sentries, and soldiers manning a roadblock, but they have been instructed not to speak to the residents.”
“Not to—why ? In God’s name, why ?”
“If this situation doesn’t resolve, Ms. Shumway, all these things will become clear to you. Most you really will figure out on your own—you sound like a very bright lady.”
“Well fuck you very much, Colonel!” she cried, stung. At the door, Horace pricked up his ears.
Cox laughed, a big unoffended laugh. “Yes, ma’am, receiving you five-by-five. Ten thirty?”
She was tempted to tell him no, but of course there was no way she could do that.
“Ten thirty. Assuming I can hunt him up. And I call you?”
“Either you or him, but it’s him I need to speak with. I’ll be waiting with one hand on the phone.”
“Then give me the magic number.” She crooked the phone against her ear and fumbled the pad out again. Of course you always wanted your pad again after you’d put it away; that was a fact of life when you were a reporter, which she now was. Again. The number he gave her to call somehow scared her more than anything else he’d said. The area code was 000.
“One more thing, Ms. Shumway: do you have a pacemaker implant? Hearing-aid implants? Anything of that nature?”
“No. Why?”
She thought he might again decline to answer, but he didn’t. “Once you’re close to the Dome, there’s some kind of interference. It’s not harmful to most people, they feel it as nothing more than a low-level electric shock which goes away a second or two after it comes, but it plays hell with electronic devices. Shuts some down—most cell phones, for instance, if they come closer than five feet or so—and explodes others. If you bring a tape recorder out, it’ll shut down. Bring an iPod or something sophisticated like a BlackBerry, it’s apt to explode.”
“Did Chief Perkins’s pacemaker explode? Is that what killed him?”
“Ten thirty. Bring Barbie, and be sure to tell him Ken says hello.”
He broke the connection, leaving Julia standing in silence beside her dog. She tried calling her sister in Lewiston. The numbers peeped … then nothing. Blank silence, as before.
The Dome, she thought. He didn’t call it the barrier there at the end; he called it the Dome.
5
Barbie had taken off his shirt and was sitting on his bed to untie his sneakers when the knock came at the door, which one reached by climbing an outside flight of stairs on the side of Sanders Hometown Drug. The knock wasn’t welcome. He had walked most of the day, then put on an apron and cooked for most of the evening. He was beat.
And suppose it was Junior and a few of his friends, ready to throw him a welcome-back party? You could say it was unlikely, even paranoid, but the day had been a festival of unlikely. Besides, Junior and Frank DeLesseps and the rest of their little band were among the few people he hadn’t seen at Sweetbriar tonight. He supposed they might be out on 119 or 117, rubbernecking, but maybe somebody had told them he was back in town and they’d been making plans for later tonight. Later like now.
The knock came again. Barbie stood up and put a hand on the portable TV. Not much of a weapon, but it would do some damage if thrown at the first one who tried to cram through the door. There was a wooden closet rod, but all three rooms were small and it was too long to swing effectively. There was also his Swiss Army Knife, but he wasn’t going to do any cutting. Not unless he had t—
“Mr. Barbara?” It was a woman’s voice. “Barbie? Are you in there?”
He took his hand off the TV and crossed the kitchenette. “Who is it?” But even as he asked, he recognized the voice.
“Julia Shumway. I have a message from someone who wants to speak to you. He told me to tell you that Ken says hello.”
Barbie opened the door and let her in.
6
In the pine-paneled basement conference room of the Chester’s Mill Town Hall, the roar of the generator out back (an elderly Kelvinator) was no more than a dim drone. The table in the center of the room was handsome red maple, polished to a high gleam, twelve feet long. Most of the chairs surrounding it were empty that night. The four attendees of what Big Jim was calling the Emergency Assessment Meeting were clustered at one end. Big Jim himself, although only the Second Selectman, sat at the head of the table. Behind him was a map showing the athletic-sock shape of the town.
Those present were the selectmen and Peter Randolph, the acting Chief of Police. The only one who seemed entirely with it was Rennie. Randolph looked shocked and scared. Andy Sanders was, of course, dazed with grief. And Andrea Grinnell—an overweight, graying version of her younger sister, Rose—just seemed dazed. This was not new.
Four or five years previous, Andrea had slipped in her icy driveway while going to the mailbox one January morning. She had fallen hard enough to crack two discs in her back (being eighty or ninety pounds overweight probably hadn’t helped). Dr. Haskell had prescribed that new wonder-drug, OxyContin, to ease what had been no doubt excruciating pain. And had been giving it to her ever since. Thanks to his good friend Andy, who ran the local drugstore, Big Jim knew that Andrea had begun at forty milligrams a day and had worked her way up to a giddy four hundred. This was useful information.
Big Jim said, “Due to Andy’s great loss, I’m going to chair this meeting, if no one objects. We’re all very sorry, Andy.”
“You bet, sir,” Randolph said.
“Thank you,” Andy said, and when Andrea briefly covered his hand with her own, he began to ooze at the eyes again.
“Now, we all have an idea of what’s happened here,” Big Jim said, “although no one in town understands it yet—”
“I bet no one out of town does, either,” Andrea said.
Big Jim ignored her. “—and the military presence hasn’t seen fit to communicate with the town’s elected officials.”
“Problems with the phones, sir,” Randolph said. He was on a first-name basis with all of these people—in fact considered Big Jim a friend—but in this room he felt it wise to stick to sir or ma’am. Perkins had done the same, and on that, at least, the old man had probably been right.
Big Jim waved a hand as if swatting at a troublesome fly. “Someone could have come to the Motton or Tarker’s side and sent for me—us—and no one has seen fit to do so.”
“Sir, the situation is still very … uh, fluid.”
“I’m sure, I’m sure. And it’s very possible that’s why no one has put us in the picture just yet. Could be, oh yes, and I pray that’s the answer. I hope you’ve all been praying.”
They nodded dutifully.
“But right now …” Big Jim looked around gravely. He felt grave. But he also felt excited. And ready. He thought it not impossible that his picture would be on the cover of Time magazine before the year was out. Disaster—especially the sort triggered by terrorists—was not always a completely bad thing. Look what it had done for Rudy Giuliani. “Right now, lady and gentlem
en, I think we have to face the very real possibility that we are on our own.”
Andrea put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes shone either with fear or too much dope. Possibly both. “Surely not, Jim!”
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, that’s what Claudette always says.” Andy spoke in tones of deep meditation. “Said, I mean. She made me a nice breakfast this morning. Scrambled eggs and leftover taco cheese. Gosh!”
The tears, which had slowed, began to ooze again. Andrea once more covered his hand. This time Andy gripped it. Andy and Andrea, Big Jim thought, and a thin smile creased the lower half of his fleshy face. The Dumbsey Twins.
“Hope for the best, plan for the worst,” he said. “What good advice that is. The worst in this case could entail days cut off from the outside world. Or a week. Possibly even a month.” He didn’t actually believe that, but they’d be quicker to do what he wanted if they were frightened.
Andrea repeated: “Surely not!”
“We just don’t know,” Big Jim said. This, at least, was the unvarnished truth. “How can we?”
“Maybe we ought to close Food City,” Randolph said. “At least for the time being. If we don’t, it’s apt to fill up like before a blizzard.”
Rennie was annoyed. He had an agenda, and this was on it, but it wasn’t first on it.
“Or maybe that’s not a good idea,” Randolph said, reading the Second Selectman’s face.
“Actually, Pete, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Big Jim said. “Same principle as never declaring a bank holiday when currency is tight. You only provoke a run.”
“Are we talking about closing the banks, too?” Andy asked. “What’ll we do about the ATMs? There’s one at Brownie’s Store … Mill Gas and Grocery … my drugstore, of course …” He looked vague, then brightened. “I think I even saw one at the Health Center, although I’m not entirely sure about that one …”
Rennie wondered briefly if Andrea had been loaning the man some of her pills. “I was only making a metaphor, Andy.” Keeping his voice low and kind. This was exactly the kind of thing you could expect when people wandered off the agenda. “In a situation like this, food is money, in a manner of speaking. What I’m saying is it should be business as usual. It’ll keep people calm.”
“Ah,” Randolph said. This he understood. “Gotcha.”
“But you’ll need to talk to the supermarket manager—what’s his name, Cade?”
“Cale,” Randolph said. “Jack Cale.”
“Also Johnny Carver at the Gas and Grocery, and … who in the heck runs Brownie’s since Dil Brown died?”
“Velma Winter,” Andrea said. “She’s from Away, but she’s very nice.”
Rennie was pleased to see Randolph writing the names down in his pocket notebook. “Tell those three people that beer and liquor sales are off until further notice.” His face cramped in a rather frightening expression of pleasure. “And Dipper’s is closed. ”
“A lot of people aren’t going to like a booze shutdown,” Randolph said. “People like Sam Verdreaux.” Verdreaux was the town’s most notorious tosspot, a perfect example—in Big Jim’s opinion—of why the Volstead Act should never have been repealed.
“Sam and the others like him will just have to suffer once their current supplies of beer and coffee brandy are gone. We can’t have half the town getting drunk like it was New Year’s Eve.”
“Why not?” Andrea asked. “They’ll use up the supplies and that’ll be the end of it.”
“And if they riot in the meantime?”
Andrea was silent. She couldn’t see what people would have to riot about—not if they had food—but arguing with Jim Rennie, she had found, was usually unproductive and always wearying.
“I’ll send a couple of the guys out to talk to them,” Randolph said.
“Talk to Tommy and Willow Anderson personally. ” The Andersons ran Dipper’s. “They can be troublesome.” He lowered his voice. “Wingnuts.”
Randolph nodded. “Left -wingnuts. Got a picture of Uncle Barack over the bar.”
“That’s it exactly.” And, he didn’t need to say, Duke Perkins let those two hippy cotton-pickers get a foothold with their dancing and loud rock and roll and drinking until one in the morning. Protected them. And look at the trouble it led to for my son and his friends. He turned to Andy Sanders. “Also, you’ve got to put all the prescription drugs under lock and key. Oh, not Nasonex or Lyrica, that sort of thing. You know the stuff I mean.”
“Anything people might use to get high,” Andy said, “is already under lock and key.” He seemed uneasy at this turn of the conversation. Rennie knew why, but he wasn’t concerned about their various sales endeavors just now; they had more pressing business.
“Better take extra precautions, just the same.”
Andrea was looking alarmed. Andy patted her hand. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we always have enough to take care of those in real need.”
Andrea smiled at him.
“Bottom line is, this town is going to stay sober until the crisis ends,” Big Jim said. “Are we in agreement? Show of hands.”
The hands went up.
“Now,” Rennie said, “may I go back to where I wanted to start?” He looked at Randolph, who spread his hands in a gesture that simultaneously conveyed go ahead and sorry.
“We need to recognize that people are apt to be scared. And when people are scared, they can get up to dickens, booze or no booze.”
Andrea looked at the console to Big Jim’s right: switches that controlled the TV, the AM/FM radio, and the built-in taping system, an innovation Big Jim hated. “Shouldn’t that be on?”
“I see no need.”
The darned taping system (shades of Richard Nixon) had been the idea of a meddling medico named Eric Everett, a thirtysomething pain in the buttinsky who was known around town as Rusty. Everett had sprung the taping system idiocy at town meeting two years before, presenting it as a great leap forward. The proposal came as an unwelcome surprise to Rennie, who was seldom surprised, especially by political outsiders.
Big Jim had objected that the cost would be prohibitive. This tactic usually worked with thrifty Yankees, but not that time; Everett had presented figures, possibly supplied by Duke Perkins, showing that the federal government would pay eighty percent. Some Disaster Assistance Whatever; a leftover from the free-spending Clinton years. Rennie had found himself outflanked.
It wasn’t a thing that happened often, and he didn’t like it, but he had been in politics for many more years than Eric “Rusty” Everett had been tickling prostates, and he knew there was a big difference between losing a battle and losing the war.
“Or at least someone should take notes?” Andrea asked timidly.
“I think it might be best to keep this informal, for the time being,” Big Jim said. “Just among the four of us.”
“Well … if you think so …”
“Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead,” Andy said dreamily.
“That’s right, pal,” Rennie said, just as if that made sense. Then he turned back to Randolph. “I’d say our prime concern—our prime responsibility to the town—is maintaining order for the duration of this crisis. Which means police.”
“Damn straight!” Randolph said smartly.
“Now, I’m sure Chief Perkins is looking down on us from Above—”
“With my wife,” Andy said. “With Claudie.” He produced a snot-clogged honk that Big Jim could have done without. Nonetheless, he patted Andy’s free hand.
“That’s right, Andy, the two of them together, bathed in Jesus’s glory. But for us here on earth … Pete, what kind of force can you muster?”
Big Jim knew the answer. He knew the answers to most of his own questions. Life was easier that way. There were eighteen officers on the Chester’s Mill police payroll, twelve full-timers and six part-timers (the latter all past sixty, which made their services entrancingly cheap). Of those eighteen, he was quite sure five of
the full-timers were out of town; they had either gone to that day’s high school football game with their wives and families or to the controlled tburn in Castle Rock. A sixth, Chief Perkins, was dead. And while Rennie would never speak ill of the dead, he was sure the town was better off with Perkins in heaven rather than down here, trying to manage a clustermug that was far beyond his limited abilities.
“I’ll tell you what, folks,” Randolph said, “it’s not that good. There’s Henry Morrison and Jackie Wettington, both of whom responded with me to the initial Code Three. There’s also Rupe Libby, Fred Denton, and George Frederick—although his asthma’s so bad I don’t know how much use he’ll be. He was planning to take early retirement at the end of this year.”
“Poor old George,” Andy said. “He just about lives on Advair.”
“And as you know, Marty Arsenault and Toby Whelan aren’t up to much these days. The only part-timer I’d call really able-bodied is Linda Everett. Between that damned firefighting exercise and the football game, this couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”
“Linda Everett?” Andrea asked, a little interested. “Rusty’s wife?”
“Pshaw!” Big Jim often said pshaw when he was irritated. “She’s just a jumped-up crossing guard.”
“Yes, sir,” Randolph said, “but she qualified on the county range over in The Rock last year and she has a sidearm. No reason she can’t carry it and go on duty. Maybe not full-time, the Everetts have got a couple of kids, but she can pull her weight. After all, it is a crisis.”
“No doubt, no doubt.” But Rennie was damned if he was going to have Everetts popping up like darned old jack-in-the-boxes every time he turned around. Bottom line: he didn’t want that cotton-picker’s wife on his first team. For one thing, she was still quite young, no more than thirty, and pretty as the devil. He was sure she’d be a bad influence on the other men. Pretty women always were. Wettington and her gunshell tiddies were bad enough.