by Stephen King
“Phew,” Rose said, looking up. “You’re really going to print this?”
Julia gestured to the stacked copies. “It’s already printed. Why? Do you object?”
“No, but …” Rose was rapidly scanning the rest of the editorial, which was very long and increasingly pro-Barbie. It ended with an appeal for anyone with information about the crimes to come forward, and the suggestion that when the crisis ended, as it surely would, the behavior of the residents regarding these murders would be closely scrutinized not just in Maine or the United States, but all over the world. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get in trouble?”
“Freedom of the press, Rose,” Pete said, sounding remarkably unsure himself.
“It’s what Horace Greeley would have done,” Julia said firmly, and at the sound of his name, her Corgi—who had been asleep on his dogbed in the corner—looked up. He saw Rose and came over for a pat or two, which Rose was happy to provide.
“Do you have more than what’s in here?” Rose asked, tapping the editorial.
“A little,” Julia said. “I’m holding it back. Hoping for more.”
“Barbie could never have done a thing like this. But I’m afraid for him, just the same.”
One of the cell phones scattered on the desk rang. Tony snared it. “Democrat, Guay.” He listened, then held out the phone to Julia. “Colonel Cox. For you. He doesn’t sound like a happy camper.”
Cox. Julia had forgotten all about him. She took the telephone.
“Ms. Shumway, I need to talk to Barbie and find out what sort of progress he’s making in taking administrative control there.”
“I don’t think that will be happening anytime soon,” Julia said. “He’s in jail.”
“Jail? Charged with what?”
“Murder. Four counts, to be exact.”
“You’re joking.”
“Do I sound like I’m joking, Colonel?”
There was a moment of silence. She could hear many voices in the background. When Cox spoke again, his voice was low. “Explain this.”
“No, Colonel Cox, I think not. I’ve been writing about it for the last two hours, and as my mother used to say when I was a little girl, I don’t chew my cabbage twice. Are you still in Maine?”
“Castle Rock. Our forward base is here.”
“Then I suggest that you meet me where we met before. Motton Road. I can’t give you a copy of tomorrow’s Democrat, even though it’s free, but I can hold it up to the Dome and you can read it for yourself.”
“E-mail it to me.”
“I won’t. I think e-mail is antithetical to the newspaper business. I’m very old-fashioned that way.”
“You’re an irritating piece of work, dear lady.”
“I may be irritating, but I’m not your dear lady.”
“Tell me this: is it a frame job? Something to do with Sanders and Rennie?”
“Colonel, in your experience, does a bear defecate in the woods?” Silence. Then he said, “I’ll meet you in an hour.”
“I’ll be bringing company. Barbie’s employer. I think you’ll be interested in what she has to say.”
“Fine.”
Julia hung up the phone. “Want to take a little ride with me out to the Dome, Rose?”
“If it’ll help Barbie, sure.”
“We can hope, but I’m kind of thinking we’re on our own here.” Julia shifted her attention to Pete and Tony. “Will you two finish stapling those? Stack em by the door and lock up when you leave. Get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow we all get to be news-boys. This paper’s getting the old-school treatment. Every house in town. The close-in farms. And Eastchester, of course. Lots of new people out there, theoretically less susceptible to the Big Jim mystique.”
Pete raised his eyebrows.
“Our Mr. Rennie’s the home team,” Julia said. “He’s going to climb onto the stump at the emergency town meeting Thursday night and try to wind this town up like a pocketwatch. The visitors get first ups, though.” She pointed at the newspapers. “Those are our first ups. If enough people read that, he’ll have some tough questions to answer before he gets to speechifying. Maybe we can disrupt his rhythm a little.”
“Maybe a lot, if we find out who did the rock-throwing at Food City,” Pete said. “And you know what? I think we will. I think this whole thing was put together on the fly. There’s got to be loose ends.”
“I just hope Barbie’s still alive when we start pulling them,” Julia said. She looked at her watch. “Come on, Rosie, let’s take a ride. You want to come, Horace?”
Horace did.
18
“You can let me off here, sir,” Sammy said. It was a pleasant ranch-style in Eastchester. Although the house was dark, the lawn was lit, because they were now close to the Dome, where bright lights had been set up at the Chester’s Mill–Harlow town line.
“Wa’m nuther beer for the road, Missy Lou?”
“No, sir, this is the end of the road for me.” Although it wasn’t. She still had to go back to town. In the yellow glow cast by the domelight, Alden Dinsmore looked eighty-five instead of forty-five. She had never seen such a sad face … except maybe for her own, in the mirror of her hospital room before she set out on this journey. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. The stubble there prickled her lips. He put his hand to the spot, and actually smiled a little.
“You ought to go home now, sir. You’ve got a wife to think about. And another boy to take care of.”
“I s’pose you’re right.”
“I am right.”
“You be okay?”
“Yes, sir.” She got out, then turned back to him. “Will you?”
“I’ll try,” he said.
Sammy slammed the door and stood at the end of the driveway, watching him turn around. He went into the ditch, but it was dry and he got out all right. He headed back toward 119, weaving at first. Then the taillights settled into a more or less straight line. He was in the middle of the road again—fucking the white line, Phil would have said—but she thought that would be okay. It was going on eight thirty now, full dark, and she didn’t think he’d meet anyone.
When his taillights winked out of sight, she walked up to the dark ranch house. It wasn’t much compared to some of the fine old homes on Town Common Hill, but nicer than anything she’d ever had. It was nice inside, too. She had been here once with Phil, back in the days when he did nothing but sell a little weed and cook a little glass out back of the trailer for his own use. Back before he started getting his strange ideas about Jesus and going to that crappy church, where they believed everybody was going to hell but them. Religion was where Phil’s trouble had started. It had led him to Cog-gins, and Coggins or someone else had turned him into The Chef.
The people who had lived here weren’t tweekers; tweekers wouldn’t be able to keep a house like this for long, they’d freebase the mortgage. But Jack and Myra Evans had enjoyed a little wacky tobacky from time to time, and Phil Bushey had been happy to supply it. They were nice people, and Phil had treated them nice. Back in those days he’d still been capable of treating people nice.
Myra gave them iced coffee. Sammy had been seven or so months gone with Little Walter then, showing plenty, and Myra had asked her if she wanted a boy or a girl. Not looking down her nose a bit. Jack had taken Phil into his little office-den to pay him, and Phil had called to her. “Hey, honey, you should get a load of this!”
It all seemed so long ago.
She tried the front door. It was locked. She picked up one of the decorative stones that bordered Myra’s flowerbed and stood in front of the picture window, hefting it in her hand. After some thought, she went around back instead of throwing it. Climbing through a window would be difficult in her current condition. And even if she was able (and careful), she might cut herself badly enough to interfere with the rest of her plans for the evening.
Also, it was a nice house. She didn’t want to vandalize it if she didn’t have to.
>
And she didn’t. Jack’s body had been taken away, the town was still functioning well enough for that, but no one had thought to lock the back door. Sammy walked right in. There was no generator and it was darker than a raccoon’s asshole, but there was a box of wooden matches on the kitchen stove, and the first one she lit showed her a flashlight on the kitchen table. It worked just fine. The beam illuminated what looked like a bloodstain on the floor. She switched it away from that in a hurry and started for Jack Evans’s office-den. It was right off the living room, a cubby so small that there was really room for no more than a desk and a glass-fronted cabinet.
She ran the beam of the flashlight across the desk, then raised it so that it reflected in the glassy eyes of Jack’s most treasured trophy: the head of a moose he’d shot up in TR-90 three years before. The moosehead was what Phil had called her in to see.
“I got the last ticket in the lottery that year,” Jack had told them. “And bagged him with that.” He pointed at the rifle in the cabinet. It was a fearsome-looking thing with a scope.
Myra had come into the doorway, the ice rattling in her own glass of iced coffee, looking cool and pretty and amused—the kind of woman, Sammy knew, she herself would never be. “It cost far too much, but I let him have it after he promised he’d take me to Bermuda for a week next December.”
“Bermuda,” Sammy said now, looking at the moosehead. “But she never got to go. That’s too sad.”
Phil, putting the envelope with the cash in it into his back pocket, had said: “Awesome rifle, but not exactly the thing for home protection.”
“I’ve got that covered, too,” Jack had replied, and although he hadn’t shown Phil just how he had it covered, he’d patted the top of his desk meaningfully. “Got a couple of damn good handguns.”
Phil had nodded back, just as meaningfully. Sammy and Myra had exchanged a boys will be boys look of perfect harmony. She still remembered how good that look had made her feel, how included, and she supposed that was part of the reason she had come here instead of trying someplace else, someplace closer to town.
She paused to chew down another Percocet, then started opening the desk drawers. They were unlocked, and so was the wooden box in the third one she tried. Inside was the late Jack Evans’s extra gun: a.45 Springfield XD automatic pistol. She took it, and after a little fumbling, ejected the magazine. It was full, and there was a spare clip in the drawer. She took that one, too. Then she went back to the kitchen to find a bag to carry it in. And keys, of course. To whatever might be parked in the late Jack and Myra’s garage. She had no intention of walking back to town.
19
Julia and Rose were discussing what the future might hold for their town when their present nearly ended. Would have ended, if they had met the old farm truck on Esty Bend, about a mile and a half from their destination. But Julia got through the curve in time to see that the truck was in her lane, and coming at her head-on.
She swung the wheel of her Prius hard left without thinking, getting into the other lane, and the two vehicles missed each other by inches. Horace, who’d been sitting on the backseat wearing his usual expression of oh-boy-going-for-a-ride delight, tumbled to the floor with a surprised yip. It was the only sound. Neither woman screamed, or even cried out. It was too quick for that. Death or serious injury passed them by in an instant and was gone.
Julia swung back into her own lane, then pulled onto the soft shoulder and put her Prius in park. She looked at Rose. Rose looked back, all big eyes and open mouth. In back, Horace jumped onto the seat again and gave a single bark, as if to ask what the delay was. At the sound, both women laughed and Rose began patting her chest above the substantial shelf of her bosom.
“My heart, my heart,” she said.
“Yeah,” Julia said. “Mine, too. Did you see how close that was?”
Rose laughed again, shakily. “You kidding? Hon, if I’d had my arm cocked out the window, that sonofabitch would have amputated my elbow.”
Julia shook her head. “Drunk, probably.”
“Drunk assuredly, ” Rose said, and snorted.
“Are you okay to go on?”
“Are you?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” Julia said. “How about you, Horace?”
Horace barked that he had been born ready.
“A near-miss rubs the bad luck off,” Rose said. “That’s what Granddad Twitchell used to claim.”
“I hope he was right,” Julia said, and got rolling again. She watched closely for oncoming headlights, but the next glow they saw was from the spots set up at the Harlow edge of the Dome. They didn’t see Sammy Bushey. Sammy saw them; she was standing in front of the Evans garage, with the keys to the Evans Malibu in her hand. When they had gone by, she raised the garage door (she had to do it by hand, and it hurt considerably) and got behind the wheel.
20
There was an alley between Burpee’s Department Store and the Mill Gas & Grocery, connecting Main Street and West Street. It was used mostly by delivery trucks. At quarter past nine that night, Junior Rennie and Carter Thibodeau walked up this alley in almost perfect darkness. Carter was carrying a five-gallon can, red with a yellow diagonal stripe on the side, in one hand. GASOLINE, read the word on the stripe. In the other hand he held a battery-powered bullhorn. This had been white, but Carter had wrapped the horn in black masking tape so it wouldn’t stand out if anyone looked their way before they could fade back down the alley.
Junior was wearing a backpack. His head no longer ached and his limp had all but disappeared. He was confident that his body was finally beating whatever had fucked it up. Possibly a lingering virus of some kind. You could pick up every kind of shit at college, and getting the boot for beating up that kid had probably been a blessing in disguise.
At the head of the alley they had a clear view of the Democrat. Light spilled out onto the empty sidewalk, and they could see Freeman and Guay moving around inside, carrying stacks of paper to the door and then setting them down. The old wooden structure housing the newspaper and Julia’s living quarters stood between Sanders Hometown Drug and the bookstore, but was separated from both—by a paved walkway on the bookstore side and an alley like the one in which he and Carter were currently lurking on the drugstore side. It was a windless night, and he thought that if his father mobilized the troops quickly enough, there would be no collateral damage. Not that he cared. If the entire east side of Main Street burned, that would be fine with Junior. Just more trouble for Dale Barbara. He could still feel those cool, assessing eyes on him. It wasn’t right to be looked at that way, especially when the man doing the looking was behind bars. Fucking Baaarbie.
“I should have shot him,” Junior muttered.
“What?” Carter asked.
“Nothing.” He wiped his forehead. “Hot.”
“Yeah. Frankie says if this keeps on, we’re all apt to end up stewed like prunes. When are we supposed to do this?”
Junior shrugged sullenly. His father had told him, but he couldn’t exactly remember. Ten o’clock, maybe. But what did it matter? Let those two over there burn. And if the newspaper bitch was upstairs—perhaps relaxing with her favorite dildo after a hard day—let her burn, too. More trouble for Baaarbie.
“Let’s do it now,” he said.
“You sure, bro?”
“You see anyone on the street?”
Carter looked. Main Street was deserted and mostly dark. The gennies behind the newspaper office and the drugstore were the only ones he could hear. He shrugged. “All right. Why not?”
Junior undid the pack’s buckles and flipped back the flap. On top were two pairs of light gloves. He gave one pair to Carter and put on the other. Beneath was a bundle wrapped in a bath towel. He opened it and set four empty wine bottles on the patched asphalt. At the very bottom of the pack was a tin funnel. Junior put it in one of the wine bottles and reached for the gasoline.
“Better let me, bro,” Carter said. “Your hands are shakin.”
Junior looked at them with surprise. He didn’t feel shaky, but yes, they were trembling. “I’m not afraid, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Never said you were. It ain’t a head problem. Anybody can see that. You need to go to Everett, because you got somethin wrong with you and he’s the closest thing we got to a doctor right now.”
“I feel fi—”
“Shut up before someone hears you. Do the fuckin towel while I do this.”
Junior took his gun from its holster and shot Carter in the eye. His head exploded, blood and brains everywhere. Then Junior stood over him, shooting him again and again and ag—
“Junes?”
Junior shook his head to clear away this vision—so vivid it was hallucinatory—and realized his hand was actually gripping the butt of his pistol. Maybe that virus wasn’t quite out of his system yet.
And maybe it wasn’t a virus after all.
What, then? What?
The fragrant odor of gas smacked his nostrils hard enough to make his eyes burn. Carter had begun filling the first bottle. Glug glug glug went the gas can. Junior unzipped the side pocket of the backpack and brought out a pair of his mother’s sewing scissors. He used them to cut four strips from the towel. He stuffed one into the first bottle, then pulled it out and stuck the other end inside, letting a length of gasoline-soaked terry cloth hang. He repeated the process with the others.
His hands weren’t shaking too badly for that.
21
Barbie’s Colonel Cox had changed from the last time Julia had seen him. He had a good shave for going on half past nine, and his hair was combed, but his khakis had lost their neat press and tonight his poplin jacket seemed to be bagging on him, as if he had lost weight. He was standing in front of a few smudges of spray paint left over from the unsuccessful acid experiment, and he was frowning at the bracket shape like he thought he could walk through it if he only concentrated hard enough.