by Stephen King
“Christ. But why, Jim? Why, in God’s name?”
“I don’t know. Testing, maybe, with us for guinea pigs. Or maybe it’s a power grab. I wouldn’t put it past that thug in the White House. What matters is we’re going to have to beef up security and watch for the liars trying to undermine our efforts to keep order.”
“Do you think she—” He inclined his head toward Julia, who was watching her business go up in smoke with her dog sitting beside her, panting in the heat.
“I don’t know for sure, but the way she was this afternoon? Storming around the station, yelling to see him? What does that tell you?”
“Yeah,” Randolph said. He was looking at Julia Shumway with flat-eyed consideration. “And burning up your own place, what better cover than that?”
Big Jim pointed a finger at him as if to say You could have a bingo there. “I have to get off my feet. Get on the horn to George Frederick. Tell him to keep his good weather eye on that Lewiston Canuck.”
“All right.” Randolph unclipped his walkie-talkie.
Behind them, Fernald Bowie shouted: “Roof’s comin down! You on the street, stand back! You men on top of those other buildings at the ready, at the ready!”
Big Jim watched with one hand on the driver’s door of his Hummer as the roof of the Democrat caved in, sending a gusher of sparks straight up into the black sky. The men posted on the adjacent buildings checked that their partners’ Indian pumps were primed and then stood at parade rest, waiting for sparks with their nozzles in their hands.
The expression on Shumway’s face as the Democrat ’s roof let go did Big Jim’s heart more good than all the cotton-picking medicines and pacemakers in the world. For years he’d been forced to put up with her weekly tirades, and while he wouldn’t admit he had been afraid of her, he surely had been annoyed.
But look at her now, he thought. Looks like she came home and found her mother dead on the pot.
“You look better,” Randolph said. “Your color’s coming back.”
“I feel better,” Big Jim said. “But I’ll still go home. Grab some shuteye.”
“That’s a good idea,” Randolph said. “We need you, my friend. Now more than ever. And if this Dome thing doesn’t go away …” He shook his head, his basset-hound eyes never leaving Big Jim’s face. “I don’t know how we’d get along without you, put it that way. I love Andy Sanders like a brother but he doesn’t have much in the way of brains. And Andrea Grinnell hasn’t been worth a tin shit since she fell and hurt her back. You’re the glue that holds Chester’s Mill together.”
Big Jim was moved by this. He gripped Randolph’s arm and squeezed. “I’d give my life for this town. That’s how much I love it.”
“I know. Me too. And no one’s going to steal it out from under us.”
“Got that right,” Big Jim said.
He drove away, mounting the sidewalk to get past the roadblock that had been placed at the north end of the business district. His heart was steady in his chest again (well, almost), but he was troubled, nonetheless. He’d have to see Everett. He didn’t like the idea; Everett was another noseyparker bent on causing trouble at a time when the town had to pull together. Also, he was no doctor. Big Jim would almost have felt better about trusting a vet with his medical problems, except there was none in town. He’d have to hope that if he needed medicine, something to regularize his heartbeat, Everett would know the right kind.
Well, he thought, whatever he gives me, I can check it out with Andy.
Yes, but that wasn’t the biggest thing troubling him. It was something else Pete had said: If this Dome thing doesn’t go away …
Big Jim wasn’t worried about that. Quite the opposite. If the Dome did go away—too soon, that was—he could be in a fair spot of trouble even if the meth lab wasn’t discovered. Certainly there would be cotton-pickers who would second-guess his decisions. One of the rules of political life that he’d grasped early was Those who can, do; those who can’t, question the decisions of those who can. They might not understand that everything he’d done or ordered done, even the rock-throwing at the market this morning, had been of a caretaking nature. Barbara’s friends on the outside would be especially prone to misunderstanding, because they would not want to understand. That Barbara had friends, powerful ones, on the outside was a thing Big Jim hadn’t questioned since seeing that letter from the President. But for the time being they could do nothing. Which was the way Big Jim wanted it to stay for at least a couple of weeks. Maybe even a month or two.
The truth was, he liked the Dome.
Not for the long term, of course, but until the propane out there at the radio station was redistributed? Until the lab was dismantled and the supply barn that had housed it had been burned to the ground (another crime to be laid at the door of Dale Barbara’s co-conspirators)? Until Barbara could be tried and executed by police firing squad? Until any blame for how things were done during the crisis could be spread around to as many people as possible, and the credit accrued to just one, namely himself?
Until then, the Dome was just fine.
Big Jim decided he’d get kneebound and pray on it before turning in.
7
Sammy limped down the hospital corridor, looking at the names on the doors and checking behind those with no names just to be sure. She was starting to worry that the bitch wasn’t here when she came to the last one and saw a get-well card thumbtacked there. It showed a cartoon dog saying “I heard you weren’t feeling so well.”
Sammy drew Jack Evans’s gun from the waistband of her jeans (that waistband a little looser now, she’d finally managed to lose some weight, better late than never) and used the automatic’s muzzle to open the card. On the inside, the cartoon dog was licking his balls and saying, “Need a hindlick maneuver?” It was signed Mel, Jim Jr., Carter, and Frank, and was exactly the sort of tasteful greeting Sammy would have expected of them.
She pushed the door open with the barrel of the gun. Georgia wasn’t alone. This did not disturb the deep calm that Sammy felt, the sense of peace nearly attained. It might have if the man sleeping in the corner had been an innocent—the bitch’s father or uncle, say—but it was Frankie the Tit Grabber. The one who’d raped her first, telling her she’d better learn to keep her mouth for when she was on her knees. That he was sleeping didn’t change anything. Because guys like him always woke up and recommenced their fuckery.
Georgia wasn’t asleep; she was in too much pain, and the longhair who’d come in to check her hadn’t offered her any more dope. She saw Sammy, and her eyes widened. “D’yew,” she said. “Ged outta here.”
Sammy smiled. “You sound like Homer Simpson,” she said.
Georgia saw the gun and her eyes widened. She opened her now mostly toothless mouth and screamed.
Sammy continued to smile. The smile widened, in fact. The scream was music to her ears and balm to her hurts.
“Do that bitch,” she said. “Right, Georgia? Isn’t that what you said, you heartless cunt?”
Frank woke up and stared around in wide-eyed befuddlement. His ass had migrated all the way to the edge of his chair, and when Georgia shrieked again, he jerked and fell onto the floor. He was wearing a sidearm now—they all were—and he grabbed for it, saying “Put it down, Sammy, just put it down, we’re all friends here, let’s be friends here.”
Sammy said, “You ought to keep your mouth closed except for when you’re on your knees gobbling your friend Junior’s cock.” Then she pulled the Springfield’s trigger. The blast from the automatic was deafening in the small room. The first shot went over Frankie’s head and shattered the window. Georgia screamed again. She was trying to get out of bed now, her IV line and monitor wires popping free. Sammy shoved her and she flopped askew on her back.
Frankie still didn’t have his gun out. In his fear and confusion, he was tugging at the holster instead of the weapon, and succeeding at nothing but yanking his belt up on the right side. Sammy took two steps toward
him, grasped the pistol in both hands like she’d seen people do on TV, and fired again. The left side of Frankie’s head came off. A flap of scalp struck the wall and stuck there. He clapped his hand to the wound. Blood sprayed through his fingers. Then his fingers were gone, sinking into the oozing sponge where his skull had been.
“No more!” he cried. His eyes were huge and swimming with tears. “No more, don’t! Don’t hurt me!” And then: “Mom! MOMMY!”
“Don’t bother, your mommy didn’t raise you right,” Sammy said, and shot him again, this time in the chest. He jumped against the wall. His hand left his wrecked head and thumped to the floor, splashing in the pool of blood that was already forming there. She shot him a third time, in the place that had hurt her. Then she turned to the one on the bed.
Georgia was huddled in a ball. The monitor above her was beeping like crazy, probably because she’d pulled out the wires connected to it. Her hair hung in her eyes. She screamed and screamed.
“Isn’t that what you said?” Sammy asked. “Do that bitch, right?”
“I horry!”
“What?”
Georgia tried again. “I horry! I horry, Hammy!” And then, the ultimate absurdity: “I take it ack!”
“You can’t. ” Sammy shot Georgia in the face and again in the neck. Georgia jumped the way Frankie had, then lay still.
Sammy heard running footsteps and shouts in the corridor. Sleepy cries of concern from some of the rooms as well. She was sorry about causing a fuss, but sometimes there was just no choice. Sometimes things had to be done. And when they were, there could be peace.
She put the gun to her temple.
“I love you, Little Walter. Mumma loves her boy.”
And pulled the trigger.
8
Rusty used West Street to get around the fire, then hooked back onto Lower Main at the 117 intersection. Bowie’s was dark except for small electric candles in the front windows. He drove around back to the smaller lot as his wife had instructed him, and parked beside the long gray Cadillac hearse. Somewhere close by, a generator was clattering.
He was reaching for the door handle when his phone twittered. He turned it off without looking to see who might be calling, and when he looked up again, a cop was standing beside his window. A cop with a drawn gun.
It was a woman. When she bent down, Rusty saw a cloudburst of frizzy blond hair, and at last had a face to go with the name his wife had mentioned. The police dispatcher and receptionist on the day shift. Rusty assumed she had been pressed into full-time service on or just after Dome Day. He also assumed that her current duty-assignment had been self-assigned.
She holstered the pistol. “Hey, Dr. Rusty. Stacey Moggin. You treated me for poison oak two years ago? You know, on my—” She patted her behind.
“I remember. Nice to see you with your pants up, Ms. Moggin.”
She laughed as she had spoken: softly. “Hope I didn’t scare you.”
“A little. I was silencing my cell phone, and then there you were.”
“Sorry. Come on inside. Linda’s waiting. We don’t have much time. I’m going to stand watch out front. I’ll give Lin a double-click on her walkie if someone comes. If it’s the Bowies, they’ll park in the side lot and we can drive out on East Street unnoticed.” She cocked her head a little and smiled. “Well … that’s a tad optimistic, but at least unidentified. If we’re lucky.”
Rusty followed her, navigating by the cloudy beacon of her hair. “Did you break in, Stacey?”
“Hell, no. There was a key at the cop-shop. Most of the businesses on Main Street give us keys.”
“And why are you in on this?”
“Because it’s all fear-driven bullshit. Duke Perkins would have put a stop to it long ago. Now come on. And make this fast.”
“I can’t promise that. In fact, I can’t promise anything. I’m not a pathologist.”
“Fast as you can, then.”
Rusty followed her inside. A moment later, Linda’s arms were around him.
9
Harriet Bigelow screamed twice, then fainted. Gina Buffalino only stared, glassy with shock. “Get Gina out of here,” Thurse snapped. He had gotten as far as the parking lot, heard the shots, and come running back. To find this. This slaughter.
Ginny put an arm around Gina’s shoulders and led her back into the hall, where the patients who were ambulatory—this included Bill Allnut and Tansy Freeman—were standing, big-eyed and frightened.
“Get this one out of the way,” Thurse told Twitch, pointing at Harriet. “And pull her skirt down, give the poor girl some modesty.”
Twitch did as he was told. When he and Ginny reentered the room, Thurse was kneeling by the body of Frank DeLesseps, who had died because he’d come in place of Georgia’s boyfriend and over-stayed visiting hours. Thurse had flapped the sheet over Georgia, and it was already blooming with blood-poppies.
“Is there anything we can do, Doctor?” Ginny asked. She knew he wasn’t a doctor, but in her shock it came automatically. She was looking down at Frank’s sprawled body, and her hand was over her mouth.
“Yes.” Thurse rose and his bony knees cracked like pistol shots. “Call the police. This is a crime scene.”
“All the ones on duty will be fighting that fire downstreet,” Twitch said. “Those who aren’t will either be on their way or sleeping with their phones turned off.”
“Well call somebody, for the love of Jesus, and find out if we’re supposed to do anything before we clean up the mess. Take photographs, or I don’t know what. Not that there’s much doubt about what happened. You’ll have to excuse me for a minute. I’m going to vomit.”
Ginny stood aside so Thurston could go into the tiny WC attached to the room. He closed the door, but the sound of his retching was still loud, the sound of a revving engine with dirt caught in it somewhere.
Ginny felt a wave of faintness rush through her head, seeming to lift her and make her light. She fought it off. When she looked back at Twitch, he was just closing his cell phone. “No answer from Rusty,” he said. “I left a voice mail. Anyone else? What about Rennie?”
“No!” She almost shuddered. “Not him.”
“My sister? Andi, I mean?”
Ginny only looked at him.
Twitch looked back for a moment, then dropped his eyes. “Maybe not,” he mumbled.
Ginny touched him above the wrist. His skin was cold with shock. She supposed her own was, too. “If it’s any comfort,” she said, “I think she’s trying to get clean. She came to see Rusty, and I’m pretty sure that was what it was about.”
Twitch ran his hands down the sides of his face, turning it for a moment into an opéra bouffe mask of sorrow. “This is a nightmare.”
“Yes,” Ginny said simply. Then she took out her cell phone again.
“Who you gonna call?” Twitch managed a little smile. “Ghost-busters?”
“No. If Andi and Big Jim are out, who does that leave?”
“Sanders, but he’s dogshit-useless and you know it. Why don’t we just clean up the mess? Thurston’s right, what happened here is obvious.”
Thurston came out of the bathroom. He was wiping his mouth with a paper towel. “Because there are rules, young man. And under the circumstances, it’s more important than ever that we follow them. Or at least give it the good old college try.”
Twitch looked up and saw Sammy Bushey’s brains drying high on one wall. What she had used to think with now looked like a clot of oatmeal. He burst into tears.
10
Andy Sanders was sitting in Dale Barbara’s apartment, on the side of Dale Barbara’s bed. The window was filled with orange fireglare from the burning Democrat building next door. From above him he heard footsteps and muffled voices—men on the roof, he assumed.
He had brought a brown bag with him when he climbed the inside staircase from the pharmacy below. Now he took out the contents: a glass, a bottle of Dasani water, and a bottle of pills. The pills were O
xyContin tablets. The label read HOLD FOR A. GRINNELL. They were pink, the twenties. He shook some out, counted, then shook out more. Twenty. Four hundred milligrams. It might not be enough to kill Andrea, who’d had time to build up a tolerance, but he was sure it would do quite well for him.
The heat from the fire next door came baking through the wall. His skin was wet with sweat. It had to be at least a hundred in here, maybe more. He wiped his face with the coverlet.
Won’t feel it much longer. There’ll be cool breezes in heaven, and we’ll all sit down to dinner together at the Lord’s table.
He used the bottom of the glass to grind the pink pills into powder, making sure the dope would hit him all at once. Like a hammer on a steer’s head. Just lie down on the bed, close his eyes, and then good night, sweet pharmacist, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Me … and Claudie … and Dodee. Together for eternity.
Don’t think so, brother.
That was Coggins’s voice, Coggins at his most dour and declamatory. Andy paused in the act of crushing the pills.
Suicides don’t eat supper with their loved ones, my friend; they go to hell and dine on hot coals that burn forever in the belly. Can you give me hallelujah on that? Can you say amen?
“Bullspit,” Andy whispered, and went back to grinding the pills. “You were snout-first in the trough with the rest of us. Why should I believe you?”
Because I speak the truth. Your wife and daughter are looking down on you right now, pleading with you not to do it. Can’t you hear them?
“Nope,” Andy said. “And that’s not you, either. It’s just the part of my mind that’s cowardly. It’s run me my whole life. It’s how Big Jim got hold of me. It’s how I got into this meth mess. I didn’t need the money, I don’t even understand that much money, I just didn’t know how to say no. But I can say it this time. Nosir. I’ve got nothing left to live for, and I’m leaving. Got anything to say to that?”
It seemed that Lester Coggins did not. Andy finished reducing the pills to powder, then filled the glass with water. He brushed the pink dust into the glass using the side of his hand, then stirred with his finger. The only sounds were the fire and the dim shouts of the men fighting it and from above, the thump-thud-thump of other men walking around on his roof.