by Stephen King
In addition to the tents that had already been erected, three long new ones were being put up. The signs already planted in front of them read VISITORS’ HOSPITALITY STATION 1, VISITORS’ HOSPITALITY STATION 2, and FIRST AID STATION. Another tent, even longer, had a sign in front of it reading LIGHT REFRESHMENTS. And shortly after Ollie sat down and began tossing his trove of rocks at the Dome, two flatbed trucks loaded with Port-A-Potties had arrived. Now ranks of cheery-looking blue shithouses stood over there, well away from the area where relatives would stand to speak with loved ones they could look at but not touch.
The stuff that had come out of his mother’s head had looked like moldy strawberry jam, and what Ollie couldn’t understand was why she’d done it that way, and in that place. Why in the room where they ate most of their meals? Had she been so far gone that she hadn’t realized she had another son, who might eat again (assuming he didn’t starve to death first) but who would never forget the horror of what lay there on the floor?
Yep, he thought. That far gone. Because Rory was always her favorite, her pet. She hardly knew I was around, unless I forgot to feed the cows or swab out the stalls when they were afield. Or if I brought home a D on my rank card. Because he never got nothing but As.
He threw a rock.
BONK. Silence.
There were several Army guys putting up pairs of signs over there near the Dome. The ones facing in toward The Mill read
WARNING!
FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY!
KEEP 2 YARDS (6 FEET) FROM THE DOME!
Ollie guessed the signs pointing the other way said the same, and on the other side they might work, because on the other side there would be lots of guys to keep order. Over here, though, there were going to be maybe eight hundred townies and maybe two dozen cops, most of them new to the job. Keeping people back on this side would be like trying to protect a sand castle from the incoming tide.
Her underpants had been wet, and there had been a puddle between her splayed legs. She’d pissed herself either right before she pulled the trigger, or right after. Ollie thought probably after.
He threw a rock.
BONK. Silence.
There was one Army guy close by. He was pretty young. There wasn’t any kind of insignia on his sleeves, so Ollie guessed he was probably a private. He looked about sixteen, but Ollie supposed he had to be older. He’d heard of kids lying about their age to get into the service, but he guessed that was before everybody had computers to keep track of such things.
The Army guy looked around, saw no one was paying him any attention, and spoke in a low voice. He had a southern accent. “Kid? Would y’all stop doing that? It’s drivin me bugshit.”
“Go someplace else, then,” Ollie said.
BONK. Silence.
“Caint. Orders.”
Ollie didn’t reply. He threw another rock, instead.
BONK. Silence.
“Why y’all doin it?” the Army guy asked. He was now just fiddling with the pair of signs he was putting up so he could talk to Ollie.
“Because sooner or later, one of them won’t bounce back. And when that happens, I’m going to get up and walk away and never see this farm again. Never milk another cow. What’s the air like out there?”
“Good. Chilly, though. I’m from South Cah’lina. It ain’t like this in South Cah’lina in October, I can tell you that.”
Where Ollie was, less than three yards from the southern boy, it was hot. Also stinky.
The Army guy pointed beyond Ollie. “Why don’t y’all quit on the rocks and do somethin about those cows?” He said it cay-ows. “Herd em into the barn and milk em or rub soothin shit on their udders; somethin like at.”
“We don’t need to herd them. They know where to go. Only now they don’t need to be milked, and they don’t need any Bag Balm, either. Their udders are dry.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. My dad says something’s wrong with the grass. He says the grass is wrong because the air’s wrong. It doesn’t smell good in here, you know. It smells like crap.”
“Yeah?” The Army guy looked fascinated. He gave the tops of the back-to-back signs a tap or two with his hammer, although they already looked well seated.
“Yeah. My mother killed herself this morning.”
The Army guy had raised his hammer for another hit. Now he just dropped it to his side. “Are you shittin me, kid?”
“No. She shot herself at the kitchen table. I found her.”
“Oh fuck, that’s rough.” The Army guy approached the Dome.
“We took my brother to town when he died last Sunday, because he was still alive—a little—but my mom was dead as dead can be, so we buried her on the knoll. My dad and me. She liked it there. It was pretty there before everything got so cruddy. ”
“Jesus, kid! You been through hell!”
“Still there,” Ollie said, and as if the words had turned a valve somewhere inside, he began to weep. He got up and went to the Dome. He and the young soldier faced each other, less than a foot apart. The soldier raised his hand, wincing a little as the transient shock whipped through him and then out of him. He laid his hand on the Dome, fingers spread. Ollie lifted his own and pressed it against the Dome on his side. Their hands seemed to be touching, finger to finger and palm to palm, but they weren’t. It was a futile gesture that would be repeated over and over the following day: hundreds of times, thousands.
“Kid—”
“Private Ames!” someone bawled. “Get your sorry ass away from there!”
Private Ames jumped like a kid who’s been caught stealing jam.
“Get over here! Double time!”
“Hang in there, kid,” Private Ames said, and ran off to get his scolding. Ollie imagined it had to be a scolding, since you couldn’t very well demote a private. Surely they wouldn’t put him in the stockade or whatever for talking to one of the animals in the zoo. I didn’t even get any peanuts, Ollie thought.
For a moment he looked up at the cows that no longer gave milk—that hardly even cropped grass—and then he sat down by his pack. He searched for and found another nice round rock. He thought about the chipped polish on the nails of his dead mother’s outstretched hand, the one with the still-smoking gun beside it. Then he threw the rock. It hit the Dome and bounced back.
BONK. Silence.
10
At four o’clock on that Thursday afternoon, while the overcast held over northern New England and the sun shone down on Chester’s Mill like a bleary spotlight through the sock-shaped hole in the clouds, Ginny Tomlinson went to check on Junior. She asked if he needed something for headache. He said no, then changed his mind and asked for some Tylenol or Advil. When she came back, he walked across the room to get it. On his chart she wrote, Limp is still present but seems improved.
When Thurston Marshall poked his head in forty-five minutes later, the room was empty. He assumed Junior had gone down to the lounge, but when he checked there it was empty except for Emily Whitehouse, the heart attack patient. Emily was recovering nicely. Thurse asked her if she’d seen a young man with dark blond hair and a limp. She said no. Thurse went back to Junior’s room and looked in the closet. It was empty. The young man with the probable brain tumor had dressed and checked himself out without benefit of paperwork.
11
Junior walked home. His limp seemed to clear up entirely once his muscles were warm. In addition, the dark keyhole shape floating on the left side of his vision had shrunk to a ball the size of a marble. Maybe he hadn’t gotten a full dose of thallium after all. Hard to tell. Either way, he had to keep his promise to God. If he took care of the Appleton kids, then God would take care of him.
As he left the hospital (by the back door), killing his father had been first on his to-do list. But by the time he actually got to the house—the house where his mother had died, the house where Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins had died—he had changed his mind. If he killed his father now, the special town meeting
would be canceled. Junior didn’t want that, because the town meeting would provide good cover for his main errand. Most of the cops would be there, and that would make gaining access to the Coop easier. He only wished he had the poisoned dog tags. He’d enjoy stuffing them down Baaarbie ’s dying throat.
Big Jim wasn’t at home, anyway. The only living thing in the house was the wolf he’d seen loping across the hospital parking lot in the small hours of the morning. It was halfway down the stairs, looking at him and growling deep in its chest. Its fur was ragged. Its eyes were yellow. Around its neck hung Dale Barbara’s dog tags.
Junior closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them, the wolf was gone.
“I’m the wolf now,” he whispered to the hot and empty house. “I’m the werewolf, and I saw Lon Chaney dancing with the queen.”
He went upstairs, limping again but not noticing. His uniform was in the closet, and so was his gun—a Beretta 92 Taurus. The PD had a dozen of them, mostly paid for with federal Homeland Security money. He checked the Beretta’s fifteen-round mag and saw it was full. He put the gun into its holster, cinched the belt around his shrinking waist, and left his room.
At the top of the stairs he paused, wondering where to go until the meeting was well under way and he could make his move. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t even want to be seen. Then it came to him: a good hiding place that was also close to the action. He descended the stairs carefully—the goddam limp was all the way back, plus the left side of his face was so numb it might have been frozen—and lurched down the hall. He stopped briefly outside his father’s study, wondering if he should open the safe and burn the money inside. He decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He vaguely remembered a joke about bankers marooned on a desert island who’d gotten rich trading each other their clothes, and he uttered a brief yapping laugh even though he couldn’t exactly recall the punchline and had never completely gotten the joke, anyway.
The sun had gone behind the clouds to the west of the Dome and the day had grown gloomy. Junior walked out of the house and disappeared into the murk.
12
At quarter past five, Alice and Aidan Appleton came in from the back yard of their borrowed house. Alice said, “Caro? Will you take Aidan and I … Aidan and me … to the big meeting?”
Carolyn Sturges, who had been making PB&J sandwiches for supper on Coralee Dumagen’s counter with Coralee Dumagen’s bread (stale but edible), looked at the children with surprise. She had never heard of kids wanting to attend an adults’ meeting before; would have said, if asked, that they’d probably run the other way to avoid such a boring event. She was tempted. Because if the kids went, she could go.
“Are you sure?” she asked, bending down. “Both of you?”
Before these last few days, Carolyn would have said she had no interest in having children, that what she wanted was a career as a teacher and a writer. Maybe a novelist, although it seemed to her that writing novels was pretty risky; what if you spent all that time, wrote a thousand-pager, and it sucked? Poetry, though … going around the country (maybe on a motorcycle) … doing readings and teaching seminars, free as a bird … that would be cool. Maybe meeting a few interesting men, drinking wine and discussing Sylvia Plath in bed. Alice and Aidan had changed her mind. She had fallen in love with them. She wanted the Dome to break—of course she did—but giving these two back to their mom was going to hurt her heart. She sort of hoped it would hurt theirs a little too. Probably that was mean, but there it was.
“Ade? Is it what you want? Because grownup meetings can be awfully long and boring.”
“I want to go,” Aidan said. “I want to see all the people.”
Then Carolyn understood. It wasn’t the discussion of resources and how the town was going to use them as it went forward that interested them; why would it be? Alice was nine and Aidan was five. But wanting to see everybody gathered together, like a great big extended family? That made sense.
“Can you be good? Not squirm and whisper too much?”
“Of course,” Alice said with dignity.
“And will you both pee yourselves dry before we go?”
“Yes!” This time the girl rolled her eyes to show what an annoying stupidnik Caro was being … and Caro sort of loved it.
“Then what I’ll do is just pack these sandwiches to go,” Carolyn said. “And we’ve got two cans of soda for kids who can be good and use straws. Assuming the kids in question have peed themselves dry before dumping any more liquid down their throats, that is.”
“I use straws like mad,” Aidan said. “Any Woops?”
“He means Whoopie Pies,” Alice said.
“I know what he means, but there aren’t any. I think there might be some graham crackers, though. The kind with cinnamon sugar on them.”
“Cinnamon graham crackers rock,” Aidan said. “I love you, Caro.”
Carolyn smiled. She thought no poem she’d ever read had been so beautiful. Not even the Williams one about the cold plums.
13
Andrea Grinnell descended the stairs slowly but steadily while Julia stared in amazement. Andi had undergone a transformation. Makeup and a comb-out of the frizzy wreck that had been her hair had played a part, but that wasn’t all of it. Looking at her, Julia realized how long it had been since she’d seen the town’s Third Selectman looking like herself. This evening she was wearing a knockout red dress belted at the waist—it looked like Ann Taylor—and carrying a large fabric bag with a drawstring top.
Even Horace was gawking.
“How do I look?” Andi asked when she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Like I could fly to the town meeting, if I had a broom?”
“You look great. Twenty years younger.”
“Thanks, hon, but I have a mirror upstairs.”
“If it didn’t show you how much better you look, you better try one down here, where the light’s better.”
Andi switched her bag to her other arm, as if it were heavy. “Well. I guess I do. A little, anyway.”
“Are you sure you have strength enough for this?”
“I think so, but if I start to shake and shiver, I’ll slip out the side door.” Andi had no intention of slipping away, whether she shook or not.
“What’s in the bag?”
Jim Rennie’s lunch, Andrea thought. Which I intend to feed him in front of this whole town.
“I always take my knitting to town meeting. Sometimes they’re just so slow and dull.”
“I don’t think this one will be dull,” Julia said.
“You’re coming, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I imagine,” Julia said vaguely. She expected to be well away from downtown Chester’s Mill before the meeting ended. “I have a few things to do first. Can you get there on your own?”
Andi gave her a comical Mother, please look. “Down the street, down the hill, and it’s right there. Been doing it for years.”
Julia looked at her watch. It was quarter to six. “Aren’t you leaving awfully early?”
“Al will open the doors at six o’clock, if I’m not mistaken, and I want to be sure and get a good seat.”
“As a selectwoman, you should be right up there onstage,” Julia said. “If it’s what you want.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Andi switched the bag to her other arm again. Her knitting was inside; so was the VADER file and the.38 her brother Twitch had given her for home protection. She thought it would serve just as well for town protection. A town was like a body, but it had one advantage over the human one; if a town had a bad brain, a transplant could be effected. And maybe it wouldn’t come to killing. She prayed it wouldn’t.
Julia was looking at her quizzically. Andrea realized she’d drifted off.
“I think I’ll just sit with the common folk tonight. But I’ll have my say when the time comes. You can count on that.”
14
Andi was right about Al Timmons opening the doors at six. By then Main Street, ne
xt to empty all day, was filling with citizens headed for the Town Hall. More walked in little groups down Town Common Hill from the residential streets. Cars began to arrive from Eastchester and Northchester, most filled to capacity. No one, it seemed, wanted to be alone tonight.
She was early enough to have her pick of seats, and chose the third row from the stage, on the aisle. Just ahead of her in the second row were Carolyn Sturges and the Appleton children. The kids were gawking wide-eyed at everything and everyone. The little boy had what appeared to be a graham cracker clutched in his fist.
Linda Everett was another early arriver. Julia had told Andi about Rusty being arrested—utterly ridiculous—and knew his wife must be devastated, but she was hiding it well behind great makeup and a pretty dress with big patch pockets. Given her own situation (mouth dry, head aching, stomach roiling), Andi admired her courage.
“Come sit with me, Linda,” she said, patting the spot beside her. “How is Rusty?”
“I don’t know,” Linda said, slipping past Andrea and sitting down. Something in one of those amusing pockets clunked on the wood. “They won’t let me see him.”
“That situation will be rectified,” Andrea said.
“Yes,” Linda said grimly. “It will.” Then she leaned forward. “Hello, kids, what are your names?”
“This is Aidan,” Caro said, “and this is—”
“I’m Alice.” The little girl held out a regal hand—queen to loyal subject. “Me and Aidan … Aidan and I … are Dorphans. That means Dome orphans. Thurston made it up. He knows magic tricks, like pulling a quarter out of your ear and stuff.”
“Well, you seem to have landed on your feet,” Linda said, smiling. She didn’t feel like smiling; she had never been so nervous in her life. Only nervous was too mild a word. She was scared shitless.