by Stephen King
“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, start
ed 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 w
ouldn’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?”