Under the Dome: A Novel

by Stephen King

  “Did you see them?”

  She started. Norrie Calvert was standing there. She looked thinner. Older, too, and Piper saw that she was going to be beautiful. To the boys she hung with, she probably already was.

  “Yes, honey, I did.”

  “Are Rusty and Barbie right? Are the people looking at us just kids?”

  Piper thought, Maybe it takes one to know one.

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure, honey. Try it for yourself.” Norrie looked at her. “Yeah?”

  And Piper—not knowing if she was doing right or doing wrong—nodded. “Yeah.”

  “If I get … I don’t know … weird or something, will you pull me back?”

  “Yes. And you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s not a dare.”

  But to Norrie it was. And she was curious. She knelt in the high grass and gripped the box firmly on either side. She was immediately galvanized. Her head snapped back so hard Piper heard the verte-brae in her neck crack like knuckles. She reached for the girl, then dropped her hand as Norrie relaxed. Her chin went to her breast-bone and her eyes, which had squeezed shut when the shock hit her, opened again. They were distant and hazy.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why?”

  Piper’s arms broke out in gooseflesh.

  “Tell me!” A tear fell from one of Norrie’s eyes and struck the top of the box, where it sizzled and then disappeared. “Tell me!”

  Silence spun out. It seemed very long. Then the girl let go and rocked backward until her butt sat on her heels. “Kids.”

  “For sure?”

  “For sure. I couldn’t tell how many. It kept changing. They have leather hats on. They have bad mouths. They were wearing goggles and looking at their own box. Only theirs is like a television. They see everywhere, all over town.”

  “How do you know?”

  Norrie shook her head helplessly. “I can’t tell you, but I know it’s true. They’re bad kids with bad mouths. I never want to touch that box again. I feel so dirty. ” She began to cry.

  Piper held her. “When you asked them why, what did they say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did they hear you, do you think?”

  “They heard. They just didn’t care.”

  From behind them came a steady beating sound, growing louder. Two transport helicopters were coming in from the north, almost skimming the TR-90 treetops.

  “They better watch out for the Dome or they’ll crash like the airplane!” Norrie cried.

  The copters did not crash. They reached the edge of safe airspace some two miles distant, then began to descend.

  21

  Cox had told Barbie of an old supply road that ran from the McCoy orchard to the TR-90 border, and said it still looked passable. Barbie, Rusty, Rommie, Julia, and Pete Freeman drove along it around seven thirty Friday morning. Barbie trusted Cox, but not necessarily pictures of an old truck-track snapped from two hundred miles up, so they’d taken the van Ernie Calvert had stolen from Big Jim Rennie’s lot. That one Barbie was perfectly willing to lose, if it got stuck. Pete was sans camera; his digital Nikon had ceased to work when he got close to the box.

  “ETs don’t like the paparazzi, broha,” Barbie said. He thought it was a moderately funny line, but when it came to his camera, Pete had no sense of humor.

  The ex–phone company van made it to the Dome, and now the five of them watched as the two huge CH-47s waddled toward an overgrown hayfield on the TR-90 side. The road continued over there, and the Chinooks’ rotors churned dust up in great clouds. Barbie and the others shielded their eyes, but that was only instinct, and unnecessary; the dust billowed as far as the Dome and then rolled off to either side.

  The choppers alit with the slow decorum of overweight ladies settling into theater seats a tad too small for their bottoms. Barbie heard the hellish screeee of metal on a protruding rock, and the copter to the left lumbered thirty yards sideways before trying again.

  A figure jumped from the open bay of the first one and strode through the cloud of disturbed grit, waving it impatiently aside. Barbie would have known that no-nonsense little fireplug anywhere. Cox slowed as he approached, and put out one hand like a blindman feeling for obstructions in the dark. Then he was wiping away the dust on his side.

  “It’s good to see you breathing free air, Colonel Barbara.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cox shifted his gaze. “Hello, Ms. Shumway. Hello, you other Friends of Barbara. I want to hear everything, but it will have to be quick—I’ve got a little dog-and-pony show going on across town, and I want to be there for it.”

  Cox jerked a thumb over his shoulder where the unloading had already begun: dozens of Air Max fans with attached generators. They were big ones, Barbie saw with relief, the kind used for drying tennis courts and racetrack pit areas after heavy rains. Each was bolted to its own two-wheeled dolly-platform. The gennies looked twenty-horsepower at most. He hoped that would be enough.

  “First, I want you to tell me those aren’t going to be necessary.”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Barbie said, “but I’m afraid they might be. You may want to get some more on the 119 side, where the townspeople are meeting their relatives.”

  “By tonight,” Cox said. “That’s the best we can do.”

  “Take some of these,” Rusty said. “If we need them all, we’ll be in extremely deep shit, anyway.”

  “Can’t happen, son. Maybe if we could cut across Chester’s Mill airspace, but if we could do that, there wouldn’t be a problem, would there? And putting a line of generator-powered industrial fans where the visitors are going to be kind of defeats the purpose. Nobody would be able to hear anything. Those babies are loud. ” He glanced at his watch. “Now how much can you tell me in fifteen minutes?”

  HALLOWEEN COMES EARLY

  1

  At quarter to eight, Linda Everett’s almost-new Honda Odyssey Green rolled up to the loading dock behind Burpee’s Department Store. Thurse was riding shotgun. The kids (far too silent for children setting off on an adventure) were in the backseat. Aidan was hugging Audrey’s head. Audi, probably sensing the little boy’s distress, bore this patiently.

  Linda’s shoulder was still throbbing in spite of three aspirin, and she couldn’t get Carter Thibodeau’s face out of her mind. Or his smell: a mixture of sweat and cologne. She kept expecting him to pull up behind her in one of the town police cars, blocking their retreat. The next load I shoot is going straight up the old wazoo. Whether the kids are watching or not.

  He’d do it, too. He would. And while she couldn’t get all the way out of town, she was wild to put as much distance between herself and Rennie’s new Man Friday as possible.

  “Grab a whole roll, and the metal-snips,” she told Thurse. “They’re under that milk box. Rusty told me.”

  Thurston had opened the door, but now he paused. “I can’t do that. What if somebody else needs them?”

  She wasn’t going to argue; she’d probably wind up screaming at him and scaring the children.

  “Whatever. Just hurry up. This is like a box canyon.”

  “As fast as I can.”

  Yet it seemed to take him forever to snip pieces of the lead roll, and she had to restrain herself from leaning out the window and asking if he had been born a prissy old lady or just grew into one.

  Keep it shut. He lost someone he loved last night.

  Yes, and if they didn’t hurry, she might lose everything. There were already people on Main Street, heading out toward 119 and the Dinsmore dairy farm, intent on getting the best places. Linda jumped every time a police loudspeaker blared, “CARS ARE NOT ALLOWED ON THE HIGHWAY! UNLESS YOU ARE PHYSICALLY DISABLED, YOU MUST WALK.”

  Thibodeau was smart, and he had sniffed something. What if he came back and saw that her van was gone? Would he look for it? Meanwhile, Thurse just kept snipping pieces of lead from the roofing roll. He turned and she thought he was done, but he was only visually m
easuring the windshield. He started cutting again. Whacking off another piece. Maybe he was actually trying to drive her mad. A silly idea, but once it had entered her mind it wouldn’t leave.

  She could still feel Thibodeau rubbing against her bottom. The tickle of his stubble. The fingers squeezing her breast. She told herself not to look at what he’d left on the seat of her jeans when she took them off, but she couldn’t help it. The word that rose in her mind was mansplat, and she’d found herself in a short, grim struggle to keep her breakfast down. Which also would have pleased him, if he had known.

  Sweat sprang out on her brow.

  “Mom?” Judy, right in her ear. Linda jumped and uttered a cry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to jump you. Can I have something to eat?”

  “Not now.”

  “Why does that man keep loudspeakering?”

  “Honey, I can’t talk to you right now.”

  “Are you bummin?”

  “Yes. A little. Now sit back.”

  “Are we going to see Daddy?”

  “Yes.” Unless we get caught and I get raped in front of you. “Now sit back.”

  Thurse was finally coming. Thank God for small favors. He appeared to be carrying enough cut squares and rectangles of lead to armor a tank. “See? That wasn’t so ba—oh, shit.”

  The kids giggled, the sound like rough files sawing away at Linda’s brain. “Quarter in the swear-jar, Mr. Marshall,” Janelle said.

  Thurse was looking down, bemused. He had stuck the metal-snips in his belt.

  “I’ll just put these back under the milk box—”

  Linda snatched them before he could finish, restrained a momentary urge to bury them up to the handles in his narrow chest—admirable restraint, she thought—and got out to put them away herself.

  As she did, a vehicle slid in behind the van, blocking access to West Street, the only way out of this cul-de-sac.

  2

  Atop Town Common Hill, just below the Y-intersection where Highland Avenue split off from Main Street, Jim Rennie’s Hummer sat idling. From below came the amplified exhortations for people to leave their cars and walk unless they were disabled. People were flowing down the sidewalks, many with packs on their backs. Big Jim eyed them with that species of longsuffering contempt which is felt only by caretakers who do their jobs not out of love but out of duty.

  Going against the tide was Carter Thibodeau. He was striding in the middle of the street, every now and then shoving someone out of his way. He reached the Hummer, got in on the passenger side, and armed sweat from his forehead. “Man, that AC feels good. Not hardly eight in the morning and it’s got to be seventy-five degrees out there already. And the air smells like a frickin ashtray. ’Scuse the language, boss.”

  “What kind of luck did you have?”

  “The bad kind. I talked to Officer Everett. Ex -Officer Everett. The others are in the breeze.”

  “Does she know anything?”

  “No. She hasn’t heard from the doc. And Wettington treated her like a mushroom, kept her in the dark and fed her shit.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Her kids there with her?”

  “Yup. The hippy, too. The one who straightened out your ticker. Plus the two kids Junior and Frankie found out at the Pond.” Carter thought about this. “With his chick dead and her husband gone, him and Everett’ll probably be boinking each other’s brains out by the end of the week. If you want me to take another run at her, boss, I will.”

  Big Jim flicked a single finger up from the steering wheel to show that wouldn’t be necessary. His attention was elsewhere. “Look at them, Carter.”

  Carter couldn’t very well help it. The foot traffic out of town was thickening every minute.

  “Most of them will be at the Dome by nine, and their cotton-picking relatives won’t arrive until ten. At the earliest. By then they’ll be good and thirsty. By noon the ones who didn’t think to bring water will be drinking cow-piddle out of Alden Dinsmore’s pond, God love them. God must love them, because the majority are too dumb to work and too nervous to steal.”

  Carter barked laughter.

  “That’s what we’ve got to deal with,” Rennie said. “The mob. The cotton-picking rabble. What do they want, Carter?”

  “I don’t know, boss.”

  “Sure you do. They want food, Oprah, country music, and a warm bed to thump uglies in when the sun goes down. So they can make more just like them. And goodness me, here comes another member of the tribe.”

  It was Chief Randolph, trudging up the hill and mopping his bright red face with a handkerchief.

  Big Jim was now in full lecture mode. “Our job, Carter, is to take care of them. We may not like it, we may not always think they’re worth it, but it’s the job God gave us. Only to do it, we have to take care of ourselves first, and that’s why a good deal of fresh fruit and veg from Food City was stored in the Town Clerk’s office two days ago. You didn’t know that, did you? Well, that’s all right. You’re a step ahead of them and I’m a step ahead of you and that’s how it’s supposed to be. The lesson is simple: the Lord helps those that help themselves.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Randolph arrived. He was puffing, there were circles under his eyes, and he appeared to have lost weight. Big Jim pushed the button that ran down his window.

  “Step in, Chief, grab yourself some AC.” And when Randolph started for the front passenger seat, Big Jim added: “Not there, Carter’s sitting there.” He smiled. “Get in back.”

  3

  It wasn’t a police car that had pulled up behind the Odyssey van; it was the hospital ambulance. Dougie Twitchell was at the wheel. Ginny Tomlinson was in the passenger seat with a sleeping baby in her lap. The rear doors opened and Gina Buffalino got out. She was still in her candy-striper uniform. The girl who followed her, Harriet Bigelow, wore jeans and tee-shirt that said U.S. OLYMPIC KISSING TEAM.

  “What … what …” That seemed to be all Linda was capable of. Her heart was racing, the blood pounding so hard in her head that she seemed to feel her eardrums flapping.

  Twitch said, “Rusty called and told us to get out to the orchard at Black Ridge. I didn’t even know there was an orchard up there, but Ginny did, and … Linda? Honey, you’re white as a ghost.”

  “I’m okay,” Linda said, and realized she was on the verge of fainting. She pinched her earlobes, a trick Rusty had taught her a long time ago. Like many of his folk-remedies (beating down wens with the spine of a heavy book was another), it worked. When she spoke again, her voice seemed both nearer and somehow realer. “He told you to come here first?”

  “Yes. To get some of that.” He pointed to the lead roll sitting on the loading dock. “Just to be on the safe side is what he said. But I’ll need those snips.”

  “Uncle Twitch!” Janelle cried, and dashed into his arms.

  “What’s up, Tiger Lily?” He hugged her, swung her, set her down. Janelle peered into the passenger window at the baby. “What’s her name?”

  “It’s a he,” Ginny said. “His name’s Little Walter.”

  “Cool!”

  “Jannie, get back in the van, we have to go,” Linda said.

  Thurse asked, “Who’s minding the store, you guys?”

  Ginny looked embarrassed. “Nobody. But Rusty said not to worry, unless there was somebody in need of constant care. Other than Little Walter, there wasn’t. So I grabbed the baby and we boogied. We might be able to go back later, Twitch says.”

  “Somebody better be able to,” Thurse said gloomily. Gloom, Linda had noticed, seemed to be Thurston Marshall’s default position. “Three-quarters of the town is hoofing it out 119 to the Dome. The air quality’s bad and it’s going to be eighty-five by ten o’clock, which will be about the time the visitor buses arrive. If Rennie and his cohorts have done anything about providing shelter, I haven’t heard of it. There’s apt to be a lot of sick people in Chester’s Mill before sundown. With luck,
only heatstroke and asthma, but there could be a few heart attacks as well.”

  “Guys, maybe we should go back,” Gina said. “I feel like a rat deserting a sinking ship.”

  “No!” Linda said so sharply that they all looked at her, even Audi. “Rusty said something bad is going to happen. It might not be today … but he said it might be. Get your lead for the ambulance windows and go. I don’t dare wait around. One of Rennie’s thugs came to see me this morning, and if he swings by the house and sees the van’s gone—”

  “Go on, go,” Twitch said. “I’ll back up so you can get out. Don’t bother with Main Street, it’s already a mess.”

  “Main Street past the cop-shop?” Linda almost shuddered. “No thanks. Mom’s taxi goes West Street up to Highland.”

  Twitch got in behind the wheel of the ambulance and the two young nurse draftees got in back again, Gina giving Linda a final doubtful look over her shoulder.

  Linda paused, looking first at the sleeping, sweaty baby, then at Ginny. “Maybe you and Twitch can go back to the hospital tonight to see how things are there. Say you were on a call way the hell and gone out in Northchester, or something. Just, whatever you do, don’t mention anything about Black Ridge.”

  “No.”

  Easy to say now, Linda thought. You might not find dummying up so easy if Carter Thibodeau bends you over a sink.

  She pushed Audrey back, shut the slider, and got behind the wheel of the Odyssey Green.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Thurse said, climbing in beside her. “I haven’t been this paranoid since my off-the-pig days.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.”

  She backed her van around the ambulance and started up West Street.

  4

  “Jim,” Randolph said from the backseat of the Hummer, “I’ve been thinking about this raid.”

  “Have you, now. Why don’t you give us the benefit of your thinking, Peter?”