Under the Dome

And with this, Jackie was at last convinced.

3

BURN CLEANSE BURN CLEANSE

THE BEAST WILL BE CAST INTO A

BURNING LAKE OF FIRE (REV 19:20)

"2 BE TORMENTED DAY & NITE 4-EVER" (20:10)

BURN THE WICKED

PURIFY THE SAINTLIE

BURN CLEANSE BURN CLEANSE

JESUS OF FIRE COMING

The three men crammed into the cab of the rumbling Public Works truck looked at this cryptic message with some wonder. It had been painted on the storage building behind the WCIK studios, black on red and in letters so large they covered almost the entire surface.

The man in the middle was Roger Killian, the chicken farmer with the bullet-headed brood. He turned to Stewart Bowie, who was behind the wheel of the truck. 'What's it mean, Stewie?'

It was Fern Bowie who answered. 'It means that goddam Phil Bushey s crazier than ever, that's what it means.' He opened the truck's glove compartment, removed a pair of greasy work gloves, and revealed a.38 revolver. He checked the loads, then snapped the cylinder back into place with a flick of his wrist and jammed the pistol in his belt.

'You know, Fernie,' Stewart said, 'that is a goddam good way to blow your babymakers off.'

'Don't you worry about me, worry about him,' Fern said, pointing back at the studio. From it the faint sound of gospel music drifted to them. 'He's been gettin high on his own supply for most of a year now, and he's about as reliable as nitroglycerine.'

'Phil likes people to call him The Chef now,' Roger Killian said.

They had first pulled up outside the studio and Stewart had honked the PW truck's big horn - not once but several times. Phil Bushey had not come out. He might be in there hiding; he might be wandering in the woods behind the station; it was even possible, Stewart thought, that he was in the lab. Paranoid. Dangerous. Which still didn't make the gun a good idea. He leaned over, plucked it from Fern's belt, and tucked it under the driver's seat.

'Hey!' Fern cried.

'You're not firing a gun in there,' Stewart said. 'You're apt to blow us all to the moon.' And to Roger, he said: 'When's the last time you saw that scrawny motherfucker?'

Roger mulled it over. 'Been four weeks, at least - since the last big shipment out of town. When we had that big Chinook helicopter come in.' He pronounced it Shin-oook. Rommie Burpee would have understood.

Stewart considered. Not good. If Bushey was in the woods, that was all right. If he was cowering in the studio, paranoid and thinking they were Feds, probably still no problem... unless he decided to come out shooting, that was.

If he was in the storage building, though... that might be a problem.

Stewart said to his brother,'There's some goodsize junks of wood in the back of the truck. Get you one of those. If Phil shows and starts: cuttin up rough, clock im one.'

'What if he has a gun?' Roger asked, quite reasonably

'He won't,' Stewart said. And although he wasn't actually sure of this, he had his orders: two tanks of propane, to be delivered to the hospital posthaste. And we're going to move the rest of it out of there as soon as we can, Big Jim had said. We're officially out of the meth business.

That was something of a relief; when they were shut of this Dome thing, Stewart intended to get out of the funeral business, too. Move someplace warm, like Jamaica or Barbados. He never wanted to see another dead body. But he didn't want to be the one who told Chef Bushey they were closing down, and he had informed Big Jim of that.

Let me worry about The Chef, Big Jim had said.

Stewart drove the big orange truck around the building and backed it up to the rear doors. He left the engine idling to run the winch and the hoist.

'Lookit that,' Roger Killian marveled. He was staring into the west, where the sun was going down in a troubling red smear. Soon it would sink below the great black smudge left by the woods-fire and be blotted out in a dirty eclipse. 'Don't that just beat the dickens.'

'Quit gawking,' Stewart said. T want to do this and get gone. Fernie, get you a junk. Pick out a good one.'

Fern climbed over the hoist and picked out a leftover piece of planking about as long as a baseball bat. He held it in both hands and gave it an experimental swish. 'This'U do,' he said.

'Baskin-Robbins,' Roger said dreamily. He was still shading his eyes and squinting west. The squint was not a good look for him; it made him resemble a fairy-tale troll.

Stewart paused while unlocking the back door, a complicated process that involved a touchpad and two locks. 'What are you pissing about?'

'Thirty-one flavors,' Roger said. He smiled, revealing a rotting set of teeth that had never been visited by Joe Boxer or probably any dentist.

Stewart had no idea what Roger was talking about, but his brother did. 'Don't think that's an ice cream ad on the side of the buildin,' Fern said. 'Unless there's Baskin-Robbins in the Book of Revelations.'

'Shut up, both of you,' Stewart said. 'Fernie, stand ready with that junk.' He pushed the door open and peered in. 'Phil?'

'Call im Chef,' Roger advised. 'Like that nigger cook on South Park. That's what he likes.'

'Chef?' Stewart called. 'You in there, Chef?'

No answer. Stewart fumbled into the gloom, half expecting his hand to be seized at any moment, and found the light switch. He turned it on, revealing a room that stretched about three-quarters the length of the storage building. The walls were unfinished bare wood, the spaces between the laths stuffed with pink foam insulation. The room was almost filled "with LP gas tanks and canisters of all sizes and brands. He had no idea how many there were in alt, but if forced to guess, he would have said between four and six hundred.

Stewart walked slowly up the center aisle, peering at the stenciling on the tanks. Big Jim had told him exactly which ones to take, had said they'd be near the back, and by God, they were. He stopped at the five municipal-size tanks with CR HOSP on the side. They were between tanks that had been filched from the post office and some with MILL MIDDLE SCHOOL on the sides.