Under the Dome

It was the old f**k and one of the candy stripers, the pretty dago whose name was Buffalo or something like Buffalo. The old f**k had her top open and was feeling her tits. She had his fly open and was jerking his dick. A poison green light surrounded them.

'Junior and his friend beat me up,' the old f**k was saying, 'but now his friend's dead and soon he will be, too. Barbie's orders.'

'I like to suck Barbie's dick like a peppermint stick,' the Buffalo-girl said, and the old f**k said he enjoyed that, too. Then, when Junior blinked his eyes, the two of them were just walking down the hall. No green aura, no dirty stuff. So maybe it had been a hallucination. On the other hand, maybe not. One thing was for sure: they were all in it together. All in league with Baaarbie. He was in jail, but that was just temporary. To gain sympathy, probably. All part of Baaarbie's plaaan. Plus, he thought that in jail he was beyond Junior's reach.

'Wrong,' he whispered as he sat by the window, looking out at the night with his now-defective vision. 'Wrong.'

Junior knew exactly what had happened to him; it had corne in a flash, and the logic was undeniable. He was suffering from thallium poisoning, like what had happened to that Russian guy in England. Barbie's dog tags had been coated with thallium dust, and Junior had handled them, and now he was dying. And since his father had sent him to Barbie's apartment, that meant he was a part of it, too. He was another of Barbie's... his... what did you call those guys...

'Minions,'Junior whispered.'Just another one of Big Jim Rennie's filet minions'

Once you thought about it - once your mind was clarified - it madejperfect sens?. His father wanted to shut him up about Coggins and Perkins. Hence, thallium poisoning. It all hung together.

Outside, beyond the lawn, a wolf loped across the parking lot. On the lawn itself, two naked women were in the 69 position. Sixty-nine, lunchtime! he and Frankie used to chant when they were kids and saw two girls walking together, not knowing what it meant, only knowing that it was rude. One of the cracksnackers looked like Sammy Bushey.The nurse - Ginny her name was - had told him that Sammy was dead, which was obviously a lie and meant that Ginny was in on it, too; in on it with Baaarbie,

Was there anyone in this whole town who wasn't? Who he could be sure wasn't?

Yes, he realized, there were two. The kids he and Frank had found out by the Pond, Alice and Aidan Appleton. He remembered their haunted eyes, and how the girl had hugged him when he picked her up. When he told her she was safe, she had asked Do you promise?, and Junior had told her yes. It made him feel really good to promise. The trusting weight of her had made him feel good, too.

He made a sudden decision; he would kill Dale Barbara. If anyone got in his way, he would kill them, too. Then he would find his father and kill him... a thing he had dreamed of doing for years, although he had never admitted it to himself fully until now.

Once that was done, he'd seek out Aidan and Alice. If someone tried to stop him, he'd kill them, too. He would take the kids back out to Chester Pond, and he would take care of them. He would keep the promise he had made to Alice. If he did, he wouldn't die. God would not let him die of thallium poisoning while he was taking care of those kids.

Now Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders went prancing across the parking lot, wearing cheerleader skirts and sweaters with big Mills Wildcats Ws on their chests. They saw him looking and began to gyrate their hips and lift up their skirts. Their faces slopped and jiggled with decay. They were chanting, 'Open up the pantry door! Come on in, let's f**k some more! Go... TEAM!'

Junior closed his eyes. Opened them. His girlfriends were gone. Another hallucination, like the wolf. About the 69 girls he wasn't so sure.

Maybe, he thought, he wouldn't take the children out to the Pond, after all. That was pretty far from town. Maybe he would take them to the McCain pantry, instead.That was closer.There was plenty of food.

And, of course, it was dark.

'I'll take care of you, kids,'Junior said.'I'll keep you safe. Once Barbie's dead, the whole conspiracy will fall apart.'

After a while he leaned his forehead against the glass and then he too slept.

4

Henrietta Clavard's ass might only have been bruised instead of broken, but it still hurt like a sonofabitch - at eighty-four, she'd found, everything that went wrong with you hurt like a sonofabitch - and at first she thought it was her ass that woke her at first light on that Thursday morning. But the Tylenol she'd taken at three a.m. still seemed to be holding. Plus, she'd found her late husband's fanny-ring (John Clavard had suffered hemorrhoids), and that helped considerably. No, it was something else, and shortly after awakening, she realized what it was. The Freemans' Irish setter, Buddy, was howling. Buddy never howled. He was the most polite dog on Battle Street, a short lane just beyond Catherine Russell Drive. Also, the Freemans' generator had stopped. Henrietta thought that might have actually been what woke her up, not the dog. Certainly it had put her to sleep last night. It wasn't one of those rackety ones, blowing blue exhaust smoke into the air; the Freemans' generator gave off a low, sleek purr that was actually quite soothing. Henrietta supposed it was expensive, but the Freemans could afford it. Will owned the Toyota franchise Big Jim Rennie had once coveted, and although these were hard times for most car dealers, Will had always seemed the exception to the rule. Just last year, he and Lois had put a very nice and tasteful addition on the house.

But that howling.The dog sounded hurt. A hurt pet was the sort of thing nice people like the Freemans saw to immediately... so why weren't they?

Henrietta got out of bed (wincing a little as her butt came out of the comforting hole in the foam doughnut) and went to the window. She could see the Freemans'split-level perfectly well, although the light was gray and listless instead of sharp and clear, as it usually was on mornings in late October. From the window she could hear Buddy even better, but she couldn't see anyone moving around over there. The house was entirely dark, not so much as a Coleman lantern glowing in a single window. She would have thought they'd gone somewhere, but both cars were parked in the driveway. And where was there to go, anyway?