Under the Dome

He put on a team-player smile. 'You know, I think that's a great idea, sir. You send em around to the station tomorrow around ten - '

'Nine might be better, Pete.'

'Nine's fine,' Andy said in his dreamy voice.

'Further discussion?' Rennie asked.

There was none. Andrea looked as if she might have had something to say but couldn't remember what it was.

'Then I call the question,' Rennie said. 'Will the Board ask acting Chief Randolph to take on Junior, Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, and Carter Thibodeau as deputies at base salary? Their period of service to last until this darn crazy business is sorted out? Those in favor signify in the usual manner.'

They all raised their hands.

'The measure is approv - '

He was interrupted by two reports that sounded like gunfire.

They all jumped. Then a third came, and Rennie, who had worked with motors for most of his life, realized what it was.

'Relax, folks. Just a backfire. Generator clearing its throa - '

The elderly gennie backfired a fourth time, then died. The lights went out, leaving them for a moment in stygian blackness. Andrea shrieked.

On his left, Andy Sanders said: 'Oh my gosh, Jim, the propane - '

Rennie reached out with his free hand and grabbed Andy's arm. Andy shut up. As Rennie was relaxing his grip, light crept back into the long pine-paneled room. Not the bright overheads but the emergency box-lights mounted in the four corners. In their weak glow, the faces clustered at the conference table's north end looked yellow and years older. They looked frightened. Even Big Jim Rennie looked frightened.

'No problem,' Randolph said with a cheeriness that sounded manufactured rather than organic. 'Tank just ran dry, that's all. Plenty more in the town supply barn.'

Andy shot Big Jim a look. It was no more than a shifting of the eyes, but Rennie had an idea Andrea saw it. What she might eventually make of it was another question.

She'll forget it after her next dose of Oxy, he told himself. By morning for sure.

And in the meantime, the town's supplies of propane - or lack thereof- didn't concern him much. He would take care of that situation when it became necessary.

'Okay, folks, I know you're as anxious to get out of here as I am, so-let's move on to our next order of business. I think we should officially confirm Pete here as our Chief of Police pro tern.'

'Yes, why not?' Andy asked. He sounded tired.

'If there's no discussion,' Big Jim said, 'I'll call the question.' They voted as he wanted them to vote. They always did.

7

Junior was sitting on the front step of the big Rennie home on Mill Street when the lights of his father's Hummer splashed up the driveway. Junior was at peace.The headache had not returned. Angie and Dodee were stored in the McCain pantry, where they would be fine - at least for a while. The money he'd taken was back in his father's safe. There was a gun in his pocket - the pearl-grip.38 his father had given him for his eighteenth birthday. Now he and his father would speak. Junior would listen very closely to what the King of Nc Money Down had to say. If he sensed his father knew what he, Junior, had done - he didn't see how that was possible, but his father knew so much - then Junior would kill him. After that he would turn the gun on himself. Because there would be no running away, not tonight. Probably not tomorrow, either. On his way back, he had stooped on the town common and listened to the conversations going en there. What they were saying was insane, but the large bubble of light to the south - and the smaller one to the southwest, where 117 ran toward Castle Rock - suggested that tonight, insanity just happened to be the truth.

The door of the Hummer opened, chunked closed. His father walked toward himr his briefcase banging one thigh. He didn't look suspicious, wary, or angry. He sat down beside Junior on the step without a word. Then, in a gesture that took Junior completely by surprise, he put a hand on the younger man's neck and squeezed gently.

'You heard?' he asked.

'Some,' Junior said. 'I don't understand it, though.'

'None of us do. I think there are going to be some hard days ahead while this gets sorted out. So I have to ask you something.'

'What's that?'Junior's hand closed around the butt of the pistol.

'Will you play your part? You and your friends? Frankie? Carter and the Searles boy?'

Junior was silent, waiting. What was this shit?

'Peter Randolph's acting chief now. He's going to need some men to fill out the police roster. Good men. Are you willing to serve as a deputy until this damn clustermug is over?'

Junior felt a wild urge to scream with laughter. Or triumph. Or both. Big Jim's hand was still on the nape of his neck. Not squeezing. Not pinching. Almost... caressing.

Junior took his hand off the gun in his pocket. It occurred to him that he was still on a roll - the roll of all rolls.

Today he had killed two girls he'd known since childhood.

Tomorrow he was going to be a town cop.

'Sure, Dad,' he said. 'If you need us, we are there! And for the first time in maybe four years (it could have been longer), he kissed his father's cheek.

CHAPTER 5

PRAYERS

1

Barbie and Julia Shumway didn't talk much; there wasn't much to say. Theirs was, as far as Barbie could see, the only car on the road, but lights streamed from most of the farmhouse windows once they cleared town. Out here, where there were always chores to be done and no one fully trusted Western Maine Power, almost everyone had a genme. When they passed the WCIK radio tower, the two red lights at the top were flashing as they always did. The electric cross in front of the little studio building was also lit, a gleamir.g white beacon in the dark. Above it, the stars spilled across the sky in their usual extravagant profusion, a never-ending cataract of energy that needed no generator to power it.