Under the Dome

He shook his head.

'Do you mind? Because I can wait.'

He shook his head again. She lit up, then blew smoke out her open window. It was still warm - a real Indian summer day for sure - but it wouldn't stay that way. Another week or so and the weather would turn wrong, as the oldtimers said. Or maybe not, she thought. Wlto in the hell knows? If the Dome stayed in place, she had no doubt that plenty of meteorologists would weigh in on the subject of the weather inside, but so what? The Weather Channel Yodas couldn't even predict which way a snowstorm would turn, and in Julia s opinion they deserved no more credence than the political geniuses who blabbed their days away at the Sweetbriar Rose bullshit table.

'Thanks for speaking up back there,' he said. 'You saved my bacon.'

'Here's a newsflash, honey - your bacon's still hanging in the smokehouse. What are you going to do next time? Have your friend Cox call the ACLU? They might be interested, but I don't think anyone from the Portland office is going to be visiting Chester's Mill soon.'

'Don't be so pessimistic. The Dome might blow out to sea tonight. Or just dissipate. We don't know.'

'Fat chance. This is a government job - some government's - and I'll bet your Colonel Cox knows it.'

Barbie was silent. He had believed Cox when Cox said the U.S. hadn't been responsible for the Dome. Not because Cox wis necessarily trustworthy, but because Barbie just didn't think America had the technology. Or any other country, for that: matter. But what did he know? His last service job had been threatening scared Iraqis. Sometimes with a gun to their heads.

Junior's friend Frankie DeLesseps was out on Route 119, helping to direct traffic. He was wearing a blue uniform shirt over jeans - there probably hadn't been any uniform pants in his size at the station. He was a tall sonofabitch. And, Julia saw with misgivings, he was wearing a gun on his hip. Smaller than the Clocks the regular Mill police carried, probably his own property, but it was a gun, all right.

'What will you do if the Hitler Youth comes after you?' she asked, lifting her chin in Frankie's direction. 'Good luck hollering police brutality if they jug you and decide to finish what they started. There's only two lawyers in town. One's senile and the other drives a Boxster Jim Rennie got him at discount. Or so I've heard.'

'I can take care of myself

'Oooh, macho.'

'What's up with your paper? It looked ready when 1 left last night.'

'Technically speaking, you left this morning. And yes, it's ready. Pete and I and a few friends will make sure it gets distributed I just didn't see any point in starting while the town was three-quarters empty. Want to be a volunteer newsboy?'

'I would, but I've got a zillion sandwiches to make. Strictly cold food at the restaurant tonight.'

'Maybe I'll drop by.' She tossed her cigarette, only half-smoked, from the window. Then, after a moment's consideration, she got out and stepped on it. Starting a grassfire out here would not be cool, not with the town's new firetrucks stranded in Castle Rock.

'I swung by Chief Perkins's house earlier,' she said as she got back behind the wheel. 'Except of course it's just Brenda's now.'

'How is she?'

"Terrible. But when I said you wanted to see her, and that it was important - although I didn't say what it was about - she agreed. After dark might be best. I suppose your friend will be impatient - '

'Stop calling Cox my friend. He's not my friend.'

They watched silently as the wounded boy was loaded into the back of the ambulance. The soldiers were still watching, too. Probably against orders, and that made Julia feel a little better about them. The ambulance began to buck its way back across the field, lights flashing.

'This is terrible,' she said in a thin voice.

Barbie put an arm around her shoulders. She tensed for a moment, then relaxed. Looking straight ahead - at the ambulance, which was now turning into a cleared lane in the middle of Route 119 - she said: 'What if they shut me down, my friend? What if Rennie and his pet police decide to shut my little newspaper down?'

'That's not going to happen,' Barbie said. But he wondered. If this went on long enough, he supposed every day in Chester's Mill would become Anything Can Happen Day.

'She had something else on her mind,'Julia Shumway said.

'Mrs Perkins?'

'Yes. It was in many ways a very strange conversation.'

'She's grieving for her husband,' Barbie said. 'Grief makes people strange. I said hello to Jack Evans - his wife died yesterday when the Dome came down - and he looked at me as if he didn't know me, although I've been serving him my famous Wednesday meatloaf since last spring.'

'I've known Brenda Perkins since she was Brenda Morse,' Julia said. 'Almost forty years. I thought she might tell me what was troubling her... but she didn't.'

Barbie pointed at the road. 'I think you can go now

As, Julia started the engine, her cell phone trilled. She almost dropped her bag in her hurry to dig it out. She listened, then handed it to Barbie with her ironic smile. 'It's for you, boss.'

It was Cox, and Cox had something to say. Quite a lot, actually. Barbie interrupted long enough to tell Cox what had happened to the boy now headed to Cathy Russell, but Cox either didn't relate Rory Dinsmore's story to what he was saying, or didn't want to. He \ister,ed politely enough, then went on. When he finished, he asked Barbie a question that would have been an order, had Barbie still been in uniform and under his command.

'Sir, I understand what you're asking, but you don't understand the... I guess you'd call it the political situation here. And my little part in it. I had some trouble before this Dome thing, and - '

'We know all about that,' Cox said. 'An altercation with the Second Selectman's son and some of his friends. You were almost arrested, according to what I've got in my folder.'