Under the Dome: A Novel (121 page)

A new helicopter is beating in from the west, and although Henry doesn’t know it, Colonel James Cox is inside. Cox is also not entirely displeased with the way Visitors Day has gone so far. He has been told no one on the Chester’s Mill side seems to be preparing for a press conference, but this doesn’t surprise or discommode him. Based on the extensive files he has been accumulating, he would have been more surprised if Rennie had put in an appearance. Cox has saluted a lot of men over the years, and he can smell a bully-pulpit coward a mile away.

Then Cox sees the long line of visitors and the trapped townspeople facing them. The sight drives James Rennie from his mind. “Isn’t that the damndest thing,” he murmurs. “Isn’t that just the damndest thing anyone ever saw.”

On the Dome side, Special Deputy Toby Manning shouts:
“Here comes the bus!”
Although the civilians barely notice—they are either raptly engaged with their relatives or still searching for them—the cops raise a cheer.

Henry walks to the back of his cruiser, and sure enough, a big yellow schoolbus is just passing Jim Rennie’s Used Cars. Pamela Chen may not weigh more than a hundred and five pounds soaking wet, but she’s come through bigtime, and with a big bus.

Henry checks his watch and sees that it’s twenty minutes past eleven.
We’re going to get through this,
he thinks.
We’re going to get through this just fine.

On Main Street, three big orange trucks are rolling up Town Common Hill. In the third one, Peter Randolph is crammed in with Stew, Fern, and Roger (redolent of chickens). As they head out 119 northbound toward Little Bitch Road and the radio station, Randolph is struck by a thought, and barely restrains himself from smacking his palm against his forehead.

They have plenty of firepower, but they have forgotten the helmets and Kevlar vests.

Go back and get them? If they do that, they won’t be in position until quarter past twelve, maybe even later. And the vests would almost certainly turn out to be a needless precaution, anyway. It’s eleven against two, and the two are probably stoned out of their gourds.

Really, it should be a tit.

8

Andy Sanders was stationed behind the same oak he’d used for cover the first time the bitter men came. Although he hadn’t taken any grenades, he had six ammo clips stuck in the front of his belt, plus four more poking into the small of his back. There were another two dozen in the wooden crate at his feet. Enough to hold off an army … although he supposed if Big Jim actually sent an army, they’d take him out in short order. After all, he was just a pill-roller.

One part of him couldn’t believe he was doing this, but another part—an aspect of his character he might never have suspected without the meth—was grimly delighted. Outraged, too. The Big Jims of the world didn’t get to have everything, nor did they get to take everything away. There would be no negotiation this time, no politics, no backing down. He would stand with his friend. His
soul-mate.
Andy understood that his state of mind was nihilistic, but that was all right. He had spent his life counting the cost, and stoned don’t-give-a-shit-itis was a delirious change for the better.

He heard trucks approaching and checked his watch. It had stopped. He looked up at the sky, and judged by the position of the yellow-white blear that used to be the sun that it must be close to noon.

He listened to the swelling sound of diesel engines, and when the sound diverged, Andy knew his
compadre
had smelled out the play—smelled it out as surely as any wise old defensive lineman on a Sunday
day afternoon. Some of them were swinging around toward the back of the station to the access road there.

Andy took one more deep drag of his current fry-daddy, held his breath as long as he could, then huffed it out. Regretfully, he dropped the roach and stepped on it. He didn’t want any smoke (no matter how deliciously clarifying) to give away his position.

I love you, Chef,
Andy Sanders thought, and pushed off the safety of his Kalashnikov.

9

There was a light chain across the rutted access road. Freddy, behind the wheel of the lead truck, did not hesitate, simply hit it and snapped it with the grill. The lead truck and the one behind it (piloted by Mel Searles) headed into the woods.

Stewart Bowie was behind the wheel of the third truck. He stopped in the middle of Little Bitch Road, pointed at the WCIK radio tower, then looked at Randolph, who was jammed against the door with his HK semiauto between his knees.

“Go another half a mile,” Randolph instructed, “then pull up and kill the engine.” It was just eleven thirty-five. Excellent. Plenty of time.

“What’s the plan?” Fern asked.

“The plan is we wait until noon. When we hear shooting, we roll at once, and take them from behind.”

“These trucks is pretty noisy,” Roger Killian said. “What if those guys hear em comin? We’ll lose that whatdoyoucallit, elephant of surprise.”

“They won’t hear us,” Randolph said. “They’ll be sitting in the station, watching television in air-conditioned comfort. They’re not going to know what hit them.”

“Shouldn’t we have gotten some bulletproof vests or something?” Stewart asked.

“Why carry all that weight on such a hot day? Stop worrying. Ole
Cheech and Chong there are going to be in hell before they even know they’re dead.”

10

Shortly before twelve o’clock, Julia looked around and saw that Barbie was gone. When she walked back to the farmhouse, he was loading canned goods into the rear of the Sweetbriar Rose van. He’d put several bags in the stolen phone company van as well.

“What are you doing? We just unloaded those last night.”

Barbie turned a strained, unsmiling face toward her. “I know, and I think we were wrong to do it. I don’t know if it’s being close to the box or not, but all at once I seem to feel that magnifying glass Rusty talked about right over my head, and pretty soon the sun’s going to come out and start shining through it. I hope I’m wrong.”

She studied him. “Is there more stuff? I’ll help you if there is. We can always put it back later.”

“Yes,” Barbie said, and gave her a strained grin. “We can always put it back later.”

11

At the end of the access road there was a small clearing with a long-abandoned house in it. Here the two orange trucks pulled up, and the raiding party disembarked. Teams of two swung down long, heavy duffle bags that had been stenciled with the words
HOME-LAND SECURITY
. On one of the bags some wit had added REMEMBER THE ALAMO in Magic Marker. Inside were more HK semiautos, two Mossberg pump shotguns with eight-round capacity, and ammo, ammo, ammo.

“Uh, Fred?” It was Stubby Norman. “Shouldn’t we have vests, or somethin?”

“We’re hitting them from behind, Stubby. Don’t worry about it.”

Freddy hoped he sounded better than he felt. He had a gutful of butterflies.

“Do we give em a chance to surrender?” Mel asked. “I mean, Mr. Sanders being a selectman and all?”

Freddy had thought about this. He’d also thought about the Honor Wall, where photographs of the three Chester’s Mill cops who had died in the line of duty since World War II were hung. He had no urge to have his own photo on that wall, and since Chief Randolph hadn’t given him specific orders on this subject, he felt free to issue his own.

“If their hands are up, they live,” he said. “If they’re unarmed, they live. Anything else, they fucking die. Anyone got a problem with that?”

No one did. It was eleven fifty-six. Almost showtime.

He surveyed his men (plus Lauren Conree, so hard-faced and small-busted she almost could have passed for one), pulled in a deep breath, and said: “Follow me. Single-file. We’ll stop at the edge of the woods and scope things out.”

Randolph’s concerns about poison ivy and poison oak proved groundless, and the trees were spaced widely enough to make the going quite easy, even loaded down with ordnance. Freddy thought his little force moved through the clumps of juniper they couldn’t avoid with admirable stealth and silence. He was starting to feel that this was going to be all right. In fact, he was almost looking forward to it. Now that they were actually on the move, the butterflies in his stomach had flown away.

Easy does it,
he thought.
Easy and quiet. Then, bang! They’ll never know what hit em.

12

Chef, crouched behind the blue panel truck parked in the high grass at the rear of the supply building, heard them almost as soon as they left the clearing where the old Verdreaux homestead was gradually sinking back into the earth. To his drug-jacked ears and
Condition Red brain, they sounded like a herd of buffalo looking for the nearest waterhole.

He scurried to the front of the truck and knelt with his gun braced on the bumper. The grenades which had been hung from the barrel of GOD’S WARRIOR now lay on the ground behind him. Sweat gleamed on his skinny, pimple-studded back. The door opener was clipped to the waistband of his RIBBIT pajamas.

Be patient,
he counseled himself.
You don’t know how many there are. Let them get out into the open before you start shooting, then mow them down in a hurry.

He scattered several extra clips for GOD’S WARRIOR in front of him and waited, hoping to Christ Andy wouldn’t have to whistle. Hoping he wouldn’t either. It was possible they could still get out of this and live to fight another day.

13

Freddy Denton reached the edge of the woods, pushed a fir bough aside with the barrel of his rifle, and peered out. He saw an overgrown hayfield with the radio tower in the middle of it, emitting a low hum he seemed to feel in the fillings of his teeth. A fence posted with signs reading HIGH VOLTAGE surrounded it. To the far left of his position was the one-story brick studio building. In between was a big red barn. He assumed the barn was for storage. Or making drugs. Or both.

Marty Arsenault eased in beside him. Circles of sweat darkened his uniform shirt. His eyes looked terrified. “What’s that truck doing there?” he asked, pointing with the barrel of his gun.

“That’s the Meals On Wheels truck,” Freddy said. “For shut-ins and such. Haven’t you seen that around town?”

“Seen it and helped load it,” Marty said. “I gave up the Catholics for Holy Redeemer last year. How come it’s not inside the barn?” He said
barn
the Yankee way, making it sound like the cry of a discontented sheep.

“How do I know and why would I care?” Freddy asked. “They’re in the studio.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s where the TV is, and the big show out at the Dome is on all the channels.”

Marty raised his HK. “Let me put a few rounds in that truck just to be sure. It could be booby-trapped. Or they could be inside it.”

Freddy pushed the barrel down. “Jesus-please-us, are you crazy? They don’t know we’re here and you just want to give it away? Did your mother have any kids that lived?”

“Fuck you,” Marty said. He considered. “And fuck your mother, too.”

Freddy looked back over his shoulder. “Come on, you guys. We’ll cut across the field to the studio. Look through the back windows and make sure of their positions.” He grinned. “Smooth sailing.”

Aubrey Towle, a man of few words, said: “We’ll see.”

14

In the truck that had remained on Little Bitch Road, Fern Bowie said, “I don’t hear nothing.”

“You will,” Randolph said. “Just wait.”

It was twelve oh-two.

15

Chef watched as the bitter men broke cover and began moving diagonally across the field toward the rear of the studio. Three were wearing actual police uniforms; the other four had on blue shirts that Chef guessed were
supposed
to be uniforms. He recognized Lauren Conree (an old customer from his pot-peddling days) and Stubby Norman, the local junkman. He also recognized Mel Searles, another old customer and a friend of Junior’s. Also a friend of the late Frank
DeLesseps, which probably meant he was one of the guys who had raped Sammy. Well, he wouldn’t be raping anyone else—not after today.

Seven. On this side, at least. On Sanders’s, who knew?

He waited for more, and when no more came, he got to his feet, planted his elbows on the hood of the panel truck, and shouted:
“BEHOLD, THE DAY OF THE LORD COMETH, CRUEL BOTH WITH WRATH AND FIERCE ANGER, TO LAY THE LAND DESOLATE!”

Their heads snapped around, but for a moment they froze, neither trying to raise their weapons nor scatter. They weren’t cops at all, Chef saw; just birds on the ground too dumb to fly.

“AND HE SHALL DESTROY THE SINNERS OUT OF IT! ISAIAH THIRTEEN! SELAH, MOTHERFUCKERS!”

With this homily and call to judgment, Chef opened fire, raking them from left to right. Two of the uniformed cops and Stubby Norman flew backward like broken dolls, painting the high trashgrass with their blood. The paralysis of the survivors broke. Two turned and fled toward the woods. Conree and the last of the uniformed cops booked for the studio. Chef tracked them and opened fire again. The Kalashnikov burped a brief burst, and then the clip was empty.

Conree clapped her hand to the back of her neck as if stung, went facedown into the grass, kicked twice, and was still. The other one—a bald guy—made it to the rear of the studio. Chef didn’t care too much about the pair who’d run for the woods, but he didn’t want to let Baldy get away. If Baldy got around the corner of the building, he was apt to see Sanders, and might shoot him in the back.

Chef grabbed a fresh clip and rammed it home with the heel of his hand.

16

Frederick Howard Denton, aka Baldy, wasn’t thinking about anything when he reached the back of the WCIK studio. He had seen the Conree girl go down with her throat blown out, and that was the end of rational consideration. All he knew now was that he didn’t want his picture on the Honor Wall. He had to get under cover, and that meant inside. There was a door. Behind it, some gospel group was singing “We’ll Join Hands Around the Throne.”

Freddy grabbed the knob. It refused to turn.

Locked.

He dropped his gun, raised the hand which had been holding it, and screamed:
“I surrender! Don’t shoot, I sur—”