Under the Dome

Alden stumbles backward into Gina Buffaimo, and they both would fall if not for Petra Searles—no lightweight she—steadying them. Mden doesn't look angry, only puzzled. 'M'wife sent me for the canned,' he explains to Petra.

Al mutter conies from the gathering people. It's not an angry sound—not quite yet. They came for groceries and the groceries are there but the door is locked. Now a man has been shoved by a high-school dropout who was a car mechanic last week.

Gina is looking at Carter, Mel, and Frank DeLesseps with widening eyes. She points. 'Those are the guys that raped her!' she tells her friend Harriet without lowering her voice. 'Those are the guys that raped Sammy Bushey!'

The smile disappears from Mel's face; the urge to nyuck-nyuck has left him. 'Shut up,' he says.

At the back of the crowd, Ricky and Randall Killian have arrived in a Chevrolet Canyon pickemup. SamVerdreaux is not far behind, walking, of course; Sam lost his license to drive for good in '07.

Gina takes a step backward, staring at Mel with wide eyes. Beside her, Alden Dinsmore hulks like a farmer-robot with a dead battery. 'You guys are supposed to be police? Hel-lo?'

'That rape stuff was nothing but a whore lie,' Frank says. 'And you better quit yelling about it before you get arrested for disturbing the peace.'

'Fuckin right,' Georgia says. She has moved a little closer to Carter. He ignores her. He is surveying the crowd. And that's what it is now. If fifty people make a crowd, then this is one. More coming, too. Carter wishes he had his gun. He doesn't like the hostility he's seeing.

Velma Winter, who runs Brownie's (or did, before it closed), arrives with Tommy and Willow Anderson. Velma is a big, burly woman who combs her hair like Bobby Darin and looks like she could be the warrior queen of Dyke Nation, but she has buried two husbands and the story you can hear at the bullshit table in Sweetbriar is that she fucked them both to death and is looking for number three at Dipper's on Wednesdays; that's Country Karaoke Night, and draws an older crowd. Now she plants herself in front of Carter, hands on her meaty hips.

'Closed, huh?' she says in a businesslike voice. 'Let's see your paperwork.'

Carter is confused, and being confused makes him angry. 'Back off, bitch. I don't need no paperwork. The Chief sent us down here. The Selectmen ordered it. It's gonna be a food depot.'

'Rationing? That what you mean?' She snorts. 'Not in my town.' She shoves between Mel and Frank and starts hammering on the door. 'Open up! Open up in there!'

'Nobody home,' Frank says. 'You might as well quit it.'

But Ernie Calvert hasn't left. He comes down the pasta-flour-and-sugar aisle. Velma sees him and starts hammering louder. 'Open up, Ernie! Open up!'

'Open up!' voices from the crowd agree.

Frank looks at Mel and nods. Together they grab Velma and muscle her two hundred pounds away from the door. Georgia Roux has turned and is waving Ernie back. Ernie doesn't go. Numb fuck just stands there.

'Open up!' Velma bawls. 'Open up! Open up!'

Tommy and Willow join her. So does Bill Wicker, the postman. So does Lissa, her face shining—all her life she has hoped to be part of a spontaneous demonstration, and here's her chance. She raises a clenched fist and begins to shake it in time—two small shakes on open and a big one on up. Others imitate her. Open up becomes Oh-pun UP! Oh-pun UP! Oh-pun UP! Now they are all shaking their fists in that two-plus-one rhythm—maybe seventy people, maybe eighty, and more arriving all the time. The thin blue line in front of the market looks thinner than ever. The four younger cops look toward Freddy Denton for ideas, but Freddy has no ideas.

He does, however, have a gun. You better fire it into the air pretty soon, Baldy, Carter thinks, or these people are gonna run us down.

Two more cops—Rupert Libby and Toby Whelan—drive down Main i Street from the PD (where they've been drinking coffee and watching CNN), blowing past Julia Shumway, who is jogging along with a camera slung over her shoulder.

Jackie Wettington and Henry Morrison also start toward the supermarket, but then the walkie-talkie on Henry's belt crackles. It's Chiefj Randolph, saying that Henry and Jackie should hold their station at the Gas & Grocery.

'But we hear—' Henry begins.

TThose are your orders,' Randolph says, not adding that they are orders he is just passing on—from a higher power, as it were.

'Oh-pun UP! Oh-pun UP! Oh-pun UP!''The crowd shaking fisted power-salutes in the warm air. Still scared, but excited, too. Getting into it. The Chef would have looked at them and seen a bunch of tyro tiweekers, needing only a Grateful Dead tune on the soundtrack to make the picture conaplete.