Under the Dome

Down front, Mel Searles tried to take Al Timmons's loaded shopping basket. When Al wouldn't give it up, Mel tore it away… and then pushed the older man down. Al cried out in pain and shame and outrage. Chief Randolph laughed. It was a short, choppy, unamused sound—Haw! Haw! Haw!— and in it Barbie thought he heard what Chester's Mill might soon become, if the Dome didn't lift,

'Come on, ladies,' he said. 'Let's get out of here.'

13

Rusty and Twitch were lining up the wounded—about a dozen in all—along the cinderblock side of the market when Barbie, Julia, and Rose came out. Anson was standing by the Sweetbriar panel truck with a paper towel pressed to his bleeding arm.

Rusty s face was grim, but when he saw Barbie, he lightened up a little. 'Hey, sport. You're with me this morning. In fact, you're my new RN.'

'You wildly overestimate my triage skills,' Barbie said, but he walked toward Rusty.

Linda Everett ran past Barbie and threw herself into Rusty's arms. He gave her a brief hug. 'Can I help, honey?' she asked. It was Ginny she was looking at, and with horror. Ginny saw the look and wearily closed her eyes.

'No,' Rusty said. 'You do what you need to. I've got Gina and Harriet, and I've got Nurse Barbara.'

'I'll do what I can,' Barbie said, and almost added: Until I'm arrested, that is.

'You'll be fine,' Rusty said. In a lower voice he added, 'Gina and Harriet are the most willing helpers in the world, but once they get past giving pills and slapping on Band-Aids, they're pretty much lost.'

Linda bent to Ginny. 'I'm so sorry,' she said.

'I'll be fine,' Ginny said, but she did not open her eyes.

Linda gave her husband a kiss and a troubled look, then walked back toward where Jackie Wettington was standing with a pad in her hand, taking Ernie Calvert's statement. Ernie wiped his eyes repeatedly as he talked.

Rusty and Barbie worked side by side for over an hour, while the cops strung yellow police tape in front of the market. At some point, Andy Sanders came down to survey the damage, clucking and shaking his head. Barbie heard him ask someone what the world was coming to, when hometown folks could get up to a thing like this.

He also shook Chief Randolph's hand and told him he was doing a hell of a job.

Hell of a job.

14

When you're feeling it, lousy breaks disappear. Strife becomes your friend. Bad luck turns hit-the-Megabucks good. You do not accept these things with gratitude (an emotion reserved for wimps and losers, in Big Jim Rennie's opinion) but as your due. Feeling it is like riding in a magic swing, and one should (once more in Big Jim's opinion) glide imperiously.

If he had emerged from the big old Rennie manse on Mill Street a little later or a little earlier, he would not have seen what he did, and he might have dealt with Brenda Perkins in an entirely different way. But he came out at exactly the right time. That was how it went when you were feeling it; the defense collapsed and you rushed through the magical hole thus created, making the easy layup.

It was the chanted cries of Oh-pun UP! Oh-pun UP! that got him out of his study, where he had been making notes for what he planned to call the Disaster Administration… of which cheerful, grinning Andy Sanders would be the titular head and Big Jim would be the power behind the throne. If it ain't broke, don't fix it was Rule One in Big Jim's political operating manual, and having Andy out front always worked like a charm. Most of Chester's Mill knew he was an idiot, but it didn't matter. You could run the same game on people over and over, because ninety-eight percent of them were even bigger idiots. And although Big Jim had never planned a political campaign on such a grand scale—it amounted to a municipal dictatorship—he had no doubt it would work.

He hadn't included Brenda Perkins in his list of possible complicating factors, but no matter. When you were feeling it, complicating factors had a way of disappearing. This you also accepted as your due.

He walked down the sidewalk to the corner of Mill and Main, a distance of no more than a hundred paces, with his belly swinging placidly before him. The Town Common was directly across the way. A little farther down the hill on the other side of the street were the Town Hall and the PD, with War Memorial Plaza in between.

He couldn't see Food City from the corner, but he could see all of the Main Street business section. And he saw Julia Shumway. She came hurrying out of the Democrat's office, a camera in one hand. She jogged down the street toward the sound of the chanting, trying to sling the camera over her shoulder while on the move. Big Jim watched her. It was funny, really—how anxious she was to get to the latest disaster.

It got funnier. She stopped, turned, jogged back, tried the newspaper office's door, found it open, and locked it. Then she hurried off once more, anxious to watch her friends and neighbors behaving badly.