Under the Dome

Jackie Wettington and Linda Everett were parked outside Food City. It was closing at five PM instead of eight. Randolph had sent them there thinking the early closing might cause trouble. A ridiculous idea, because the supermarket was almost empty. There were hardly a dozen cars in the parking lot, and the few remaining shoppers were moving in a slow daze, as if sharing the same bad dream. The two officers saw only one cashier, a teenager named Bruce Yardley. The kid was taking currency and writing chits instead of running credit cards. The meat counter was looking depleted, but there was still plenty of chicken and most of the canned and dry-goods shelves were fully stocked.

They were waiting for the last customers to leave when Linda’s cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and felt a little stab of fear in her stomach. It was Marta Edmunds, who kept Janelle and Judy when Linda and Rusty were both working—as they had been, almost nonstop, since the Dome came down. She hit callback.

“Marta?” she said, praying it was nothing, Marta asking if it was okay for her to take the girls down to the common, something like that. “Everything all right?”

“Well… yes. That is, I guess so.” Linda hating the worry she heard in Marta’s voice. “But… you know that seizure thing?”

“Oh God—did she have one?”

“I think so,” Marta said, then hurried on: “They’re perfectly okay now, in the other room, coloring.”

“What happened? Tell me!”

“They were on the swings. I was doing my flowers, getting them ready for winter—”

“Marta, please!” Linda said, and Jackie laid a hand on her arm.

“I’m sorry. Audi started to bark, so I turned around. I said, ‘Honey, are you all right?’ She didn’t answer, just got out of the swing and sat down underneath—you know, where there’s a little dip from all the feet? She didn’t fall out or anything, just sat down. She was staring straight ahead and doing that lip-smacking thing you told me to watch for. I ran over… kind of shook her… and she said… let me think…”

Here it comes, Linda thought. Stop Halloween, you have to stop Halloween.

But no. It was something else entirely.

“She said ‘The pink stars are falling. The pink stars are falling in lines.’ Then she said, ‘It’s so dark and everything smells bad.’ Then she woke up and now everything’s fine.”

“Thank God for that,” Linda said, and spared a thought for her five-year-old. “Is Judy okay? Did it upset her?”

There was a long pause on the line and then Marta said, “Oh.”

“Oh? What does that mean, oh?”

“It was Judy, Linda. Not Janelle. This time it was Judy.”

15

I want to play that other game you said, Aidan had told Carolyn Sturges when they had stopped on the common to talk to Rusty. The other game she had in mind was Red Light, although Carolyn had only the slightest recollection of the rules—not surprising, since she hadn’t played it since she was six or seven.

But once she was standing against a tree in the commodious backyard of the “passionage,” the rules came back to her. And, unexpectedly, to Thurston, who seemed not only willing to play, but eager.

“Remember,” he instructed the children (who somehow seemed to have missed the pleasures of Red Light themselves), “she can count to ten as fast as she wants to, and if she catches you moving when she turns around, you have to go all the way back.”

“She won’t catch me, ” Alice said.

“Me, either,” Aidan said stoutly.

“We’ll see about that,” Carolyn said, and turned her face to the tree: “One, two, three, four… five, six, seven… eight-nine-ten RED LIGHT!”

She whirled around. Alice was standing with a smile on her mouth and one leg extended in a big old giant step. Thurston, also smiling, had his hands extended in Phantom of the Opera claws. She caught the slightest movement from Aidan, but didn’t even think about sending him back. He looked happy, and she had no intention of spoiling that.

“Good,” she said. “Good little statues. Here comes Round Two.” She turned to the tree and counted again, invaded by the old, childishly delicious fear of knowing people were moving in while her back was turned. “Onetwo threefour fivesix seveneightnineten REDLIGHT!”

She whirled. Alice was now only twenty paces away. Aidan was ten paces or so behind her, trembling on one foot, a scab on his knee very visible. Thurse was behind the boy, one hand on his chest like an orator, smiling. Alice was going to be the one to catch her, but that was all right; in the second game the girl would be “it” and her brother would win. She and Thurse would see to it.

She turned to the tree again. “Onetwothreefo—”

Then Alice screamed.