Under the Dome

“Maybe she went down to Sweetbriar to see if they’re serving dinner. I hope that’s it, because if she tries to walk all the way back to her place, she’s apt to bust her stitches.”

Harriet looked alarmed. “Could she, like, bleed to death? Bleeding to death from your woo-woo… that would be bad. ”

Rusty had heard many terms for the vagina, but this one was new to him. “Probably not, but she could end up back here for an extended stay. What about her baby?”

Harriet looked stricken. She was an earnest little thing who had a way of blinking distractedly behind the thick lenses of her glasses when she was nervous; the kind of girl, Rusty thought, who might treat herself to a mental breakdown about fifteen years after graduating summa cum laude from Smith or Vassar.

“The baby! Omigod, Little Walter!” She dashed down the hall before Rusty could stop her and came back looking relieved. “Still here. He’s not very lively, but that seems to be his nature.”

“Then she’ll probably be back. Whatever other problems she might have, she loves the kid. In an absentminded sort of way.”

“Huh?” More furious blinking.

“Never mind. I’ll be back as soon as I can, Hari. Keep em flying.”

“Keep what flying?” Her eyelids now appeared on the verge of catching fire.

Rusty almost said, I mean keep your pecker up, but that wasn’t right, either. In Harriet’s terminology, a pecker was probably a wah-wah.

“Keep busy,” he said.

Harriet was relieved. “I can do that, Dr. Rusty, no prob.”

Rusty turned to go, but now a man was standing there—thin, not bad-looking once you got past the hooked nose, a lot of graying hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked a bit like the late Timothy Leary. Rusty was starting to wonder if he was going to get out of here, after all.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Actually, I was thinking that perhaps I could help you.” He stuck out a bony hand. “Thurston Marshall. My partner and I were weekending at Chester Pond, and got caught in this whatever-it-is.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Rusty said.

“The thing is, I have a bit of medical experience. I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam mess. Thought about going to Canada, but I had plans… well, never mind. I registered as a CO and did two years as an orderly at a veterans’ hospital in Massachusetts.”

That was interesting. “Edith Nourse Rogers?”

“The very one. My skills are probably a bit out-of-date, but—”

“Mr. Marshall, do I have a job for you.”

11

As Rusty headed down 119, a horn blew. He checked his mirror and saw one of the town’s Public Works trucks preparing to turn in at Catherine Russell Drive. It was hard to tell in the red light of the lowering sun, but he thought Stewart Bowie was behind the wheel. What he saw on second glance gladdened Rusty’s heart: there appeared to be a couple of LP tanks in the bed of the truck. He’d worry about where they came from later, maybe even ask some questions, but for now he was just relieved to know that soon the lights would be back on, the respirators and monitors online. Maybe not for the long haul, but he was in full one-day-at-a-time mode.

At the top of Town Common Hill he saw his old skateboarding patient, Benny Drake, and a couple of his friends. One was the McClatchey boy who’d set up the live video feed of the missile strike. Benny waved and shouted, obviously wanting Rusty to stop and shoot the shit. Rusty waved back, but didn’t slow. He was anxious to see Linda. Also to hear what she had to say, of course, but mostly to see her, put his arms around her, and finish making up with her.

12

Barbie needed to take a piss but held his water. He had done interrogations in Iraq and knew how it worked over there. He didn’t know if it would be the same here just yet, but it might be. Things were moving very rapidly, and Big Jim had shown a ruthless ability to move with the times. Like most talented demagogues, he never underestimated his target audience’s willingness to accept the absurd.

Barbie was also very thirsty, and it didn’t surprise him much when one of the new officers showed up with a glass of water in one hand and a sheet of paper with a pen clipped to it in the other. Yes, it was how these things went; how they went in Fallujah, Takrit, Hilla, Mosul, and Baghdad. How they also now went in Chester’s Mill, it seemed.

The new officer was Junior Rennie.

“Well, look at you,” Junior said. “Don’t look quite so ready to beat guys up with your fancy Army tricks right now.” He raised the hand holding the sheet of paper and rubbed his left temple with the tips of his fingers. The paper rattled.

“You don’t look so good yourself.”

Junior dropped his hand. “I’m fine as rain.”

Now that was odd, Barbie thought; some people said right as rain and some said fine as paint, but none, as far as he knew, said fine as rain. It probably meant nothing, but—

“Are you sure? Your eye’s all red.”

“I’m fucking terrific. And I’m not here to discuss me.”