Under the Dome

The people who had lived here weren’t tweekers; tweekers wouldn’t be able to keep a house like this for long, they’d freebase the mortgage. But Jack and Myra Evans had enjoyed a little wacky tobacky from time to time, and Phil Bushey had been happy to supply it. They were nice people, and Phil had treated them nice. Back in those days he’d still been capable of treating people nice.

Myra gave them iced coffee. Sammy had been seven or so months gone with Little Walter then, showing plenty, and Myra had asked her if she wanted a boy or a girl. Not looking down her nose a bit. Jack had taken Phil into his little office-den to pay him, and Phil had called to her. “Hey, honey, you should get a load of this!”

It all seemed so long ago.

She tried the front door. It was locked. She picked up one of the decorative stones that bordered Myra’s flowerbed and stood in front of the picture window, hefting it in her hand. After some thought, she went around back instead of throwing it. Climbing through a window would be difficult in her current condition. And even if she was able (and careful), she might cut herself badly enough to interfere with the rest of her plans for the evening.

Also, it was a nice house. She didn’t want to vandalize it if she didn’t have to.

And she didn’t. Jack’s body had been taken away, the town was still functioning well enough for that, but no one had thought to lock the back door. Sammy walked right in. There was no generator and it was darker than a raccoon’s asshole, but there was a box of wooden matches on the kitchen stove, and the first one she lit showed her a flashlight on the kitchen table. It worked just fine. The beam illuminated what looked like a bloodstain on the floor. She switched it away from that in a hurry and started for Jack Evans’s office-den. It was right off the living room, a cubby so small that there was really room for no more than a desk and a glass-fronted cabinet.

She ran the beam of the flashlight across the desk, then raised it so that it reflected in the glassy eyes of Jack’s most treasured trophy: the head of a moose he’d shot up in TR-90 three years before. The moosehead was what Phil had called her in to see.

“I got the last ticket in the lottery that year,” Jack had told them. “And bagged him with that.” He pointed at the rifle in the cabinet. It was a fearsome-looking thing with a scope.

Myra had come into the doorway, the ice rattling in her own glass of iced coffee, looking cool and pretty and amused—the kind of woman, Sammy knew, she herself would never be. “It cost far too much, but I let him have it after he promised he’d take me to Bermuda for a week next December.”

“Bermuda,” Sammy said now, looking at the moosehead. “But she never got to go. That’s too sad.”

Phil, putting the envelope with the cash in it into his back pocket, had said: “Awesome rifle, but not exactly the thing for home protection.”

“I’ve got that covered, too,” Jack had replied, and although he hadn’t shown Phil just how he had it covered, he’d patted the top of his desk meaningfully. “Got a couple of damn good handguns.”

Phil had nodded back, just as meaningfully. Sammy and Myra had exchanged a boys will be boys look of perfect harmony. She still remembered how good that look had made her feel, how included, and she supposed that was part of the reason she had come here instead of trying someplace else, someplace closer to town.

She paused to chew down another Percocet, then started opening the desk drawers. They were unlocked, and so was the wooden box in the third one she tried. Inside was the late Jack Evans’s extra gun: a .45 Springfield XD automatic pistol. She took it, and after a little fumbling, ejected the magazine. It was full, and there was a spare clip in the drawer. She took that one, too. Then she went back to the kitchen to find a bag to carry it in. And keys, of course. To whatever might be parked in the late Jack and Myra’s garage. She had no intention of walking back to town.

19

Julia and Rose were discussing what the future might hold for their town when their present nearly ended. Would have ended, if they had met the old farm truck on Esty Bend, about a mile and a half from their destination. But Julia got through the curve in time to see that the truck was in her lane, and coming at her head-on.

She swung the wheel of her Prius hard left without thinking, getting into the other lane, and the two vehicles missed each other by inches. Horace, who’d been sitting on the backseat wearing his usual expression of oh-boy-going-for-a-ride delight, tumbled to the floor with a surprised yip. It was the only sound. Neither woman screamed, or even cried out. It was too quick for that. Death or serious injury passed them by in an instant and was gone.