Under the Dome

Jackie shook her head. Her face was kind but firm. “He might talk, and the talk might get back to Rennie. If Rennie sniffs something in the wind before we break Barbie and Rusty out, we could have a total disaster on our hands.”

“If I tell him to keep it strictly to himself—”

“But Claire, don’t you see? There’s too much at stake. Two men’s lives. Ours, too.” She paused. “Your son’s.”

Claire’s shoulders sagged, then straightened again. “You take Joe, then. I’ll come after Visitors Day. Rennie won’t suspect me; I don’t know Dale Barbara from Adam, and I don’t know Rusty, either, except to say hi to on the street. I go to Dr. Hartwell over in Castle Rock.”

“But Joe knows Barbie, ” Jackie said patiently. “Joe was the one who set up the video feed when they shot the missiles. And Big Jim knows that. Don’t you think he might take you into custody and sweat you until you told him where we went?”

“I wouldn’t,” Claire said. “I would never tell.”

Joe came into the kitchen. Claire wiped her cheeks and tried to smile. “Oh hi, honey. We were just talking about Visitors Day, and—”

“Mom, he might not just sweat you,” Joe said. “He might torture you.”

She looked shocked. “Oh, he wouldn’t do that. I know he’s not a nice man, but he’s a town selectman, after all, and—”

“He was a town selectman,” Jackie said. “Now he’s auditioning for emperor. And sooner or later everybody talks. Do you want Joe to be somewhere imagining you having your fingernails pulled out?”

“Stop it!” Claire said. “That’s horrible!”

Jackie didn’t let go of Claire’s hands when Claire tried to pull them back. “It’s all or nothing, and it’s too late to be nothing. This thing is in motion, and we’ve got to move with it. If it was just Bar-bie escaping by himself with no help from us, Big Jim might actually let him go. Because every dictator needs a boogeyman. But it won’t just be him, will it? And that means he’ll try to find us, and wipe us out.”

“I wish I’d never gotten into this. I wish I’d never gone to that meeting, and never let Joe go.”

“But we’ve got to stop him!” Joe protested. “Mr. Rennie’s trying to turn The Mill into a, you know, police state!”

“I can’t stop anybody!” Claire nearly wailed. “I’m a goddam housewife!”

“If it’s any comfort,” Jackie said, “you probably had a ticket for this trip as soon as the kids found that box.”

“It’s not a comfort. It’s not. ”

“In some ways, we’re even lucky,” Jackie went on. “We haven’t sucked too many innocent people into this with us, at least not yet.”

“Rennie and his police force will find us anyway,” Claire said. “Don’t you know that? There’s only so much town in this town.”

Jackie smiled mirthlessly. “By then there’ll be more of us. With more guns. And Rennie will know it.”

“We have to take over the radio station as soon as we can,” Joe said. “People need to hear the other side of the story. We have to broadcast the truth.”

Jackie’s eyes lit up. “That’s a hell of a good idea, Joe.”

“Dear God,” Claire said. She put her hands over her face.

8

Ernie pulled the phone company van up to the Burpee’s loading dock. I’m a criminal now, he thought, and my twelve-year-old granddaughter is my accomplice. Or is she thirteen now? It didn’t matter; he didn’t think Peter Randolph would treat her as a juvenile if they were caught.

Rommie opened the rear door, saw it was them, and came out onto the loading dock with guns in both hands. “Have any trouble?”

“Smooth as silk,” Ernie said, mounting the steps to the dock. “There’s nobody on the roads. Have you got more guns?”

“Yuh. A few. Inside, back of the door. You help too, Miss Norrie.”

Norrie picked up two rifles and handed them to her grampa, who stowed them in the back of the van. Rommie rolled a dolly out to the loading dock. On it were a dozen lead rolls. “We don’t need to unload dis right now,” he said. “I’ll just cut some pieces for the windows. We’ll do the windshield once we get out there. Leave a slit to see through—like an old Sherman tank—n drive dat way. Norrie, while Ernie and I do dis, see if you can push that other dolly out. If you can’t, just leave it and we’ll get it after.”

The other dolly was loaded with cartons of food, most of it canned stuff or pouches of concentrate meant for campers. One box was stuffed with envelopes of cut-rate powdered drink mix. The dolly was heavy, but once she got it moving, it rolled easily. Stopping it was another matter; if Rommie hadn’t reached up and shoved from where he was standing at the back of the van, the dolly might have gone right off the dock.

Ernie had finished blocking the stolen van’s small rear windows with pieces of lead roll held by generous applications of masking tape. Now he wiped his brow and said, “This is risky as hell, Burpee—we’re planning on a damn convoy out to the McCoy Orchard.”