Under the Dome

“Why would I kill you, Freddy? You still owe on that rototiller you bought from me las’ spring. Behind in payments, too, is my recollection. No, we’ll just lock you in the Coop. See how you like it down dere. Smells kinda pissy, but who knows, you might like it.”

“Did you have to kill Mickey?” Mel asked. “He wasn’t nothing but a softheaded boy.”

“We didn’t kill none of em,” Rommie said. “Your good pal Junior did dat.” Not that anybody will believe it come tomorrow night, he thought.

“Junior!” Freddy exclaimed. “Where is he?”

“Shoveling coal down in hell would be my guess,” Rommie said. “Dat’s where they put the new help.”

34

Barbie, Rusty, Jackie, and Ernie came upstairs. The two erstwhile prisoners looked as if they did not quite believe they were still alive. Rommie and Jackie escorted Freddy and Mel down to the Coop. When Mel saw Junior’s crumpled body, he said, “You’ll be sorry for this!”

Rommie said, “Shut your hole and get in your new home. Bot’ in the same cell. You’re chums, after all.”

As soon as Rommie and Jackie had returned to the top floor, the two men began to holler.

“Let’s get out of here while we still can,” Ernie said.

35

On the steps, Rusty looked up at the pink stars and breathed air which stank and smelled incredibly sweet at the same time. He turned to Barbie. “I never expected to see the sky again.”

“Neither did I. Let’s blow town while we’ve got the chance. How does Miami Beach sound to you?”

Rusty was still laughing when he got into the van. Several cops were on the Town Hall lawn, and one of them—Todd Wendlestat—looked over. Ernie raised his hand in a wave; Rommie and Jackie followed suit; Wendlestat returned the wave, then bent to help a woman who had gone sprawling to the grass when her high heels betrayed her.

Ernie slid behind the wheel and mated the electrical wires hanging below the dashboard. The engine started, the side door slammed shut, and the van pulled away from the curb. It rolled slowly up Town Common Hill, weaving around a few stunned meeting-goers who were walking in the street. Then they were out of downtown and headed toward Black Ridge, picking up speed.

ANTS

1

They started seeing the glow on the other side of a rusty old bridge that now spanned nothing but a mudslick. Barbie leaned forward between the front seats of the van. “What’s that? It looks like the world’s biggest Indiglo watch.”

“It’s radiation,” Ernie said.

“Don’t worry,” Rommie said.

“We’ve got plenty of lead roll.”

“Norrie called me on her mother’s cell phone while I was waiting for you,” Ernie said. “She told me about the glow. She says Julia thinks it’s nothing but a kind of… scarecrow, I guess you’d say. Not dangerous.”

“I thought Julia’s degree was in journalism, not science,” Jackie said. “She’s a very nice lady, and smart, but we’re still going to armor this thing up, right? Because I don’t much fancy getting ovarian or breast cancer as a fortieth birthday present.”

“We’ll drive fast,” Rommie said. “You can even slide a piece of dat lead roll down the front of your jeans, if it’ll make you feel better, you.”

“That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” she said… then did just that when she got an image of herself in lead panties, fashionably high-cut on the sides.

They came to the dead bear at the foot of the telephone pole. They could have seen it even with the headlights off, because by then the combined light from the pink moon and the radiation belt was almost strong enough to read a newspaper by.

While Rommie and Jackie covered the van’s windows with lead roll, the others stood around the rotting bear in a semicircle.

“Not radiation,” Barbie mused.

“Nope,” Rusty said. “Suicide.”

“And there are others.”

“Yes. But the smaller animals seem to be safe. The kids and I saw plenty of birds, and there was a squirrel in the orchard. It was just as lively as can be.”

“Then Julia’s almost certainly right,” Barbie said.

“The glow-band’s a scarecrow and the dead animals are another. It’s the old belt-and -suspenders thing.”

“I’m not following you, my friend,” Ernie said.

But Rusty, who had learned the belt-and-suspenders approach as a medical student, absolutely was. “Two warnings to keep out,” he said. “Dead animals by day, a glowing belt of radiation by night.”

“So far as I know,” Rommie said, joining them at the side of the road, “radiation only glows in science fiction movies.”

Rusty thought of telling him they were living in a science fiction movie, and Rommie would realize it when he got close to that weird box on the ridge. But of course Rommie was right.

“We’re supposed to see it,” he said. “The same with the dead animals. You’re supposed to say, ‘Whoa—if there’s some kind of suicide ray out here that affects big mammals, I better stay away. After all, I’m a big mammal.’”

“But the kids didn’t back off,” Barbie said.

“Because they’re kids,” Ernie said. And, after a moment’s consideration: “Also skateboarders. They’re a different breed.”