Under the Dome: A Novel (108 page)

22

“These people are masters of disinformation,” Big Jim continued, “and when you go out to the Dome to visit with your loved ones, the campaign against me will kick into high gear. Cox and his surrogates will stop at nothing to blacken me. They’ll call me a liar and a thief, they may even say I ran their drug operation myself—”

“You did,”
a clear, carrying voice said.

It was Andrea Grinnell. Every eye fixed upon her as she rose, a human exclamation point in her bright red dress. She looked at Big Jim for a moment with an expression of cool contempt, then turned to face the people who had elected her Third Selectwoman when old Billy Cale, Jack Cale’s father, had died of a stroke four years ago.

“You people need to put your fears aside for a moment,” she said. “When you do, you’ll see that the story he’s telling is ludicrous. Jim Rennie thinks you can be stampeded like cattle in a thunderstorm. I’ve lived with you all my life, and I think he’s wrong.”

Big Jim waited for cries of protest. There were none. Not that the
townspeople necessarily believed her; they were just stunned by this sudden turn of events. Alice and Aidan Appleton had turned all the way around and were kneeling on their benches, goggling at the lady in red. Caro was equally stunned.

“A secret experiment? What bullshit! Our government has gotten up to some pretty lousy stuff over the last fifty years or so, and I’d be the first to admit it, but holding a whole town prisoner with some sort of force field? Just to see what we’ll do? It’s idiotic. Only terrified people would believe it. Rennie knows that, so he’s been orchestrating the terror.”

Big Jim had been momentarily knocked off his stride, but now he found his voice again. And, of course, he had the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, Andrea Grinnell is a fine woman, but she’s not herself tonight. She’s as shocked as the rest of us, of course, but in addition, I’m sorry to say that she herself has a serious drug-dependency problem, as a result of a fall and her consequent use of an extremely addictive drug called—”

“I haven’t had anything stronger than aspirin for days now,” Andrea said in a clear, carrying voice. “And I have come into possession of papers which show—”

“Melvin Searles?” Big Jim boomed. “Will you and several of your fellow officers gently but firmly remove Selectwoman Grinnell from the room and escort her home? Or perhaps to the hospital for observation. She’s not herself.”

There were some approving murmurs, but not the clamor of approbation he’d expected. And Mel Searles had taken only a single step forward when Henry Morrison swept a hand into Mel’s chest and sent him back against the wall with an audible thump.

“Let’s let her finish,” Henry said. “She’s a town official too, so let her finish.”

Mel looked up at Big Jim, but Big Jim was watching Andi, almost hypnotized, as she drew a brown manila envelope from her big bag. He knew what it was the instant he saw it.
Brenda Perkins,
he thought.
Oh, what a bitch. Even dead, her bitchery continues.

As Andi held the envelope up, it began to waver back and forth.

The shakes were coming back, the fucking shakes. They couldn’t have picked a worse time, but she wasn’t surprised; in fact, she might have expected it. It was the stress.

“The papers in this envelope came to me from Brenda Perkins,” she said, and at least her voice was steady. “They were compiled by her husband and the State Attorney General. Duke Perkins was investigating James Rennie for a laundry list of high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Mel looked at his friend Carter for guidance. And Carter was looking back, his gaze bright and sharp and almost amused. He pointed at Andrea, then held the side of his hand against his throat:
Shut her up.
This time when Mel started forward, Henry Morrison didn’t stop him—like almost everyone else in the room, Henry was gaping at Andrea Grinnell.

Marty Arsenault and Freddy Denton joined Mel as he hurried along the front of the stage, bent over like a man running in front of a movie screen. From the other side of the Town Hall, Todd Wendlestat and Lauren Conree were also in motion. Wendlestat’s hand was on a sawed-off piece of hickory cane he was carrying as a nightstick; Conree’s was on the butt of her gun.

Andi saw them coming, but didn’t stop. “The proof is in this envelope, and I believe it’s proof—”
… that Brenda Perkins died for,
she intended to finish, but at that moment her shaking, sweat-slicked left hand lost her grip on the drawstring top of her bag. It fell into the aisle, and the barrel of her home protection.38 slid from the bag’s puckered mouth like a periscope.

Clearly, heard by everyone in the now silent hall, Aidan Appleton said: “Wow! That lady has a gun!”

Another instant of thunderstruck silence followed. Then Carter Thibodeau leaped from his seat and ran in front of his boss, screaming
“Gun! Gun! GUN!”

Aidan slipped into the aisle to investigate more closely.
“No, Ade!”
Caro shouted, and bent over to grab him just as Mel fired the first shot.

It put a hole in the polished wood floor right in front of Carolyn
Sturges’s nose. Splinters flew up. One struck her just below the right eye and blood began to pour down her face. She was vaguely aware that everyone was screaming now. She knelt in the aisle, grabbed Aidan by the shoulders, and hiked him between her thighs like a football. He flew back into the row where they’d been sitting, surprised but unhurt.

“GUN! SHE’S GOT A GUN!”
Freddy Denton shouted, and swept Mel out of his way. Later he would swear that the young woman was reaching for it, and that he had only meant to wound her, anyway.

23

Thanks to the speakers, the three people in the stolen van heard the change in the festivities at the town hall. Big Jim’s speech and the accompanying applause were interrupted by some woman who was talking loudly but standing too far from the mike for them to make out the words. Her voice was drowned in a general uproar punctuated by screams. Then there was a gunshot.

“What the
hell
?” Rommie said.

More gunshots. Two, perhaps three. And screams.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jackie said. “Drive, Ernie, and fast. If we’re going to do this, and we have to do it now.”

24

“No!”
Linda cried, leaping to her feet.
“No shooting! There are children! THERE ARE CHILDREN!”

The Town Hall erupted in pandemonium. Maybe for a moment or two they hadn’t been cattle, but now they were. The stampede for the front doors was on. The first few got out, then the crowd jammed up. A few souls who had retained a scrap of common sense beat feet down the side and center aisles toward the exit doors which flanked the stage, but they were a minority.

Linda reached for Carolyn Sturges, meaning to pull her back to the relative safety of the benches, when Toby Manning, sprinting down the center aisle, ran into her. His knee connected with the back of Linda’s head and she fell forward, dazed.

“Caro!”
Alice Appleton was screaming from somewhere far away.
“Caro, get up! Caro, get up! Caro, get up!”

Carolyn started getting to her feet and that was when Freddy Denton shot her squarely between the eyes, killing her instantly. The children began to shriek. Their faces were freckled with her blood.

Linda was vaguely aware of being kicked and stepped on. She got to her hands and knees (standing was currently out of the question) and crawled into the aisle opposite the one she’d been sitting in. Her hand squelched in more of Carolyn’s blood.

Alice and Aidan were trying to get to Caro. Knowing they might be seriously hurt if they made it into the aisle (and not wanting them to see what had become of the woman she assumed was their mother), Andi reached over the bench just ahead of her to grab them. She had dropped the VADER envelope.

Carter Thibodeau had been waiting for this. He was still standing in front of Rennie, shielding him with his body, but he had drawn his gun and laid it over his forearm. Now he squeezed the trigger, and the troublesome woman in the red dress—the one who had caused this ruckus—went flying backward.

The Town Hall was in chaos, but Carter ignored it. He descended the stairs and walked steadily to where the woman in the red dress had fallen. When people came running down the center aisle, he threw them out of his way, first left and then right. The little girl, crying, tried to cling to his leg and Carter kicked her aside without looking at her.

He didn’t see the envelope at first. Then he did. It was lying beside one of the Grinnell woman’s outstretched hands. A large foot-track printed in blood had been stamped across the word VADER. Still calm in the chaos, Carter glanced around and saw that Rennie was staring at the shambles of his audience, his face shocked and unbelieving. Good.

Carter yanked out the tails of his shirt. A screaming woman—it was Carla Venziano—ran into him, and he hurled her aside. Then he jammed the VADER envelope into his belt at the small of his back and bloused the tails of his shirt out over it.

A little insurance was always a good thing.

He backed toward the stage, not wanting to be blindsided. When he reached the stairs, he turned and trotted up them. Randolph, the town’s fearless Chief, was still in his seat with his hands planted on his meaty thighs. He could have been a statue except for the single vein pulsing in the center of his forehead.

Carter took Big Jim by the arm. “Come on, boss.”

Big Jim looked at him as if he did not quite know where or even who he was. Then his eyes cleared a little. “Grinnell?”

Carter pointed to the body of the woman sprawled in the center aisle, the growing puddle around her head matching her dress.

“Okay, good,” Big Jim said. “Let’s get out of here. Downstairs. You too, Peter. Get up.” And when Randolph continued to sit and stare at the maddened crowd, Big Jim kicked him in the shin.
“Move.”

In the pandemonium, no one heard the shots from next door.

25

Barbie and Rusty stared at each other.

“What the
hell
is going on over there?” Rusty asked.

“I don’t know,” Barbie said, “but it doesn’t sound good.”

There were more gunshots from the Town Hall, then one that was much closer: from upstairs. Barbie hoped it was their guys … and then he heard someone yell,
“No, Junior! What are you, crazy? Wardlaw, back me up!”
More gunshots followed. Four, maybe five.

“Ah, Jesus,” Rusty said. “We’re in trouble.”

“I know,” Barbie said.

26

Junior paused on the PD steps, looking over his shoulder toward the newly hatched uproar at the Town Hall. The people on the benches outside were now standing and craning their necks, but there was nothing to see. Not for them, and not for him. Perhaps someone had assassinated his father—he could hope; it would save him the trouble—but in the meantime, his business was inside the PD. In the Coop, to be specific.

Junior pushed through the door with WORKING TOGETHER: YOUR HOMETOWN POLICE DEPARTMENT AND YOU printed on it. Stacey Moggin came hurrying toward him. Rupe Libby was behind her. In the ready-room, standing in front of the grumpy sign reading COFFEE AND DONUTS ARE
NOT
FREE, was Mickey Wardlaw. Hulk or not, he looked very frightened and unsure of himself.

“You can’t come in here, Junior,” Stacey said.

“Sure, I can.”
Sure
came out
surrr.
It was the numbness at the side of his mouth. Thallium poisoning! Barbie! “I’m on the force.”
Um onna forsh.

“You’re drunk, is what you are. What’s going on over there?” But then, perhaps deciding he was incapable of any coherent reply, the bitch gave him a push in the center of his chest. It made him stagger on his bad leg and almost fall. “Go away, Junior.” She looked back over her shoulder and spoke her last words on Earth. “You stay where you are, Wardlaw. No one goes downstairs.”

When she turned back, meaning to bulldoze Junior out of the station ahead of her, she found herself looking into the muzzle of a police-issue Beretta. There was time for one more thought—
Oh no, he wouldn’t
—and then a painless boxing glove hit her between the breasts and drove her backward. She saw Rupe Libby’s amazed face upside down as her head tilted back. Then she was gone.

“No, Junior! What are you, crazy?”
Rupe shouted, clawing for his gun.
“Wardlaw, back me up!”

But Mickey Wardlaw only stood gaping as Junior pumped five bullets into Piper Libby’s cousin. His left hand was numb, but his right was still okay; he didn’t even need to be a particularly good shot, with a stationary target just seven feet away. The first two rounds went into Rupe’s belly, driving him against Stacey Moggin’s desk and knocking it over. Rupe doubled up, holding himself. Junior’s third shot went wild, but the next two went into the top of Rupe’s head. He went down in a grotesquely balletic posture, his legs splaying out to either side and his head—what remained of it—coming to rest on the floor, as if in a final deep bow.

Junior limped into the ready room with the smoking Beretta held out in front of him. He couldn’t remember exactly how many shots he had fired; he thought seven. Maybe eight. Or eleventy-nine—who could know for sure? His headache was back.

Mickey Wardlaw raised his hand. There was a frightened, placa-tory smile on his large face. “No trouble from me, bro,” he said. “You do what you got to do.” And made the peace sign.

“I will,” Junior said.
“Bro.”

He shot Mickey. The big boy went down, peace sign now framing the hole in his head that had lately held an eye. The remaining eye rolled up to look at Junior with the dumb humility of a sheep in the shearing pen. Junior shot him again, just to be sure. Then he looked around. He had the place to himself, it appeared.

“Okay,” he said. “Oh …
kay.
”

He started toward the stairs, then went back to Stacey Moggin’s body. He verified the fact that she was carrying a Beretta Taurus like his, and ejected the mag from his own gun. He replaced it with a full one from her belt.