Under the Dome: A Novel (15 page)

Horace, meanwhile, had finally assumed the position. When he was done, she swung into action with a small green bag labeled Doggie Doo, wondering to herself what Horace Greeley would have thought of a world where picking up dogshit from the gutter was not just socially expected but a legal responsibility. She thought he might have shot himself.

Once the bag was filled and tied off, she tried her phone again.

Nothing.

She took Horace back inside and fed him.

4

Her cell rang while she was buttoning her coat to drive out to the barrier. She had her camera over her shoulder and almost dropped it, scrabbling in her pocket. She looked at the number and saw the words PRIVATE CALLER.

“Hello?” she said, and there must have been something in her voice, because Horace—waiting by the door, more than ready for a nighttime expedition now that he was cleaned out and fed—pricked up his ears and looked around at her.

“Mrs. Shumway?” A man’s voice. Clipped. Official-sounding.

“
Ms.
Shumway. To whom am I speaking?”

“Colonel James Cox, Ms. Shumway. United States Army.”

“And to what do I owe the honor of this call?” She heard the sarcasm in her voice and didn’t like it—it wasn’t professional—but she was afraid, and sarcasm had ever been her response to fear.

“I need to get in touch with a man named Dale Barbara. Do you know this man?”

Of course she did. And had been surprised to see him at Sweet-briar earlier tonight. He was crazy to still be in town, and hadn’t Rose herself said just yesterday that he had given notice? Dale Barbara’s story was one of hundreds Julia knew but hadn’t written. When you published a smalltown newspaper, you left the lids on a great many cans of worms. You had to pick your fights. The way she was sure Junior Rennie and his friends picked theirs. And she doubted very much if the rumors about Barbara and Dodee’s good friend Angie were true, anyway. For one thing, she thought Barbara had more taste.

“Ms. Shumway?” Crisp. Official. An on-the-outside voice. She could resent the owner of the voice just for that. “Still with me?”

“Still with you. Yes, I know Dale Barbara. He cooks at the restaurant on Main Street. Why?”

“He has no cell phone, it seems, the restaurant doesn’t answer—”

“It’s closed—”

“—and the landlines don’t work, of course.”

“Nothing in this town seems to work very well tonight, Colonel Cox. Cell phones included. But I notice you didn’t have any trouble getting through to me, which makes me wonder if you fellows might not be responsible for that.” Her fury—like her sarcasm, born of fear—surprised her. “What did you
do
? What did you people
do
?”

“Nothing. So far as I know now, nothing.”

She was so surprised she could think of no follow-up. Which was very unlike the Julia Shumway longtime Mill residents knew.

“The cell phones, yes,” he said. “Calls in and out of Chester’s Mill are pretty well shut down now. In the interests of national security. And with all due respect, ma’am, you would have done the same, in our position.”

“I doubt that.”

“Do you?” he sounded interested, not angry. “In a situation that’s unprecedented in the history of the world, and suggestive of
technology far beyond what we or anyone else can even understand?”

Once more she found herself stuck for a reply.

“It’s quite important that I speak to Captain Barbara,” he said, returning to his original scripture. In a way, Julia was surprised he’d wandered as far off-message as he had.

“
Captain
Barbara?”

“Retired. Can you find him? Take your cell phone. I’ll give you a number to call. It’ll go through.”

“Why me, Colonel Cox? Why didn’t you call the police station? Or one of the town selectmen? I believe all three of them are here.”

“I didn’t even try. I grew up in a small town, Ms. Shumway—”

“Bully for you.”

“—and in my experience, town politicians know a little, the town cops know a lot, and the local newspaper editor knows everything.”

That made her laugh in spite of herself.

“Why bother with a call when you two can meet face-to-face? With me as your chaperone, of course. I’m going out to my side of the barrier—was leaving when you called, in fact. I’ll hunt Barbie up—”

“Still calling himself that, is he?” Cox sounded bemused.

“I’ll hunt him up and bring him with me. We can have a mini press conference.”

“I’m not in Maine. I’m in D.C. With the Joint Chiefs.”

“Is that supposed to impress me?” Although it did, a little.

“Ms. Shumway, I’m busy, and probably you are, too. So, in the interests of resolving this thing—”

“Is that possible, do you think?”

“Quit it,” he said. “You were undoubtedly a reporter before you were an editor, and I’m sure asking questions comes naturally to you, but time is a factor here. Can you do as I ask?”

“I can. But if you want him, you get me, too. We’ll come out 119 and call you from there.”

“No,” he said.

“That’s fine,” she said pleasantly. “It’s been very nice talking to you, Colonel C—”

“Let me finish. Your side of 119 is totally FUBAR. That means—”

“I know the expression, Colonel, I used to be a Tom Clancy reader. What exactly do you mean by it in regard to Route 119?”

“I mean it looks like, pardon the vulgarity, opening night at a free whorehouse out there. Half your town has parked their cars and pickups on both sides of the road and in some dairy farmer’s field.”

She put her camera on the floor, took a notepad from her coat pocket, and scrawled
Col. James Cox
and
Like open night at free w’house.
Then she added
Dinsmore farm?
Yes, he was probably talking about Alden Dinsmore’s place.

“All right,” she said, “what do you suggest?”

“Well, I can’t stop you from coming, you’re absolutely right about that.” He sighed, the sound seeming to suggest it was an unfair world. “And I can’t stop what you print in your paper, although I don’t think it matters, since no one outside of Chester’s Mill is going to see it.”

She stopped smiling. “Would you mind explaining that?”

“I would, actually, and you’ll work it out for yourself. My suggestion is that, if you want to see the barrier—although you can’t actually
see
it, as I’m sure you’ve been told—you bring Captain Barbara out to where it cuts Town Road Number Three. Do you know Town Road Number Three?”

For a moment she didn’t. Then she realized what he was talking about, and laughed.

“Something amusing, Ms. Shumway?”

“In The Mill, folks call that one Little Bitch Road. Because in mud season, it’s one little bitch.”

“Very colorful.”

“No crowds out on Little Bitch, I take it?”

“No one at all right now.”

“All right.” She put the pad in her pocket and picked up the camera. Horace continued waiting patiently by the door.

“Good. When may I expect your call? Or rather, Barbie’s call on your cell?”

She looked at her watch and saw it had just gone ten. How in God’s name had it gotten that late so early? “We’ll be out there by ten thirty, assuming I can find him. And I think I can.”

“That’s fine. Tell him Ken says hello. That’s a—”

“A joke, yes, I get it. Will someone meet us?”

There was a pause. When he spoke again, she sensed reluctance. “There will be lights, and sentries, and soldiers manning a roadblock, but they have been instructed not to speak to the residents.”

“Not to—
why
? In God’s name,
why
?”

“If this situation doesn’t resolve, Ms. Shumway, all these things will become clear to you. Most you really will figure out on your own—you sound like a very bright lady.”

“Well fuck you very much, Colonel!” she cried, stung. At the door, Horace pricked up his ears.

Cox laughed, a big unoffended laugh. “Yes, ma’am, receiving you five-by-five. Ten thirty?”

She was tempted to tell him no, but of course there was no way she could do that.

“Ten thirty. Assuming I can hunt him up. And I call you?”

“Either you or him, but it’s him I need to speak with. I’ll be waiting with one hand on the phone.”

“Then give me the magic number.” She crooked the phone against her ear and fumbled the pad out again. Of course you always wanted your pad again after you’d put it away; that was a fact of life when you were a reporter, which she now was. Again. The number he gave her to call somehow scared her more than anything else he’d said. The area code was 000.

“One more thing, Ms. Shumway: do you have a pacemaker implant? Hearing-aid implants? Anything of that nature?”

“No. Why?”

She thought he might again decline to answer, but he didn’t. “Once you’re close to the Dome, there’s some kind of interference. It’s not harmful to most people, they feel it as nothing more than a
low-level electric shock which goes away a second or two after it comes, but it plays hell with electronic devices. Shuts some down—most cell phones, for instance, if they come closer than five feet or so—and explodes others. If you bring a tape recorder out, it’ll shut down. Bring an iPod or something sophisticated like a BlackBerry, it’s apt to explode.”

“Did Chief Perkins’s pacemaker explode? Is that what killed him?”

“Ten thirty. Bring Barbie, and be sure to tell him Ken says hello.”

He broke the connection, leaving Julia standing in silence beside her dog. She tried calling her sister in Lewiston. The numbers peeped … then nothing. Blank silence, as before.

The Dome,
she thought.
He didn’t call it the barrier there at the end; he called it the Dome.

5

Barbie had taken off his shirt and was sitting on his bed to untie his sneakers when the knock came at the door, which one reached by climbing an outside flight of stairs on the side of Sanders Hometown Drug. The knock wasn’t welcome. He had walked most of the day, then put on an apron and cooked for most of the evening. He was beat.

And suppose it was Junior and a few of his friends, ready to throw him a welcome-back party? You could say it was unlikely, even paranoid, but the day had been a festival of unlikely. Besides, Junior and Frank DeLesseps and the rest of their little band were among the few people he hadn’t seen at Sweetbriar tonight. He supposed they might be out on 119 or 117, rubbernecking, but maybe somebody had told them he was back in town and they’d been making plans for later tonight. Later like now.

The knock came again. Barbie stood up and put a hand on the portable TV. Not much of a weapon, but it would do some damage
if thrown at the first one who tried to cram through the door. There was a wooden closet rod, but all three rooms were small and it was too long to swing effectively. There was also his Swiss Army Knife, but he wasn’t going to do any cutting. Not unless he had t—

“Mr. Barbara?” It was a woman’s voice. “Barbie? Are you in there?”

He took his hand off the TV and crossed the kitchenette. “Who is it?” But even as he asked, he recognized the voice.

“Julia Shumway. I have a message from someone who wants to speak to you. He told me to tell you that Ken says hello.”

Barbie opened the door and let her in.

6

In the pine-paneled basement conference room of the Chester’s Mill Town Hall, the roar of the generator out back (an elderly Kelvinator) was no more than a dim drone. The table in the center of the room was handsome red maple, polished to a high gleam, twelve feet long. Most of the chairs surrounding it were empty that night. The four attendees of what Big Jim was calling the Emergency Assessment Meeting were clustered at one end. Big Jim himself, although only the Second Selectman, sat at the head of the table. Behind him was a map showing the athletic-sock shape of the town.

Those present were the selectmen and Peter Randolph, the acting Chief of Police. The only one who seemed entirely with it was Rennie. Randolph looked shocked and scared. Andy Sanders was, of course, dazed with grief. And Andrea Grinnell—an overweight, graying version of her younger sister, Rose—just seemed dazed. This was not new.

Four or five years previous, Andrea had slipped in her icy driveway while going to the mailbox one January morning. She had fallen hard enough to crack two discs in her back (being eighty or ninety pounds overweight probably hadn’t helped). Dr. Haskell had prescribed that new wonder-drug, OxyContin, to ease what had been no doubt excruciating pain. And had been giving it to her ever since. Thanks
to his good friend Andy, who ran the local drugstore, Big Jim knew that Andrea had begun at forty milligrams a day and had worked her way up to a giddy four hundred. This was useful information.

Big Jim said, “Due to Andy’s great loss, I’m going to chair this meeting, if no one objects. We’re all very sorry, Andy.”

“You bet, sir,” Randolph said.

“Thank you,” Andy said, and when Andrea briefly covered his hand with her own, he began to ooze at the eyes again.

“Now, we all have an idea of what’s happened here,” Big Jim said, “although no one in town understands it yet—”

“I bet no one out of town does, either,” Andrea said.

Big Jim ignored her. “—and the military presence hasn’t seen fit to communicate with the town’s elected officials.”

“Problems with the phones, sir,” Randolph said. He was on a first-name basis with all of these people—in fact considered Big Jim a friend—but in this room he felt it wise to stick to sir or ma’am. Perkins had done the same, and on that, at least, the old man had probably been right.

Big Jim waved a hand as if swatting at a troublesome fly. “Someone could have come to the Motton or Tarker’s side and sent for me—us—and no one has seen fit to do so.”

“Sir, the situation is still very … uh, fluid.”

“I’m sure, I’m sure. And it’s very possible that’s why no one has put us in the picture just yet. Could be, oh yes, and I pray that’s the answer. I hope you’ve all been praying.”

They nodded dutifully.

“But right now …” Big Jim looked around gravely. He
felt
grave. But he also felt excited. And
ready.
He thought it not impossible that his picture would be on the cover of
Time
magazine before the year was out. Disaster—especially the sort triggered by terrorists—was not always a completely bad thing. Look what it had done for Rudy Giuliani. “
Right now,
lady and gentlemen, I think we have to face the very real possibility that we are on our own.”