Under the Dome: A Novel (7 page)

“What happened?” she asked. This had also been Wanda’s question, although Elsa didn’t remember that. She stood in a strew of chrome and bloody glass, then put the back of her left hand to her forehead, as if checking for a fever. “What happened? What just happened? Nora? Nora-pie? Where are you, dear?”

Then she saw her friend and uttered a scream of grief and horror. A crow watching from high in a pine tree on The Mill side of the barrier cawed once, a cry that sounded like a contemptuous snort of laughter.

Elsa’s legs turned rubbery. She backed until her bottom struck the crumpled nose of the Mercedes. “Nora-pie,” she said. “Oh, honey.” Something tickled the back of her neck. She wasn’t sure, but
thought it was probably a lock of the wounded girl’s hair. Only now, of course, she was the dead girl.

And poor sweet Nora, with whom she’d sometimes shared illicit nips of gin or vodka in the laundry room at Cathy Russell, the two of them giggling like girls away at camp. Nora’s eyes were open, staring up at the bright midday sun, and her head was cocked at a nasty angle, as if she had died trying to look back over her shoulder and make sure Elsa was all right.

Elsa, who
was
all right—“just shaken up,” as they’d said of certain lucky survivors back in their ER days—began to cry. She slid down the side of the car (ripping her own coat on a jag of metal) and sat on the asphalt of 117. She was still sitting there and still crying when Barbie and his new friend in the Sea Dogs cap came upon her.

3

Sea Dogs turned out to be Paul Gendron, a car salesman from upstate who had retired to his late parents’ farm in Motton two years before. Barbie learned this and a great deal more about Gendron between their departure from the crash scene on 119 and their discovery of another one—not quite so spectacular but still pretty horrific—at the place where Route 117 crossed into The Mill. Barbie would have been more than willing to shake Gendron’s hand, but such niceties would have to remain on hold until they found the place where the invisible barrier ended.

Ernie Calvert had gotten through to the Air National Guard in Bangor, but had been put on hold before he had a chance to say why he was calling. Meanwhile, approaching sirens heralded the imminent arrival of the local law.

“Just don’t expect the Fire Department,” said the farmer who’d come running across the field with his sons. His name was Alden Dinsmore, and he was still getting his breath back. “They’re over to Castle Rock, burnin down a house for practice. Could have gotten
plenty of practice right h—” Then he saw his younger son approaching the place where Barbie’s bloody handprint appeared to be drying on nothing more than sunny air. “Rory, get away from there!”

Rory, agog with curiosity, ignored him. He reached out and knocked on the air just to the right of Barbie’s handprint. But before he did, Barbie saw goosebumps rash out on the kid’s arms below the ragged sleeves of his cut-off Wildcats sweatshirt. There was something there, something that kicked in when you got close. The only place Barbie had ever gotten a similar sensation was close to the big power generator in Avon, Florida, where he’d once taken a girl necking.

The sound of the kid’s fist was like knuckles on the side of a Pyrex casserole dish. It silenced the little babbling crowd of spectators, who had been staring at the burning remains of the pulp-truck (and in some cases taking pictures of it with their cell phones).

“I’ll be dipped in shit,” someone said.

Alden Dinsmore dragged his son away by the ragged collar of his sweatshirt, then whapped him backside of the head as he had the older brother not long before. “Don’t you ever!” Dinsmore cried, shaking the boy. “Don’t you
ever,
when you don’t know what it is!”

“Pa, it’s like a glass wall! It’s—”

Dinsmore shook him some more. He was still panting, and Barbie feared for his heart. “Don’t you
ever
!” he repeated, and pushed the kid at his older brother. “Hang onto this fool, Ollie.”

“Yessir,” Ollie said, and smirked at his brother.

Barbie looked toward The Mill. He could now see the approaching flashers of a police car, but far ahead of it—as if escorting the cops by virtue of some higher authority—was a large black vehicle that looked like a rolling coffin: Big Jim Rennie’s Hummer. Barbie’s fading bumps and bruises from the fight in Dipper’s parking lot seemed to give a sympathetic throb at the sight.

Rennie Senior hadn’t been there, of course, but his son had been the prime instigator, and Big Jim had taken care of Junior. If that meant making life in The Mill tough for a certain itinerant short-order cook—tough enough so the short-order cook in question would decide to just haul stakes and leave town—even better.

Barbie didn’t want to be here when Big Jim arrived. Especially not with the cops. Chief Perkins had treated him okay, but the other one—Randolph—had looked at him as if Dale Barbara were a piece of dogshit on a dress shoe.

Barbie turned to Sea Dogs and said: “You interested in taking a little hike? You on your side, me on mine? See how far this thing goes?”

“And get away from here before yonder gasbag arrives?” Gendron had also seen the oncoming Hummer. “My friend, you’re on. East or west?”

4

They went west, toward Route 117, and they didn’t find the end of the barrier, but they saw the wonders it had created when it came down. Tree branches had been sheared off, creating pathways to the sky where previously there had been none. Stumps had been cut in half. And there were feathered corpses everywhere.

“Lotta dead birds,” Gendron said. He resettled his cap on his head with hands that trembled slightly. His face was pale. “Never seen so many.”

“Are you all right?” Barbie asked.

“Physically? Yeah, I think so. Mentally, I feel like I’ve lost my frickin mind. How about you?”

“Same,” Barbie said.

Two miles west of 119, they came to God Creek Road and the body of Bob Roux, lying beside his still-idling tractor. Barbie moved instinctively toward the downed man and once again bumped the barrier … although this time he remembered at the last second and slowed in time to keep from bloodying his nose again.

Gendron knelt and touched the farmer’s grotesquely cocked neck. “Dead.”

“What’s that littered all around him? Those white scraps?”

Gendron picked up the largest piece. “I think it’s one of those
computer-music doohickies. Musta broke when he hit the …” He gestured in front of him. “The you-know.”

From the direction of town a whooping began, hoarser and louder than the town whistle had been.

Gendron glanced toward it briefly. “Fire siren,” he said. “Much good it’ll do.”

“FD’s coming from Castle Rock,” Barbie said. “I hear them.”

“Yeah? Your ears are better’n mine, then. Tell me your name again, friend.”

“Dale Barbara. Barbie to my friends.”

“Well, Barbie, what now?”

“Go on, I guess. We can’t do anything for this guy.”

“Nope, can’t even call anyone,” Gendron said gloomily. “Not with my cell back there. Guess you don’t have one?”

Barbie did, but he had left it behind in his now-vacated apartment, along with some socks, shirts, jeans, and underwear. He’d lit out for the territories with nothing but the clothes on his back, because there was nothing from Chester’s Mill he wanted to carry with him. Except a few good memories, and for those he didn’t need a suitcase or even a knapsack.

All this was too complicated to explain to a stranger, so he just shook his head.

There was an old blanket draped over the seat of the Deere. Gendron shut the tractor off, took the blanket, and covered the body.

“I hope he was listenin to somethin he liked when it happened,” Gendron said.

“Yeah,” Barbie said.

“Come on. Let’s get to the end of this whatever-it-is. I want to shake your hand. Might even break down and give you a hug.”

5

Shortly after discovering Roux’s body—they were now very close to the wreck on 117, although neither of them knew it—they came to
a little stream. The two men stood there for a moment, each on his own side of the barrier, looking in wonder and silence.

At last Gendron said, “Holy jumped-up God.”

“What does it look like from your side?” Barbie asked. All he could see on his was the water rising and spreading into the under-growth. It was as if the stream had encountered an invisible dam.

“I don’t know how to describe it. I never seen anything quite like it.” Gendron paused, scratching both cheeks, drawing his already long face down so he looked a little like the screamer in that Edvard Munch painting. “Yes I have. Once. Sorta. When I brought home a couple of goldfish for my daughter’s sixth birthday. Or maybe she was seven that year. I brought em home from the pet store in a plastic bag, and that’s what this looks like—water in the bottom of a plastic bag. Only flat instead of saggin down. The water piles up against that … thing, then trickles off both ways on your side.”

“Is none going through at all?”

Gendron bent down, his hands on his knees, and squinted. “Yeah, some appears to go through. But not very much, just a trickle. And none of the crap the water’s carrying. You know, sticks and leaves and such.”

They pushed on, Gendron on his side and Barbie on his. As yet, neither of them were thinking in terms of inside and outside. It didn’t occur to them that the barrier might not have an end.

6

Then they came to Route 117, where there had been another nasty accident—two cars and at least two fatals that Barbie could be sure of. There was another, he thought, slumped behind the wheel of an old Chevrolet that had been mostly demolished. Only this time there was also a survivor, sitting beside a smashed-up Mercedes-Benz with her head lowered. Paul Gendron rushed to her, while Barbie could only stand and watch. The woman saw Gendron and struggled to rise.

“No, ma’am, not at all, you don’t want to do that,” he said.

“I think I’m fine,” she said. “Just … you know, shaken up.” For some reason this made her laugh, although her face was puffy with tears.

At that moment another car appeared, a slowpoke driven by an old fellow who was leading a parade of three or four other no doubt impatient drivers. He saw the accident and stopped. The cars behind him did, too.

Elsa Andrews was on her feet now, and with-it enough to ask what would become the question of the day: “What did we hit? It wasn’t the other car, Nora went around the other car.”

Gendron answered with complete honesty. “Dunno, ma’am.”

“Ask her if she has a cell-phone,” Barbie said. Then he called to the gathering spectators. “Hey! Who’s got a cell phone?”

“I do, mister,” a woman said, but before she could say more, they all heard an approaching
whup-whup-whup
sound. It was a helicopter.

Barbie and Gendron exchanged a stricken glance.

The copter was blue and white, flying low. It was angling toward the pillar of smoke marking the crashed pulp-truck on 119, but the air was perfectly clear, with that almost magnifying effect that the best days in northern New England seem to have, and Barbie could easily read the big blue
13
on its side. And see the CBS eye logo. It was a news chopper, out of Portland. It must already have been in the area, Barbie thought. And it was a perfect day to get some juicy crash footage for the six o’clock news.

“Oh, no,” Gendron moaned, shading his eyes. Then he shouted:
“Get back, you fools! Get back!”

Barbie chimed in.
“No! Stop it! Get away!”

It was useless, of course. Even more useless, he was waving his arms in big go-away gestures.

Elsa looked from Gendron to Barbie, bewildered.

The chopper dipped to treetop level and hovered.

“I think it’s gonna be okay,” Gendron breathed. “The people back there must be waving em off, too. Pilot musta seen—”

But then the chopper swung north, meaning to hook in over
Alden Dinsmore’s grazeland for a different view, and it struck the barrier. Barbie saw one of the rotors break off. The helicopter dipped, dropped, and swerved, all at the same time. Then it exploded, showering fresh fire down on the road and fields on the other side of the barrier.

Gendron’s side.

The outside.

7

Junior Rennie crept like a thief into the house where he had grown up. Or a ghost. It was empty, of course; his father would be out at his giant used car lot on Route 119—what Junior’s friend Frank sometimes called the Holy Tabernacle of No Money Down—and for the last four years Francine Rennie had been hanging out nonstop at Pleasant Ridge Cemetery. The town whistle had quit and the police sirens had faded off to the south somewhere. The house was blessedly quiet.

He took two Imitrex, then dropped his clothes and got into the shower. When he emerged, he saw there was blood on his shirt and pants. He couldn’t deal with it now. He kicked the clothes under his bed, drew the shades, crawled into the rack, and drew the covers up over his head, as he had when he was a child afraid of closet-monsters. He lay there shivering, his head gonging like all the bells of hell.

He was dozing when the fire siren went off, jolting him awake. He began to shiver again, but the headache was better. He’d sleep a little, then think about what to do next. Killing himself still seemed by far the best option. Because they’d catch him. He couldn’t even go back and clean up; he wouldn’t have time before Henry or LaDonna McCain came back from their Saturday errands. He could run—maybe—but not until his head stopped aching. And of course he’d have to put some clothes on. You couldn’t begin life as a fugitive buckytail naked.

On the whole, killing himself would probably be best. Except
then the fucking short-order cook would win. And when you really considered the matter, all this was the fucking cook’s fault.

At some point the fire whistle quit. Junior slept with the covers over his head. When he woke up, it was nine PM. His headache was gone.

And the house was still empty.

1

When Big Jim Rennie scrunched to a stop in his H3 Alpha Hummer (color: Black Pearl; accessories: you name it), he was a full three minutes ahead of the town cops, which was just the way he liked it. Keep ahead of the competish, that was Rennie’s motto.