Stephen King - Under the Dome

“So basically, you’re all clean,” Big Jim said.

“As a whistle,” Frank replied.

“Well, I think we’re satisfied.” Big Jim looked around. “Are we satisfied, gentlemen?”

Andy and Randolph nodded, looking relieved.

“Good,” Big Jim said. “Now, it’s been a long day—an eventful day—and we all need some sleep, I’m sure. You young officers especially need it, because you’ll report back for duty at seven AM tomorrow. The supermarket and the Gas and Grocery are both going to be closed for the duration of this crisis, and Chief Randolph thought that you’d be just the ones to guard Food City in case the people who show up there don’t take kindly to the new order of things. Think you’re up to that, Mr. Thibodeau? With your… your war wound?”

Carter flexed his arm. “I’m okay. Her dog didn’t rip the tendon none.”

“We can put Fred Denton with them, too,” Chief Randolph said, getting into the spirit of the thing. “Wettington and Morrison at the Gas and Grocery should be enough.”

“Jim,” Andy said, “maybe we should put the more experienced officers at Food City, and the less experienced ones at the smaller—”

“I don’t think so,” Big Jim said. Smiling. Feeling it. “These young folks are the ones we want at Food City. The very ones. And another thing. A little bird told me that some of you folks have been carrying weapons in your cars, and a couple have even been wearing them on foot patrol.”

Silence greeted this.

“You’re probationary officers,” Big Jim said. “If you’ve got personal handguns, that’s your right as Americans. But if I hear that any of you are strapped while standing out in front of Food City tomorrow and dealing with the good folks of this town, your police officer days are over.”

“Absolutely right,” Randolph said.

Big Jim surveyed Frank, Carter, Mel, and Georgia. “Any problems with that? Any of you?”

They didn’t look happy about it. Big Jim hadn’t expected that they would be, but they were getting off easy. Thibodeau kept flexing his shoulder and his fingers, testing them.

“What if they weren’t loaded?” Frank asked. “What if they were just there, you know, as a warning?”

Big Jim raised a teacherly finger. “I’m going to tell you what my father told me, Frank—there’s no such thing as an unloaded gun. We’ve got a good town here. They’ll behave, that’s what I’m banking on. If they change, we’ll change. Got it?”

“Yessir, Mr. Rennie.” Frank didn’t sound happy about it. That was fine with Big Jim.

He rose. Only instead of leading them out, Big Jim extended his hands. He saw their hesitation and nodded, still smiling. “Come on, now. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day, and we don’t want to let this one go without a word of prayer. So grab on.”

They grabbed on. Big Jim closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Dear Lord—”

It went on for some time.

Barbie mounted the outside steps to his apartment at a few minutes to midnight, his shoulders sagging with weariness, thinking that the only thing in the world he wanted was six hours of oblivion before answering the alarm and going up to Sweetbriar Rose to cook breakfast.

The weariness left him as soon as he snapped on the lights—which, courtesy of Andy Sanders’s generator, still worked.

Someone had been in here.

The sign was so subtle that at first he couldn’t isolate it. He closed his eyes, then opened them and let them swing casually about his combination living-room/kitchenette, trying to take in everything. The books he’d been planning to leave behind hadn’t been moved around on the shelves; the chairs were where they had been, one under the lamp and the other by the room’s only window, with its scenic view of the alley outside; the coffee cup and the toast plate were still in the dish drainer beside the tiny sink.

Then it clicked home, as such things usually did if you didn’t push too hard. It was the rug. What he thought of as his Not Lindsay rug.

About five feet long and two wide, Not Lindsay was a repeating diamond pattern in blue, red, white, and brown. He had bought it in Baghdad, but had been assured by an Iraqi policeman he trusted that it was of Kurdish manufacture. “Very old, very beautiful,” the policeman had said. His name was Latif abd al-Khaliq Hassan. A good troop. “Look Turkey, but no-no-no.” Big grin. White teeth. A week after that day in the marketplace, a sniper’s bullet had blown Latif abd al-Khaliq Hassan’s brains right out through the back of his head. “Not Turkey, Iraqi!”

The rug-merchant wore a yellow tee-shirt that had said DON’T SHOOT ME, I’M ONLY THE PIANO PLAYER. Latif listened to him, nodding. They laughed together. Then the merchant had made a startlingly American jackoff gesture and they laughed even harder.

“What was that about?” Barbie had asked.

“He says American senator bought five like these. Lindsay Graham. Five rug, five hundred dollar. Five hundred out front, for press. More on the down-low. But all senator rug fake. Yes-yes-yes. This one not fake, this one real. I, Latif Hassan, tell you this, Barbie. Not Lindsay Graham rug.”

Latif had raised his hand and Barbie slapped him five. That had been a good day. Hot, but good. He had bought the rug for two hundred dollars American and an all-territories Coby DVD player. Not Lindsay was his one souvenir of Iraq, and he never stepped on it. He always stepped around it. He had planned to leave it behind when he left The Mill—he supposed down deep his idea had been to leave Iraq behind when he left The Mill, but fat chance of that. Wherever you went, there you were. The great Zen truth of the age.

He hadn’t stepped on it, he was superstitious about that, he always detoured around it, as if to step on it would activate some computer in Washington and he would find himself back in Baghdad or fucking Fallujah. But somebody had, because Not Lindsay was mussed. Wrinkled. And a little crooked. It had been perfectly straight when he left this morning, a thousand years ago.

He went into the bedroom. The coverlet was as neat as always, but that sense that someone had been here was equally strong. Was it a lingering smell of sweat? Some psychic vibe? Barbie didn’t know and didn’t care. He went to his dresser, opened the top drawer, and saw that the pair of extra-faded jeans which had been on top of the pile was now on the bottom. And his khaki shorts, which he’d laid in with the zippers up, were now zippers-down.

He went immediately to the second drawer, and the socks. It took less than five seconds to verify that his dog tags were gone, and he wasn’t surprised. No, not surprised at all.

He grabbed the disposable cell he had also been planning to leave behind and went back into the main room. The combined Tarker’s-Chester’s telephone directory was sitting on a table by the door, a book so skinny it was almost a pamphlet. He looked for the number he wanted, not really expecting it to be there; Chiefs of Police did not make a practice of listing their home phone numbers.

Except, it seemed, in small towns, they did. At least this one had, although the listing was discreet: H and B Perkins 28 Morin Street.Even though it was now past midnight, Barbie punched in the number without hesitation. He couldn’t afford to wait. He had an idea that time might be extremely short.

Her phone was tweeting. Howie, no doubt, calling to tell her he was going to be late, to just lock up the house and go to bed—

Then it came down on her again, like unpleasant presents raining from a poison piñata: the realization that Howie was dead. She didn’t know who could be calling her at—she checked her watch—twenty past midnight, but it wasn’t Howie.