Stephen King - Under the Dome

Rennie opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Ernie Calvert spoke up. “There’s a barrier across the road. You can’t see it, but it’s there, Chief. The truck hit it. The plane, too.”

“Damn right!” Dinsmore exclaimed.

“Officer Wettington hit it, too,” Johnny Carver said. “Lucky for her she was goin slower.” He had placed an arm around Jackie, who looked dazed. Duke observed her blood on the sleeve of Carver’s I GOT GASSED AT MILL DISCOUNT jacket.

On the Motton side, another FD truck had arrived. The first two had blocked the road in a V. Firemen were already spilling out and unrolling hoses. Duke could hear the warble of an ambulance from the direction of Castle Rock. Where’s ours? he wondered. Had it also gone to that stupid damn training exercise? He didn’t like to think so. Who in their right mind would order an ambulance to an empty burning house?

“There seems to be an invisible barrier—” Rennie began.

“Yeah, I got that,” Duke said. “I don’t know what it means, but I got it.” He left Rennie and went to his bleeding officer, not seeing the dark red color that suffused the Second Selectman’s cheeks at this snub.

“Jackie?” Duke asked, taking her gently by the shoulder. “All right?”

“Yeah.” She touched her nose, where the blood-flow was slowing. “Does it look broken? It doesn’t feel broken.”

“It’s not broken, but it’s going to swell. Think you’ll look all right by the time the Harvest Ball comes around, though.”

She offered a weak smile.

“Chief,” Rennie said, “I really think we ought to call someone on this. If not Homeland Security—on more mature reflection that seems a little radical—then perhaps the State Police—”

Duke moved him aside. It was gentle but unequivocal. Almost a push. Rennie balled his hands into fists, then unrolled them again. He had built a life in which he was a pusher rather than a pushee, but that didn’t alter the fact that fists were for idiots. Witness his own son. All the same, slights needed to be noted and addressed. Usually at some later date… but sometimes later was better.

Sweeter.

“Peter!” Duke called to Randolph. “Give the Health Center a shout and ask where the hell our ambulance is! I want it out here!”

“Morrison can do that,” Randolph said. He had grabbed the camera from his car and was turning to snap pictures of the scene.

“ You can do it, and right now.”

“Chief, I don’t think Jackie’s too banged up, and no one else—”

“When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it, Peter.”

Randolph started to give him a look, then saw the expression on Duke’s face. He tossed the camera back onto the front seat of his shop and grabbed his cell phone.

“What was it, Jackie?” Duke asked.

“I don’t know. First there was a buzzy feeling like you get if you accidentally touch the prongs of a plug when you’re sticking it into the wall. It passed, but then I hit… jeez, I don’t know what I hit.”

An ahhh sound went up from the spectators. The firemen had trained their hoses on the burning pulp-truck, but beyond it, some of the spray was rebounding. Striking something and splattering back, creating rainbows in the air. Duke had never seen anything like it in his life… except maybe when you were in a car wash, watching the high-pressure jets hit your windshield.

Then he saw a rainbow on the Mill side as well: a small one. One of the spectators—Lissa Jamieson, the town librarian—walked toward it.

“Lissa, get away from there!” Duke shouted.

She ignored him. It was as if she were hypnotized. She stood inches from where a jet of high-pressure water was striking thin air and splashing back, her hands spread. He could see drops of mist sparkling on her hair, which was pulled away from her face and bunned at the back. The little rainbow broke up, then reformed behind her.

“Nothing but mist!” she called, sounding rapturous. “All that water over there and nothing but mist over here! Like from a humidifier.”

Peter Randolph held up his cell phone and shook his head. “I get a signal, but I’m not getting through. My guess is that all these spectators”—he swept his arm in a big arc—“have got everything jammed up.”

Duke didn’t know if that were possible, but it was true that almost everyone he could see was either yakking or taking pictures. Except for Lissa, that was, who was still doing her wood-nymph imitation.

“Go get her,” Duke told Randolph. “Pull her back before she decides to haul out her crystals or something.”

Randolph’s face suggested that such errands were far below his pay grade, but he went. Duke uttered a laugh. It was short but genuine.

“What in the goodness sakes do you see that’s worth laughing about?” Rennie asked. More Castle County cops were pulling up on the Motton side. If Perkins didn’t look out, The Rock would end up taking control of this thing. And getting the gosh-darn credit.

Duke stopped laughing, but he was still smiling. Unabashed. “It’s a clustermug,” he said. “Isn’t that your word, Big Jim? And in my experience, sometimes laughing is the only way to deal with a clustermug.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Rennie almost shouted. The Dinsmore boys stepped back from him and stood beside their father.

“I know.” Duke spoke gently. “And that’s okay. All you need to understand right now is that I’m the chief law enforcement officer on the scene, at least until the County Sheriff gets here, and you’re a town selectman. You have no official standing, so I’d like you to move back.”

Duke raised his voice and pointed to where Officer Henry Morrison was stringing yellow tape, stepping around two largeish pieces of airplane fuselage to do it. “I’d like everyone to move back and let us do our job! Follow Selectman Rennie. He’s going to lead you behind the yellow tape.”

“I don’t appreciate this, Duke,” Rennie said.

“God bless you, but I don’t give a shit,” Duke said. “Get off my scene, Big Jim. And be sure to go around the tape. No need for Henry to have to string it twice.”

“Chief Perkins, I want you to remember how you spoke to me today. Because I will.”

Rennie stalked toward the tape. The other spectators followed, most looking over their shoulders to watch the water spray off the diesel-smudged barrier and form a line of wetness on the road. A couple of the sharper ones (Ernie Calvert, for instance) had already noticed that this line exactly mimicked the border between Motton and The Mill.

Rennie felt a childish temptation to snap Hank Morrison’s carefully strung tape with his chest, but restrained himself. He would not, however, go around and get his Land’s End slacks snagged in a mess of burdocks. They had cost him sixty dollars. He shuffled under, holding up the tape with one hand. His belly made serious ducking impossible.

Behind him, Duke walked slowly toward the place where Jackie had suffered her collision. He held one hand outstretched before him like a blind man prospecting his way across an unfamiliar room.

Here was where she had fallen down… and here …

He felt the buzzing she had described, but instead of passing, it deepened to searing pain in the hollow of his left shoulder. He had just enough time to remember the last thing Brenda had said— Take care of your pacemaker —and then it exploded in his chest with enough force to blow open his Wildcats sweatshirt, which he’d donned that morning in honor of this afternoon’s game. Blood, scraps of cotton, and bits of flesh struck the barrier.

The crowd aaah ed.