Stephen King - Under the Dome

She promised to have Joe and his friends at the house by eight thirty at the latest, would pick them up herself, if necessary. Lowering her voice, she said, “I think Joe is crushing on the Calvert girl.”

“He’d be a fool not to,” Rusty said.

“Will you have to take them out there?”

“Yes, but not into a high radiation zone. I promise you that, Mrs. McClatchey.”

“Claire. If I’m going to allow my son to go with you to an area where the animals apparently commit suicide, I think we should be on a first-name basis.”

“You get Benny and Norrie to your house and I promise to take care of them on the field trip. That work for you?”

Claire said it did. Five minutes after hanging up on her, Rusty was turning off an eerily deserted Motton Road and onto Drummond Lane, a short street lined with Eastchester’s nicest homes. The nicest of the nice was the one with BURPEE on the mailbox. Rusty was soon in the Burpee kitchen, drinking coffee (hot; the Burpee generator was still working) with Romeo and his wife, Michela. Both of them looked pale and grim. Rommie was dressed, Michela still in her housecoat.

“You t’ink dat guy Barbie really killed Bren?” Rommie asked. “Because if he did, my friend, I’m gonna kill him myself.”

Michela put a hand on his arm. “You ain’t that dumb, honey.”

“I don’t think so,” Rusty said. “I think he was framed. But if you tell people I said that, we could all be in trouble.”

“Rommie always loved that woman.” Michela was smiling, but there was frost in her voice. “More than me, I sometimes think.”

Rommie neither confirmed nor denied this—seemed, in fact, not to hear it at all. He leaned toward Rusty, his brown eyes intent. “What you talking ’bout, doc? Framed how?”

“Nothing I want to go into now. I’m here on other business. And I’m afraid this is also secret.”

“Then I don’t want to hear it,” Michela said. She left the room, taking her coffee cup with her.

“Ain’t gonna be no lovin from dat woman tonight,” Rommie said.

“I’m sorry.”

Rommie shrugged. “I got ’nother one, crosstown. Misha knows, although she don’t let on. Tell me what your other bi’ness is, doc.”

“Some kids think they may have found what’s generating the Dome. They’re young but smart. I trust them. They had a Geiger counter, and they got a radiation spike out on Black Ridge Road. Not into the danger zone, but they didn’t get all that close.”

“Close to what? What’d they see?”

“A flashing purple light. You know where the old orchard is?”

“Hell, yeah. The McCoy place. I used to take girls parkin dere. You can see the whole town. I had dis ole Willys….” He looked momentarily wistful. “Well, never mind. Just a flashin light?”

“They also came across a lot of dead animals—some deer, a bear. Looked to the kids like they committed suicide.”

Rommie regarded him gravely. “I’m going wit you.”

“That’s fine… up to a point. One of us has got to go all the way, and that should be me. But I need a radiation suit.”

“What you got in mind, doc?”

Rusty told him. When he had finished, Rommie produced a package of Winstons and offered the pack across the table.

“My favorite OPs,” Rusty said, and took one. “So what do you think?”

“Oh, I can help you,” Rommie said, lighting them up. “I got ever-thin in dat store of mine, as everyone in dis town well know.” He pointed his cigarette at Rusty. “But you ain’t gonna want any pictures of yourself in the paper, because gonna look damn funny, you.”

“Not worried about dat, me,” Rusty said. “Newspaper burned down last night.”

“I heard,” Rommie said. “Dat guy Barbara again. His friens.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Oh, I’m a believin soul. When Bush said there was nukes an such in Iraq, I believed dat. I tell people, ‘He’s the guy who knows.’ Also b’lieve dat Oswal’ act alone, me.”

From the other room, Michela called: “Stop talking that fake French shit.”

Rommie gave Rusty a grin that said, You see what I have to put up with. “Yes, my dear,” he said, and with absolutely no trace of his Lucky Pierre accent. Then he faced Rusty again. “Leave your car here. We’ll take my van. More space. Drop me off at the store, then get those kids. I’ll put together your radiation suit. But as for gloves… I don’t know.”

“We’ve got lead-lined gloves in the X-ray room closet at the hospital. Go all the way up to the elbow. I can grab one of the aprons—”

“Good idea, hate to see you risk your sperm count—”

“Also there might be a pair or two of the lead-lined goggles the techs and radiologists used to wear back in the seventies. Although they could have been thrown out. What I’m hoping is that the radiation count doesn’t go much higher than the last reading the kids got, which was still in the green.”

“Except you said they didn’t get all dat close.”

Rusty sighed. “If the needle on that Geiger counter hits eight hundred or a thousand counts per second, my continued fertility is going to be the least of my worries.”

Before they left, Michela—now dressed in a short skirt and a spectacularly cozy sweater—swept back into the kitchen and berated her husband for a fool. He’d get them in trouble. He’d done it before and would do it again. Only this might be worse trouble than he knew.

Rommie took her in his arms and spoke to her in rapid French. She replied in the same language, spitting the words. He responded. She beat a fist twice against his shoulder, then cried and kissed him. Outside, Rommie turned to Rusty apologetically and shrugged.

“She can’t help it,” he said. “She’s got the soul of a poet and the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog.”

When Rusty and Romeo Burpee got to the department store, Toby Manning was already there, waiting to open up and serve the public, if that was Rommie’s pleasure. Petra Searles, who worked across the street in the drugstore, was sitting with him. They were in lawn chairs with tags reading END OF SUMMER BLOWOUT SALE hanging from the arms.

“Sure you don’t want to tell me about this radiation suit you’re going to build before”—Rusty looked at his watch—“ten o’clock?”

“Better not,” Rommie said. “You’d call me crazy. Go on, Doc. Get those gloves and goggles and the apron. Talk to the kids. Gimme some time.”

“We opening, boss?” Toby asked when Rommie got out.

“Dunno. Maybe this afternoon. Gonna be a l’il busy dis mornin, me.”

Rusty drove away. He was on Town Common Hill before he realized that both Toby and Petra had been wearing blue armbands.

He found gloves, aprons, and one pair of lead-lined goggles in the back of the X-ray closet, about two seconds before he was ready to give up. The goggles’ strap was busted, but he was sure Rommie could staple it back together. As a bonus, he didn’t have to explain to anyone what he was doing. The whole hospital seemed to be sleeping.

He went back out, sniffed at the air—flat, with an unpleasant smoky undertang—and looked west, at the hanging black smear where the missiles had struck. It looked like a skin tumor. He knew he was concentrating on Barbie and Big Jim and the murders because they were the human element, things he sort of understood. But ignoring the Dome would be a mistake—a potentially catastrophic one. It had to go away, and soon, or his patients with asthma and COPD were going to start having problems. And they were really just the canaries in the coal mine.

That nicotine-stained sky.

“Not good,” he muttered, and threw his salvage into the back of the van. “Not good at all.”