Stephen King - Under the Dome

“Yuh,” he said. “I think that’s what it was.”

Joe turned to look at the van, now heading back toward them. When it got to the foot of the ridge it sped up, as if Rusty couldn’t wait to get back. When he arrived and jumped out, Joe saw he had another reason for hurry: the lead apron was gone.

Before Rusty could say anything, his cell phone rang. He flipped it open, looked at the number, and took the call. He expected Ginny, but it was the new guy, Thurston Marshall. “Yes, what? If it’s about the plane, I saw—” He listened, frowning a little, then nodding. “Okay, yes. Right. I’m coming now. Tell Ginny or Twitch to give him two milligrams of Valium, IV push. No, better make it three. And tell him to be calm. That’s foreign to his nature, but tell him to try. Give his son five milligrams.”

He closed his phone and looked at them. “Both Rennies are in the hospital, the elder with heartbeat arrhythmia, which he’s had before. The damn fool has needed a pacemaker for two years. Thurston says the younger has symptoms that look to him like a glioma. I hope he’s wrong.”

Norrie turned her tearstained face up to Rusty’s. She had her arm around Benny Drake, who was furiously wiping at his eyes. When Joe came and stood next to her, she put her other arm around him.

“That’s a brain tumor, right?” she said. “A bad one.”

“When they hit kids Junior Rennie’s age, almost all of them are bad.”

“What did you find up there?” Rommie asked.

“And what happened to your apron?” Benny added.

“I found what Joe thought I’d find.”

“The generator?” Rommie said. “Doc, are you sure?”

“Yeah. It’s like nothing I ever saw before. I’m pretty sure no one on Earth’s seen anything like it before.”

“Something from another planet,” Joe said in a voice so low it was a whisper. “I knew. ”

Rusty looked at him hard. “You can’t talk about it. None of us can. If you’re asked, say we looked and found nothing.”

“Even to my mom?” Joe asked plaintively.

Rusty almost relented on that score, then hardened his heart. This was a secret now shared among five people, and that was far too many. But the kids had deserved to know, and Joe McClatchey had guessed anyway.

“Even her, at least for now.”

“I can’t lie to her,” Joe said. “It doesn’t work. She’s got Mom Vision.”

“Then just say I swore you to secrecy and it’s better for her that way. If she presses, tell her to talk to me. Come on, I need to get back to the hospital. Rommie, you drive. My nerves are shot.”

“Aren’t you gonna—” Rommie began.

“I’ll tell you everything. On the way back. Maybe we can even figure out what the hell to do about it.”

An hour after the Air Ireland 767 crashed into the Dome, Rose Twitchell marched into the Chester’s Mill PD with a napkin-covered plate. Stacey Moggin was back on the desk, looking as tired and distracted as Rose felt.

“What’s that?” Stacey asked.

“Lunch. For my cook. Two toasted BLTs.”

“Rose, I’m not supposed to let you go down there. I’m not supposed to let anyone go down there.”

Mel Searles had been talking with two of the new recruits about a monster truck show he’d seen at the Portland Civic Center last spring. Now he looked around. “I’ll take em to him, Miz Twitchell.”

“You will not, ” Rose said.

Mel looked surprised. And a little hurt. He had always liked Rose, and thought she liked him.

“I don’t trust you not to drop the plate,” she explained, although this wasn’t the exact truth; the fact was, she didn’t trust him at all. “I watched you play football, Melvin.”

“Aw, come on, I ain’t that clumsy.”

“Also because I want to see if he’s all right.”

“He’s not supposed to have any visitors,” Mel said. “That’s from Chief Randolph, and he got it direct from Selectman Rennie.”

“Well, I’m going down. You’ll have to use your Taser to stop me, and if you do that, I’ll never make you another strawberry waffle the way you like them, with the batter all runny in the middle.” She looked around and sniffed. “Besides, I don’t see either of those men here right now. Or am I missing something?”

Mel considered getting tough, if only to impress the fresh fish, and then decided not to. He really did like Rose. And he liked her waffles, especially when they were a little gooshy. He hitched up his belt and said, “Okay. But I hafta to go with you, and you ain’t taking him nothing until I look under that napkin.”

She raised it. Underneath were two BLTs, and a note written on the back of a Sweetbriar Rose customer check. Stay strong, it said. We believe in you.

Mel took the note, crumpled it, and threw it toward the waste-basket. It missed, and one of the recruits scurried to pick it up. “Come on,” he said, then stopped, took half a sandwich, and tore out a monster bite. “He couldn’t eat all that, anyway,” he told Rose.

Rose said nothing, but as he led her downstairs, she did briefly consider braining him with the plate.

She got halfway down the lower corridor before Mel said, “That’s as close as you go, Miz Twitchell. I’ll take it the rest of the way.”

She handed the plate over and watched unhappily as Mel knelt, pushed the plate through the bars, and announced: “Lunch is served, mon-sewer.”

Barbie ignored him. He was looking at Rose. “Thank you. Although if Anson made those, I don’t know how grateful I’ll be after the first bite.”

“I made them,” she said. “Barbie—why did they beat you up? Were you trying to get away? You look awful. ”

“Not trying to get away, resisting arrest. Wasn’t I, Mel?”

“You want to quit the smart talk, or I’ll come in there and take them samwidges away from you.”

“Well, you could try,” Barbie said. “We could contest the matter.” When Mel showed no inclination to take him up on this offer, Barbie turned his attention to Rose once more. “Was it an airplane? It sounded like an airplane. A big one.”

“ABC says it was an Air Ireland jetliner. Fully loaded.”

“Let me guess. It was on its way to Boston or New York and some not-so-bright spark forgot to reprogram the autopilot.”

“I don’t know. They’re not saying about that part yet.”

“Come on.” Mel came back and took her arm. “That’s enough chitter-chatter. You need to leave before I get in trouble.”

“Are you okay?” Rose asked Barbie, resisting this command—at least for a moment.

“Yeah,” Barbie said. “How about you? Did you patch it up with Jackie Wettington yet?”

And what was the correct answer to that one? So far as Rose knew, she had nothing to patch up with Jackie. She thought she saw Barbie give a tiny shake of the head, and hoped it wasn’t just her imagination.

“Not yet,” she said.

“You ought to. Tell her to stop being a bitch.”

“As if,” Mel muttered. He locked onto Rose’s arm. “Come on, now; don’t make me drag you.”

“Tell her I said you’re all right,” Barbie called as she went up the stairs, this time leading the way with Mel at her heels. “You two really should talk. And thanks for the sandwiches.”

Tell her I said you’re all right.

That was the message, she was quite sure of it. She didn’t think Mel had caught it; he’d always been dull, and life under the Dome did not seem to have smartened him up any. Which was probably why Barbie had taken the risk.

Rose made up her mind to find Jackie as soon as possible, and pass on the message: Barbie says I’m all right. Barbie says you can talk to me.