Stephen King - Under the Dome

The press helicopter takes off again and hovers, sending back images of a double human snake spread over a quarter of a mile. On the Motton side, the leaves flame and dance with late October color; on the Chester’s Mill side they hang limp. Behind the towns-folk—on the road, in the fields, caught in the bushes—are dozens of discarded signs. At this moment of reunion (or almost-reunion), politics and protest have been forgotten.

Candy Crowley says: “Wolf, this is without a doubt the saddest, strangest event I’ve witnessed in all my years of reporting.”

Yet human beings are nothing if not adaptable, and little by little the excitement and the strangeness begin to wear off. The reunions merge into the actual visiting. And behind the visitors, those who have been overwhelmed—on both sides of the Dome—are being carried away. On The Mill side, there’s no Red Cross tent to drag them to. The police put them in such scant shade as the police cars allow, to wait for Pamela Chen and the schoolbus.

In the police station, the WCIK raiding party is watching with the same silent fascination as everyone else. Randolph lets them; there is a little time yet. He checks the names off on his clipboard, then motions Freddy Denton to join him on the front steps. He has expected grief from Freddy for taking over the head honcho role (Peter Randolph has been judging others by himself his whole life), but there is none. This is a far bigger deal than rousting scuzzy old drunks out of convenience stores, and Freddy is delighted to hand off the responsibility. He wouldn’t mind taking credit if things went well, but suppose they don’t? Randolph has no such qualms. One unemployed troublemaker and a mild-mannered druggist who wouldn’t say shit if it was in his cereal? What can possibly go wrong?

And Freddy discovers, as they stand on the steps Piper Libby tumbled down not so long ago, that he isn’t going to be able to duck the leadership role completely. Randolph hands him a slip of paper. On it are seven names. One is Freddy’s. The other six are Mel Sear-les, George Frederick, Marty Arsenault, Aubrey Towle, Stubby Norman, and Lauren Conree.

“You will take this party down the access road,” Randolph says. “You know the one?”

“Yep, busts off from Little Bitch this side of town. Sloppy Sam’s father laid that little piece of roa—”

“I don’t care who laid it,” Randolph says, “just drive to the end of it. At noon, you take your men through the belt of woods there. You’ll come out in back of the radio station. Noon, Freddy. That doesn’t mean a minute before or a minute after.”

“I thought we were all supposed to go in that way, Pete.”

“Plans have changed.”

“Does Big Jim know they’ve changed?”

“Big Jim is a selectman, Freddy. I’m the Police Chief. I’m also your superior, so would you kindly shut up and listen?”

“Soh- ree, ” Freddy says, and cups his hands to his ears in a way that is impudent, to say the least.

“I’ll be parked down the road that runs past the front of the station. I’ll have Stewart and Fern with me. Also Roger Killian. If Bushey and Sanders are foolish enough to engage you—if we hear shooting from behind the station, in other words—the three of us will swoop in and take them from behind. Have you got it?”

“Yeah.” It actually sounds like a pretty good plan to Freddy.

“All right, let’s synchronize watches.”

“Uh… sorry?”

Randolph sighs. “We have to make sure they’re the same, so noon comes at the same time for both of us.”

Freddy still looks puzzled, but he complies.

From inside the station, someone—it sounds like Stubby—shouts: “Whoop, another one bites the dust! The fainters’re stacked up behind them cruisers like cordwood!” This is greeted by laughter and applause. They are pumped up, excited to have pulled what Melvin Searles calls “possible shootin duty.”

“We saddle up at eleven fifteen,” Randolph tells Freddy. “That gives us almost forty-five minutes to watch the show on TV.”

“Want popcorn?” Freddy asks. “We got a whole mess of it in the cupboard over the microwave.”

“Might as well, I guess.”

Out at the Dome, Henry Morrison goes to his car and helps himself to a cool drink. His uniform is soaked through with sweat and he can’t recall ever feeling so tired (he thinks a lot of that is down to bad air—he can’t seem to completely catch his breath), but on the whole he is satisfied with himself and his men. They have managed to avoid a mass crushing at the Dome, nobody has died on this side—yet—and folks are settling down. Half a dozen TV cameramen race to and fro on the Motton side, recording as many heartwarming reunion vignettes as possible. Henry knows it’s an invasion of privacy, but he supposes America and the world beyond may have a right to see this. And on the whole, people don’t seem to mind. Some even like it; they are getting their fifteen minutes. Henry has time to search for his own mother and father, although he’s not surprised when he doesn’t see them; they live all the way to hell and gone up in Derry, and they’re getting on in years now. He doubts if they even put their names in the visitor lottery.

A new helicopter is beating in from the west, and although Henry doesn’t know it, Colonel James Cox is inside. Cox is also not entirely displeased with the way Visitors Day has gone so far. He has been told no one on the Chester’s Mill side seems to be preparing for a press conference, but this doesn’t surprise or discommode him. Based on the extensive files he has been accumulating, he would have been more surprised if Rennie had put in an appearance. Cox has saluted a lot of men over the years, and he can smell a bully-pulpit coward a mile away.

Then Cox sees the long line of visitors and the trapped townspeople facing them. The sight drives James Rennie from his mind. “Isn’t that the damndest thing,” he murmurs. “Isn’t that just the damndest thing anyone ever saw.”

On the Dome side, Special Deputy Toby Manning shouts: “Here comes the bus!” Although the civilians barely notice—they are either raptly engaged with their relatives or still searching for them—the cops raise a cheer.

Henry walks to the back of his cruiser, and sure enough, a big yellow schoolbus is just passing Jim Rennie’s Used Cars. Pamela Chen may not weigh more than a hundred and five pounds soaking wet, but she’s come through bigtime, and with a big bus.

Henry checks his watch and sees that it’s twenty minutes past eleven. We’re going to get through this, he thinks. We’re going to get through this just fine.

On Main Street, three big orange trucks are rolling up Town Common Hill. In the third one, Peter Randolph is crammed in with Stew, Fern, and Roger (redolent of chickens). As they head out 119 northbound toward Little Bitch Road and the radio station, Randolph is struck by a thought, and barely restrains himself from smacking his palm against his forehead.

They have plenty of firepower, but they have forgotten the helmets and Kevlar vests.

Go back and get them? If they do that, they won’t be in position until quarter past twelve, maybe even later. And the vests would almost certainly turn out to be a needless precaution, anyway. It’s eleven against two, and the two are probably stoned out of their gourds.

Really, it should be a tit.

Andy Sanders was stationed behind the same oak he’d used for cover the first time the bitter men came. Although he hadn’t taken any grenades, he had six ammo clips stuck in the front of his belt, plus four more poking into the small of his back. There were another two dozen in the wooden crate at his feet. Enough to hold off an army… although he supposed if Big Jim actually sent an army, they’d take him out in short order. After all, he was just a pill-roller.