Stephen King - Under the Dome

“Ms. Shumway?” Crisp. Official. An on-the-outside voice. She could resent the owner of the voice just for that. “Still with me?”

“Still with you. Yes, I know Dale Barbara. He cooks at the restaurant on Main Street. Why?”

“He has no cell phone, it seems, the restaurant doesn’t answer—”

“It’s closed—”

“—and the landlines don’t work, of course.”

“Nothing in this town seems to work very well tonight, Colonel Cox. Cell phones included. But I notice you didn’t have any trouble getting through to me, which makes me wonder if you fellows might not be responsible for that.” Her fury—like her sarcasm, born of fear—surprised her. “What did you do ? What did you people do ?”

“Nothing. So far as I know now, nothing.”

She was so surprised she could think of no follow-up. Which was very unlike the Julia Shumway longtime Mill residents knew.

“The cell phones, yes,” he said. “Calls in and out of Chester’s Mill are pretty well shut down now. In the interests of national security. And with all due respect, ma’am, you would have done the same, in our position.”

“I doubt that.”

“Do you?” he sounded interested, not angry. “In a situation that’s unprecedented in the history of the world, and suggestive of technology far beyond what we or anyone else can even understand?”

Once more she found herself stuck for a reply.

“It’s quite important that I speak to Captain Barbara,” he said, returning to his original scripture. In a way, Julia was surprised he’d wandered as far off-message as he had.

“ Captain Barbara?”

“Retired. Can you find him? Take your cell phone. I’ll give you a number to call. It’ll go through.”

“Why me, Colonel Cox? Why didn’t you call the police station? Or one of the town selectmen? I believe all three of them are here.”

“I didn’t even try. I grew up in a small town, Ms. Shumway—”

“Bully for you.”

“—and in my experience, town politicians know a little, the town cops know a lot, and the local newspaper editor knows everything.”

That made her laugh in spite of herself.

“Why bother with a call when you two can meet face-to-face? With me as your chaperone, of course. I’m going out to my side of the barrier—was leaving when you called, in fact. I’ll hunt Barbie up—”

“Still calling himself that, is he?” Cox sounded bemused.

“I’ll hunt him up and bring him with me. We can have a mini press conference.”

“I’m not in Maine. I’m in D.C. With the Joint Chiefs.”

“Is that supposed to impress me?” Although it did, a little.

“Ms. Shumway, I’m busy, and probably you are, too. So, in the interests of resolving this thing—”

“Is that possible, do you think?”

“Quit it,” he said. “You were undoubtedly a reporter before you were an editor, and I’m sure asking questions comes naturally to you, but time is a factor here. Can you do as I ask?”

“I can. But if you want him, you get me, too. We’ll come out 119 and call you from there.”

“No,” he said.

“That’s fine,” she said pleasantly. “It’s been very nice talking to you, Colonel C—”

“Let me finish. Your side of 119 is totally FUBAR. That means—”

“I know the expression, Colonel, I used to be a Tom Clancy reader. What exactly do you mean by it in regard to Route 119?”

“I mean it looks like, pardon the vulgarity, opening night at a free whorehouse out there. Half your town has parked their cars and pickups on both sides of the road and in some dairy farmer’s field.”

She put her camera on the floor, took a notepad from her coat pocket, and scrawled Col. James Cox and Like open night at free w’house. Then she added Dinsmore farm? Yes, he was probably talking about Alden Dinsmore’s place.

“All right,” she said, “what do you suggest?”

“Well, I can’t stop you from coming, you’re absolutely right about that.” He sighed, the sound seeming to suggest it was an unfair world. “And I can’t stop what you print in your paper, although I don’t think it matters, since no one outside of Chester’s Mill is going to see it.”

She stopped smiling. “Would you mind explaining that?”

“I would, actually, and you’ll work it out for yourself. My suggestion is that, if you want to see the barrier—although you can’t actually see it, as I’m sure you’ve been told—you bring Captain Barbara out to where it cuts Town Road Number Three. Do you know Town Road Number Three?”

For a moment she didn’t. Then she realized what he was talking about, and laughed.

“Something amusing, Ms. Shumway?”

“In The Mill, folks call that one Little Bitch Road. Because in mud season, it’s one little bitch.”

“Very colorful.”

“No crowds out on Little Bitch, I take it?”

“No one at all right now.”

“All right.” She put the pad in her pocket and picked up the camera. Horace continued waiting patiently by the door.

“Good. When may I expect your call? Or rather, Barbie’s call on your cell?”

She looked at her watch and saw it had just gone ten. How in God’s name had it gotten that late so early? “We’ll be out there by ten thirty, assuming I can find him. And I think I can.”

“That’s fine. Tell him Ken says hello. That’s a—”

“A joke, yes, I get it. Will someone meet us?”

There was a pause. When he spoke again, she sensed reluctance. “There will be lights, and sentries, and soldiers manning a roadblock, but they have been instructed not to speak to the residents.”

“Not to— why ? In God’s name, why ?”

“If this situation doesn’t resolve, Ms. Shumway, all these things will become clear to you. Most you really will figure out on your own—you sound like a very bright lady.”

“Well fuck you very much, Colonel!” she cried, stung. At the door, Horace pricked up his ears.

Cox laughed, a big unoffended laugh. “Yes, ma’am, receiving you five-by-five. Ten thirty?”

She was tempted to tell him no, but of course there was no way she could do that.

“Ten thirty. Assuming I can hunt him up. And I call you?”

“Either you or him, but it’s him I need to speak with. I’ll be waiting with one hand on the phone.”

“Then give me the magic number.” She crooked the phone against her ear and fumbled the pad out again. Of course you always wanted your pad again after you’d put it away; that was a fact of life when you were a reporter, which she now was. Again. The number he gave her to call somehow scared her more than anything else he’d said. The area code was 000.

“One more thing, Ms. Shumway: do you have a pacemaker implant? Hearing-aid implants? Anything of that nature?”

“No. Why?”

She thought he might again decline to answer, but he didn’t. “Once you’re close to the Dome, there’s some kind of interference. It’s not harmful to most people, they feel it as nothing more than a low-level electric shock which goes away a second or two after it comes, but it plays hell with electronic devices. Shuts some down—most cell phones, for instance, if they come closer than five feet or so—and explodes others. If you bring a tape recorder out, it’ll shut down. Bring an iPod or something sophisticated like a BlackBerry, it’s apt to explode.”

“Did Chief Perkins’s pacemaker explode? Is that what killed him?”

“Ten thirty. Bring Barbie, and be sure to tell him Ken says hello.”

He broke the connection, leaving Julia standing in silence beside her dog. She tried calling her sister in Lewiston. The numbers peeped… then nothing. Blank silence, as before.