Stephen King - Under the Dome

“Have you actually overflown it yet?”

“Less than two hours ago. Mission successful.”

“Who did it, Colonel?”

“We don’t know.”

“Was it us? Is this an experiment that went wrong? Or, God help us, some kind of test? You owe me the truth. You owe this town the truth. These people are goddam terrified.”

“Understood. But it wasn’t us.”

“Would you know if it was?”

Cox hesitated. When he next spoke, his voice was lower. “We have good sources in my department. When they fart in the NSA, we hear it. The same is true about Group Nine at Langley and a couple of other little deals you never heard of.”

It was possible that Cox was telling the truth. And it was possible he wasn’t. He was a creature of his calling, after all; if he had been drawing sentry duty out here in the chilly autumn dark with the rest of the pogeybait Marines, Cox too would have been standing with his back turned. He wouldn’t have liked it, but orders were orders.

“Any chance it’s some sort of natural phenomenon?” Barbie asked.

“One that conforms exactly to the man-made borders of a whole town? Every nook and fucking cranny? What do you think?”

“I had to ask. Is it permeable? Do you know?”

“Water goes through,” Cox said. “A little, anyway.”

“How is that possible?” Although he’d seen for himself the weird way water behaved; both he and Gendron had seen it.

“We don’t know, how could we?” Cox sounded exasperated. “We’ve been working on this less than twelve hours. People here are slapping themselves on the back just for figuring out how high it goes. We may figure it out, but for now we just don’t know.”

“Air?”

“Air goes through to a greater degree. We’ve set up a monitoring station where your town borders on… mmm…” Faintly, Barbie heard paper rustle. “Harlow. They’ve done what they call ‘puff tests.’ I guess that must measure outgoing air pressure against what bounces back. Anyway, air goes through, and a lot more freely than water does, but the scientists say still not completely. This is going to severely fuck up your weather, pal, but nobody can say how much or how bad. Hell, maybe it’ll turn Chester’s Mill into Palm Springs.” He laughed, rather feebly.

“Particulates?” Barbie thought he knew the answer to that one.

“Nope,” Cox said. “Particulate matter doesn’t go through. At least we don’t think so. And you want to be aware that works both ways. If particulate matter doesn’t get in, it won’t get out. That means auto emissions—”

“Nobody’s got that far to drive. Chester’s Mill is maybe four miles across at its widest. Along a diagonal—” He looked at Julia.

“Seven, tops,” she said.

Cox said, “We don’t think oil-heat pollutants are going to be a big deal, either. I’m sure everybody in town has a nice expensive oil furnace—in Saudi Arabia they have bumper stickers on their cars these days saying I Heart New England—but modern oil furnaces need electricity to provide a constant spark. Your oil reserves are probably good, considering the home-heating season hasn’t started yet, but we don’t think it’s going to be very useful to you. In the long run, that may be a good thing, from the pollution standpoint.”

“You think so? Come on up here when it’s thirty below zero and the wind’s blowing at—” He stopped for a moment. “ Will the wind blow?”

“We don’t know,” Cox said. “Ask me tomorrow and I may at least have a theory.”

“We can burn wood,” Julia said. “Tell him that.”

“Ms. Shumway says we can burn wood.”

“People have to be careful about that, Captain Barbara—Barbie. Sure, you’ve got plenty of wood up there and you don’t need electricity to ignite it and keep it going, but wood produces ash. Hell, it produces carcinogens.”

“Heating season here starts…” Barbie looked at Julia.

“November fifteenth,” she said. “Or thereabouts.”

“Ms. Shumway says mid-November. So tell me you’re going to have this worked out by then.”

“All I can say is that we intend to try like hell. Which brings me to the point of this conversation. The smart boys—the ones we’ve been able to convene so far—all agree that we’re dealing with a force field—”

“Just like on Star Trick, ” Barbie said. “Beam me up, Snotty.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Doesn’t matter. Go on, sir.”

“They all agree that a force field doesn’t just happen. Something either close to the field of effect or in the center of it has to generate it. Our guys think the center is most likely. ‘Like the handle of an umbrella,’ one of them said.”

“You think this is an inside job?”

“We think it’s a possibility. And we just happen to have a decorated soldier in town—”

Ex-soldier, Barbie thought. And the decorations went into the Gulf of Mexico eighteen months ago. But he had an idea his term of service had just been extended, like it or not. Held over by popular demand, as the saying went.

“—whose specialty in Iraq was hunting down Al Qaeda bomb factories. Hunting them down and shutting them down.”

So. Basically just another gennie. He thought of all those he and Julia Shumway had passed on the way out here, roaring away in the dark, providing heat and light. Eating propane to do it. He realized that propane and storage batteries, even more than food, had become the new gold standard in Chester’s Mill. One thing he knew: people would burn wood. If it got cold and the propane was gone, they’d burn plenty. Hardwood, softwood, trashwood. And fuck the carcinogens.

“It won’t be like the generators working away in your part of the world tonight,” Cox said. “A thing that could do this… we don’t know what it would be like, or who could build such a thing.”

“But Uncle Sammy wants it,” Barbie said. He was gripping the phone almost tightly enough to crack it. “That’s actually the priority, isn’t it? Sir? Because a thing like that could change the world. The people of this town are strictly secondary. Collateral damage, in fact.”

“Oh, let’s not be melodramatic,” Cox said. “In this matter our interests coincide. Find the generator, if it’s there to be found. Find it the way you found those bomb factories, and then shut it down. Problem solved.”

“If it’s there.”

“If it’s there, roger that. Will you try?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not that I can see, but I’m career military. For us, free will isn’t an option.”

“Ken, this is one fucked-up fire drill.”

Cox was slow to reply. Although there was silence on the line (except for a faint high hum that might mean the proceedings were being recorded), Barbie could almost hear him reflecting. Then he said: “That’s true, but you still get all the good shit, you bitch.”

Barbie laughed. He couldn’t help it.

On the way back, passing the dark shape that was Christ the Holy Redeemer Church, he turned to Julia. In the glow of the dashboard lights, her face looked tired and solemn.

“I won’t tell you to keep quiet about any of this,” he said, “but I think you should hold one thing back.”

“The generator that may or may not be in town.” She took a hand off the wheel, reached back, and stroked Horace’s head, as if for comfort and reassurance.

“Yes.”

“Because if there’s a generator spinning the field—creating your Colonel’s Dome—then somebody must be running it. Somebody here.”

“Cox didn’t say that, but I’m sure it’s what he thinks.”

“I’ll withhold that. And I won’t e-mail any pictures.”