Stephen King - Under the Dome

Gravel crunched. He turned in time to catch incoming from Thibodeau, who had cut behind him. The blow connected with his temple. Barbie saw stars. (“Or maybe one was a comet,” he told Brenda, opening the valve on the new gas canister.) Thibodeau moved in. Barbie pistoned a hard kick to his ankle, and Thibodeau’s grin turned to a grimace. He dropped to one knee, looking like a football player holding the ball for a field goal attempt. Except ball-holders usually don’t clutch their ankles.

Absurdly, Carter Thibodeau cried: “Fuckin dirty-fighter!”

“Look who’s ta—” Barbie got that far before Melvin Searles locked an elbow around his throat. Barbie drove his own elbow back into Searles’s midsection and heard the grunt of escaping air. Smelled it, too: beer, cigarettes, Slim Jims. He was turning, knowing that Thibodeau would probably be on him again before he could fight his way entirely clear of the aisle between vehicles into which he had retreated, no longer caring. His face was throbbing, his ribs were throbbing, and he suddenly decided—it seemed quite reasonable—that he was going to put all four of them in the hospital. They could discuss what constituted dirty fighting and what did not as they signed each other’s casts.

That was when Chief Perkins—called by either Tommy or Willow Anderson, the roadhouse proprietors—drove into the parking lot with his jackpots lit and his headlights winking back and forth. The combatants were illuminated like actors on a stage.

Perkins hit the siren once; it blipped half a whoop and died. Then he got out, hitching his belt up over his considerable girth.

“Little early in the week for this, isn’t it, fellas?”

To which Junior Rennie replied

Brenda didn’t need Barbie to tell her that; she’d heard it from Howie, and hadn’t been surprised. Even as a child, Big Jim’s boy had been a fluent confabulator, especially when his self-interest was at stake.

“To which he replied, ‘The cook started it.’ Am I right?”

“Yep.” Barbie pushed the gennie’s start button and it roared into life. He smiled at her, although he could feel a flush warming his cheeks. What he’d just told was not his favorite story. Although he supposed he’d pick it over the one of the gym in Fallujah any day. “There you go—lights, camera, action.”

“Thank you. How long will it last?”

“Only a couple of days, but this may be over by then.”

“Or not. I suppose you know what saved you from a trip to the county lockup that night?”

“Sure,” Barbie said. “Your husband saw it happening. Four-onone. It was kind of hard to miss.”

“Any other cop might not have seen it, even if it was right in front of his eyes. And it was just luck Howie was on that night; George Frederick was supposed to have the duty, but he called in with stomach flu.” She paused. “You might call it providence instead of luck.”

“So I might,” Barbie agreed.

“Would you like to come inside, Mr. Barbara?”

“Why don’t we sit out here? If you don’t mind. It’s pleasant.”

“Fine by me. The weather will turn cold soon enough. Or will it?”

Barbie said he didn’t know.

“When Howie got you all to the station, DeLesseps told Howie that you raped Angie McCain. Isn’t that how it went?”

“That was his first story. Then he said maybe it wasn’t quite rape, but when she got scared and told me to stop, I wouldn’t. That would make it rape in the second degree, I guess.”

She smiled briefly. “Don’t let any feminists hear you say there are degrees of rape.”

“I guess I better not. Anyway, your husband put me in the interrogation room—which seems to be a broom closet when it’s doing its day job—”

Brenda actually laughed.

“—then hauled Angie in. Sat her where she had to look me in the eye. Hell, we were almost rubbing elbows. It takes mental preparation to lie about something big, especially for a young person. I found that out in the Army. Your husband knew it, too. Told her it would go to court. Explained the penalties for perjury. Long story short, she recanted. Said there’d been no intercourse, let alone rape.”

“Howie had a motto: ‘Reason before law.’ It was the basis for the way he handled things. It will not be the way Peter Randolph handles things, partially because he’s a foggy thinker but mostly because he won’t be able to handle Rennie. My husband could. Howie said that when news of your… altercation… got back to Mr. Rennie, he insisted that you be tried for something. He was furious. Did you know that?”

“No.” But he wasn’t surprised.

“Howie told Mr. Rennie that if any of it made it into court, he’d see that all of it made it into court, including the four-on-one in the parking lot. He added that a good defense attorney might even be able to get some of Frankie and Junior’s high school escapades into the record. There were several, although nothing quite like what happened to you.”

She shook her head.

“Junior Rennie was never a great kid, but he used to be relatively harmless. Over the last year or so, he’s changed. Howie saw it, and was troubled by it. I’ve discovered that Howie knew things about both the son and the father…” She trailed off. Barbie could see her debating whether or not to go on and deciding not to. She had learned discretion as the wife of a small-town police official, and it was a hard habit to unlearn.

“Howie advised you to leave town before Rennie found some other way to make trouble for you, didn’t he? I imagine you got caught by this Dome thing before you could do it.”

“Yes to both. Can I have that Diet Coke now, Mrs. Perkins?”

“Call me Brenda. And I’ll call you Barbie, if that’s what you go by. Please help yourself to a soft drink.”

Barbie did.

“You want a key to the fallout shelter so you can get the Geiger counter. I can and will help you there. But it sounded like you were saying Jim Rennie has to know, and with that idea I have trouble. Maybe it’s grief clouding my mind, but I don’t understand why you’d want to get into any kind of head-butting contest with him. Big Jim freaks out when anybody challenges his authority, and you he doesn’t like to begin with. Nor does he owe you any favors. If my husband were still Chief, maybe the two of you could go see Rennie together. I would rather have enjoyed that, I think.” She leaned forward, looking at him earnestly from her dark-circled eyes. “But Howie’s gone and you’re apt to wind up in a cell instead of looking around for some mystery generator.”

“I know all that, but something new has been added. The Air Force is going to shoot a Cruise missile at the Dome tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours.”

“Oh-my-Jesus.”

“They’ve shot other missiles at it, but only to determine how high the barrier goes. Radar doesn’t work. Those had dummy warheads. This one will have a very live one. A bunker-buster.”

She paled visibly.

“What part of our town are they going to shoot it at?”

“Point of impact will be where the Dome cuts Little Bitch Road. Julia and I were out there just last night. It’ll explode about five feet off the ground.”

Her mouth dropped open in an unladylike gape. “Not possible!”

“I’m afraid it is. They’ll release in from a B-52, and it’ll fly a preprogrammed course. I mean really programmed. Down to every ridge and dip, once it descends to target height. Those things are eerie. If it explodes and doesn’t break through, it means everyone in town just gets a bad scare—it’s going to sound like Armageddon. If it does break through, though—”