Stephen King - Under the Dome

Maybe I was wrong, maybe I put the dope back in my attaché —

Unfortunately, no. The dope was there, right next to the remains of the Brie they had gorged on before commencing last night’s fuckathon.

He ran to it, and there was a knock on the door. No, a hammering on the door.

“Just a minute!” Thurston cried, madly merry. Carolyn was standing in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in a sheet, but he hardly noticed her. Thurston’s mind—still suffering residual paranoia from the previous evening’s indulgences—tumbled with unconnected thoughts: revoked tenure, 1984 thought-police, revoked tenure, the disgusted reaction of his three children (by two previous wives), and, of course, revoked tenure. “Just a minute, just a sec, let me get dressed—”

But the door burst open, and—in direct violation of about nine different Constitutional guarantees—two young men strode in. One held a bullhorn. Both were dressed in jeans and blue shirts. The jeans were almost comforting, but the shirts bore shoulder-patches and badges.

We don’t need no stinkin badges, Thurston thought numbly.

Carolyn shrieked, “Get out of here!” “Check it out, Junes,” Frankie DeLesseps said. “It’s When Horny Met Slutty. ”

Thurston snatched up the Baggie, held it behind his back, and dropped it into the sink.

Junior was eyeing the equipment this move revealed. “That’s about the longest and skinniest dorkola I’ve ever seen,” he said. He looked tired, and came by the look honestly—he’d had only two hours’ sleep—but he was feeling fine, absolutely ripping, old bean. Not a trace of a headache.

This work suited him.

“Get OUT!” Carolyn shouted.

Frankie said, “You want to shut your mouth, sweetheart, and put on some clothes. Everyone on this side of town’s being evacuated.”

“This is our place! GET THE FUCK OUT!”

Frankie had been smiling. Now he stopped. He strode past the skinny naked man standing by the sink ( quailing by the sink might have been more accurate) and grabbed Carolyn by the shoulders. He gave her a brisk shake. “Don’t give me lip, sweetheart. I’m trying to keep you from getting your ass fried. You and your boyfr—”

“Get your hands off me! You’ll go to jail for this! My father’s a lawyer!” She tried to slap him. Frankie—not a morning person, never had been—seized her hand and bent it back. Not really hard, but Carolyn screamed. The sheet dropped to the floor.

“Whoa! That’s a serious rack,” Junior confided to the gaping Thurston Marshall. “Can you keep up with that, old fella?”

“Get your clothes on, both of you,” Frankie said. “I don’t know how dumb you are, but pretty dumb would be my guess, since you’re still here. Don’t you know—” He stopped. Looked from the woman’s face to the man’s. Both equally terrified. Equally mystified.

“Junior!” he said.

“What?”

“Titsy McGee and wrinkle-boy don’t know what’s going on.”

“Don’t you dare call me any of your sexist—”

Junior held up his hands. “Ma’am, get dressed. You have to get out of here. The U.S. Air Force is going to fire a Cruise missile at this part of town in”—he looked at his watch—“a little less than five hours.”

“ARE YOU INSANE?” Carolyn screamed.

Junior heaved a sigh and then pushed ahead. He guessed he understood the whole cop thing a little better now. It was a great job, but people could be so stupid. “If it bounces off, you’d just hear a big bang. Might cause you to shit your pants—if you were wearing any—but it wouldn’t hurt you. If it punches through, though, you’d most likely get charbroiled, since it’s gonna be really big and you’re less than two miles from what they say is gonna be the point of impact.”

“Bounces off what, you dimwit?” Thurston demanded. With the dope in the sink, he now used one hand to cover his privates… or at least tried to; his love-machine was indeed extremely long and skinny.

“The Dome,” Frankie said. “And I don’t appreciate your mouth.” He took a long step forward and punched the current guest editor of Ploughshares in the gut. Thurston made a hoarse whoofing sound, doubled over, staggered, almost kept his feet, went to his knees, and vomited up about a teacup’s worth of thin white gruel that still smelled of Brie.

Carolyn held her swelling wrist. “You’ll go to jail for this,” she promised Junior in a low, trembling voice. “Bush and Cheney are long gone. This isn’t the United States of North Korea anymore.”

“I know that,” Junior said, with admirable patience for one who was thinking he wouldn’t mind doing a little more choking; there was a small dark Gila monster in his brain that thought a little more choking would be just the way to start the day off right.

But no. No. He had to do his part in completing the evacuation. He had taken the Oath of Duty, or whatever the fuck it was.

“I do know it,” he repeated. “But what you two Massholes don’t get is that you aren’t in the United States of America anymore, either. You’re in the Kingdom of Chester now, and if you don’t behave, you’re going to end up in the Dungeons of Chester. I promise. No phone call, no lawyer, no due process. We’re trying to save your lives here. Are you too fuck-dumb to understand that?”

She was staring at him, stunned. Thurston tried to get up, couldn’t manage it, and crawled toward her. Frankie helped him along with a boot to the butt. Thurston cried out in shock and pain. “That’s for holding us up, Grampa,” Frankie said. “I admire your taste in chicks, but we’ve got a lot to do.”

Junior looked at the young woman. Great mouth. Angelina lips. He bet she could, as the saying went, suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. “If he can’t get dressed by himself, you help him. We’ve got four more cabins to check out, and when we get back here, you want to be in that Volvo of yours and on your way into town.”

“I don’t understand any of this!” Carolyn wailed.

“Not surprised,” Frankie said, and plucked the Baggie of dope out of the sink. “Didn’t you know this stuff makes you stupid?”

She began to cry.

“Don’t worry,” Frankie said. “I’m confisticating it, and in a couple of days, booya, you’ll smarten up all on your own.”

“You didn’t read us our rights,” she wept.

Junior looked astonished. Then he laughed. “You have the right to get the fuck out of here and shut the fuck up, okay? In this situation those are the only rights you have. Do you understand that?”

Frankie was examining the confisticated dope. “Junior,” he said, “there’s hardly any seeds in this. This is fucking primo. ”

Thurston had reached Carolyn. He got to his feet, farting quite loudly as he did so. Junior and Frankie looked at each other. They tried to hold it in—they were officers of the law, after all—and couldn’t. They burst out laughing simultaneously.

“Trombone Charlie is back in town!” Frankie yelled, and they gave each other a high five.

Thurston and Carolyn stood in the bedroom doorway, covering their mutual nakedness in an embrace, staring at the cackling intruders. In the background, like voices in a bad dream, loudhailers continued to announce that the area was being evacuated. Most of the amplified voices were now retreating toward Little Bitch.

“I want that car gone when we get back,” Junior said. “Or I will fuck you up.”

They left. Carolyn dressed herself, then helped Thurston—his stomach hurt too much for him to bend over and put on his own shoes. By the time they were finished, both of them were crying. In the car, on their way back down the camp lane that led to Little Bitch Road, Carolyn tried to reach her father on her cell. She got nothing but silence.