Stephen King - Under the Dome

“Good morning, Colonel Barbara,” Julia said with her little Mona Lisa smile. “I keep wanting to call you Major Barbara. Like the—”

“The play, I know.” Barbie had heard this one a few times before. Like ten thousand. “Is this your posse?”

One of the children was an extremely tall, extremely skinny boy with a mop of dark brown hair; one was a stocky young fellow wearing baggy shorts and a faded 50 Cent tee-shirt; the third was a pretty little girl with a lightning bolt on her cheek. A decal rather than a tattoo, but it still gave her a certain savoir faire. He realized if he told her she looked like the middle-school version of Joan Jett, she wouldn’t know who he was talking about.

“Norrie Calvert,” Julia said, touching the riot grrl’s shoulder. “Benny Drake. And this tall drink of water is Joseph McClatchey. Yesterday’s protest demonstration was his idea.”

“But I never meant anyone to get hurt,” Joe said.

“And it wasn’t your fault they did,” Barbie told him. “So rest easy on that.”

“Are you really the bull goose?” Benny asked, looking him over.

Barbie laughed. “No,” he said. “I’m not even going to try and be the bull goose unless I absolutely have to.”

“But you know the soldiers out there, right?” Norrie asked.

“Well, not personally. For one thing, they’re Marines. I was Army.”

“You’re still Army, according to Colonel Cox,” Julia said. She was wearing her cool little smile, but her eyes were dancing with excitement. “Can we talk to you? Young Mr. McClatchey has had an idea, and I think it’s brilliant. If it works.”

“It’ll work,” Joe said. “When it comes to computer shi—stuff, I’m the bull goose.”

“Step into my office,” Barbie said, and escorted them toward the counter.

It was brilliant, all right, but it was already going on ten thirty, and if they were really going to make this thing happen, they would have to move fast. He turned to Julia. “Do you have your cell ph—”

Julia slapped it smartly into his palm before he could finish. “Cox’s number is in memory.”

“Great. Now if I knew how to access the memory.”

Joe took the phone. “What are you, from the Dark Ages?”

“Yes!” Barbie said. “When knights were bold and ladies fair went without their underwear.”

Norrie laughed hard at that, and when she raised her fist, Barbie tapped her small fist with his big one.

Joe pushed a couple of buttons on the minuscule keypad. He listened, then handed the cell to Barbie.

Cox must still have been sitting with one hand on the phone, because he was already on when Barbie put Julia’s cell to his ear.

“How’s it going, Colonel?” Cox asked.

“We’re basically okay.”

“And that’s a start.”

Easy for you to say, Barbie thought. “I imagine things will remain basically okay until the missile either bounces off or punches through and does gross damage to the woods and farms on our side. Which the citizens of Chester’s Mill would welcome. What are your guys saying?”

“Not much. No one is making any predictions.”

“That’s not what we’re hearing on the TV.”

“I don’t have time to keep up with the talking heads.” Barbie could hear the shrug in Cox’s voice. “We’re hopeful. We think we’ve got a shot. To coin a phrase.”

Julia was opening and closing her hands in a What gives? gesture.

“Colonel Cox, I’m sitting here with four friends. One of them is a young man named Joe McClatchey, who’s had a pretty cool idea. I’m going to put him on the phone with you right now—”

Joe was shaking his head hard enough to make his hair fly. Barbie paid no attention.

“—to explain it.”

And he handed Joe the cell. “Talk,” he said.

“But—”

“Don’t argue with the bull goose, son. Talk.”

Joe did so, diffidently at first, with a lot of ah s and erm s and y’know s, but as his idea took hold of him again he sped up, became articulate. Then he listened. After a little while he started to grin. A few moments later he said, “Yessir! Thank you, sir!” and handed the phone back to Barbie. “Check it out, they’re gonna try to augment our Wi-Fi before they shoot the missile! Jesus, this is hot !” Julia grabbed his arm and Joe said, “I’m sorry, Miz Shumway, I mean jeepers. ”

“Never mind that, can you really work this thing?”

“You kidding? No prob.”

“Colonel Cox?” Barbie asked. “Is this true about the Wi-Fi?”

“We can’t stop anything you folks want to try to do,” Cox said. “I think you were the one who originally pointed that out to me. So we might as well help. You’ll have the fastest Internet in the world, at least for today. That’s some bright kid you got there, by the way.”

“Yes sir, that was my impression,” Barbie said, and gave Joe a thumbs-up. The kid was glowing.

Cox said, “If the boy’s idea works and you record it, make sure we get a copy. We’ll be making our own, of course, but the scientists in charge of this thing will want to see what the hit looks like from your side of the Dome.”

“I think we can do better than that,” Barbie said. “If Joe here can put this together, I think most of the town will be able to watch it live.”

This time Julia raised her fist. Grinning, Barbie bumped it.

“Holee shit,” Joe said. The awe on his face made him look eight instead of thirteen. The whipcrack confidence was gone from his voice. He and Barbie were standing about thirty yards from where Little Bitch Road ran up against the Dome. It wasn’t the soldiers he was looking at, although they had turned around to observe; it was the warning band and the big red Xsprayed on the Dome that had fascinated him.

“They’re moving their bivouac point, or whatever you call it,” Julia said. “The tents are gone.”

“Sure. In about”—Barbie looked at his watch—“ninety minutes, it’s going to get very hot over there. Son, you better get to it.” But now that they were actually out here on the deserted road, Barbie began to wonder if Joe could do what he had promised.

“Yeah, but… do you see the trees ?”

Barbie didn’t understand at first. He looked at Julia, who shrugged. Then Joe pointed, and he saw. The trees on the Tarker’s side of the Dome were dancing in a moderate fall wind, shedding leaves in colorful bursts that fluttered down around the watching Marine sentries. On The Mill side, the branches were barely moving and most of the trees were still fully dressed. Barbie was pretty sure air was coming through the barrier, but not with any force. The Dome was damping the wind. He thought of how he and Paul Gendron, the guy in the Sea Dogs cap, had come to the little stream and had seen the water piling up.

Julia said, “The leaves over here look… I don’t know… listless, somehow. Limp.”

“It’s just because they’ve got a wind on their side and we’ve only got a puff of breeze,” Barbie said, then wondered if that was really it. Or all of it. But what good did it do to speculate about the current air quality in Chester’s Mill, when there was nothing they could do about it? “Go on, Joe. Do your thing.”

They had swung by the McClatchey house in Julia’s Prius to get Joe’s PowerBook. (Mrs. McClatchey had made Barbie swear he would keep her son safe, and Barbie had so sworn.) Now Joe pointed at the road. “Here?”

Barbie raised his hands to the sides of his face and sighted at the red X.“Little to the left. Can you try it? See how it looks?”