
- •It's a dream, he told himself. If you keep telling yourself that, you'll be able to operate.
- •It was useless, of course. Even more useless, he was waving his arms in big go-away gestures.
- •Interdiction? Interdiction? What kind of Fedspeak was that?
- •Xxxx70yyyy
- •Very low, Rose said: 'Barbie, you're scaring me.'
- •I'll have to Xerox the paper. Wliich means seven hundred and fifty copies, max.
- •Xet me finish. Your side of 119 is totally fubar.That means—'
- •It wasn't much, but Barbie was encouraged. 'Stand easy, tellas; stand easy and let's talk this over.'
- •I'm a little scared.
- •In the other bed Judy stirred and spoke. 'Mumma? Is it brefkus? Did I miss the bus?'
- •If it was petit mal, it would stop on its own.
- •In a moment she still wasn't completely there, although her eyes shifted and he knew she was seeing and hearing him now. 'Stop Halloween, Daddy! You have to stop Halloween!'
- •It was time for a demonstration, which he of course would lead.
- •I must see you tonight. God has spoken to me. Now I must speak to you before I speak to the town. Please reply. Richie Killian will carry your message to me.
- •I knew all that high school shotputting would catch up with me someday, he thought.
- •It's all those r-rated movies they watch now, Big Jim thought. Rubbing
- •It was the boy who answered. He spoke while still examining the headlamp. 'I want my mother. And I want my breffus.'
- •It was a bathroom, and it 'was empty. There was, however, a picture of a very Caucasian Jesus on the wall.
- •In Washington, Colonel Cox said:'Roger that, Major. Good luck. Blast the bastard.'
- •Interesting.
- •I like it because it is bitter, she thought. And because it is my heart.
- •Instead of answering the question, Barbie said,'Selectman Rennie could be a dangerous man to press right about now.'
- •It was exactly what she t'ought, and Julia had told him so. She had also planted a kiss on his cheek. 'I owe you for this, Rommie.'
- •It's because he scares you a little, he thought. That's all it is.
- •It's one possibility. It's also possible that some earthly supervillain set it up. A real-world Lex Luthor. Or it could be the work of a renegade country, like North Korea.'
- •It was entirely possible he was the last thing on Brenda's mind, but his radar was pinging and he watched her closely.
- •I'll get up in a minute, she told herself. Get the last bottle of Poland Spring out of the fridge and wash that foul taste out of my mou…
- •II have no idea what you're talking about. I think your grief…' He sighed, spread his blunt-fingered hands.'Come inside.We'll discuss this and I'll set your mind at rest.'
- •It was impossible for Boxer to draw himself up any further, and yet somehow he did. His face was so red it was almost purple. 'Then take me to court! What court? Case closed! Ha!'
- •3 P.M. Julia—
- •If the Dome wasn't bad enough, weird enough, there's the Selectman from Hell.
- •If he was in the storage building, though… that might be a problem.
- •It was a lot to think about, and thinking was easier these days when he was smoked up.
- •In the background she heard the swish of a car, and Benny, faint but clear, hailing someone: 'Dr Rusty! Yo, dude, whoa!'
- •It was Ginny Tomlinson, walking slowly up the hallway toward them.
- •INever mind. I'll be back as soon as I can, Hari. Keep 'em flying.'
- •It isn't a migraine making him do that. At least not any migraine I ever heard of.
- •It all seemed so long ago.
- •If was. She slipped in, a pale and limping ghost.
- •I'm all right. It's just overwork. Nothing seven hours of sleep won't cure.
- •I no longer want this job. No. Not even a little bit.
- •I have gone to the hospital. There has been a shooting there.
- •It had to begin with letting Barbie know he wasn't alone. Then he could plan his own actions accordingly.
- •If you were here, Colonel Cox, I'd give you a taste of what I gave Coggins. With God as my witness, I would.
- •It: was a joke.
- •Isn 't it more likely that the counter's malfunctioning? You could be giving yourself a lethal dose of gamma rays at this very second. The damn thing's a cold war relic.
- •Instead he approached the box again and dropped to his knees before it, a posture too much like worship for his liking.
- •I 'Oh my goodness, Ginny's in love,' Rusty said, grinning.
- •It was true. Andi was still pale, and much too thin, but the dark circles under her eyes had faded a little, and the eyes themselves had a new spark. 'Thanks for saying so.'
- •It now read c fee and doare ot free.
- •It took a moment for Carter to get it. 'She was just having a bunch of dope-ass hallucinations, wasn't she?'
- •I follow it.'
- •It was Chief Randolph, trudging up the hill and mopping his bright red face with a handkerchief.
- •If he sees us, I'm going to run him down, she thought. The idea brought a certain perverse calm.
- •It's an eighth of a mile at most, but Henry doesn't argue. 'Put her in the front seat of my car.'
- •I'm not your son, your son is dead. Carter thought… but didn't say. He went into the bunkrooni to see if there were any candybars on the shelves in there.
- •I'm crazy, he thought. It can't be. No one could have lived through that firestorm.
- •I pushed the wrong button, that's all.
- •It was almost as dark in the ruins of the Town Hall conference room as in the shelter, but with one big difference: the air was worthless.
- •I did. On purpose. Who the hell wants to turn forty? What is it?'
- •II hear you. Give it your best shot.'
- •I don't know, Barbie thought. J don't know what's happening.
- •Very young; barely out of the nursery, in fact. It speaks.
If he was in the storage building, though… that might be a problem.
Stewart said to his brother,'There's some goodsize junks of wood in the back of the truck. Get you one of those. If Phil shows and starts: cuttin up rough, clock im one.'
'What if he has a gun?' Roger asked, quite reasonably
'He won't,' Stewart said. And although he wasn't actually sure of this, he had his orders: two tanks of propane, to be delivered to the hospital posthaste. And we're going to move the rest of it out of there as soon as we can, Big Jim had said. We're officially out of the meth business.
That was something of a relief; when they were shut of this Dome thing, Stewart intended to get out of the funeral business, too. Move someplace warm, like Jamaica or Barbados. He never wanted to see another dead body. But he didn't want to be the one who told Chef Bushey they were closing down, and he had informed Big Jim of that.
Let me worry about The Chef, Big Jim had said.
Stewart drove the big orange truck around the building and backed it up to the rear doors. He left the engine idling to run the winch and the hoist.
'Lookit that,' Roger Killian marveled. He was staring into the west, where the sun was going down in a troubling red smear. Soon it would sink below the great black smudge left by the woods-fire and be blotted out in a dirty eclipse. 'Don't that just beat the dickens.'
'Quit gawking,' Stewart said. T want to do this and get gone. Fernie, get you a junk. Pick out a good one.'
Fern climbed over the hoist and picked out a leftover piece of planking about as long as a baseball bat. He held it in both hands and gave it an experimental swish. 'This'U do,' he said.
'Baskin-Robbins,' Roger said dreamily. He was still shading his eyes and squinting west. The squint was not a good look for him; it made him resemble a fairy-tale troll.
Stewart paused while unlocking the back door, a complicated process that involved a touchpad and two locks. 'What are you pissing about?'
'Thirty-one flavors,' Roger said. He smiled, revealing a rotting set of teeth that had never been visited by Joe Boxer or probably any dentist.
Stewart had no idea what Roger was talking about, but his brother did. 'Don't think that's an ice cream ad on the side of the buildin,' Fern said. 'Unless there's Baskin-Robbins in the Book of Revelations.'
'Shut up, both of you,' Stewart said. 'Fernie, stand ready with that junk.' He pushed the door open and peered in. 'Phil?'
'Call im Chef,' Roger advised. 'Like that nigger cook on South Park. That's what he likes.'
'Chef?' Stewart called. 'You in there, Chef?'
No answer. Stewart fumbled into the gloom, half expecting his hand to be seized at any moment, and found the light switch. He turned it on, revealing a room that stretched about three-quarters the length of the storage building. The walls were unfinished bare wood, the spaces between the laths stuffed with pink foam insulation. The room was almost filled "with LP gas tanks and canisters of all sizes and brands. He had no idea how many there were in alt, but if forced to guess, he would have said between four and six hundred.
Stewart walked slowly up the center aisle, peering at the stenciling on the tanks. Big Jim had told him exactly which ones to take, had said they'd be near the back, and by God, they were. He stopped at the five municipal-size tanks with CR HOSP on the side. They were between tanks that had been filched from the post office and some with MILL MIDDLE SCHOOL on the sides.
'We're supposed to take two,' he said to Roger. 'Bring the chain and we'll hook em up. Fernie, go you down there and try that door to the lab. If it ain't locked, lock it.' He tossed Fern his key ring.
Fern could have done without this chore, but he was an obedient brother. He walked down the aisle between the piles of propane tanks. They ended ten feet from the door—and the door, he saw with a sinking heart, was standing ajar. Behind him he heard the clank of the chain, then the whine of the winch and the low clatter of the first tank being dragged back to the truck. It sounded far away, especially when he imagined The Chef crouching on the other side of that door, red-eyed and crazy. All smoked up and toting aTEC-9. Chef?' he asked. 'You here, buddy?'
No answer. And although he had no business doing so—was probably crazy himself for doing so—curiosity got the better of him and he used his makeshift club to push open the door.
The fluorescents in the lab were on, but otherwise this part of the Christ Is King storage building looked empty. The twenty or so cookers—big electric grills, each hooked to its own exhaust fan and propane canister—were off. The pots, beakers, and expensive flasks were all on their shelves. The place stank (always had, always would, Fern thought), but the floor was swept and there was no sign of disarray. On one wall was a Rennie's Used Cars calendar, still turned to August. Probably when the motherfucker finished losing touch with reality, Fern thought.fust flooaated away. He ventured a little farther into the lab. It had made them all rich men, but he had never liked it. It smelled too much like the funeral parlors downstairs prep room.
One corner had been partitioned off with a heavy steel panel. There was a door in the middle of it. This, Fern knew, was where The Chef's product was stored, long-glass crystal meth put up not in gallon Baggies but in Hefty garbage bags. Not shitglass, either. No tweeker scruffing the streets of New York or Los Angeles in search of a fix would have been able to credit such stocks. When the place was full, it held enough to supply the entire United States for months, perhaps even a year.
Why did Big Jim let him make so fucking much? Fern wondered. And why did we go along? What were we thinking of? He could come up with no answer to this question but the obvious one: because they could. The combination of Bushey's genius and all those cheap Chinese ingredients had intoxicated them. Also, it funded the CIK Corporation, which was doing God's work all up and down the East Coast. When anyone questioned, Big Jim always pointed this out. And he would quote scripture: For the laborer is worthy of his hire—Gospel of Luke—and Thou shalt not muzzle the ox while he is threshing—First Timothy.
Fern had never really gotten thai: one about the oxes. Chef?' Advancing in a little farther still. 'Goodbuddy?'
Nothing. He looked up and saw galleries of bare wood running along two sides of the building. These were being used for storage, and the contents of the cartons stacked there would have interested the FBI, the FDA, and the ATF a great deal. No one was up there, but Fern spied something he thought was new: white cord running along the railings of both galleries, affixed to the wood by heavy staples. An electrical cord? Running to what? Had that nutball put more cookers up there? If so, Fern didn't see them. The cord looked too thick to be powering just a simple appliance, like a TV or a ra—
'Fern!' Stewart cried, making him jump.'If he ain't there, come on and help us! I want to get out of here! They said there's gonna be an update on TV at six and I want to see if they've figured anything out!'
In Chester's Mill, 'they' had more and more come to mean anything or anyone in the world beyond the town's borders.
Fern went, not looking over the door and thus not seeing what the new electrical cords were attached to: a large brick of white claylike stuff sitting on its own little shelf. It was explosive.
The Chef's own recipe.
4
As they drove back toward town, Roger said: 'Halloween. That's a thirty-one, too.'
'You're a regular fund of information,' Stewart said.
Roger tapped the side of his unfortunately shaped head. 'I store it up,' he said. 'I don't do it on purpose. It's just a knack.'
Stewart thought: Jamaica. Or Barbados. Somewhere warm, for sure. As soon as the Dome lets go. I never want to see another Killian. Or anyone from this town.
'There's also thirty-one cards in a deck,' Roger said.
Fern stared at him. 'What the fuck are you—'
'Just kiddin, just kiddin with you,' Roger said, and burst into a terrifying shriek of laughter that hurt Stewart's head.
They were coming up on the hospital now. Stewart saw a gray Ford Taurus pulling out of Catherine Russell.
'Hey, that's Dr Rusty,' Fern said. 'Bet he'll be glad to get this stuff. Give im a toot, Stewie.'
Stewart gave im a toot.
5
When the Godless ones were gone, Chef Bushey finally let go of the garage door opener he'd been holding. He had been watching the Bowie brothers and Roger Killian from the window in the studio men's room. His thumb had been on the button the whole time they were in the storage barn, rummaging around in his stuff. If they had come out with product, he—would have pushed the button and blown the whole works sky-high.
'It's in your hands, my Jesus,' he had muttered. 'Like we used to say when we were kids, I don't wanna but I will.'
And Jesus handled it. Chef had a feeling He would when he heard George Dow and the Gospel-Tones come over the sat-feed, singing 'God, How You Care for Me,' and it was a true feeling, a true Sign from Above.They hadn't come for long-glass but for two piddling tanks of LP.
He watched them drive away, then shambled down the path between the back of the studio and the combination lab-storage facility. It was his building now, his long-glass, at least until Jesus came and took it all for his own.
Maybe Halloween.
Maybe earlier.