Under the Dome

Duke stopped laughing, but he was still smiling. Unabashed. 'It's a clustermug,' he said. 'Isn't that your word, Big Jim? And in my experience, sometimes laughing is the only way to dea] with a clustermug.'

'I have no idea what you're talking about!'Re

The Dinsmore boys stepped back from him and stood beside their father.

'I know.' Duke spoke gently. 'And that's okay. All you need to understand right now is that I'm the chief law enforcement officer on the scene, at least until the County Sheriff gets here, and you're, a town selectman. You have no official standing, so I'd like you to move back.'

Duke raised his voice and pointed to where Officer Henry Morrison was stringing yellow tape, stepping around two largeish pieces of airplane fuselage to do it. 'I'd like everyone to move back and let us do our job! Follow Selectman Re

'I | don't appreciate this, Duke,' Re

'God bless you, but I don't give a shit,' Duke said. 'Get off my scene, Big Jim. And be sure to go around the tape. No need for Henry to have to string it twice.'

'Chief Perkins, I want you to remember how you spoke to me today. Because I will.'

Re

Re

Behind him, Duke walked slowly toward the place—where Jackie had suffered her collision. He held one hand outstretched before him like a blind man prospecting his way across an unfamiliar room.

Here was where she had fallen down… and here…

He felt the buzzing she had described, but instead of passing, it deepened to searing pain in the hollow of his left shoulder. He had just enough time to remember the last thing Brenda had said—Take care of your pacemaker— and then it exploded in his chest with enough force to blow open his Wildcats sweatshirt, which he'd do

The crowd aaahed.

Duke tried to speak his wife's name and failed, but hi; saw her face clearly in his mind. She was smiling. Then, darkness.

4

The kid was Be

The adult was Eric 'Rusty' Everett, thirty-seven, a physician's assistant working with Dr Ron Haskell, whom Rusty often thought of as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Because, Rusty would have explained (if he'd anyone other than his wife he could trust with such disloyalty), he so often remains behind the curtain while I do the work.

Now he checked the state of young Master Drake's last tetanus shot. Fall of 2009, very good. Especially considering that young Master Drake had done a Wilson while cement-shooting and torn up his calf pretty good. Not a total jake, but a lot worse than simple roadrash.

'Power's back on, dude,' young Master Drake offered.

'Generator, dude,' Rusty said.'Handles the hospital and tae Health Center. Radical, huh?'

'Old-school,' young Master Drake agreed.

For a moment the adult and the adolescent regarded the six-inch gash in Be

Ambulance is go

Except the kid's face was pretty white, and Rusty thought there were tears standing in his eyes.

'Scared?' Rusty asked.

'A little,' Be

'Is that what you're scared of?' Because he guessed that Be

'Well… how much is it go

Rusty had been hiding the syringe. Now he injected three cc's of Xylocaine and epinephrine—a deadening compound he still called Novocain. He took his time infiltrating the wound, so as not to hurt the kid any more than he had to. 'About that much.'

'Whoa,' Be

Rusty laughed. 'Did you full-pipe before you Wilsoned?' As a long-retired boarder, he was honestly curious.

'Only half, but it was toxic!' Be

'Not that many,' Rusty said. He knew Norrie, a mini-goth whose chief aspiration seemed to be killing herself on a skateboard before bearing her first woods colt. He pressed near the wound with the needle end of the syringe. 'Feel that?'

'Yeah, dude, totally. Did you hear, like, a bang out there?' Be

'Nope,' Rusty said. He had actually heard two: not bangs but, he was afraid, explosions. Had to make this fast. And where was The Wizard? Doing rounds, according to Gi

'Feel it now?' Rusty poked again with the needle. 'Don't look, looking is cheating.'

"No, man, nothin. You're gooiin wit me.'

'I'm not. You're numb.' In more ways than one, Rusty thought. 'Okay, here we go. Lie back, relax, and enjoy flying Cathy Russell Airlines.' He scrubbed the wound with sterile saline, debrided, then trimmed with his trusty no. 10 scalpel.'Six stitches with my very best four-oh nylon.'