Under the Dome

by Stephen King

remembering something his mother had told him when he was no more than ten: cold water for bloodstains.

Little Walter was still asleep (his father had insisted on naming the kid after some old bluesman,

Disaster—especially the sort triggered by terrorists—was not always a completely bad thing. Look what it had done for Rudy Giuliani.

A B-52 which had taken off from Carswell Air Force Base in the early hours of that Monday morning had been on-station above Burlington, Vermont, since 1040 hours (the Air Force believes in showing up early for the prom whenever possible).

and now she sat here shivering and trying to convince herself she’d done the right thing. It was the only thing, she thought. That kind of takes the right and wrong out of it.

Immediately her tongue went to the hole where there had been a tooth up until yesterday. But there was a worse hole in her life. “Hello, Not-There,” she said. “It’s me again, back for another helping of Your love and mercy.” A tear trickled from beneath one swollen eyelid and ran down one swollen (not to mention colorful) cheek. “Is my dog anywhere around? I only ask because I miss him so much. If he is, I hope you’ll give him the spiritual equivalent of a chewbone. He deserves one.”

“Have another beer.” “Thank you.” She had another beer. She was getting drunk. It was lovely to be drunk. In this fashion they progressed as the pink stars grew brighter overhead, flickering but not falling: no meteor showers tonight. They passed Sammy’s trailer, where she’d never go again, without slowing.

“Freedom of the press, Rose,” Pete said, sounding remarkably unsure himself. “It’s what Horace Greeley would have done,” Julia said firmly, and at the sound of his name, her Corgi—who had been asleep on his dogbed in the corner—looked up. He saw Rose and came over for a pat or two, which Rose was happy to provide.

“E-mail it to me.” “I won’t. I think e-mail is antithetical to the newspaper business. I’m very old-fashioned that way.” “You’re an irritating piece of work, dear lady.” “I may be irritating, but I’m not your dear lady.”

Horace the Corgi liked peoplefood.

A woman said, Take that to her. Horace looked up, his ears pricking. That was not Julia or the other woman; it was a deadvoice. Horace, like all dogs, heard dead-voices quite often, and sometimes saw their owners. The dead were all around, but living people saw them no more than they could smell most of the ten thousand aromas that surrounded them every minute of every day.

“I assure you that’s not true, Rennie.” No more Mister; the Era of Good Feelings seemed to be over.

“Wettington was given a citation for helping to break up an illegal drug ring operating out of the Sixty-seventh Combat Support Hospital in Würzburg, Germany, and was personally recommended by a man named Jack Reacher, the toughest goddam Army cop that ever served, in my humble opinion.”

Maybe a novelist, although it seemed to her that writing novels was pretty risky; what if you spent all that time, wrote a thousand-pager, and it sucked?

Andy understood that his state of mind was nihilistic, but that was all right. He had spent his life counting the cost, and stoned don’t-give-a-shit-itis was a delirious change for the better.