MISSILE STRIKE IMMINENT 6 page

There were half a dozen pairs of skivvies and another four or five pairs of plain white athletic socks in the second drawer. Nothing at all in the third drawer.

He looked under the bed, his head thudding and whamming—not better after all, it seemed. And nothing under there, not even dust-kitties. Baaarbie was a neatnik. Junior considered taking the Imitrex in his watch-pocket, but didn’t. He’d taken two already, with absolutely no effect except for the metallic aftertaste in the back of his throat. He knew what medicine he needed: the dark pantry on Prestile Street. And the company of his girlfriends.

Meantime, he was here. And there had to be something.

“Sumpin,” he whispered. “Gotta have a little sumpin-sumpin.”

He started back to the living room, wiping water from the corner of his throbbing left eye (not noticing it was tinged with blood), then stopped, struck by an idea. He returned to the dresser, opened the sock-and­underwear drawer again. The socks were balled. When he was in high school, Junior had sometimes hidden a little weed or a couple of uppers in his balled-up socks; once one of Adriette Nedeau’s thongs. Socks were a good hiding place. He took out the neatly made bundles one at a time, feeling them up.

He hit paydirt on the third ball, something that felt like a flat piece of metal. No, two of them. He unrolled the socks and shook the heavy one over the top of the dresser.

What fell out were Dale Barbara’s dog tags. And in spite of his terrible headache, Junior smiled.

In the frame, Baaarbie, he thought. You are in the fucking frame.

On the Tarker’s Mills side of Little Bitch Road, the fires set by the Fasthawk missiles were still raging, but would be out by dark; fire departments from four towns, augmented by a mixed detachment of Marine and Army grunts, were working on it, and gaining. It would have been out even sooner, Brenda Perkins judged, if the firefighters over there hadn’t had a brisk wind to contend with. On The Mill side, they’d had no such problem. It was a blessing today. Later on, it might be a curse. There was no way to know.

Brenda wasn’t going to let the question bother her this afternoon, because she felt good. If someone had asked her this morning when she thought she might feel good again, Brenda would have said, Maybe next year. Maybe never. And she was wise enough to know this feeling probably wouldn’t last. Ninety minutes of hard exercise had a lot to do with it; exercise released endorphins whether the exercise was jogging or pounding out brushfires with the flat of a spade. But this was more than endorphins. It was being in charge of a job that was important, one that she could do.

Other volunteers had come to the smoke. Fourteen men and three women stood on either side of Little Bitch, some still holding the spades and rubber mats they’d been using to put out the creeping flames, some with the Indian pumps they’d been wearing on their backs now unslung and sitting on the unpaved hardpack of the road. Al Timmons, Johnny Carver, and Nell Toomey were coiling hoses and tossing them into the back of the Burpee’s truck. Tommy Anderson from Dipper’s and Lissa Jamieson—a little New Age-y but also as strong as a horse—were carrying the sump pump they’d used to draw water from Little Bitch Creek to one of the other trucks. Brenda heard laughter, and realized she wasn’t the only one currently enjoying an endorphin rush.

The brush on both sides of the road was blackened and still smoldering, and several trees had gone up, but that was all. The Dome had blocked the wind and had helped them in another way, as well, partially damming the creek and turning the area on this side into a marsh-in-progress. The fire on the other side was a different story. The men fighting it over there were shimmering wraiths seen through the heat and the accumulating soot on the Dome.

Romeo Burpee sauntered up to her. He was holding a soaked broom in one hand and a rubber floormat in the other. The price tag was still clinging to the underside of the mat. The words on it were charred but readable: EVERY DAY IS SALE DAY AT BURPEE’S! He dropped it and stuck out a grimy hand.

Brenda was surprised but willing. She shook firmly. “What’s that for, Rommie?”

“For you doin one damn fine job out here,” he said.

She laughed, embarrassed but pleased. “Anybody could have done it, given the conditions. It was only a contact fire, and the ground’s so squelchy it probably would have put itself out by sunset.”

“Maybe,” he said, then pointed through the trees to a raggedy clearing with a tumbledown rock wall meandering across it. “Or maybe it would’ve gotten into that high grass, then the trees on the other side, and then Katy bar the door. It could have burned for a week or a month. Especially with no damn fire department.” He turned his head aside and spat. “Even widdout wind, a fire will burn if it gets a foothold. They got mine fires down south that have burned for twenty, thirty years. I read it in National Geographic. No wind underground. And how do we know a good wind won’t come up? We don’t know jack about what that thing does or don’t do.”

They both looked toward the Dome. The soot and ash had rendered it visible—sort of—to a height of almost a hundred feet. It had also dimmed their view of the Tarker’s side, and Brenda didn’t like that. It wasn’t anything she wanted to consider deeply, not when it might rob some of her good feelings about the afternoon’s work, but no—she didn’t like it at all. It made her think of last night’s weird, smeary sunset.

“Dale Barbara needs to call his friend in Washington,” she said. “Tell him when they get the fire out on their side, they have to hose that whatever-it-is off. We can’t do it from our side.”

“Good idea,” Romeo said. But something else was on his mind. “Do you reckonize anything about your crew, ma’am? Because I sure do.”

Brenda looked startled. “They’re not my crew.”

“Oh yes they are,” he said. “You were the one givin orders, that makes em your crew. You see any cops? ”

She took a look.

“Not a one,” Romeo said. “Not Randolph, not Henry Morrison, not Freddy Denton or Rupe Libby, not Georgie Frederick … none of the new ones, either. Those kids.”

“They’re probably busy with …” She trailed off.

Romeo nodded. “Right. Busy wit what? You don’t know and neither do I. But whatever they’re busy wit, I’m not sure I like it. Or think it’s wort bein busy wit. There’s gonna be a town meeting Thursday night, and if this is still goin on, I think there should be some changes.” He paused. “I could be gettin out of my place here, but I think maybe you ought to stand for Chief of Fire n Police.”

Brenda considered it, considered the file she had found marked VADER, then shook her head slowly. “It’s too soon for anything like that.”

“What about just Fire Chief? How bout dat one?” The Lewiston on parle coming on stronger in his voice now.

Brenda looked around at the smoldering brush and charred trash-wood trees. Ugly, granted, like something out of a World War I battlefield photo, but no longer dangerous. The people who had shown up here had seen to that. The crew. Her crew.

She smiled. “That I might consider.”

The first time Ginny Tomlinson came down the hospital hallway she was running, responding to a loud beeping that sounded like bad news, and Piper didn’t have a chance to speak to her. Didn’t even try. She had been in the waiting room long enough to get the picture: three people—two nurses and a teenage candy striper named Gina Buffalino—in charge of an entire hospital. They were coping, but barely. When Ginny came back, she was walking slowly. Her shoulders were slumped. A medical chart dangled from one hand.

“Ginny?” Piper asked. “Okay?”

Piper thought Ginny might snap at her, but she offered a tired smile instead of a snarl. And sat down next to her. “Fine. Just tired.” She paused. “Also, Ed Carty just died.”

Piper took her hand. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

Ginny squeezed her fingers. “Don’t be. You know how women talk about having babies? This one had an easy delivery, this one had it hard?”

Piper nodded.

“Death is like that, too. Mr. Carty was in labor a long time, but now he’s delivered.”

To Piper the idea seemed beautiful. She thought she could use it in a sermon … except she guessed that people wouldn’t want to hear a sermon on death this coming Sunday. Not if the Dome was still in place.

They sat for a while, Piper trying to think of the best way to ask what she had to ask. In the end, she didn’t have to.

“She was raped,” Ginny said. “Probably more than once. I was afraid Twitch was going to have to try his suturing, but I finally got it stopped with a vaginal pack.” She paused. “I was crying. Luckily, the girl was too stoned to notice.”

“And the baby?”

“Your basic healthy eighteen-month-old, but he gave us a scare. He had a mini-seizure. It was probably exposure to the sun. Plus dehydration … hunger … and he has a wound of his own.” Ginny traced a line across her forehead.

Twitch came down the hall and joined them. He looked light-years from his usual jaunty self.

“Did the men who raped her also hurt the baby?” Piper’s voice remained calm, but a thin red fissure was opening in her mind.

“Little Walter? I think he just fell,” Twitch said. “Sammy said something about the crib collapsing. It wasn’t completely coherent, but I’m pretty sure it was an accident. That part, anyway.”

Piper was looking at him, bemused. “That was what she was saying. I thought it was ‘little water.’”

“I’m sure she wanted water,” Ginny said, “but Sammy’s baby really is Little, first name, Walter, second name. They named him after a blues harmonica player, I believe. She and Phil—” Ginny mimed sucking a joint and holding in the smoke.

“Oh, Phil was a lot more than a smokehound,” Twitch said. “When it came to drugs, Phil Bushey was a multitasker.”

“Is he dead?” Piper asked.

Twitch shrugged. “I haven’t seen him around since spring. If he is, good riddance.”

Piper looked at him reproachfully.

Twitch ducked his head a little. “Sorry, Rev.” He turned to Ginny. “Any sign of Rusty?”

“He needed some time off,” she said, “and I told him to go. He’ll be back soon, I’m sure.”

Piper sat between them, outwardly calm. Inside, the red fissure was widening. There was a sour taste in her mouth. She remembered a night when her father had forbidden her to go out to Skate Scene at the mall because she’d said something smart to her mother (as a teenager, Piper Libby had been an absolute font of smart things to say). She had gone upstairs, called the friend she had expected to meet, and told that friend—in a perfectly pleasant, perfectly even voice—that something had come up and she wouldn’t be able to meet her after all. Next weekend? For sure, uh-huh, you bet, have a good time, no, I’m fine, b’bye. Then she had trashed her room. She finished by yanking her beloved Oasis poster off the wall and tearing it up. By then she had been crying hoarsely, not in sorrow but in one of those rages that had blown through her teenage years like force-five hurricanes. Her father came up at some point during the festivities and stood in the doorway, regarding her. When she finally saw him there she stared back defiantly, panting, thinking how much she hated him. How much she hated them both. If they were dead, she could go live with her aunt Ruth in New York. Aunt Ruth knew how to have a good time. Not like some people. He had held his hands out to her, open, extended. It had been a somehow humble gesture, one that had crushed her anger and almost crushed her heart.

If you don’t control your temper, your temper will control you, he had said, and then left her, walking down the hallway with his head bent. She hadn’t slammed the door behind him. She had closed it, very quietly.

That was the year she had made her often vile temper her number one priority. Killing it completely would be killing part of herself, but she thought if she did not make some fundamental changes, an important part of her would remain fifteen for a long, long time. She had begun working to impose control, and mostly she had succeeded. When she felt that control slipping, she would remember what her father had said, and that open-handed gesture, and his slow walk along the upstairs hall of the house she had grown up in. She had spoken at his funeral service nine years later, sayingMy father told me the most important thing I’ve ever heard. She hadn’t said what that thing was, but her mother had known; she had been sitting in the front pew of the church in which her daughter was now ordained.

For the last twenty years, when she felt the urge to flash out at someone—and often the urge was nearly uncontrollable, because people could be so stupid, so willfully dumb—she would summon her father’s voice: If you don’t control your temper, your temper will control you.

But now the red fissure was widening and she felt the old urge to throw things. To scratch skin until the blood came sweating out.

“Did you ask her who did it?”

“Yes, of course,” Ginny said. “She won’t say. She’s scared.” Piper remembered how she’d first thought the mother and baby lying beside the road was a bag of garbage. And that, of course, was what they’d been to whoever did this. She stood up. “I’m going to talk to her.”

“That might not be such a good idea right now,” Ginny said. “She’s had a sedative, and—”

“Let her take a shot,” Twitch said. His face was pale. His hands were knotted between his knees. The knuckles cracked repeatedly. “And make it a good one, Rev.”

Sammy’s eyes were at half-mast. They opened slowly when Piper sat down beside her bed. “You … were

the one who …”

“Yes,” Piper said, taking her hand. “My name is Piper Libby.”

“Thank you,” Sammy said. Her eyes began to drift closed again.

“Thank me by telling me the names of the men who raped you.”

In the dim room—warm, with the hospital’s air-conditioning shut down—Sammy shook her head. “They said they’d hurt me. If I told.” She glanced at Piper. It was a cowlike glance, full of dumb resignation. “They might hurt Little Walter, too.”

Piper nodded. “I understand you’re frightened,” she said. “Now tell me who they were. Give me the names.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Looking away from Piper now. “They said they would hurt—”

Piper had no time for this; the girl would zone out on her. She grasped Sammy’s wrist. “I want those names, and you’re going to give them to me.”

“I don’t dare. ” Sammy began to ooze tears.

“You’re going to do it because if I hadn’t come along, you might be dead now.” She paused, then drove the dagger the rest of the way in. She might regret it later, but not now. Right now the girl in the bed was only an obstacle standing between her and what she needed to know. “Not to mention your baby. He might be dead, too. I saved your life, I saved his, and I want those names. ”

“No.” But the girl was weakening now, and part of the Reverend Piper Libby was actually enjoying this. Later she’d be disgusted; later she’d think You’re not that much different from those boys, forcing is forcing. But now, yes, there was pleasure, just as there had been pleasure in tearing the treasured poster from the wall and ripping it to shreds.

I like it because it is bitter, she thought. And because it is my heart.

She leaned over the crying girl. “Dig the wax out of your ears, Sammy, because you need to hear this. What they’ve done once they’ll do again. And when they do, when some other woman shows up here with a bloody snatch and possibly pregnant with a rapist’s child, I will come to you, and I will say—”

“No! Stop!”

“‘You were part of it. You were right there, cheering them on.’”

“No!” Sammy cried. “Not me, that was Georgia! Georgia was the one cheering them on!”

Piper felt cold disgust. A woman. A woman had been there. In her head, the red fissure opened wider. Soon it would begin to spew lava.

“Give me the names,” she said.

And Sammy did.

Jackie Wettington and Linda Everett were parked outside Food City. It was closing at five PM instead of eight. Randolph had sent them there thinking the early closing might cause trouble. A ridiculous idea, because the supermarket was almost empty. There were hardly a dozen cars in the parking lot, and the few remaining shoppers were moving in a slow daze, as if sharing the same bad dream. The two officers saw only one cashier, a teenager named Bruce Yardley. The kid was taking currency and writing chits instead of running credit cards. The meat counter was looking depleted, but there was still plenty of chicken and most of the canned and dry-goods shelves were fully stocked.

They were waiting for the last customers to leave when Linda’s cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and felt a little stab of fear in her stomach. It was Marta Edmunds, who kept Janelle and Judy when Linda and Rusty were both working—as they had been, almost nonstop, since the Dome came down. She hit callback.

“Marta?” she said, praying it was nothing, Marta asking if it was okay for her to take the girls down to the common, something like that. “Everything all right?”

“Well … yes. That is, I guess so.” Linda hating the worry she heard in Marta’s voice. “But … you know that seizure thing?”

“Oh God—did she have one?”

“I think so,” Marta said, then hurried on: “They’re perfectly okay now, in the other room, coloring.”

“What happened? Tell me!”

“They were on the swings. I was doing my flowers, getting them ready for winter—”

“Marta, please !” Linda said, and Jackie laid a hand on her arm.

“I’m sorry. Audi started to bark, so I turned around. I said, ‘Honey, are you all right?’ She didn’t answer, just got out of the swing and sat down underneath—you know, where there’s a little dip from all the feet? She didn’t fall out or anything, just sat down. She was staring straight ahead and doing that lip-smacking thing you told me to watch for. I ran over … kind of shook her … and she said … let me think …”

Here it comes, Linda thought. Stop Halloween, you have to stop Halloween.

But no. It was something else entirely.

“She said ‘The pink stars are falling. The pink stars are falling in lines.’ Then she said, ‘It’s so dark and everything smells bad.’ Then she woke up and now everything’s fine.”

“Thank God for that,” Linda said, and spared a thought for her five-year-old. “Is Judy okay? Did it upset her?”

There was a long pause on the line and then Marta said, “Oh.”

“Oh? What does that mean, oh ?”

“It was Judy, Linda. Not Janelle. This time it was Judy.”

I want to play that other game you said, Aidan had told Carolyn Sturges when they had stopped on the common to talk to Rusty. The other game she had in mind was Red Light, although Carolyn had only the slightest recollection of the rules—not surprising, since she hadn’t played it since she was six or seven.

But once she was standing against a tree in the commodious backyard of the “passionage,” the rules came back to her. And, unexpectedly, to Thurston, who seemed not only willing to play, but eager.

“Remember,” he instructed the children (who somehow seemed to have missed the pleasures of Red Light themselves), “she can count to ten as fast as she wants to, and if she catches you moving when she turns around, you have to go all the way back.”

“She won’t catch me, ” Alice said.

“Me, either,” Aidan said stoutly.

“We’ll see about that,” Carolyn said, and turned her face to the tree: “One, two, three, four … five, six, seven … eight-nine-ten RED LIGHT!”

She whirled around. Alice was standing with a smile on her mouth and one leg extended in a big old giant step. Thurston, also smiling, had his hands extended in Phantom of the Opera claws. She caught the slightest movement from Aidan, but didn’t even think about sending him back. He looked happy, and she had no intention of spoiling that.

“Good,” she said. “Good little statues. Here comes Round Two.” She turned to the tree and counted again, invaded by the old, childishly delicious fear of knowing people were moving in while her back was turned. “Onetwo threefour fivesix seveneightnineten REDLIGHT!”

She whirled. Alice was now only twenty paces away. Aidan was ten paces or so behind her, trembling on one foot, a scab on his knee very visible. Thurse was behind the boy, one hand on his chest like an orator, smiling. Alice was going to be the one to catch her, but that was all right; in the second game the girl would be “it” and her brother would win. She and Thurse would see to it.

She turned to the tree again. “Onetwothreefo—”

Then Alice screamed.

Carolyn turned and saw Aidan Appleton lying on the ground. At first she thought he was still trying to play the game. One knee—the one with the scab on it—was up, as if he were trying to run on his back. His wide eyes were staring at the sky. His lips were folded into a poochy littleO.There was a dark spot spreading on his shorts. She rushed to him.

“What’s wrong with him?” Alice asked. Carolyn could see all the stress of the terrible weekend crushing in on her face. “Is he all right?”

“Aidan?” Thurse asked. “You okay, big fella?”

Aidan went on trembling, his lips seeming to suck at an invisible straw. His bent leg came down … then kicked out. His shoulders twitched.

“He’s having some kind of seizure,” Carolyn said. “Probably from overexcitement. I think he’ll come out of it if we just give him a few m—”

“The pink stars are falling,” Aidan said. “They make lines behind them. It’s pretty. It’s scary. Everyone is watching. No treats, only tricks. Hard to breathe. He calls himself the Chef. It’s his fault. He’s the one.”

Carolyn and Thurston looked at each other. Alice was kneeling by her brother, holding his hand.

“Pink stars,” Aidan said. “They fall, they fall, they f—”

“Wake up!” Alice shouted into his face. “Stop scaring us!”

Thurston Marshall touched her shoulder gently. “Honey, I don’t think that’s helping.”

Alice paid him no mind. “Wake up, you … you CRAPHEAD!”

And Aidan did. He looked at his sister’s tear-streaked face, puzzled. Then he looked at Carolyn and smiled —the sweetest goddam smile she had ever seen in her life.

“Did I win?” he asked.

The gennie in the Town Hall’s supply shed was badly maintained (someone had shoved an old-timey galvanized tin washbasin under it to catch the dripping oil), and, Rusty guessed, about as energy-efficient as Big Jim Rennie’s Hummer. But he was more interested in the silver tank attached to it.

Barbie looked briefly at the generator, grimaced at the smell, then moved to the tank. “It isn’t as big as I would’ve expected,” he said … although it was a hell of a lot bigger than the canisters they used at Sweetbriar, or the one he had changed out for Brenda Perkins.

“It’s called ‘municipal size,’” Rusty said. “I remember that from the town meeting last year. Sanders and Rennie made a big deal of how the smaller tanks were going to save us yea bucks during ‘these times of costly energy.’ Each one holds eight hundred gallons.”

“Which means a weight of … what? Sixty-four hundred pounds?”

Rusty nodded. “Plus the weight of the tank. It’s a lot to lift—you’d need a forklift or a hydraulic Power Step—but not to move. A Ram pickup is rated for sixty-eight hundred pounds, and it could probably carry more. One of these midsize tanks would fit in the bed, too. Sticking out the end a little bit, is all.” Rusty shrugged. “Hang a red flag from it and you’re good to go.”

“This is the only one here,” Barbie said. “When it’s gone, the Town Hall lights go out.”

“Unless Rennie and Sanders know where there are more,” Rusty agreed. “And I’m betting they do.”

Barbie ran a hand over the blue stenciling on the tank: CR HOSP. “This is what you lost.”

“We didn’t lose it; it was stolen. That’s what I’m thinking. Only there should be five more of our tanks in here, because we’re missing a total of six.”

Barbie surveyed the long shed. Despite the stored plows and cartons of reserve parts, the place looked empty. Especially around the generator. “Never mind whatever got kited from the hospital; where’s the rest of the town’s tanks?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what could they be using them for?”

“I don’t know,” Rusty said, “but I mean to find out.”

PINK STARS FALLING

Barbie and Rusty stepped outside and breathed deeply of the open air. It had a smoky tang from the recently extinguished fire west of town, but seemed very fresh after the exhaust fumes in the shed. A lackadaisical little breeze cat’s-pawed their cheeks. Barbie was carrying the Geiger counter in a brown shopping bag he’d found in the fallout shelter.

“This shit will not stand,” Rusty said. His face was set and grim.

“What are you going to do about it?” Barbie asked.

“Now? Nothing. I’m going back to the hospital and do rounds. Tonight, though, I intend to knock on Jim Rennie’s door and ask for a goddam explanation. He better have one, and he better have the rest of our propane as well, because we’re going to be dead out at the hospital by the day after tomorrow, even with every nonessential shut down.”

“This might be over by the day after tomorrow.”

“Do you believe it will be?”

Instead of answering the question, Barbie said, “Selectman Rennie could be a dangerous man to press right about now.”

“Just now? That tags you for a town newbie like nothing else could. I’ve been hearing that about Big Jim for the ten thousand or so years he’s been running this town. He either tells people to get lost or pleads patience. ‘For the good of the town,’ he says. That’s number one on his hit parade. Town meeting in March is a joke. An article to authorize a new sewer system? Sorry, the town can’t afford the taxes. An article to authorize more commercial zoning? Great idea, the town needs the revenue, let’s build a Walmart out on

117. The University of Maine Small Town Environmental Study says there’s too much graywater in Chester Pond? The selectmen recommend tabling discussion because everybody knows all those scientific studies are run by radical humanist bleeding-heart atheists. But the hospital is for the good of the town, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes. I would.” Barbie was a little bemused by this outburst.

Rusty stared at the ground with his hands in his back pockets. Then he looked up. “I understand the President tapped you to take over. I think it’s high time you did so.”

“It’s an idea.” Barbie smiled. “Except … Rennie and Sanders have got their police force; where’s mine?”

Before Rusty could reply, his cell phone rang. He flipped it open and looked at the little window. “Linda? What?”

He listened.

“All right, I understand. If you’re sure they’re both okay now. And you’re sure it was Judy? Not Janelle?” He listened some more, then said: “I think this is actually good news. I saw two other kids this morning— both with transient seizures that passed off quickly, long before I saw them, and both fine afterward. Had calls on three more. Ginny T. took another one. It could be a side effect of whatever force is powering the Dome.”

He listened.

“Because I didn’t have a chance to,” he said. His tone patient, nonconfrontational. Barbie could imagine the question which had prompted that: Kids have been having seizures all day and now you tell me?

“You’re picking the kids up?” Rusty asked. He listened. “Okay. That’s good. If you sense anything wrong, call me ASAP. I’ll come on the run. And make sure Audi stays with them. Yes. Uh-huh. Love you, too.” He hooked the phone on his belt and ran both hands through his hair hard enough to make his eyes look briefly Chinese. “Jesus jumped-up Christ.”

“Who’s Audi?”

“Our golden retriever.”

“Tell me about these seizures.”

Rusty did so, not omitting what Jannie had said about Halloween and what Judy had said about pink stars.

“The Halloween thing sounds like what the Dinsmore boy was raving about,” Barbie said.

“Does, doesn’t it?”

“What about the other kids? Any of them talking about Halloween? Or pink stars?”

“The parents I saw today said their kids babbled while the seizure was ongoing, but they were too

freaked to pay any attention.”

“The kids themselves didn’t remember?”

“The kids didn’t even know they’d had seizures.”

“Is that normal?”

“It’s not ab normal.”

“Any chance your younger daughter was copying the older one? Maybe … I don’t know … vying for attention?”

Rusty hadn’t considered this—hadn’t had the time, really. Now he did. “Possible, but not likely.” He nodded to the old-fashioned yellow Geiger counter in the bag. “You going prospecting with that thing?”

“Not me,” Barbie said. “This baby’s town property, and the powers that be don’t like me much. I wouldn’t want to be caught with it.” He held the bag out to Rusty.

“Can’t. I’m just too busy right now.”

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 561