I knew all that high school shotputting would catch up with me someday, he thought.

He switched the ball to his left hand and swung it sideways and upward. It connected with Lester's jaw, knocking his lower face out of true and spraying more blood into the not-quite-steady light of the overhead fixture. A few drops struck the milky glass.

'Guh!' Lester cried. He was still trying to sidle around the desk. Big Jim retreated into the kneehole.

'Dad?'

Junior was standing in the doorway, eyes wide, mouth open.

'Guh!' Lester said, and began to flounder around toward the new voice. He held out the Bible. 'Guh… Guh… Guh-uh-ODD—'

'Don't just stand there, help me!' Big Jim roared at his son.

Lester began to stagger toward Junior, flapping the Bible extravagantly up and down. His sweater was sodden; his pants had turned a muddy maroon; his face was gone, buried in blood.

Junior hurried to meet him. When Lester started to collapse, Junior grabbed him and held him up. 'I gotcha, Reverend Coggins, I gotcha, don't worry.'

Then Junior clamped his hands around Lester's blood-sticky throat and began to squeeze.

14

Five interminable minutes later.

Big Jim sat in his office chair—sprawled in his office chair—with his tie, put on special for the meeting, pulled down and his shirt unbuttoned. He was massaging his hefty left breast. Beneath it, his heart was still galloping and throwing off arrhythmias, but showed no signs of actually going into cardiac arrest.

Junior left. Rennie thought at first he was going to get Randolph, which would have been a mistake, but he was too breathless to call the boy back. Then he came back on his own, carrying the tarp from the back of the camper. He watched Junior shake it out on the floor

-oddly businesslike, as if he had done this a thousand times before.

It's all those r-rated movies they watch now, Big Jim thought. Rubbing

the flabby flesh that had once been so firm and so hard.

Til… help,' he wheezed, knowing he could not.

'You'll sit right there and get your breath.' His son, on his knees, gave him a dark and unreadable look. There might have been love in it—Big Jim certainly hoped there was—but there were other things, too.

Gotcha now? Was Gotcha now part of that look?

Junior rolled Lester onto the tarp. The tarp crackled. Junior studied the body, rolled it a little farther, then flipped the end of the tarp over it. The tarp was green. Big Jim had bought it at Burpee's. Bought it on sale. He remembered Toby Manning saying, You're getting a heckuva good deal on that one, Mr Rennie.

'Bible,' Big Jim said. He was still wheezing, but he felt a little better. Heartbeat slowing, thank God. Who knew the climb would get so steep after fifty? He thought: I have to start working out. Get back in shape. God only gives you one body.

'Right, yeah, good call,'Junior murmured. He grabbed the bloody Bible, wedged it between Coggins's thighs, and began rolling up the body.

'He broke in, Son. He was crazy.'

'Sure.' Junior did not seem interested in that. What he seemed interested in was rolling the body up… just so.

'It was him or me.You'll have to—'Another little taradiddle in his chest. Jim gasped, coughed, pounded his breast. His heart settled again. 'You'll have to take him out to Holy Redeemer. When he's found, there's a guy… maybe…' It was the Chef he was thinking of, but maybe arranging for Chef to carry the can for this was a bad idea. Chef Bushey knew stuff. Of course, he'd probably resist arrest. In which case he might not be taken alive.

'I've got a better place,'Junior said. He sounded serene. 'And if you're talking about hanging it on someone, I've got a better idea!

'Who?'

'Dale Fucking Barbara.'

'You know I don't approve of that language—'

Looking at him over the tarp, eyes glittering, Junior said it again. 'Dale… Fucking… Barbara!

'How?'

'I don't know yet. But you better wash off that damn gold ball if you mean to keep it. And get rid of the blotter.'

Big Jim got to his feet. He was feeling better now. 'You're a good boy to help your old dad this way, Junior.'

'If you say so,'Junior replied. There was now a big green burrito on the rug. With feet sticking out the end. Junior tucked the tarp over them, but it wouldn't stay. 'I'll need some duct tape.'

'If you're not going to take him to the church, then where—'

'Never mind,' Junior said. 'It's safe. The Rev'll keep until we figure out how to put Barbara in the frame.'

'Got to see what happens tomorrow before we do anything.'

Junior looked at him with an expression of distant contempt Big Jim had never seen before. It came to him that his son now had a great deal of power over him. But surely his own son…

'We'll have to bury your rug. Thank God it's not the wall-to-wall carpet you used to have in here. And the upsicie is it caught most of the mess.' Then he lifted the big burrito and bore it down the hall. A few minutes later Rennie heard the camper start up.

Big Jim considered the golden baseball. I should get rid of that, too, he thought, and knew he wouldn't. It was practically a family heirloom. And besides, what harm? What harm, if it was clean?

When Junior returned an hour later, the golden baseball was once again gleaming in its Lucite cradle.

MISSILE STRIKE IMMINENT

1

'ATTENTION! THIS IS THE CHESTER'S MILL POLICE! THE AREA IS BEING EVACUATED! IF YOU HEAR ME, COME TO THE SOUND OF MY VOICE! THE AREA IS BEING EVACUATED!'

Thurston Marshall and Carolyn Sturges sat up in bed, listening to this weird blare and looking at each other with wide eyes. They were teachers at Emerson College, in Boston—Thurston a full professor of English (and guest editor for the current issue of Ploughshares), Carolyn a graduate assistant in the same department. They had been lovers for the last six months, and the bloom was far from off the rose. They were in Thurston's litde cabin on Chester Pond, which lay between Little Bitch Road and Prestile Stream.They had come here for a long 'fall foliage' weekend, but most of the foliage they had admired since Friday afternoon had been of the pubic variety.There was no TV in the cabin;Thurston Marshall abominated TV. There was a radio, but they hadn't turned it on. It was eight thirty in the morning on Monday, October twenty-third. Neither of them had any idea anything was wrong until that blaring voice startled them awake.

'ATTENTION! THIS IS THE CHESTER'S MILL POLICE! THE AREA—' Closer. Moving in.

'Thurston! The dope! Where did you leave the dope?'

'Don't worry,' he said, but the quaver in his voice suggested he was incapable of taking his own advice. He was a tall, reedy man with a lot of graying hair that he usually tied back in a ponytail. Now it lay loose, almost to his shoulders. He was sixty; Carolyn was twenty-three. 'All these little camps are deserted at this time of year, they'll just drive past and back to the Little Bitch R—'

She pounded him on the shoulder—a first. 'The car is in the driveway! They'll see the car!'

An oh shit look dawned on his face.

'-EVACUATED! IF YOU HEAR ME, COME TO THE SOUND OF MY VOICE! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!' Very close now. Thurston could hear other amplified voices, as well—people using loudhailers, cops using loudhailers—but this one was almost on top of them.'THE AREA IS BEING EVAC—'There was a moment of silence. Then: 'HELLO, CABIN! COME OUT HERE! MOVE IT!'

Oh, this was a nightmare.

'Where did you leave the dope?' She pounded him again.

The dope was in the other room. In a Baggie that was now half empty, sitting beside a platter of last night's cheese and crackers. If someone came in, it would be the first goddam thing they saw.

'THIS IS THE POLICE! WE ARE NOT SCREWING AROUND HERE! THE AREA IS BEING EVACUATED! IF YOU'RE IN THERE, COME OUT BEFORE WE HAVE TO DRAG YOU OUT!'

Pigs, he thought. Smalltown pigs with smalltown piggy minds.

Thurston sprang from the bed and ran across the room, hair flying, skinny buttocks flexing.

His grandfather had built the cabin after World War II, and it had only two rooms: a big bedroom facing the pond and the living room/kitchen. Power was provided by an old Henske generator, which Thurston had turned off before they had retired; its ragged blat was not exactly romantic. The embers of last night's fire—not really necessary, but tres romantic—still winked sleepily in the fireplace.

Maybe I was wrong, maybe I put the dope back in my attache—

Unfortunately, no. The dope was there, right next to the remains of the Brie they had gorged on before commencing last night's fuckathon.

He ran to it, and there was a knock on the door. No, a hammering on the door.

'Just a minute!'Thurston cried, madly merry. Carolyn was standing in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in a sheet, but he hardly noticed her.Thurston's mind—still suffering residual paranoia from the previous evening's indulgences—tumbled with unconnected thoughts: revoked tenure, 1984 thought-police, revoked tenure, the disgusted reaction of his three children (by two previous wives), and, of course, revoked tenure. 'Just a minute, just a sec, let me get dressed—'

But the door burst open, and—in direct violation of about nine different Constitutional guarantees—two young men strode in. One held a bullhorn. Both were dressed in jeans and blue shirts. The jeans were almost comforting, but the shirts bore shoulder-patches and badges.

We don't need no stinkin badges, Thurston thought numbly.

Carolyn shrieked, 'Get out of here!'

Check it out, Junes,' Frankie DeLesseps said. 'It's When Homy Met Slutty!

Thurston snatched up the Baggie, held it behind his back, and dropped it into the sink.

Junior was eyeing the equipment this move revealed. 'That's about the longest and skinniest dorkola I've ever seen,' he said. He looked tired, and came by the look honestly—he'd had only two hours' sleep—but he was feeling fine, absolutely ripping, old bean. Not a trace of a headache.

This work suited him.

'Get OUT!' Carolyn shouted.

Frankie said, 'You want to shut your mouth, sweetheart, and put on some clothes. Everyone on this side of town's being evacuated.'

'This is our place! GET THE FUCK OUT!'

Frankie had been smiling. Now he stopped. He strode past the skinny naked man standing by the sink (quailing by the sink might have been more accurate) and grabbed Carolyn by the shoulders. He gave her a brisk shake. 'Don't give me lip, sweetheart. I'm trying to keep you from getting your ass fried. You and your boyfr-*

'Get your hands off me! You'll go to jail for this! My father's a lawyer!' She tried to slap him. Frankie—not a morning person, never had been—seized her hand and bent it back. Not really hard, but Carolyn screamed. The sheet dropped to the floor.

'Whoa! That's a serious rack,' Junior confided to the gaping Thurston Marshall. 'Can you keep up with that, old fella?'

'Get your clothes on, both of you,' Frankie said. 'I don't know how dumb you are, but pretty dumb would be my guess, since you're still here. Don't you know—' He stopped. Looked from the woman's face to the man's. Both equally terrified. Equally mystified.

'Junior!' he said.

'What?'

'Titsy McGee and wrinkle-boy don't know what's going on.'

'Don't you dare call me any of your sexist—'

Junior held up his hands. 'Ma'am, get dressed. You have to get out of here. The U.S. Air Force is going to fire a Cruise missile at this part of town in'—he looked at his watch—'a little less than five hours.'

'ARE YOU INSANE?' Carolyn screamed.

Junior heaved a sigh and then pushed ahead. He guessed he understood the whole cop thing a little better now. It was a great job, but people could be so stupid. 'If it bounces off, you'd just hear a big bang. Might cause you to shit your pants—if you were wearing any—but it wouldn't hurt you. If it punches through, though, you'd most likely get charbroiled, since it's gonna be really big and you're less than two miles from what they say is gonna be the point of impact.'

'Bounces off what, you dimwit?' Thurston demanded. With the dope in the sink, he now used one hand to cover his privates… or at least tried to; his love-machine was indeed extremely long and skinny.

'The Dome,' Frankie said. 'And I don't appreciate your mouth.' He took a long step forward and punched the current guest editor of Ploughshares in the gut. Thurston made a hoarse whoofmg sound, doubled over, staggered, almost kept his feet, went to his knees, and vomited up about a teacup's worth of thin white gruel that still smelled of Brie.

Carolyn held her swelling wrist. 'You'll go to jail for this,' she promised Junior in a low, trembling voice. 'Bush and Cheney are long gone. This isn't the United States of North Korea anymore.'

'I know that,'Junior said, with admirable patience for one who was thinking he wouldn't mind doing a little more choking; there was a small dark Gila monster in his brain that thought a little more choking would be just the way to start the day off right.

But no. No. He had to do his part in completing the evacuation. He had taken the Oath of Duty, or whatever the fuck it was.

'I do know it,' he repeated. 'But what you two Massholes don't get is that you aren't in the United States of America anymore, either. You're in the Kingdom of Chester now, and if you don't behave, you're going to end up in the Dungeons of Chester. I promise. No phone call, no lawyer, no due process. We're trying to save your lives here. Are you too fuck-dumb to understand that?'

She was staring at him, stunned. Thurston tried to get up, couldn't manage it, and crawled toward her. Frankie helped him along with a boot to the butt. Thurston cried out in shock and pain. 'That's for holding us up, Grampa,' Frankie said. 'I admire your taste in chicks, but we've got a lot to do.'

Junior looked at the young woman. Great mouth. Angelina lips. He bet she could, as the saying went, suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.i 'If he can't get dressed by himself, you help him. We've got four more cabins to check out, and when we get back here, you want to be in that Volvo of yours and on your way into town.'

'I don't understand any of this!' Carolyn wailed.

'Not surprised,' Frankie said, and plucked the Baggie of dope out of the sink. 'Didn't you know this stuff makes you stupid?'

She began to cry.

'Don't worry,' Frankie said.'I'm confisticating it, and in a couple of days, booya, you'll smarten up all on your own.'

'You didn't read us our rights,' she wept.

Junior looked astonished. Then he laughed. 'You have the right to get the fuck out of here and shut the fuck up, okay? In this situation those are the only rights you have. Do you understand that?'

Frankie was examining the confisticated dope. 'Junior,' he said, 'there's hardly any seeds in this. This is fucking primo!

Thurston had reached Carolyn. He got to his feet, farting quite loudly as he did so. Junior and Frankie looked at each other. They tried to hold it in—they were officers of the law, after all—and couldn't. They burst out laughing simultaneously.

'Trombone Charlie is back in town!' Frankie yelled, and they gave each other a high five.

Thurston and Carolyn stood in the bedroom doorway, covering their mutual nakedness in an embrace, staring at the cackling intruders. In the background, like voices in a bad dream, loudhailers continued to announce that the area was being evacuated. Most of the amplified voices were now retreating toward Little Bitch.

'I want that car gone when we get back,'Junior said. 'Or I will fuck you up.'

They left. Carolyn dressed herself, then helped Thurston—his stomach hurt too much for him to bend over and put on his own shoes. By the time they were finished, both of them were crying. In the car, on their way back down the camp lane that led to Little Bitch Road, Carolyn tried to reach her father on her cell. She got nothing but silence.

At the intersection of Little Bitch and Route 119, a town police car was pulled across the road. A stocky female cop with red hair pointed at the soft shoulder, then waved at them to use it. Carolyn pulled over instead, and got out. She held up her puffy wrist.

'We were assaulted! By two guys calling themselves cops! One named Junior and one named Frankie! They—'

'Get your ass gone or I'll assault you myself,' Georgia Roux said… 'I ain't shittin, honeypie.'

Carolyn stared at her, stunned. The whole world had turned sideways and slipped into a Twilight Zone episode while she was asleep. That had to be it; no other explanation made even marginal sense. They'd hear the Rod Serling voice-over anytime now.

She got back into the Volvo (the sticker on the bumper, faded but still readable: OBAMA '12! YES WE STILL CAN) and" detoured around the police car. Another, older cop was sitting inside it, going over a checklist on a clipboard. She thought of appealing to him, then thought better of it.

'Try the radio,' she said. 'Let's find out if something really is going on.'

Thurston turned it on and got nothing but Elvis Presley and the Jordanaires, trudging through 'How Great Thou Art.'

Carolyn snapped it off, thought of saying Tlie nightmare is officially complete, and didn't. All she wanted was to get out of Weirdsville as soon as possible.

2

On the map, the Chester Pond camp road was a thin hooklike thread, almost not there. After leaving the Marshall cabin, Junior and Frankie sat for a moment in Frankie's car, studying this.

'Can't be anybody else down there,' Frankie said. 'Not at this time of the year. What do you think? Say fuck it and go back to town?' He cocked a thumb at the cabin. 'They'll be along, and if they're not, who really gives a shit?'

Junior considered it for a moment, then shook his head. They had taken the Oath of Duty. Besides, he wasn't anxious to get back and face his father's pestering about what he'd done with the Reverend's body. Coggins was now keeping his girlfriends company in the McCain pantry, but there was no need for his dad to know that. At least not until the big man figured out how to nail Barbara with it:. And Junior believed his father would figure it out. If there was one thing Big Jim Rennie was good at, it was nailing people.

Now it doesn't even matter if he finds out I left school, Junior thought, because I know worse about him. Way worse.

Not that dropping out seemed very important now; it was chump change compared to what was going on in The Mill. But he'd have to be careful, just the same. Junior wouldn't put it past his father to nail him, if the situation seemed to call for it.

'Junior? Earth to Junior.'

'I'm here,' he said, a little irritated.

'Back to town?'

'Let's check out the other cabins. It's only a quarter of a mile, and if we go back to town, Randolph'll find something else for us to do.'

'Wouldn't mind a little chow, though.'

'Where? At Sweetbriar? Want some rat poison in your scrambled eggs, courtesy of Dale Barbara?'

'He wouldn't dare.'

'You positive?'

'Okay, okay' Frankie started the car and backed down the little stub of driveway. The brightly colored leaves hung moveless on the trees, and the air felt sultry. More like July than October. 'But the Massholes better be gone when we come back, or I just might have to introduce Titsy McGee to my helmeted avenger.'

'I'll be happy to hold her down,' Junior said. 'Yippee-ki-yi-yay, motherfucker.'

3

The first three cabins were clearly empty; they didn't even bother getting out of the car. By now the camp road was down to a pair of wheelruts with a grassy hump between them. Trees overhung it on both sides, some of the lower branches almost close enough to scrape the roof.

'I think the last one's just around this curve,' Frankie said. 'The road ends at this shitpot little boat land—'

'Look out!' Junior shouted.

They came out of the blind curve and two kids, a boy and a girl, were standing in the road. They made no effort to get out of the way. Their faces were shocked and blank. If Frankie hadn't been afraid of tearing the Toyota's exhaust system out on the camp road's center hump—if he'd been making any kind of speed at all—he would have hit them. Instead he stood on the brake, and the car stopped two feet short.

'Oh my God, that was close,' he said. 'I think I'm having a heart attack.'

'If my father didn't, you won't; Junior said.

'Huh?'

'Never mind.'Junior got out. The kids were still standing there. The girl was taller and older. Maybe nine. The boy looked about five. Their faces were pale and dirty. She was holding his hand. She looked up at Junior, but the boy looked straight ahead, as if examining something of interest in the Toyota's driver's side headlamp.

Junior saw the terror on her face and dropped to one knee in front of her. 'Honey, are you okay?'