On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field.
Авторы: King Stephen Edwin
but she could throw an unearthly fuck when she was stoned. What did she have against those two blueboys?’
Even in his grief, Andy had no intention of bringing up the rape accusation. ‘I suppose she was upset about the Dome. Do you know about the Dome, Phil? Chef?’
Chef waved his hand again, apparently in the affirmative. ‘What you say about the meth is correct. Selling it is wrong. An affront. Making it, though—that is God’s will.’
Andy dropped his hands and peered at Chef from his swollen eyes. ‘Do you think so? Because I’m not sure that can be right.’
‘Have you ever had any?’
‘No!’Andy cried. It was as if Chef had asked him if he had ever enjoyed sexual congress with a cocker spaniel.
‘Would you take medicine if the doctor prescribed it?’
‘Well… yes, of course… but…’
‘Meth is medicine.’ Chef looked at him solemnly, then tapped Andy’s chest with a finger for emphasis. Chef had nibbled the nail all the way to the bloody quick. ‘Meth is medicine. Say it.’
‘Meth is medicine,’ Andy repeated, agreeably enough.
‘That’s right.’ Chef stood up. ‘It’s a medicine for melancholy. That’s from Ray Bradbury. You ever read Ray Bradbury?’
‘No.’
‘He’s a fucking head. He knew. He wrote the motherfucking hook, say hallelujah. Come with me. I’m going to change your life.’
18
The First Selectman of Chester’s Mill took to meth like a frog to flies.
There was a ratty old couch behind the ranked cookers, and here Andy and Chef Bushey sat under a picture of Christ on a motorcycle (title: Your Unseen Road Buddy), passing a pipe back and forth. While burning, meth smells like three-day-old piss in an uncovered thunderjug, but after his first tentative puff, Andy felt positive that the Chef was right: selling it might be Satan’s work, but the stuff itself had to be God’s. The world jumped into an exquisite, delicately trembling focus he had never seen before. His heart rate spiked, the blood vessels in his neck swelled to throbbing cables, his gums tingled, and his balls crawled in the most delightfully adolescent way. Better than any of these things, the weariness that had lain on his shoulders and muddled up his thinking disappeared. He felt he could move mountains in a wheelbarrow.
‘In the Garden of Eden there was a Tree,’ Chef said, passing him the pipe. Tendrils of green smoke drifted from both ends. ‘The Tree of Good and Evil. Dig that shit?’
‘Yes. It’s in the Bible.’
‘Bet your jackdog. And on that Tree was an Apple.’
‘Right, right.’ Andy took a puff so small it was actually a sip. He wanted more—he wanted it all— but feared that if he helped himself to a deep lungful, his head would explode off his neck and fly around the lab like a rocket, shooting fiery exhaust from its stump.
‘The flesh of that Apple is Truth, and the skin of that Apple is Meth,’ Chef said.
Andy looked at him. ‘That’s amazing.’
Chef nodded. ‘Yes, Sanders. It is.’ He took back the pipe. ‘Is this good shit or what?’
‘Amazing shit.’
‘Christ is coming back on Halloween,’ Chef said. ‘Possibly a few days earlier; I can’t tell. It’s already the Halloween season, you know. Season of the motherfucking witch.’ He handed Andy the pipe, then pointed with the hand holding the garage door opener. ‘Do you see that? Up at the end of the gallery. Over the door to the storage side.’
Andy looked. ‘What? That white lump? Looks like clay?’
‘That’s not clay,’ Chef said. ‘That’s the Body of Christ, Sanders.’
‘What about those wires coming out of it?’
‘Vessels with the Blood of Christ running through em.’
Andy considered this concept and found it quite brilliant.’Good.’ He considered some more. ‘I love you, Phil. Chef, I mean. I’m glad I came out here.’
‘Me too,’ Chef said. ‘Listen, do you want to go for a ride? I’ve got a car here somewhere—I think—but I’m a little shaky’
‘Sure,’ Andy said. He stood up. The world swam for a moment or two, then steadied. ‘Where do you want to go?’
Chef told him.
19
Ginny Tomlinson was asleep at the reception desk with her head on the cover of a People magazine—Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie frolicking in the surf on some horny little island where waiters brought you drinks with little paper parasols stuck in them. When something woke her up at quarter of two on Wednesday morning, an apparition was standing before her: a tall, scrawny man with hollow eyes and hair that stuck out in all directions. He was wearing a WCIK tee-shirt and jeans that floated low on his meager hips. At first she thought she was having a nightmare about walking corpses, but then she caught a whiff of him. No dream had ever smelled that bad.
‘I’m Phil Bushey,’
