Pages 299 - 343, Missile Strike Imminent: What Did You Expect?

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What Happened? The piggish deputies begin evacuating the part of town where the Cruise Missile just might land.  They encounter Thurston Marshall, out-of-town college professor, and Carolyn Sturges, the grad student he's boffing, who've screwed and slept through the local disaster, until now.  They get roust the couple, while Frankie and Junior encounter two children, Rachel and Aiden Appleton, whose mom is apparently on the other side of the Dome. Good cops Jackie and Linda visit the Rev. Coggins' home and find evidence of his self-flagellatoin, but no body.  They move on to the utlra-automated, ultra-spooky WCIK, and find no one.Moments after they leave, the totally insane, emaciated and filthy Chef crawls from his hiding place.   Barbie hooks up with young, brilliant geekboy Scarecrow oe McClatchey; together they set up a web cam to watch the missile impact.  Chief Randolph and Big Jim hate it, but they lose the confrontation.  Everybody watches as the missile arrives, explodes .. and does nothing but start a fire on both sides of the Dome.  It has failed.

Clearly the Chef is UTD's Trashcan Man, the truly nutty bad man who shouldn't even still be alive, but is -- and will remain so, it seems, long enough to wreak a little havoc downstream.  Meanwhile the battle between Big Jim and his faction and Dale Barbie and HIS faction shape up even more ... and boy, is Barbie on the wrong side of this one.  Overall, it's a whole lot of build-up (especially the long confrontation over the web cam thing) for a pay-off we all knew was coming: the missile didn't work.  I mean, look, i's not even page 350 of 1050 yet; you know the Dome isn't disappearing yet.  Let the episode of Castle where the killer gets caught in the first twenty minutes.  You know it's bogus -- it's an hour show, man.

This is a big book.  It's gonna drag now and then  And even though we had to see what the missile was going to do, we already knew the outcome, and it took thirty pages to get there.

Let's hope all those little seeds being planted bear big, ugly-ass flowers, and soon.