Cell

by Stephen King

  "Why don't you show us what he wants us to see?" Clay asked. He had to work to sound calm. His mind was roaring. The one clear thought in it was that if he could get to his son before Johnny got to Kashwak--and whatever was going on there--he might still have a chance to save him. Rationality told him that Johnny must be in Kashwak already, but another voice (and it wasn't entirely irrational) said something might have held up Johnny and whatever group he was traveling with. Or they might have gotten cold feet. It was possible. It was even possible that nothing more sinister than segregation was going on up there in TR-90, that the phone-people were just creating a rez for normies. In the end, he supposed it went back to what Jordan had said, quoting Headmaster Ardai: the mind could calculate, but the spirit yearned.

  "Come this way," Dan said. "It's not far." He produced a flashlight and began walking up the shoulder of Route 11--North with the beam aimed at his feet.

  "Pardon me if I don't go," Denise said. "I've seen. Once was enough."

  "I think this was supposed to please you, in a way," Dan said. "Of course it was also supposed to underline the point--to my little group as well as yours--that the phoners are now the ones with the power, and they are to be obeyed." He stopped. "Here we are; in this particular sleep-o-gram, the President of Harvard made very sure we all saw the dog, so we couldn't get the wrong house." The flashlight beam nailed a roadside mailbox with a collie painted on the side. "I'm sorry Jordan has to see this, but it's probably best that you know what you're dealing with." He raised his flashlight higher. Ray joined his beam to Dan's. They lit up the front of a modest one-story wooden house, sitting neatly on a postage stamp of lawn.

  Gunner had been crucified between the living room window and the front door. He was naked except for a pair of bloodstained Joe Boxers. Nails big enough to be rail spikes jutted from his hands, feet, forearms, and knees. Maybe they were rail spikes, Clay thought. Sitting splay-legged at Gunner's feet was Harold. Like Alice when they met her, Harold was wearing a bib of blood, but his hadn't come from his nose. The wedge of glass he'd used to cut his throat after crucifying his running buddy still twinkled in one hand.

  Hung around Gunner's neck on a loop of string was a piece of cardboard with three words scrawled on it in dark capital letters: JUSTITIA EST COMMODATUM.

  9

  "In case you don't read Latin--" Dan Hartwick began.

  "I remember enough from high school to read that," Tom said. " 'Justice is served.' This is for killing Alice. For daring to touch one of the untouchables."

  "Right you are," Dan said, snapping off his light. Ray did the same. "It also serves as a warning to others. And they didn't kill them, although they most certainly could have."

  "We know," Clay said. "They took reprisals in Gaiten after we burned their flock."

  "They did the same in Nashua," Ray said somberly. "I'll remember the screams until my dyin day. Fuckin horrible. This shit is, too." He gestured toward the dark shape of the house. "They got the little one to crucify the big one, and the big one to hold still for it. And when it was done, they got the little one to cut his own throat."

  "It's like with the Head," Jordan said, and took Clay's hand.

  "That's the power of their minds," Ray said, "and Dan thinks that's part of what's sendin everybody north to Kashwak--maybe part of what kept us movin north even when we told ourselves it was only to show you this and persuade you to hook up with us. You know?"

  Clay said, "Did the Raggedy Man tell you about my son?"

  "No, but if he had I'm sure it would have been that he's with the other normies, and that you and he will have a happy reunion in Kashwak," Dan said. "You know, just forget about those dreams of standing on a platform while the President tells the cheering crowd you're insane, that ending's not for you, it can't be for you. I'm sure by now you've thought of all the possible happy-ending scenarios, the chief one being how Kashwak and who knows how many other cell phone dead zones are the normie equivalent of wildlife refuges, places where folks who didn't get a blast on the day of the Pulse will be left alone. I think what your young friend said about the chute leading to the slaughterhouse is far more likely, but even supposing normies are to be left alone up there, do you think the phoners will forgive people like us? The flock-killers?"

  Clay had no answer for this.

  In the dark, Dan looked at his watch again. "It's gone three," he said. "Let's walk back. Denise will have us packed up by now. The time has come when we've either got to part company or decide to go on together."

  But when you talk about going on together, you're asking me to part company from my son, Clay thought. And that he would never do unless he discovered Johnny-Gee was dead.

  Or changed.

  10

  "How can you hope to get west?" Clay asked as they walked back to the junction sign. "The nights still may be ours for a while, but the days belong to them, and you see what they can do."

  "I'm almost positive we can keep them out of our heads when we're awake," Dan said. "It takes a little work, but it can be done. We'll sleep in shifts, at least for a while. A lot depends on keeping away from the flocks."

  "Which means getting into western New Hampshire and then into Vermont as fast as we can," Ray said. "Away from built-up areas." He shone his light on Denise, who was reclining on the sleeping bags. "We set, darlin?"

  "All set," she said. "I just wish you'd let me carry something."

  "You're carryin your kid," Ray said fondly. "That's enough. And we can leave the sleepin bags."

  Dan said, "There are places where driving may actually make sense. Ray thinks some of the back roads could be clear for as much as a dozen miles at a stretch. We've got good maps." He dropped to one knee and shouldered his pack, looking up at Clay with a small and bitter half-smile as he did it. "I know the chances aren't good; I'm not a fool, in case you wondered. But we wiped out two of their flocks, killed hundreds of them, and I don't want to wind up on one of those platforms."

  "We've got something else going for us," Tom said. Clay wondered if Tom realized he'd just put himself in the Hartwick camp. Probably. He was far from stupid. "They want us alive."

  "Right," Dan said. "We might really make it. This is still early times for them, Clay--they're still weaving their net, and I'm betting there are plenty of holes in it."

  "Hell, they haven't even changed their clothes yet," Denise said. Clay admired her. She looked like she was six months along, maybe more, but she was a tough little thing. He wished Alice could have met her.

  "We could slip through," Dan said. "Cross into Canada from Vermont or New York, maybe. Five is better than three, but six would be better than five--three to sleep, three to stand watch in the days, fight off the bad telepathy. Our own little flock. So what do you say?"

  Clay shook his head slowly. "I'm going after my son."

  "Think it over, Clay," Tom said. "Please."

  "Let him alone," Jordan said. "He's made up his mind." He put his arms around Clay and hugged him. "I hope you find him," he said. "But even if you do, I guess you'll never find us again."

  "Sure I will," Clay said. He kissed Jordan on the cheek, then stood back. "I'll hogtie me a telepath and use him like a compass. Maybe the Raggedy Man himself." He turned to Tom and held out his hand.

  Tom ignored it and put his arms around Clay. He kissed him first on one cheek, then the other. "You saved my life," he whispered into Clay's ear. His breath was hot and ticklish. His cheek rasped against Clay's. "Let me save yours. Come with us."

  "I can't, Tom. I have to do this."

  Tom stood back and looked at him. "I know," he said. "I know you do." He wiped his eyes. "Goddam, I suck at goodbyes. I couldn't even say goodbye to my fucking cat."

  11

  Clay stood beside the junction sign and watched their lights dwindle. He kept his eyes fixed on Jordan's, and it was the last to disappear. For a moment or two it was alone at the top of the first hill to the west, a single small spark in the black, as if Jorda
n had paused there to look back. It seemed to wave. Then it was also gone, and the darkness was complete. Clay sighed--an unsteady, tearful sound--then shouldered his own pack and started walking north along the dirt shoulder of Route 11. Around quarter to four he crossed the North Berwick town line and left Kent Pond behind.

  PHONE-BINGO

  1

  There was no reason not to resume a more normal life and start traveling days; Clay knew the phone-people wouldn't hurt him. He was off-limits and they actually wanted him up there in Kashwak. The problem was he'd become habituated to a nighttime existence. All I need is a coffin and a cape to wrap around myself when I lie down in it, he thought.

  When dawn came up red and cold on the morning after his parting from Tom and Jordan, he was on the outskirts of Springvale. There was a little house, probably a caretaker's cottage, next to the Springvale Logging Museum. It looked cozy. Clay forced the lock on the side door and let himself in. He was delighted to find both a woodstove and a hand-pump in the kitchen. There was also a shipshape little pantry, well stocked and untouched by foragers. He celebrated this find with a large bowl of oatmeal, using powdered milk, adding heaps of sugar, and sprinkling raisins on top.

  In the pantry he also found concentrated bacon and eggs in foil packets, stored as neatly on their shelf as paperback books. He cooked one of these and stuffed his pack with the rest. It was a much better meal than he had expected, and once in the back bedroom, Clay fell asleep almost immediately.

  2

  There were long tents on both sides of the highway.

  This wasn't Route 11 with its farms and towns and open fields, with its pump-equipped convenience store every fifteen miles or so, but a highway somewhere out in the williwags. Deep woods crowded all the way up to the roadside ditches. People stood in long lines on both sides of the white center-stripe.

  Left and right, an amplified voice was calling. Left and right, form two lines.

  It sounded a little like the amplified voice of the bingo-caller at the Akron State Fair, but as Clay drew closer, walking up the road's center-stripe, he realized all the amplification was going on in his head. It was the voice of the Raggedy Man. Only the Raggedy Man was just a--what had Dan called him?--just a pseudopod. And what Clay was hearing was the voice of the flock.

  Left and right, two lines, that's correct. That's doing it.

  Where am I? Why doesn't anybody look at me, say "Hey buddy, no cutting in front, wait your turn"?

  Up ahead the two lines curved off to either side like turnpike exit ramps, one going into the tent on the left side of the road, one going into the tent on the right. They were the kind of long tents caterers put up to shade outdoor buffets on hot afternoons. Clay could see that just before each line reached the tents, the people were splitting into ten or a dozen shorter lines. Those people looked like fans waiting to have their tickets ripped so they could go into a concert venue.

  Standing in the middle of the road at the point where the double line split and curved off to the right and the left, still wearing his threadbare red hoodie, was the Raggedy Man himself.

  Left and right, ladies and gentlemen. Mouth not moving. Telepathy that was all jacked up, amped by the power of the flock. Move right along. Everyone gets a chance to call a loved one before you go into the no-fo zone.

  That gave Clay a shock, but it was the shock of the known--like the punchline of a good joke you'd heard for the first time ten or twenty years ago. "Where is this?" he asked the Raggedy Man. "What are you doing? What the hell is going on?"

  But the Raggedy Man didn't look at him, and of course Clay knew why. This was where Route 160 entered Kashwak, and he was visiting it in a dream. As for what was going on...

  It's phone-bingo, he thought. It's phone-bingo, and those are the tents where the game is played.

  Let's keep it moving, ladies and gents, the Raggedy Man sent. We've got two hours until sunset, and we want to process as many of you as we can before we have to quit for the night.

  Process.

  Was this a dream?

  Clay followed the line curving toward the pavilion-style tent on the left side of the road, knowing what he was going to see even before he saw it. At the head of each shorter line stood one of the phone-people, those connoisseurs of Lawrence Welk, Dean Martin, and Debby Boone. As each person in line reached the front, the waiting usher--dressed in filthy clothes, often much more horribly disfigured by the survival-struggles of the last eleven days than the Raggedy Man--would hold out a cell phone.

  As Clay watched, the man closest to him took the offered phone, punched it three times, then held it eagerly to his ear. "Hello?" he said. "Hello, Ma? Ma? Are you th--" Then he fell silent. His eyes emptied and slackness loosened his face. The cell sagged away from his ear slightly. The facilitator--that was the best word Clay could think of--took the phone back, gave the man a push to start him forward, and motioned for the next person in line to step forward.

  Left and right, the Raggedy Man was calling. Keep it moving.

  The guy who'd been trying to call his mom plodded out from beneath the pavilion. Beyond it, Clay saw, hundreds of other people were milling around. Sometimes someone would get in someone else's way and there would be a little weak slapping. Nothing like before, however. Because--

  Because the signal's been modified.

  Left and right, ladies and gentlemen, keep it moving, we've got a lot of you to get through before dark.

  Clay saw Johnny. He was wearing jeans, his Little League hat, and his favorite Red Sox T-shirt, the one with Tim Wakefield's name and number on the back. He had just reached the head of the line two stations down from where Clay was standing.

  Clay ran for him, but at first his path was blocked. "Get out of my way!" he shouted, but of course the man in his way, who was shuffling nervously from foot to foot as if he needed to go to the bathroom, couldn't hear him. This was a dream and besides, Clay was a normie--he had no telepathy.

  He darted between the restless man and the woman behind him. He pushed through the next line as well, too fixated on reaching Johnny to know if the people he was pushing had substance or not. He reached Johnny just as a woman--he saw with mounting horror that it was Mr. Scottoni's daughter-in-law, still pregnant but now missing an eye--handed the boy a Motorola cell phone.

  Just dial 911, she said without moving her mouth. All calls go through 911.

  "No, Johnny, don't!" Clay shouted, and grabbed for the phone as Johnny-Gee began punching in the number, surely one he'd been taught long ago to call if he was ever in trouble. "Don't do that!"

  Johnny turned to his left, as if to shield his call from the pregnant facilitator's one dully staring eye, and Clay missed. He probably couldn't have stopped Johnny in any case. This was a dream, after all.

  Johnny finished (punching three keys didn't take long), pushed the SEND button, and put the phone to his ear. "Hello? Dad? Dad, are you there? Can you hear me? If you can hear me, please come get m--" Turned away as he was, Clay could only see one of his son's eyes, but one was enough when you were watching the lights go out. Johnny's shoulders slumped. The phone sagged away from his ear. Mr. Scottoni's daughter-in-law snatched the phone from him with a dirty hand, then gave Johnny-Gee an unloving push on the back of the neck to get him moving into Kashwak, along with all the others who had come here to be safe. She motioned for the next person in line to come forward and make his call.

  Left and right, form two lines, the Raggedy Man thundered in the middle of Clay's head, and he woke up screaming his son's name in the caretaker's cottage as late-afternoon light streamed in the windows.

  3

  At midnight Clay reached the little town of North Shapleigh. By then a nasty cold rain that was almost sleet--what Sharon had called "Slurpee rain"--had begun to fall. He heard oncoming motors and stepped off the highway (still good old Route 11; no dream highway here) onto the tarmac of a 7-Eleven store. When the headlights showed, turning the drizzle to silver lines, it was a pair of
sprinters running side by side, actually racing in the dark. Madness. Clay stood behind a gas pump, not exactly hiding but not going out of his way to be seen, either. He watched them fly past like a vision of the gone world, sending up thin sprays of water. One of the racers looked like a vintage Corvette, although with only a single failing emergency light on the corner of the store to see by, it was impossible to tell for sure. The racers shot beneath North Shapleigh's entire traffic-control system (a dead blinker), were neon cherries in the dark for a moment, then were gone.

  Clay thought again: Madness. And as he swung back onto the shoulder of the road: You're a fine one to talk about madness.

  True. Because his phone-bingo dream hadn't been a dream, or not entirely a dream. He was sure of it. The phoners were using their strengthening telepathic abilities to keep track of as many of the flock-killers as they could. That only made sense. They might have a problem with groups like Dan Hartwick's, ones that actually tried to fight them, but he doubted if they were having any trouble with him. The thing was, the telepathy was also oddly like a phone--it seemed to work both ways. Which made him... what? The ghost in the machine? Something like that. While they were keeping an eye on him, he was able to keep an eye on them. At least in his sleep. In his dreams.

  Were there actual tents at the Kashwak border, with normies lining up to get their brains blasted? Clay thought there were, both in Kashwak and places like Kashwak all over the country and the world. Business would be slowing down by now, but the checkpoints--the changing-points--might still be there.

  The phoners used group-speak telepathy to coax the normies into coming. To dream them into coming. Did that make the phoners smart, calculating? Not unless you called a spider smart because it could spin a web, or an alligator calculating because it could lie still and look like a log. Walking north along Route 11 toward Route 160, the road that would take him to Kashwak, Clay thought the telepathic signal the phoners sent out like a low siren-call (or a pulse) must contain at least three separate messages.