Cell. Part 33

'The Northern Counties Expo was never a big deal in the twentieth century,' Clay said. 'Just your standard little s.h.i.+tpot aggie fair with arts, crafts, produce, and animals over there in Kashwakamak Hall* which is where they're going to put us, from the look of things.'

He glanced at the Raggedy Man, but the Raggedy Man neither confirmed nor denied. The Raggedy Man only grinned. The little vertical line had disappeared from his forehead.

'Clay, look out,' Denise said in a tight, controlled voice.

He looked back through the winds.h.i.+eld and stepped on the brake. An elderly woman with infected lacerations on both legs came swaying out of the silent crowd. She skirted the edge of the Parachute Drop, trampled over several prefab pieces of the funhouse that had been laid out but not erected at the time of the Pulse, then broke into a shambling run aimed directly at the schoolbus. When she reached it, she began to hammer slowly on the winds.h.i.+eld with filthy, arthritis-twisted hands. What Clay saw in this woman's face wasn't the avid blankness he'd come to a.s.sociate with the phoners but terrified disorientation. And it was familiar. Who are you? Who are you? Pixie Dark had asked. Pixie Dark, who hadn't gotten a direct blast of the Pulse. Pixie Dark had asked. Pixie Dark, who hadn't gotten a direct blast of the Pulse. Who am I? Who am I?

Nine phoners in a neat moving square came after the elderly woman, whose frantic face was less than five feet from Clay's own. Her mouth moved, and he heard four words, both with his ears and with his mind: 'Take me with you.' 'Take me with you.'

We're not going anywhere you want to go, lady, Clay thought. Clay thought.

Then the phoners grabbed her and took her back toward the mult.i.tude on the gra.s.sy mall. She struggled to get away, but they were relentless. Clay caught one flash of her eyes and thought they were the eyes of a woman who was in purgatory only if she was lucky. More likely it was h.e.l.l.

Once more the Raggedy Man held out his hand, palm-up and index finger pointing: Roll. Roll.

The elderly woman had left a handprint, ghostly but visible, on the winds.h.i.+eld. Clay looked through it and got rolling.

4.

'Anyhow,' he said, 'until 1999, the Expo was no big deal. If you lived in this part of the world and wanted rides and games-carny stuff-you had to go down to the Fryeburg Fair.' He heard his own voice running as if on a tape loop. Talk for the sake of talk. It made him think of the drivers on the Duck Boat tours in Boston, pointing out the various sights. 'Then, just before the turn of the century, the State Bureau of Indian Affairs did a land-survey. Everybody knew the Expo grounds were right next door to the Sockabasin Rez; what that land-survey showed was that the north end of Kashwakamak Hall was actually on reservation land. Technically, it was in Micmac Indian territory. The people running the Expo were no dummies, and neither were the ones on the Micmac tribal council. They agreed to clean out the little shops from the north end of the hall and put in slots. All at once the Northern Counties Expo was Maine's biggest fall fair.'

They had reached the Parachute Drop. Clay started to jog left and guide the little bus between the ride and the half-constructed funhouse, but the Raggedy Man patted his hands on the air, palms-down. Clay stopped. The Raggedy Man stood up and turned to the door. Clay threw the lever and the Raggedy Man stepped off. Then he turned to Clay and made a kind of sweeping, bowing gesture.

'What's he doing now?' Denise asked. She couldn't see from where she was sitting. None of them could.

'He wants us to get off,' Clay said. He stood up. He could feel the cell phone Ray had given him lying hard along his upper thigh. If he looked down, he would see its outline against the blue denim of his jeans. He pulled down the T-s.h.i.+rt he was wearing, trying to cover it. A cellphone, so what, everybody's thinking about them. A cellphone, so what, everybody's thinking about them.

'Are we going to?' Jordan asked. He sounded scared.

'Not much choice,' Clay said. 'Come on, you guys, let's go to the fair.'

5.

The Raggedy Man led them toward the silent mult.i.tude. It opened for them, leaving a narrow aisle-not much more than a throat-from the back of the Parachute Drop to the double doors of Kashwakamak Hall. Clay and the others pa.s.sed a parking area filled with trucks (new england amus.e.m.e.nt corp. was printed on the sides, along with a roller-coaster logo). Then the crowd swallowed them.

That walk seemed endless to Clay. The smell was nearly insupportable, wild and ferocious even with the freshening breeze to carry the top layer away. He was aware of his legs moving, he was aware of the Raggedy Man's red hoodie ahead of him, but the hall's double doors with their swags of red, white, and blue bunting seemed to get no closer. He smelled dirt and blood, urine and s.h.i.+t. He smelled fermenting infections, burned flesh, the spoiled eggwhite aroma of oozing pus. He smelled clothes that were rotting on the bodies they draped. He smelled something else, as well-some new thing. Calling it madness would have been too easy.

I think it's the smell of telepathy. And if it is, we're not ready for it. It's too strong for us. It burns the brain, somehow, the way too much current will burn out the electrical system in a car or a- 'Help me with her!' Jordan yelled from behind him. 'Help me with her, she's fainting!'

He turned and saw that Denise had gone down on all fours. Jordan was on all fours beside her and had one of her arms over his neck, but she was too heavy for him. Tom and Dan couldn't get forward enough to help. The corridor cutting through the ma.s.s of phoners was too narrow. Denise raised her head, and for a moment her eyes met Clay's. The look was one of dazed incomprehension, the eyes those of a slugged steer. She vomited a thin gruel onto the gra.s.s and her head dropped down again. Her hair fell around her face like a curtain.

'Help me!' Jordan shouted again. He began to cry.

Clay went back and started elbowing phoners in order to get on Denise's other side. 'Get out of the way!' he shouted. 'Get out of the way, she's pregnant, can't you fools see she's preg-'

It was the blouse he recognized first. The high-necked, white silk blouse that he had always called Sharon's doctor s.h.i.+rt. In some ways he thought it was the s.e.xiest garment she owned, partly because of that high, prim neck. He liked her bare, but he liked to touch and squeeze her b.r.e.a.s.t.s through that high-necked, white silk blouse even more. He liked to bring her nipples up until he could see them poking the cloth.

Now Sharon's doctor s.h.i.+rt was streaked black with dirt in some places and maroon with dried blood in others. It was torn under the arm. She doesn't look as bad as some, She doesn't look as bad as some, Johnny had written, but she didn't look good; she certainly wasn't the Sharon Riddell who had gone off to school in her doctor s.h.i.+rt and her dark red skirt while her estranged husband was in Boston, about to make a deal that would put an end to their financial worries and make her realize that all her carping about his 'expensive hobby' had been so much fear and bad faith (that, anyway, had been his semi-resentful dream). Her dark blond hair hung in lank strings. Her face had been cut in a number of places, and one of her ears looked torn half-off; where it had been, a clotted hole bored into the side of her head. Something she had eaten, something dark, clung in curds to the corners of the mouth he had kissed almost every day for almost fifteen years. She stared at him, through him, with that idiotic half-grin they sometimes wore. Johnny had written, but she didn't look good; she certainly wasn't the Sharon Riddell who had gone off to school in her doctor s.h.i.+rt and her dark red skirt while her estranged husband was in Boston, about to make a deal that would put an end to their financial worries and make her realize that all her carping about his 'expensive hobby' had been so much fear and bad faith (that, anyway, had been his semi-resentful dream). Her dark blond hair hung in lank strings. Her face had been cut in a number of places, and one of her ears looked torn half-off; where it had been, a clotted hole bored into the side of her head. Something she had eaten, something dark, clung in curds to the corners of the mouth he had kissed almost every day for almost fifteen years. She stared at him, through him, with that idiotic half-grin they sometimes wore.

'Clay help me!' Jordan almost sobbed. almost sobbed.

Clay snapped back. Sharon wasn't here, that was the thing to remember. Sharon hadn't been here for almost two weeks now. Not since trying to make a call on Johnny's little red cell phone on the day of the Pulse.

'Give me some room, you b.i.t.c.h,' he said, and pushed aside the woman who'd been his wife. Before she could rebound, he slid into her place.

'This woman's pregnant, so give me some f.u.c.king room.' Then he bent, slipped Denise's other arm over his neck, and got her up.

'Go on ahead,' Tom said to Jordan. 'Let me in, I've got her.'

Jordan held up Denise's arm long enough for Tom to slip it over his own neck. He and Clay carried her that way the final ninety yards to the doors of Kashwakamak Hall, where the Raggedy Man stood waiting. By then Denise was muttering that they could let her go, she could walk, she was all right, but Tom wouldn't. Neither would Clay. If he let her go, he might look back for Sharon. He didn't want to do that.

The Raggedy Man grinned at Clay, and this time that grin seemed to have more focus. It really was as though the two of them shared a joke. Sharon? Sharon? he wondered. he wondered. Is Sharon the joke? Is Sharon the joke?

It seemed not, because the Raggedy Man made a gesture that would have seemed very familiar to Clay in the old world but seemed eerily out of place here: right hand to the right side of his face, right thumb to ear, pinkie finger to mouth. The phone-mime.

'No-fo-you-you,' Denise said, and then, in her own voice: 'Don't do that, I hate it it when you do that!' when you do that!'

The Raggedy Man paid her no mind. He went on holding his right hand in the phone-gesture, thumb to ear and pinkie to mouth, staring at Clay. For one moment Clay was sure he also glanced down at the pocket where the cell phone was stowed. Then Denise said it again, that horrible parody of his old routine with Johnny-Gee: 'No-fo-you-you.' The Raggedy Man mimed laughing, and his ruined mouth made it gruesome. From behind him, Clay felt the eyes of the flock like a physical weight.

Then the double doors of Kashwakamak Hall opened on their own, and the mingled odors that came out, although faint-olfactory ghosts of other years-was still an anodyne to the stink of the flock: spices, jams, hay, and livestock. It wasn't completely dark, either; the battery-powered emergency lights were dim, but hadn't yet given out entirely. Clay thought that was pretty amazing, unless they had been saved especially for their arrival, and he doubted that. The Raggedy Man wasn't telling. He only smiled and gestured with his hands for them to go in.

'It'll be a pleasure, you freak,' Tom said. 'Denise, are you sure you can walk on your own?'

'Yes. I've just got one tiny bit of business first.' She drew in breath, then spit in the Raggedy Man's face. 'There. Take that back to Hah-vud with you, f.u.c.kface.'

The Raggedy Man said nothing. He only grinned at Clay. Just two fellows sharing a secret joke.

6.

No one brought them any food, but there were snack machines galore and Dan found a crowbar in the maintenance closet at the huge building's south end. The others were standing around and watching him pry open the candy machine-Of course we're insane, Clay thought, Clay thought, we eat Baby Ruths for dinner and tomorrow we'll have Pay Days for breakfast we eat Baby Ruths for dinner and tomorrow we'll have Pay Days for breakfast-when the music started. And it wasn't 'You Light Up My Life' or 'Baby Elephant Walk' coming out of the big speakers ringing the gra.s.sy mall outside, not this time. It was something slow and stately that Clay had heard before, although not for years. It filled him with sadness and made gooseflesh run up the soft insides of his arms.

'Oh my G.o.d,' Dan said softly. 'I think it's Albinoni.'

'No,' Tom said. 'That's Pachelbel. It's the Canon in D Major.'

'Of course it is,' Dan said, sounding embarra.s.sed.

'It's as if*' Denise began, then stopped. She looked down at her shoes.

'What?' Clay asked. 'Go on, say it. You're among friends.'

'It's like the sound of memories,' she said. 'As if it's all they have.'

'Yes,' Dan said. 'I suppose-'

'You guys!' Jordan called. He was looking out one of the small windows. They were quite high, but by standing on his tiptoes, he could just manage. 'Come look at this!'

They lined up and looked out at the wide mall. It was almost full dark. The speakers and the light-standards loomed, black sentinels against the dead sky. Beyond was the gantry shape of the Parachute Drop with its one lonely blinking light. And ahead, directly ahead, thousands of phoners had gone to their knees like Muslims about to pray while Johann Pachelbel filled the air with what could have been a subst.i.tute for memory. And when they lay down they lay as one, producing a great soft swoop of noise and a fluttering displacement of air that sent empty bags and flattened soda cups twirling into the air.

'Bedtime for the whole brain-damaged army,' Clay said. 'If we're going to do something, it's got to be tonight.'

'Do? What are we going to do?' Tom asked. 'The two doors I tried are both locked. I'm sure that's true of the others, as well.'

Dan held up the crowbar.

'Don't think so,' Clay said. 'That thing may work just fine on the vending machines, but remember, this place used to be a casino.' He pointed to the north end of the hall, which was lushly carpeted and filled with rows of one-armed bandits, their chrome muted in the glow of the failing emergency lights. 'I think you'll find the doors are crowbar-resistant.'

'The windows?' Dan asked, then took a closer look and answered his own question. 'Jordan, maybe.'

'Let's have something to eat,' Clay said. 'Then let's just sit down and be quiet for a little while. There hasn't been enough of that.'

'And do what?' Denise asked.

'Well, you guys can do what you want,' Clay said. 'I haven't done any drawing in almost two weeks, and I've been missing it. I think I'll draw.'

'You don't have any paper,' Jordan objected.

Clay smiled. 'When I don't have any paper, I draw in my head.'

Jordan looked at him uncertainly, trying to ascertain whether his leg was being pulled. When he decided it wasn't, he said, 'That can't be as good as drawing on paper, can it?'

'In some ways it's better. Instead of erasing, I just rethink.'

There was a loud clank and the door of the candy machine swung open. 'Bingo!' Dan cried, and lifted his crowbar above his head. 'Who said college professors were good for nothing in the real world?'

'Look,' Denise said greedily, ignoring Dan. 'A whole rack of Junior Mints!' She dug in.

'Clay?' Tom asked.

'Hmmm?'

'I don't suppose you saw your little boy, did you? Or your wife? Sandra?'

'Sharon,' Clay said. 'I didn't see either of them.' He looked around Denise's ample hip. 'Are those b.u.t.terfingers?'

7.

Half an hour later they had eaten their fill of candy and raided the soda machine. They had tried the other doors and found them all locked. Dan tried his crowbar and couldn't get purchase even at the bottom. Tom was of the opinion that, although the doors looked like wood, they were very likely equipped with steel cores.

'Probably alarmed, too,' Clay said. 'Screw around with them too much and the reservation police will come and take you away.'

Now the other four sat in a little circle on the soft casino carpeting among the slot machines. Clay sat on the concrete, with his back against the double doors through which the Raggedy Man had ushered them with that mocking gesture of his-After you, see you in the morning.

Clay's thoughts wanted to return to that other mocking gesture-the thumb-and-pinkie phone-mime-but he wouldn't let them, at least not directly. He knew from long experience that the best way to go after such things was by the back door. So he leaned his head against the wood with the steel core hiding inside, and closed his eyes, and visualized a comic splash-page. Not a page from Dark Wanderer Dark Wanderer-Dark Wanderer was kaput and n.o.body knew it better than him-but from a new comic. Call it was kaput and n.o.body knew it better than him-but from a new comic. Call it Cell, Cell, for want of a better t.i.tle, a thrilling end-of-the-world saga of the phoner hordes versus the last few normies- for want of a better t.i.tle, a thrilling end-of-the-world saga of the phoner hordes versus the last few normies- Except that couldn't be right. It looked looked right if you glanced at it fast, the way the doors in this place looked like wood but weren't. The ranks of the phoners had to be seriously depleted- right if you glanced at it fast, the way the doors in this place looked like wood but weren't. The ranks of the phoners had to be seriously depleted-had to be. How many of them had been lost in the violence immediately following the Pulse? Half? He recalled the fury of that violence and thought, be. How many of them had been lost in the violence immediately following the Pulse? Half? He recalled the fury of that violence and thought, Maybe more. Maybe sixty or even seventy percent. Maybe more. Maybe sixty or even seventy percent. Then attrition due to serious wounds, infection, exposure, further fighting, and just plain stupidity. Plus, of course, the flock-killers; how many had Then attrition due to serious wounds, infection, exposure, further fighting, and just plain stupidity. Plus, of course, the flock-killers; how many had they they taken out? How many big flocks like this one were actually left? taken out? How many big flocks like this one were actually left?

Clay thought they might find out tomorrow, if the ones remaining all hooked up for one big execute-the-insane extravaganza. Much good the knowledge would do them.

Never mind. Boil it down. If you wanted backstory on the splash, the situation had to be boiled down enough to fit on a single narrative panel. It was an unwritten rule. The phoners' situation could be summed up in two words: bad losses. They looked like a lot-h.e.l.l, like a d.a.m.ned mult.i.tude mult.i.tude-but probably the pa.s.senger pigeons had looked like a lot right up until the end. Because they traveled in sky-darkening flocks right up to the end. What n.o.body noticed was that there were fewer and fewer of those giant flocks. Until, that was, they were all gone. Extinct. Finite Buh-bye.

Plus, he thought, he thought, they've got this other problem now, this bad-programming thing. This worm. What about that? All in all, these guys could have a shorter run than the dinosaurs, telepathy, levitation, and all. they've got this other problem now, this bad-programming thing. This worm. What about that? All in all, these guys could have a shorter run than the dinosaurs, telepathy, levitation, and all.

Okay, enough backstory. What's your illo? What's your d.a.m.n picture, d.a.m.n picture, the one that's going to hook them and draw them in? Why, Clay Riddell and Ray Huizenga, that's what. They're standing in the woods. Ray's got the Beth Nickerson.45 with the barrel under his chin and Clay's holding* the one that's going to hook them and draw them in? Why, Clay Riddell and Ray Huizenga, that's what. They're standing in the woods. Ray's got the Beth Nickerson.45 with the barrel under his chin and Clay's holding*

A cell phone, of course. The one Ray lifted from the Gurleyville Quarry.

CLAY (terrified): Ray, STOP! This is pointless! Don't you remember? Kashwak's a CELL DEAD Z- Ray, STOP! This is pointless! Don't you remember? Kashwak's a CELL DEAD Z- No good! KA-POW! KA-POW! in jagged yellow capitals across the foreground of the splash, and this one really in jagged yellow capitals across the foreground of the splash, and this one really is is a splash, because Arnie Nickerson has thoughtfully provided his wife with the kind of softnosed rounds they sell on the Internet at the American Paranoia sites, and the top of Ray's head is a red geyser. In the background-one of those detailed touches for which Clay Riddell might have become famous in a world where the Pulse never happened-a single terrified crow is lifting off from a pine branch. a splash, because Arnie Nickerson has thoughtfully provided his wife with the kind of softnosed rounds they sell on the Internet at the American Paranoia sites, and the top of Ray's head is a red geyser. In the background-one of those detailed touches for which Clay Riddell might have become famous in a world where the Pulse never happened-a single terrified crow is lifting off from a pine branch.

A d.a.m.n good splash page, Clay thought. Gory, sure-it would never have pa.s.sed muster in the old Comics Code days-but instantly involving. And although Clay had never said that thing about cell phones not working beyond the conversion point, he would've if he'd thought of it in time. Only time had run out. Ray had killed himself so that the Raggedy Man and his phoner friends wouldn't see that phone in his mind, which was bitterly ironic. The Raggedy Man had known all about the cell whose existence Ray had died to protect. He knew it was in Clay's pocket* and he didn't care.

Standing at the double doors to Kashwakamak Hall. The Raggedy Man making that gesture-thumb to ear, curled fingers next to his torn and stubbly cheek, pinkie in front of his mouth. Using Denise to say it again, to drive the point home: No-fo-you-you. No-fo-you-you.

That's right. Because Kashwak-No-Fo.

Ray had died for nothing* so why didn't that upset him now?