Стивен Кинг - Cell

"It'll be all right," Tom said, and Clay knew he meant well, but the words struck terror into his heart just the same, because it was just one of those things you said when there was really nothing else. Like You'll get over it or He's in a better place.

Alice's shrieks woke clay from a confused but not unpleasant dream of being in the Bingo Tent at the Akron State Fair. In the dream he was six again—maybe even younger but surely no older—and crouched beneath the long table where his mother was seated, looking at a forest of lady-legs and smelling sweet sawdust while the caller intoned, "B-12, players, B-12! It's the sunshine vitamin!"

There was one moment when his subconscious mind tried to integrate the girl's cries into the dream by insisting he was hearing the Saturday noon whistle, but only a moment. Clay had let himself go to sleep on Tom's porch after an hour of watching because he was convinced that nothing was going to happen out there, at least not tonight. But he must have been equally convinced that Alice wouldn't sleep through, because there was no real confusion once his mind identified her shrieks for what they were, no groping for where he was or what was going on. At one moment he was a small boy crouching under a bingo table in Ohio; at the next he was rolling off the comfortably long couch on Tom McCourt's enclosed front porch with the comforter still wrapped around his lower legs. And somewhere in the house, Alice Maxwell, howling in a register almost high enough to burst crystal, articulated all the horror of the day just past, insisting with one scream after another that such things surely could not have happened and must be denied.

Clay tried to rid his lower legs of the comforter and at first it wouldn't let go. He found himself hopping toward the inside door and pulling at it in a kind of panic while he looked out at Salem Street, sure that lights would start going on up and down the block even though he knew the power was out, sure that someone—maybe the gun-owning, gadget-loving Mr. Nickerson from up the street—would come out on his lawn and yell for someone to for chrissake shut that kid up. Don't make me come down there! Arnie Nickerson would yell. Don't make me come down there and shoot her!

Or her screams would draw the phone-crazies like moths to a bug light. Tom might think they were dead, but Clay believed it no more than he believed in Santa's workshop at the North Pole.

But Salem Street—their block of it, anyway, just west of the town center and below the part of Maiden Tom had called Granada Highlands– remained dark and silent and without movement. Even the glow of the fire from Revere seemed to have diminished.

Clay finally rid himself of the comforter and went inside and stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up into the blackness. Now he could hear Tom's voice—not the words, but the tone, low and calm and soothing. The girl's chilling shrieks began to be broken up by gasps for breath, then by sobs and inarticulate cries that became words. Clay caught one of them, nightmare. Tom's voice went on and on, telling lies in a reassuring drone: everything was all right, she would see, things would look better in the morning. Clay could picture them sitting side by side on the guestroom bed, each dressed in a pair of pajamas with TMmonograms on the breast pockets. He could have drawn them like that. The idea made him smile.

When he was convinced she wasn't going to resume screaming, he went back to the porch, which was a bit chilly but not uncomfortable once he was wrapped up snugly in the comforter. He sat on the couch, surveying what he could see of the street. To the left, east of Tom's house, was a business district. He thought he could see the traffic light marking the entrance into the town square. The other way—which was the way they'd come—more houses. All of them still in this deep trench of night.

"Where are you?" he murmured. "Some of you headed north or west, and still in your right minds. But where did the rest of you go?"

No answer from the street. Hell, maybe Tom was right—the cell phones had sent them a message to go crazy at three and drop dead at eight. It seemed too good to be true, but he remembered feeling the same way about recordable CDs.

Silence from the street in front of him; silence from the house behind him. After a while, Clay leaned back on the couch and let his eyes close. He thought he might doze, but doubted he would actually go to sleep again. Eventually, however, he did, and this time there were no dreams. Once, shortly before first light, a mongrel dog came up Tom McCourt's front walk, looked in at him as he lay snoring in his cocoon of comforter, and then moved on. It was in no hurry; pickings were rich in Malden that morning and would be for some time to come.

" Clay. Wake up."

A hand, shaking him. Clay opened his eyes and saw Tom, dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a gray work-shirt, bending over him. The front porch was lit by strong pale light. Clay glanced at his wristwatch as he swung his feet off the couch and saw it was twenty past six.

"You need to see this," Tom said. He looked pale, anxious, and grizzled on both sides of his mustache. The tail of his shirt was untucked on one side and his hair was still standing up in back.

Clay looked at Salem Street, saw a dog with something in its mouth trotting past a couple of dead cars half a block west, saw nothing else moving. He could smell a faint smoky funk in the air and supposed it was either Boston or Revere. Maybe both, but at least the wind had died. He turned his gaze to Tom.

"Not out here," Tom said. He kept his voice low. "In the backyard. I saw when I went in the kitchen to make coffee before I remembered coffee's out, at least for the time being. Maybe it's nothing, but . . . man, I don't like this."

"Is Alice still sleeping?" Clay was groping under the comforter for his socks.

"Yes, and that's good. Never mind your socks and shoes, this ain't dinner at the Ritz. Come on."

He followed Tom, who was wearing a pair of comfortable-looking scuffs, down the hall to the kitchen. A half-finished glass of iced tea was standing on the counter.

Tom said, "I can't get started without some caffeine in the morning, you know? So I poured myself a glass of that stuff—help yourself, by the way, it's still nice and cold—and I pushed back the curtain over the sink to take a look out at my garden. No reason, just wanted to touch base with the outside world. And I saw . . . but look for yourself."

Clay peered out through the window over the sink. There was a neat little brick patio behind the house with a gas grill on it. Beyond the patio was Tom's yard, half-grass and half-garden. At the back was a high board fence with a gate in it. The gate was open. The bolt holding it closed must have been shot across because it now hung askew, looking to Clay like a broken wrist. It occurred to him that Tom could have made coffee on the gas grill, if not for the man sitting in his garden beside what had to be an ornamental wheelbarrow, eating the soft inside of a split pumpkin and spitting out the seeds. He was wearing a mechanic's coverall and a greasy cap with a faded letter Bon it. written in faded red script on the left breast of his coverall was George. clay could hear the soft smooching sounds his face made every time he dove into the pumpkin.

"Fuck," Clay said in a low voice. "It's one of them."

"Yes. And where there's one there'll be more."

"Did he break the gate to get in?"

"Of course he did," Tom said. "I didn't see him do it, but it was locked when I left yesterday, you can depend on that. I don't have the world's best relationship with Scottoni, the guy who lives on the other side. He has no use for 'fellas like me,' as he's told me on several occasions." He paused, then went on in a lower voice. He had been speaking quietly to begin with, and now Clay had to lean toward him to hear him. "You know what's crazy? I know that guy. He works at Sonny's Texaco, down in the Center. It's the only gas station in town that still does repairs. Or did. He replaced a radiator hose for me once. Told me about how he and his brother made a trip to Yankee Stadium last year, saw Curt Schilling beat the Big Unit. Seemed like a nice enough guy. Now look at him! Sitting in my garden eating a raw pumpkin!"