Стивен Кинг - Cell

"That building's the indoor track," the Head told them. "It's also where all the sports gear is stored. There's a steep drop-off on the far side. I imagine they're throwing the bodies over the edge."

"You bet," Jordan said. He sounded sick. "It's all marshy down there. They'll rot."

"They were rotting anyway, Jordan," Tom said gently.

"I know," he said, sounding sicker than ever, "but they'll rot even faster in the sun." A pause. "Sir?"

"Yes, Jordan?"

"I saw Noah Chutsky. From your Drama Reading Club."

The Head patted the boy's shoulder. He was very pale. "Never mind."

"It's hard not to," Jordan whispered. "He took my picture once. With his . . . with his you-know."

Then, a new wrinkle. Two dozen of the worker-bees peeled off from the main group with no pause for discussion and headed for the shattered greenhouses, moving in a V-shape that reminded the watchers of migrating geese. The one Jordan had identified as Noah Chutsky was among these. The rest of the body-removal squad watched them go for a moment, then marched back down the ramps, three abreast, and resumed fishing dead bodies out from under the bleachers.

Twenty minutes later the greenhouse party returned, now spread out in a single line. Some were still empty-handed, but most had acquired wheelbarrows or handcarts of the sort used to transport large bags of lime or fertilizer. Soon the phone-crazies were using the carts and barrows to dispose of the bodies, and their work went faster.

"It's a step forward, all right," Tom said.

"More than one," the Head added. "Cleaning house; using tools to do it."

Clay said, "I don't like this."

Jordan looked up at him, his face pale and tired and far older than its years. "Join the club," he said.

They slept until one in the afternoon. then, after confirming that the body detail had finished its work and gone to join the rest of the foragers, they went down to the fieldstone pillars marking the entrance to Gaiten Academy. Alice had scoffed at Clay's idea that he and Tom should do this on their own. "Never mind that Batman and Robin crap," she said.

"Oh my, I always wanted to be the Boy Wonder," Tom said with a trace of a lisp, but when she gave him a humorless look, her sneaker (now beginning to look a bit tattered) clasped in one hand, he wilted. "Sorry."

"You can go across to the gas station on your own," she said. "That much makes sense. But the rest of us will stand lookout on the other side."

The Head had suggested that Jordan should stay behind at the Lodge. Before the boy could respond—and he looked ready to do so hotly—Alice asked, "How are your eyes, Jordan?"

He had given her a smile, once more accompanied by the slightly starry look. "Good. Fine."

"And you've played video games? The ones where you shoot?"

"Sure, a ton."

She handed him her pistol. Clay could see him quiver slightly, like a tapped tuning fork, when their fingers touched. "If I tell you to point and shoot—or if Headmaster Ardai tells you—will you do it?"

"Sure."

Alice had looked at Ardai with a mixture of defiance and apology. "We need every hand."

The Head had given in, and now here they were and there was the Academy Grove Citgo, on the other side of the street and just a little way back toward town. From here the other, slightly smaller, sign was easy to read: academy lp gas. The single car standing at the pumps with its driver's door open already had a dusty, long-deserted look. The gas station's big plate-glass window was broken. Off to the right, parked in the shade of what had to be one of northern New England's few surviving elm trees, were two trucks shaped like giant propane bottles. Written on the side of each were the words Academy LP Gasand Serving Southern New Hampshire Since 1982.

There was no sign of foraging phone-crazies on this part of Academy Avenue, and although most of the houses Clay could see had shoes on their front stoops, several did not. The rush of refugees seemed to be drying up. Too early to tell, he cautioned himself.

"Sir? Clay? What's that?" Jordan asked. He was pointing to the middle of the Avenue—which of course was still Route 102, although that was easy to forget on this sunny, quiet afternoon where the closest sounds were birds and the rustle of the wind in the leaves. There was something written in bright pink chalk on the asphalt, but from where they were, Clay couldn't make it out. He shook his head.

"Are you ready?" he asked Tom.

"Sure," Tom said. He was trying to sound casual, but a pulse beat rapidly on the side of his unshaven throat. "You Batman, me Boy Wonder."

They trotted across the street, pistols in hand. Clay had left the Russian automatic weapon with Alice, more or less convinced it would spin her around like a top if she actually had to use it.

The message scrawled in pink chalk on the macadam was

"Does that mean anything to you?" Tom asked.

Clay shook his head. It didn't, and right now he didn't care. All he wanted was to get out of the middle of Academy Avenue, where he felt as exposed as an ant in a bowl of rice. It occurred to him, suddenly and not for the first time, that he would sell his soul just to know that his son was okay, and in a place where people weren't putting guns into the hands of children who were good at video games. It was strange. He'd think he had his priorities settled, that he was dealing with his personal deck one card at a time, and then these thoughts would come, each as fresh and painful as an unsettled grief.

Get out of here, Johnny. You don't belong here. Not your place, not your time.

The propane trucks were empty and locked, but that was all right; today their luck was running the right way. The keys were hanging on a board in the office, below a sign reading NO TOWING BETWEEN MIDNITE AND 6 AM NO EXEMPTIONS.a tiny propane bottle dangled from each keychain. Halfway back to the door, Tom touched Clay's shoulder.

Two phone-crazies walked up the middle of the street, side by side but by no means in lockstep. One was eating Twinkies from a box of them; his face was lathered with cream, crumbs, and frosting. The other, a woman, was holding a coffee-table-size book out in front of her. To Clay she looked like a choir-member holding an oversize hymnal. On the front there appeared to be a photograph of a collie jumping through a tire swing. The fact that the woman held the book upside down gave Clay some comfort. The vacant, blasted expressions on their faces—and the fact that they were wandering on their own, meaning midday was still a non-flocking time—gave him more. But he didn't like that book. No, he didn't like that book at all.

They wandered past the fieldstone pillars, and Clay could see Alice, Jordan, and the Head peering out, wide-eyed. The two crazies walked over the cryptic message chalked in the street— KASHWAK=NO-FO —and the woman reached for her companion's Twinkies. The man held the box away from her. The woman cast her book aside (it landed rightside up and Clay saw it was 100 Best Loved Dogs of the World) and reached again. The man slapped her face hard enough to make her filthy hair fly, the sound very loud in the stillness of the day. All this time they were walking. The woman made a sound: "Aw!" The man replied (it sounded to Clay like a reply): "Eeeen!" The woman reached for the box of Twinkies. Now they were passing the Citgo. The man punched her in the neck this time, a looping overhand blow, and then dove a hand into his box for another treat. The woman stopped. Looked at him. And a moment later the man stopped. He had pulled a bit ahead, so his back was mostly to her.