Стивен Кинг - Cell

The gas-jet over there was finally starting to burn low, but the bleachers were still blazing and so was the press box. Tonney Arch itself had caught and glared in the night like a horseshoe in a smithy. Nothing that had been on that field could still be alive—Alice had been right about that much, surely—but twice on their return to the Lodge (the Head shambling like an old drunk in spite of their best efforts to support him), they had heard those ghostly cries coming down the wind from other flocks. Clay told himself he didn't hear anger in those cries, it was just his imagination—his guilty imagination, his murderer's imagination, his mass murderer's imagination—but he didn't completely believe it.

It had been a mistake, but what else could they have done? He and Tom had felt their gathering power just that afternoon, had seen it, and that had been only two of them, just two. How could they have let that go on? Just let it grow?

"Damned if you do, damned if you stand pat," he said under his breath, and turned from the window. He didn't even know how long he'd been looking at the burning stadium and resisted the urge to check his watch. It would be easy to give in to the panic-rat, he was close to it now, and if he gave in, it would travel to the others quickly. Starting with Alice. Alice had managed to get herself back under some sort of control, but it was thin. Thin enough to read a newspaper through, his bingo-playing mother might have said. Although a kid herself, Alice had managed to keep herself shiny-side up mostly for the other kid's sake, so he wouldn't give way entirely.

The other kid. Jordan.

Clay hurried back into the front hall, noted there was still no fourth pack by the door, and saw Tom coming down the stairs. Alone.

"Where's the kid?" Clay asked. His ears had started to clear a little, but his voice still sounded too far away, and like a stranger's. He had an idea that was going to continue for a while. "You were supposed to be helping him put some stuff together—Ardai said he brought a pack over with him from that dorm of his—"

"He won't come." Tom rubbed the side of his face. He looked tired, sad, distracted. With half his mustache gone, he looked ludicrous as well.

"What?"

"Lower your voice, Clay. I don't make the news, I just report it."

"Then tell me what you're talking about, for Christ's sake."

"He won't go without the Head. He said, 'You can't make me.' And if you're really serious about going tonight, I believe he's right."

Alice came tearing out of the kitchen. She had washed up, tied her hair back, and put on a new shirt—it hung almost to her knees—but her skin glowed with the same burn Clay felt on his own. He supposed they should count themselves lucky that they weren't popping blisters.

"Alice," he began, "I need you to exercise your womanly powers over Jordan. He's being—"

She steamed past as if he hadn't spoken, fell on her knees, seized her pack, and tore it open. He watched, perplexed, as she began to pull out the stuff inside. He looked at Tom and saw an expression of understanding and sympathy dawning on Tom's face.

"What?" Clay asked. "What, for chrissake?" He had felt an all too similar exasperated annoyance toward Sharon during the last year they'd actually lived together—had felt it often—and hated himself for having that pop up now, of all times. But dammit, another complication was the last thing they needed now. He ran his hands through his hair. "What?"

"Look at her wrist," Tom said.

Clay looked. The dirty piece of shoestring was still there, but the sneaker was gone. He felt an absurd sinking in his stomach. Or maybe it wasn't so absurd. If it mattered to Alice, he supposed it mattered. So what if it was just a sneaker?

The spare T-shirt and sweatshirt she had packed (gaiten boosters' club printed across the front) went flying. Batteries rolled. Her spare flashlight hit the tile floor and the lens-cover cracked. That was enough to convince Clay. This wasn't a Sharon Riddell tantrum because they were out of hazelnut coffee or Chunky Monkey ice cream; this was unvarnished terror.

He went to Alice, knelt beside her, and took hold of her wrists. He could feel the seconds flying by, turning into minutes they should have been using to put this town behind them, but he could also feel the lightning sprint of her pulse under his fingers. And he could see her eyes. It wasn't panic in them now but agony, and he realized she'd put everything in that sneaker: her mother and father, her friends, Beth Nickerson and her daughter, the Tonney Field inferno, everything.

"It's not in here!" she cried. "I thought I must have packed it, but I didn't! I can't find it anywhere!"

"No, honey, I know." Clay was still holding her wrists. Now he lifted the one with the shoelace around it. "Do you see?" He waited until he was sure her eyes had focused, then he flipped the ends beyond the knot, where there had been a second knot.

"It's too long now," she said. "It wasn't that long before."

Clay tried to remember the last time he'd seen the sneaker. He told himself it was impossible to remember a thing like that, given all that had been going on, then realized he could. Very clearly, too. It was when she'd helped Tom pull him up after the second truck had exploded. It had been dancing from its string then. She had been covered with blood, scraps of cloth, and little chunks of flesh, but the sneaker had still been on her wrist. He tried to remember if it was still there when she'd booted the burning torso off the ramp. He didn't think so. Maybe that was hindsight, but he didn't think so.

"It came untied, honey," he said. "It came untied and fell off."

"I lost it?" Her eyes, unbelieving. The first tears. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure, yeah."

"It was my luck," she whispered, the tears spilling over.

"No," Tom said, and put an arm around her. "We're your luck."

She looked at him. "How do you know?"

"Because you found us first," Tom said. "And we're still here."

She hugged them both and they stood that way for a while, the three of them, with their arms around each other in the hall with Alice's few possessions scattered around their feet.

The fire spread to a lecture building the head identified as Hackery Hall. Then, around four a.m., the wind dropped away and it spread no farther. When the sun came up, the Gaiten campus stank of propane, charred wood, and a great many burnt bodies. The bright sky of a perfect New England morning in October was obscured by a rising column of gray-black smoke. And Cheatham Lodge was still occupied. In the end it had been like dominoes: the Head couldn't travel except by car, car travel was impossible, and Jordan would not go without the Head. Nor was Ardai able to persuade him. Alice, although resigned to the loss of her talisman, refused to go without Jordan. Tom would not go without Alice. And Clay was loath to go without the two of them, although he was horrified to find these newcomers in his life seemed at least temporarily more important than his own son, and although he continued to feel certain that they would pay a high price for what they'd done on Tonney Field if they stayed in Gaiten, let alone at the scene of the crime.

He thought he might feel better about that last at daybreak, but he did not.

The five of them watched and waited at the living room window, but of course nothing came out of the smoldering wreckage, and there was no sound but the low crackle of fire eating deep into the Athletic Department offices and locker rooms even as it finished off the bleachers above-ground. The thousand or so phone-crazies who had been roosting there were, as Alice had said, crispy. The smell of them was rich and stick-in-your-throat awful. Clay had vomited once and knew the others had, as well– even the Head.