Стивен Кинг - Cell

At around four in the morning, alice bid clay and tom a foggy goodnight and stumbled off to bed. The two men sat in the kitchen, drinking iced tea, not talking much. There seemed nothing to say. Then, just before dawn, another of those great groans, made ghostly by distance, rode in on the foggy air from the northeast. It wavered like the cry of a theremin in an old horror movie, and just as it began to fade, a much louder answering cry came from Gaiten, where the Raggedy Man had taken his new, larger flock.

Clay and Tom went out front, pushing aside the barrier of melted boom-boxes to get down the porch steps. They could see nothing; the whole world was white. They stood there awhile and went back in.

Neither the death-cry nor the answer from Gaiten woke Alice and Jordan; they had that much to be grateful for. Their road atlas, now bent and crumpled at the corners, was on the kitchen counter. Tom thumbed through it and said, "That might have come from Hooksett or Suncook. They're both good-sized towns northeast of here—good-sized for New Hampshire, I mean. I wonder how many they got? And how they did it."

Clay shook his head.

"I hope it was a lot," Tom said with a thin and charmless smile. "I hope it was at least a thousand, and that they slow-cooked them. I find myself thinking of some restaurant chain or other that used to advertise 'broasted chicken.' Are we going tomorrow night?"

"If the Raggedy Man lets us live through today, I guess we ought to. Don't you think?"

"I don't see any choice," Tom said, "but I'll tell you something, Clay– I feel like a cow being driven down a tin chute into the slaughterhouse. I can almost smell the blood of my little moo-brothers."

Clay had the same feeling, but the same question recurred: If slaughtering was what they had on their group mind, why not do it here? They could have done it yesterday afternoon, instead of leaving melted boom-boxes and Alice's pet sneaker on the porch.

Tom yawned. "Turning in. Are you good for another couple of hours?"

"I could be," Clay said. In fact, he had never felt less like sleeping. His body was exhausted but his mind kept turning and turning. It would begin to settle a bit, and then he'd recall the sound the pen had made coming out of the Head's eyesocket: the low squall of metal against bone. "Why?"

"Because if they decide to kill us today, I'd rather go my way than theirs," Tom said. "I've seen theirs. You agree?"

Clay thought that if the collective mind which the Raggedy Man represented had really made the Head stick a fountain pen in his eye, the four remaining residents of Cheatham Lodge might find that suicide was no longer among their options. That was no thought to send Tom to bed on, however. So he nodded.

"I'll take all the guns upstairs. You've got that big old .45, right?"

"The Beth Nickerson special. Right."

"Good night, then. And if you see them coming—or feel them coming—give a yell." Tom paused. "If you have time, that is. And if they let you."

Clay watched Tom leave the kitchen, thinking Tom had been ahead of him all the time. Thinking how much he liked Tom. Thinking he'd like to get to know him better. Thinking the chances of that weren't good. And Johnny and Sharon? They had never seemed so far away.

At eight o'clock that morning, clay sat on a bench at one end of the Head's victory garden, telling himself that if he weren't so tired, he'd get up off his dead ass and make the old fellow some sort of marker. It wouldn't last long, but the guy deserved it for taking care of his last pupil, if for nothing else. The thing was, he didn't even know if he could get up, totter into the house, and wake Tom to stand a watch.

Soon they would have a chilly, beautiful autumn day—one made for apple-picking, cider-making, and touch-football games in the backyard. For now the fog was still thick, but the morning sun shone strongly through it, turning the tiny world in which Clay sat to a dazzling white. Fine suspended droplets hung in the air, and hundreds of tiny rainbow wheels circulated in front of his heavy eyes.

Something red materialized out of this burning whiteness. For a moment the Raggedy Man's hoodie seemed to float by itself, and then, as it came up the garden toward Clay, its occupant's dark brown face and hands materialized above and below it. This morning the hood was up, framing the smiling disfigurement of the face and those dead-alive eyes.

Broad scholar's forehead, marred with a slash.

Filthy, shapeless jeans, torn at the pockets and worn more than a week now.

HARVARD across the narrow chest.

Beth Nickerson's .45 was in the side-holster on his belt. Clay didn't even touch it. The Raggedy Man stopped about ten feet from him. He—it—was standing on the Head's grave, and Clay believed that was no accident. "What do you want?" he asked the Raggedy Man, and immediately answered himself: "To. Tell you."

He sat staring at the Raggedy Man, mute with surprise. He had expected telepathy or nothing. The Raggedy Man grinned—insofar as he could grin, with that badly split lower lip—and spread his hands as if to say Shucks, 't'warn't nuthin.

"Say what you have to say, then," Clay told him, and tried to prepare for having his voice hijacked a second time. He discovered it was a thing you couldn't prepare for. It was like being turned into a grinning piece of wood sitting on a ventriloquist's knee.

"Go. Tonight." Clay concentrated and said, "Shut up, stop it!"

The Raggedy Man waited, the picture of patience.

"I think I can keep you out if I try hard," Clay said. "I'm not sure, but I think I can."

The Raggedy Man waited, his face saying Are you done yet?

"Go ahead," Clay said, and then said, "I could bring. More. I came. Alone."

Clay considered the idea of the Raggedy Man's will joined to that of an entire flock and conceded the point.

"Go. Tonight. North." Clay waited, and when he was sure the Raggedy Man was done with his voice for the time being, he said, "Where? Why?"

There were no words this time, but an image suddenly rose before him. It was so clear that he didn't know if it was in his mind or if the Raggedy Man had somehow conjured it on the brilliant screen of the mist. It was what they had seen scrawled in the middle of Academy Avenue in pink chalk:

"I don't get it," he said.

But the Raggedy Man was walking away. Clay saw his red hoodie for a moment, once again seeming to float unoccupied against the brilliant mist; then that was gone, too. Clay was left with only the thin consolation of knowing that they had been going north anyway, and that they had been given another day's grace. Which meant there was no need to stand a watch. He decided to go to bed and let the others sleep through, as well.

Jordan awoke in his right mind, but his nervy brilliance had departed. He nibbled at half a rock-hard bagel and listened dully as Clay recounted his meeting with the Raggedy Man that morning. When Clay finished, Jordan got their road atlas, consulted the index at the back, and then opened it to the western Maine page. "There," he said, pointing to a town above Fryeburg. "This is Kashwak here, to the east, and Little Kashwak to the west, almost on the Maine-New Hampshire state line. I knew I recognized the name. Because of the lake." He tapped it. "Almost as big as Sebago."

Alice leaned closer to read the name on the lake. "Kash . . . Kashwaka-mak, I guess it is."

"It's in an unincorporated area called TR-90," Jordan said. He tapped this on the map, also. "Once you know that, Kashwak Equals No-Fo is sort of a no-brainer, wouldn't you say?"

"It's a dead zone, right?" Tom said. "No cell phone towers, no microwave towers."