Стивен Кинг - Cell

In the posted notes, Clay saw the survivors had come to believe that they could hope for more than rescue. They believed that salvation awaited them in Kashwak. Why that particular townlet, when probably all of TR-90 (certainly the northern and western quadrants) was dead to cell phone transmission and reception? The notes on the bulletin board weren't clear on that. Most seemed to assume that any readers would understand without needing to be told; it was a case of "everybody knows, everybody goes." And even the clearest of the correspondents had obviously been struggling to keep terror and elation balanced and under control; most messages amounted to little more than follow the Yellow Brick Road to Kashwak and salvation as soon as you can.

Three-quarters of the way down the board, half-hidden by a note from Iris Nolan, a lady Clay knew quite well (she volunteered at the tiny town library), he saw a sheet with his son's familiar, looping scrawl and thought, Oh, dear God, thank you. Thank you so much. He pulled it off the board, being careful not to tear it.

This note was dated: Oct 3. Clay tried to remember where he had been on the night of October 3 and couldn't quite do it. Had it been the barn in North Reading, or the Sweet Valley Inn, near Methuen? He thought the barn, but he couldn't be absolutely certain—it all ran together and if he thought too hard about it, it began to seem that the man with the flashlights on the sides of his head had also been the young man jabbing the car aerials, that Mr. Ricardi had killed himself by gobbling broken glass instead of hanging himself, and it had been Alice in Tom's garden, eating cucumbers and tomatoes.

"Stop it," he whispered, and focused on the note. It was better spelled and a little better composed, but there was no mistaking the agony in it.

Oct 3 Dear Dad,

I hope you are alive & get this. Me & Mitch made it okay but Hughie Darden got George, I think he killed him. Me & Mitch just outran faster.

I felt like it was my fault but Mitch, he said how could you know he was just a Phoner like the others its not your fault.

Daddy there is worse. Mom is one of them, I saw her with one of the "flocks" today. (That is what they call them, flocks.) She doesnt look as bad as some but I know if I went out there she wouldnt even no me and would kill me soon as look at me. IF YOU SEE HER DON'T BE FOOLED, I'M SORRY BUT ITS TRUE.

We're going to Kashwak (its up north) tomorow or next day, Mitch's mom is here I could kill him I'm so ennveous. Daddy I know you dont have a cell phone and everyone knows about Kashwak how it's a safe place. If you get this note PLEASE COME GET ME.

I love you with all my Heart, Your Son, John Gavin Riddell

Even after the news about Sharon, Clay was doing all right until he got to I love you with all my Heart. Even then he might have been all right if not for that capital H. He kissed his twelve-year-old son's signature, looked at the bulletin board through eyes that had become untrustworthy– things doubled, tripled, then shivered completely apart—and let out a hoarse cry of pain. Tom and Jordan came running.

"What, Clay?" Tom said. "What is it?" He saw the sheet of paper—a ruled yellow page from a legal pad—and slipped it out of Clay's hand. He and Jordan scanned it quickly.

"I'm going to Kashwak," Clay said hoarsely.

"Clay, that's probably not such a hot idea," Jordan said cautiously. "Considering, you know, what we did at Gaiten Academy."

"I don't care. I'm going to Kashwak. I'm going to find my son."

The refugees who had taken shelter in the kent pond town hall had left plenty of supplies behind when they decamped, presumably en masse, for TR-90 and Kashwak. Clay, Tom, and Jordan made a meal of canned chicken salad on stale bread, with canned fruit salad for dessert.

As they were finishing, Tom leaned over to Jordan and murmured something. The boy nodded. The two of them got up. "Would you excuse us for a few minutes, Clay? Jordan and I need to have a little talk."

Clay nodded. While they were gone, he cracked another fruit salad cup and read Johnny's letter over for the ninth and tenth times. He was already well on the way to having it memorized. He could remember Alice's death just as clearly, but that now seemed to have happened in another life, and to a different version of Clayton Riddell. An earlier draft, as it were.

He finished his meal and stowed the letter away just as Tom and Jordan returned from the hall, where they had held what he supposed lawyers had called a sidebar, back in the days when there were lawyers. Tom once more had his arm around Jordan's narrow shoulders. Neither of them looked happy, but both looked composed.

"Clay," Tom began, "we've talked it over, and—"

"You don't want to go with me. Perfectly understandable."

Jordan said, "I know he's your son and all, but—"

"And you know he's all I've got left. His mother . . ." Clay laughed, a single humorless bark. "His mother. Sharon. It's ironic, really. After all the worry I put in about Johnny getting a blast from that goddam little red rattlesnake. If I had to pick one, I would have picked her." There, it was out. Like a chunk of meat that had been caught in his throat and was threatening to block his windpipe. "And you know how that makes me feel? Like I offered to make a deal with the devil, and the devil actually came through for me."

Tom ignored this. When he spoke, he did so carefully, as if he were afraid of setting Clay off like an unexploded land mine. "They hate us. They started off hating everyone and progressed to just hating us. Whatever's going on up there in Kashwak, if it's their idea, it can't be good."

"If they're rebooting to some higher level, they may get to a live-and-let-live plane," Clay said. All of this was pointless, surely they both must see that. He had to go.

"I doubt it," Jordan said. "Remember that stuff about the chute leading to the slaughterhouse?"

"Clay, we're normies and that's strike one," Tom said. "We torched one of their flocks. That's strike two and strike three combined. Live and let live won't apply to us."

"Why should it?" Jordan added. "The Raggedy Man says we're insane."

"And not to be touched," Clay said. "So I should be fine, right?"

After that there didn't seem to be any more to say.

Tom and jordan had decided to strike out due west, across new Hampshire and into Vermont, putting KASHWAK=NO-FOat their backs– and over the horizon—as soon as possible. Clay said that Route 11, which made an elbow-bend at Kent Pond, would serve them both as a starting-point. "It'll take me north to 160," he said, "and you guys can follow it all the way to Laconia, in the middle of New Hampshire. It's not exactly a direct route, but what the hell—you don't exactly have a plane to catch, have you?"

Jordan dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbed them, then brushed the hair back from his forehead, a gesture Clay had come to know well—it signaled tiredness and distraction. He would miss it. He would miss Jordan. And Tom even more.

"I wish Alice was still here," Jordan said. "She'd talk you out of this."

"She wouldn't," Clay said. Still, he wished with all his heart that Alice could have had her chance. He wished with all his heart that Alice could have had her chance at a lot of things. Fifteen was no age at which to die.

"Your current plans remind me of act four in Julius Caesar, " Tom said. "In act five, everyone falls on their swords." They were now making their way around (and sometimes over) the stalled cars jamming Pond Street. The emergency lights of the Town Hall were slowly receding behind them. Ahead was the dead traffic light marking the center of town, swaying in a slight breeze.