Стивен Кинг: Cell

"I know, turn it on." Jordan gave Clay an I'm-no-dummy look. "Then start the motor—"

"No, don't get ahead of yourself—"

"Pull the driving seat forward so I can reach the pedals, then start the motor."

"Right."

"Drive between the Parachute Drop and the funhouse. Go super slow. I'll run over some pieces of the funhouse and they may break—snap under the tires—but don't let that stop me."

"Right on."

"Get as close to them as I can."

"Yes, that's right. Then come around back again, to this window. So the hall is between you and the explosion."

"What we hope will be an explosion," Dan said.

Clay could have done without this, but let it pass. He stooped and kissed Jordan on the cheek. "I love you, you know," he said.

Jordan hugged him briefly, fiercely. Then Tom. Then Denise.

Dan put out his hand, then said, "Oh, what the hell," and enfolded Jordan in a bearhug. Clay, who had never warmed very much to Dan Hartwick, liked him better for that.

Clay made a step with his hands and boosted jordan up. "Remember," he said, "it's going to be like a dive, only into hay instead of water. Hands up and out."

Jordan put his hands over his head, extending them through the broken window and into the night. His face underneath his thick fall of hair was paler than ever; the first red blemishes of adolescence stood out there like tiny burns. He was scared, and Clay didn't blame him. He was in for a ten-foot drop, and even with the hay, the landing was apt to be hard. Clay hoped Jordan would remember to keep his hands out and his head tucked; he'd do none of them any good lying beside Kashwakamak Hall with a broken neck.

"You want me to count three, Jordan?" he asked.

"Fuck, no! Just do it before I pee myself!"

"Then keep your hands out, go!" Clay cried, and thrust his locked hands upward. Jordan shot through the window and disappeared. Clay didn't hear him land; the music was too loud.

The others crowded up to the window, which was just above their heads. "Jordan?" Tom called. "Jordan, you there?"

For a moment there was nothing, and Clay was sure Jordan really had broken his neck. Then he said shakily, "I'm here. Jeez, that hurts. I croggled my elbow. The left one. That arm's all weird. Wait a minute . . ."

They waited. Denise took Clay's hand and squeezed it hard.

"It moves," Jordan said. "It's okay, I guess, but maybe I ought to see the school nurse."

They all laughed too hard.

Tom had tied the bus's ignition key to a double line of thread from his shirt, and the thread to the buckle of his belt. Now Clay laced his fingers together again and Tom stepped up. "I'm going to lower the key to you, Jordan. Ready?"

"Yeah."

Tom gripped the edge of the window, looked down, and then lowered his belt. "Okay, you got it," he said. "Now listen to me. All we ask is do it if you can. If you can't, no penalty minutes. Got that?"

"Yes."

"Go on, then. Scat." He watched a moment, then said, "He's on his way. God help him, he's a brave kid. Put me down."

Jordan had gone out on the side of the building away from the roosting flock. Clay, Tom, Denise, and Dan crossed the room to the midway side. The three men tipped the already vandalized snack machine over on its side and shoved it against the wall. Clay and Dan could easily see out the high windows by standing on it, Tom by standing on tiptoes. Clay added a crate so Denise could also see, praying she wouldn't topple off it and go into labor.

They saw Jordan cross to the edge of the sleeping multitude, stand there a minute as if debating, and then move off to his left. Clay thought he continued seeing movement long after his rational mind told him that Jordan must be gone, skirting the edge of the massive flock.

"How long will it take him to get back, do you think?" Tom asked.

Clay shook his head. He didn't know. It depended on so many variables—the size of the flock was only one of them.

"What if they looked in the back of the bus?" Denise asked.

"What if Jordy looks in the back of the bus and there's nothing there?" Dan asked, and Clay had to restrain himself from telling the man to keep his negative vibe to himself.

Time passed, giving itself up by inches. The little red light on the tip of the Parachute Drop blinked. Pachelbel once more gave way to Faurй and Faurй to Vivaldi. Clay found himself remembering the sleeping boy who had come spilling out of the shopping cart, how the man with him—probably not his father—had sat down with him at the side of the road and said Gregory kiss it, make it all better. He remembered the man with the rucksack listening to "Baby Elephant Walk" and saying Dodge had a good time, too. He remembered how, in the bingo tents of his childhood, the man with the microphone would invariably exclaim It's the sunshine vitamin! when he pulled B-12 out of the hopper with the dancing Ping-Pong balls inside. Even though the sunshine vitamin was D.

The time now gave itself up in what seemed quarter-inches, and Clay began losing hope. If they were going to hear the sound of the bus's engine, they should have heard it by now.

"It's gone wrong somehow," Tom said in a low voice.

"Maybe not," Clay said. He tried to keep his heart's heaviness out of his voice.

"No, Tommy's right," Denise said. She was on the verge of tears. "I love him to death, and he was ballsier than Lord Satan on his first night in hell, but if he was coming, he'd be on his way by now."

Dan's take was surprisingly positive. "We don't know what he might have run into. Just take a deep breath and try to put your imaginations on hold."

Clay tried that and failed. Now the seconds dripped by. Schubert's "Ave Maria" boomed through the big concert speakers. He thought, Iwould sell my soul for some honest rock and roll — Chuck Berry doing "Oh, Carol," U2 doing "When Love Comes to Town" . . .

Outside, nothing but dark, and stars, and that one tiny red battery-driven light.

"Boost me up over there," Tom said, hopping down from the snack machine. "I'll squeeze through that window somehow and see if I can't go get him."

Clay began, "Tom, if I was wrong about there being explosives in the back of the bus—"

"Fuck the back of the bus and fuck the explosives!" Tom said, distraught. "I just want to find Jor—"

"Hey!" Dan shouted, and then: "Hey, all right! BABY-NOW!" He slammed one fist against the wall beside the window.

Clay turned and saw headlights had bloomed in the dark. A mist had begun to rise from the blanket of comatose bodies on the acres of mall, and the bus's headlights seemed to be shining through smoke. They flicked bright, then dim, then bright again, and Clay could see Jordan with brilliant clarity, sitting in the driver's seat of the minibus and trying to figure out which controls did which.

Now the headlights began to creep forward. High beams.

"Yeah, honey," Denise breathed. "Do it, my sweetheart." Standing on her crate, she grabbed Dan's hand on one side and Clay's on the other. "You're beautiful, just keep on coming."

The headlights jogged away from them, now illuminating the trees far to the left of the open space with its carpet of phoners.

"What's he doing?" Tom almost moaned.

"That's where the side of the funhouse takes a jog," Clay said. "It's all right." He hesitated. "I think it's all right." If his foot doesn't slip. If he doesn'tmix up the brake and the accelerator, run the bus into the side of the damn funhouse, and stick it there.

They waited, and the headlights swung back, spearing the side of Kashwakamak Hall on the dead level. And in the glare of the high beams, Clay saw why it had taken Jordan so long. Not all of the phoners were down. Dozens of them—the ones with bad programming, he assumed—were up and moving. They walked aimlessly toward any and every point of the compass, black silhouettes moving outward in expanding ripples, struggling to make their way over the bodies of the sleepers, stumbling, falling, getting up and walking on again while Schubert's "Ave" filled the night. One of them, a young man with a long red gash running across the middle of his forehead like a worry line, reached the Hall and felt his way along the side like a blind man.