Cell

'Clay?' Alice sounded shrill, ready to be hysterical.

'Okay,' he heard himself say. His mouth seemed to be operating itself, with no help from his brain. 'Still right here.' He was thinking of how Mr. Ricardi had looked when he said Ishall stay at my post. The words had been lofty, but the eyes had been scared and somehow humble, the eyes of a small raccoon driven into a corner of the garage by a large and angry dog. 'I'm coming out now.'

He backed away, as if Mr. Ricardi might slip his homemade drape-cord noose and come after him the second he turned his back. He was suddenly more than afraid for Sharon and Johnny; he was homesick for them with a depth of feeling that made him think of his first day at school, his mother leaving him at the playground gate. The other parents had walked their kids inside. But his mother said, You just go in there, Clayton, it's the first room, you'll be fine, boys should do this part alone. Before he did what she told him he had watched her going away, back up Cedar Street. Her blue coat. Now, standing here in the dark, he was renewing acquaintance with the knowledge that the second part of homesick was sick for a reason.

Tom and Alice were fine, but he wanted the people he loved.

Once he was around the reception desk, he faced the street and crossed the lobby. He got close enough to the long broken window to see the frightened faces of his new friends, then remembered he had forgotten his fucking portfolio again and had to go back. Reaching for it, he felt certain that Mr. Ricardi's hand would steal out of the gathering darkness behind the desk and close over his. That didn't happen, but from overhead came another of those thumps. Something still up there, something still blundering around in the dark. Something that had been human until three o'clock this afternoon.

This time when he was halfway to the door, the lobby's single battery-powered emergency light stuttered briefly, then went out. That's a FireCode violation, Clay thought. Iought to report that.

He handed out his portfolio. Tom took it.

'Where is he?' Alice asked. 'Wasn't he there?'

'Dead,' Clay said. It had crossed his mind to lie, but he didn't think he was capable. He was too shocked by what he had seen. How did a man hang himself? He didn't see how it was even possible. 'Suicide.'

Alice began to cry, and it occurred to Clay that she didn't know that if it had been up to Mr. Ricardi, she'd probably be dead herself now. The thing was, he felt a little like crying himself. Because Mr. Ricardi had come around. Maybe most people did, if they got a chance.

From west of them on the darkening street, back toward the Common, came a scream that seemed too great to have issued from human lungs. It sounded to Clay almost like the trumpeting of an elephant. There was no pain in it, and no joy. There was only madness. Alice cringed against him, and he put an arm around her. The feel of her body was like the feel of an electrical wire with a strong current passing through it.

'If we're going to get out of here, let's do it,' Tom said. 'If we don't run into too much trouble, we should be able to get as far north as Maiden, and spend the night at my place.'

'That's a hell of a good idea,' Clay said.

Tom smiled cautiously. 'You really think so?'

'I really do. Who knows, maybe Officer Ashland's already there.'

'Who's Officer Ashland?' Alice asked.

'A policeman we met back by the Common,' Tom said. 'He . . . you know, helped us out.' The three of them were now walking east toward Atlantic Avenue, through the falling ash and the sound of alarms. 'We won't see him, though. Clay's just trying to be funny.'

'Oh,' she said. 'I'm glad somebody's trying to be.' Lying on the pavement by a litter barrel was a blue cell phone with a cracked casing. Alice kicked it into the gutter without breaking stride.

'Good one,' Clay said.

Alice shrugged. 'Five years of soccer,' she said, and at that moment the streetlights came on, like a promise that all was not yet lost.

MALDEN

1

Thousands of people stood on the mystic river bridge and watched as everything between Comm Ave and Boston Harbor took fire and burned. The wind from the west remained brisk and warm even after the sun was down and the flames roared like a furnace, blotting out the stars. The rising moon was full and ultimately hideous. Sometimes the smoke masked it, but all too often that bulging dragon's eye swam free and peered down, casting a bleary orange light. Clay thought it a horror-comic moon, but didn't say so.

No one had much to say. The people on the bridge only looked at the city they had so lately left, watching as the flames reached the pricey harborfront condos and began engulfing them. From across the water came an interwoven tapestry of alarms—fire alarms and car alarms, mostly, with several whooping sirens added for spice. For a while an amplified voice had told citizens to GET OFF THE STREETS, and then another had begun advising them to LEAVE THE CITY ON FOOT BY MAJOR ARTERIES WEST AND NORTH. These two contradictory pieces of advice had competed with each other for several minutes, and then GET OFF THE STREETS had ceased. About five minutes later, LEAVE THE CITY ON FOOT had also quit. Now there was only the hungry roar of the wind-driven fire, the alarms, and a steady low crumping sound that Clay thought must be windows imploding in the enormous heat.

He wondered how many people had been trapped over there. Trapped between the fire and the water.

'Remember wondering if a modern city could burn?' Tom McCourt said. In the light of the fire, his small, intelligent face looked tired and sick. There was a smudge of ash on one of his cheeks. 'Remember that?'

'Shut up, come on,' Alice said. She was clearly distraught, but like Tom, she spoke in a low voice. It's like we're in a library, Clay thought. And then he thought, No—a funeral home. 'Can't we please go? Because this is kicking my ass.'

'Sure,' Clay said. 'You bet. How far to your place, Tom?'

'From here, less than two miles,' he said. 'But it's not all behind us, I'm sorry to say.' They had turned north now, and he pointed ahead and to the right. The glow blooming there could almost have been orange-tinted arc-sodium streetlights on a cloudy night, except the night was clear and the streetlights were now out. In any case, streetlights did not give off rising columns of smoke.

Alice moaned, then covered her mouth as if she expected someone among the silent multitude watching Boston burn might reprimand her for making too much noise.

'Don't worry,' Tom said with eerie calm. 'We're going to Maiden and that looks like Revere. The way the wind's blowing, Maiden should still be all right.'

Stop right there, Clay urged him silently, but Tom did not.

'For now,' he added.

2

There were several dozen abandoned cars on the lower deck of the span, and a fire truck with EAST BOSTON lettered on its avocado-green side that had been sideswiped by a cement truck (both were abandoned), but mostly this level of the bridge belonged to the pedestrians. Except now you probably have to call them refugees, Clay thought, and then realized there was no them about it. Us. Call us refugees.

There was still very little talk. Most people just stood and watched the city burn in silence. Those who were moving went slowly, looking back frequently over their shoulders. Then, as they