Cell

graduating from trespass to burglary. What they did mostly was wander around, occasionally trying to grab one another's food, sometimes fighting or biting one another. Three or four—the Scottoni woman, for one—lay in the street, either dead or unconscious. Most of those who had passed Tom's house earlier were still in the town square, Clay guessed, having a street dance or maybe the First Annual Malden Raw Meat Festival, and thank God for that. It was strange, though, how that sense of purpose—that sense of flocking —had seemed to loosen and fall apart.

After noon, when he began to feel seriously sleepy, he went into the kitchen and found Alice dozing at the kitchen table with her head in her arms. The little sneaker, the one she had called a Baby Nike, was loosely clasped in one hand. When he woke her, she looked at him groggily and clasped it to the breast of her sweatshirt, as if afraid he would try to take it away.

He asked if she could watch from the end of the hallway for a while without falling asleep again or being seen. She said she could. Clay took her at her word and carried a chair for her. She paused for a moment at the door to the living room. 'Check it out,' she said.

He looked in over her shoulder and saw the cat, Rafe, was sleeping on Tom's belly. He grunted in amusement.

She sat where he put the chair, far enough inside the door so someone who glanced at the house wouldn't see her. After a single look she said, 'They're not a flock anymore. What happened?'

'I don't know.'

'What time is it?'

He glanced at his watch. 'Twenty past twelve.'

'What time did we notice they were flocking?'

'I don't know, Alice.' He was trying to be patient with her but he could hardly keep his eyes open. 'Six- thirty? Seven? I don't know. Does it matter?'

'If we could chart them, it might matter a lot, don't you think?'

He told her that he'd think about that when he'd had some sleep. 'Couple of hours, then wake me or Tom,' he said. 'Sooner, if something goes wrong.'

'It couldn't go much wronger,' she said softly. 'Go on upstairs. You look really wasted.'

He went upstairs to the guest bedroom, slipped off his shoes, and lay down. He thought for a moment about what she'd said: If we could chart them. She might have something there. Odds against, but maybe—

It was a pleasant room, very pleasant, full of sun. You lay in a room like this and it was easy to forget there was a radio in the closet you didn't dare turn on. Not so easy to forget your wife, estranged but still loved, might be dead and your son—not just loved but adored—might be crazy. Still, the body had its imperatives, didn't it? And if there had ever been a room for an afternoon nap, this was the one. The panic-rat twitched but didn't bite, and Clay was asleep almost as soon as he closed his eyes.

17

This time alice was the one who shook him awake. the little purple sneaker swung back and forth as she did it. She had tied it around her left wrist, turning it into a rather creepy talisman. The light in the room had changed. It was going the other way, and diminished. He had turned on his side and he had to urinate, a reliable sign that he had slept for some time. He sat up in a hurry and was surprised—almost appalled—to see it was quarter of six. He had slept for over five hours. But of course last night hadn't been his first night of broken rest; he'd slept poorly the night before, as well. Nerves, on account of his presentation to the Dark Horse comics people.

'Is everything all right?' he asked, taking her by the wrist. 'Why'd you let me sleep so long?'

'Because you needed it,' she said. 'Tom slept until two and I slept until four. We've been watching together since then. Come down and look. It's pretty amazing.'

'Are they flocking again?'

She nodded. 'But going the other way this time. And that's not all. Come and see.'

He emptied his bladder and hurried downstairs. Tom and Alice were standing in the doorway to the porch with their arms around each other's waist. There was no question of being seen, now; the sky had clouded over and Tom's porch was already thick with shadows. Only a few people were left on Salem Street, anyway. All of them were moving west, not quite running but going at a steady clip. A group of four went past in the street itself, marching over a sprawl of bodies and a litter of discarded food, which included the leg of lamb, now gnawed down to the bone, a great many torn-open cellophane bags and cardboard boxes, and a scattering of discarded fruits and vegetables. Behind them came a group of six, the ones on the end using the sidewalks. They didn't look at each other but were still so perfectly together that when they passed Tom's house they seemed for an instant to be only a single man, and Clay realized even their arms were swinging in unison. After them came a youth of maybe fourteen, limping along, bawling inarticulate cow-sounds, and trying to keep up.

'They left the dead and the totally unconscious ones,' Tom said, 'but they actually helped a couple who were stirring.'

Clay looked for the pregnant woman and didn't see her. 'Mrs. Scottoni?'

'She was one of the ones they helped,' Tom said.

'So they're acting like people again.'

'Don't get that idea,' Alice said. 'One of the men they tried to help couldn't walk, and after he fell down a couple of times, one of the guys who'd been lifting him got tired of being a Boy Scout and just—'

'Killed him,' Tom said. 'Not with his hands, either, like the guy in the garden. With his teeth. Tore out his throat.'

'I saw what was going to happen and looked away,' Alice said, 'but I heard it. He . . . squealed.'

'Easy,' Clay said. He squeezed her arm gently. 'Take it easy.'

Now the street was almost entirely empty. Two more stragglers came along, and although they moved more or less side by side, both were limping so badly there was no sense of unison about them.

'Where are they going?' Clay asked.

'Alice thinks maybe inside,' Tom said, and he sounded excited. 'Before it gets dark. She could be right.'

'Where? Where are they going in? Have you seen any of them going into houses along this block?'

'No.' They said it together.

'They didn't all come back,' Alice said. 'No way did as many come back up Salem Street as went down this morning. So a lot are still in Malden Center, or beyond. They may have gravitated toward public buildings, like school gymnasiums . . .'

School gymnasiums. Clay didn't like the sound of that.

'Did you see that movie, Dawn of the Dead?' she asked.

'Yes,' Clay said. 'You're not going to tell me someone let you in to see it, are you?'

She looked at him as if he were nuts. Or old. 'One of my friends had the DVD. We watched it at a sleepover back in eighth grade.' Back whenthe Pony Express still rode and the plains were dark with buffalo, her tone said. 'In that movie, all the dead people—well, not all, but a lot—went back to the mall when they woke up.'

Tom McCourt goggled at her for a second, then burst out laughing. It wasn't a little laugh, either, but a long series of guffaws, laughter so hard he had to lean against the wall for support, and Clay thought it wise to shut the door between the hall and the porch. There was no telling how well the things straggling up the street might hear; all he could think of at the moment was that the hearing of the lunatic narrator in Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' had been extremely keen.

'Well they did,' Alice said, putting her hands on her hips. The baby sneaker flopped. 'Straight to the mall.' Tom laughed even harder. His knees buckled and he oozed slowly down to the hall floor, howling and flapping his hands against his shirt.

'They died . . . ,' he gasped, '. . . and came back . . .