Cell

tore her to pieces.'

'And this happened when?' Clay asked. He saw Alice was swaying and put an arm around her.

'Nine this morning. In Topsfield. So if you see a bunch of them walking up the Yella Brick Road with a boombox that's playing 'Why Can't We Be Friends' . . .' He surveyed them grimly by the glow of the flashlights strapped to the sides of his head. 'I wouldn't go running out yelling kemo sake, that's all.' He paused. 'And I wouldn't go north, either. Even if they don't shoot you at the border, it's a waste of time.'

But after a little consultation at the edge of the IGA parking lot, they went north anyway.

6

They paused near north andover, standing on a pedestrian overpass above Route 495. The clouds were thickening again, but the moon broke through long enough to show them six lanes of silent traffic. Near the bridge where they stood, in the southbound lanes, an overturned sixteen-wheeler lay like a dead elephant. Orange pylons had been set up around it, showing that someone had made at least a token response, and there were two abandoned police cruisers beyond them, one on its side. The rear half of the truck had been burned black. There was no sign of bodies, not in the momentary moonlight. A few people labored westward in the breakdown lane, but it was slow going even there.

'Kind of makes it all real, doesn't it?' Tom said.

'No,' Alice said. She sounded indifferent. 'To me it looks like a special effect in some big summer movie. Buy a bucket of popcorn and a Coke and watch the end of the world in . . .what do they call it? Computer graphic imaging? CGI? Blue screens? Some fucking thing.' She held up the little sneaker by one lace. 'This is all I need to make it real. Something small enough to hold in my hand. Come on, let's go.'

7

There were plenty of abandoned vehicles on highway 28, but it was wide-open compared to 495, and by four o'clock they were nearing Methuen, hometown of Mr. Roscoe Handt, he of the stereo flashlights. And they believed enough of Handt's story to want to be under cover well before daylight. They chose a motel at the intersection of 28 and 110. A dozen or so cars were parked in front of the various units, but to Clay they had an abandoned feel. And why wouldn't they? The two roads were passable, but only if you were on foot. Clay and Tom stood at the edge of the parking lot, waving their flashlights over their heads.

'We're okay!' Tom called. 'Normal folks! Coming in!'

They waited. There was no response from what the sign identified as the Sweet Valley Inn, Heated Pool, HBO, Group Rates.

'Come on,' Alice said. 'My feet hurt. And it'll be getting light soon, won't it?'

'Look at this,' Clay said. He picked up a CD from the motel's turn-in and shone the beam of his flashlight on it. It was Love Songs, by Michael Bolton.

'And you said they were getting smarter,' Tom said.

'Don't be so quick to judge,' Clay said as they started toward the units. 'Whoever had it threw it away, right?'

'More likely just dropped it,' Tom said.

Alice shone her own light on the CD. 'Who is this guy?'

'Honeybunch,' Tom said, 'you don't want to know.' He took the CD and tossed it back over his shoulder.

They forced the doors on three adjoining units—as gently as possible, so they could at least shoot the bolts once they were inside—and with beds to sleep in, they slept most of the day away. They were not disturbed, although that evening Alice said she thought she had heard music coming from far away. But, she admitted, it might have been part of a dream she was having.

8

There were maps for sale in the lobby of the sweet valley inn that would offer more detail than their road atlas. They were in a glass display cabinet that had been smashed. Clay took one for Massachusetts and one for New Hampshire, reaching in carefully so as not to cut his hand, and saw a young man lying on the other side of the reception counter as he did so. His eyes glared sightlessly. For a moment Clay thought someone had put an oddly colored corsage in the corpse's mouth. Then he saw the greenish points poking out through the dead man's cheeks and realized they matched the broken glass littering the shelves of the display cabinet. The corpse was wearing a nametag that said my name is hank ask me about weekly rates. Clay thought briefly of Mr. Ricardi as he looked at Hank.

Tom and Alice were waiting for him just inside the lobby door. It was quarter of nine, and outside it was full dark. 'How did you do?' Alice asked.

'These may help,' he said. He gave her the maps, then lifted the Coleman lantern so she and Tom could study them, compare them against the road atlas, and plot the night's travel. He was trying to cultivate a sense of fatalism about Johnny and Sharon, trying to keep the bald truth of his current family situation front and center in his mind: what had happened in Kent Pond had happened. His son and his wife were either all right or they weren't. He would either find them or he wouldn't. His success at this sort of semi-magical thinking came and went.

When it started slipping, he told himself he was lucky to be alive, and this was certainly true. What balanced his good luck out was that he'd been in Boston, a hundred miles south of Kent Pond by even the quickest route (which they were definitely not taking), when the Pulse happened. And yet he'd fallen in with good people. There was that. People he could think of as friends. He'd seen plenty of others—Beer- Keg Guy and Plump Bible-Toting Lady as well as Mr. Roscoe Handt of Methuen—who weren't as lucky.

If he got to you, Share, if Johnny got to you, you better be taking care of him. You just better be.

But suppose he'd had his phone? Suppose he'd taken the red cell phone to school? Might he not have been taking it a little more often lately? Because so many of the other kids took theirs?

Christ.

'Clay? You all right?' Tom asked.

'Sure. Why?'

'I don't know. You looked a little . . . grim.'

'Dead guy behind the counter. He's not pretty.'

'Look here,' Alice said, tracing a thread on the map. It squiggled across the state line and then appeared to join New Hampshire Route 38 a little east of Pelham. 'That looks pretty good to me,' she said. 'If we go west on the highway out there for eight or nine miles'—she pointed at 110, where both the cars and the tar were gleaming faintly in a misty drizzle—'we should hit it. What do you think?'

'I think that sounds good,' Tom said.

She looked from him to Clay. The little sneaker was put away—probably in her backpack—but Clay could see her wanting to squeeze it. He supposed it was good she wasn't a smoker, she'd be up to four packs a day. 'If they've got the way across guarded—' she began.

'We'll worry about that if we have to,' Clay said, but he wasn't worrying. One way or another, he was getting to Maine. If it meant crawling through some puckerbrush, like an illegal crossing the Canadian border to pick apples in October, he would do it. If Tom and Alice decided to stay behind, that would be too bad. He'd be sorry to leave them . . . but he would go. Because he had to know.

The red squiggle Alice had found on the Sweet Valley maps had a name—Dostie Stream Road—and it was almost wide-open. It was a four-mile hike to the state line, and they came upon no more than five or six abandoned vehicles and only a single wreck. They also passed two houses where they could see lights and hear the roar of generators. They considered stopping at these, but not for long.

'We'd probably get into a firefight with some guy defending his hearth and home,' Clay said. 'Always assuming there's anyone there. Those generators were probably set to come on when the county juice failed, and they'll run until they're out of gas.'