Cell

Alice had looked at Ardai with a mixture of defiance and apology. 'We need every hand.'

The Head had given in, and now here they were and there was the Academy Grove Citgo, on the other side of the street and just a little way back toward town. From here the other, slightly smaller, sign was easy to read: academy lp gas. The single car standing at the pumps with its driver's door open already had a dusty, long-deserted look. The gas station's big plate-glass window was broken. Off to the right, parked in the shade of what had to be one of northern New England's few surviving elm trees, were two trucks shaped like giant propane bottles. Written on the side of each were the words Academy LP Gas and Serving SouthernNew Hampshire Since 1982.

There was no sign of foraging phone-crazies on this part of Academy Avenue, and although most of the houses Clay could see had shoes on their front stoops, several did not. The rush of refugees seemed to be drying up. Too early to tell, he cautioned himself.

'Sir? Clay? What's that?' Jordan asked. He was pointing to the middle of the Avenue—which of course was still Route 102, although that was easy to forget on this sunny, quiet afternoon where the closest sounds were birds and the rustle of the wind in the leaves. There was something written in bright pink chalk on the asphalt, but from where they were, Clay couldn't make it out. He shook his head.

'Are you ready?' he asked Tom.

'Sure,' Tom said. He was trying to sound casual, but a pulse beat rapidly on the side of his unshaven throat. 'You Batman, me Boy Wonder.'

They trotted across the street, pistols in hand. Clay had left the Russian automatic weapon with Alice, more or less convinced it would spin her around like a top if she actually had to use it.

The message scrawled in pink chalk on the macadam was

KASHWAK=NO-FO

'Does that mean anything to you?' Tom asked.

Clay shook his head. It didn't, and right now he didn't care. All he wanted was to get out of the middle of Academy Avenue, where he felt as exposed as an ant in a bowl of rice. It occurred to him, suddenly and not for the first time, that he would sell his soul just to know that his son was okay, and in a place where people weren't putting guns into the hands of children who were good at video games. It was strange. He'd think he had his priorities settled, that he was dealing with his personal deck one card at a time, and then these thoughts would come, each as fresh and painful as an unsettled grief.

Get out of here, Johnny. You don't belong here. Not your place, not your time.

The propane trucks were empty and locked, but that was all right; today their luck was running the right way. The keys were hanging on a board in the office, below a sign reading NO TOWING BETWEEN MIDNITE AND 6 AM NO EXEMPTIONS.a tiny propane bottle dangled from each keychain. Halfway back to the door, Tom touched Clay's shoulder.

Two phone-crazies walked up the middle of the street, side by side but by no means in lockstep. One was eating Twinkies from a box of them; his face was lathered with cream, crumbs, and frosting. The other, a woman, was holding a coffee-table-size book out in front of her. To Clay she looked like a choir-member holding an oversize hymnal. On the front there appeared to be a photograph of a collie jumping through a tire swing. The fact that the woman held the book upside down gave Clay some comfort. The vacant, blasted expressions on their faces—and the fact that they were wandering on their own, meaning midday was still a non-flocking time—gave him more. But he didn't like that book. No, he didn't like that book at all.

They wandered past the fieldstone pillars, and Clay could see Alice, Jordan, and the Head peering out, wide-eyed. The two crazies walked over the cryptic message chalked in the street—KASHWAK=NO- FO —and the woman reached for her companion's Twinkies. The man held the box away from her. The woman cast her book aside (it landed rightside up and Clay saw it was 100 Best Loved Dogs of the World) and reached again. The man slapped her face hard enough to make her filthy hair fly, the sound very loud in the stillness of the day. All this time they were walking. The woman made a sound: 'Aw!' The man replied (it sounded to Clay like a reply): 'Eeeen!' The woman reached for the box of Twinkies. Now they were passing the Citgo. The man punched her in the neck this time, a looping overhand blow, and then dove a hand into his box for another treat. The woman stopped. Looked at him. And a moment later the man stopped. He had pulled a bit ahead, so his back was mostly to her.

Clay felt something in the sunwarmed stillness of the gas station office. No, he thought, not in the office, in me. Shortness of breath, like after you climb a flight of stairs too fast.

Except maybe it was in the office, too, because—Tom stood on his toes and whispered in his ear, 'Do you feel that?' Clay nodded and pointed at the desk. There was no wind, no discernible draft, but the papers there were fluttering. And in the ashtray, the ashes had begun to circle lazily, like water going down a bathtub drain. There were two butts in there—no, three—and the moving ashes seemed to be pushing them toward the center.

The man turned toward the woman. He looked back at her. She looked at him. They looked at each other. Clay could read no expression on either face, but he could feel the hairs on his arms stirring, and he heard a faint jingling. It was the keys on the board below the NO TOWINGsign. they were stirring, too— chittering against each other just the tiniest bit.

'Aw!' said the woman. She held out her hand.

'Eeen!' said the man. He was wearing the fading remains of a suit. On his feet were dull black shoes. Six days ago he might have been a middle manager, a salesman, or an apartment-complex manager. Now the only real estate he cared about was his box of Twinkies. He held it to his chest, his sticky mouth working.

'Aw!' the woman insisted. She held out both hands instead of just one, the immemorial gesture signifying gimme, and the keys were jingling louder. Overhead there was a bzzzzt as a fluorescent light for which there was no power flickered and then went out again. The nozzle fell off the middle gas pump and hit the concrete island with a dead-metal clank.

'Aw,' the man said. His shoulders slumped and all the tension went out of him. The tension went out of the air. The keys on the board fell silent. The ashes made one final, slowing circuit of their dented metal reliquary and came to a stop. You would not have known anything had happened, Clay thought, if not for the fallen nozzle out there and the little cluster of cigarette butts in the ashtray on the desk in here.

'Aw,' the woman said. She was still holding out her hands. Her companion advanced to within reach of them. She took a Twinkie in each and began to eat them, wrappings and all. Once more Clay was comforted, but only a little. They resumed their slow shuffle toward town, the woman pausing long enough to spit a filling-caked piece of cellophane from the side of her mouth. She showed no interest in 100 Best Loved Dogsof the World.

'What was that?' Tom asked in a low and shaken voice when the two of them were almost out of sight.

'I don't know, but I didn't like it,' Clay said. He had the keys to the propane trucks. He handed one set to Tom. 'Can you drive a standard shift?'

'I learned on a standard. Can you?'

Clay smiled patiently. 'I'm straight, Tom. Straight guys know how to drive standards without instruction. It's instinct with us.'

'Very funny.' Tom wasn't really listening. He was looking after the departed odd couple, and that pulse in the side of his throat was going faster than ever. 'End of the world, open season on the queers, why not, right?'

'That's right. It's gonna be open season on straights, too, if they get that shit under control. Come on, let's do it.'