Cell

'Maybe they need less sleep now,' Jordan said. 'Maybe that's part of their new programming.'

Hearing him talk that way, as if the phone people were organic computers in some kind of upload cycle, never failed to give Clay a chill.

'They don't do rifles, either, Jordan,' Tom said. 'They don't need them.'

'So now they've got a few collaborators taking care of them while they get their beauty rest,' Alice said. There was brittle contempt on top of her voice, tears just beneath. 'I hope they rot in hell.'

Clay said nothing, but he found himself thinking of the people they had met earlier that night, the ones with the shopping carts—the fear and loathing in the voice of the man who had called them the Gaiten bunch. He might as well have called us the Dillinger gang, Clay thought. And then he thought, Idon't think of them as the phone-crazies anymore; now I think of them as the phone-people. Why is that? The thought that followed was even more uncomfortable: When does a collaborator stop being a collaborator? The answer, it seemed to him, was when the collaborators became the clear majority. Then the ones who weren't collaborators became . . .

Well, if you were a romantic, you called those people 'the underground.' If you weren't a romantic, you called them fugitives.

Or maybe just criminals.

They pushed on to the village of Hayes Station and stayed the night at a tumbledown motel called Whispering Pines. It was within sight of a sign reading ROUTE 19, 7 MI SANFORD THE BERWICKS KENT POND.they didn't leave their shoes outside the doors of the units they chose.

There no longer seemed any need of that.

8

He was standing on a platform in the middle of that damned field again, somehow immobilized, the object of every eye. On the horizon was the skeletal shape with the blinking red light on top. The place was bigger than Foxboro. His friends were lined up with him, but now they weren't alone. Similar platforms ran the length of the open area. On Tom's left stood a pregnant woman in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt with cutoff sleeves. On Clay's right was an elderly gent—not in the Head's league, but getting there—with graying hair pulled back in a ponytail and a frightened frown on his horsey, intelligent face. Beyond him was a younger man wearing a battered Miami Dolphins cap.

Clay saw people that he knew among the thousands and wasn't surprised—wasn't that how things always went in dreams? One minute you were phone-booth-cramming with your first-grade teacher; a minute later you were making out with all three members of Destiny's Child on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

Destiny's Child wasn't in this dream, but Clay saw the naked young man who had been jabbing the car aerials (now dressed in chinos and a clean white T-shirt), and the guy with the packsack who had called Alice little ma'am, and the limping grandmotherly type. She pointed to Clay and his friends, who were more or less on the fifty-yard line, then spoke to the woman next to her . . . who was, Clay observed without surprise, Mr. Scottoni's pregnant daughter-in-law. That's the Gaiten bunch, the limping grandmotherly type said, and Mr. Scottoni's pregnant daughter-in-law lifted her full upper lip in a sneer.

Help me! called the woman on the platform next to Tom's. It was Mr. Scottoni's daughter-in-law she was calling to. Iwant to have my baby thesame as you! Help me!

You should have thought of that while there was still time, Mr. Scottoni's daughter- in-law replied, and Clay realized, as he had in the other dream, that no one was actually talking. This was telepathy.

The Raggedy Man began making his way up the line, putting a hand over the head of each person he came to. He did this as Tom had over the Head's grave: palm extended, fingers curled in. Clay could see some sort of ID bracelet flashing on the Raggedy Man's wrist, maybe one of those medical-alert things, and realized there was power here—the light-towers were blazing. He saw something else, as well. The reason the Raggedy Man could reach above their heads even though they were standing on platforms was because the Raggedy Man wasn't on the ground. He was walking, but on four feet of thin air.

'Ecce homo —insanus,' he said. 'Ecce femina —insana.' And each time the crowd roared back 'DON'T TOUCH!' in a single voice, both the phone-people and the normies. Because now there was no difference. In Clay's dream they were the same.

He awoke in the late afternoon, huddled in a ball and clutching a flat motel pillow. He went outside and saw Alice and Jordan sitting on the curb between the parking lot and the units. Alice had her arm around Jordan. His head was on her shoulder and his arm was around her waist. His hair was sticking up in back. Clay sat down with them. Beyond them, the highway leading to Route 19 and Maine was deserted except for a Federal Express truck sitting dead on the white line with its back doors standing open, and a crashed motorcycle.

Clay sat down with them. 'Did you—'

'Ecce puer, insanus,' Jordan said, without lifting his head from Alice's shoulder. 'That's me.'

'And I'm the femina,' Alice said. 'Clay, is there some sort of humongous football stadium in Kashwak? Because if there is, I'm not going near the place.'

A door closed behind them. Footsteps approached. 'Me either,' Tom said, sitting down with them. 'I have many issues—I'd be the first to admit it—but a death-wish has never been one of them.'

'I'm not positive, but I don't think there's much more than an elementary school up there,' Clay said. 'The high school kids probably get bused to Tashmore.'

'It's a virtual stadium,' Jordan said.

'Huh?' Tom said. 'You mean like in a computer game?'

'I mean like in a computer.' Jordan lifted his head, still staring at the empty road leading to Sanford, the Berwicks, and Kent Pond. 'Never mind that, I don't care about that. If they won't touch us—the phone-people, the normal people—who will touch us?' Clay had never seen such adult pain in a child's eyes. 'Who will touch us?'

No one answered.

'Will the Raggedy Man touch us?' Jordan asked, his voice rising a little. 'Will the Raggedy Man touch us? Maybe. Because he's watching, I feel him watching.'

'Jordan, you're getting carried away,' Clay said, but the idea had a certain weird interior logic. If they were being sent this dream—the dream of the platforms—then maybe he was watching. You didn't mail a letter if you didn't have an address.

'I don't want to go to Kashwak,' Alice said. 'I don't care if it's a no-phone zone or not. I'd rather go to . . . to Idaho.'

'I'm going to Kent Pond before I go to Kashwak or Idaho or anywhere,' Clay said. 'I can be there in two nights' walk. I wish you guys would come, but if you don't want to—or can't—I'll understand.'

'The man needs closure, let's get him some,' Tom said. 'After that, we can figure out what comes next. Unless someone's got another idea.'

No one did.

10

Route 19 was totally clear on both sides for short stretches, sometimes up to a quarter of a mile, and that encouraged sprinters. This was the term Jordan coined for the semi-suicidal dragsters who would go roaring past at high speeds, usually in the middle of the road, always with their high beams glaring.

Clay and the others would see the approaching lights and get off the pavement in a hurry, right off the