Cell

'And you've seen plenty of Kashwak No-Fo signs.'

They nodded.

'Purely as a sociologist, I began to question those signs,' Dan said. 'Not how they began—I'm sure the first No-Fo signs were posted soon after the Pulse, by survivors who'd decided a place like that, where there was no cell phone coverage, would be the best place on earth to go. What I questioned was how the idea—and the graffiti—could spread so quickly in a cata-strophically fragmented society where all normal forms of communication—other than my mouth to your ear, of course—had broken down. The answer seemed clear, once one admitted that a new form of communication, available to only one group, had entered the picture.'

'Telepathy.' Jordan almost whispered the word. 'Them. The phoners. They want us to go north to Kashwak.' He turned his frightened eyes to Clay. 'It really is a frigging slaughterhouse chute. Clay, you can't go up there! This is all the Raggedy Man's idea!'

Before Clay could respond, Dan Hartwick was speaking again. He did it with a teacher's natural assumptions: lecturing was his responsibility, interruption his privilege.

'I'm afraid I really must hurry this along, sorry. We have something to show you—something the President of Harvard has demanded we show you, actually—'

'In your dreams, or in person?' Tom asked.

'Our dreams,' Denise said quietly. 'We've only seen him once in person since we burned the flock in Nashua, and that was at a distance.'

'Checkin up on us,' Ray said. 'That's what I think.'

Dan waited with a look of exasperated patience for this exchange to conclude. When it had, he resumed. 'We were willing to comply, since this was on our way—'

'You're going north, then?' Clay was the one to interrupt this time.

Dan, looking more exasperated now, flicked another quick glance at his watch. 'If you look at that route- sign closely, you'll see that it offers a choice. We intend to go west, not north.'

'Fuckin right,' Ray muttered. 'I may be stupid, but I'm not crazy.'

'What I show you will be for our purposes rather than theirs,' Dan said. 'And by the way, talking about the President of Harvard—or the Raggedy Man, if you prefer—showing up in person is probably a mistake. Maybe a bad one. He's really no more than a pseudopod that the group mind, the overflock, puts out front to do business with ordinary normies and special insane normies like us. I theorize that there are overflocks all over the world now, and each may have put forward such a pseudopod. Maybe even more than one. But don't make the mistake of thinking that when you're talking to your Raggedy Man you're talking to an actual man. You're talking to the flock.'

'Why don't you show us what he wants us to see?' Clay asked. He had to work to sound calm. His mind was roaring. The one clear thought in it was that if he could get to his son before Johnny got to Kashwak—and whatever was going on there—he might still have a chance to save him. Rationality told him that Johnny must be in Kashwak already, but another voice (and it wasn't entirely irrational) said something might have held up Johnny and whatever group he was traveling with. Or they might have gotten cold feet. It was possible. It was even possible that nothing more sinister than segregation was going on up there in TR-90, that the phone-people were just creating a rez for normies. In the end, he supposed it went back to what Jordan had said, quoting Headmaster Ardai: the mind could calculate, but the spirit yearned.

'Come this way,' Dan said. 'It's not far.' He produced a flashlight and began walking up the shoulder of Route 11—North with the beam aimed at his feet.

'Pardon me if I don't go,' Denise said. 'I've seen. Once was enough.'

'I think this was supposed to please you, in a way,' Dan said. 'Of course it was also supposed to underline the point—to my little group as well as yours—that the phoners are now the ones with the power, and they are to be obeyed.' He stopped. 'Here we are; in this particular sleep-o-gram, the President of Harvard made very sure we all saw the dog, so we couldn't get the wrong house.' The flashlight beam nailed a roadside mailbox with a collie painted on the side. 'I'm sorry Jordan has to see this, but it's probably best that you know what you're dealing with.' He raised his flashlight higher. Ray joined his beam to Dan's. They lit up the front of a modest one-story wooden house, sitting neatly on a postage stamp of lawn.

Gunner had been crucified between the living room window and the front door. He was naked except for a pair of bloodstained Joe Boxers. Nails big enough to be rail spikes jutted from his hands, feet, forearms, and knees. Maybe they were rail spikes, Clay thought. Sitting splay-legged at Gunner's feet was Harold. Like Alice when they met her, Harold was wearing a bib of blood, but his hadn't come from his nose. The wedge of glass he'd used to cut his throat after crucifying his running buddy still twinkled in one hand.

Hung around Gunner's neck on a loop of string was a piece of cardboard with three words scrawled on it in dark capital letters: JUSTITIA EST COMMODATUM.

9

' Incase you don't read latin—' dan hartwick began.

'I remember enough from high school to read that,' Tom said. ' 'Justice is served.' This is for killing Alice. For daring to touch one of the untouchables.'

'Right you are,' Dan said, snapping off his light. Ray did the same. 'It also serves as a warning to others. And they didn't kill them, although they most certainly could have.'

'We know,' Clay said. 'They took reprisals in Gaiten after we burned their flock.'

'They did the same in Nashua,' Ray said somberly. 'I'll remember the screams until my dyin day. Fuckin horrible. This shit is, too.' He gestured toward the dark shape of the house. 'They got the little one to crucify the big one, and the big one to hold still for it. And when it was done, they got the little one to cut his own throat.'

'It's like with the Head,' Jordan said, and took Clay's hand.

'That's the power of their minds,' Ray said, 'and Dan thinks that's part of what's sendin everybody north to Kashwak—maybe part of what kept us movin north even when we told ourselves it was only to show you this and persuade you to hook up with us. You know?'

Clay said, 'Did the Raggedy Man tell you about my son?'

'No, but if he had I'm sure it would have been that he's with the other normies, and that you and he will have a happy reunion in Kashwak,' Dan said. 'You know, just forget about those dreams of standing on a platform while the President tells the cheering crowd you're insane, that ending's not for you, it can't be for you. I'm sure by now you've thought of all the possible happy-ending scenarios, the chief one being how Kashwak and who knows how many other cell phone dead zones are the normie equivalent of wildlife refuges, places where folks who didn't get a blast on the day of the Pulse will be left alone. I think what your young friend said about the chute leading to the slaughterhouse is far more likely, but even supposing normies are to be left alone up there, do you think the phoners will forgive people like us? The flock-killers?'

Clay had no answer for this.

In the dark, Dan looked at his watch again. 'It's gone three,' he said. 'Let's walk back. Denise will have us packed up by now. The time has come when we've either got to part company or decide to go on together.'

But when you talk about going on together, you're asking me to part company from my son, Clay thought. And that he would never do unless he discovered Johnny-Gee was dead.

Or changed.

10

' How can you hope to get west?' Clay asked as they walked back to the junction sign. 'The nights still may be ours for a while, but the days belong to them, and you see what they can do.'

'I'm almost positive we can keep them out of our heads when we're awake,' Dan said. 'It takes a little