Cell

Ray tossed him the pack without a word.

'It's like being nudged by a hand, only inside your brain,' Tom said. 'Not at all nice. Intrusive in a way I can't even begin to describe. And all this time there was the sense of the Raggedy Man and his flock, moving with us. Sometimes we saw a few of them through the trees; most times not.'

'So they're not just flocking early and late now,' Clay said.

'No, all that's changing,' Dan said. 'Jordan's got a theory—interesting, and with some evidence to back it up. Besides, we constitute a special occasion.' He lit his cigarette. Inhaled. Coughed. 'Shit, I knew there was a reason I gave these things up.' And then, with hardly a pause: 'They can float, you know. Levitate. Must be a hell of a handy way to get around with the roads so jammed. Like having a magic carpet.'

A mile or so up the seemingly pointless woods road, the five of them had discovered a cabin with a pickup parked in front. Keys in the truck. Ray drove; Tom and Jordan rode in the truck-bed. None of them were surprised when the woods road eventually bent north again. Just before it petered out, the navigation-beacon in their heads sent them onto another, then a third that was little more than a track with weeds growing up the middle. That one eventually drowned in a boggy patch where the truck mired, but an hour's slog brought them out on Route 11, just south of that highway's junction with 160.

'Couple of dead phoners there,' Tom said. 'Fresh. Downed power-lines, snapped-off poles. The crows were having a banquet.'

Clay thought of telling them what he'd seen at the Gurleyville Volunteer Fire Department, then didn't. If it had any bearing on the present situation, he didn't see it. Besides, there were plenty who weren't fighting with each other, and these had kept forcing Tom and the others onward.

That force hadn't led them to the little yellow bus; Ray had found it as a result of exploring the Newfield Trading Post while the others were scrounging sodas from the very same cooler Clay had raided. Ray saw it through a back window.

They had stopped only once since then, to build a fire on the granite floor of the Gurleyville Quarry and eat a hot meal. They had also changed into fresh footwear from the Newfield Trading Post—their bog-slog had left all of them muddy from the shins down—and had an hour's rest. They must have driven past Clay at the Gurleyville Motel right around the time he was waking up, because they were nudged to a stop shortly after that.

'And here we are,' Tom said. 'Case almost closed.' He swept an arm at the sky, the land, the trees. 'Someday, son, all of this will be yours.'

'That pushing thing has gone out of my head, at least for the time being,' Denise said. 'I'm grateful for that. The first day was the worst, you know? I mean, Jordan had the clearest idea that something was wrong, but I think all of us knew it wasn't. . . you know, really right.'

'Yeah,' Ray said. He rubbed the back of his neck. 'It was like being in a kid's story where the birds and snakes talk. They say stuff like, 'You're okay, you're fine, never mind that your legs are so tired, you're deenie-cool.' Deenie-cool, that's what we used to say when I was growin up in Lynn.'

' 'Lynn, Lynn, city of sin, when you get to heaven, they won't let you in,' ' Tom chanted.

'You grew up with the Christers, all right,' Ray said. 'Anyway, the kid knew better, I knew better, I think we all knew fuckin better. If you had half a brain and still thought you were gettin away —'

'I believed as long as I could because I wanted to believe,' Dan said, 'but in truth? We never had a chance. Other normies might, but not us, not flock-killers. They mean to have us, no matter what happens to them.'

'What do you think they've got in mind for us?' Clay asked.

'Oh, death,' Tom said, almost without interest. 'At least I'll be able to get some decent sleep.'

Clay's mind finally caught up with a couple of things and latched on. Earlier in the conversation, Dan had said their normal behavior was changing and Jordan had a theory about it. Just now he'd said no matterwhat happens to them.

'I saw a pair of phoners go at each other not far from here,' Clay finally told them.

'Did you,' Dan said, without much interest.

'At night,' he added, and now they all looked at him. 'They were fighting over a fire truck. Like a couple of kids over a toy. I got some of that telepathy from one of them, but they were both talking.'

'Talking?' Denise asked skeptically. 'Like actual words?'

“Actual words. The clarity was in and out, but they were definitely words. How many fresh dead have you guys seen? Just those two?'

Dan said, 'We've probably seen a dozen since we woke up to where we really are.' He looked at the others. Tom, Denise, and Jordan nodded. Ray shrugged and lit another cigarette. 'But it's hard to tell about the cause of death. They might be reverting; that fits Jordan's theory, although the talking doesn't seem to. They might've just been corpses the flocks haven't gotten around to getting rid of. Body-disposal isn't a priority with them right now.'

'We're their priority, and they'll be moving us along pretty soon,' Tom said. 'I don't think we get the . . . you know, the big stadium treatment until tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure they want us in Kashwak before dark tonight.'

'Jordan, what's your theory?' Clay asked.

Jordan said, 'I think there was a worm in the original program.'

2

' Idon't understand,' Clay said, 'but that's par for the course. When it came to computers, I could use Word, Adobe Illustrator, and MacMail. After that I was pretty much illiterate. Johnny had to walk me through the solitaire program that came with my Mac.' Talking about that hurt. Remembering Johnny's hand closing over his on the mouse hurt more.

'But you know what a computer worm is, right?'

'Something that gets into your computer and screws up all the programs, right?'

Jordan rolled his eyes but said, 'Close enough. It can burrow in, corrupting your files and your hard drive as it goes. If it gets into shareware and the stuff you send, even e-mail attachments—and they do—it can go viral and spread. Sometimes a worm has babies. The worm itself is a mutant and sometimes the babies mutate further. Okay?'

'Okay.'

'The Pulse was a computer program sent out by modem—that's the only way it could work. And it's still being sent out by modem. Only there was a worm in there, and it's rotting out the program. It's becoming more corrupted every day. GIGO. Do you know GIGO?'

Clay said, 'I don't even know the way to San Jose.'

'Stands for 'garbage in, garbage out.' We think that there are conversion points where the phoners are changing normies over—'

Clay remembered his dream. 'I'm way ahead of you there.'

'But now they're getting bad programming. Do you see? And it makes sense, because it's the newest phoners who seem to be going down first. Fighting, freaking out, or actually dropping dead.'

'You don't have enough data to say that,' Clay replied at once. He was thinking of Johnny.

Jordan's eyes had been bright. Now they dulled a little. 'That's true.' Then his chin lifted. 'But it's logical. If the premise is right—if it's a worm, something actively burrowing deeper and deeper into the original programming—then it's every bit as logical as the Latin they use. The new phoners are rebooting, but now it's a crazy, uneven reboot. They get the telepathy, but they can still talk. They—'

'Jordan, you can't draw that conclusion on just the two I saw—'

Jordan was paying no attention. He was really talking to himself now. 'They don't flock like the others, not as completely, because the flocking imperative is imperfectly installed. Instead they . . . they stay up late and get up early. They revert to aggression against their own kind. And