Cell

KASHWAK

1

An hour after leaving the picnic area where ray had shot himself with Clay's gun, they passed a sign reading

NORTHERN COUNTIES EXPO

OCTOBER 5-15

COME ONE, COME ALL!!!

VISIT KASHWAKAMAK HALL

AND DON'T FORGET THE UNIQUE 'NORTH END'

*SLOTS (INCLUDING TEXAS HOLD 'EM)

*'INDIAN BINGO'

YOU'LL SAY 'WOW!!!'

'Oh my God,' Clay said. 'The Expo. Kashwakamak Hall. Christ. If there was ever a place for a flock, that's it.'

'What's an expo?' Denise asked.

'Your basic county fair,' Clay said, 'only bigger than most of them and quite a lot wilder, because it's on the TR, which is unincorporated. Also, there's that North End business. Everyone in Maine knows about the North End at the Northern Counties Expo. In its own way, it's as notorious as the Twilight Motel.'

Tom wanted to know what the North End was, but before Clay could explain, Denise said, 'There's two more. Mary-and-Jesus, I know they're phoners, but it still makes me sick.'

A man and a woman lay in the dust at the side of the road. They had died either in an embrace or a bitter battle, and embracing did not seem to go with the phoner lifestyle. They had passed half a dozen other bodies on their run north, almost certainly casualties from the flock that had come down to get them, and had seen twice that number wandering aimlessly south, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs. One of the pairs, clearly confused about where they wanted to go, had actually tried to hitchhike the bus as it passed.

'Wouldn't it be nice if they'd all either fall out or drop dead before what they've got planned for us tomorrow?' Tom said.

'Don't count on it,' Dan said. 'For every casualty or deserter we've seen, we've seen twenty or thirty who are still with the program. And God knows how many are waiting in this Kashwacky place.'

'Don't count it out, either,' Jordan said from his place beside Tom. He spoke a little sharply. 'A bug in the program—a worm—is not a small thing. It can start out as a minor pain in the ass and then boom, everything's down. I play this game, Star-Mag? Well, you know—I used to play it—and this sore sport out in California got so mad about losing all the time that he put a worm in the system and it took down all the servers in a week. Almost half a million gamers back to computer cribbage because of that jamhead.'

'We don't have a week, Jordan,' Denise said.

'I know,' he said. 'And I know they're not all apt to go wheels-up overnight . . . but it's possible. And I won't stop hoping. I don't want to end up like Ray. He stopped . . . you know, hoping.' A single tear rolled down Jordan's cheek.

Tom gave him a hug. 'You won't end up like Ray,' he said. 'You're going to grow up to be like Bill Gates.'

'I don't want to grow up to be like Bill Gates,' Jordan said morosely. 'I bet Bill Gates had a cell phone. In fact I bet he had a dozen.' He sat up straight. 'One thing I'd give a lot to know is how so many cell phone transmission towers can still be working when the fucking power's down.'

'FEMA,' Dan said hollowly.

Tom and Jordan turned to look at him, Tom with a tentative smile on his lips. Even Clay glanced up into the rearview mirror.

'You think I'm joking,' Dan said. 'I wish I was. I read an article about it in a newsmagazine while I was in my doctor's office, waiting for that disgusting exam where he puts on a glove and then goes prospecting—'

'Please,' Denise said. 'Things are bad enough. You can skip that part. What did the article say?'

'That after 9/11, FEMA requested and got a sum of money from Congress—I don't remember how much, but it was in the tens of millions—to equip cell phone transmission towers nationwide with long-life emergency generators to make sure the nation's ability to communicate wouldn't go to hell in the event of coordinated terrorist attacks.' Dan paused. 'I guess it worked.'

'FEMA,' Tom said. 'I don't know whether to laugh or cry.'

'I'd tell you to write your congressman, but he's probably insane,' Denise said.

'He was insane well before the Pulse,' Tom answered, but he spoke absently. He was rubbing the back of his neck and looking out the window. 'FEMA,' he said. 'You know, it sort of makes sense. Fucking FEMA.'

Dan said, 'I'd give a lot just to know why they've made such a business of collaring us and bringing us in.'

'And making sure the rest of us don't follow Ray's example,' Denise said. 'Don't forget that.' She paused. 'Not that I would. Suicide's a sin. They can do whatever they want to me here, but I'm going to heaven with my baby. I believe that.'

'The Latin's the part that gives me the creeps,' Dan said. 'Jordan, is it possible that the phoners could take old stuff—stuff from before the Pulse, I mean—and incorporate it into their new programming? If it fit their . . . mmmm, I don't know . . . their long-term goals?'

'I guess,' Jordan said. 'I don't really know, because we don't know what sort of commands might have been encoded in the Pulse. This isn't like ordinary computer programming in any case. It's self-generating. Organic. Like learning. I guess it is learning. 'It satisfies the definition,' the Head would say. Only they're all learning together, because—'

'Because of the telepathy,' Tom said.

'Right,' Jordan agreed. He looked troubled.

'Why does the Latin give you the creeps?' Clay asked, looking at Dan in the rearview mirror.

'Tom said Latin's the language of justice, and I guess that's true, but this feels much more like vengeance to me.' He leaned forward. Behind his glasses, his eyes were tired and troubled. 'Because, Latin or no Latin, they can't really think. I'm convinced of that. Not yet, anyway. What they depend on instead of rational thought is a kind of hive mind born out of pure rage.'

'I object, Your Honor, Freudian speculation!' Tom said, rather merrily.

'Maybe Freud, maybe Lorenz,' Dan said, 'but give me the benefit of the doubt either way. Would it be surprising for such an entity—such a raging entity—to confuse justice and vengeance?'

'Would it matter?' Tom asked.

'It might to us,' Dan said. 'As someone who once taught a block course on vigilantism in America, I can tell you that vengeance usually ends up hurting more.'

2

Not long after this conversation, they came to a place clay recognized. Which was unsettling, because he had never been in this part of the state before. Except once, in his dream of the mass conversions.

Written across the road in broad strokes of bright green paint was KASHWAK=NO-FO. the van rolled over the words at a steady thirty miles an hour as the phoners continued to stream past in their stately, witchy procession on the left.

That was no dream, he thought, looking at the drifts of trash caught in the bushes at the sides of the road, the beer and soda cans in the ditches. Bags that had contained potato chips, Doritos, and