Cell

Cheez Doodles crackled under the tires of the little bus. The normies stood here in a double line, eating their snacks and drinking their drinks, feeling that funny itch in their heads, that weird sense of a mental hand pushing on their backs, waiting their turns to call some loved one who got lost in the Pulse. They stood here and listened to the Raggedy Man say 'Left and right, two lines, that's correct, that's doing it, let's keep moving, we've got a lot of you to process before dark.'

Up ahead the trees drew back on either side of the road. What had been some farmer's hard-won grazeland for cows or sheep had now been flattened and churned down to bare earth by many passing feet. It was almost as though there had been a rock concert here. One of the tents was gone—blown away—but the other had caught on some trees and flapped in the dull early-evening light like a long brown tongue.

'I dreamed of this place,' Jordan said. His voice was tight.

'Did you?' Clay said. 'So did I.'

'The normies followed the Kashwak equals No-Fo signs, and this is what they came to,' Jordan said. 'It was like tollbooths, wasn't it, Clay?'

'Kind of,' Clay said. 'Kind of like tollbooths, yeah.'

'They had big cardboard boxes full of cell phones,' Jordan said. This was a detail Clay didn't remember from his own dream, but he didn't doubt it. 'Heaps and heaps of them. And every normie got to make a call. What a bunch of lucky ducks.'

'When did you dream this, Jordy?' Denise asked.

'Last night.' Jordan's eyes met Clay's in the rearview mirror. 'They knew they weren't going to be talking to the people they wanted to talk to. Down deep they knew. But they did it anyway. They took the phones anyway. Took em and listened. Most of em didn't even put up a fight. Why, Clay?'

'Because they were tired of fighting, I suppose,' Clay said. 'Tired of being different. They wanted to hear 'Baby Elephant Walk' with new ears.'

They were past the beaten-down fields where the tents had been. Ahead, a paved byroad split off from the highway. It was broader and smoother than the state road. The phoners were streaming up this byway and disappearing into a slot in the woods. Looming high above the trees half a mile or so farther on was a steel gantrylike structure Clay recognized at once from his dreams. He thought it had to be some sort of amusement attraction, maybe a Parachute Drop. There was a billboard at the junction of the highway and the byroad, showing a laughing family– dad, mom, sonny, and little sis—walking into a wonderland of rides, games, and agricultural exhibits.

NORTHERN COUNTIES EXPO

GALA FIREWORKS SHOW OCTOBER 5TH

VISIT KASHWAKAMAK HALL

THE 'NORTH END' OPEN '24/7' OCTOBER 5-15

YOU'LL SAY 'WOW!!!'

Standing below this billboard was the Raggedy Man. He raised one hand and held it out in a stop gesture.

Oh Jesus, Clay thought, and pulled the minibus up beside him. The Raggedy Man's eyes, which Clay hadn't been able to get right in his drawing at Gaiten, looked simultaneously dazed and full of malevolent interest. Clay told himself it was impossible for them to appear both ways at the same time, but they did. Sometimes the dazed dullness was foremost in them; a moment later it seemed to be that weirdly unpleasant avidity.

He can't want to get on with us.

But the Raggedy Man did, it seemed. He lifted his hands to the door with the palms pressed together, then opened them. The gesture was rather pretty—like a man indicating this bird has flown — but the hands themselves were black with filth, and the little finger on the left one had been badly broken in what looked like two places.

These are the new people, Clay thought. Telepaths who don't take baths.

'Don't let him on,' Denise said. Her voice was trembling.

Clay, who could see that the steady conveyor-movement of phoners to the left of the bus had stopped, shook his head. 'No choice.'

They peek in your head and find out you're thinkin about a fuckin cellphone, Ray had said—had almost snorted. What else is anyone thinkin about since October first?

Hope you're right, Ray, he thought, because it's still an hour and a half until dark. An hour and a half at least.

He threw the lever that opened the door and the Raggedy Man, torn lower lip drooping in its constant sneer, climbed aboard. He was painfully thin; the filthy red sweatshirt hung on him like a sack. None of the normies on the bus were particularly clean—hygiene hadn't been a priority since the first of October—but the Raggedy Man gave off a ripe and powerful stench that almost made Clay's eyes water. It was the smell of strong cheese left to sweat it out in a hot room.

The Raggedy Man sat down in the seat by the door, the one that faced the driver's seat, and looked at Clay. For a moment there was nothing but the dusty weight of his eyes and that strange grinning curiosity.

Then Tom spoke in a thin, outraged voice Clay had heard him use only once before, when he'd said That's it, everybody out of the pool to the plump Bible-toting woman who'd started preaching her End Times sermon to Alice. 'What do you want from us? You have the world, such as it is– what do you want from us?'

The Raggedy Man's ruined mouth formed the word even as Jordan said it. Only that one word, flat and emotionless. 'Justice.'

'When it comes to justice,' Dan said, 'I don't think you have a clue.'

The Raggedy Man replied with a gesture, raising one hand to the feeder-road, palm up and index finger pointing: Get rolling.

When the bus started to move, most of the phoners started to move again, as well. A few more had fallen to fighting, and in the outside mirror Clay saw others walking back down the expo feeder-road toward the highway.

'You're losing some of your troops,' Clay said.

The Raggedy Man made no reply on behalf of the flock. His eyes, now dull, now curious, now both, remained fixed on Clay, who fancied he could almost feel that gaze walking lightly over his skin. The Raggedy Man's twisted fingers, gray with dirt, lay on the lap of his grimy blue jeans. Then he grinned. Maybe that was answer enough. Dan was right, after all. For every phoner who dropped out—who went wheels-up, in Jordan-speak—there were plenty more. But Clay had no idea how many plenty more might entail until half an hour later, when the woods opened up on both sides and they passed beneath the wooden arch reading WELCOME TO THE NORTHERN COUNTIES EXPO.

3

' Dear God,' Dan said.

Denise articulated Clay's own feelings better; she gave a low scream.

Sitting across the narrow aisle of the little bus in the first passenger seat, the Raggedy Man only sat and stared at Clay with the half-vacant malevolence of a stupid child about to pull the wings off a few flies.