Cell

Do youlike it? his grin seemed to say. It's quite something, isn't it? The gang's all here! Of course a grin like that could mean that or anything. It could even mean I know what you have in your pocket.

Beyond the arch was a midway and a batch of rides, both still being assembled at the time of the Pulse, from the way things looked. Clay didn't know how many of the carny pitch-tents had been erected, but some had blown away, like the pavilions at the checkpoint six or eight miles back, and only half a dozen or so still stood, their sides seeming to breathe in the evening breeze. The Krazy Kups were half-built, and so was the funhouse across from it (WE DARE YOU TOran across the single piece of faзade that had been erected; skeletons danced above the words). Only the Ferris wheel and the Parachute Drop at the far end of what would have been the midway looked complete, and with no electric lights to make them jolly, they looked gruesome to Clay, less like amusement rides than gigantic implements of torture. Yet one light was blinking, he saw: a tiny red beacon, surely battery-powered, at the very top of the Parachute Drop.

Well beyond the Drop was a white building with red trim, easily a dozen barn-lengths long. Loose hay had been heaped along the sides. American flags, fluttering in the evening breeze, had been planted in this cheap rural insulation every ten feet or so. The building was draped with swags of patriotic bunting and bore the legend

NORTHERN COUNTIES EXPO

KASHWAKAMAK HALL

in bright blue paint.

But none of this was what had attracted their attention. Between the Parachute Drop and Kashwakamak Hall were several acres of open ground. Clay guessed it was where the big crowds gathered for livestock exhibitions, tractor-pulls, end-of-fair-day concerts, and—of course—the fireworks shows that would both open and close the Expo. It was ringed with light-standards and loudspeaker-poles. Now this broad and grassy mall was crammed with phoners. They stood shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, their faces turned to watch the arrival of the little yellow bus.

Any hope Clay had harbored of seeing Johnny—or Sharon—was gone in a moment. His first thought was that there had to be five thousand people crowded beneath those dead light-standards. Then he saw they had spilled into the grassy parking lots adjoining the main exhibition area as well and revised his estimate upward. Eight. Eight thousand at least.

The Raggedy Man sat where some Newfield Elementary School third-grader belonged, grinning at Clay with his teeth jutting through the split in his lip. Do you like it? that grin seemed to ask, and again Clay had to remind himself that you could read anything into a grin like that.

'So who's playing tonight? Vince Gill? Or did you guys break the bank and get Alan Jackson?' That was Tom. He was trying to be funny and Clay gave him high marks for that, but Tom only sounded scared.

The Raggedy Man was still looking at Clay, and a little vertical crease had appeared in the middle of his brow, as if something puzzled him.

Clay drove the minibus slowly up the center of the midway, toward the Parachute Drop and the silent multitude beyond. There were more bodies here; they reminded Clay of how you sometimes found heaps of dead bugs on the windowsills after a sudden cold snap. He concentrated on keeping his hands loose. He didn't want the Raggedy Man to see his knuckles turn white on the wheel.

And go slow. Nice and easy does it. He's only looking at you. As for cellphones, what else has anyone been thinking about since October first?

The Raggedy Man raised a hand and pointed one twisted, badly used finger at Clay. 'No-fo, you,' Clay said in that other voice. 'Insanus.'

'Yeah, no-fo-me-me, no-fo none of us, we're all bozos on this bus,' Clay said. 'But you'll fix that, right?'

The Raggedy Man grinned, as if to say that was right . . . but the little vertical line was still there. As if something still puzzled him. Maybe something rolling and tumbling around in Clay Riddell's mind.

Clay looked up into the rearview mirror as they neared the end of the midway. 'Tom, you asked me what the North End was,' he said.

'Forgive me, Clay, but my interest seems to have waned,' Tom said. 'Maybe it's the size of the welcoming committee.'

'No, but this is interesting,' Clay said, a little feverishly.

'Okay, what is it?' Jordan asked. God bless Jordan. Curious to the end.

'The Northern Counties Expo was never a big deal in the twentieth century,' Clay said. 'Just your standard little shitpot aggie fair with arts, crafts, produce, and animals over there in Kashwakamak Hall. . . which is where they're going to put us, from the look of things.'

He glanced at the Raggedy Man, but the Raggedy Man neither confirmed nor denied. The Raggedy Man only grinned. The little vertical line had disappeared from his forehead.

'Clay, look out,' Denise said in a tight, controlled voice.

He looked back through the windshield and stepped on the brake. An elderly woman with infected lacerations on both legs came swaying out of the silent crowd. She skirted the edge of the Parachute Drop, trampled over several prefab pieces of the funhouse that had been laid out but not erected at the time of the Pulse, then broke into a shambling run aimed directly at the schoolbus. When she reached it, she began to hammer slowly on the windshield with filthy, arthritis-twisted hands. What Clay saw in this woman's face wasn't the avid blankness he'd come to associate with the phoners but terrified disorientation. And it was familiar. Who are you? Pixie Dark had asked. Pixie Dark, who hadn't gotten a direct blast of the Pulse. Who am I?

Nine phoners in a neat moving square came after the elderly woman, whose frantic face was less than five feet from Clay's own. Her mouth moved, and he heard four words, both with his ears and with his mind: 'Take me with you.'

We're not going anywhere you want to go, lady, Clay thought.

Then the phoners grabbed her and took her back toward the multitude on the grassy mall. She struggled to get away, but they were relentless. Clay caught one flash of her eyes and thought they were the eyes of a woman who was in purgatory only if she was lucky. More likely it was hell.

Once more the Raggedy Man held out his hand, palm-up and index finger pointing: Roll.

The elderly woman had left a handprint, ghostly but visible, on the windshield. Clay looked through it and got rolling.

4

' Anyhow,' he said, 'until 1999, the Expo was no big deal. If you lived in this part of the world and wanted rides and games—carny stuff—you had to go down to the Fryeburg Fair.' He heard his own voice running as if on a tape loop. Talk for the sake of talk. It made him think of the drivers on the Duck Boat tours in Boston, pointing out the various sights. 'Then, just before the turn of the century, the State Bureau of Indian Affairs did a land-survey. Everybody knew the Expo grounds were right next door to the Sockabasin Rez; what that land- survey showed was that the north end of Kashwakamak Hall was actually on reservation land. Technically, it was in Micmac Indian territory. The people running the Expo were no dummies, and neither were the ones on the Micmac tribal council. They agreed to clean out the little shops from the north end of the hall and put in slots. All at once the Northern Counties Expo was Maine's biggest fall fair.'

They had reached the Parachute Drop. Clay started to jog left and guide the little bus between the ride and