Cell

'It's like the sound of memories,' she said. 'As if it's all they have.'

'Yes,' Dan said. 'I suppose—'

'You guys!' Jordan called. He was looking out one of the small windows. They were quite high, but by standing on his tiptoes, he could just manage. 'Come look at this!'

They lined up and looked out at the wide mall. It was almost full dark. The speakers and the light- standards loomed, black sentinels against the dead sky. Beyond was the gantry shape of the Parachute Drop with its one lonely blinking light. And ahead, directly ahead, thousands of phoners had gone to their knees like Muslims about to pray while Johann Pachelbel filled the air with what could have been a substitute for memory. And when they lay down they lay as one, producing a great soft swoop of noise and a fluttering displacement of air that sent empty bags and flattened soda cups twirling into the air.

'Bedtime for the whole brain-damaged army,' Clay said. 'If we're going to do something, it's got to be tonight.'

'Do? What are we going to do?' Tom asked. 'The two doors I tried are both locked. I'm sure that's true of the others, as well.'

Dan held up the crowbar.

'Don't think so,' Clay said. 'That thing may work just fine on the vending machines, but remember, this place used to be a casino.' He pointed to the north end of the hall, which was lushly carpeted and filled with rows of one-armed bandits, their chrome muted in the glow of the failing emergency lights. 'I think you'll find the doors are crowbar-resistant.'

'The windows?' Dan asked, then took a closer look and answered his own question. 'Jordan, maybe.'

'Let's have something to eat,' Clay said. 'Then let's just sit down and be quiet for a little while. There hasn't been enough of that.'

'And do what?' Denise asked.

'Well, you guys can do what you want,' Clay said. 'I haven't done any drawing in almost two weeks, and I've been missing it. I think I'll draw.'

'You don't have any paper,' Jordan objected.

Clay smiled. 'When I don't have any paper, I draw in my head.'

Jordan looked at him uncertainly, trying to ascertain whether his leg was being pulled. When he decided it wasn't, he said, 'That can't be as good as drawing on paper, can it?'

'In some ways it's better. Instead of erasing, I just rethink.'

There was a loud clank and the door of the candy machine swung open. 'Bingo!' Dan cried, and lifted his crowbar above his head. 'Who said college professors were good for nothing in the real world?'

'Look,' Denise said greedily, ignoring Dan. 'A whole rack of Junior Mints!' She dug in.

'Clay?' Tom asked.

'Hmmm?'

'I don't suppose you saw your little boy, did you? Or your wife? Sandra?'

'Sharon,' Clay said. 'I didn't see either of them.' He looked around Denise's ample hip. 'Are those Butterfingers?'

7

Half an hour later they had eaten their fill of candy and raided the soda machine. They had tried the other doors and found them all locked. Dan tried his crowbar and couldn't get purchase even at the bottom. Tom was of the opinion that, although the doors looked like wood, they were very likely equipped with steel cores.

'Probably alarmed, too,' Clay said. 'Screw around with them too much and the reservation police will come and take you away.'

Now the other four sat in a little circle on the soft casino carpeting among the slot machines. Clay sat on the concrete, with his back against the double doors through which the Raggedy Man had ushered them with that mocking gesture of his—After you, see you in the morning.

Clay's thoughts wanted to return to that other mocking gesture—the thumb-and-pinkie phone-mime—but he wouldn't let them, at least not directly. He knew from long experience that the best way to go after such things was by the back door. So he leaned his head against the wood with the steel core hiding inside, and closed his eyes, and visualized a comic splash-page. Not a page from Dark Wanderer — Dark Wanderer was kaput and nobody knew it better than him—but from a new comic. Call it Cell, for want of a better title, a thrilling end-of-the-world saga of the phoner hordes versus the last few normies—

Except that couldn't be right. It looked right if you glanced at it fast, the way the doors in this place looked like wood but weren't. The ranks of the phoners had to be seriously depleted— had to be. How many of them had been lost in the violence immediately following the Pulse? Half? He recalled the fury of that violence and thought, Maybe more. Maybe sixty or even seventy percent. Then attrition due to serious wounds, infection, exposure, further fighting, and just plain stupidity. Plus, of course, the flock-killers; how many had they taken out? How many big flocks like this one were actually left?

Clay thought they might find out tomorrow, if the ones remaining all hooked up for one big execute-the- insane extravaganza. Much good the knowledge would do them.

Never mind. Boil it down. If you wanted backstory on the splash, the situation had to be boiled down enough to fit on a single narrative panel. It was an unwritten rule. The phoners' situation could be summed up in two words: bad losses. They looked like a lot—hell, like a damned multitude —but probably the passenger pigeons had looked like a lot right up until the end. Because they traveled in sky-darkening flocks right up to the end. What nobody noticed was that there were fewer and fewer of those giant flocks. Until, that was, they were all gone. Extinct. Finite Buh-bye.

Plus, he thought, they've got this other problem now, this bad- programming thing. This worm. What about that? All in all, these guys could have a shorter run than the dinosaurs, telepathy, levitation, and all.

Okay, enough backstory. What's your illo? What's your damn picture, the one that's going to hook them and draw them in? Why, Clay Riddell and Ray Huizenga, that's what. They're standing in the woods. Ray's got the Beth Nickerson .45 with the barrel under his chin and Clay's holding . . .

A cell phone, of course. The one Ray lifted from the Gurleyville Quarry.

CLAY (terrified): Ray, STOP! This is pointless! Don't you remember? Kashwak's a CELL DEAD Z —

No good! KA-POW!in jagged yellow capitals across the foreground of the splash, and this one really is a splash, because Arnie Nickerson has thoughtfully provided his wife with the kind of softnosed rounds they sell on the Internet at the American Paranoia sites, and the top of Ray's head is a red geyser. In the background—one of those detailed touches for which Clay Riddell might have become famous in a world where the Pulse never happened—a single terrified crow is lifting off from a pine branch.

A damn good splash page, Clay thought. Gory, sure—it would never have passed muster in the old Comics Code days—but instantly involving. And although Clay had never said that thing about cell phones not working beyond the conversion point, he would've if he'd thought of it in time. Only time had run out. Ray had killed himself so that the Raggedy Man and his phoner friends wouldn't see that phone in his mind, which was bitterly ironic. The Raggedy Man had known all about the cell whose existence Ray had died to protect. He knew it was in Clay's pocket . . . and he didn't care.

Standing at the double doors to Kashwakamak Hall. The Raggedy Man making that gesture—thumb to ear, curled fingers next to his torn and stubbly cheek, pinkie in front of his mouth. Using Denise to say it again, to drive the point home: No-fo-you-you.

That's right. Because Kashwak—No-Fo.

Ray had died for nothing . . . so why didn't that upset him now?