Cell

There was plenty to eat, there was a woodstove, there was fresh water from the hand-pump. There was even a chemical toilet (although Johnny wouldn't use it; Johnny used the backyard). All mod cons, circa 1908.

It had been quiet time, except for Johnny's nightly screaming fit. There had been time to think, and now, standing here by the living room window and watching snow skirl up the street while his son slept in his little closet hidey-hole, there was time to realize that the time for thinking was done. Nothing was going to change unless he changed it.

You'd need another cellphone, Jordan had said. And you'd need to take him to a place where there's coverage.

There was coverage here. Still coverage. He had the bars on the cell phone to prove it.

How much worse can it be? Tom had asked. And shrugged. But of course he could shrug, couldn't he? Johnny wasn't Tom's kid, Tom had his own kid now.

It all depends on whether or not brains do what seriously protected computers do when they're hit with an EMP, Jordan had said. They save to system.

Save to system. A phrase of some power.

But you'd have to wipe the phoner program first to make space for such a highly theoretical second reboot, and Jordan's idea—to hit Johnny with the Pulse yet again, like lighting a backfire—seemed so spooky, so off-the-wall dangerous, given the fact that Clay had no way of knowing what sort of program the Pulse had mutated into by now . . . assuming (makes an ass out of you and me, yeah, yeah, yeah) it was still up and running at all. . .

'Save to system,' Clay whispered. Outside the light was almost gone; the skirling snow looked more ghostly than ever.

The Pulse was different now, he was sure of that. He remembered the first phoners he'd come upon who were up at night, the ones at the Gurleyville Volunteer Fire Department. They had been fighting over the old pumper, but they had been doing more than that; they had been talking. Not just making phantom vocalizations that might have been words, talking. It hadn't been much, not brilliant cocktail-party chatter, but actual talk, just the same. Go away. You go. Hell you say. And the always popular Mynuck. Those two had been different from the original phoners—the phoners of the Raggedy Man Era—and Johnny was different from those two. Why? Because the worm was still munching, the Pulse program was still mutating? Probably.

The last thing Jordan had said before kissing him goodbye and heading north was If you set a new version of the program against the one Johnny andthe others got at the checkpoint, they might eat each other up. Because that's what worms do. They eat.

And then, if the old programming was there . . . if it was saved to the system . . .

Clay found his troubled mind turning to Alice—Alice who had lost her mother, Alice who had found a way to be brave by transferring her fears to a child's sneaker. Four hours or so out of Gaiten, on Route 156, Tom had asked another group of normies if they'd like to share their picnic site by the side of the road. That's them, one of the men had said. That's the Gaiten bunch. Another had told Tom he could go to hell. And Alice had jumped up. Jumped up and said—

'She said at least we did something,' Clay said as he looked out into the darkening street. 'Then she asked them, 'Just what the fuck did you do?' '

So there was his answer, courtesy of a dead girl. Johnny-Gee wasn't getting better. Clay's choices came down to two: stick with what he had, or try to make a change while there was still time. If there was.

Clay used a battery-powered lamp to light his way into the bedroom. The closet door was ajar, and he could see Johnny's face. In sleep, lying with his cheek on one hand and his hair tousled across his forehead, he looked almost exactly like the boy Clay had kissed goodbye before setting out for Boston with his Dark Wanderer portfolio a thousand years ago. A little thinner; otherwise pretty much the same. It was only when he was awake that you saw the differences. The slack mouth and the empty eyes. The slumped shoulders and dangling hands.

Clay opened the closet door all the way and knelt in front of the cot. Johnny stirred a little when the light of the lantern struck his face, then settled again. Clay was not a praying man, and events of the last few weeks had not greatly increased his faith in God, but he had found his son, there was that, so he sent a prayer up to whatever might be listening. It was short and to the point: Tony, Tony, come around, something's lost that can't be found.

He flipped open the cell and pushed the power button. It beeped softly. The amber light in the window came on. Three bars. He hesitated for a moment, but when it came to placing the call, there was only one sure shot: the one the Raggedy Man and his friends had taken.

When the three digits were entered, he reached out and shook Johnny's shoulder. The boy didn't want to wake up. He groaned and tried to pull away. Then he tried to turn over. Clay wouldn't let him do either.

'Johnny! Johnny-Gee! Wake up!' He shook harder and kept on shaking until the boy finally opened his empty eyes and looked at him with wariness but no human curiosity. It was the sort of look you got from a badly treated dog, and it broke Clay's heart every time he saw it.

Last chance, he thought. Do you really mean to do this? The odds can't be one in ten.

But what had the odds been on his finding Johnny in the first place? Of Johnny leaving the Kashwakamak flock before the explosion, for that matter? One in a thousand? In ten thousand? Was he going to live with that wary yet incurious look as Johnny turned thirteen, then fifteen, then twenty-one? While his son slept in the closet and shat in the backyard?

At least we did something, Alice Maxwell had said.

He looked in the window above the keypad. There the numbers 911 stood out as bright and black as some declared destiny.

Johnny's eyes were drooping. Clay gave him another brisk shake to keep him from falling asleep again. He did this with his left hand. With the thumb of his right he pushed the phone's call button. There was time to count Mississippi ONE and Mississippi TWO before calling in the phone's little lighted window changed to connected. When that happened, Clayton Riddell didn't allow himself time to think.

'Hey, Johnny-Gee,' he said, 'Fo-fo-you-you.' And pressed the cell against his son's ear.

December 30, 2004-October 17, 2005 Center Lovell, Maine

~ ~ ~

Chuck Verrill edited the book and did a great job. Thanks, Chuck.

Robin Furth did research on cell phones and provided various theories on what may lie at the core of the human psyche. Good info is hers; errors in understanding are mine. Thanks, Robin.

My wife read the first-draft manuscript and said encouraging things. Thanks, Tabby.

Bostonians and northern New Englanders will know I took certain geographical liberties. What can I say? It goes with the territory (to make a small pun).

To the best of my knowledge, FEMA hasn't appropriated any money to provide backup generators for cell telephone transmission towers, but I should note that many transmission towers do have generator backup in case of power outages.

S.K.

Stephen King lives in Maine with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King. He does not own a cell phone.