Cell: A Novel (16 page)

Tom McCourt goggled at her for a second, then burst out laughing. It wasn’t a little laugh, either, but a long series of guffaws, laughter so hard he had to lean against the wall for support, and Clay thought it wise to shut the door between the hall and the porch. There was no telling how well the things straggling up the street might hear; all he could think of at the moment was that the hearing of the lunatic narrator in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” had been extremely keen.

“Well they
did,”
Alice said, putting her hands on her hips. The baby sneaker flopped. “Straight to the mall.” Tom laughed even harder. His knees buckled and he oozed slowly down to the hall floor, howling and flapping his hands against his shirt.

“They
died
… ,” he gasped, “… and came
back
… to go to the
mall.
Jesus Christ, does Jerry
F-Falwell…”
He went off into another gale. Tears were now running down his cheeks in clear streams. He brought himself under control enough to finish, “Does Jerry Falwell know heaven’s the Newcastle Mall?”

Clay also began to laugh. So did Alice, although Clay thought she was a little bit pissed off that her reference had been greeted not with interest or even mild good humor but outright howls. Still, when people started laughing, it was hard not to join in. Even when you were pissed.

They had almost stopped when Clay said, apropos of nothing, “If heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie, I don’t want to go.”

That set them off again, all three. Alice was still laughing when she said, “If they’re flocking, then roosting for the night in gyms and churches and malls, people could machine-gun them by the hundreds.”

Clay stopped laughing first. Then Tom stopped. He looked at her, wiping moisture out of his neat little mustache.

Alice nodded. The laughter had brought high color to her cheeks, and she was still smiling. She had, at least for the moment, careened past pretty and into genuine beauty. “By the thousands, maybe, if they’re all going to the same place.”

“Jesus,” Tom said. He took off his glasses and began to wipe them, too. “You don’t fool around.”

“It’s survival,” Alice said matter-of-factly. She looked down at the sneaker tied to her wrist, then up at the men. She nodded again. “We ought to chart them. Find out
if
they ‘re flocking and
when
they’re flocking,
If
they’re roosting and
where
they’re roosting. Because if they can be charted—”

18

Clay had led them out of Boston, but when the three of them left the house on Salem Street some twenty-four hours later, fifteen-year-old Alice Maxwell was unquestionably in charge. The more Clay thought about it, the less it surprised him.

Tom McCourt didn’t lack for what his British cousins called bottle, but he was not and never would be a natural leader. Clay had some leadership qualities, but that evening Alice had an advantage beyond her intelligence and desire to survive: she had suffered her losses and begun to move on. In leaving the house on Salem Street, both men were dealing with new ones. Clay had begun to suffer a rather frightening depression that at first he thought was just the result of his decision—unavoidable, really—to leave his portfolio behind. As the night went on, however, he realized it was a profound dread of what he might find if and when he got to Kent Pond.

For Tom, it was simpler. He hated to leave Rafe.

“Prop the door open for him,” Alice said—the new and harder Alice, who seemed more decisive by the minute. “He’ll almost certainly be okay, Tom. He’ll find plenty of forage. It’ll be a long time before the cats starve or the phone-crazies work their way down the food-chain to cat-meat.”

“He’ll go feral,” Tom said. He was sitting on the living room couch, looking stylish and miserable in a belted raincoat and trilby hat. Rafer was on his lap, purring and looking bored.

“Yeah, that’s what they do,” Clay said. “Think of all the dogs—the little ones and the oversized ones—that are just going to flat die.”

“I’ve had him for a long time. Since he was a kitten, really.” He looked up and Clay saw the man was on the verge of tears. “Also, I guess I see him as my luck. My mojo. He saved my life, remember.”

“Now we’re your mojo,” Clay said. He didn’t want to point out that he himself had almost certainly saved Tom’s life once already, but it was true. “Right, Alice?”

“Yep,” she said. Tom had found a poncho for her, and she wore a knapsack on her back, although there currently was nothing in it but batteries for the flashlights… and, Clay was quite sure, that creepy little sneaker, which was at least no longer tied to her wrist. Clay was also carrying batteries in his pack, along with the Coleman lantern. They had nothing else, at Alice’s suggestion. She said there was no reason for them to carry what they could pick up along the way. “We’re the Three Musketeers, Tom—all for one and one for all. Now let’s go over to the Nickle-bys’ house and see if we can get some muskets.”

“Nickerson.” He was still stroking the cat.

She was smart enough—and compassionate enough, maybe that, too—not to say something like
Whatever,
but Clay could see she was getting low in the patience department. He said, “Tom. Time to go.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” He started to put the cat aside, then picked it up and kissed it firmly between the ears. Rafe bore it with no more than a slight narrowing of the eyes. Tom put it down on the sofa and stood. “Double rations in the kitchen by the stove, kiddo,” he said. “Plus a big bowl of milk, with the rest of the half ‘n’ half poured in for good measure. Back door’s open. Try to remember where home is, and maybe… hey, maybe I’ll see you.”

The cat jumped down and walked out of the room toward the kitchen with its tail up. And, true to its kind, it never looked back.

Clay’s portfolio, bent and with a horizontal wrinkle running both ways from the knife-slash in the middle, leaned against the living room wall. He glanced at it on the way by and resisted an urge to touch it. He thought briefly of the people inside he’d lived with so long, both in his little studio and in the much wider (or so he liked to flatter himself) reaches of his imagination: Wizard Flak, Sleepy Gene, Jumping Jack Flash, Poison Sally. And the Dark Wanderer, of course. Two days ago he’d thought that maybe they were going to be stars. Now they had a hole running through them and Tom McCourt’s cat for company.

He thought of Sleepy Gene leaving town on Robbie the Robo-Cayuse, saying
S-So l-long b-boys! Meh-Meh-Mebbe I’ll b-be back this w-w-way again!

“So long, boys,” he said out loud—a little self-conscious but not very. It was the end of the world, after all. As farewells went, it wasn’t much, but it would have to do… and as Sleepy Gene might also have said,
It sh-sh-sure beats a p-poke in the eye with a ruh-ruh-rusty b-brandin‘-arn.

Clay followed Alice and Tom out onto the porch, into the sound of soft autumn rain.

19

Tom had his trilby, there was a hood on Alice’s poncho, and Tom had found Clay a Red Sox cap that would keep his head dry for a while, at least, if the light rain didn’t get heavier. And if it did… well, forage shouldn’t be a problem, as Alice had pointed out. That would surely include foul-weather gear. From the slight elevation of the porch they could see roughly two blocks of Salem Street. It was impossible to be sure in the failing light, but it appeared completely deserted except for a few bodies and the food-litter the crazies had left behind.

Each of them was wearing a knife seated in scabbards Clay had made. If Tom was right about the Nickersons, they would soon be able to do better. Clay hoped so. He might be able to use the butcher knife from Soul Kitchen again, but he still wasn’t sure he would be able to use it in cold blood.

Alice held a flashlight in her left hand. She looked to make sure Tom had one, too, and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “You take us to the Nickerson house, right?”

“Right,” Tom said.

“And if we see someone on our way there, we stop right away and put our lights on them.” She looked at Tom, then Clay, with some anxiety. They had been over this before. Clay guessed she probably obsessed the same way before big tests… and of course this was a very big one.

“Right,” Tom said. “We say, ‘Our names are Tom, Clay, and Alice. We’re normal. What are your names?’ ”

Clay said, “If they have flashlights like us, we can almost assume—”

“We can’t
assume
anything,” she said restlessly, querulously. “My father says
assume
makes an ass out of you
and
me. Get it,
u
and—”

“I get it,” Clay said.

Alice brushed at her eyes, although whether to wipe away rain or tears Clay wasn’t sure. He wondered, briefly and painfully, if Johnny was somewhere crying for him, right now. Clay hoped he was. He hoped his son was still capable of tears. Of memory.

“If they can answer, if they can say their names, they’re fine, and they’re probably safe,” Alice said. “Right?”

“Right,” Clay said.

“Yeah,” Tom agreed, a little absently. He was looking at the street where there were no people and no bobbing flashlight beams, near or far.

Someplace in the distance, gunshots popped. They sounded like fireworks. The air stank of burning and char and had all day. Clay thought they were smelling it more strongly now because it was wet. He wondered how long before the smell of decaying flesh turned the fug hanging over greater Boston into a reek. He supposed it depended on how warm the days ahead turned out to be.

“If we meet normal people and they ask us what we’re doing or where we’re going, remember the story,” she said.

“We’re looking for survivors,” Tom said.

“That’s right. Because they’re our friends and neighbors. Any people we meet will just be passing through. They’ll want to keep moving. Later on we’ll probably want to hook up with other normal people, because there’s safety in numbers, but right now—”

“Right now we’d like to get to those guns,” Clay said. “If there are any guns to get. Come on, Alice, let’s do this.”

She looked worriedly at him. “What’s wrong? What am I missing? You can tell me, I know I’m just a kid.”

Patiently—as patiently as he could with nerves that felt like overtuned guitar-strings—Clay said, “There’s nothing wrong with it, honey. I just want to get rolling. I don’t think we’re going to see anyone, anyway. I think it’s too soon.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said. “My hair’s a mess and I’ve chipped a nail.”

They looked at her silently for a moment, then laughed. After that it was better among them, and stayed better until the end.

20

“No,” Alice said. She made a gagging sound. “No. No, I can’t.” A louder gagging sound. Then: “I’m going to throw up. I’m sorry.”

She plunged out of the Coleman’s glare and into the gloom of the Nickersons’ living room, which adjoined the kitchen via a wide arch. Clay heard a soft thump as she went to her knees on the carpet, then more gagging. A pause, a gasp, and then she was vomiting. He was almost relieved.

“Oh Christ,” Tom said. He pulled in a long, gasping breath and this time spoke in a wavering exhalation that was nearly a howl. “Oh
Chrüüüst.”

“Tom,” Clay said. He saw how the little man was swaying on his feet and understood he was on the verge of fainting. Why not? These bloody leavings had been his neighbors.

“Tom!”
He stepped between Tom and the two bodies on the kitchen floor, between Tom and most of the splattered blood, which looked as black as India ink in the Coleman’s unforgiving white glare. He tapped the side of Tom’s face with his free hand.
“Don’t pass out!”
And when he saw Tom steady on his feet, he dropped his voice a little. “Go on in the other room and take care of Alice. I’ll take care of the kitchen.”

“Why would you want to go in there?” Tom asked. “That’s Beth Nickerson with her brains… her b-brains all over…” He swallowed. There was an audible click in his throat. “Most of her face is gone, but I recognize the blue jumper with the white snowflakes on it. And that’s Heidi on the floor by the center island. Their daughter. I recognize
her,
even with…” He shook his head, as if to clear it, then repeated: “Why would you
want
to?”

“I’m pretty sure I see what we came for,” Clay said. He was astounded by how calm he sounded.

“In the
kitchen
?”

Tom tried to look past him and Clay moved to block his view. “Trust me. You see to Alice. If she can, you two start looking around for more guns. Shout if you hit paydirt. And be careful, Mr. Nickerson may be here, too. I mean, we could assume he was at work when all this went down, but as Alice’s dad says—”

“Assume makes an ass out of you
and
me,” Tom said. He managed a sickly smile. “Gotcha.” He started to turn away, then turned back. “I don’t care where we go, Clay, but I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to. I didn’t exactly love Arnie and Beth Nickerson, but they were my neighbors. And they treated me a hell of a lot better than that idiot Scottoni from around the block.” “Understood.”

Tom snapped on his flashlight and went into the Nickerson living room. Clay heard him murmuring to Alice, comforting her.

Steeling himself, Clay walked into the kitchen with the Coleman lantern held up, stepping around the puddles of blood on the hardwood floor. It had dried now, but he still didn’t want to put his shoes in any more of it than he had to.

The girl lying on her back by the center island had been tall, but both her pigtails and the angular lines of her body suggested a child two or three years younger than Alice. Her head was cocked at a strenuous angle, almost a parody of interrogation, and her dead eyes bulged. Her hair had been broom straw-blond, but all of it on the left side of her head—the side that had taken the blow which had killed her—was now the same dark maroon as the stains on the floor.