Cell: A Novel (42 page)

“That seems like a zillion years ago,” Denise said. She stuck out her lower lip and blew hair off her forehead.

“Ray
found the little bus,” Clay said. “Seats about twelve—”

“Sixteen, actually,” Dan said. “It’s written on the dashboard. Man, they must have
teensy
schools up here.”

“Seats sixteen, with space behind the rear seat for packs, or a little light luggage for field trips. Then you moved on. And when you got to the Gurleyville Quarry, I bet it was Ray’s idea that you should stop there.”

“You know, it was,” Tom said. “He thought we could use a hot meal and a rest. How’d you know that, Clay?”

“I knew it because I drew it,” Clay said, and this was close to true—he was seeing it as he spoke. “Dan, you and Denise and Ray wiped out two flocks. The first with gasoline, but on the second you used dynamite. Ray knew how because he’d used it working highway jobs.”

“Fuck,” Tom breathed. “He got dynamite in that quarry, didn’t he? While we were sleeping. And he
could have
—we slept like the dead.”

“Ray was the one who woke us up,” Denise said.

Clay said, “I don’t know if it was dynamite or some other explosive, but I’m almost positive he turned that little yellow bus into a rolling bomb while you were sleeping.”

“It’s in back,” Jordan said. “In the luggage compartment.”

Clay nodded.

Jordan’s hands were clenched into fists. “How much, do you think?”

“No way of knowing until it goes up,” Clay said.

“Let me see if I’m following this,” Tom said. Outside, Vivaldi gave way to Mozart—
A Little Night Music.
The phoners had definitely evolved past Debby Boone. “He stowed a bomb in the back of the bus… then somehow rigged a cell phone as a detonator?”

Clay nodded. “That’s what I believe. I think he found two cells in the quarry office. For all I know, there could have been half a dozen, for crew use—God knows they’re cheap enough nowadays. Anyway, he rigged one to a detonator on the explosives. It’s how the insurgents used to set off roadside bombs in Iraq.”

“He did all that while we were sleeping?” Denise asked. “And didn’t tell us?”

Clay said, “He kept it from you so it wouldn’t be in your minds.”

“And killed himself so it wouldn’t be in his,” Dan said. Then he uttered a burst of bitter laughter. “Okay, he’s a goddam hero! The only thing he forgot is that cell phones don’t work beyond the place where they put up their goddam conversion tents! I bet they barely worked there!”

“Right,” Clay said. He was smiling. “That’s why the Raggedy Man let me keep this phone. He didn’t know what I wanted it for—I’m not sure they exactly think, anyway—”

“Not like us, they don’t,” Jordan said. “And they never will.”

“—but he didn’t care, because he knew it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t even Pulse myself with it, because Kashwak equals no-fo. No-fo-me-me.”

“Then why the smile?” Denise asked.

“Because I know something he doesn’t,” Clay said. “Something
they
don’t.” He turned to Jordan. “Can you drive?”

Jordan looked startled. “Hey, I’m twelve. I mean, hello?”

“You’ve never driven a go-kart? An ATV? A snowmobile?”

“Well, sure… there’s a dirt go-kart track at this pitch-n-putt place outside Nashua, and once or twice…”

“That’ll work. We’re not talking about very far. Assuming, that is, they left the bus at the Parachute Drop. And I bet they did. I don’t think they know how to drive any more than they know how to think.”

Tom said, “Clay, have you lost your mind?”

“No,” he said. “They may hold their mass flock-killer executions in that virtual stadium of theirs tomorrow, but
we’re
not going to be part of it. We’re getting out of here.”

9

The little windows were thick, but Dan’s crowbar was a match for the glass. He, Tom, and Clay took turns with it, working until all the shards were knocked out. Then Denise took the sweater she’d been wearing and laid it over the bottom of the frame.

“You okay with this, Jordan?” Tom asked.

Jordan nodded. He was frightened—there was no color in his lips at all—but seemed composed. Outside, the phoners’ lullaby music had cycled around to Pachelbel’s Canon again—what Denise had called the sound of memories.

“I’m okay,” Jordan said. “I will be, anyway. I think. Once I get going.”

Clay said, “Tom might be able to squeeze through—”

Behind Jordan’s shoulder, Tom looked at the small window, no more than eighteen inches wide, and shook his head.

“I’ll be okay,” Jordan said.

“All right. Tell it to me again.”

“Go around and look in the back of the bus. Make sure there’s explosives, but don’t touch any of it. Look for the other cell phone.”

“Right. Make sure it’s on. And if it’s not on—”

“I know,
turn
it on.” Jordan gave Clay an I’m-no-dummy look. “Then start the motor—”

“No, don’t get ahead of yourself—”

“Pull the driving seat forward so I can reach the pedals,
then
start the motor.”

“Right.”

“Drive between the Parachute Drop and the funhouse. Go super slow. I’ll run over some pieces of the funhouse and they may break—snap under the tires—but don’t let that stop me.”

“Right on.”

“Get as close to them as I can.”

“Yes, that’s right. Then come around back again, to this window. So the hall is between you and the explosion.”

“What we
hope
will be an explosion,” Dan said.

Clay could have done without this, but let it pass. He stooped and kissed Jordan on the cheek. “I love you, you know,” he said.

Jordan hugged him briefly, fiercely. Then Tom. Then Denise.

Dan put out his hand, then said, “Oh, what the hell,” and enfolded Jordan in a bearhug. Clay, who had never warmed very much to Dan Hartwick, liked him better for that.

10

Clay made a step with his hands and boosted Jordan up. “Remember,” he said, “it’s going to be like a dive, only into hay instead of water. Hands up and out.”

Jordan put his hands over his head, extending them through the broken window and into the night. His face underneath his thick fall of hair was paler than ever; the first red blemishes of adolescence stood out there like tiny burns. He was scared, and Clay didn’t blame him. He was in for a ten-foot drop, and even with the hay, the landing was apt to be hard. Clay hoped Jordan would remember to keep his hands out and his head tucked; he’d do none of them any good lying beside Kashwakamak Hall with a broken neck.

“You want me to count three, Jordan?” he asked.

“Fuck, no! Just do it before I pee myself!”

“Then keep your hands out,
go!”
Clay cried, and thrust his locked hands upward. Jordan shot through the window and disappeared. Clay didn’t hear him land; the music was too loud.

The others crowded up to the window, which was just above their heads. “Jordan?” Tom called. “Jordan, you there?”

For a moment there was nothing, and Clay was sure Jordan really had broken his neck. Then he said shakily, “I’m
here. Jeez,
that hurts. I croggled my elbow. The left one. That arm’s all weird. Wait a minute…”

They waited. Denise took Clay’s hand and squeezed it hard.

“It moves,” Jordan said. “It’s okay, I guess, but maybe I ought to see the school nurse.”

They all laughed too hard.

Tom had tied the bus’s ignition key to a double line of thread from his shirt, and the thread to the buckle of his belt. Now Clay laced his fingers together again and Tom stepped up. “I’m going to lower the key to you, Jordan. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

Tom gripped the edge of the window, looked down, and then lowered his belt. “Okay, you got it,” he said. “Now listen to me. All we ask is do it if you can. If you can’t, no penalty minutes. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“Go on, then. Scat.” He watched a moment, then said, “He’s on his way. God help him, he’s a brave kid. Put me down.”

11

Jordan had gone out on the side of the building away from the roosting flock. Clay, Tom, Denise, and Dan crossed the room to the midway side. The three men tipped the already vandalized snack machine over on its side and shoved it against the wall. Clay and Dan could easily see out the high windows by standing on it, Tom by standing on tiptoes. Clay added a crate so Denise could also see, praying she wouldn’t topple off it and go into labor.

They saw Jordan cross to the edge of the sleeping multitude, stand there a minute as if debating, and then move off to his left. Clay thought he continued seeing movement long after his rational mind told him that Jordan must be gone, skirting the edge of the massive flock.

“How long will it take him to get back, do you think?” Tom asked.

Clay shook his head. He didn’t know. It depended on so many variables—the size of the flock was only one of them.

“What if they looked in the back of the bus?” Denise asked.

“What if
Jordy
looks in the back of the bus and there’s nothing there?” Dan asked, and Clay had to restrain himself from telling the man to keep his negative vibe to himself.

Time passed, giving itself up by inches. The little red light on the tip of the Parachute Drop blinked. Pachelbel once more gave way to Fauré and Fauré to Vivaldi. Clay found himself remembering the sleeping boy who had come spilling out of the shopping cart, how the man with him—probably not his father—had sat down with him at the side of the road and said
Gregory kiss it, make it all better.
He remembered the man with the rucksack listening to “Baby Elephant Walk” and saying
Dodge had a good time, too.
He remembered how, in the bingo tents of his childhood, the man with the microphone would invariably exclaim
It’s the sunshine vitamin!
when he pulled B-12 out of the hopper with the dancing Ping-Pong balls inside. Even though the sunshine vitamin was D.

The time now gave itself up in what seemed quarter-inches, and Clay began losing hope. If they were going to hear the sound of the bus’s engine, they should have heard it by now.

“It’s gone wrong somehow,” Tom said in a low voice.

“Maybe not,” Clay said. He tried to keep his heart’s heaviness out of his voice.

“No, Tommy’s right,” Denise said. She was on the verge of tears. “I love him to death, and he was ballsier than Lord Satan on his first night in hell, but if he was coming, he’d be on his way by now.”

Dan’s take was surprisingly positive. “We don’t know what he might have run into. Just take a deep breath and try to put your imaginations on hold.”

Clay tried that and failed. Now the seconds
dripped
by. Schubert’s “Ave Maria” boomed through the big concert speakers. He thought,
I would sell my soul for some honest rock and roll
—
Chuck Berry doing “Oh, Carol,” U2 doing “When Love Comes to Town”
…

Outside, nothing but dark, and stars, and that one tiny red battery-driven light.

“Boost me up over there,” Tom said, hopping down from the snack machine. “I’ll squeeze through that window somehow and see if I can’t go get him.”

Clay began, “Tom, if I was wrong about there being explosives in the back of the bus—”

“Fuck the back of the bus and fuck the explosives!” Tom said, distraught. “I just want to find Jor—”

“Hey!” Dan shouted, and then:
“Hey, all right! BABY-NOW!”
He slammed one fist against the wall beside the window.

Clay turned and saw headlights had bloomed in the dark. A mist had begun to rise from the blanket of comatose bodies on the acres of mall, and the bus’s headlights seemed to be shining through smoke. They flicked bright, then dim, then bright again, and Clay could see Jordan with brilliant clarity, sitting in the driver’s seat of the minibus and trying to figure out which controls did which.

Now the headlights began to creep forward. High beams.

“Yeah, honey,” Denise breathed.
“Do
it, my sweetheart.” Standing on her crate, she grabbed Dan’s hand on one side and Clay’s on the other. “You’re beautiful, just keep on coming.”

The headlights jogged away from them, now illuminating the trees far to the left of the open space with its carpet of phoners.

“What’s he doing?” Tom almost moaned.

“That’s where the side of the funhouse takes a jog,” Clay said. “It’s all right.” He hesitated. “I think it’s all right.”
If his foot doesn’t slip. If he doesn’t mix up the brake and the accelerator, run the bus into the side of the damn funhouse, and stick it there.

They waited, and the headlights swung back, spearing the side of Kashwakamak Hall on the dead level. And in the glare of the high beams, Clay saw why it had taken Jordan so long. Not all of the phoners were down. Dozens of them—the ones with bad programming, he assumed—were up and moving. They walked aimlessly toward any and every point of the compass, black silhouettes moving outward in expanding ripples, struggling to make their way over the bodies of the sleepers, stumbling, falling, getting up and walking on again while Schubert’s “Ave” filled the night. One of them, a young man with a long red gash running across the middle of his forehead like a worry line, reached the Hall and felt his way along the side like a blind man.

“That’s far enough, Jordan,” Clay murmured as the headlights neared the speaker-standards on the far side of the open area. “Park it and get your ass back here.”

It seemed that Jordan heard him. The headlights came to a stop. For a moment the only things moving out there were the restless shapes of the wakeful phoners and the mist rising from the warm bodies of the others. Then they heard the bus’s engine rev—even over the music they heard it—and the headlights leaped forward.
“No, Jordan, what are you doing?”
Tom screamed.

Denise recoiled and would have tumbled off her crate if Clay hadn’t caught her around the waist.

The bus jounced into the sleeping flock.
Onto
the sleeping flock. The headlights began to pogo up and down, now pointing at them, now lifting briefly upward, now coming back to dead level again. The bus slewed left, came back on course, then slewed right. For a moment one of the night-walkers was illuminated in its four glaring high beams as clearly as something cut from black construction paper. Clay saw the phoner’s arms go up, as if it wanted to signal a successful field goal, and then it was borne under the bus’s charging grille.