Cell

The town hall was at the intersection of pond and mill streets, in front of the town common and the body of water that gave the little village its name. The parking lot was almost empty except for the spaces reserved for employees, because both streets leading to the big white Victorian building were jammed with stalled vehicles. People had gotten as close as they could, then walked the rest of the way. For latecomers like Clay, Tom, and Jordan, it was a slow slog. Within two blocks of the Town Hall, not even the lawns were free of cars. Half a dozen houses had burned down. Some were still smoldering.

Clay had covered the body of the boy on Livery Lane—it had indeed been Joh

His mind kept going back to George Gendron, who had been lying facedown in a clot of bloody leaves. In his note, John had said that George and Mitch, his other good friend this year in the seventh grade, had been with him. So whatever had happened to George must have happened after Joh

Of course assume makes an ass out of you and me, he thought. The gospel according to Alice Maxwell, may she rest in peace.

And it was true. George's killer might have chased them and gotten them somewhere else. On Main Street, or Dugway Street, maybe neighboring Laurel Way. Stabbed them with a Swedish butcher knife or a couple of car aerials . . .

They had reached the edge of the Town Hall parking lot. On their left was a pickup truck that had tried to reach it overland and wound up mired in a boggy ditch less than five yards from an acre of civilized (and largely deserted) asphalt. On their right was a woman with her throat torn out and her features pecked away to black holes and bloody ribbons by the birds. She was still wearing her Portland Sea Dogs baseball cap, and her purse was still over her arm.

Killers weren't interested in money anymore.

Tom put a hand on his shoulder, startling him. "Stop thinking about what might have happened."

"How did you know—"

"It doesn't take a mind reader. If you find your son—you probably won't, but if you do—I'm sure he'll tell you the whole story. Otherwise . . . does it matter?"

"No. Of course not. But Tom . . . I knew George Gendron. The kids used to call him Co

"I know," Tom said. "I know." And, to Jordan, sharply: "Stop looking at her, Jordan, she's not going to get up and walk."

Jordan ignored him and kept staring at the crow-picked corpse in the Sea Dogs hat. "The phoners started trying to take care of their own as soon as they got back some base-level programming," he said. "Even if it was only fishing them out from under the bleachers and throwing them into the marsh, they tried to do something. But they don't take care of ours. They leave ours to rot where they fell." He turned to face Clay and Tom. "No matter what they say or what they promise, we can't trust them," he said fiercely. "We can't, okay?"

"I'm totally down with that," Tom said.

Clay nodded. "Me too."

Tom tipped his head toward the Town Hall, where a few emergency lights with long-life batteries still shone, casting a sickly yellow glow on the employees' cars, which now stood in drifts of leaves. "Let's go in there and see what they left behind."

"Yes, let's do it," Clay said. Joh

They knew for sure the town hall was deserted when they saw what had been painted across the double doors. In the fading glow of the battery-powered emergency lights, the large, sloppy strokes of red paint looked like more dried blood:

"How far away is this Kashwak place?" Tom asked.

Clay thought about it. "I'd say eighty miles, almost due north. You'd take Route 160 most of the way, but once you get on the TR, I don't know."

Jordan asked, "What exactly is a TR?"

"TR-90's an unincorporated township. There are a couple of little villages, some quarries, and a two-bit Micmac rez up north, but mostly it's just woods, bear, and deer." Clay tried the door and it opened to his hand. "I'm going to check this place out. You guys really don't have to come if you don't want to—you can be excused."

"No, we'll come," Tom said. "Won't we, Jordan?"

"Sure." Jordan sighed like a boy confronted with what may be a difficult chore. Then he smiled. "Hey, electric lights. Who knows when we'll get to see them again."

No Joh

In the posted notes, Clay saw the survivors had come to believe that they could hope for more than rescue. They believed that salvation awaited them in Kashwak. Why that particular townlet, when probably all of TR-90 (certainly the northern and western quadrants) was dead to cell phone transmission and reception? The notes on the bulletin board weren't clear on that. Most seemed to assume that any readers would understand without needing to be told; it was a case of "everybody knows, everybody goes." And even the clearest of the correspondents had obviously been struggling to keep terror and elation balanced and under control; most messages amounted to little more than follow the Yellow Brick Road to Kashwak and salvation as soon as you can.

Three-quarters of the way down the board, half-hidden by a note from Iris Nolan, a lady Clay knew quite well (she volunteered at the tiny town library), he saw a sheet with his son's familiar, looping scrawl and thought, Oh, dear God, thank you. Thank you so much. He pulled it off the board, being careful not to tear it.

This note was dated: Oct 3. Clay tried to remember where he had been on the night of October 3 and couldn't quite do it. Had it been the barn in North Reading, or the Sweet Valley I