Cell

"I should have turned it off, but I thought the headlights would go out if I did," Jordan said. "And I wanted them to see by."

"It's okay, Jordan," Clay said. "No harm done. I'm going to—" But there was nothing in the pocket from which he'd taken the cell phone. The scrap of paper with the telephone number on it was gone.

Clay and tom were looking for it on the floor—frantically looking for it on the floor—and Dan was dolefully reporting from atop the snack machine that the first phoner had just stumbled on board the bus when Denise bellowed, "Stop! SHUT UP!"

They all stopped what they were doing and looked at her. Clay's heart was fluttering high in his throat. He couldn't believe his own carelessness. Ray died for that, you stupid shit! part of him kept shouting at the rest of him. He died for it and you lost it!

Denise closed her eyes and put her hands together over her bowed head. Then, very rapidly, she chanted, "Tony, Tony, come around, something's lost that can't be found."

"What the fuck is that?' Dan asked. He sounded astonished.

"A prayer to St. Anthony," she said calmly. "I learned it in parochial school. It always works."

"Give me a break," Tom almost groaned.

She ignored him, focusing all her attention on Clay. "It's not on the floor, is it?"

"I don't think so, no."

"Another two just got on the bus," Dan reported. "And the turn signals are going. So one of them must be sitting at the—"

"Will you please shut up, Dan," Denise said. She was still looking at Clay. Still calm. "And if you lost it on the bus, or outside somewhere, it's lost for good, right?"

"Yes," he said heavily.

"So we know it's not in either of those places."

"Why do we know that?"

"Because God wouldn't let it be."

"I think . . . my head's going to explode," Tom said in a strangely calm voice.

Again she ignored him. "So which pocket haven't you checked?"

"I checked every —" Clay began, then stopped. Without taking his eyes from Denise's, he investigated the small watch-pocket sewn into the larger right front pocket of his jeans. And the slip of paper was there. He didn't remember putting it there, but it was there. He pulled it out. Scrawled on it in the dead man's laborious printing was the number: 207-919-9811.

"Thank St. Anthony for me," he said.

"If this works," she said, "I'll ask St. Anthony to thank God."

"Deni?" Tom said.

She turned to him.

"Thank Him for me, too," he said.

The four of them sat together against the double doors through which they had entered, counting on the steel cores to protect them. Jordan was crouched down in back of the building, below the broken window through which he had escaped.

"What are we going to do if the explosion doesn't blow any holes in the side of this place?" Tom asked.

"We'll think of something," Clay said.

"And if Ray's bomb doesn't go off?" Dan asked.

"Drop back twenty yards and punt," Denise said. "Go on, Clay. Don't wait for the theme-music."

He opened the cell phone, looked at the dark LED readout, and realized he should have checked for bars on this one before sending Jordan out. He hadn't thought of it. None of them had thought of it. Stupid. Almost as stupid as forgetting he'd put the scrap of paper with the number written on it in his watch pocket. He pushed the power button now. The phone beeped. For a moment there was nothing, and then three bars appeared, bright and clear. He punched in the number, then settled his thumb lightly on the button marked call.

"Jordan, you ready back there?"

"Yes!"

"What about you guys?" Clay asked.

"Just do it before I have a heart attack," Tom said.

An image rose in Clay's mind, nightmarish in its clarity: Joh

He swept it aside.

"Tony, Tony, come around," he said for no reason whatever, and then pushed the button that called the cell phone in the back of the minibus.

There was time for him to count Mississippi ONE and Mississippi TWO before the entire world outside Kashwakamak Hall seemed to blow up, the roar swallowing Tomaso Albinoni's "Adagio" in a hungry blast. All the small windows lining the flock side of the building blew in. Brilliant crimson light shone through the holes, then the entire south end of the building tore away in a hail of boards, glass, and swirling hay. The doors they were leaning against seemed to bend backward. Denise wrapped protective arms around her belly. From outside a terrible hurt screaming began. For a moment this sound ripped through Clay's head like the blade of a buzzsaw. Then it was gone. The screaming in his ears went on. It was the sound of people roasting in hell.

Something landed on the roof. It was heavy enough to make the whole building shudder. Clay pulled Denise to her feet. She looked at him wildly, as if no longer sure who he was. "Come on!" He was shouting but could hardly hear his own voice. It seemed to be seeping through wads of cotton. "Come on, let's get out!"

Tom was up. Dan made it halfway, fell back, tried again, and managed it the second time. He grabbed Tom's hand. Tom grabbed Denise's. Linked three-across, they shuffled to the gaping hole at the end of the Hall. There they found Jordan standing next to a litter of burning hay and staring out at what a single phone call had done.

The giant's foot that had seemed to stamp the roof of kashwakamak Hall had been a large chunk of schoolbus. The shingles were burning. Directly in front of them, beyond the little pile of blazing hay, were a pair of upside-down seats, also burning. Their steel frames had been shredded into spaghetti. Clothes floated out of the sky like big snow: shirts, hats, pants, shorts, an athletic supporter, a blazing bra. Clay saw that the hay insulation piled along the bottom of the hall was going to be a moat of fire before very long; they were getting out just in time.

Patches of fire dotted the mall area where concerts, outdoor dances, and various competitions had been held, but the chunks of the exploding bus had swept farther than that. Clay saw flames burning high in trees that had to be at least three hundred yards away. Dead south of their position, the funhouse had started to burn and he could see something—he thought it was probably a human torso—blazing halfway up the strutwork of the Parachute Drop.

The flock itself had become a raw meatloaf of dead and dying phoners. Their telepathy had broken down (although little currents of that strange psychic force occasionally tugged at him, making his hair rise and his flesh crawl), but the survivors could still scream, and they filled the night with their cries. Clay would have gone ahead even if he'd been able to imagine how bad it was going to be—even in the first few seconds he made no effort to mislead himself on that score—but this was beyond imagining.

The firelight was just enough to show them more than they wanted to see. The mutilations and decapitations were bad—the pools of blood, the littered limbs—but the scattered clothes and shoes with nobody inside them were somehow worse, as if the explosion had been fierce enough to actually vaporize part of the flock. A man walked toward them with his hands to his throat in an effort to stem the flow of blood pouring over and between his fingers—it looked orange in the growing glow of the Hall's burning roof—while his intestines swung back and forth at the level of his crotch. More wet loops came sliding out as he walked past them, his eyes wide and unseeing.