Cell

by Stephen King

Behind them, in the park, a dog barked and someone shouted.

when he saw a variation of this behavior, that he was watching an act which would once have been considered almost insufferably rude—yes, even while engaging in a small bit of commerce with a total stranger—becoming a part of accepted everyday behavior.

Boylston

the signature scribble of madness.

That tight little accent grated on Clay’s frayed nerves. He thought that if it had been a fart, it would have been the kind that comes out sounding like a party-horn blown by a kid with asthma.

would have killed me,” Alice agreed in a whisper. “She didn’t know who I was. My own mother.” She looked from Clay to Tom. “It was the cell phones,” she said in that same whisper. “It was the cell phones, all right.”

was to see if they couldn’t find some sort of makeshift scabbard

They had reached the part of Route One—sometimes called the Miracle Mile, sometimes Sleaze Alley—where limited-access highway yielded to a jostle of liquor marts, cut-rate clothing stores, sporting-goods outlets, and eateries with names like Fuddruckers.

“Christ, it’s zombie heaven,” Tom said. Clay didn’t bother answering. The

But when he turned that way, he saw nothing but a flock of crows, one so huge it blotted out the sun.

asked. “And there goes your ballgame.” “Thus spake fuckin Zarathustra,” Clay said. Alice laughed until she cried.

Three days ago we not only ruled the earth, we had survivor’s guilt about all the other species we’d wiped out on our climb to the nirvana of round-the-clock cable news and microwave popcorn. Now we’re the Flashlight People.

been a trim and Nautilus-toned sixty last week and now looked like a seventy-five-year-old Jew trying to get the hell out of Poland while there was still time.

He was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

don’t—” “They must be dedicated music-lovers,” Tom

“Yes,” the Head agreed. “At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse exposed five days ago.”

man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.” He leaned forward, surveying them with his bright eyes.

thought to tell Ardai that George W. Bush’s Iraq adventure had probably looked equally simple—load the sprayers, toss a match—and didn’t. It would have been pointlessly cruel.

psionics,

knives in each other, what are they waiting for?” Clay suddenly knew what they were waiting for, and also where Jordan’s Raggedy Man was—it was what Mr. Devane, his high school algebra teacher, would have called an aha! moment. He turned and headed for the front hall.

aliene geisteskrank insano elmebajos vansinnig fou atamagaokashii gek dolzinnig hullu gila meschuge nebun dement

“Do not withhold Your mercy from us, O Lord; may Your love and Your truth always protect us. For troubles without numbers surround us; our sins have overtaken us and we cannot see. Our sins are more than the hairs of our heads, and our hearts fail within us. Be pleased, O Lord, to save us; O Lord, come quickly to help us.”

“May all who seek to take our lives as this life was taken be put to shame and confusion; may all who desire our ruin be turned back in disgrace. May those who say to us, ‘Aha, aha!’ be appalled at their own shame. Here lies the dead, dust of the earth—”

One minute you were phone-booth-cramming with your first-grade teacher; a minute later you were making out with all three members of Destiny’s Child on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

I wish!

The little redhead nodded. “Yeah. Harvard. The black guy. But they ain’t dreams. If you don’t know, it ain’t no fuckin good telling ya. They’re fuckin broadcasts.

Broadcasts in our sleep. If you don’t get em, it’s because you’re poison. Ain’t they, Gunnah?”

Daddy there is worse. Mom is one of them, I saw her with one of the “flocks” today.

Ever read The Haunting of Hill House?”

Clay shook his head, bewildered. “Saw the movie.” “There’s a line there that resonates in the current situation—‘Journeys end in lovers meeting.’ Looks like I might get to meet your kid after all.”

“Someday, son, all of this will be yours.”

All mod cons, circa 1908.