Cell: A Novel by Stephen King Page B

street. It’s very convenient.”
    “It wouldn’t be convenient this afternoon,” Tom said. “After what we just saw, you couldn’t get me down there on a bet.”
    Mr. Ricardi looked at Clay with mournful eagerness. “You see?”
    Clay nodded again. “You’re better off in here,” he said. Knowing that he meant to get home and see to his boy. Sharon too, of course, but mostly his boy. Knowing he would let nothing stop him unless something absolutely did. It was like a weight in his mind that cast an actual shadow on his vision. “Much better off.” Then he picked up the phone and punched 9 for an outside line. He wasn’t sure he’d get one, but he did. He dialed 1, then 207, the area code for all of Maine, and then 692, which was the prefix for Kent Pond and the surrounding towns. He got three of the last four numbers—almost to the house he still thought of as home—before the distinctive three-tone interrupt. A recorded female voice followed. “We’re sorry. All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later.”
    On the heels of this came a dial tone as some automated circuit disconnected him from Maine…if that was where the robot voice had been coming from. Clay let the handset drop to the level of his shoulder, as if it had grown very heavy. Then he put it back in the cradle.
     
    13
    Tom told him he was crazy to want to leave.
    For one thing, he pointed out, they were relatively safe here in the Atlantic Avenue Inn, especially with the elevators locked down and lobby access from the stairwell blocked off. This they had done by piling boxes and suitcases from the luggage room in front of the door at the end of the short corridor beyond the elevator banks. Even if someone of extraordinary strength were to push against that door from the other side, he’d only be able to shift the pile against the facing wall, creating a gap of maybe six inches. Not enough to get through.
    For another, the tumult in the city beyond their little safe haven actually seemed to be increasing. There was a constant racket of conflicting alarms, shouts and screams and racing engines, and sometimes the panic-tang of smoke, although the day’s brisk breeze seemed to be carrying the worst of that away from them. So far, Clay thought, but did not say aloud, at least not yet—he didn’t want to frighten the girl any more than she already was. There were explosions that never seemed to come singly but rather in spasms. One of those was so close that they all ducked, sure the front window would blow in. It didn’t, but after that they moved to Mr. Ricardi’s inner sanctum.
    The third reason Tom gave for thinking Clay was crazy to even think about leaving the marginal safety of the Inn was that it was now quarter past five. The day would be ending soon. He argued that trying to leave Boston in the dark would be madness.
    “Just take a gander out there,” he said, gesturing to Mr. Ricardi’s little window, which looked out on Essex Street. Essex was crowded with abandoned cars. There was also at least one body, that of a young woman in jeans and a Red Sox sweatshirt. She lay facedown on the sidewalk, both arms outstretched, as if she had died trying to swim, varitek, her sweatshirt proclaimed. “Do you think you’re going to drive your car? If you do, you better think again.”
    “He’s right,” Mr. Ricardi said. He was sitting behind his desk with his arms once more folded across his narrow chest, a study in gloom. “You’re in the Tamworth Street Parking Garage. I doubt if you’d even succeed in securing your keys.”
    Clay, who had already given his car up as a lost cause, opened his mouth to say he wasn’t planning to drive (at least to start with), when another thump came from overhead, this one heavy enough to make the ceiling shiver. It was accompanied by the faint but distinctive shiver-jingle of breaking glass. Alice Maxwell, who was sitting in the chair across the desk from Mr. Ricardi, looked up