THERE'S A REASON CELL RHYMES WITH HELL.
On October 1, God is in His heaven, the stock market stands at 10,140,
most of the planes are on time, and Clayton Riddell, an artist from
Maine, is almost bouncing up Boylston Street in Boston. He's just
landed a comic book deal that might finally enable him to support his
family by making art instead of teaching it. He's already picked up a
small (but expensive!) gift for his long suffering wife, and he knows
just what he'll get for his boy Johnny. Why not a little treat for
himself? Clay's feeling good about the future.
That changes in
a hurry. The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to
be known as the Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone.
Everyone's cell phone. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join
him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization's
darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has
been reduced to its basest nature... and then begins to evolve.
There's
really no escaping this nightmare. But for Clay, an arrow points home
to Maine, and as he and his fellow refugees make their harrowing
journey north they begin to see crude signs confirming their direction:
KASHWAK=NO-FO. A promise, perhaps. Or a threat...
There are one hundred and ninety-three million cell phones in the United States alone. Who doesn't have one? Stephen King's utterly gripping, gory, and fascinating novel
doesn't just ask the question "Can you hear me now?" It answers it with a vengeance.
