Cell
Published: 24, January 2006
Author: Stephen King
Genre: Action, Adventure, Apocalyptic, Classic, Fiction, Horror, Literature, Media Tie-In, Murder, Psychic, Suspense, Technothriller, Thriller, Zombie
Check out the review of this book here:
Summary
Clayton Riddell, a struggling Maine artist, has just landed a graphic novel deal in Boston when "The Pulse," a signal broadcast over the global cell phone network, transforms all cell phone users into mindless zombie-like killers.
Clay is standing in Boston Common when the Pulse goes off, sparking havoc all around him. As the "phoners" attack each other and anybody in sight, civilization falls.
Clay is forced together with middle-aged Thomas McCourt and youngster Alice Maxwell during the mayhem; the three runs to Tom's suburban house while Boston burns.
The next day, they discover that the "phoners" have begun scavenging for food and joining together.
Clay remains adamant about returning to Maine and reuniting with his son, Johnny. Tom and Alice accompany him since they have no other options.
They travel north by night over destroyed New England, encountering other survivors and gaining frightening information about the operations of the phoners, who continue to attack non-phoners on sight.
They arrive at the Gaiten Academy, a prep school with one remaining teacher, Charles Ardai, and one surviving student, Jordan, after crossing into New Hampshire.
The couple shows the newcomers where the local phoners congregate at night: they crowd into the Academy's soccer field and "turn off" till dawn.
The phoners have clearly formed a hive mind and are acquiring psychic skills. The five survivors resolve to kill the flock, which they achieve with the help of two propane tanks.
Clay attempts to persuade everyone to go, but the others hesitate to forsake the elderly Ardai.
That night, all of the survivors have the same terrifying dream: they are in a stadium, surrounded by phoners when a disheveled man wearing a Harvard University hooded sweatshirt approaches and kills them.
When the heroes awaken, they recount their terrifying dream experiences and refer to him as "the Raggedy Man."
A new flock has encircled their home, and the "normies" are confronted by the flock's symbolic spokesman: the man in the Harvard sweatshirt.
In retaliation, the flock murders other normals and tells the heroes to travel north to a location in Maine known as "Kashwak."
The flock psychically drives Ardai to commit suicide in order to silence their biggest complaint.
Clay and his friends bury him and head north, as Clay is still desperate to get home.
On the way, they discover that as "flock-killers," they have been psychically designated as untouchables, to be avoided by other normies.
Alice is slain by a loutish couple of normies after a trifling argument on the road. The party buries her and travels to Clay's hometown of Kent Pond, where they find notes from Johnny revealing that Clay's estranged wife Sharon was transformed into a phoner, but their son lived for several days until being pushed by the phoners to travel to the ostensible cell phone-free Kashwak.
Clay has another nightmare in which he discovers that the normie refugees were all exposed to the Pulse once they arrived.
He is still determined to find his kid, but after encountering another group of flock-killers, Tom and Jordan decide to forego the phoners' planned ceremonial killings.
Before splitting off, the party finds that Alice's killers were psychically driven to do a heinous suicide act in exchange for touching an untouchable.
Clay sets out on his own, but the others soon reappear, driving a small school bus; the phoners have used their ever-increasing psychic powers to force them to rejoin him.
Ray Huizenga, a construction worker, is one of the flock-killers who secretly provides Clay a cell phone and a phone number, advising him to use them when the time is appropriate; Ray then kills himself.
The group arrives at Kashwak, the site of a half-assembled county fair, where an increasing number of phoners are behaving erratically and breaking away from the flock.
Jordan believes that the Pulse was produced by a computer program and that, while it is still transmitting into the battery-powered cell phone network, it has become contaminated by a computer worm, infecting newer phone users with a mutated Pulse.
Nonetheless, an army of phoners is waiting for them, and Clay recognizes Sharon among them.
The phoners confine the group to the fair's exhibition hall for the night; tomorrow is the ceremonial execution, which will be psychically broadcast to all phoners and remaining normies worldwide.
Clay notices Ray's unsaid plan as he awaits their morning execution: Ray had packed the back of the bus with explosives, connected a phone-triggered detonator to them, and then executed himself to prevent the phoners from telepathically detecting the explosives.
Jordan drives the vehicle into the midst of the inert phoners after the group breaks a window for him to squeeze through.
Clay is able to detonate the bomb and wipe out the Raggedy Man and his flock thanks to a jury-rigged cell phone patch set up by pre-Pulse fair workers.
The majority of the party travels to Canada, where the coming winter will annihilate the region's defenseless and leaderless phoners.
Clay travels south in search of his son. He comes across Johnny, who has a "corrupted" Pulse; he has walked away from Kashwak and appears to know his father.
However, Johnny is an unstable shell of his former self, so Clay decides to give Johnny another Pulse blast, hoping that the progressively garbled signal will balance itself out and reset his son's brain.
Clay dials and places the mobile phone to Johnny's ear towards the end of the book.
Useful Search Related Words & Keywords
Brian Witten, Cell Phone, Character Development, Clayton Riddell, Dark Tower, George Romero, Isabelle Fuhrman, Richard Saperstein, John Cusack, Living Dead, Main Characters, Michael Benaroya, Page Turner, Raggedy Man, Salems Lot, Samuel L. Jackson, Shara Kay, Tod Williams, Tower Series, Viacom
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