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What would happen if, right this instant, a plague transmitted through a cell phone signal was to strike everyone within earshot of a wireless call?

In Stephen King's Cell (2006), this is just what happens at 3:03 p.m. October 1 in a year both post-9/11 and post-Katrina. In the moments following the initial "Pulse", as this latest human disaster comes to be called, most cell-phone owners not yet affected react in a quite predictable way.

"People...would want to know what was happening, and if their families were all right. They would[reach]for their car phones, their cell phones, without a second thought." (p.219)

This enables the Pulse to expand virally beyond its initial impact to encompass the vast majority of the population with access to a cell phone. The Pulse strips away every vestige of civilized behavior from its victims. What moments before had been humans, are now pre-verbal creatures that kill and commit suicide without a second thought; in fact they are not thinking at all.

Our Hero is Clay, a semi-starving artist from Maine who, thankfully for the reader, is a technophobe who doesn't even own a cell phone. In the ensuing chaos, he meets Tom, another "normal" whose cell phone had been broken that very morning. They soon come upon Alice: 15 years old and highly traumatized by her mother's attempt to kill her in a fit of phone-induced frenzy. Tom and Alice decide to accompany Clay on a journey from Boston to Maine; Clay is desperate to reunite with his beloved son and recently estranged wife.

Early on, their observations reveal that these creatures sleep at night and roam by day. The group begins their journey traveling at night and holing up during the day. As they spend their days sleeping and observing the "phone crazies", they soon notice something quite interesting: these things appear to be evolving! How the creatures are changing is truly disturbing.

Along the way, the travelers meet and work alongside other "normies" who agree with the methods the original trio have used for survival. However, most of those unaffected by the cell phone virus have chosen to conform to the desires of the phone crazies, who now clearly make up the majority of the population. Actions taken by Clay, Tom, Alice, and their companions quickly make them outcasts even among their own "kind".

Will Tom make it to Maine and reunite with his family?
Will the majority overwhelm the minority as they struggle to survive?
Will good triumph over evil?
You will need to read the book to find out.

Never at a loss for coming up with really creative and horrible ways to die, King does not disappoint here. However, alongside the truly macabre, runs an undercurrent of thought-provoking questions:

1) What separates humans from animals? From machines? From each other?
2) Who defines "sanity" and "insanity"?
3) When faced with the questions of survival, how far will we go?

This may provide one key to King's wide and lasting appeal. There is always an attempt to find meaning, even in the worst of situations.

King's sense of humor and peeks out through the mayhem, as well. By the end of the book although we do not know what Stephen King's favorite type of music IS, we certainly know what it is NOT. We also learn that an Altoid, "end of the world or not[is] curiously strong."
(p. 275)

This book is a must-read for fans of Stephen King. If you have never read him before, this would be a fine place to start. Cell will make a great film in the zombie genre, and Eli Roth ("Hostel") has agreed to adapt the book for the big screen. According to an article on the website "Timeout London" [http://www.timeout.com/film/n ews/983/]: "this truly could be a match made in hell". You will get no argument from this writer about that.

Learn more about this author, Leslie J Nelson.
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