Cell (novel)

God's in His heaven, the stock market's riding high, and the world goes on uncaring.

That is, until the Pulse strikes.

All those who use their cellphone are instantly devolved into rabid, mindless creatures that kill everyone and everything around them, using whatever means necessary to inflict damage. The "Phoners", as they're called, kill billions within seconds.

When the Pulse hits, struggling artist Clay is in Boston, having just landed a lucrative deal for his graphic novel. Fleeing the burning city with new friends Tom and Alice, he hopes to return home to Maine to find out what became of his estranged wife and their young son. En route, the surviving Phoners begin displaying (even more) alarming changes in behavior..

Written by Stephen King and published in 2006. A film adaptation was in Development Hell since 2006, Eli Roth being involved until he left the production in 2009. The film was released ten years later in 2016, starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, and with a script co-written by Stephen King.


 * All Psychology Is Freudian - The Phoners and their violence.
 * Angrish - After going insane, the Phoners speak in a guttural, angry, growling language. A more perfect example comes from later Phoners,.
 * Arc Words - "Insane", "KASHAWAK = NO-FO", and "DON'T TOUCH!" for the latter half of the book.
 * Author Tract - A fat Holier Than Thou bible-thumper accosts the original group as they flee Boston. Clay punches her and Tom gives her a speech.
 * Brown Note - The Pulse, which drives anyone who hears it insane.
 * Cell Phone - Obviously.
 * Cool Car - There are people who go out of their way to pick up the coolest deserted cars they can and drive them short distances. Clay finds the aftermath of such a race:
 * Cool Old Guy - The Academy head. Tom, later on.
 * Contest Winner Cameo - A man won an auction to have a major character in the novel named after him, then gave it to a friend - the character in question shows up late in the novel, traveling with another group of Maine-bound survivors. In something of a Take That, he kills himself, but
 * Note that for better or for worse, the character almost certainly bears zero resemblance to his Real Life namesake.
 * Teenagers Are Innocent - Alice is scared, timid, and kind. . Same goes for Jordan.
 * Crazy Survivalist - Tom's neighbor, who has a house full of guns, illegal cop-killer ammo, and supplies, but isn't home when he needs them most.
 * Driven to Suicide -  kills himself after Clay, Alice, and Tom leave. Clay goes back and finds that he has hung himself.
 * The wife of Tom's survivalist neighbor also kills herself after being forced to kill her daughter. Another victim of the Pulse is found to have died from swallowing jagged shards of glass.
 * Dying as Yourself -
 * Eagle Land - Invoked when Clay, Tom, and Alice break into a redneck home - it contains a gun vault complete with a very illegal machine gun and ammo. Which prove to
 * Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" - The Raggedy Man/The President Of Harvard.
 * Eye Scream -
 * Laughing Mad - Alice is able to hold herself together until the group reaches Tom's house, then has a hysterical breakdown.  She does it again when the
 * Fate Worse Than Death - More like fate worse than death, then death. The two thugs who
 * Genius Bruiser - Subverted with the President of Harvard. The apparent leader of a lare group of Phoners, except for speaking Latin.
 * Genre Savvy - The main characters all did their homework in the field of common sense. They don't take stupid, unnecessary risks or put their necks on the line.
 * The Heartless - The Phoners are people who have had all but their negative emotions and desires stripped away.
 * Hive Mind -.
 * Identity Amnesia - A minor character near the beginning of the book receives an indirect dose of the Pulse from her friend's cell phone conversation, which is still enough to make her forget who she is, where she is, or that she shouldn't run into lampposts.
 * It Got Worse - The book starts off with a traditional zombie apocalypse. Then, slowly, things begin to change for the worse. The zombies . Eventually, they become the dominant species on Earth. Then, , after an odd turn of events which basically ends with a.
 * It's Raining Men -
 * Kill the Cutie -
 * Ludicrous Gibs -
 * 90% of Your Brain - After the initial blast of crazy wiped out the higher reasoning of anyone talking on their cell phones at the time of the disaster . The characters develop a theory in-Universe that they are using parts of their brains which had been dormant before.
 * No Ending -
 * Not Using the Z Word - Phoners. Of course, they're not really zombies.
 * Lampshaded by the main characters actually discussing the fact that they're not calling them zombies.
 * The Only One Allowed to Defeat You - After Clay & Co
 * Psychic Powers -.
 * Schrödinger's Gun - When the main characters decide to stay at Tom's house early in the book, Alice finds a boombox sitting in the closet. They debate turning it on to see if they can pick up any radio stations, even though there is a risk of the Pulse being on the radio waves, too..
 * Shout-Out - There are a lot of references to the work of George A. Romero, and he is directly acknowledged in Stephen King's note at the beginning of the book.
 * Additionally, Clay's graphic novel contains a character called "The Dark Wanderer", whose initials are R.D., and a wizard called Flack. Does This Remind You Of Anything?
 * Slasher Smile - The President of Harvard is always smiling an unsettling grin.
 * Spear Carrier - Several characters, as the protagonists travel to Maine, literally pass in the night and exchange tidbits of info, such as New Hampshire closing its borders and some changes in Phoner behavior.
 * Strawman Political - The crazy old lady who the group runs into leaving Boston.
 * Technically Living Zombie - The Phoners, but only in the beginning.
 * Title Drop - Near the end of the book, when, Clay passes the time by 'drawing' comics in his mind. The one he works on is called Cell.
 * Too Dumb to Live - When Clay separates from the group, he observes a Corvette and another Cool Car racing on the wreck-cluttered highway..
 * Traumatic Toggle: In the final moments of the book, Clay attempts to invoke this trope with Johnny, hoping to fix him by giving him a second dose of the Pulse.  The book ends before we can find out if it worked.
 * Voice of the Legion - The Raggedy Man, and is able to use other people as his voice (since he is unable to speak on his own). He does this with almost all of the main characters at one point or another, including with Alice,.
 * Word of God - King confirmed on his website that
 * Zombie Gait - The Phoners don't use a classic zombie shuffle until the first hive-minds are made.
 * Zombie Apocalypse - On a massive scale.
 * Zombie Infectee - Played with. Evolved Phoners have been "infecting" non-Phoners by placing signs directing desperate survivors to no-coverage areas, and infect them with a corrupt version of the Signal.