Cell
Stephen King

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...

First off, let me just say that if you have not read the novel, you need to read it. Because of the nature of the book and the violence I'd say it's appropriate for high school age and up, but wow, it is absolutely phenomenal.

It feels a lot like The Stand and has a lot of the excellent elements of that story, however, it's much more modern and up to date and there's no struggle between good and evil like there was in The Stand. Instead, the struggle is between the "normies" - those who have not been effected by The Pulse and the "phonies" - those who have essentially become raging living zombies bent on killing anything that moves.

Though, over time the normies realize that the phonies are evolving and have a sort of hive mind. The days are no longer safe and movement is only possible at night when the phonies go into a reboot mode. The more they reboot, the more they evolve to the point of gaining psychic powers, telepathy, and levitation. Things look pretty hopeless for the normies, especially when the main group decides to take matters into their own hands and kill off one of the large flocks of the phonies.

This book is riveting from the first chapter and ends up being something you don't want to put down. My only complaint would be that I didn't like the ending. I'm not a fan of ending a novel like this on an open ending - I prefer to know exactly what happens, but other than that this is close to a perfect novel.

My rating: Five out of five snails.