Desire Drive

Due to my relative fascination with horror that I've developed recently, I've decided to read some of the works of Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King, both of which are fairly noteworthy horror authors. (I might sample some H.P. Lovecraft horror at some point too.)
My first goal is to finish Stephen King's Cell. Warning, Spoiler contains the plot summary present in the novel itself. (One of those "clinchers" you see at the very first page of a novel, or on the back cover. Positive people know what I'm talking about. :x)

"On October 1, God is in heaven, the stock market stands at 10,140, most of the planes are on time, and Clayton Riddel, 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. 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..."