Phone Crazies

"Civilization slipped into its second dark age in a surprising track of blood, with a speed which had been unseen by even the most pessimistic futurist"

- Stephen King describing the Pulse which created the Phone crazies

The phone crazies are the antagonists in the novel Cell, and are humans which have been turned into zombies due to a computer virus hidden in cell phones which infects humans and turns them into complete monsters.

The phone crazies behave like stereotypical zombies, they are aggressive and violent, but, unlike normal zombies, these are not the living dead, nor reanimated, but are just humans infected with a virus and, unlike normal zombies, these do not eat humans. Instead, they merely infect or kill them. And, unlike normal zombies, they all move at different speeds, not limited to super-speed or shuffling; they can be cunning and cruel.

The phone crazies went insane during the release of the virus and then could not recognize each other; thus infected humans killed each other, because the virus was in the brain and destroyed sanity. However, two days later the infected began grouping, and voraciously eating stolen shop food, and then they migrated.

Later on, they banded in groups, now recognizing each other, and only came out in the day - continuing their diurnal lifestyle; thus meaning night was the safe time for uninfected human survivors. The phone crazies eventually became telepathic, and used the remaining 98 percent of their brains which they had previously been unable to unlock. However, loads of them got infections from other disease (being living, they were susceptible to diseases) and starvation, and exposure. The surviving infected got leaders, one of which was the Raggedy Man. He became the leader of those infected in the northern United States.

The infected gained the power of levitation and slowly managed to get speech back; but it was garbled and incoherent, yet survivors knew what they meant telepathically.