“With them?” Story asks, but Simon shoves her and keeps shoving her until they are in the backseat of the Kia, folded in next to Rose, and Avon jumps in the passenger seat, gun pointed back out the open door.
“Go,” he says, and the fear in his voice makes Girlie stomp the gas pedal all the way to the floor, and the car leaps forward, tires eating asphalt, until they are at the corner, running the red light, flying toward the freeway. Only then does Avon holster his pistol and slam his door.
*
They drive till they run out of gas, mostly in silence. In the backseat, Rose starts to cry, big broad tears, her bosom quivering.
“I’m sorry,” she tells Story and Simon, over and over. “So, so sorry.”
Story has her feet under her and her face buried in her knees. They have listened to the reports on the radio. The world has gone crazy. Margot and Remy are dead, along with fourteen senators and more than a hundred bystanders. And around the country there have been attacks on military bases and state houses. Story knows she should cry, but her heart feels like a glass ball stored in Bubble Wrap. Once upon a time she was a baby who couldn’t sit or stand, who needed everything, and isn’t that what a mother is? Everything? Food and warmth, safety and love. Once upon a time Story was a toddler stumbling through the world, heading for every sharp corner, an engine of grievances and demands. And still her mother was there, patient, nurturing. Once upon a time her father left, and a new father came, and she stopped eating. But still the mother was there.
Once upon a time, she stood on a stage and sang the national anthem, but where is her anthem now? That human anthem, nationless and true, with all its sorrow and yearning, all its hope and grief. The music of existence. Everyone you love will die. Everyone you need will pass from this world without warning or reason. Where is their song, the anthem of their lives, soaring to the rafters, celebrating all their sweet, pathetic attempts at permanence? Where is their anthem of fury, their anthem of love?
When the people who fill your heart die, Story thinks, all that’s left is emptiness and regret. Nothingness. And a heart filled with nothing feels nothing. So she doesn’t cry. She just rocks back and forth and stares into the void.
Sitting next to her, Simon watches the sun rise through smoky haze. The Santa Ana winds are blowing hot and dry from the east and in places the sky is clear, pockets of morning blue. Not for the first time he thinks about the others: Louise and the Prophet, Duane and Felix and Randall Flagg. Are they alive? In prison? They were on a mission together, a quest, but it all seems meaningless now in the face of catastrophe, in the face of revolution.
“Can I borrow your phone?” Simon asks quietly, leaning into the front. Avon is putting first aid cream on his burned right hand, the skin blistering where he gripped the gun. Girlie reaches into her pocket, hands him back her Samsung.
“No log ins,” grunts Avon, wrapping a light bandage around his hand.
Simon opens the phone, finds Instagram. He is looking for a specific account, unconnected to any of them. In Marfa they devised this plan, that if any of them were separated they should post a photo on @bassethoundsrule. He searches for the account, finds it, scrolls through the filler images—Basset hounds at the beach! Basset hounds in the woods! Basset hounds in clothes!—until he finds a photo of a walled estate. A teenage Black girl stands in front of it with a handwritten sign. The sign is blocking her face. The girl is rail thin, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, her arms like twigs.
The sign reads BASSET HOUNDS LOVE PALM SPRINGS!
Simon backs out of the page, erases the browser history, then turns off the phone.
“I have to go to Palm Springs,” he says.
They are headed east toward Interstate 5. Racing back to the Long Beach airport, Girlie sees a Shell station, puts on her blinker.
“What are you doing?” Avon asks.
“We need gas,” she says, pulling onto the off-ramp.
At the pump, Simon and Story get out. Rose is asleep in the backseat. Avon goes inside to buy some supplies. Story stands on a strip of grass, staring at the sky. The smell of smoke from the east is overpowering.
“Are you okay?” Simon asks.
“You really want me to answer that?” says Story.
“No, sorry. That was—I’m an idiot.”
They stand together, watching traffic race by on the highway. Like everything else in the LA sprawl, the gas station has the air of urban decay. It is what happens when you take a beautiful valley and pave it, cementing even the river, then fill it with people without rhyme or reason, and finally neglect it all for decades, investing neither time nor money in its health or beauty.
“I had a sister,” Simon tells Story, “Claire. And she—died.”
Story nods.
“And then my parents just pretended she never existed. We didn’t talk about her. They put away her pictures, redecorated her room.”
Simon is still wearing hospital scrubs. He has no shoes on. Neither does she. He takes Story’s hand.
“I’m saying, I’m here if you want to talk.”
She nods, tears in her eyes.
“What do you want to do?” Simon asks her. “I could call someone, get you home?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I think Louise is in Palm Springs,” Simon tells her. “I don’t know about Felix or the Prophet. They were with me when I was—”
He pauses.
“You were with Louise and Duane though,” he says. “Did they—how did they get away?”
Story sighs.
“They had to pee, and I said I’d stay in the van near the radio. And then these cars pulled in, and this man grabbed me out of the car. They called themselves goblins.”
Simon nods. “It was an ambush,” he says. “The Wizard saw us. They were waiting.”
Story wipes her eyes as Avon exits the Q-Mart carrying two plastic bags.
“Why are they in Palm Springs?” she asks. “Louise.”
“I think maybe they found Bathsheba,” he says.
Avon, walking toward the car, stops. “What did you say?” he asks.
Simon turns. “No, nothing.”
Avon drops the bags. A can of Coke inside pops a hole, hisses soda onto the parking lot. Avon walks to them. “Did you say Bathsheba?”