“Ohhhh,” moans Heavyset. “Please. I’m hurt real bad.”
Pimply puts his elbows in the dirt, raises the rifle. He wipes the soot from his eyes, weeping, wishing they’d found some night-vision goggles in the truck. The smoke is so thick he can’t see shit. Then he hears the sound of the bike’s kickstand going down.
“Ohhhhh,” moans Heavyset, and Pimply has to stifle a giggle.
Footsteps approach at a slow, deliberate gait. Pimply flicks off the safety. He hears a snap behind him, turns. A deer stumbles out of the bushes, eyes wild, its horns on fire. Pimply ducks, the buck jumping over him and running across the road.
“Fuckin’ hell,” he says, as on the road, the footsteps stop.
“Ohhh,” moans Heavyset. “Mister, please. I’m hurt real bad.”
Shaken, Pimply gets back in position. He can make out the figure now. A young man with shoulder-length hair, wearing some kind of eye patch. He stands twelve feet from Heavyset, who is rolling on the ground, moaning, making it look real.
Pimply tightens his grip on the gun.
On the road the young man turns his head toward him.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he says.
Pimply feels a chill go through him. How the fuck does this guy know he’s there? Pimply panics, pulls the trigger. The gun clicks. Shit. Pimply bangs it with his fist.
“Steve,” he shouts. “It’s fucking jammed.”
On the road, Heavyset rolls onto his stomach, pushing himself up. There is a 9mm in his waistband. He reaches for it. The young man doesn’t move.
In the ditch, Pimply pulls out the clip, jams it back in, tries to clear the breach. He hears movement behind him again. Another fucking deer. He doesn’t turn, working the rifle until the jammed round pops from the breech.
“Yes,” he hisses, raising the rifle. But then there is a growl behind him, impossibly low, so low he feels it in his bones. Pimply has time only to turn his head, and then the bear is on top of him. Half of its fur has been burned off, its left flank bubbling red. The bear thunders out of the brush and pounces on him, sinking its teeth into Pimply’s throat. He screams briefly, but then his head is off and bouncing in the road.
Heavyset has his gun halfway out when the bear strikes. He freezes at the sound of it, a nine-hundred-pound predator, half-mad with pain and fear, launching from the underbrush. And then Pimply’s head is rolling in the road, and the bear is turning toward him.
Heavyset tugs at the gun, but now it hooks on his pants. He yanks on it as the bear rises out of the ditch and onto the asphalt. It paws at the ground, bellowing in pain, then explodes up onto its back legs, towering twelve feet in the air. The crotch of Heavyset’s jeans go dark. He looks to the young man, who stares back at him with a bemused smile, like, What are you gonna do?
Heavyset starts to cry. Gun forgotten, he turns and runs toward the center guardrail, hearing the bear drop to its front paws, hearing it chase after him. He grabs for the rail, tries to vault over it, but his foot catches and he tumbles over into the oncoming lane. His gun clatters away, skidding onto the far shoulder. And then the bear is on him. Its teeth sink into his spine. He screams. Behind him, the hillside ignites, flames racing down toward the road.
Randall Flagg gets back on his bike and drives on.
*
They move Avon into the backseat so he can stretch out, clearing the mountains near Bonnie Bell. Story pushes the needle to ninety-five mph. In back, Simon tears the sleeves from his hospital scrubs and fashions a bandage for Avon’s ear. He crouches in the footwell, applying pressure. Avon pulls up his shirt. There is a .40-caliber entrance wound above his left hip and a larger exit wound in the small of his back. Inside his body cavity, Avon’s kidney and spleen are a kind of toxic soup, mixing with his blood and viscera.
“It didn’t used to be like this,” he mutters, feverish now, his voice growly from years of smoking unfiltered Camels. “It used to be open and wild, and he’d let me sit in his lap and drive.”
“Who?” says Simon, then rings the bloody rag out onto the footwell.
“Daddy,” says Avon. He grabs Simon’s wrist. “Don’t you get it,” he says. “It used to be better. We used to be free.”
The farther east they drive, the more the air clears, until outside Whitewater they are able to roll down the windows and let in the first fresh air any of them have breathed in three days. The sun is rising when they stop for gas in Palm Springs. The back windshield is gone, the teal four-door exterior perforated with fifty-five holes. While the car is filling, Story goes into the shop and buys Simon a new outfit, yellow sweatpants, a thin white T-shirt with the blue and red Valvoline logo on it, and a pair of flip-flops. She also buys three rolls of paper towels and some duct tape.
“We’re taking him to the hospital, right?” says Simon, pulling the T-shirt on over his head, as Story changes Avon’s bandages, wrapping the gray tape around his waist.
“No hospitals,” mutters Avon, seemingly from sleep.
An Amazon delivery truck drives by, beginning its daily rounds, despite the melee.
The backseats are fabric and have absorbed most of the blood. A red Mercedes pulls into the next pump. A balding man in a pink polo shirt and cargo shorts gets out. There is a sidearm strapped to his waist.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he asks them, swiping his card. He sets the nozzle, then goes inside. In his mind, the equation is clear. He’s the one with the gun and they’re the ones with the car full of bullet holes. Losers, in other words.
Story screws the Kia’s gas cap back on. She goes over and peers into the Mercedes.
“Story,” warns Simon, but Story leans in through the open window and grabs the preppy asshole’s cell phone. Then she is sliding into the Kia’s driver’s seat as the bald avenger comes out of the shop, carrying a blue Slurpee.