He stares at his reflection, lit from behind by the blue lamps of glass aquariums, and then a face appears inside his own face. Another man’s kind eyes. A stranger’s long hair. Jesus? he wonders. But then the image clarifies. The Prophet, his prophet, puts a hand on the glass and smiles, seeing Simon within. One lens of his glasses is missing. He presses his lips to the window, like a pilgrim kisses the ground. And then the front door is opening, and the Prophet is hugging Simon, and everyone is rallying together, and the dogs are barking and jumping. It feels like the impossible is happening. How certain they’ve been in the last few days that death had come for them all, that their friends were dead or in jail, that they had been left alone.
Coming in behind the Prophet, Samson looks for Story, terrified Simon will tell her she’s dead or in jail. He has no idea her parents have been killed. No idea that she has learned the truth about him, that she knows his real name. Finally, he sees her at the back of the pack, lurking in the shadows. His heart leaps and he moves to take her in his arms, but she steps back, her hands coming up to block him.
“Hey,” he says, flustered. “I was—you’re okay?”
But she won’t meet his eye. She is thinking instead of how much disdain it takes to lie to the person you claim to love about something as fundamental as your name. She can’t believe she chose him. Her mother is dead and she chose him. She went into hiding for him. She allowed her parents to worry, to think God knows what—that she’d been kidnapped, killed?—when she could have called, could have flown to DC and been with them in the days and weeks before they died. Could have saved them, maybe, or at least could have been there for her brother when they died. Could be with him now, instead of here on some farkakte mission to save the sister of the man who lied to her about his fucking name.
“I love you,” says Samson, reaching for her again.
“Your dad’s here,” Story tells him, turning away.
“What?”
Story points over toward Duane, who has finished sewing up the old man and is now wrapping him with duct tape and hand towels.
For Samson there is a moment of vertigo. His first thought is his dad has tracked him down, has come to punish him for his disloyalty, but then he sees the blood-soaked towels and his father’s pale face, and a different feeling hits him.
“Dad?” says Samson, feeling his eyes start to water. He touches his father to make sure he’s real—and yet how can this be?
Avon opens his eyes and grabs his wrist. How are you here? How is this possible?
“Your sister,” he says weakly.
“We’re getting her.”
And then it hits him. His father is here. Story said Your father is here. She wouldn’t hug him, wouldn’t look him in the eye, which means the unthinkable inevitable has happened. The past and the present have collided. Every lie he has ever told has burst. The man he pretended to be, the man she loved, has blown away with the wind. What’s left is a scarecrow, a straw man in human clothes. And nobody loves a scarecrow.
He turns to look for her, desperate suddenly, but she’s gone.
Avon squeezes his wrist. “Don’t go,” he says.
Samson stands paralyzed by doubt, filled with self-loathing.
“How?” he says. “How did you get here?”
“Everything’s connected,” says Avon.
At the door, Louise gives the Prophet a kiss on the mouth, embarrassing him.
“You old softy,” she says. “Wait till you see what God sent us.”
The Prophet grabs Simon’s hand. “You,” he says.
“Me what?” says Simon.
The Prophet takes off his glasses, wipes his remaining lens on his shirt, puts them on.
“You must lead us now,” he says. “God told me. Your time has come.”
Simon feels the blood leave his body. A coldness washes over him. He has just finished renouncing his faith. He is a fraud. How can he lead them when the world is on fire and he has no way to put it out?
“Palm Springs, huh?” says a voice from behind him.
Simon turns.
Randall Flagg leans in the open doorway, smoking a Newport. He is dressed in all black, with a shotgun slung around his body. There is a red bandanna tied over his left eye.
Simon can’t help himself. He throws himself into Randall’s arms, hugs him.
“Jesus, kid,” says the Walking Dude. “Ease up.”
Simon retreats, crying now, as much from confusion as from relief. The world has become a missile, moving too fast to steer. All you can do is hold on and pray. For the first time he wishes he were an adult, clear in himself, a man with experience and perspective, who has already made all his mistakes and learned from them. Instead, he is a beginning skier poised at the top of a mountain. He doesn’t know the terrain ahead, let alone how to turn, how to slalom, how to stop.
This will all make sense when I am older, he thinks, but even as he thinks it, he knows that no one in the history of humanity has ever been that old.
Randall comes in and closes the door.
“Which one of you motherfuckers has a plan?” he says.
*
They find a band saw in the Amazon truck and use it to cut a hole in the drywall that connects the pet store to the sporting goods store. Busting through the cinder block takes more effort, but they’re young and motivated, and Flagg finds some steel pipes in the back room, and they go to town, smashing, smashing, smashing. It feels good after everything they’ve been through. To whirl and swing, to jab and kick. On snack breaks they compare their wounds—physical, emotional. Everyone agrees that Flagg, with half a liver and a missing eye is the winner, although when Simon describes his and Story’s ordeal with the Witch, the room gets quiet.
Louise starts to shiver.
Avon is touch and go, they figure, and Samson sits with him while the others work, not sure what to feel. He has lost so much already, has renounced his father and changed his name, and yet here he is, the old man, like a thought you don’t want but have to face. The Prophet would say that God brought Avon to him so they could heal their old wounds, but Samson isn’t so sure. Sometimes, he thinks, the world is just a fucked-up, random place, where everything happens and nothing makes sense.