We make our own meaning.
Simon is the first through the wall. The sporting goods store has been ransacked pretty well in the last few days—not looted, just shopped out. The gun racks are empty, bullets sold, but not all the shelves are empty, and they stock up on what they think they might need, or what seems funny in the moment. At first Louise refuses to make the pilgrimage to Angel’s Sporting Goods. Her logic is that God gave them everything they could need when he delivered them the truck. But then the Prophet suggests that maybe it was God who put a sporting goods store next to the pet store in the first place, and who are we to reject such a blessing, and Louise shrugs and climbs on through.
Later, Samson finds Story sitting by herself on the floor of the pet shop, her back to the wall. She has her hands pressed to the cold cement, needing to feel something physical, something real. He slides down beside her, careful not to get too close. In the back room, Simon told him what happened. The explosion at the Capitol. How her family is dead. His lies seem pathetic now in comparison to the magnitude of her grief.
They sit for a minute in silence.
“I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” she says, not looking at him. “I have to find Hadrian. But who do I call? The FBI? Social Services? Not that—I mean, the phone lines are down. He’s a twelve-year-old boy and the satellites, whatever, are screwed, because, I don’t know, the world is ending.”
He nods. “Whatever I can do,” he says. “I want to help.”
“No,” she says, “I think you’ve done enough.”
He thinks about that. The last thing she needs right now is for him to explain himself, to shift the focus, to say, I know your parents are dead, but let’s talk about my rough childhood. Let me tell you how hard I had it, so you’ll forgive me, and we can what—go back to the way it used to be?
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She nods.
“Do you want me to drive you to DC?”
She looks at him for the first time.
“Drive three thousand miles in the middle of a civil war?”
“If you want.”
“What about your sister?”
He thinks about that. “I’m trying to make things right,” he says.
“There is no right. Right is a fantasy.”
“Help me save my sister and then I’ll help you find your brother.”
“Help you?”
He nods.
“Because,” he says, “she’s a kid too, and she’s all alone, and the monster has her, and she’s here. And it’s something to do that’s not sitting on the floor feeling terrible.”
“My parents died.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but nothing’s gonna get fixed staying here. And I don’t know if the kid is right, the—whaddaya—Prophet, that God talks to him and we have to do this so that we can start over, humanity, but what if he is? What if this is the moment? What if this is history? Aren’t you tired of talking about everything? Always saying something’s wrong, but nobody ever does anything. All they do is tell you there are rules, systems? Well, fuck it. I’m done talking. We save her, we save your brother, and then we find this utopia he keeps talking about and start over.”
For a long time she says nothing, and he worries he’s lost her for good. But then she closes her eyes and nods. “Okay.”
They spend the next three hours planning their assault on the Wizard’s compound—scouring the fuzzy map on Google Earth for entry points, blind spots, et cetera. The compound has been smudged in the satellite image, but they find old photos online and study them for details. Who knew there was a price you could pay to literally erase your home from the map?
“Is that a helipad?” asks Louise, pointing at the blurred image. They gather around, squinting. None of them know how to ground a helicopter without shooting it from the sky. For a moment they’re silent. The only way they can think to rescue Bathsheba is to die trying, which—Flagg says, fine with him. He knows what the rest of them aren’t willing to say out loud, that blood is about to be shed, and nobody goes to war hoping for a tie. In the middle hours of the night, they map out their options—Samson attacks from here, Simon vaults the wall there—but every scenario ends in death. They are a ragtag group of kids, planning an assault on a fortress defended by special forces. The best they can hope for is chaos and luck.
And then Simon has an idea so simple, so foolproof, it leaves them all light-headed. He sees past the battlefield, past the objective, to the heart of human nature itself. As soon as he says the words out loud, the room realizes that this is what they must do. The Prophet kneels before Simon and kisses his feet.
“I told you,” he says, and Simon blushes.
With renewed vigor, they fortify themselves for the attack to come. They pack their vehicles with stolen loot and load their weapons. Their plan is to leave at dawn. Everyone has a job, even Avon, who wakes around 4:00 a.m., and offers advice on their plan. He’s the one who tells them that if they soak tennis balls in gasoline and fire them through the windows of the house, they can create what he calls “a hell of a diversion.” He shows them how to turn the small camping stove propane tanks into bombs. To Samson’s surprise, he doesn’t shit all over their strategy, doesn’t try to force his own adult plan on them. Avon seems to understand something fundamental in his vulnerable state, which is that his time deciding things is over. It’s their turn now. All that’s left for him is to defend the decisions he’s made, the ones worth saving. And the only ones that seem to matter right now are his children.
Do they overpack? Maybe. But they know that the key to victory is to make themselves look like an army, an overwhelming force. Only in this way can they force the Wizard to make a mistake.