“You ever fired an assault rifle?” Flagg asks him, which is a strange question coming from a man who looks like America’s neighbor.
“I’m a little behind on my weapons of death,” says Simon.
On the wall across from them are hundreds of long guns, displayed in orderly rows. In the glass case, handguns are arranged by manufacturer, by make and model. Looking at them Simon’s anxiety is a throbbing pulse in his neck. He hears Flagg breathing inside his rubber mask.
“What he did, see,” says Flagg, “he pulled the fire alarm. So he didn’t have to go room to room. He could shoot us when we came out into the hall.”
Simon swallows the lump that forms in his throat when he realizes what Flagg is talking about. Parkland.
“My brother knew him. They were older. I was twelve. Tommy used to say how they were weird, Nik and his brother, that they liked to do stuff to animals, especially Nik. Jabbing sticks in rabbit holes to kill the babies, shooting squirrels. I guess he was adopted, and first his dad died and then his mom, and he was living with somebody, a friend. She was old, his mom. Adopted. This was after he got expelled for selling knives out of his lunch box, or maybe it was the bullets in his backpack. Those are just, you know, details.”
He points to the wall.
“That’s the gun. Smith & Wesson, manufactured by American Outdoor Brands. A .223-caliber that could be modified automatic supereasy. That shit’ll punch a dozen bullets through you at thirty-two hundred feet per second. Recoil’s real light, standard mag thirty rounds. He probably bought it at a place like this when he was eighteen. No waiting. This was before he put on YouTube that he wanted to become a professional school shooter.”
He tilts up his mask, lights a cigarette.
“We all have thoughts, you know,” he says. “Who doesn’t want revenge for things? But that’s, like, hit the guy when he’s not looking and run away. Not—I don’t know, seventeen dead. Maybe it’s Florida. Maybe we’re the problem. America’s liver.”
He reaches under his rubber mask, and Simon gets the feeling he’s wiping away tears.
“All I know is, as long as they’re packing, I’m gonna be strapped. I’m done hiding in supply closets.”
“What happened to Tommy?” Simon asks.
Flagg drops the cigarette on the linoleum, lifts his rubber mask, spits. “What do you think?” he says.
The Prophet comes over. There is a middle-aged woman with him, part native American. She is Wanda Salas Soto, who lives in a double-wide outside Coyanosa.
“Bad news,” says the Prophet. “Wanda says the government came for Javier and his father last week.”
“Our government?” says Simon, then immediately feels stupid. It has been thirty-six hours since his last Ativan and his brain feels like a box of spiders.
It was 110 degrees in Paris last week.
You Deserve a Break Today.
There are 1,000,000 more guns in America than people.
I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing.
“County sheriff raided last week,” Wanda tells them. She is in her midforties, moon-faced with a smoker’s cough. Truckers on the dating app she uses describe her as “exotic” when they text her from the road. “Maybe you saw the billboards. Sheriff Roy. He calls himself the real immigration police ever since the ICE purge and that southern border reform bill—which—that shit don’t fly in Texas. So the deputies come in with stun guns and Black Jacks, took fifteen of us. Javier also.”
“Where?” says Louise, wandering over.
“Sheriff Roy built a detention center outside Balmorhea,” says Wanda. “Cyclone fences and razor wire. A few un-air-conditioned Quonset huts. They keep the kids in cages, away from their parents.”
“Wait a minute,” says Simon. “How old is Javier?”
“He’s eleven,” says the Prophet.
“Eleven,” says Simon, his mind reeling. “I thought you said he could get us in to see the Wizard.”
“Yes.”
“An eleven-year-old boy. Did they—”
Simon looks at Wanda. He doesn’t want to say what he knows in front of her.
“No,” says the Prophet. “Javier’s mother worked in the Wizard’s kitchens. He knows the secret passageways.”
Simon considers asking how he knows this but doesn’t. He can guess the answer.
God told me.
“Why not talk to the mother?” asks Louise.
Wanda crosses herself. “Sheriff Roy got her too, but I think she got sent to Brownsville.”
Simon looks at Flagg. He is a few feet away, talking to Katniss and Cyclops. “We could visit him. At the detention center. They have to let them have visitors.”
“No visitors,” says Wanda. “Not even lawyers. Sheriff Roy ain’t a big believer in civil rights.”
Simon looks at Louise. Neither has any clue what to do next.
“Flagg,” calls the Prophet.
“On it,” says Flagg. Simon watches Katniss vault the glass gun display case. She tries its sliding doors. Locked. On the wall behind her, the long guns are locked down as well.
“Keys,” she calls, looking at Simon.
“What?” he says. Everyone is staring at him.
The last Hawaiian tree snail died in 2019.
Don’t be Evil.
Farewell to the giant Yangtze soft-shell turtle.
They’re Grrrreat!
Looking down, Simon realizes he still has the manager’s key chain in his hand.
“Simon,” says the Prophet. “Give her the keys.”
Simon lifts his hand, looks at them. His brain feels like it’s moving in slow motion. Why does Katniss want to open the gun case? And why is Cyclops coming back with a shopping cart full of fertilizer?
Then Flagg walks over and snatches the keys from Simon’s hand. “You’re taking too long.” He tosses the keys to Katniss, who opens the case and begins pulling out boxes of ammunition and stacking them on the counter.
“We have to find Javier,” the Prophet tells Simon.
“I know,” says Simon, “but—”
“To rescue Javier,” he clarifies. “Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt. He sent the ten plagues. He parted the Red Sea.”
Simon’s head is spinning. “You want to—we’re supposed to what? Break into a federal detention center to rescue an illegal immigrant?”