“Don’t call him that,” says Wanda. “No person is illegal.”
“Sure,” says Simon. “Sorry. But—they’re—are they stealing those guns?”
No one answers. Simon feels the edges of his vision starting to go black. There’s no oxygen in the air he’s breathing.
“So, already we’ve got breaking and entering, and now grand theft arsenal, but that’s not—you also want—”
As he lifts it to his face, Simon realizes he’s taken the paper bag from his pocket. In case of emergency… He holds it over his nose and mouth, huffing into it. Louise helps him slide down onto the floor.
“The kid’s day three without meds,” she tells the Prophet. “You should probably get him some Klonopin if you want him to go from state crimes to federal.”
Breathing rapidly, Simon feels he will pass out.
The Prophet comes over, kneels beside him. “Do you know what a criminal is?” he asks. “Someone who rejects morality and ethics. Someone who puts their own needs above the needs of society. A cynic. A nihilist. We’re fighting for something here, a greater good, this human agreement—balance, community, civilization. Our parents have surrendered. They can’t or won’t commit to creating a collective system based on sharing, based on the idea that every human life is precious, that we can’t sacrifice any of God’s children in the name of progress. They can’t or won’t agree that we are stronger together. That diversity strengthens the species. That power without empathy is a sin.”
Through cloudy pupils, Simon watches Flagg and Katniss load weapons and ammunition into an oversize shopping cart with a red plastic steering wheel and a bucket seat.
“This is crazy,” he says.
“No,” says the Prophet. “Crazy is putting eleven-year-olds in cages. Saving them is the definition of sane.”
Simon wants to argue the point, but he can’t for the life of him figure out how.
Thirty percent of Americans believe that angels and demons are active in the world.
“But why me?” says Simon.
“Because those who refuse his call are worse than those who never hear it at all.”
Simon thinks of his room at Float, the bed he made before he left, his clothes on hangers in the closet, the entrances and exits he committed to memory. A system. He had a system there. Structure. All he has now is chaos. Terrible things could happen if they’re not careful, and they are not being careful. They are being the opposite of careful. They are breaking laws. They are arming themselves.
Louise, sitting on the floor next to Simon, puts her head on his shoulder. “Come on, kid,” she says. “You’re overthinking this thing.”
“Overthinking.”
“You can’t reason your way out of a holy war.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the only way out.”
Louise rubs his arm. “This is our planet. They had their chance, and what did we get—Mexican babies drowning inside their daddy’s shirts. Rising seas and bump stocks. Shit. We got shit, and what’s their solution? Conspiracy theories and magical thinking. Well, maybe it’s time we got some magic thinking on our side too.”
She stands, holds out her hand.
“Let’s go get ’em.”
Simon stares at her hand for a long moment. The paper bag at his side is forgotten. For as long as he can remember, all he’s known is fear. But there’s a bigger emotion inside him now. A feeling with no name. He reaches up and takes her hand.
“All right, all right,” says Flagg, taking the cigarette from behind his ear and putting it between his lips. “Now let’s get this shit loaded up.”
Avon DeWitt
It was said there wasn’t a jail on Earth that could hold Avon DeWitt. The fact that it was Avon who said it and that he had never once escaped from a lockup of any kind was beside the point. What was important was that every time they sent Avon away, he walked right back out the door—usually six to twenty-four months later (although in 2004 he did a spell of three years, six months for assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon, i.e., the driver’s-side door of his Cutlass). This time he’d been in for four months for tax evasion, a term he disagreed with—as he said while representing himself in Miami-Dade County Municipal Court—violently.
If you keep moving, Avon used to tell his son, Samson, they never catch you on the big stuff. Which is why they’d lived in ten states in eleven years. Cowboys of the interstate. American nomads. Samson is grown now, living somewhere in the middle of the country. They talk infrequently these days, and unpleasantly when they do. You teach a boy everything you know, Avon likes to say, and then he spits in your face.
And yet isn’t that what Avon did to his father?