“You said we have to find Samson and hear his story.”
“Yes. And before you ask—I don’t know who that is or where we have to look. But I know if he is important to completing our quest, the Lord will put him in front of us.”
“So what’s the plan?” asks Simon.
The Prophet offers him a sunflower seed. Simon takes one, tasting the sharp saltiness on his tongue.
“Javier says he can get us into the Wizard’s compound. That there’s a sluiceway leading to a back wall. He says there’s a grate on the wall that can be cut away. He drew me a map.”
“And there are women there now?” asks Simon. “Girls? We know this for sure.”
“God has shown me a single face in a window that will not open.”
“Does he have a name? This Wizard. Do the police know about him? Can’t we just call them?”
The Prophet shakes his head.
“Calls have been made. Investigations undertaken and dismissed. An absurd plea deal five years back. House Arrest, which—for a man with homes on six continents, a man with his own island—this is just another way of saying freedom.”
Simon’s palms are raw where the shotgun ripped from his grip. His right index finger might be sprained.
“So we break in, what, with weapons hot? What if there are guards?”
“There are definitely guards. Javier calls them Orcs.”
Orcs, ogres, wizards. Simon feels a laugh catch in his throat, a bitter weed, like the joke you make to the hangman just before he pulls the lever.
“The brothers Orci,” says the Prophet. “Sworn protectors of the Wizard.”
“Stop calling him that. What’s his name?”
“E. L. Mobley, sixth richest man in the world.”
For a moment Simon feels faint. His father knows Mobley. Of course his father knows him. Mobley has been to their house. This is how small the world is for those with wealth. They are a small town, a northern island, insular, isolated. Who else can understand the problems of the ultra-rich except those who suffer them too—how expensive it is to service your jets and yachts, how hard it is to find trustworthy money managers who will launder your millions through offshore accounts?
“You know him,” says the Prophet.
“I’ve—met him. All of them. Millionaires, billionaires.”
“What was he like?”
“He was—”
Simon thinks back. A New Year’s party in Tudor City. Simon was what? Twelve? The guests came in costume. Mobley and his entourage arrived dressed as characters from a movie Simon had never seen. White shirts and pants with jockstrap worn on the outside. Simon can remember the moment he first saw Mobley—a shadow in a darkened doorway, wearing a black bowler, his left eye ringed in mascara. And with him were six young women, all drinking milk.
“—creepy,” finishes Simon. “My sister called him a loser.”
“Claire.”
“To his face.”
Simon smiles. He misses her like she was his own heart.
“In Utah,” says the Prophet, “there is a forest of quaking aspen that functions as a single organism. Natives call it the Pando or Trembling Giant. Fifty thousand trees sharing a single root system. It’s thought to be more than eight thousand years old.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When a tree gets sick, that sickness can spread to everything around it. The body dies. The mind rots. I’m saying when one of us is spoiled, they infect everyone around them. The myth of our species is that we are individuals first, but that’s a lie. I’m saying your sister was right. The Wizard is a loser, in that he cannot be allowed to win. His reign of tears must end.”
“Kill him, you’re saying?”
The Prophet thinks about that. “Do you know what the Pied Piper did with those children he took?”
Simon shakes his head.
“He led them under a mountain and closed it up over them.”
Simon looks out the window. The sun is up now, the hills turning to gold. Styx plays on the radio—come sail away with me.
A pickup truck passes them, going ninety. There are three clowns seated in the truck bed, one bald, two with long hair flying in the wind. One holds a sniper rifle, barrel pointed toward the sky. Even at that speed they seem to pass in slow motion.
“Duane,” says the Prophet.
Duane slows. The pickup truck passes them, then the two dirt bikes. It swerves right, into their lane, as an Amazon delivery truck closes in the oncoming lane.
Flagg’s voice comes over the walkie-talkie, swallowed by the wind.
“Get ready,” he says. “This could be it.”
“It,” says Simon. “This could be what?”
On the floor, Javier stirs, sits up.
“?Qué hora es?”
The brake lights of the pickup truck flash, a solid red. The pickup slows. Simon comes to his knees, his right hand grabbing a seat belt strap. He looks through the windshield in time to see Flagg jog left and pass the pickup, speeding up. Katniss mirrors him on the right. As the pickup slows, Duane is forced to brake hard. Simon lurches forward as Flagg and Katniss race off toward the horizon.
“They left us,” he says, as the van skids to a halt. Ahead of them, the pickup has swung left and stopped across the road. Before Simon can process what’s happening, the three clowns are out of the truck bed, coming toward the van, weapons up.
“Calm. Everybody be calm,” says the Prophet. He tells Javier to lie down on the floor, covers him with a blanket.
“No te muevas,” he says.
Gunshots come from behind the van. Simon turns. Cyclops jumps from his bike and advances, firing. The clowns never flinch. With bullets whipping past, they turn as one and fire. Simon throws himself to the floor. Behind the van, Cyclops goes down like a marionette with its strings cut. And then the side door of the van is sliding open, and the bald clown is there, his shotgun up.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “back by popular demand, it’s the one and only get outta the fuckin’ van.”
He waves them out with his weapon. The two long-haired clowns have taken up spots at the front and rear bumpers.