Nancy snaps her head around to look at him. “What did you say?”
“The equinox. We’re on the other side of it now. The walls are falling. Your worlds are colliding. This phony civil war you’ve forced upon yourselves.”
They rush him through an underground parking garage and into the back of an unmarked van. Felix is already inside. Two armed agents climb in with the Prophet, and the door slams shut. And then they are peeling out, racing up a steep ramp, scratching pavement as the van pulls out onto the street.
“What’s happening?” Felix asks.
“Panic,” says the Prophet.
“What do you mean, panic?”
“Do you know what a nervous breakdown is?”
9. A Scout Is Thrifty
“When an animal is unable to flee or fight, it freezes,” says the Prophet. “While it’s frozen, all the brain chemicals and hormones associated with flight or self-defense kick in—adrenaline, epinephrine. If the animal survives—and we see this in nature—the mouse or rabbit or bird will shake, often for hours. In this way it discharges those toxins from its body.”
Felix looks at him. “You can never just answer a question, can you?”
The Prophet thinks about that. “I am answering the question,” he says. “People, we freeze too in the face of trauma. But as children we’re taught that growing up means being strong. Shaking and trembling are seen as a sign of weakness. So when we freeze in the face of trauma and survive, we bury those toxins deep inside. We act like everything’s normal. But everything’s not normal. A nervous breakdown is your brain—which has been sending you warnings for days or weeks or years—it’s your brain’s way of getting your attention. Ignore this.”
The van turns a corner fast, tires squealing. Felix is thrown into one of the agents, who shoves him away roughly.
10. A Scout Is Brave
“What’s happening now,” says the Prophet, “is that this land we call America is having a nervous breakdown. Hold on.”
The van goes around another turn. Felix slams into the wall.
“I said hold on,” says the Prophet.
“Where are they taking us?”
“There’s been an event in DC. They think we’re part of it.”
“What kind of event?”
“I don’t know. God has told me only that the nervous breakdown has begun. And that Story’s mother is dead.”
“What?”
But before the Prophet can answer, the van slows, stops. They are blind inside, but outside, Felix can hear words exchanged. Then the van is moving again.
11. A Scout Is Clean
The agent who shoved him leans over to the other agent. “Are we going directly to the plane?” he asks quietly.
The other agent nods. Felix’s heart is racing, but the Prophet is calm.
“Prepare yourself,” he says.
The van roars forward for sixty seconds, then slams on its brakes. Almost before it’s stopped, the back doors open. Two agents are there with rifles. The Prophet stands, almost in anticipation, and then he and Felix are shoved out the door and onto the tarmac of the Fort Bliss Army Base.
Overhead, the sky is orange.
They are behind the wing of a small jet. The sun is setting. Agent Nancy walks to the plane, confers with the pilot. The other agents hold Felix and the Prophet in place behind the van. The Prophet is watching the horizon. Ash falls on his face. Standing close to him, Felix can hear that he’s humming low in his throat. He is stunned by the ochre of the air.
“Why is the sky orange?” he asks, but no one answers.
Could this be the apocalypse?
He has no idea that California, Arizona, and New Mexico are burning. No idea that paramilitary groups have moved on thirty-nine state houses.
He thinks of his sister. How close they were to saving her. Unless. Unless she was already gone. Of course. It was an ambush. Somehow Mobley and Bathsheba got out. Somehow even though they were watching.
A sound reaches them then. The roar of heavy trucks accelerating and then a crash, followed by gunfire. The agents flinch, ducking instinctually, heads turning. Two panel trucks have broken through the front gate. Soldiers at the gate fire at them, but the back doors of the trucks roll up. There’s some kind of heavy machine gun mounted inside. The trucks return fire.
The agents scramble. They shove Felix and the Prophet back into the van, slam the doors. With the engine off, it’s dark inside. Felix lies on the floor, facedown, hands cuffed behind his back. The Prophet lies on top of him. There is a feeling in Felix’s heart, a profound sense of disorientation, as if the world as he knows it has changed into something unrecognizable. Something foreign. Something insane.
This is it. The day the threads are pulled, and the garment falls apart.
12. A Scout Is Reverent
Gunfire then, close by. It booms through the van as the agents shoot back. And then return fire, a series of metal punches as bullets rip through the van above them.
pop pop pop pop
Felix tries to duck, but he’s already on the floor. Above him the Prophet continues to hum. Felix hears the sound of the plane’s engines cycling up. Either Agent Nancy is trying to make a break for it, or the pilots are moving the plane out of danger. More bullets hit the van.
pop pop pop pop
Felix hears a grunt from outside and what sounds like a body bounce off the paneling. The return gunfire stops. Above him, the Prophet stops humming.
“It’s up to you,” he says directly into Felix’s ear. “You have to save us now.”
Book 5
The Unconformity
Boogaloo II
Randall Flagg wakes to the sound of screams. It’s daytime, but the hospital blinds are drawn. The door to the hall is open and Flagg sees an orderly rush by, pushing a gurney. For a moment he wonders if the scream was real or in a dream, but then he hears it again. A wail of anguish. And then a gunshot. Boom. Flagg looks for the state trooper, but the trooper is gone, his sports page scattered across the floor.