He knows without knowing that the switch has flipped. The Big Igloo is finally here. The hospital is under siege, the whole state maybe, even the country.
Flagg wastes no time on shock. He has been in this situation before and understands on a fundamental level that unthinkable things happen every day. He struggles to sit up. There is pain in his side, but it’s manageable. He is blind in one eye, but that too is manageable. His right hand is cuffed to the plastic rail of the bed. There is an IV line in that arm, rubber tubing running to a saline bag on a stand. EKG monitors dot his chest and belly.
Boom, another shot, getting closer. To Flagg it sounds like the low roar of a shotgun. Because there is no ratchet between shots, he thinks, it must be a high-capacity tactical shotgun. He pulls the IV needle from his arm, but he doesn’t discard it. Instead, he tugs hard, tipping the IV stand onto the bed. For ten seconds he considers trying to use the IV needle to pick the lock on the handcuff, but a one-pin lockpick takes time, and from the sound of the shot he has none.
He throws the covers off the bed, examines the rail of the bed, looking for a weak point. It’s solid state, maybe four feet wide and two feet tall, made of thick plastic without visible joints. But because it can be raised and lowered it must have a joint somewhere, a weak connection. He gets to his knees, hospital gown open in the back, and lifts the metal IV stand off the floor with his left hand, short sleeved by the handcuff on his right wrist.
Boom.
Adrenaline races through his veins and he thinks: I am Randall Flagg, the Walking Dude, the Ageless Stranger, who can call beast and fowl alike to my defense, who haunts the dreams of mortal men. Randall Flagg, the Man in Black, Old Creeping Judas, the Grinning Man. Only an atom bomb can kill me.
He rears up and smashes the IV stand into the plastic arm, once, twice, three times, feeling the cuff bite into his right wrist, feeling his stitches pull in protest. The industrial plastic is tough, but Randall Flagg is a being of pure will. He hits it one more time and it snaps at the base but doesn’t fall.
Boom.
Randall drops the IV stand, lies on his back, right arm extended awkwardly, and kicks the wobbly plastic rail, once, twice, until he feels a snap and the weight of the detached rail falls, threatening to snap his cuffed arm at the elbow.
Boom.
He scrambles to his knees, feeling the shooter coming, and has time only to grab the solid-state side rail—which looks like a large plastic tray with a handle—and hold it to his chest, and then he is spinning toward the door as the shooter appears, backlit by the fluorescents, his shotgun smoking from the barrels.
He is a clown in white face paint, tactical vest on over a Hawaiian shirt. Seeing Flagg, he fires. The shot hits the thick plastic tray at Flagg’s chest and blows him backward out of bed. He hits the wall, goes down hard, out of sight.
The clown comes into the room, pulling the empty clip from his weapon and sliding in another. He moves quietly around the foot of the bed warily, barrel at low ready. But when he reaches the other side, Flagg is gone. The clown has time for a moment’s confusion, and then Flagg rises from the foot of the bed. He has wrapped the IV tubing around his left fist, needle sticking out between his middle and ring finger, and as the clown turns to face him, Flagg punches the needle into his eye. The clown staggers back, blood spurting. Flagg swings the heavy bedrail mace chained to his wrist, cracking the clown in the head so hard, the bedrail (damaged by the shotgun blast) shatters. The clown goes down hard. Old Creeping Judas is free.
He lifts the shotgun from the floor, feeling the AC on his naked butt and legs, and something else, a warm trickle running down his right side onto his leg. He glances down. His stitches are torn, but not too badly, blood soaking into his hospital gown. He takes it off, stands naked in the venetian light from the blinds, shotgun in hands. If he feels self-conscious or vulnerable in this state, he doesn’t show it.
His eyes go to the clown’s Doc Martens.
The man who emerges from that hospital room three minutes later is like an apparition, naked except for heavy boots and a tactical vest, side wound weeping like Jesus on the cross. His black hair, shorn at the temples, stands straight up, and there is blood on his face, like war paint. He moves quickly, weapon up, headed for the stairs.
Samson
There are moments in history that defy comprehension. Moments where the world as you know it ends and is replaced by something unrecognizable. Moments where the human mind tries and fails to orient itself. This failure can last for seconds or years. When the Crow Indians were forced from their nomadic existence onto settlements by white generals, they lacked not only a way to orient themselves to their new reality, but the concepts with which to understand who they were now or what the world had become. They literally had no idea what was happening.
This is how Felix feels when the back doors of the van open and the insurgents surround them. Everywhere he looks he sees chaos. The airfield is overrun with revolutionary cosplay warriors. Seditionist frontiersmen, confederate soldiers, and human yetis in tactical ghillie suits. Grown men wander the tarmac wearing animal pelts and flak jackets, wielding primitive blades. In the distance, Felix spots an Uncle Sam dressed in red, white, and blue, standing next to six cowboys with spurs and ten-gallon hats. They take turns posing for selfies with mulleted Aryans in pin-striped uniforms, carrying baseball bats.
Black smoke fills the air, flames from burning vehicles.