Margot thinks of her son, safe at the hotel, of her daughter, alive or dead. She has time only to grab her husband’s hand, to say a one-word prayer, and then—
“Long live the God King,” yells Senator LaRue, and everything goes white.
Boogaloo
The Prophet is asleep in his chair when the door bursts open and Homeland Security Nancy comes in with three other agents. They unchain him and hustle him from the room at a dead run, suspending him at the elbows. In the elevator, riding down, the Prophet yawns. He’d been having the most wonderful dream about utopia. Mountain streams and bison, spring snow and summer thaws. Nothing but children as far as the eye could see. They would build houses and grow their own crops. The dream is so vivid, he wakes up crying. But that’s tomorrow’s promise. He must live in the now, for this is the most dangerous moment of all, what happens in the next twenty-four hours. If Simon is free. If he has found the others. If they are moving north. After all, God can show us the path, but he can’t walk it for us.
8. A Scout Is Cheerful
“Are you taking us to Washington DC?” he asks.
“Quiet,” says one of the agents.
The elevator descends. The Prophet hums low in his throat. He has the resting heart rate of a man who knows what’s going to happen next.
“I told you it was close,” he says.
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.