Randall Flagg gets back on his bike and drives on.
*
They move Avon into the backseat so he can stretch out, clearing the mountains near Bonnie Bell. Story pushes the needle to ninety-five mph. In back, Simon tears the sleeves from his hospital scrubs and fashions a bandage for Avon’s ear. He crouches in the footwell, applying pressure. Avon pulls up his shirt. There is a .40-caliber entrance wound above his left hip and a larger exit wound in the small of his back. Inside his body cavity, Avon’s kidney and spleen are a kind of toxic soup, mixing with his blood and viscera.
“It didn’t used to be like this,” he mutters, feverish now, his voice growly from years of smoking unfiltered Camels. “It used to be open and wild, and he’d let me sit in his lap and drive.”
“Who?” says Simon, then rings the bloody rag out onto the footwell.
“Daddy,” says Avon. He grabs Simon’s wrist. “Don’t you get it,” he says. “It used to be better. We used to be free.”
The farther east they drive, the more the air clears, until outside Whitewater they are able to roll down the windows and let in the first fresh air any of them have breathed in three days. The sun is rising when they stop for gas in Palm Springs. The back windshield is gone, the teal four-door exterior perforated with fifty-five holes. While the car is filling, Story goes into the shop and buys Simon a new outfit, yellow sweatpants, a thin white T-shirt with the blue and red Valvoline logo on it, and a pair of flip-flops. She also buys three rolls of paper towels and some duct tape.
“We’re taking him to the hospital, right?” says Simon, pulling the T-shirt on over his head, as Story changes Avon’s bandages, wrapping the gray tape around his waist.
“No hospitals,” mutters Avon, seemingly from sleep.
An Amazon delivery truck drives by, beginning its daily rounds, despite the melee.
The backseats are fabric and have absorbed most of the blood. A red Mercedes pulls into the next pump. A balding man in a pink polo shirt and cargo shorts gets out. There is a sidearm strapped to his waist.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he asks them, swiping his card. He sets the nozzle, then goes inside. In his mind, the equation is clear. He’s the one with the gun and they’re the ones with the car full of bullet holes. Losers, in other words.
Story screws the Kia’s gas cap back on. She goes over and peers into the Mercedes.
“Story,” warns Simon, but Story leans in through the open window and grabs the preppy asshole’s cell phone. Then she is sliding into the Kia’s driver’s seat as the bald avenger comes out of the shop, carrying a blue Slurpee.
She hands Simon the phone, puts the car in gear. They pull out onto the road.
Story changes lanes, driving the speed limit. They pass a supermarket where all the windows have been smashed. Looters run out carrying frozen meat and ice cream, charcoal briquettes and box cereals.
Simon scrolls through the stolen phone. He finds Instagram, sees the original photo of Louise holding her sign. Under that are a series of images of basset hound puppies shaking their flappy lips. Then he finds a photo of an aquarium in the window display of a store. He shows Story.
“Look it up,” she says.
He finds three pet stores in Palm Springs. Only one sells aquariums. It’s in the north part of town. The phone relays directions, a left, a right, straight for two miles. They pass six police cars along the way, blue and reds flashing, and a dozen private security vehicles, some of them tactical. The corpses of weekend warriors litter the road. Here in moneyed Palm Springs, the wealthy are leaving nothing to chance. Story turns into a strip mall parking lot. Ulysses Pet Emporium is straight ahead, next to Angel’s Sporting Goods on the left and a nail salon on the right. At 2:00 a.m. everything is shuttered and dark.
“Go around back,” says Simon.
They park in the loading bay, in front of a rolling garage door.
Simon opens his door.
“Here,” says Avon from the backseat. He had been asleep until now, moaning and talking to long-dead relatives. Simon looks back. Avon is up on one elbow, offering Simon his pistol. Simon thinks about arguing but doesn’t. He knows the journey they’re on. He takes the gun, approaches the back door. In the distance, to the west, he can see the mountains burning, a red zipper drawn across the horizon.
He raps on the back door quietly with his knuckles, waits. Story is outside the car, standing by the driver’s door, engine still running, ready to make a quick getaway if it turns out to be a trap.