4） Randall Flagg vaults the air stairs and lands in the open passenger door, gun out and up, the bodies of his enemies splayed out on the tarmac behind him. He shoots Liam under the right arm, the bullet passing through his heart and lodging in his left biceps, as the Prophet sprays predator piss into Boaz’s eyes, blinding him. The surviving Orci brother screams, stumbles back, bouncing off the sixty-inch wall-mounted television, as his brother falls. Flagg shoots him twice in the back, the bullets exiting through his chest and passing through the TV into the lavatory.
Sparks fly. The Orcs lie together, arms entwined.
In that moment, Bathsheba launches herself onto Mobley from the sofa, her hands going to his throat. Her knee drives itself into his crotch. Then she rears back and hits him again. His screams are choked and hysterical. Agony paralyzes his rational mind. Bathsheba knows the key to killing him is not to cut off his airway but to stop blood flow to his brain. She squeezes with all her strength, seeing the pain and fear in his eyes. She watches as he starts to lose consciousness. Then the Prophet and Simon are on her, pulling her free. Bathsheba, now Katie, shouts and kicks as they carry her back to the sofa.
“Get off me,” she screams. “I had him. I had him.”
Mobley sucks air, his hands on his crotch. It’s a miracle he doesn’t vomit. For the first time in decades he’s found a feeling his billions can’t numb or erase.
The Prophet crouches before Bathsheba, gazing at her with just the kindest eyes.
“You’re safe now,” he says. “We’re with Samson.”
“I had him,” Katie repeats, but the fight is leaving her, relief setting in.
Across from her, E. L. Mobley struggles to sit up.
For the first time in his life he has no idea what to say or do.
Simon sits across from him.
“I figured it out,” he repeats. “It’s grief. The five stages of death, right? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, but we’re all trapped in the first two stages. The whole country, or maybe the Earth. We’re in denial and we’re pissed, because something we love is dead, except, for half the country, what they’re grieving is the past they think they’ve lost, and the other half is mourning the progress they thought they’d made, but everyone feels the same way. Like someone they love is dead. And I get it. I’m grieving too. I miss her and I don’t want her to be dead, and I’m pissed.”
He leans toward the Wizard.
“But we can’t move on,” he says, “none of us, because you’re preying on us, you and the others, turning our grief into cash, keeping us angry, keeping us fighting, keeping us divided so you can take our children and bleed us dry.”
The Wizard drops the handkerchief in his lap.
“Are you finished?” he says, making no attempt to disguise the contempt he feels for them.
“No,” says Simon. “Because I’m not in denial. I’m pissed, sure, but I know what’s real. And what’s real is that you’re killing us. With your greed and your doublespeak. You’re killing our planet. And the only ones who can see it are the children. And that’s why we’re killing ourselves. Because the death we’re really grieving is our own.”
Bathsheba stands from the sofa and comes over. She’s trembling. “Kill him,” she says.
Simon looks at the Prophet.
“No,” says the holy man who once was a baby named Paul. “We need him for one last thing.”
Epilogue
The Legend of Yes and No
My daughter asked me how I’m going to end this book. I told her I wasn’t sure. Actually, what I said was—you got me.
I explained to her that her father is a romantic, which means he wants life to work out for people in the end. He wants good things to happen to those who do good and bad things happen to those who do ill. This is how we are, humanity. We want relationships to last. We want families to stay together. We like it when the good guy wins.
Fairy tales. I’m describing fairy tales.
My daughter said, Yeah, but how do you end a story when nothing ever really ends?
We’d been talking about World War One, which she’s been studying in history class, and I’d just finished telling her how you can’t really tell the story of World War One without telling the story of World War Two.
That’s how it goes. One thing leads to another.
The best you can hope for, I told her, is a feeling of catharsis. That something meaningful has changed. That growth has occurred.
And has it? she asked.