“The only way to stop a bad man with a gun is a kid with a gun.”
He holsters his gun, spits in the dirt.
“Randall Flagg,” he says, offering his hand. “The Dark Man, the Walking Dude.”
“Isn’t that a character from a Stephen King story?” Simon asks.
“What do you mean story?” Duster asks.
Simon frowns. “You know—a story,” he says. “A made-up story.”
Randall Flagg exhales a plume of smoke. “No,” he says. “That shit happened.”
“The world ended and the devil took over Las Vegas.”
Flagg nods.
“Then how are we here today?” Simon asks.
“Look,” says Randall Flagg. “It’s a fictional world, dude. Why can’t I be a fictional character?”
For the life of him, Simon can’t think of a reason.
Randall Flagg looks around.
“We should get inside. A lotta boogaloos at this rodeo.”
They start walking, flanked by the others.
“Boogaloos?” asks Simon.
“The Hawaiian-shirt crowd, fighters of the coming race war, also known as the Big Igloo or the Big Luau. You remember Capitol Hill—all those jokers with body armor, live streaming anarchy.”
“Clowns?” Simon asks.
“Sure,” says Flagg. “Clown World is real. Those are some serious barracudas. We get two notches for each clown we take out.”
“Seriously?”
Flagg pulls back his duster to show his six-shooter.
“This shit ain’t theoretical, Mr. Ivy League.”
“I’m fifteen.”
“What can I say? I’m a time traveler from the future back with your 401（k） millions and your house keys in Greenwich fucking Connecticut.”
Simon’s thumbs are tingling. He fingers the paper bag in his pocket.
They reach a tented enclosure—tarps hung in a rough rectangle next to a corral of dirt bikes. Inside are camping mats, a cooktop, and a battered cooler. Randall is the last one in, casting around the woods for spies before closing the curtains. Inside, Louise finds a small battery-powered hand fan and holds it up to her face, blades spinning.
“Mercy,” she says.
Flagg crosses to the cooler. It’s full of ice water and chocolate milks. He reaches deep, pulls out a ziplock bag. Inside is an old flip phone. He hands the bag to the Prophet.
“I found your guy, Javier. Wasn’t easy. His number’s in the phone. It’s good for one call. Then torch that shit or SWAT teams are gonna rain down on you like hellfire.”
The Prophet unzips the wet bag, takes out the phone. “Four three two,” he says, reading the area code on the number. “Where’s that?”
“West Texas, Daddy,” says a heavyset Chicano kid with a wispy mustache, wearing a Heinz ketchup T-shirt.
“Don’t call until you’re close,” says Flagg, opening a cold chocolate milk. “I don’t know how much time you’ll have.”
The Prophet puts the phone in his pocket. “And you’ll take us?” he says.
Flagg punches the tiny straw into the milk carton. “For ten thousand.”
“Dollars?” says Louise.
“We take Bitcoin,” says a girl they call Katniss, her black hair pinched in pigtails.
The Prophet puts his hand on Simon’s back. “He’s good for it,” he says.
Simon turns. “Me?”
The Prophet meets his eye. “No one ever said redemption was free.”
Goblins
Gabe Lin is a big believer in advertising. Announce yourself to the world, he tells people. Declare the man you want to be, and the world will see that man. He started his own private security force twelve months after making detective at Manhattan Vice. Chutzpah, some called it, but he knew the truth. That thought is action. If you visualize something, if you claim it without hesitation, then it is yours. That was when he got his first personalized license plate. It had come to him in a dream one night, the car, the plate, all of it, after he watched The Dark Knight at the local AMC.
A black Dodge Charger with a red racing stripe, the windows tinted as dark as the law allowed. Darker even. What good is being a cop, after all, if you can’t bend the rules a bit?
Goblin, that’s what he would call himself, and that’s what he would call his firm. Picture the license plate—black text on a yellow backing.
G0BL1N.
The rig was so badass that when it all came together, Gabe found himself grinning for weeks, even in the middle of a standard perp beat down. Nightstick out, Collins would dopesmack Gabe in the back of the head and say, What the fuck are you grinning at? And Gabe would turn on him, screw up his face and say—