S is for Simon struck down by regret.
“Don’t,” says Simon, shoving her arm, instinctually foiling what can only be called murder.
Her rifle goes off, blowing apart the light over their head. Glass and metal rain down.
“Shit,” says Katniss, wrestling the gun down, as the deputies turn, their own guns coming up. Then the Prophet is in front of Simon, his arms up.
“Tranquilo,” he says. “Tranquilo.”
The deputies open fire. They are maybe fifteen feet away. Simon crouches instinctually, Katniss diving to the ground. But the Prophet formerly known as Paul stands without flinching, his hands raised in the universal sign for peace.
Bullets whiz past them, kicking up dirt, ricocheting off the metal structures, and then Katniss is up, squeezing off six responding rounds in contained bursts, and the deputies go down.
The USA Today article said that all twenty-five Tokyo schoolchildren climbed onto the rail of the bridge together. There was a cell phone photo of them up there, holding hands, as what must have been their teacher ran to intervene, arms outstretched, his mouth open. Then together they stepped off into the void, plummeting without sound to the raging Sumida River below.
Children no more.
Simon pictures their teacher standing at the rail, shouting, weeping, looking for survivors.
The deputies are down. Gun smoke fills the air. Simon straightens. The Prophet lowers his arms. There isn’t a scratch on him. Somehow, at impossibly short range, he has been spared.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” he says.
Katniss crouch-runs over, checks the bodies. They are folded together awkwardly, collapsed in the dirt. Behind them, the SUV is full of holes.
S is for Simon somehow still alive.
“Get their keys,” Simon hears himself say.
Katniss, beginning to stand, stops and grabs a key ring from the nearest deputy’s belt. “Stay behind me,” she says, moving toward the nearest Quonset hut door.
Simon grabs the Prophet’s hand. Time has stopped making sense. The edges of his vision threaten to close in. People are dead. Riddled with bullets. There is a feeling in his belly that can only be described as exhilaration. It feels like he has gone crazy.
“It’s okay,” the Prophet tells him. “It’s all part of God’s plan.”
Katniss reaches the Quonset hut door. She tosses the key to Simon, motions for him to open it and step back. Dull-witted, in shock, Simon misses the key ring and has to scramble in the dirt to get it. He comes up fumbling, adrenaline shaking his hands. After what feels like an eternity, he finds the right key and slips it into the lock. Only as he turns the key and yanks on the handle does he think about what may wait for them on the other side.
S is for Simon who angered the hive.
The first shot catches Katniss in the arm, spins her sideways.
“Ogres,” says the Prophet.
Another shot from inside, the muzzle flash lighting up the night. Still holding the door, Simon sees a hulking figure inside the doorway, weapon high, belly distended, mouth distorted in anger and fear. Overhead, a bloodred emergency bulb colors him in hellish light.
Ogre.
The second bullet whizzes past Simon’s ear. He is too stunned to duck. Behind the agent, a hundred cowering children scream through a chain-link fence, their faces painted red.
Ogre.
And then Simon feels himself freeing the shotgun from his shoulder—am I doing that?—feels it move into his hands—stop! don’t—the barrel rising, his right hand clicking off the safety.
Simon—could it be he is an instrument of the Lord?—pulls the trigger.
Boom, says the shotgun. The kick of it is so strong the shotgun rips out of his hands and flies backward out the door, as—in what feels like slow motion—the ogre tilts backward and tumbles into darkness, blown out of his shoes, quivering with electric shock. Blue sparks paint the wall as the ogre convulses, making a series of glottal grunts and shrieks.
In the stillness that follows, the stench of cordite hangs over them. Children whimper and scream.
“It’s okay,” the Prophet tells them, stepping inside. “Está bien. Somos amigos. Amigos.”
Simon turns and throws up in the dirt. Behind him, Katniss has torn off one of her shirtsleeves and tied it around her left arm to stop the bleeding. She pushes Simon inside, her fingers dripping blood. The Prophet goes to the cage door.
“Nosotros tambien somos ni?os,” he says. We’re children too.
“Juice boxes,” he says. “Doritos.”
Simon finds a bench, sits down, trying not to look at the deputy he shot. Not an ogre at all in the literal sense, but a man with a family. He can smell the electricity in the air, the smell of burnt flesh.