Lightning

one arm. She propped the Uzi by the back door and found she could not lift him even with both arms. It seemed dangerous to move a man who was so badly hurt, but more dangerous to leave him in the frigid night, especially when someone was apparently in pursuit of him. She managed to half lift and half drag him into the kitchen, where she stretched him out on the floor. With relief she retrieved the Uzi, relocked the door, and engaged the alarm again.
    He was frighteningly pale and cold to the touch, so the immediate necessity was to strip off his shoes and socks, which were crusted with snow. By the time she dealt with his left foot and was unlacing his right shoe, he was mumbling in a strange language, the words too slurred for her to identify the tongue, and in English he muttered about explosives and gates and "phantoms in the trees."
    Though she knew that he was delirious and very likely could not understand her any more than she could understand him, she spoke to him reassuringly: "Easy now, just relax, you'll be all right; as soon as I get your foot out of this block of ice, I'll call a doctor."
    The mention of a doctor brought him briefly out of his confusion. He gripped her arm weakly, fixed her with an intense, fearful gaze. "No doctor. Get out… got to get out…"
    "You're in no condition to go anywhere," she told him. "Except by ambulance to a hospital."
    "Got to get out. Quick. They'll be coming… soon coming…"
    She glanced at the Uzi. "Who will be coming?"
    "Assassins," he said urgently. "Kill me for revenge. Kill you, kill Chris. Coming. Now."
    At that moment there was no delirium in his eyes or voice. His pale, sweat-slick face was no longer slack but taut with terror.
    All her training with guns and in the martial arts no longer seemed like hysterical precautions. "Okay," she said, "we'll get out as soon as I've had a look at that wound, see if it needs to be dressed."
    "No! Now. Out now."
    "But—"
    "Now," he insisted. In his eyes was such a haunted look, she could almost believe that the assassins of whom he spoke were not ordinary men but creatures of some supernatural origin, demons with the ruthlessness and relentlessness of the soulless.
    "Okay," she said. "We'll get out now."
    His hand fell away from her arm. His eyes shifted out of focus, and he began to mumble thickly, senselessly.
    As she hurried across the kitchen, intending to go upstairs and wake Chris, she heard her guardian speak dreamily yet anxiously of a "great, black, rolling machine of death," which meant nothing to her but frightened her nonetheless.

PART II
    Pursuit

    The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
    — SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Five
AN ARMY OF SHADOWS
1
    Laura switched on a lamp and shook Chris awake. "Get dressed, honey. Quickly."
    "What's happening?" he asked sleepily, rubbing his eyes with his small fists.
    "Some bad men are coming, and we've got to get out of here before they arrive. Now hurry."
    Chris had spent a year not only mourning his father but preparing for the moment when the deceptively placid events of daily life would be disrupted by another unexpected explosion of the chaos that lay at the heart of human existence, the chaos that from time to time erupted like an active volcano, as it had done the night his father had been murdered. Chris had watched his mother become a first-rate shot with a handgun, had seen her collect an arsenal, had taken self-defense classes with her, and through it all he had retained the point of view and attitudes of a child, had seemed pretty much like any other child, if understandably melancholy since the death of his father. But now in a moment of crisis he did not react like an eight-year-old; he did not whine or ask unnecessary questions; he was not quarrelsome or stubborn or slow to obey. He threw back the covers, got out of bed at once, and hurried to the closet.
    "'Meet me in the kitchen," Laura said.
    "Okay, Mom."
    She was proud of his responsible reaction and relieved that he would not delay them, but she was also saddened that at eight years of age he understood enough about the brevity and harshness of life to respond to a crisis with the swiftness and equanimity of an adult.
    She was wearing jeans and a blue-plaid, flannel shirt. When she went to her bedroom, she only had to slip into a wool sweater, pull off her Rockport walking shoes, and put on a pair of rubberized hiking boots with lace-up tops.
    She had gotten rid of Danny's clothes, so she had no