Mr. Murder

written many stories in which policemen and other characters handled weapons with the ease of familiarity, Marty was surprised by how unhesitatingly he had resorted to guns when trouble arose. After all, he was neither a man of action nor experienced in killing.
        His own life and then his family had been in jeopardy, but he would have thought, before learning differently, that he'd have reservations when his finger first curled around the trigger. He would have expected to experience at least a flicker of regret after shooting a man in the chest even if the bastard deserved shooting.
        He clearly remembered the dark glee with which he had emptied the Beretta at the fleeing Buick. The savage lurking in the human genetic heritage was as accessible to him as to any man, regardless of how educated, well-read, and civilized he was.
        What he had discovered about himself did not displease him as much as perhaps it should. Hell, it didn't displease him at all.
        He knew that he was capable of killing any number of men to save his own life, Paige's life, or the lives of his children. And although he swam in a society where it was intellectually correct to embrace pacifism as the only hope of civilization's survival, he didn't see himself as a hopeless reactionary or an evolutionary throwback or a degenerate but merely as a man acting precisely as nature intended.
        Civilization began with the family, with children protected by mothers and fathers willing to sacrifice and even die for them.
        If the family wasn't safe any more, if the government couldn't or wouldn't protect the family from the depredations of rapists and child molesters and killers, if homicidal sociopaths were released from prison after serving less time than fraudulent evangelists who embezzled from their churches and greedy hotel-rich millionairesses who underpaid their taxes, then civilization had ceased to exist.
        If children were fair game-as any issue of a daily paper would confirm they were-then the world had devolved into savagery. Civilization existed only in tiny units, within the walls of those houses where the members of a family shared a love strong enough to make them willing to put their lives on the line in the defense of one another.
        What a day they'd been through. A terrible day. The only good thing about it was-he had discovered that his fugue, nightmares, and other symptoms didn't result from either physical or mental illness. The trouble was not within him, after all. The boogeyman was real.
        But he could take minimal satisfaction from that diagnosis. Although he had regained his self-confidence, he had lost so much else.
        Everything had changed.
        Forever.
        He knew that he didn't even yet grasp just how dreadfully their lives had been altered. In the hours remaining before dawn, as he tried to think what steps they must take to protect themselves, and as he dared to consider the few possible origins of The Other that logic dictated, their situation inevitably would seem increasingly difficult and their options narrower than he could yet envision or admit.
        For one thing, he suspected that they would never be able to go home again.
        He wakes half an hour before dawn, healed and rested.
        He returns to the front seat, switches on the interior light, and examines his forehead and left eye in the rearview mirror. The bullet furrow in his brow has knit without leaving any scar that he can detect.
        His eye is no longer damaged-or even bloodshot.
        However, half his face is crusted with dried blood and the grisly biological waste products of the accelerated healing process. A portion of his countenance looks like something out of The Abominable Dr.
        Phibes or Darkman.
        Rummaging in the glove compartment, he finds a small packet of Kleenex.
        Under the tissues is a travel-size box of Handi Wipes, moistened towelettes sealed in foil packets. They have a lemony scent.
        Very nice. He uses the Kleenex and towelettes to scrub the muck off his face, and he smooths out his sleep-matted hair with his hands.
        He won't frighten anyone now, but he is still not presentable enough to be inconspicuous, which is what he desires to be. Though the bulky raincoat, buttoned to the neck, covers his bullet-torn shirt, the shirt reeks of blood and the variety of foods that he spilled on it during his