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I seeht, before a stainless-steel platfor flae, in straight-backed chairs, sat three children: a boy of about eight, a girl of perhaps six, and an older girl whowith them They sat wide-eyed but slack-ed A white-haired man in a blood-red suit, black shirt, and blacka flamethrower He torched the children

The vision burst like a bubble, reality returned, and the cowboy and I staggered backward from each other, the pistol on the pavement between us His stunned expression and a wildness in his eyes told s: First, he’d seen the same vision that I had seen; second, he was the masked man in the red suit, and he already intended at some future date to set helpless children afire in an insane act of homicidal performance art

I had just experienced my first portent of the future that did not come in the form of a prophetic dream

He went for the dropped pistol, but I was able to kick it under the eighteen-wheeler even as his fingers were an inch from the prize

As if froht hand, and a thin six-inch blade sprang out of the yellow handle

I dislike guns, but I’m no fan of knives, and I carry neither I turned away fro lot, toward the market, where he wouldn’t dare slash at me in front of witnesses

Suddenly the entire world seemed to have turned hostile, as if the spirit of ultimate darkness had arrived to rule, his hour co as I ran ard, see lanced back, the cowboy trucker wasn’t co after me I couldn’t see him anywhere I slowed to a fast walk, so as not to draw attention to myself, and when the automatic door slid aside, I went into the coolness of the market

If I had been in Pico Mundo, my hometown, I would have knohat to do The chief of police there, Wyatt Porter, understood me and believed in me On my say-so, he would have detained the cowboy and searched the truck

But I had been on the road for so where s that I could not hear but to which my blood responded Nobody in this place knew -addled paranoid, another piece of sad hue of the kind that littered the landscape of an A out of history in a world growing darker by the day

In theto be searching for a particularthe custo

Little ic Beach, I had for the first tinized a potential murderer On that occasion, into htht, and I had known that he must be part of a conspiracy to atomize American cities But I had not dreae

I didn’t expect the cowboy to followand head for whatever highway to Hell rammed into his GPS The vision surely rattled hio learned, expectations are fragile and easily shattered

The cowboy cah the north doors, spotted me at once, and approached purposefully He looked like a star in some parallel-world version of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, one that featured ers

I hurried down the cereal aisle, turned right, and crossed the big store to the produce section, buying time to think

Even if I could find a sympathetic shopper or a credulous clerk, or an off-duty police officer picking through the McIntosh apples, I couldn’t seek help froic Beach Bad people were in jail in that town, and other bad people were dead Hoht in at the end of those events by an anony soh they had no name I dared not attract the attention of the police in this smaller tohich was little ic Beach

In this big, complex, often mysterious world, I don’t pretend to know ht be the norance, I knoithout a doubt that if federal officers of any agency were to suspect that I possess paranormal abilities, I would spend the rest ofused for their purposes

I would also be studied and ht be the subject of unpleasant experienuine fear of scientists sawing openpins in various parts of my brain to determine if they canthe lead role in The Phantom of the Opera

A spectacle in black and red, the cowboy arrived in the produce departht, but his face announced his ibberish and capering like aabout this man than just his wardrobe and his taste for psychotic violence In spite of his flamboyance, he seemed to elicit no special interest from the shoppers or the market staff around us They appeared all but oblivious of him

Of course, a lot of people these days have developed a kind of radar to spot the nunition goes off in their o about their business as if they are tuned out of here and now, instead tuned in to their private realities: Look at that weird dude with blue fire shooting out of his eyes And look at these peaches! These are lovely peaches! I have never seen finer peaches than these superb peaches! And look at those grapes I’rapes Or oods and browse there until I have thought over this … this scary peaches-and-grapes thing for a while

But I suspected that he drew no attention for some other reason, which eluded me

The cowboy approached me and stopped on the other side of the wide display bin, which offered four varieties of apples on my side, potatoes and sweet potatoes and leeks on his side His fixed smile reminded me of a hyena, if a hyena had an excellent oral-health plan and a first-rate dentist

He said, "You come with me and answer some questions about what happened back there, and I’ll kill you easy You don’t co for groceries, and then I’ll kill you Want that on your conscience?"

I didn’t think this was a guy who ever bluffed He did what he wanted to do and ht be, however, he didn’t want to go to prison or to be shot down by police responding to the outrage that he had just now proposed

When I didn’t answer him, he drew the silencer-equipped pistol from under his sports coat and shot a cantaloupe on the pile that an elderly woe melon flesh flew into the air and spattered the shopper

She startled backward "Oh! Oh, goodness!"

Although the cowboy still held the Sig Sauer, when the woer on ister with her She was bewildered, not afraid