Beatrice didn't move. Her hands were still clamped to the steering wheel.

"I'm not going anywhere," Trey snapped, "until you tell me what the hell's going on here."

Harp pulled the trigger.

The explosion was deafening, and Trey wasn't sure but that he actually felt and heard the bullet barely miss his cheek before it pocked a hole in the windshield.

Beatrice didn't even flinch.

"Out," Harp repeated.

A million tough guy movies, a million tough guy books: you're bluffing, old man; if you really wanted me dead I'd be dead by now.

Trey swallowed, nodded, and opened his door, slid out, and stepped away from the sedan, hands away from his sides, fingers spread.

Harp followed, closed his door gently, and stood by the rear fender, inhaling slowly, deeply, without once shifting his aim from Trey's heart. He adjusted his hat by tugging at the brim. Then his hand and the gun disappeared into his jacket pocket. His free hand smoothed the lapels, touched the perfectly folded handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket.

"You do understand," he said mildly, "that we're no longer inside the city limits."

Trey did. It was an agitated pair of wings in his stomach, a weight on his shoulders more than the heat that still pressed on the desert and made bleak the mountains' slopes. It was a feeling he thought he had banished more than two years ago, to a place in his dreams where he seldom visited, and when he did, not by choice.

Beatrice left the car, sunglasses but no hat. She stood on the other side of the hood, fingers tucked into her waistband.

"It's amazing, isn't it," Harp said, waving his hand at the browning grass, the scrub, a stunted Joshua tree not far from the car. All that was missing was the bleached skull of a steer. "Because of the sunlight, you can't see anything but the desert. You'd never know a large city was only a few miles from here. Quite an image, don't you think?"

Trey said nothing, and made no plans to overpower the old man, steal the car, and get out of here.

A million movies, a million books, but he was a gambler, not a hero.

And Harp was a hell of a lot tougher than he looked.

2.

"Mr. Falkirk," Harp said, "I have bungled this entire affair quite badly, and I must apologize. Had I not been so ..." A hand fluttered in search of a word.

"Stuffy," Beatrice said.

"Yes. Well. Perhaps. Nevertheless-"

"Pompous."

Harp stiffened, thrust out his chin. "All right. But-"

"Damnably inscrutable."

Trey, struggling to keep a straight face, watched the old man turn his head slowly and stare at his wife, who walked around the car, shaking her head.

"Damnit, John." No sir this time. "If you hadn't insisted on playing games with the poor man, we wouldn't be in this awful mess."

"I was merely trying to educate him, my dear. Under the circumstances, not such a bad idea."

"But you wasted all our time!" She shook her head, closed her eyes, sagged against the car. "Mr. Falkirk, I'm so sorry. I'm as much at fault as Sir John, and I'm so terribly sorry."

Trey knew something had to be said at this point, but the situation was so ludicrous all he could do was shrug a no big deal, and wait. Especially since he didn't know what the deal was.

"She's right, of course," Harp said to him, barely a hint of contrition. "We're both at fault. We have both fumbled our precious time, and now we must hurry."

"Fine," Trey said. "Hurry for what? Where? And don't," he added, suddenly pointing at the old man, "answer me with one of your damn questions. I've been to school, I know the method, and it isn't working, since you and I don't seem to be speaking the same language."

Harp sucked his lips between his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and smiled. Dipped his head in a slight bow. Took his left hand from his pocket, but left the gun behind. Tapped thoughtfully on his chin.

"No," Beatrice scolded quietly. "No time for poses. Just tell him and let's leave before she knows we're here."

"Who?" Trey said. "Eula?"

They looked at him intently; Harp nodded.

"Too late," he told them. "She already knows. In fact, she told me just a while ago to tell you it's too late. Or, too little too late. Something like that."

"Oh, my God," Beatrice whispered, and covered her eyes with one hand.

Patience, Trey cautioned himself when he felt his temper stir; patience. For a while.

Eula was right about one thing, though-they both seemed afraid of her.

Harp took out his handkerchief, took off his hat, and mopped his brow and hairline. His hand trembled.

"It's rather simple, when you look at it the right way," he said as he replaced the hat, tugged again at the brim. A tremble in his voice as well. "Those questions, Mr. Falkirk, were neither frivolous nor were they meant to be provocative. You are able to do the thing you do not because of those spirits that old Indian told you about, but because you are different from anyone else. Special, in a way you yourself have often considered, and discarded because you did not want to be special.

"You cannot be hurt within the boundaries of this city, because you are protected. You are in danger outside the city, because you are not protected. You learned that quite well and rather painfully over the years as a dog learns a simple trick, and whenever you ever questioned the reasons, your only answer, the only safe answer, has been 'just because.'

"You do not ask yourself how long it will last because you do not want to know. I can tell you now, it will not be much longer.

"And you know it is also true that if you ever venture ' out of the city again for any distance or any reason, if you ever get in trouble again beyond the protection's reach, as you suffered the last time, you. . ." He shrugged helplessly. "You will probably die."

Trey wanted to hit him, he wanted to sit, he wanted to walk away, he wanted to scream.

With little breath left in him he lowered himself into a crouch, resting awkwardly on his heels, balancing on his toes, the fingertips of one hand spread on the ground for support.

"How we know this is not important, but-"

"Yes, it is," he said, looking up, seeing the old man against the distant mountain slope, the white suit ignoring the sun's red light. "What are you, magicians or something? Some kind of psychics? Angels, demons, what?"

Beatrice took off her scarf and wrapped it around her hands, over and over. "We're not supernatural or divine, if that's what you're asking, Mr. Falkirk. We're all too ordinary, I'm afraid. We've just been given something we have to do, and we're not doing it well at all."

"Given by whom? And what the hell does Eula have to do with all this?"

"Trey," said Harp, so forcefully, so gently, that Trey almost lost his balance. "A good gambler is more than a good liar, you know. He is also a good listener. And surely you've been listening to what's happening out here, outside the city, since you've gone to ground."

"How can you help it?" he answered, poking at the ground, flicking dust off his boots. "People killing each other all over the place, people starving, this damn Sickness . . . how the hell can you help not noticing?"

"Death," the old man said. "Famine. Plague." He sighed and shook his head. "As they say these days, perhaps it's time you did the math."

"John," Beatrice cautioned.

His hand raised to stop her. "No, my dear. This time he must do it himself."

Trey scooped up a handful of grey sand, closed his hand, and let the sand escape slowly. "This is Millennium stuff you're talking about, right? Apocalypse, stuff like that. The Four Horsemen, and all that jazz?" He dusted his hand on his knee and stood, disappointed, disgusted. "You know, you two are as bad as that guy on the Strip. Counting the dead to the end of the world." He frowned, not bothering to work on dampening his exasperation or temper anymore. "Not that it makes any difference, but you're right, I have asked myself all those questions, and a hundred more you couldn't even begin to guess. And you're right, I have said 'just because,' because sometimes that's the right answer." A half step toward the car. "I am what I am, which is why I can do what I do. I don't drive myself nuts anymore trying to explain it.

"But that other crap, it's superstition, nothing more. I believe I'm going to get clobbered, so I let my guard down and I get the shit beaten out of me." A mirthless brief laugh as he shook his head. "I've been around too long, seen too much, Mr. Harp. If you're not going to tell me anything, fine. Great. Take me home." Another half step, "That's not a request, Mr. Harp. I mean it. Take me home."

Harp, slipped his hand back into the pocket.

Trey wanted to giggle, wanted to throw a punch.

"John," Beatrice said from behind her hand. "For God's sake, he's not listening, get it over with."

"Not listening?" Trey's voice rose. "Not listening? To what? I haven't heard anything but-" He stopped when he saw the gun. "Now look . . ."

Harp jerked his head to the right. "One or two miles that way, Mr. Falkirk, is the edge of the city. There's no sign, but it's there." His voice hardened. "We're not talking about your bloody stupid superstitions. But we are indeed talking about the end of the world."

Trey laughed.

John Harp shot him.

3.

He wasn't clear what happened next.

What he did know was that from reading descriptions of bullets entering flesh they usually mentioned a burning sensation. Which, he thought as his leg buckled and he toppled to the ground, was a crock of an understatement, because it felt as if someone had jammed a white hot poker into his left thigh so far that it popped out the other side.

He gripped his leg above the wound and yelled, rolled onto his side, and the world began to shift into shades of white and red. A voice he couldn't understand; the car starting and leaving; sitting up and spotting, a few feet away, a length of thin rubber tubing and a long piece of cloth.

Obscenities he didn't realize he knew dragged him over to the tubing, which he wrapped and tied tightly around the thigh just above the place where the blood ... he shuddered, gagged-there were holes front and back, and the blood ...

Jesus, he didn't know what he was doing. He had never taken first aid, had never seen a real gunshot wound, and he didn't know what he was doing, could only shake the dirt off the cloth and wrap and tie it over the thigh and watch it turn pale, then dark red.

And it hurt so much he could barely sit up, and his knee wouldn't bend, and that son-of-a-bitching old man had shot him, had stood there calm as could be and shot him and left him here to die. Bleed to death. Just to prove what, that he was mortally vulnerable outside Las Vegas?

That it was no superstition, that it was real, that he could really die?

He was afraid to let go of his leg, thinking that if he did all the blood would run out. All of it.

He rocked and moaned, bit hard enough on his lower lip to draw blood which, when he tasted it, he spat out as his stomach exploded bile into his throat. He spat that put as well, rocking, moaning, blinking furiously to rid his vision of the tears that blinded him. Realizing he was perilously close to hyperventilating and passing out, which would mean ...

Swallowing hard, licking his lips, he concentrated on breathing as normally as he could. Slowly, tentatively, virtually one finger at a time, he released the grip on his leg, braced his left hand on the ground beside him, and watched the red cloth gleam in the sunset, watched streaks of red sink into his jeans. He almost panicked again, felt his breathing hitch and stutter before slowing to as close to calm as it was ever going to get. Another swallow while he wiped his face, his eyes, and understood that he was, in fact, alone.

Get it over with, she had said.

"Jesus," he whispered. "Jesus."

They had planned it; they had goddamn planned it.

Still rocking, no longer moaning, he looked around and saw nothing but desert, and the sun touching the top of the range far to his right.

Alone.

So what do you do? he asked himself.

He answered, ask a stupid question.

If he stayed, waiting for some miracle to provide him with a savior who just happened to be driving around the middle of nowhere, he would probably bleed to death. The tourniquet and the cloth had stemmed but not stopped the flow, and his leg grew increasingly numb . . . except for the pain.

One or two miles that way, Sir John had told him.

Son of a bitch, what choice did he have?

It took several tries, several cries, before he flailed to his feet, neck muscles bulging, sweat drenching him head to foot as he waited for the poker to stop jabbing him and settle into a constant fiery throbbing.

Another cry, less of anguish than of rage, when he took his first step and the injured leg crumpled and he fell and rolled onto his back and cursed the sky no longer sharp and blue.

Screw it, he thought; I'm gonna stay here.

Screw it, he thought, and cursed himself back to standing and, after a few halting tries, discovered that if he sort of dragged the bad leg he could sort of walk-hop without falling, without passing out.

Every step reigniting the fire; every step releasing just a little more blood, he could feel it mingling with the sweat on his leg.

He could feel it slipping down into his boots.

Step and grunt, step and swear.

He felt light-headed, queasy, and furious enough not to let that stop him. It did, however, blur his thinking for a while, until he realized he could wander off in the wrong direction, and latched onto the tracks the car had made. With his left hand holding on to the back of his thigh, he soon slipped into a rhythm, a routine.