Lucy stood in the doorway, in shadow. She watched the weather roll in, felt the dampness on her face, the backs of her hands. The fine hairs on her forearms lifted. Her fingers twitched, the thumbs cocked, as if they were grasping Preach’s throat. She was aware of White, a mousy-seeming man at his side, and, of course, Preach, but she saw them all as though through a scrim, indistinct and muzzy. It was as if she had finally arrived at a far-off place, a shingle of beach that abutted a vast ocean across which was a promontory inhabited by the others, a bit of land she had once been to, but was now a distant memory. The stir of breeze, fitful before dying, the thick layers of clouds, the coming storm were all more real to her, companions that sang in her ear, speaking in tongues, while the three men babbled on to no effect, as if they were apes failing at human speech.

And then, turning, she became aware of what she should have seen sooner: Preach wasn’t among the babbling apes; he was part of the landscape, along with the wind and the clouds and the incoming rain. He inhabited the same place she did, an outside place, where neither shadows nor light could survive. They were beached together.

At the precise moment of her revelation, he turned to face her. His grin was terrifying, though she had promised herself that he would never terrify her again. He began to walk toward her, and she felt her skin scrawl. She wanted to back up, to run, but she was rooted to the spot.

“Ready or not,” he said, “here I come.”

*   *   *

Whitman turned the wheel hard over, just missing the first land mine, but his altered course led him right into the second, and the detonation brought the jeep to its knees. The windshield blew inward. Bleeding from a number of cuts, none of them deep, he and Charlie leapt out of the jeep, ran on foot across the inner perimeter. Inside the circle of land mines, they crouched down, moving crabwise among the trees, using the trunks as cover.

“You okay?” Charlie whispered.

He nodded. “You?”

She grinned at him.

“They’ll have more surprises to throw at us.”

Her grin widened as she slapped the side of her backpack. “I have everything in here except a fire-breathing dragon.”

“No, that man over there’s got one of those.” Whitman indicated Albin White standing on the porch with a shotgun cradled in his arms. “That shotgun is loaded with incendiary iron pellets, one of which will cause your clothes to burst into flame.”