Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz

by now.
    “I know you’re going to be major trouble,” he said. “I’d really like to put a bullet in your face.”
    “Yes, sir, I know you would. I appreciate that. But you really don’t have a reason to put a bullet in my face.”
    “The reason is I don’t like it.”
    “Besides, if you kill me, the girl I’m with will be upset, and Mr. Wolflaw is so charmed by her that he’ll be upset, too, and there goes your job. Not to mention prison, gang rape, and the loss of your right to vote.”
    Even the prospect of being turned away from the ballot box didn’t seem to faze him. “The girl’s not his type. She’s nobody’s type. The bitch creeps me out.”
    “Ah, sir, that’s just mean. She’s not a Victoria’s Secret model, but she’s pretty in her way.”
    “I’m not talking about how she looks. With this face, I’m gonna make fun of how other people look?”
    “Good point.”
    At last lowering the pistol, he said, “It’s how she stared at me the very first time I saw her. Like she’s a speed-reader and my whole story’s no longer than the list of ingredients on a cereal box.”
    I nodded. “She seems to look straight into your heart.”
    “Wasn’t any damn romance-novel moment,” Sempiterno said. “It was like I went through airport security and in ten seconds flat came out scoped, poked, and naked.”
    If you’re open to it, a smile can find you at the most unlikely times. “I like the way you say things, sir.”
    Again he favored me with that bruin-emasculating glare. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Nothing. Just that you have a way of putting things.”
    “I say what I say. I don’t care what you think.” He holstered his pistol. “If Noah Wolflaw, the idiot, wants you here, I can’t make you leave. But you better understand, pretty boy, he doesn’t love the girl and he doesn’t like you, he’s all about himself. And whatever he wants from you two—when he takes it, you’re going to wish to hell you’d listened to me and been long gone.”
    As he turned away from me, I said, “I’m thinking we’ll probably leave in the morning.”
    Having taken only two steps, he halted, facing me again. “Leave today. Don’t stay the night. Leave now.”
    “Maybe after lunch.”
    He stared at me as if, with his willpower alone, he could cause me to spontaneously combust. After a silence, he said, “Maybe I know after all why Wolflaw wants you here.”
    “Why?”
    Instead of answering me, he said, “Whatever you’re looking for in Roseland, you’ll find its opposite. If you want to live, look for death.”
    He turned away again and strode toward the conclave of massive oaks. At his approach, the whistling nuthatches in the aviary of branches all fell silent again. When he stepped into the shadows of the trees, the flock flew, wings rattling through the veils of oval leaves, and flung themselves into the sky, at risk of falcons.
    Among the trees I saw a battery-powered mini truck, a vehicle often used by landscapers, which was longer than a golf cart, smaller than a pickup, roofless, with two seats and an open cargo area. This one was jacked up on fat tires that, with other alterations, made it pretty much an all-terrain vehicle.
    Paulie Sempiterno got behind the wheel. Purring softly, the truckletseemed almost to float among the trees, out into the golden meadow, and toward the rise beyond which stood the main house.
    I don’t take offense at any rude names that I am called. I did find
pretty boy
sad, however, because I’m as ordinary looking as any actor who has ever played Tom Cruise’s pal in a movie and whose primary job is, by his very ordinariness, to make the star look even more extraordinary than he does in real life.
    When he sneered those two words, Mr. Sempiterno wasn’t mocking me; successful mockery must be based on at least a grain of truth. You can’t mock a dog for being a dog, but in trying to do so, you make yourself a person worthy of