“Are you talking about a gun?” Cole asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to shoot somebody?”

“It’s only to protect us, buddy.”

“But you might have to kill someone?”

“Hopefully not.” Jack watched Dee thumb another semijacketed round into the magazine.

“How many will it hold?” she asked.

“Nine, I think.”

“Where are we going, Jack?”

“Lomas Boulevard, then the interstate.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to work that-” Two sets of headlights appeared a hundred yards ahead. “Jesus Christ.”

“You see them, Jack?”

“Of course I see them.”

“What’s happening, Dad?”

In the rearview mirror, a third set of headlights rushed toward them.

“Jack, do something.”

His foot depressed the brake pedal into the floorboard.

“Jack.”

“Sit up kids.”

“What are you doing?”

“Naomi, Cole, sit up. Give me the gun.”

Dee handed over the.45, which he stowed under his seat.

“What are you doing, Jack?”

He took his foot off the brake, the Discovery nearing the roadblock.

“Jack, tell me what you’re-”

“Shut up. Everybody shut up.”

A large oak had been felled across the road, the middle section excised and two pickup trucks parked in front, blocking passage, their highbeams glaring into the night.

Dee said, “Oh, God, they’re armed.”

Jack counted four people standing in front of the vehicles, silhouetted by the headlights. One of their them came forward as the Discovery closed within ten yards-a man wearing an Isotopes baseball cap and a red windbreaker. He trained a shotgun on the Discovery’s windshield and extended his right hand for Jack to stop.

Jack shifted into park, locked the doors.

“I’ll do the talking. Nobody say a word.”

The third truck pulled within several feet of the Discovery’s back bumper, its headlights halfway up the glass of the back hatch, so they shone directly into the rearview mirror.