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the surface so pocked and windswept it resembles the dark side of the moon. “There!—See ’em?!”
    â€œWhere?” The preacher cranes his neck, slowing the vehicle down to a crawl. “I don’t see a thing.”
    â€œAbout a half mile up yonder, see?” The woman is positively vibrating with excitement. “Whole slew of ’em! See the taillights?”
    Jeremiah Garlitz takes in a deep, cleansing breath as he finally sees the caravan chugging along the coastal road. In the predawn light, it looks like a ribbon of burning embers throwing gouts of smoke in its wake. “Yes, ma’am, I surely do!” Jeremiah’s big, barrel-shaped chest puffs with relief. “Whaddaya think of that, boys?”
    The two young men in the rear seats lean forward, transfixed by the sight, each of them rapt and silent as they gaze at the convoy.
    â€œGive ’em a blast on your horn!” Norma Sutters wrings her hands anxiously. “Don’t let them get away!”
    Jeremiah smiles to himself. In his former life, he used to be fascinated by wildlife shows on television. He would record them on the VCR in the back of his trailer for later viewing, and he would watch them between revival meetings late at night for hours on end before turning in. He remembers one episode in particular, on the behavior of sheep versus the behavior of wolves. He remembers the flock mentality: the sheep moving almost as one, a school of helpless fish, easily managed by a single sheepdog. He remembers the instinct of the wolf—stealthy, solitary, patient—as it creeps up on the flock.
    He shoots a glance across the dark interior at the heavyset little woman. “I got a better idea.”
    *   *   *
    Father Patrick Liam Murphy, ordained Catholic priest and former head of Jacksonville’s Most Holy Redeemer Parish, doesn’t see the unexpected obstruction in the middle of the road until it’s almost too late. The problem is, the slender, silver-haired priest has diarrhea of the mouth—perhaps an occupational hazard for someone charged with sermonizing, counseling, and easing fevered brows.
    He sits behind the wheel of his rumbling Winnebago, relentlessly chewing the ear off his protégé, James Frazier, who’s slumped in the cab’s passenger seat, struggling to pay attention. “May I remind you, Jimmy, that there are two distinct versions of Christ, and the one of whom you speak now, in your insolent and narrow perspective, is the one we call the ‘historic’ Jesus, who lived and breathed and walked the earth a couple of millennia ago, but also the one who is merely the vessel for the second version, the one that matters, the one who is the absolute true son of—”
    â€œLOOK OUT!”
    James Frazier, an angular man of thirty-three, blond-whiskered and dressed in ragged denim, sits up with a start, eyes wide and fixed on something he sees through the massive windshield. Father Murphy jerks the wheel and stands on the brakes. The contents of the RV shift in the back, water bottles, canned goods, tools, and weapons tumbling off their shelves and cubbies. Both men slam forward as the trailer skids to a sudden halt.
    The priest flops back in his seat, blinking, breathless. In his side mirror, he sees the long line of vehicles behind him—pickup trucks, RVs, four-wheelers, and a few sedans—forming a chain reaction of lurching skids, the members of the caravan screeching to a stop, one by one, in a billowing cloud of carbon monoxide.
    â€œDear Lord, what’s this?” The priest sucks in a breath, still gripping his steering wheel, as he tries to focus on the figure standing blithely in their path less than twenty yards ahead of them.
    The man is tall, Caucasian, dressed in a tattered black suit, and has one of his big muddy Wellington boots propped up on the front fender of a fancy Cadillac SUV—the big black kind often