Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz Page A

evidence of cunning adversaries and vast conspiracies.
    Having led a fortunate, cozy, and—after the night of my birth—happily uneventful life, I had made no enemies of whom I was aware. Yet I surveyed the second- and third-story windows overlooking the town square, convinced I would spot a sniper drawing a bead on me.
    Until that moment, my assumption had always been that whatever misfortune befell me on the five days would be impersonal, an act of nature: lightning strike, snakebite, cerebral thrombosis, incoming meteorite. Or otherwise it might be an accident resulting from the fallibility of my fellow human beings: a runaway concrete truck, a runaway train, a faultily constructed propane tank.
    Even stumbling into the middle of a bank robbery and being shot would be a kind of accident, considering that I could have delayed my banking errand by taking a walk in the park, feeding squirrels, getting bitten, and contracting rabies.
    Now I was paralyzed by the possibility of
intent,
by the realization that an unknown person might consciously select me as the object upon which to visit mayhem and misery.
    He didn’t have to be anyone I knew. Most likely he would be a crazed loner. Some homicidal stranger with a grudge against life, a rifle, plenty of hollow-point ammunition, and a supply of tasty high-protein power bars to keep him alert during a long standoff with the police.
    Many windowpanes blazed with orange reflections of the afternoon sun. Others were dark, at angles that didn’t take the solar image; any of those might have been open, the gunman lurking in the shadows beyond.
    In my paralysis I became convinced that I possessed the talent for precognition that Grandpa Josef had displayed on his deathbed. The sniper was not just a possibility; he was
here,
finger on the trigger. I had not imagined him, but had sensed him clairvoyantly, him and my bullet-riddled future.
    I tried to continue forward and then attempted to retreat, but I couldn’t move. I felt that a step in the wrong direction would take me into the path of a bullet.
    Of course as long as I stood motionless, I made a perfect target. Rational argument, however, couldn’t dispel the paralysis.
    My gaze rose from windows to rooftops, which might provide an even more likely roost for a sniper.
    So intense was my concentration that I heard but didn’t respond to the question until he repeated it: “I said—are you all right?”
    I lowered my attention from the search for a sniper to the young man standing on the sidewalk in front of me. Dark-haired, green-eyed, he was handsome enough to be a movie star.
    For a moment I felt disoriented, as though I had briefly stepped outside the flow of time and now, stepping in again, could not adjust to the pace of life.
    He glanced toward the rooftops that had concerned me, then fixed me with those remarkable eyes. “You don’t look well.”
    My tongue felt thick. “I…just…I thought I saw something over there.”
    This statement was peculiar enough to tweak an uncertain smile from him. “You mean something in the sky?”
    I couldn’t explain that my focus had been on rooftops, because it seemed this would lead me inexorably to the revelation that I had been mesmerized by the possibility of a sniper.
    Instead, I said, “Yes, uh, in the sky, something…odd,” and at once realized that this statement made me seem no less peculiar than talk of a sniper would have done.
    “UFO, you mean?” he asked, revealing a lopsided smile as winning as that of Tom Cruise at his most insouciant.
    He might in fact have been a well-known actor, a rising star. Many entertainment figures vacationed in Snow Village.
    Even if he had been famous, I wouldn’t have recognized him. I didn’t have that much interest in movies, being too busy with baking and family and life.
    The only film I’d seen that year had been
Forrest Gump.
Now I supposed that I must appear to have the IQ of the title character.
    Heat blossomed in my