Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

"Maybe the storm brought down the lines," Jack said. "Aren't the phone lines on the same poles as the power and we have power, so it wasn't the storm." the pegboard, he snatched the keys to the Explorer and to Eduardo's Cherokee.

"Okay, let's get the out of here. We'll drive over to Paul and Carolyn's, call Travis from there."

Heather tucked the yellow tablet into the waistband of her pants, against her stomach, and zipped her ski-jacket over it. She took the Micro Uzi and the Korth from the countertop, one in each hand. Toby scooted off his chair, Falstaff came out from under the table and padded directly to the connecting door between the kitchen and the garage. The dog seemed to understand that they were getting out, and he fully concurred with their decision.

Jack unlocked the door, opened it fast but warily, sing the threshold with the shotgun held in front of him, as if he expected their enemy to be in the garage. flipped the light switch, looked left and right, and said, "Okay."

Toby followed his father, with Falstaff at his side. Heather left last, glancing back at the windows. ow. Nothing but cold cascades of snow. Even with the lights on, the garage was murky. It was as chilly as a walk-in refrigerator. The big sectional roll-up door rattled in the wind, but she didn't push the button to raise it, they would be safer if they activated it with the remote from inside the Explorer.

While Jack made sure that Toby got in the back seat and buckled his safety belt and that the dog was in as well, Heather hurried to the passenger side. She watched the floor as she moved, convinced that something was under the Explorer and would seize her by the ankles.

She remembered the dimly and briefly glimpsed presence on the other side of the threshold when she had opened the door a crack in her dream Friday night. Glistening and dark. Writhing and quick. Its full shape had not been discernible, although she had perceived something large, with vaguely serpentine coils. From memory she could clearly recall its cold hiss of triumph before she had slammed the door and exploded from the nightmare.

Nothing slithered from under either vehicle and grabbed at her, however, and she made it safely into the front passenger seat of the Explorer, where she put the heavy Uzi on the floor between her feet.

She held on to the revolver. "Maybe the snow's too deep," she said as Jack leaned in the driver's door and handed her the twelve-gage. She braced the shotgun between her knees, butt against the floor, muzzle aimed at the ceiling… "The storm's a lot worse than they predicted." Getting behind the wheel, slamming his door, he said, "It'll be all right. We might push a little snow here and there with the bumper, but I don't think it's deep enough yet to be a big problem."

"I wish we'd had that plow attached first thing." Jack jammed the key in the ignition, twisted the switch, but was rewarded only with silence, not even the grinding of the starter. He tried again.

Nothing. He checked to be sure the Explorer wasn't in gear. Tried a third time without success. Heather was no more surprised than she had been when the phone proved to be dead. Although Jack said nothing and was reluctant to meet her eyes, she knew he had expected it too, which was why he had also brought the keys to the Cherokee.

While Heather, Toby, and Falstaff got out of the Explorer, Jack slipped behind the wheel of the other vehicle. That engine wouldn't turn over, either. He raised the hood on the Jeep, then the hood on the Explorer.

He couldn't find any problems. They went back into the house.

Heather locked the connecting door to the garage. She doubted that locks were of any use in keeping out the thing that now held dominion over Quartermass Ranch. For all they knew, it could walk through walls if it wished, but she engaged the dead bolt, anyway.

Jack looked grim. "Let's prepare for the worst."

Shatters of snow ticked and pinged against the windows in the ground-floor study. Though the outer world was whitewashed and full of glare, little daylight filtered into the room. Lamps with parchment shades cast an amber glow.

Reviewing their own guns and those that Eduardo had inherited from Stanley Quartermass, Jack chose to load only one other weapon: a Colt.45 revolver.

"I'll carry the Mossberg and the Colt," he told Heather. "You'll have the Micro Uzi and the thirty-eight. Use the revolver only as backup to the Uzi."

"That's it?" she asked. He regarded her bleakly. "If we can't stop whatever's coming at us with this much firepower, a third gun isn't going to do either of us a damned bit of good."

In one of the two drawers in the base of the gun cabinet, among other sporting paraphernalia, he found three game-hunting holsters that belted around the waist. One was crafted from nylon or rayon-some man-made fabric, anyway-and the other two were leather. Exposed to below-zero temperatures for an extended period, nylon would remain flexible long after the leather holster would stiffen, a handgun might snag or bind up slightly if the leather contracted around it… Because he intended to be outdoors while Heather remained inside, he gave her the most supple of the two leather rigs and kept the nylon for himself. Their ski suits were replete with zippered pockets. They filled many of them with spare ammunition, though it might be optimistic to expect to have a chance to reload after the assault began. That an assault would occur, Jack had no doubt.

He didn't know what form it would take-an entirely physical attack or a combination of physical and mental blows. He didn't know whether the damn thing would come itself or through surrogates, neither when nor from what direction it would launch its onslaught, but he knew it would come It was impatient with their resistance, eager to control and become them. Little imagination was required to see that it would next want to study them at much closer range, perhaps dissect them and examine their brains and nervous systems to learn the secret of their ability to resist. He had no illusions that they would be killed or anesthetized before being subjected to that exploratory surgery.

Jack put his shotgun on the kitchen table again. From one of the cupboards he removed a round galvanized-tin can, unscrewed the lid, and extracted a box of wooden matches, which he put on the table. While Heather stood watch at one window, Toby and Falstaff at the other, Jack went down to the basement. In the second of the two lower rooms, along the wall beside the silent generator, stood eight five-gallon cans of gasoline, a fuel supply they had laid in at Paul Youngblood's suggestion. He carried two cans upstairs and set them on the kitchen floor beside the table.

"If the guns can't stop it," he said, "if it gets inside, and you're backed into a corner, then the risk of fire might be worth taking."

"Burn down the house?"

Heather asked disbelievingly. "It's only a house. It can be rebuilt.

If you have no other choice, then to hell with the house. If bullets don't work-" He saw stark terror in her eyes. "They will work, I'm sure of that, the guns will stop it, especially that Uzi. But if by some chance, some one-in-a-million chance, that doesn't stop it, fire will get it for sure. Or at least drive it back. Fire could be just what you need to give you time to distract the thing, hold it off, and get out before you're trapped."

She stared at him dubiously. "Jack, why do you keep saying 'you' instead of 'we'?" He hesitated. She wasn't going to like this. He didn't like it much himself. There was no alternative. "You'll stay here with Toby and the dog while I-"

"No way."

"— while I try to get to the Youngbloods' ranch for help."

"No, we shouldn't split up."

"We don't have a choice, Heather."."It'll take us easier if we split up."