Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

"Probably won't make a difference."

"I think it will."

"This shotgun doesn't add much to that Uzi." He gestured at the whiteout beyond the window. "Anyway, we can't all make it through that weather." She stared morosely at the wall of blowing snow, unable to argue the point.

"I could make it," Toby said, smart enough to know that he was the weak link. "I really could." The dog sensed the boy's anxiety and padded to his side, rubbed against him. "Dad, please, just give me a chance."

Two miles wasn't a great distance on a warm spring day, an easy walk, but they were faced with fierce cold against which even their ski suits were not perfect protection.

Furthermore, the power of the wind would work against them in three ways: reducing the subjective air temperature at least ten degrees below what it was objectively, pounding them into exhaustion as they tried to make progress against it, and obscuring their desired route with whirling clouds of snow that reduced visibility to near zero.

Jack figured he and Heather might have the strength and stamina required to walk two miles under those conditions, with snow up to their knees, higher in places, but he was sure Toby wouldn't get a quarter of the way, not even walking in the trail they broke for him.

Before they'd gone far, they would have to take turns carrying him.

Thereafter, they would quickly become debilitated and surely die in that white desolation.

"I don't want to stay here," Toby said. "I don't want to do what I might have to do if I stay here."

"And I don't want to leave you here." Jack squatted in front of him.

"I'm not abandoning you, Toby. You know I'd never do that, don't you?"

Toby nodded somberly. "And you can depend on your mom. She's tough.

She won't let anything happen to you."

"I know," Toby said, being a brave soldier.

"Good. Okay. Now I've got a couple of things to do yet, and then I'll go. I'll be back fast as I can-straight over to Ponderosa Pines, round up help, get back here with the cavalry. You've seen those old movies. The cavalry always gets there in the nick of time, doesn't it?

You'll be okay. We'll all be okay." The boy searched his eyes. He.met his son's fear with a falsely reassuring smile and felt like the most deceitful bastard ever born. He was not as confident as he sounded. Not by half. And he did feel as if he was running out on them. What if he got help- but they were dead by the time he returned to Quartermass Ranch?

He might as well kill himself then. Wouldn't be a point in going on.

Truth was, it probably wouldn't work out that them dead and him alive.

At best he had a fifty-fifty chance of making it all the way to Ponderosa Pines. If the storm didn't bring him down… something else might. He didn't know how closely they were being observed, whether their adversary would be aware of his departure. If it did see him go, it wouldn't let him get far. Then Heather and Toby would be on their own. Nothing else he could do. No other plan made sense. Zero options.

And time running out.

Hammer blows boomed through the house. Hard, hollow, fearful sounds.

Jack used three-inch steel nails because they were the largest he had been able to find in the garage tool cabinet. Standing in the vestibule at the bottom of the back stairs, he drove those spikes at a severe angle through the outside door and into the jamb. Two above the knob, two below. The door was solid oak, and the long nails bit through it only with relentless hammering. The hinges were on the inside. Nothing on the back porch could pry them loose. Nevertheless, he decided to fix the door to the jamb on that flank as well, though with only two nails instead of four. He drove another two through the upper part of the door and into the header, just for good measure. Any intruder that entered those back stairs could take two immediate routes once it crossed the outer threshold, instead of just one as with the other doors. It could enter the kitchen and confront Heathen-or turn the other way and swiftly ascend to Toby's room. Jack wanted to prevent anything from reaching the second floor because, from there, it could slip into several rooms, avoiding a frontal assault, forcing Heather to search for it until it had a chance to attack her from behind. After he'd driven the final nail home, he disengaged the dead-bolt lock and tried to open the door. He couldn't budge it, no matter how hard he strained. No intruder could get through it quietly anymore, it would have to be broken down, and Heather would hear it regardless of where she was. He twisted the thumb-turn. The lock clacked into the striker plate again. Secure.

While Jack nailed shut the other door at the back of the house, Toby helped Heather pile pots, pans, dishes, flatware, and drinking glasses in front of the door between the kitchen and the back porch. That carefully balanced tower would topple with a resounding crash if the door was pushed open even slowly, alerting them if they were elsewhere in the house. Falstaff kept his distance from the rickety assemblage, as if he understood that he would be in big trouble if he was the one to knock it over. "What about the cellar door?" Toby said. "That's safe," Heather assured him. "There's no way into the cellar from outside." As Falstaff watched with interest, they constructed a.similar security device in front of the door between the kitchen and the garage. Toby crowned it with a glassful of spoons atop an inverted metal bowl. They carried bowls, dishes, pots, baking pans, and forks to the foyer. After Jack left, they would construct a third tower inside the front door. Heather couldn't help feeling that the alarms were inadequate. Pathetic, actually. However, they couldn't nail shut all the first-floor doors, because they might have to escape by one-in which case they could just shove the tottering housewares aside, slip the lock, and be gone. And they hadn't time to transform the house into a sealed fortress.

Besides, every fortress had the potential to become a prison. Even if Jack had felt there was time enough to attempt to secure the house a little better, he might not have tried. Regardless of what measures were taken, the large number of windows made the place difficult to defend. The best he could do was hurry from window to window upstairs-while Heather checked those on the ground floor-to make sure they were locked. A lot of them appeared to be painted shut and not easy to open in any case. Pane after pane revealed a misery of snow and wind. He caught no glimpse of anything unearthly.

In Heather's closet off the master bedroom, Jack sorted through her wool scarves. He selected one that was loosely knit. He found his sunglasses in a dresser drawer. He wished he had ski goggles.

Sunglasses would have to be good enough. He couldn't walk the two miles to Ponderosa Pines with his eyes unprotected in that glare, he'd be risking snowblindness.

When he returned to the kitchen, where Heather was checking the locks on the last of the windows, he lifted the phone again, hoping for a dial tone. Folly, of course. A dead line. "Got to go," he said.

They might have hours or only precious minutes before their nemesis decided to come after them. He couldn't guess whether the thing would be swift or leisurely in its approach, there was no way of understanding its thought processes or of knowing whether time had any meaning to it. Alien. Eduardo had been right. Utterly alien.

Mysterious.

Infinitely strange.

Heather and Toby accompanied him to the front door. He held Heather briefly but tightly, fiercely. He kissed her only once. He said an equally quick goodbye to Toby. He dared not linger, for he might decide at any second not to leave, after all. Ponderosa Pines was the only hope they had. Not going was tantamount to admitting they were doomed. Yet leaving his wife and son alone in that house was the hardest thing he had ever done- harder than seeing Tommy Fernandez and Luther Bryson cut down at his side, harder than facing Anson Oliver in front of that burning service station, harder by far than recovering from a spinal injury. He told himself that going required as much courage on his part as staying required of them, not because of the ordeal the storm would pose and not because something unspeakable might be waiting for him out there, but because, if they died and he lived, his grief and guilt and selfloathing would make life darker than.death.