Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

The beast was burning, or at least the portion of it that was Eduardo Fernandez's body was being consumed, and yet the demonic thing climbed one more step. Almost to the top now.

Heather couldn't delay any longer. The heat was unbearable. She'd already exposed her face too long and would probably wind up with a mild burn. The hungry fire ate across the hallway ceiling, licking at the plaster overhead, and her position was perilous.

Besides, the Giver was not going to collapse backward into the furnace below, as she had hoped. It would reach the second floor and open its arms to her, its many fiery arms, seeking to enfold and become her.

Heart thudding furiously, Heather hurried a few steps along the hall to the red can of gasoline. She snatched it up with one hand. It felt light. She must have used three of the five gallons.

She glanced back.

The stalker came out of the stairwell, into the hallway. Both the colpse and the Giver were ablaze, not merely a smoldering gnarl of charred organisms but a dazzling column of tempestuous flames, as if their entwined bodies had been constructed of dry tinder. Some of the longer tentacles coiled and lashed like whips, casting off streams and gobs of fire that spattered against the walls and floor, igniting carpet and wallpaper.

As Toby took one more step toward the curtained bed, Falstaff finally dashed into the room. The dog blocked his path and barked at him, warning him to back off.

Something moved on the bed behind the drapes, brushing against them, and each of the next few seconds was an hour to Toby, as if he had shifted into super-slow-mo. The sleeping alcove was like the stage of a puppet theater just before the show began, but it wasn't Punch or Judy back there, wasn't Kukla or Ollie, wasn't any of the Muppets, nothing you'd ever find on Sesame Street, and this wasn't going to be a funny program, no laughs in this weird performance.

He wanted to close his eyes and wish it away. Maybe, if you just didn't believe in it, the thing wouldn't exist.

It was stirring the drapes again, bulging against them, as if to say, Hello there, little boy. Maybe you had to believe in it just like you had to believe in Tinker Bell to keep her alive. So if you closed your eyes and thought good thoughts about an empty bed, about air that smelled of freshbaked cookies, then the thing wouldn't be there any more, and neither would the stink. It wasn't a perfect plan, maybe it was even a dumb plan, but at least it was something to do. He had to have something to do or he was going to go nuts, yet he couldn't take one more step toward the bed, not even if the retriever hadn't been blocking his way, because he was just too scared. Numb. Dad hadn't.said anything about heroes going numb. Or spitting up. Did heroes ever spit up? Because he felt as if he was going to spew. He couldn't run, either, because he'd have to turn his back to the bed. He wouldn't do that, couldn't do that. Which meant that closing his eyes and wishing the thing away was the plan, the best and only plan-except he was not in a billion years going to close his eyes.

Falstaff remained between Toby and the alcove but turned to face whatever waited there. Not barking now. Not growling or whimpering.

Just waiting, teeth bared, shuddering in fear but ready to fight.

A hand slipped between the drapes, reaching out from the alcove. It was mostly bone in a shredded glove of crinkled leathery skin, spotted with mold. For sure, this couldn't really be alive unless you believed in it, because it was more impossible than Tinker Bell, a hundred million times more impossible. A couple of fingernails were still attached to the decaying hand, but they had turned black, looked like the gleaming shells of fat beetles. If he couldn't close his eyes and wish the thing away, if he couldn't run, he at least had to scream for his mother, humiliating as that would be for a kid who was almost nine.

But then she had the machine gun, after all, not him.

A wrist became visible, a forearm with a little more meat on it, the ragged and stained sleeve of a blue blouse or dress.

"Mom!"

He shouted the word but heard it only in his head, because no sound would escape his lips.

A red-speckled black bracelet was around the withered wrist. Shiny.

New-looking.

Then it moved and wasn't a bracelet but a greasy worm, no, a tentacle, wrapping the wrist and disappearing along the underside of the rotting arm, beneath the dirty blue sleeve.

"Mom, help!"

Master bedroom. No Toby. Under the bed? In the closet, the bathroom?

No, don't waste time looking. The boy might be hiding but not the dog.

Must've gone to his own room.

Back into the hall. Waves of heat. Wildly leaping light and shadows.

The crackle-sizzle-growl-hiss of fire.

Other hissing. The Giver looming. Snap-snap-snapsnap, the furious.whipping of fiery tentacles.

Coughing on the thin but bitter smoke, heading toward the rear of the house, the can swinging in her left hand. Gasoline sloshing. Right hand empty.

Shouldn't be empty.

Damn!

She stopped short of Toby's room, turned to peer back into the fire and smoke.

She'd forgotten the Uzi on the floor near the head of the steps. The twin magazines were empty, but her zippered ski-suit pockets bulged with spare ammunition. Stupid.

Not that guns were of much use against the freaking thing. Bullets didn't harm it, only delayed it. But at least the Uzi had been something, a lot more firepower than the.38 at her hip.

She couldn't go back. Hard to breathe. Getting harder. The fire sucking up all the oxygen. And the burning, lashing apparition already stood between her and the Uzi.

Crazily, Heather had a mental flash of Alma Bryson loaded down with weaponry: pretty black lady, smart and kind, cop's widow, and one tough damned bitch, capable of handling anything. Gina Tendero, too, with her black leather pantsuit and red-pepper Mace and maybe an unlicensed handgun in her purse. If only they were here now, at her side. But they were down there in the City of Angels, waiting for the end of the world, ready for it, when all the time the end of the world was starting here in Montana.

Billowing smoke suddenly gushed out of the flames, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, dark and churning. The Giver vanished. In seconds Heather was going to be completely blinded.

Holding her breath, she stumbled along the wall toward Toby's room.

She found his door and crossed the threshold, out of the worst of the smoke, just as he screamed.

With the Mossberg twelve-gauge gripped in both hands, Jack moved eastward at an easy trot, in the manner of an infantryman in a war zone. He hadn't expected the county road to be half as clear as it was, so he was able to make better time than planned.

He kept flexing his toes with each step. In spite of — two pairs of heavy socks and insulated boots, his feet were cold and getting colder.

He needed to keep full circulation in them.

The scar tissue and recently knitted bones in his left leg ached dully from exertion, however, the slight pain didn't hamper him. In fact, he.was in better shape than he had realized.

Although the whiteout continued to limit visibility to less than a hundred feet, sometimes dramatically less, he was no longer at risk of becoming disoriented and lost. The walls of snow from the plow defined a well-marked path. The tall poles along one side of the road carried telephone and power lines, and served as another set of route markers.

He figured he had covered nearly half the distance to Ponderosa Pines, but his pace was flagging. He cursed himself, pushed harder, and picked up speed.

Because he was trotting with his shoulders hunched against the battering wind and his head tucked down to spare himself the sting of the hard-driven snow, looking only at the roadway immediately in front of him, he did not at first see the golden light but saw only the reflection of it in the fine, sheeting flakes. There was just a hint of yellow at first, then suddenly he might have been running through a storm of gold dust rather than a blizzard.