Winter Moon

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.

He wound the scarf around his face, from the chin to just below his

eyes.

Although it went around twice, the weave was loose enough to allow him

to breathe. He pulled up the hood and tied it under his chin to hold

the scarf in place. He felt like a knight girding for battle. Toby

watched, nervously chewing his lower lip. Tears shimmered in his eyes,

but he strove not to spill them.

Being the little hero, so the boy's tears would be less visible to him

and, therefore, less corrosive of his will to leave.

He pulled on his gloves and picked up the Mossberg shotgun. The Colt

.45 was holstered at his right hip. The moment had come. Heather

appeared stricken. He could hardly bear to look at her. She opened

the door. Wailing wind drove snow all the way across the porch and

over the threshold. Jack stepped out of the house and reluctantly

turned away from everything he loved. He kicked through the powdery

snow on the porch. He heard her speak to him one last time--"I love

you"--the words distorted by the wind but the meaning unmistakable. At

the head of the porch steps he hesitated, turned to her, saw that she

had taken one step out of the house, said, "I love you, Heather," then

walked down and out into the storm, not sure if she had heard him, not

knowing if he would ever speak to her again, ever hold her in his arms,

ever see the love in her eyes or the smile that was, to him, worth more