Winter Moon

other monsters rolled into one-- but he was just a kid. Maybe he was a

hero too, like his dad said, even if he didn't feel like a hero, which

he didn't, not one bit, but if he was a hero, he couldn't do what he

knew he should do.

He reached the end of the hall, where Falstaff stood trembling and

whining.

"Come on, fella," Toby said.

He pushed past the dog into his bedroom, where the lamps were already

bright because he and Mom had turned on just about every lamp in the

house before Dad left, though it was daytime.

"Get out of the hall, Falstaff. Mom wants us out of the hall. Come

on!"

The first thing he noticed, when he turned away from the dog, was that

the door to the back stairs stood open. It should have been locked.

They were making a fortress here. Dad had nailed shut the lower door,

but this one should also be locked. Toby ran to it, pushed it shut,

engaged the dead bolt, and felt better.

At the doorway, Falstaff had still not entered the room. He had

stopped whining.

He was growling.

Jack at the ranch entrance. Pausing only a moment to recover from the

first and most arduous leg of the journey.

Instead of soft flakes, the snow was coming down in sharp-edged

crystals, almost like grains of salt. The wind drove it hard enough to

sting his exposed forehead.

A road crew had been by at least once, because a four-foot-high wall of

plowed snow blocked the end of the driveway. He clambered over it,

onto the two-lane.

Flame flared off the match head.

For an instant Heather expected the fumes to explode, but they weren't

sufficiently concentrated to be combustible.

The parasite and its dead host climbed another step, apparently

oblivious of the danger--or certain that there was none.

Heather stepped back, out of the flash zone, tossed the match.

Continuing to back up until she bumped into the hallway wall, watching

the flame flutter in an arc toward the stairwell, she had a seizure of

manic thoughts that elicited an almost compulsive bark of mad laughter,

a single dark bray that came dangerously close to ending in a thick

sob: Burning down my own house, welcome to Montana, beautiful scenery

and walking dead men and things from other worlds, and here we go,

flame falling, may you.burn in hell, burning down my own house,

wouldn't have to do that in Los Angeles, other people will do it for

you there.

WHOOSH!

The gasoline-soaked carpet exploded into flames that leaped all the way

to the ceiling. The fire didn't spread through the stairwell, it was

simply everywhere at once. Instantaneously the walls and railings were

as fully involved as the treads and risers.

A stinging wave of heat hit Heather, forcing her to squint. She should

at once have moved farther away from the blaze because the air was

nearly hot enough to blister her skin, but she had to see what happened

to the Giver.

The staircase was an inferno. No human being could have survived in it

longer than a few seconds.

In that swarming incandescence, the dead man and the living beast were

a single dark mass, rising another step. And another. No screams or

shrieks of pain accompanied its ascent, only the roar and crackle of

the fierce fire, which was now lapping out of the stairwell and into

the upstairs hallway.

As Toby locked the stairhead door and turned from it, and as Falstaff

growled from the threshold of the other door, orange-red light flashed

through the hall behind the dog. His growl spiraled into a yelp of

surprise. Following the flash were flickering figures of light that

danced on the walls out there: reflections of fire.

Toby knew that his mom had set the alien on fire-- she was tough, she

was smart--and a current of hope thrilled through him.

Then he noticed the second wrong thing about the bedroom. The drapes

were closed over his recessed bed.

He had left them open, drawn back to both sides of the niche. He only

closed them at night or when he was playing a game. He had opened them

this morning, and he'd had no time for games since he'd gotten up.

The air had a bad smell. He hadn't noticed it right away because his

heart was pounding and he was breathing through his mouth.

He moved toward the bed. One step, two.

The closer he drew to the sleeping alcove, the worse the smell

became.

It was like the odor on the back stairs the first day they'd seen the

house, but a lot worse.

He stopped a few steps from the bed. He told himself he was a hero.

It was okay for heroes to be afraid, but even when they were afraid,

they had to do something.

At the open door, Falstaff was just about going crazy.

Blacktop was visible in a few small patches, revealed by the flaying

wind, but most of the roadway was covered by two inches of fresh

powder. Numerous drifts had formed against the snow walls thrown up by

the plow.

Judging by the available signs, Jack figured the crew had made a

circuit through this neighborhood about two hours ago, certainly no

more recently than an hour and a half. They were overdue to make

another pass.

He turned east and hurried toward the Youngblood spread, hopeful of