“I couldn’t set the alarm system,” said Bill. “You need the code to engage it, and he’s not talking.” Bill cocked a thumb at Ken’s unconscious body.
After muscling the unconscious Ken up the stairs, they had decided on the master bath. It was the only room on the second floor that didn’t have windows. Mike shoved a dresser in front of the door from the bedroom, and drew the curtains in all upstairs rooms. Their plan involved narrowing the creature’s options and forcing him up the stairs. Mike’s other big contribution to the defense involved breaking the lock on Ken’s gun cabinet. He found Ken’s shotgun and a few boxes of ammunition.
Ken and Sharon had stabilized into a fast-pulsed unconscious state. Mike maintained his earlier proclamation that they were no worse off than they would be in a hospital, and they wouldn’t be affected by waiting for Mike and Bill to dispatch the thing that hunted them.
While Mike prepared the upstairs, Bill lugged the contents from the trunk of his car into the second-floor hallway. With that inventory arrayed on the carpet, Bill set about booby-trapping the steps.
“Let me show you the stairs,” said Bill, as he pulled shut the hall door to the master bath. Mike followed his new partner over to the landing.
Each step bore strips of aluminum foil taped to the tread.
“Touch it,” said Bill, pointing to the closest sheet of foil. “Lightly,” he added.
“No way,” said Mike. “It’s electrified, right?”
“Yeah, but it won’t do much to you,” said Bill as he tapped his finger lightly on the tread. “Every other stair is grounded, and the other ones are hot. So you’re not going to get a real shock until you touch an odd an even stair together. The thing was still barefoot—you can see the print on the roof of my car—so it should hit him pretty hard.”
“Will this carry enough current?” asked Mike.
“I’ve got it hooked up to a twenty amp breaker, and I’ve layered the foil with conductors. So yeah, it should give a good punch,” he said. “I’ve also got these paintball guns.” He picked up one of the air-powered guns and demonstrated by shooting a ball at the front door. “I assume one of us will have the shotgun and the other one can try to hit it in the eyes with these.”
“What else?” asked Mike.
“That’s about it for direct weapons,” said Bill. “If we can stun it, then we’ve got all these ropes and straps. But that’s a big if.”
“Yeah,” agreed Mike.
“Oh, and I do have that.” Bill pointed at a round metal case with a power cord and a thin, branching antenna.
“What is it?” asked Mike.
“I don’t know if it will work, but that’s the suppressor thing I talked about. It’s basically the opposite of that amplifier that you and Gary built. Instead of emitting energy that the creature can absorb and use as power, it emits the opposite, which I think should deplete the thing’s energy.”
“Huh,” said Mike.
“Only problem is, I don’t really know if it will work as intended. There’s a chance that it will just power the creature in a way I don’t expect. It’s still an amplifier of sorts, it’s just trying to put out an opposite energy. You know what I mean?”
“I think so,” said Mike. “How will we know?”
“Well,” said Bill. “We should be able to see the effect on the detector, but having them both in close proximity might give us strange results.”
“I wish we had tried that back at the sewage treatment place,” said Mike.
“Couldn’t,” said Bill. “It takes too much power—has to be run on house current. Even with an inverter it would have been too much of a draw to use in the car.”
“Oh,” said Mike. “So, what, we’ll just try it and see if the thing looks weaker?”
“I guess,” said Bill. “Flip a coin?”
“Sounds risky,” said Mike. “Let’s leave it off, but keep it handy.”
“Yeah, alright,” said Bill. “I don’t really know how the detector will react anyway. There’s a chance it could damage it,” he admitted.
Mike smiled. “Good to know,” he said. He pushed open a door to one of the guest rooms and returned with two desk chairs. They set them against the wall and brought their supplies to within close reach. “I’ll keep an eye this way, and you that way,” he said. “And we’ll both watch the middle.”
“Perfect." Bill settled down in his chair and picked up a six pack of soda he had brought up from the kitchen. “Coke?”
“Sure,” said Mike. “More caffeine—that’s what I need.”
They sipped their drinks for a few minutes as Mike loaded shells into the shotgun. Bill paralleled his effort by filling his guns with paintballs.
“Have you ever shot anything?” Bill asked Mike.
“I used to hunt when I was a teenager,” said Mike. “My grandfather taught me. Never shot anything bigger than a pheasant, but yeah.”
Bill picked up the detector device, adjusted the dials, and swept it back and forth until he had a good lock on the signal. “Hard to tell exactly, but I think it’s still a few miles away. The terrain affects the signal, but that should be worst case.”
“So what’s the most frightening thing that’s ever happened to you?” Mike turned the tables on Bill.
“Probably this,” said Bill, chuckling nervously.
“Well you said you used to play the game on college road trips, what was your answer back then?” asked Mike.
“For a while I used to tell a story about how I thought I’d knocked this one girl up, but it turned out that she was missing her period because she was a long-distance runner,” said Bill.
“Was it really that frightening?”
“It might have been, but I was making it up,” said Bill. “I was a virgin until my senior year of college. My second senior year. I made up that stuff about thinking my girlfriend was pregnant as a cover.”
“So you were really just frightened of being found out as a fraud?” asked Mike.
“Yeah,” Bill said. His expression changed quickly as he frowned at the detector, adjusted a knob, and frowned deeper.
“What’s up?” asked Mike.
“The signal has been growing stronger very consistently as the thing approaches, but it just went down a tiny bit,” Bill answered.
“Problem with it?” asked Mike.
“Could be,” said Bill. “Or maybe the creature had to backtrack a little. We’re not exactly out in the country here. And you said it would want to hide.”
“Yeah,” said Mike. “It’s getting more careful as it goes. Bad news for us in a way—means it’s learning.”
Eventually, Bill set the detector back in his lap, convinced that the creature still had significant distance to cover.
“I hate to bring it up,” said Bill, glancing at Mike for a second and then returning his gaze to the landing at the bottom of the stairs, “but I want to tell you about a more recent scare.”
“Oh yeah?” asked Mike. He had set up extra shells on the floor next to his chair, but now was removing more from the box and stuffing them in his pockets, in case he was on the move when he had to reload.
“Until tonight, the most frightened I’ve been was at my house, that night with the fire,” said Bill.
“Yeah,” said Mike, “that was horrible.”
“I didn’t mean for Gary to get hurt,” said Bill.
“What does that mean?” asked Mike. He stopped jamming shells into his left pocket and rested the gun over his arm, pointed safely at the floor.
“I wanted to move out of that house, but I knew I couldn’t sell it half-finished. I figured the only way I could get away was if the place burned down,” said Bill.
“That’s not possible,” said Mike, shaking his head and denying what Bill was saying.