“Maybe he has an idea about disposing of the body,” Nora said.
As Nora gathered up the leftover iodine, alcohol, gauze, and tape, Travis painfully pulled on his shirt and went to the pantry to see what Einstein had to say.
THE OUTSIDER IS HERE.
Travis slammed a new magazine into the butt of the Uzi carbine, put an extra in one pocket, and gave Nora one of the Uzi pistols that was kept in the pantry.
Judging by Einstein’s sense of urgency, they had no time to go through the house, closing and bolting shutters.
The clever scheme to gas The Outsider in the barn had been built upon the certainty that it would approach at night and reconnoiter. Now that it had come in daylight and had reconnoitered while they were distracted by Vince, that plan was useless.
They stood in the kitchen, listening, but nothing could be heard above the relentless roar of the rain.
Einstein was not able to give them a more precise fix on their adversary’s location. His sixth sense was still not working up to par. They were just lucky that he had sensed the beast at all. His morning-long anxiety had evidently not been related to any presentiment about the man who had come home with Nora but had been, even without his knowledge, caused by the approach of The Outsider.
“Upstairs,” Travis said. “Let’s go.”
Down here, the creature could enter by doors or windows, but on the second floor they would at least have only windows to worry about. And maybe they could get shutters closed over some of those.
Nora climbed the stairs with Einstein. Travis brought up the rear, moving backward, keeping the Uzi aimed down at the first floor. The ascent made him dizzy. He was acutely aware that the pain and weakness in his injured shoulder was slowly spreading outward through his entire body like an ink stain through a blotter.
On the second floor, at the head of the stairs, he said, “If we hear it come in, we can back off, wait until it starts to climb toward us, then step forward and catch it by surprise, blow it away.”
She nodded.
. They had to be silent now, give it a chance to creep into the downstairs, give it time to decide they were on the second floor, let it gain confidence, let it approach the stairs with a sense of security.
A strobe-flash of lightning-the first of the storm-pulsed at the window at the end of the hall, and thunder cracked. The sky seemed to have been shattered by the blast, and all the rain stored in the heavens collapsed upon the earth in one tremendous fall.
At the end of the hallway, one of Nora’s canvases flew out of her studio and crashed against the wall.
Nora cried out in surprise, and for an instant all three of them stared stupidly at the painting lying on the hall floor, half thinking that its poltergeist-like flight had been related to the great crash of thunder and the lightning.
A second painting sailed out of her studio, hit the wall, and Travis saw the canvas was shredded.
The Outsider was already in the house.
They were at one end of the short hall. The master bedroom and future nursery were on the left, the bathroom and then Nora’s studio on the right. The thing was just two doors away, in Nora’s studio, demolishing her paintings.
Another canvas flew into the hallway.
Rain-soaked, muddied, battered, still somewhat weak from his battle with distemper, Einstein nevertheless barked viciously, trying to warn off The Outsider.
Holding the Uzi, Travis moved one step down the hall. Nora grabbed his arm. “Let’s not. Let’s get out.”
“No. We’ve got to face it.”
“On our terms,” she said.
“These are the best terms we’re going to get.”
Two more paintings flew out of the studio and clattered down on top of the growing pile of wrecked canvases.
Einstein was no longer barking but growling deep in his throat.
Together, they moved along the hall, toward the open door of Nora’s studio.
Travis’s experience and training told him they ought to split up, spread out, instead of grouping into a single target. But this was not Delta Force. And their enemy was not a mere terrorist. If they spread out, they would lose some of the courage they needed to face the thing. Their very closeness gave them strength.
They were halfway to the studio door when The Outsider shrieked. It was an icy sound that stabbed right through Travis and quick-froze his bone marrow. He and Nora halted, but Einstein took two more steps before stopping.
The dog was shuddering violently.
Travis realized he, too, was shaking. The tremors aggravated the pain in his shoulder.
Breaking fear’s hold, he rushed to the open door, treading on ruined canvases, spraying bullets into the studio. The weapon’s recoil, though minimal, was like a chisel chipping into his wound.
He hit nothing, heard nothing scream, saw no sign of the enemy.
The floor in there was littered with a dozen mangled paintings and glass from the broken window by which the thing had entered after climbing ontO the front porch roof.
Waiting, Travis stood with his legs spread wide. The gun in both hands. Blinking sweat out of his eyes. Trying to ignore the seething pain in his right shoulder. Waiting.
The Outsider must be to the left of the door-or behind it on the right, crouched, ready to spring. If he gave it time, maybe it would grow tired of waiting and would rush him, and he could cut it down in the doorway.
No, it’s as smart as Einstein, he told himself. Would Einstein be so dumb as to rush me through a narrow doorway? No. No, it’ll do something more intelligent, unexpected.
The sky exploded with thunder so powerful it vibrated the windows and shook the house. Chain lightning sizzled through the day.
Come on you bastard, show yourself.
He glanced at Nora and Einstein, who stood a few steps away from him, with the master bedroom on one side of them and the bathroom on the other side, the stairs behind them.
He looked again through the doorway, at the window glass among the debris on the floor. Suddenly he was certain that The Outsider was no longer in the studio, that it had gone out through the window, onto the roof of the front porch, and that it was coming at them from another part of the house, through another door, perhaps out of one of the bedrooms, or from the bathroom-or maybe it would explode at them, shrieking, from the top of the steps.
He motioned Nora forward, to his side. “Cover me.”
Before she could object, he went through the doorway, into the studio, moving in a crouch. He nearly fell in the rubble, but stayed on his feet and spun around, ready to open fire if the thing was looming over him.
It was gone.
The closet door was open. Nothing in there.
He went to the broken window and cautiously looked out onto the roof of the rain-washed porch. Nothing.
Wind keened over the dangerously sharp shards of glass still bristling from the window frame.
He started back toward the upstairs hail. He could see Nora out there, looking in at him, scared, but gamely clutching her Uzi. Behind her, the door to the future nursery opened, and it was there, yellow eyes aglow. Its monstrous jaws cracked wide, full of teeth far sharper than the wicked glass shards in the window frame.
She was aware of it, started to turn, but it struck at her before she had a chance to fire. It tore the Uzi out of her hands.
It had no chance to gut her with its razor-edged six-inch claws because, even as the beast was tearing the pistol out of her hands, Einstein charged it, snarling. With catlike quickness, The Outsider shifted its attention from Nora to the dog. It whipped around on him, lashed out as if its long arms Were constructed with more than one elbow joint. It snatched Einstein up in both horrendous hands.
Crossing the studio to the hall door, Travis had no clear shot at The Outsider because Nora was between him and that hateful thing. As Travis reached the doorway, he cried out for her to fall down, to give him a line of fire, and she did, immediately, but too late. The Outsider scooped Einstein into the nursery and slammed the door, as if it were an evil nightmare-spawned jack-in-the-box that had popped out and popped back in with its prey, all in the blink of an eye.