Nothing. He checked to be sure the Explorer wasn't in gear. Tried a third time without success. Heather was no more surprised than she had been when the phone proved to be dead. Although Jack said nothing and was reluctant to meet her eyes, she knew he had expected it too, which was why he had also brought the keys to the Cherokee.
While Heather, Toby, and Falstaff got out of the Explorer, Jack slipped behind the wheel of the other vehicle. That engine wouldn't turn over, either. He raised the hood on the Jeep, then the hood on the Explorer.
He couldn't find any problems. They went back into the house.
Heather locked the connecting door to the garage. She doubted that locks were of any use in keeping out the thing that now held dominion over Quartermass Ranch. For all they knew, it could walk through walls if it wished, but she engaged the dead bolt, anyway.
Jack looked grim. "Let's prepare for the worst."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Shatters of snow ticked and pinged against the windows in the ground-floor study. Though the outer world was whitewashed and full of glare, little daylight filtered into the room. Lamps with parchment shades cast an amber glow.
Reviewing their own guns and those that Eduardo had inherited from Stanley Quartermass, Jack chose to load only one other weapon: a Colt.45 revolver.
"I'll carry the Mossberg and the Colt," he told Heather. "You'll have the Micro Uzi and the thirty-eight. Use the revolver only as backup to the Uzi."
"That's it?" she asked. He regarded her bleakly. "If we can't stop whatever's coming at us with this much firepower, a third gun isn't going to do either of us a damned bit of good."
In one of the two drawers in the base of the gun cabinet, among other sporting paraphernalia, he found three game-hunting holsters that belted around the waist. One was crafted from nylon or rayon-some man-made fabric, anyway-and the other two were leather. Exposed to below-zero temperatures for an extended period, nylon would remain flexible long after the leather holster would stiffen, a handgun might snag or bind up slightly if the leather contracted around it… Because he intended to be outdoors while Heather remained inside, he gave her the most supple of the two leather rigs and kept the nylon for himself. Their ski suits were replete with zippered pockets. They filled many of them with spare ammunition, though it might be optimistic to expect to have a chance to reload after the assault began. That an assault would occur, Jack had no doubt.
He didn't know what form it would take-an entirely physical attack or a combination of physical and mental blows. He didn't know whether the damn thing would come itself or through surrogates, neither when nor from what direction it would launch its onslaught, but he knew it would come It was impatient with their resistance, eager to control and become them. Little imagination was required to see that it would next want to study them at much closer range, perhaps dissect them and examine their brains and nervous systems to learn the secret of their ability to resist. He had no illusions that they would be killed or anesthetized before being subjected to that exploratory surgery.
Jack put his shotgun on the kitchen table again. From one of the cupboards he removed a round galvanized-tin can, unscrewed the lid, and extracted a box of wooden matches, which he put on the table. While Heather stood watch at one window, Toby and Falstaff at the other, Jack went down to the basement. In the second of the two lower rooms, along the wall beside the silent generator, stood eight five-gallon cans of gasoline, a fuel supply they had laid in at Paul Youngblood's suggestion. He carried two cans upstairs and set them on the kitchen floor beside the table.
"If the guns can't stop it," he said, "if it gets inside, and you're backed into a corner, then the risk of fire might be worth taking."
"Burn down the house?"
Heather asked disbelievingly. "It's only a house. It can be rebuilt.
If you have no other choice, then to hell with the house. If bullets don't work-" He saw stark terror in her eyes. "They will work, I'm sure of that, the guns will stop it, especially that Uzi. But if by some chance, some one-in-a-million chance, that doesn't stop it, fire will get it for sure. Or at least drive it back. Fire could be just what you need to give you time to distract the thing, hold it off, and get out before you're trapped."
She stared at him dubiously. "Jack, why do you keep saying 'you' instead of 'we'?" He hesitated. She wasn't going to like this. He didn't like it much himself. There was no alternative. "You'll stay here with Toby and the dog while I-"
"No way."
"— while I try to get to the Youngbloods' ranch for help."
"No, we shouldn't split up."
"We don't have a choice, Heather."."It'll take us easier if we split up."
"Probably won't make a difference."
"I think it will."
"This shotgun doesn't add much to that Uzi." He gestured at the whiteout beyond the window. "Anyway, we can't all make it through that weather." She stared morosely at the wall of blowing snow, unable to argue the point.
"I could make it," Toby said, smart enough to know that he was the weak link. "I really could." The dog sensed the boy's anxiety and padded to his side, rubbed against him. "Dad, please, just give me a chance."
Two miles wasn't a great distance on a warm spring day, an easy walk, but they were faced with fierce cold against which even their ski suits were not perfect protection.
Furthermore, the power of the wind would work against them in three ways: reducing the subjective air temperature at least ten degrees below what it was objectively, pounding them into exhaustion as they tried to make progress against it, and obscuring their desired route with whirling clouds of snow that reduced visibility to near zero.
Jack figured he and Heather might have the strength and stamina required to walk two miles under those conditions, with snow up to their knees, higher in places, but he was sure Toby wouldn't get a quarter of the way, not even walking in the trail they broke for him.
Before they'd gone far, they would have to take turns carrying him.
Thereafter, they would quickly become debilitated and surely die in that white desolation.
"I don't want to stay here," Toby said. "I don't want to do what I might have to do if I stay here."
"And I don't want to leave you here." Jack squatted in front of him.
"I'm not abandoning you, Toby. You know I'd never do that, don't you?"
Toby nodded somberly. "And you can depend on your mom. She's tough.
She won't let anything happen to you."
"I know," Toby said, being a brave soldier.
"Good. Okay. Now I've got a couple of things to do yet, and then I'll go. I'll be back fast as I can-straight over to Ponderosa Pines, round up help, get back here with the cavalry. You've seen those old movies. The cavalry always gets there in the nick of time, doesn't it?
You'll be okay. We'll all be okay." The boy searched his eyes. He.met his son's fear with a falsely reassuring smile and felt like the most deceitful bastard ever born. He was not as confident as he sounded. Not by half. And he did feel as if he was running out on them. What if he got help- but they were dead by the time he returned to Quartermass Ranch?
He might as well kill himself then. Wouldn't be a point in going on.
Truth was, it probably wouldn't work out that them dead and him alive.
At best he had a fifty-fifty chance of making it all the way to Ponderosa Pines. If the storm didn't bring him down something else might. He didn't know how closely they were being observed, whether their adversary would be aware of his departure. If it did see him go, it wouldn't let him get far. Then Heather and Toby would be on their own. Nothing else he could do. No other plan made sense. Zero options.