And time running out.
Hammer blows boomed through the house. Hard, hollow, fearful sounds.
Jack used three-inch steel nails because they were the largest he had been able to find in the garage tool cabinet. Standing in the vestibule at the bottom of the back stairs, he drove those spikes at a severe angle through the outside door and into the jamb. Two above the knob, two below. The door was solid oak, and the long nails bit through it only with relentless hammering. The hinges were on the inside. Nothing on the back porch could pry them loose. Nevertheless, he decided to fix the door to the jamb on that flank as well, though with only two nails instead of four. He drove another two through the upper part of the door and into the header, just for good measure. Any intruder that entered those back stairs could take two immediate routes once it crossed the outer threshold, instead of just one as with the other doors. It could enter the kitchen and confront Heathen-or turn the other way and swiftly ascend to Toby's room. Jack wanted to prevent anything from reaching the second floor because, from there, it could slip into several rooms, avoiding a frontal assault, forcing Heather to search for it until it had a chance to attack her from behind. After he'd driven the final nail home, he disengaged the dead-bolt lock and tried to open the door. He couldn't budge it, no matter how hard he strained. No intruder could get through it quietly anymore, it would have to be broken down, and Heather would hear it regardless of where she was. He twisted the thumb-turn. The lock clacked into the striker plate again. Secure.
While Jack nailed shut the other door at the back of the house, Toby helped Heather pile pots, pans, dishes, flatware, and drinking glasses 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 than a place in heaven and the salvation of his soul.
The snow in the front yard was knee-deep. He bulled through it. He dared not look back again. Leaving them, he knew, was essential. It was courageous. It was wise, prudent, their best hope of survival.
However, it didn't feel like any of those things. It felt like abandonment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Wind hissed at the windows as if it possessed consciousness and was keeping watch on them, thumped and rattled the kitchen door as if testing the lock, shrieked and snuffled along the sides of the house in search of a weakness in their defenses.
Reluctant to put the Uzi down in spite of its weight, Heather stood watch for a while at the north window of the kitchen, then at the west window above the sink. She cocked her head now and then to listen closely to those noises that seemed too purposeful to be just voices of the storm.
At the table, Toby was wearing earphones and playing with a Game Boy.
His body language was different from that which he usually exhibited when involved in an electronic game-no twitching, leaning, rocking from side to side, bouncing in his seat. He was playing only to fill the time.