A window shattered in another corner of the room, toward the rear of the house.
"Don!"
I turned in that direction.
A second alien was trying to get into the living room from the back lawn. Two heavy, hair-prickled, snow-dusted legs came through the window, chitinous legs as hard as metal, and scrabbled for a foothold.
I glanced at the fire. It was building slowly, but it was not throwing off enough heat to compensate for the cold air pouring in at the violated windows.
Glass exploded behind me again.
The second of the three big porch windows had been knocked in, and a third alien was gradually thrusting through the oversized frame.
The first alien to attack was almost inside now. Its large forelegs were firmly planted on the carpet; and only four of the other six legs were still out on the porch. Its enormous head swiveled from Connie to Toby to me to Connie
I used both barrels of the shotgun on it, blew it backwards. Two of the smaller legs were torn off, and they clattered against the wall. The creature made a curious, keening noise and started toward me once more. By that time I had slipped two shells from my coat pocket and had reloaded. I used both shots on it, and it seemed to dissolve, tumbling through the window and onto the porch in a dozen pieces.
I jammed more shells into the chambers.
I felt mental fingers reaching for me, pressing against my skull, slipping inside of me. I fought back with all of my will-fought against not only the control it sought but against the mindless, biological fear it produced. That fear could incapacitate me; it had paralyzed me before. And if I were driven half-mad with fear now, there would be no hope for us.
Bones
Connie used the rifle. It made a sharp, ear-splitting sound in the confines of the room.
I looked back and saw that the insect on her side of the room was three-quarters of the way inside and had not been stopped by the rifle fire.
Glass crashed.
A fourth alien was trying to come in from the third porch window. But that was of little consequence, for the creature at the second window was already inside and coming for me, its head swiveling, its amber eyes brighter than I have ever seen them, the big mandibles clacking noisily.
I raised the shotgun and pulled the first trigger without knowing if the thing was in my line of fire.
The alien halted, but it was not dead. It seemed stunned for an instant, but then it started forward once more.
I moved in close and discharged the second shot into its head, straight into the eyes.
Thankfully, it shuddered and toppled.
I groped for more shells, fed them into the gun, slammed the breach shut, and blasted the third alien out of the window and back onto the front porch.
The room was full of thunder. My ears ached.
Connie's rifle had been cracking repeatedly while I tended to the attackers on my side of the room, but she still had not been able to destroy the fourth alien. It seemed able to absorb the rifle bullets without damage-which meant that the shotgun was effective only because it packed considerably more wallop and spread it granulated charge over a broader area. As I reloaded my weapon, Connie dropped the rifle and ran to the fireplace, poked in the burning wood, and found a fairly long, slender piece of wood that was burning only at one end. She picked this up, turned, and ran back toward the beast.
"Connie, no!"
The thing was halfway across the room when she came upon it, and it backtracked the instant it saw the flames. Its mandibles made a snicking noise.
Suddenly one of the three slender legs on its right side reached up to a bandolier slung across its back; fingerlike claws grasped a tubular device clipped to the bandolier.
"Connie, it's reaching for a weapon!"
She threw the burning branch.
When the flames touched it, the alien shrieked, an ungodly sound that made me shiver. It stumbled backwards, eight legs akimbo, and fell heavily to the floor. It burnt like a gasoline-soaked torch. It rolled and heaved and kicked, trying to get to the window. The insufferable stench-ammonia, carbon, decay- was so intense that it made me feel ill.
I emptied my shotgun into the thing in order to put it out of its misery-then whirled around to see if any new beasts had come through the porch windows.
None had.
Everything was still, quiet.
Deafeningly quiet.
"Is it over?" Connie asked.
"Not that easily."
"There are more?"
"I'd bet on it."
"We can't hold out forever."
"We've done-"
We were both overcome with the same realization at the same instant, but she said it first: "My God, where's Toby?"
"He was here-"
"He isn't now!"
I ran out into the kitchen.
He wasn't there.
I heard her in the living room, shouting up the stairs.
The sun porch door was open. I hurried to it.
She rushed into the kitchen behind me.
I glanced back at her.
"Don, he doesn't answer me."
I went out onto the sun porch and found that the outer door was standing open. Snow was sweeping inside on the wind-and the snow just beyond the door was marked by a child's footprints and the eight-holed tracks I knew all too well.
Death is real.
Death is final.
"They've got him," she said.
The world is a madhouse.
"Their attack was only meant to distract us," she said dazedly. "While we were distracted, they took control of Toby's mind and marched him right out of the house."
I turned and went back into the kitchen.
She came after me. "But four of them died! Would they sacrifice four of their own to get one of us?"
Real, final, real, final
"Looks that way," I said, opening the box of shotgun shells that stood on the kitchen table. I began to fill my pockets.
She moaned softly.
"We've got to move fast," I told her. "Get your rifle and the box of ammunition. Hurry."
"We're going after them?"
"What else?"
She hesitated.
"Connie, hurry! We've got to catch the bastards before they
We've got to get Toby back from them!"
Leadenly: "What if he's already dead?"
"And what if he isn't?"
"Oh, God!"
"Exactly."
She ran to get the rifle.
SATURDAY
The End
24
It was an eerie pursuit upon which we engaged in that stark winter night: down the open hillside where the trail was only very slightly softened by the wind and the falling snow (which meant that they could not be far ahead of us, else their tracks would have been erased entirely), then along the perimeter of the trees for more than a hundred yards, and finally into the primeval northern forest. Under the pines, in the bleak wilderness, our flashlights were of more use to us than they had been out on the open land, for the snow did not blow and sheet before us, cutting our range of vision; and the yellow beams opened the night for twelve or fourteen feet ahead, like a scalpel slicing through skin. Connie went first along the narrow woodland trails, for I felt that if we were to be attacked, the enemy would surely try to surprise us from behind. After all, the flashlight revealed the way ahead and protected us from stumbling blindly into alien arms; therefore, the beasts might circle around us. She carried the rifle, and I carried the shotgun. Occasionally, spooked by the weird shadows caused by the dancing flashlight beams, one of us would bring up a gun and whirl and nearly open fire. And as we walked we kept glancing behind us: I did it to see if we were still alone, and Connie did it to see if the footsteps she heard behind her were still mine.