Invasion

boots, and snowshoes.
        "When will you get there?" she asked.
        "In this wind, on snowshoes… Four hours."
        "With a couple of hours to rest at the other end, maybe you'll get back here by three or four in the afternoon."
        "Sooner, I hope."
        "I hope so too."
        I wanted to be able to see her, to drift for a minute in the bright pools of her eyes.
        "I love you," she said.
        "I love you too," I echoed dumbly, meaning it with all my soul, wishing that there were some clever phrase that would say it better. "I love you."
        Two patches of blacker black in the blackness of the room, we embraced, kissed, clung to each other for several seconds, clung like drowners to a raft.
        "Better get moving," she said at last.
        "Yeah." As I reached for the doorknob, I had a frightening thought. I froze and said, "If they take control of Toby again, you won't be able to restrain him. I was barely able to manage him. What'll hap pen?"
        "It's all right," she said. "I've already thought of that. When I feed him breakfast, I'll powder one of my sleeping tablets in his hot chocolate."
        "That won't hurt him, will it?"
        "They're not that strong. He'll sleep like a baby most of tomorrow. That's all."
        "And you think-so long as he's drugged, they can't make use of him?" I asked.
        "What do you think?"
        "I don't know."
        "It'll work."
        "I  guess it will."
        "Well," she said, "whether it'll work or not, it's really the only thing I can do."
        After I'd looked at it from every angle, I had to agree with her. "But be extremely careful, Connie. Watch him as closely as you would if he weren't drugged. If they take control of him, they could make him attack you."
        "I'll be careful."
        I listened quietly, until I heard Toby breathing deeply and smoothly: he was still sound asleep on the living room sofa.
        I said, "Keep the pistol with you."
        She said, "I won't let it out of my sight."
        "Don't let it out of your hand."
        "Okay."
        "I'm serious."
        "Okay."
        "And keep the safety off."
        
        "I  will."
        "I shouldn't leave you alone."
        "And I should make you take the gun in case they come after you along the way."
        "They won't."
        "They might."
        I fumbled for her, hugged her. "You're in much worse danger than I am. I shouldn't leave."
        "If we stay here together," she said, "we die here together." Softly:
        "Better get moving before there's too much light out there."
        I kissed her.
        She opened the door for me.
        Then: cold, snow, ice, wind.

----

    11.
        
        Dawn had come but only technically. The sun had risen behind the dense dark storm clouds, but night had not yet gone to bed. The sun lay on the cloud shrouded horizon, and there was nothing more than a vague glimmer of light in the world.
        Cloaked in darkness, but with sufficient dawn glow to keep me from wandering off in the wrong direction, I struck out from the farmhouse. I headed due west toward Pastor's Hill which rose beyond the open fields comprising that flank of Timberlake Farm.
        I floundered, getting accustomed to my snowshoes, and walked atop a hip-deep, cold dry sea of snow.
        I didn't know if there were any aliens nearby or if they were watching me. I did know, from having listened to the radio, that this was no world-wide invasion, for there had been no news reports of strange yellow-eyed creatures. Thus far the aliens seemed to be concentrated in the woods behind the farmhouse-although they might well be on all sides of us.
        If they were on all sides of us, if I were being watched right this minute, then there wasn't much of a chance of my ever reaching the Johnson farm.
        But that was negative thinking, and it smacked of more than a little paranoia. Paranoia led to despair and a feeling of utter helplessness. That kind of attitude could end in paralysis, a condition that already had been half brought on by the wind and the snow. Determined to think positive, I used the darkness and the wavelike drifts to mask my stealthy progress toward the open fields toward Pastor's Hill.
        If the aliens were out there keeping a vigil, they would never see me.
        Never.
        Not in a million years.
        I had to believe