Invasion

beyond this arm of the forest. I could not see the house or the red barn or even the hill itself. The day had brightened considerably, but the snow was falling thick and fast, whipped relentlessly by the wind; and I could see no farther than a hundred yards.
        I  sucked on the winter air and began to move again. At the bottom of Pastor's
        Hill, I crossed a narrow, frozen creek. My snowshoes rattled noisily on the ironlike surface.
        On the far side of the creek I was stopped by another thought: without a compass I was sure to become disoriented and hopelessly lost in the forest maze. Up to this point, I had known the terrain fairly well, but from here on it would be all new to me. Somehow I had to maintain a westward heading, without deviation, if I were to reach the Johnson farm. At first I didn't see how I could be positive I was on a proper course. The sun was hidden by dense clouds, its light so diffused that I couldn't simply rely on keeping it behind my back to assure my westward progress. And then I realized that until the sun rose higher the western horizon would be the darkest of the four. This section of the woods- mostly maple, birch, elm, oak, and only a very few scattered evergreens-had been denuded by the cycle of the seasons; therefore, I could see the lowering gray clouds and mark my course by walking toward the gloomiest part of the sky. Soon the sun would rise high enough so that no distinction between dark and light horizons would be possible, but the system should see me most of the way through the forest if I hurried in advance of the dawn.
        I lumbered forward. The bulky snowshoes were considerably less useful to me here than they had been out in the open fields, for they kept getting snagged in brush, briars, and brambles that poked through the snow. Nevertheless, persevering, I made fairly good time.
        And I was not molested. Apparently, I had escaped the farmhouse without being seen.
        At 9:30 in the morning I came out of the trees into a pasture below the Johnson farm. The land rose gently, like a woman's breast, with the farm perched prettily atop the hill. There was no movement in or around the house, nor were any lights burning. At least I was not able to see movement or light from where I stood, although I was too far away to be absolutely certain.
        The hillside was a fantasy of scalloped drifts, some of them too soft to bear my weight even though the snowshoes distributed it over a large area. Time and again I sank to my hips in powdery snow and had to claw my way out, wasting precious energy and minutes. My greatest fear, just then, was of dropping into a drift that was higher than my head-in which case I might exhaust myself trying to escape, pass out and freeze to death there, entombed in the fresh snow.
        I tried not to think about that and kept plodding upward. By 10:00 I gained the crest, having taken half an hour to make what would have been a three-minute walk on a snowless day. I crossed the lawn to the back porch, clambered up the steps and over the porch to the rear door of the house.
        The door was standing open. Wide open. The un-lighted kitchen lay beyond.
        I wanted to turn and go home.
        That was impossible.
        I knocked on the door frame.
        Only the wind answered me.
        "Hey!"
        Nothing.
        "Hey, Ed!"
        The wind.
        "Molly?"
        Silence.
        Then I noticed that the door had been open for so long that the snow had drifted through it and had piled up to a depth of eight or ten inches on the nearest kitchen tiles. Reluctantly, I went inside.
        "Ed! Molly!"
        Who was I kidding?
        There was no one in the kitchen.
        I went to the cellar door, opened it, and stared down into perfect velvety blackness. When I tried the light switch, there was no response. I closed the door, locked it, and listened for a moment to be sure that nothing stirred in the cellar.
        Next, I went to the kitchen cabinets and searched through most of the drawers until I found a twelve-inch, razor-sharp butcher's knife. Holding it as if it were a dagger, raised and ready, I went from the kitchen into the downstairs hall.
        The house was as cold as the winter world outside. My breath hung in clouds before me.
        Just inside the hall archway
        I stopped, peeled up the ear flaps on my hunting cap, and listened closely.