Invasion

the weapons in the gun case. I chose a rifle with telescopic sights and a double-barrel shotgun. I loaded both weapons and carried them to the living room along with two boxes of ammunition.
        By this time I was extremely anxious to get going, for I did not like to think of Connie and Toby all alone at Timberlake Farm-especially not as the day rushed toward an early winter sunset. I also didn't like to think of trekking through the woods in the dark, easy prey for Nature and the aliens. Yet
        I understood that if I were to make another long journey in the snow, I would have to stay here before the fire for an hour or until my bones as well as my clothes were warm and dry. And as impatient as I was to get moving, I sat there as long as it took for the fire to revive me. In the dancing flames I saw faces:
        Connie, Toby, and a face composed solely of two enormous yellow eyes…
        At one o'clock in the afternoon, I left the Johnson farm by way of the same hill and pasture over which I'd come.
        The rifle was strapped across my back.
        I carried the shotgun in my right hand.
        I was ready for anything.
        At least I thought I was.
        It was not easy going. And that's an understatement. The temperature had dropped fifteen or twenty degrees from where it had stood this morning and must now be hovering well below zero even without the wind chill factor figured into it. And the wind chill factor had to be considerable, for the wind was coming in from the west with the same forty-mile-an-hour punch that it had been throwing at us (except for occasional fifty-mile-an-hour gusts and sixty-mile-an-hour squalls) for nearly seventy-two hours. Furthermore, new drifts had built up everywhere, and many of them had not yet formed crusts thick enough to support my weight. I fell into them and struggled out and got to my feet and walked a few steps and fell again, pratfall after pratfall. It became monotonous. After what seemed like six or eight hours of grueling, Herculean effort, I came to a familiar limestone formation against which I had rested for a spell this morning when I had been traveling in the opposite direction. The limestone marked the halfway point through this arm of the forest, which meant that I was only one-quarter of the way back to Timberlake Farm. I allowed myself less than five minutes, then started out once more. I walked eastward, judging my direction by certain formations of land and trees and brush which I had carefully committed to memory on the way westward earlier in the day. The wind blew and the snow snowed and the cold chilled and the light gradually went out of the gray sky as if some celestial hand were slowly turning a rheostat switch up above the clouds.
        

    ***
        
        I was lying on my back under a bare elm tree, resting. I had no idea how I had gotten there; I couldn't remember lying down. And I was lying on the rifle which was still strapped across my back… Odd. Distinctly odd… But much more comfortable than I would have thought. Oh yes. So comfortable. Just lovely. I felt warm and snug. I could look up through the interlacing black branches and watch the pretty little lacy snowflakes spiraling down to the earth. So very pretty and warm and soft and pretty and soft and warm, warm, warm, warm…
        Hanlon, don't be a fool, I told myself.
        Well I like it here, I answered.
        For eternity?
        Five minutes will do.
        Eternity.
        Will you stop messing in my comfortable world?
        Get up.
        No.
        Get up!
        I rolled onto my side, sat up, clutched at the trunk of the tree, and got my numbed feet under me again. My sense of balance was functioning about as well as it would have done had I just now stepped off the biggest, fastest roller coaster in the world. The world circled around and around me… Nevertheless,
        I got going once more, head down and thrust out in front of me, teeth clenched and jaws bulging, shotgun in one hand, the other hand fisted, looking and feeling mean as a treed raccoon.
        

    ***
        
        A clump of powdery white stuff fell out of the laden pine boughs overhead and struck me in the face. I spluttered, coughed, cursed, groped around in the snow, found the shotgun just inches from my fingers, used it as a staff, and levered myself to my feet.
        I thought smugly, How about that for stamina? Huh? Now that is