Invasion

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.

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    SATURDAY
        
    The End

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    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.
        "We've come so far," she said at one point. "Why would they bring him so far?"
        "I don't know."
        But then a short while later I did know. Twenty minutes after we entered the forest,
        I realized that we were heading in the general direction from which that brilliant purple light had flashed at me two days ago, just after I had come out of the woods from finding Blueberry's skeleton. The light must have been some manifestation of their space craft: it marked the spot of their landing, their invasion base. And now they were taking Toby to their space ship…
        For what?
        Examination?
        Tests?
        Dissection?
        Were they taking him as a specimen, taking him away into the stars?
        We picked up our pace, walked as fast