Midnight

NO NO NO NO NO NO….
    Loman felt as if his blood was icy sludge pumped by a heart as jellied as the meat in the freezer downstairs. He had never known a chill that penetrated as deep as this one.
    He stepped away from the crumpled body, which at last stopped twitching, and turned his revolver on the computer. He emptied the gun into the machine, first blowing out the screen. Because the blinds and drapes were closed, the room was nearly dark. He blasted the circuitry to pieces. Thousands of sparks flared in the blackness, spraying out of the data-processing unit. But with a final sputter and crackle, the machine died, and the gloom closed in again.
    The air stank of scorched insulation. And worse.
    Loman left the room and walked to the head of the stairs. He stood there a moment, leaning against the railing. Then he descended to the front hall.
    He reloaded his revolver, holstered it.
    He went out into the rain.
    He got in his car and started the engine.
    "Shaddack," he said aloud.

19
    Tessa immediately took charge of the girl. She led her upstairs, leaving Harry and Sam and Moose in the kitchen, and got her out of her wet clothes.
    "Your teeth are chattering, honey."
    "I'm lucky to have any teeth to chatter."
    "Your skin's positively blue."
    "I'm lucky to have skin," the girl said.
    "I noticed you're limping too."
    "Yeah. I twisted an ankle."
    "Sure it's just sprained?"
    "Yeah. Nothing serious. Besides—"
    "I know," Tessa said, "You're lucky to have ankles."
    "Right. For all I know, aliens find ankles particularly tasty, the same way some people like pig's feet. Yuch."
    She sat on the edge of the bed in the guest room, a wool blanket pulled around her nakedness, and waited while Tessa got a sheet from the linen supplies and several safety pins from a sewing box that she noticed in the same closet.
    Tessa said, "Harry's clothes are much too big for you, so we'll wrap you in a sheet temporarily. While your clothes are in the dryer, you can come downstairs and tell Harry and Sam and me all about it."
    "It's been quite an adventure," the girl said.
    "Yes, you look as if you've been through a lot."
    "It'd make a great book."
    "You like books?"
    "Oh, yes, I love books."
    Blushing but evidently determined to be sophisticated Chrissie threw back the blanket and stood and allowed Tessa to drape the sheet around her. Tessa pinned it in place, fashioning a toga of sorts.
    As Tessa worked, Chrissie said, "I think I'll write a book about all of this one day. I'll call it The Alien Scourge or maybe Nest Queen , although naturally I won't title it Nest Queen unless it turns out there really is a nest queen somewhere. Maybe they don't reproduce like insects or even like animals. Maybe they're basically a vegetable lifeform. Who knows? If they're basically a vegetable lifeform, then I'd have to call the book something like Space Seeds or Vegetables of the Void or maybe Murderous Martian Mushrooms . It's sometimes good to use alliteration in titles. Alliteration. Don't you like that word? It sounds so nice. I like words. Of course, you could always go with a more poetic title, haunting, like Alien Roots, Alien Leaves . Hey, if they're vegetables, we may be in luck, because maybe they'll eventually be killed off by aphids or tomato worms, since they won't have developed protection against earth pests, just like a few tiny germs killed off the mighty Martians in War of the Worlds ."
    Tessa was reluctant to disclose that their enemies were not from the stars, for she was enjoying the girl's precocious chatter. Then she noticed that Chrissie's left hand was injured. The palm had been badly abraded; the center of it looked raw.
    "I did that when I fell off the porch roof at the rectory," the girl said.
    "You fell off a roof?"
    "Yeah. Boy, that was exciting. See, the wolf-thing was coming through the window after me, and I didn't have anywhere else to go. Twisted my ankle in the same fall and then had to run across the yard to the back gate before he caught me. You know, Miss Lockland—"
    "Please call me Tessa."
    Apparently Chrissie was unaccustomed to addressing adults by their Christian names. She frowned and was silent for a moment, evidently struggling with the invitation to informality. She decided it would be rude not to use first names when asked to do so. "Okay … Tessa. Well, anyway, I can't decide what the aliens are most likely to do if they catch us. Maybe eat our kidneys? Or don't they eat us at all? Maybe they just shove