Mr. Murder

a red five-gallon gasoline can from a shelf to the left of the workbench. When he unscrews the cap, high-octane fumes waft out of the container. Spring through autumn, Dad probably keeps gasoline in the can to use in the lawn mower, but it is empty now.
        Rummaging through the drawers and cabinets around the work bench, he finds a coil of flexible plastic tubing in a box of repair parts for the drinking-water filtration system in the kitchen. With this he siphons gasoline out of the Dodge into the five-gallon can.
        At the sink in the laundry room, he uses the funnel to pour an inch of detergent into the bottom of each empty wine bottle. He adds gasoline.
        He cuts the dishcloths into useable strips.
        Although he has two revolvers and twenty rounds of ammunition, he wants to add gasoline bombs to his arsenal. His experiences of the past twenty-four hours, since first confronting the false father, have taught him not to underestimate his adversary.
        He still hopes to save Paige, Charlotte, and little Emily. He continues to desire reunion and the renewal of their life together.
        However, he must face reality and prepare for the possibility that his wife and children are no longer who they once were. They may simply have been mentally enslaved. On the other hand, they might also have been infected by parasites not of this world, their brains now hollow and filled with writhing monstrosities. Or they might not be themselves at all, merely replicants of the real Paige, Charlotte, and Emily, just as the false father is a replicant of him, arising out of a seed pod from some distant star.
        The varieties of alien infestation are limitless and strange, but one weapon has saved the world more often than any other, fire.
        Kurt Russell, when he was a member of an Antarctic scientific-re search outpost, had been confronted by an extraterrestrial shape changer of infinite forms and great cunning, perhaps the most frightening and powerful alien ever to attempt colonization of the earth, and fire had been by far the most effective weapon against that formidable enemy.
        He wonders if four incendiary devices are enough. He probably won't have time to use more of them, anyway. If something bursts out of the false father, Paige, or the girls, and if it's as hostile as the things that had burst out of people in Kurt Russell's research station, he would no doubt be overwhelmed before he could use more than four gasoline bombs, considering that he must take the time to light each one separately. He wishes he had a flamethrower.
        Standing by one of the front windows, watching heavy snow filter through the trees and onto the lane that led out to the county route, Marty plucked handfuls of 9mm ammunition out of the boxes of ammo they'd brought from Mission Viejo. He distributed cartridges in the numerous zippered pockets of his red-and-black ski jacket and in the pockets of his jeans as well.
        Paige loaded the magazine of the Mossberg. She'd had less time than Marty to practice with the pistol on the firing range, and she felt more comfortable with the 12-gauge.
        They had eighty shells for the shotgun and approximately two hundred 9mm rounds for the Beretta.
        Marty felt defenseless.
        No amount of weaponry would have made him feel better.
        After hanging up on The Other, he had considered getting out of the cabin, going on the run. But if they had been followed this far so easily, they would be followed anywhere they went. It was better to make a stand in a defendable location than to be accosted on a lonely highway or be taken by surprise in a place more vulnerable than the cabin.
        He almost called the local police to send them to his parents' house.
        But The Other would surely be gone before they got there, and the evidence they collected-fingerprints and God knew what else-would only make it appear that he had murdered his own mother and father.
        The media had already painted him as an unstable character. The scene at the house in Mammoth Lakes would play into the fantasy they were selling. If he were arrested today or tomorrow or next week-or even just detained for a few hours without being booked-Paige and the girls would be left on their own, a situation that he found intolerable.
        They had no choice but to dig in and fight. Which wasn't a choice so much as a death sentence.
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