Strange Highways

there. She was certain that they had not immolated themselves. They had left the house after tampering with the furnace and setting the trap for her. She knew that they would not huddle in the open, which left only the barn. She figured that they had constructed a tunnel between the two structures. They must have arrived in mid-afternoon, which gave them time to scout the property and to dig the long, connecting, subterranean passage; they were big, stronger than ordinary rats, so the tunnel would not have been a major project. While she and Tommy had struggled from house to barn to house again, the rats had scampered easily back and forth through the ground beneath them.
     Meg went to the barn not just to blast away at the rats out of a need for vengeance. More important, it was the only place where she and Tommy had a hope of surviving the night. With the cut in her left hand, she was limited to one arm with which to pull the sled. She was also in mild shock, and shock was draining. Previously she had realized that pulling the sled out to Black Oak Road in sixty-mile-per-hour winds and subzero cold, then waiting hours until a road crew came by, was a task at the extremity of her endurance; in her current condition, she would not make it, and neither would Tommy. The house was gone, which left only the barn as a shelter, so she would have to take it back from the rats, kill all of them and reclaim her property, if she and her son were to live.
     She had no hope that anyone would see the glow of the fire from afar and come inquiring as to the cause. Cascade Farm was relatively isolated, and the cloaking effect of the blizzard would prevent the flames from being seen at much of a distance.
     At the open barn door, she hesitated. The lone bulb still burned inside, but the shadows seemed deeper than before. Then, with the wind and the orange light of her burning home at her back, she entered the gremlins' lair.

    15

BEN PARNELL DISCOVERED THAT THE SLOPING MEADOW WAS CUT BY A series of natural, angled drainage channels that made progress difficult. In the nearly blinding tempest of snow, the ground was dangerous, for he often realized that a ditch lay ahead only when he fell into it. Rapid progress across the field was sure to result in a sprained ankle or broken leg, so he and his three men maintained a cautious pace, although the sight of the burning house terrified him.
     He knew that the rats had caused the fire. He did not know how or why they had done it, but the timely eruption of the flames could not be a coincidence. Through his mind passed disturbing images of the woman and the boy, their rat-gnawed bodies aflame in the middle of the house.

    16

SHE WAS SCARED. IT WAS AN ODD FEAR THAT DID NOT WEAKEN HER BUT contributed to her strength and determination. A cornered rat would freeze up in panic, but a cornered woman was not always easy prey. It depended on the woman.
     Meg walked to the middle of the barn, in front of the jeep. She looked around at the shadowy stalls along the south wall, at the open loft suspended from the front wall - and at the large, empty, and long-unused feed bin in the northeast corner.
     She sensed that the rats were present and watching her.
     They were not going to reveal themselves while she was armed with the shotgun, yet she had to lure them into the open to shoot them. They were too smart to be enticed with food. So ... if she could not lure them, perhaps she could force them into the open with a few well-placed rounds from the 12-gauge.
     She walked slowly down the center of the barn, to the end farthest from the door. As she passed the stalls that had once housed livestock, she peered intently into the shadows, seeking the telltale gleam of small red eyes. At least one or two gremlins must be crouched in those pools of darkness.
     Although she saw none of the enemy, she began to fire into the stalls as she moved again toward the front of the barn - blam, blam, blam - three rounds in three of those narrow spaces, a yard-long flare spurting from the muzzle with each hard explosion, the thunderous gunfire echoing off the barn walls. When she fired the third shot, a squealing pair of rats burst from the fourth stall into the better-lighted center of the barn, sprinting toward the cover offered by the disabled Jeep. She pumped two rounds into them, and both were hit, killed, tossed end over end as if they were