Winter Moon

imagination was required to see that it would next want to study them at much closer range, perhaps dissect them and examine their brains and nervous systems to learn the secret of their ability to resist. He had no illusions that they would be killed or anesthetized before being subjected to that exploratory surgery.
        Jack put his shotgun on the kitchen table again. From one of the cupboards he removed a round galvanized-tin can, unscrewed the lid, and extracted a box of wooden matches, which he put on the table. While Heather stood watch at one window, Toby and Falstaff at the other, Jack went down to the basement. In the second of the two lower rooms, along the wall beside the silent generator, stood eight five-gallon cans of gasoline, a fuel supply they had laid in at Paul Youngblood's suggestion. He carried two cans upstairs and set them on the kitchen floor beside the table.
        "If the guns can't stop it," he said, "if it gets inside, and you're backed into a corner, then the risk of fire might be worth taking."
        "Burn down the house?"
        Heather asked disbelievingly. "It's only a house. It can be rebuilt.
        If you have no other choice, then to hell with the house. If bullets don't work-" He saw stark terror in her eyes. "They will work, I'm sure of that, the guns will stop it, especially that Uzi. But if by some chance, some one-in-a-million chance, that doesn't stop it, fire will get it for sure. Or at least drive it back. Fire could be just what you need to give you time to distract the thing, hold it off, and get out before you're trapped."
        She stared at him dubiously. "Jack, why do you keep saying 'you' instead of 'we'?" He hesitated. She wasn't going to like this. He didn't like it much himself. There was no alternative. "You'll stay here with Toby and the dog while I-"
        "No way."
        "-while I try to get to the Youngbloods' ranch for help."
        "No, we shouldn't split up."
        "We don't have a choice, Heather."."It'll take us easier if we split up."
        "Probably won't make a difference."
        "I think it will."
        "This shotgun doesn't add much to that Uzi." He gestured at the whiteout beyond the window. "Anyway, we can't all make it through that weather." She stared morosely at the wall of blowing snow, unable to argue the point.
        "I could make it," Toby said, smart enough to know that he was the weak link. "I really could." The dog sensed the boy's anxiety and padded to his side, rubbed against him. "Dad, please, just give me a chance."
        Two miles wasn't a great distance on a warm spring day, an easy walk, but they were faced with fierce cold against which even their ski suits were not perfect protection.
        Furthermore, the power of the wind would work against them in three ways: reducing the subjective air temperature at least ten degrees below what it was objectively, pounding them into exhaustion as they tried to make progress against it, and obscuring their desired route with whirling clouds of snow that reduced visibility to near zero.
        Jack figured he and Heather might have the strength and stamina required to walk two miles under those conditions, with snow up to their knees, higher in places, but he was sure Toby wouldn't get a quarter of the way, not even walking in the trail they broke for him.
        Before they'd gone far, they would have to take turns carrying him.
        Thereafter, they would quickly become debilitated and surely die in that white desolation.
        "I don't want to stay here," Toby said. "I don't want to do what I might have to do if I stay here."
        "And I don't want to leave you here." Jack squatted in front of him.
        "I'm not abandoning you, Toby. You know I'd never do that, don't you?"
        Toby nodded somberly. "And you can depend on your mom. She's tough.
        She won't let anything happen to you."
        "I know," Toby said, being a brave soldier.
        "Good. Okay. Now I've got a couple of things to do yet, and then I'll go. I'll be back fast as I can-straight over to Ponderosa Pines, round up help, get back here with the cavalry. You've seen those old movies. The cavalry always gets there in the nick of time, doesn't it?
        You'll be okay. We'll all be okay." The boy searched his eyes. He.met his son's fear with a falsely reassuring smile and felt like the most deceitful bastard ever born. He was not as