where they could get another car.
The interior of the Jeep was wonderfully warm and dry.
Jack was relieved when the doors were all safely shut and the Jeep began
to pull out.
But just as they were making a U-turn in the middle of the deserted
avenue, Burt’s partner, a freckle-faced young man named Leo, saw
something moving through the snow, coming toward them from across the
street.
He said, “Hey, Burt, hold on a sec. Isn’t that a cat out there? ”
“So what if it is?” Burt asked.
“He shouldn’t be out in weather like this.”
“Cats go where they want,” Burt said. “You’re the cat fancier; you
should know how independent they are.”
“But it’ll freeze to death out there,” Leo said.
As the Jeep completed the turn, and as Burt slowed down a bit to
consider Leo’s statement, Jack squinted through the side window at the
dark shape loping across the snow; it moved with feline grace. Farther
back in the storm, beyond several veils of falling snow, there might
have been other things coming this way; perhaps it was even the entire
nightmare pack moving in for the kill, but it was hard to tell for sure.
However, the first of the goblins, the catlike thing that had caught
Leo’s eye, was undeniably out there, only thirty or forty feet away and
closing fast.
“Stop just a see,” Leo said. “Let me get out and scoop up the poor
little fella.”
“No!” Jack said. “Get the hell out of here. That’s no damned cat out
there.”
Startled, Burt looked over his shoulder at Jack.
Penny began to shout the same thing again and again, and Davey took up
her chant: “Don’t let them in, don’t let them in here, don’t let them
in!”
Face pressed to the window in his door, Leo said, “Jesus, you’re right.
It isn’t any cat.”
“Move!” Jack shouted.
The thing leaped and struck the side window in front of Leo’s face. The
glass cracked but held.
Leo yelped, jumped, scooted backwards across the front seat, crowding
Burt.
Burt tramped down on the accelerator, and the tires spun for a moment.
The hideous cat-thing clung to the cracked glass.
Penny and Davey were screaming. Rebecca tried to shield them from the
sight of the goblin.
It probed at them with eyes of fire.
Jack could almost feel the heat of that inhuman gaze.
He wanted to empty his revolver at the thing, put half a dozen slugs
into it, though he knew he couldn’t kill it.
The tires stopped spinning, and the Jeep took off with a lurch and a
shudder.
Burt held the steering wheel with one hand and used the other hand to
try to push Leo out of the way, but Leo wasn’t going to move even an
inch closer to the fractured window where the cat-thing had attached
itself.
The goblin licked the glass with its black tongue.
The Jeep careened toward the divider in the center of the avenue, and it
started to slide.
Jack said, “Damnit, don’t lose control! ”
“I can’t steer with him on my lap,” Burt said.
He rammed an elbow into Leo’s side, hard enough to accomplish what all
the pushing and shoving and shouting hadn’t managed to do; Leo
moved-although not much.
The cat-thing grinned at them. Double rows of sharp and pointed teeth
gleamed.
Burt stopped the sliding Jeep just before it would have hit the center
divider. In control again, he accelerated.
The engine roared.
Snow flew up around them.
Leo was making odd gibbeting sounds, and the kids were crying, and for
some reason Burt began blowing the horn, as if he thought the sound
would frighten the thing and make it let go.
Jack’s eyes met Rebecca’s. He wondered if his own gaze was as bleak as
hers.
Finally, the goblin lost its grip, fell off, tumbled away into the snowy
street.
Leo said, “Thank God,” and collapsed back into his own corner of the
front seat.
Jack turned and looked out the rear window. Other dark beasts were
coming out of the whiteness of the storm. They loped after the Jeep,
but they couldn’t keep up with it. They quickly dwindled.