shivering.
No question about it: the intruder in the kitchen was the very thing that had
pursued them through the woods more than three months ago. During the
intervening weeks, it had made its way north, probably traveling mostly in the
wildlands to the east of the developed part of the state, relentlessly tracking
the dog by some means that Travis could not understand and for reasons he could
not even guess.
In response to the chair he had thrown, a large white-enameled canister crashed
to the floor just beyond the kitchen doorway, and Travis jumped back in
surprise, squeezing off a wild shot before he realized he was only being
taunted. The lid flew off the container when it hit the floor, and flour spilled
across the tile.
Silence again.
By responding to Travis’s taunt with one of its own, the intruder had displayed
unnerving intelligence. Abruptly Travis realized that, coming from the same
research lab as Einstein and being a product of related experiments, the
creature might be as smart as the retriever. Which would explain Einstein’s fear
of it. If Travis had not already accommodated himself to the idea of a
dog with humanlike intelligence, he might have been unable to credit this beast
with more than mere animal cleverness; however, events of the past few months
had primed him to accept—and quickly adapt to—almost anything.
Silence.
Only one round left in the gun.
Deep silence.
He had been so startled by the flour canister that he had not noticed from which
side of the doorway it had been flung, and it had fallen in such a fashion that
he could not deduce the position of the creature that had hurled it. He still
did not know if the intruder was to the left or right of the doorway.
He was not sure he any longer cared where it was. Even with the .357 in hand, he
did not think he would be wise to enter the kitchen. Not if the damn thing was
as smart as a man. It would be like doing battle with an intelligent buzz saw,
for Christ’s sake.
The light in the east-facing kitchen was dwindling, almost gone. In the dining
room, where Travis and Einstein stood, the darkness was deepening. Even behind
them, in spite of the open front door and window and the corner lamp, the living
room was filling with shadows.
In the kitchen, the intruder hissed loudly, a sound like escaping gas, which was
immediately followed by a click-click-click that might have been made by its
sharply clawed feet or hands tapping against a hard surface.
Travis had caught Einstein’s tremors. He felt as if he were a fly on the edge of
a spider’s web, about to step into a trap.
He remembered Ted Hockney’s bitten, bloodied, eyeless face.
Click-click.
In antiterrorist training, he had been taught how to stalk men, and he had been
good at it. But the problem here was that the yellow-eyed intruder was maybe as
smart as a man but could not be counted on to think like a man, so Travis had no
way of knowing what it might do next, how it might respond to any initiative he
made. Therefore, he could never outthink it, and by its alien nature the
creature had a perpetual and deadly advantage of surprise.
Click.
Travis quietly took a step back from the open kitchen door, then another Step,
treading with exaggerated care, not wanting the thing to discover that he was
retreating because only God knew what it might do if it knew he was slipping out
of its reach. Einstein padded silently into the living room, now equally eager
to put distance between himself and the intruder.
When he reached Ted Hockney’s corpse, Travis glanced away from the dining room,
searching for the least littered route to the front door—and he
saw Nora standing by the armchair. Frightened by the gunfire, she had gotten a
butcher’s knife from the kitchenette in the Airstream and had come to see if he
needed help.
He was impressed by her courage but horrified to see her there in the glow of
the corner lamp. Suddenly it seemed as if his nightmares of losing both