third time without success. Heather was no more surprised than she had
been when the phone proved to be dead. Although Jack said nothing and
was reluctant to meet her eyes, she knew he had expected it too, which
was why he had also brought the keys to the Cherokee.
While Heather, Toby, and Falstaff got out of the Explorer, Jack slipped
behind the wheel of the other vehicle. That engine wouldn’t turn over,
either. He raised the hood on the Jeep, then the hood on the
Explorer.
He couldn’t find any problems. They went back into the house.
Heather locked the connecting door to the garage. She doubted that
locks were of any use in keeping out the thing that now held dominion
over Quartermass Ranch. For all they knew, it could walk through walls
if it wished, but she engaged the dead bolt, anyway.
Jack looked grim. “Let’s prepare for the worst.”
CHAPTER TWENTY.
Shatters of snow ticked and pinged against the windows in the
ground-floor study. Though the outer world was whitewashed and full of
glare, little daylight filtered into the room. Lamps with parchment
shades cast an amber glow.
Reviewing their own guns and those that Eduardo had inherited from
Stanley Quartermass, Jack chose to load only one other weapon: a Colt
.45 revolver.
“I’ll carry the Mossberg and the Colt,” he told Heather. “You’ll have
the Micro Uzi and the thirty-eight. Use the revolver only as backup to
the Uzi.”
“That’s it?” she asked. He regarded her bleakly. “If we can’t stop
whatever’s coming at us with this much firepower, a third gun isn’t
going to do either of us a damned bit of good.”
In one of the two drawers in the base of the gun cabinet, among other
sporting paraphernalia, he found three game-hunting holsters that
belted around the waist. One was crafted from nylon or rayon–some
man-made fabric, anyway–and the other two were leather. Exposed to
below-zero temperatures for an extended period, nylon would remain
flexible long after the leather holster would stiffen, a handgun might
snag or bind up slightly if the leather contracted around it.
Because he intended to be outdoors while Heather remained inside, he
gave her the most supple of the two leather rigs and kept the nylon for
himself. Their ski suits were replete with zippered pockets. They
filled many of them with spare ammunition, though it might be
optimistic to expect to have a chance to reload after the assault
began. That an assault would occur, Jack had no doubt.
He didn’t know what form it would take–an entirely physical attack or
a combination of physical and mental blows. He didn’t know whether the
damn thing would come itself or through surrogates, neither when nor
from what direction it would launch its onslaught, but he knew it would
come It was impatient with their resistance, eager to control and
become them. Little 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