Jack used three-inch steel nails because they were the largest he had
been able to find in the garage tool cabinet. Standing in the
vestibule at the bottom of the back stairs, he drove those spikes at a
severe angle through the outside door and into the jamb. Two above the
knob, two below. The door was solid oak, and the long nails bit
through it only with relentless hammering. The hinges were on the
inside. Nothing on the back porch could pry them loose. Nevertheless,
he decided to fix the door to the jamb on that flank as well, though
with only two nails instead of four. He drove another two through the
upper part of the door and into the header, just for good measure. Any
intruder that entered those back stairs could take two immediate routes
once it crossed the outer threshold, instead of just one as with the
other doors. It could enter the kitchen and confront Heathen-or turn
the other way and swiftly ascend to Toby’s room. Jack wanted to
prevent anything from reaching the second floor because, from there, it
could slip into several rooms, avoiding a frontal assault, forcing
Heather to search for it until it had a chance to attack her from
behind. After he’d driven the final nail home, he disengaged the
dead-bolt lock and tried to open the door. He couldn’t budge it, no
matter how hard he strained. No intruder could get through it quietly
anymore, it would have to be broken down, and Heather would hear it
regardless of where she was. He twisted the thumb-turn. The lock
clacked into the striker plate again. Secure.
While Jack nailed shut the other door at the back of the house, Toby
helped Heather pile pots, pans, dishes, flatware, and drinking glasses
in front of the door between the kitchen and the back porch. That
carefully balanced tower would topple with a resounding crash if the
door was pushed open even slowly, alerting them if they were elsewhere
in the house. Falstaff kept his distance from the rickety assemblage,
as if he understood that he would be in big trouble if he was the one
to knock it over. “What about the cellar door?” Toby said. “That’s
safe,” Heather assured him. “There’s no way into the cellar from
outside.” As Falstaff watched with interest, they constructed a
similar security device in front of the door between the kitchen and
the garage. Toby crowned it with a glassful of spoons atop an inverted
metal bowl. They carried bowls, dishes, pots, baking pans, and forks
to the foyer. After Jack left, they would construct a third tower
inside the front door. Heather couldn’t help feeling that the alarms
were inadequate. Pathetic, actually. However, they couldn’t nail shut
all the first-floor doors, because they might have to escape by one–in
which case they could just shove the tottering housewares aside, slip
the lock, and be gone. And they hadn’t time to transform the house
into a sealed fortress.
Besides, every fortress had the potential to become a prison. Even if
Jack had felt there was time enough to attempt to secure the house a
little better, he might not have tried. Regardless of what measures
were taken, the large number of windows made the place difficult to
defend. The best he could do was hurry from window to window
upstairs–while Heather checked those on the ground floor–to make sure
they were locked. A lot of them appeared to be painted shut and not
easy to open in any case. Pane after pane revealed a misery of snow
and wind. He caught no glimpse of anything unearthly.
In Heather’s closet off the master bedroom, Jack sorted through her
wool scarves. He selected one that was loosely knit. He found his
sunglasses in a dresser drawer. He wished he had ski goggles.
Sunglasses would have to be good enough. He couldn’t walk the two
miles to Ponderosa Pines with his eyes unprotected in that glare, he’d
be risking snowblindness.
When he returned to the kitchen, where Heather was checking the locks
on the last of the windows, he lifted the phone again, hoping for a
dial tone. Folly, of course. A dead line. “Got to go,” he said.