Winter Moon. By: Dean R. Koontz

They might have hours or only precious minutes before their nemesis

decided to come after them. He couldn’t guess whether the thing would

be swift or leisurely in its approach, there was no way of

understanding its thought processes or of knowing whether time had any

meaning to it. Alien. Eduardo had been right. Utterly alien.

Mysterious.

Infinitely strange.

Heather and Toby accompanied him to the front door. He held Heather

briefly but tightly, fiercely. He kissed her only once. He said an

equally quick goodbye to Toby. He dared not linger, for he might

decide at any second not to leave, after all. Ponderosa Pines was the

only hope they had. Not going was tantamount to admitting they were

doomed. Yet leaving his wife and son alone in that house was the

hardest thing he had ever done– harder than seeing Tommy Fernandez and

Luther Bryson cut down at his side, harder than facing Anson Oliver in

front of that burning service station, harder by far than recovering

from a spinal injury. He told himself that going required as much

courage on his part as staying required of them, not because of the

ordeal the storm would pose and not because something unspeakable might

be waiting for him out there, but because, if they died and he lived,

his grief and guilt and selfloathing would make life darker than

death.

He wound the scarf around his face, from the chin to just below his

eyes.

Although it went around twice, the weave was loose enough to allow him

to breathe. He pulled up the hood and tied it under his chin to hold

the scarf in place. He felt like a knight girding for battle. Toby

watched, nervously chewing his lower lip. Tears shimmered in his eyes,

but he strove not to spill them.

Being the little hero, so the boy’s tears would be less visible to him

and, therefore, less corrosive of his will to leave.

He pulled on his gloves and picked up the Mossberg shotgun. The Colt

.45 was holstered at his right hip. The moment had come. Heather

appeared stricken. He could hardly bear to look at her. She opened

the door. Wailing wind drove snow all the way across the porch and

over the threshold. Jack stepped out of the house and reluctantly

turned away from everything he loved. He kicked through the powdery

snow on the porch. He heard her speak to him one last time–“I love

you”–the words distorted by the wind but the meaning unmistakable. At

the head of the porch steps he hesitated, turned to her, saw that she

had taken one step out of the house, said, “I love you, Heather,” then

walked down and out into the storm, not sure if she had heard him, not

knowing if he would ever speak to her again, ever hold her in his arms,

ever see the love in her eyes or the smile that was, to him, worth more

than a place in heaven and the salvation of his soul.

The snow in the front yard was knee-deep. He bulled through it. He

dared not look back again. Leaving them, he knew, was essential. It

was courageous. It was wise, prudent, their best hope of survival.

However, it didn’t feel like any of those things. It felt like

abandonment.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Wind hissed at the windows as if it possessed consciousness and was

keeping watch on them, thumped and rattled the kitchen door as if

testing the lock, shrieked and snuffled along the sides of the house in

search of a weakness in their defenses.

Reluctant to put the Uzi down in spite of its weight, Heather stood

watch for a while at the north window of the kitchen, then at the west

window above the sink. She cocked her head now and then to listen

closely to those noises that seemed too purposeful to be just voices of

the storm.

At the table, Toby was wearing earphones and playing with a Game Boy.

His body language was different from that which he usually exhibited

when involved in an electronic game–no twitching, leaning, rocking

from side to side, bouncing in his seat. He was playing only to fill

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