other hand to tip the bottom. A pale gush of gasoline arced out of the
spout. She swung the can left and right, saturating the carpet along
the width of the steps, letting the stream splash down the entire top
flight.
On the first step below the landing, the Giver appeared in the wake of
its shadow, a demented construct of filth and slithering sinuosities.
Heather hastily capped the gasoline can. She carried it a short
distance along the hall, set it out of the way, and returned to the
stairs.
The Giver had reached the landing. It turned to face the second
flight.
Heather fumbled in the jacket pocket where she thought she had stowed
the matches, found spare ammo for both the Uzi and the Korth, no
matches. She tried another zipper, groped in the pocket–more
cartridges, no matches, no matches.
On the landing, the dead man raised his head to stare at her, which
meant the Giver was staring too, with eyes she couldn’t see.
Could it smell the gasoline? Did it understand that gasoline was
flammable? It was intelligent. Vastly so, apparently. Did it grasp
the potential for its own destruction?
A third pocket. More bullets. She was a walking ammo dump, for God’s
sake.
One of the cadaver’s eyes was still obscured by a thin yellowish
cataract, gazing between lids that were sewn half shut.
The air reeked of gasoline. Heather had difficulty drawing a clear
breath, she was wheezing. The Giver didn’t seem to mind, and the
corpse wasn’t breathing.
Too many pockets, Jesus, four on the outside of the jacket, three
inside, pockets and more pockets, two on each leg of her pants, all of
them zippered.
The other eye socket was empty, partially curtained by shredded lids
and dangling strands of mortician’s thread. Suddenly the tip of a
tentacle extruded from inside the skull.
With an agitation of appendages, like the tendrils of a black sea
anemone lashed by turbulent currents, the thing started up from the
landing.
Matches.
A small cardboard box, wooden matches. Found them.
Two steps up from the landing, the Giver hissed softly.
Heather slid open the box, almost spilled the matches. They rattled
against one another, against the cardboard.
The thing climbed another step.
When his mom told him to go to the bedroom, Toby didn’t know if she
meant her bedroom or his. He wanted to get as far as possible from the
thing coming up the front stairs, so he went to his bedroom at the end
of the hallway, though he stopped a couple of times and looked back at
her and almost returned to her side.
e didn’t want to leave her there alone. She was his mom. He hadn’t
seen all of the Giver, only the tangle of tentacles squirming around
the edge of the front door, but he knew it was more than she could
handle.
It was more than he could handle too, so he had to forget about doing
anything, didn’t dare think about it. He knew what had to be done, but
he was too scared to do it, which was all right, because even heroes
were afraid, because only insane people were never ever scared. And
right now he knew he sure wasn’t insane, not even a little bit, because
he was scared bad, so bad he felt like he had to pee. This thing was
like the Terminator and the Predator and the alien from Alien and the
shark from Jaws and the velociraptors from Jurassic Park and a bunch of
other monsters rolled into one– but he was just a kid. Maybe he was a
hero too, like his dad said, even if he didn’t feel like a hero, which
he didn’t, not one bit, but if he was a hero, he couldn’t do what he
knew he should do.
He reached the end of the hall, where Falstaff stood trembling and
whining.
“Come on, fella,” Toby said.
He pushed past the dog into his bedroom, where the lamps were already
bright because he and Mom had turned on just about every lamp in the
house before Dad left, though it was daytime.
“Get out of the hall, Falstaff. Mom wants us out of the hall. Come