“No!” she shouted. “No, no! Tell it no!”
Grunting with the effort, Heather twisted the bolt open again and held
tightly to the thumb-turn. But she felt the lock being reengaged
against her will, the shiny brass slipping inexorably between her thumb
and forefinger. The Giver.
This was the same power that could switch on the radio. Or animate a
corpse.
She tried to turn the knob with her other hand, before the bolt slammed
into the striker plate again, but now the knob was frozen. She gave
up.
Pushing Toby behind her, putting her back to the door, she faced the
two creatures. Weaponless.
The road grader was painted yellow from end to end. Most of the
massive steel frame was exposed, with only the powerful diesel engine
and the operator’s cab enclosed. This no-frills worker drone looked
like a big exotic insect.
The grader slowed when the driver realized that a man was standing in
the middle of the road, but Jack figured the guy might speed up again
at first sight of the shotgun. He was prepared to run alongside the
machine and board it while it was on the move.
But the driver brought it to a full stop in spite of the gun. Jack ran
around to the side where he could see a door on the cab about ten feet
off the ground.
The grader sat high on five-foot-tall tires with rubber that looked
heavier and tougher than tank tread, and the guy up there was not
likely to open his door and come down for a chat. He would probably
just roll down his : window, keep some distance between them, have a
shouted conversation above the shrieking wind–and if he heard
something he didn’t like, he’d tramp the accelerator and haul ass out
of there. In the event that the driver wouldn’t listen to reason, or
wanted to waste too much time with questions, Jack was ready to climb
up to the door and do whatever he had to do to get control of the
grader, short of killing someone.
To his surprise, the driver opened his door all the way, leaned out,
and looked down. He was a chubby guy with a full beard and longish
hair sprouting under a John Deere cap. He shouted over the combined
roar of the engine and the storm: “You got trouble?”
“My family needs help!”
“What kind of help?”
Jack wasn’t even going to try to explain an extraterrestrial encounter
in ten words or less. “They could die, for God’s sake!”
“Die? Where?”
“Quartermass Ranch!”
“You the new fella?”
“Yeah!”
“Climb on up!”
The guy hadn’t even asked him why he was carrying a shotgun, as if
everyone in Montana went nearly everywhere with a pistol-grip,
pump-action twelve-gauge.
Hell, maybe everyone did.
Holding the shotgun in one hand, Jack hauled himself up to the cab,
careful where he placed his feet, not foolish enough to try to leap up
like a monkey.
Dirty ice was crusted on parts of the frame. He slipped a couple of
times but didn’t fall.
When Jack arrived at the open door, the driver reached for the shotgun
to stow it inside. He gave it to the guy, even though for a moment he
worried that, relieved of the Mossberg, he would get a boot in the
chest and be knocked back to the roadway.
The driver was a good Samaritan to the end. He stowed the gun and
said, “This isn’t a limousine, only one seat, kinda cramped. You’ll
have to swing in here behind me.”
The niche between the driver’s seat and the back wall of the cab was
less than two feet deep and five feet wide. The ceiling was low. A
couple of rectangular toolboxes were on the floor, and he had to share
the space with them. While the driver leaned forward, Jack squirmed
headfirst into that narrow storage area and pulled his legs in after
himself, sort of half lying on his side and half sitting.
The driver shut the door. The rumble of the engine was still loud, and
so was the whistling wind.
Jack’s bent knees were behind the driver, and his body was in line with