connection lasted no more than three or four seconds, it seemed
interminable. When it was broken, he found himself standing with his
hands clamped against his temples, mouth open in a silent scream.
He gasped for breath and shuddered violently.
The roar of an engine brought his eyes back into focus and drew his
attention to the day beyond the window. The Jeep station wagon was
accelerating up the driveway, toward the cabin.
Maybe he was misjudging the degree of The Other's recklessness and
insanity, but he had been in that mind, and he thought he knew what was
coming. He spun away from the window, toward the girls.
"Run, get out the back, go!"
Having already scrambled up from the living-room floor and the two-hand
card game in which they'd been pretending to been grossed, Charlotte and
Emily were sprinting toward the kitchen before Marty had finished
shouting the warning.
He ran after them.
All in a second, spinning through his mind, an alternate strategy, stay
in the living room, hope the Jeep got hung up in the porch and never
made it to the front wall of the cabin, then rush outside, after the
impact, and shoot the bastard before he climbed out from behind the
steering wheel.
And in another second, the dark potential of that strategy, maybe the
Jeep would make it all the way--cedar siding, shattered two-by fours,
electrical wiring, chunks of plaster, broken glass exploding into the
living room with it, rafters buckling, ceiling collapsing, murderous
slate roof tiles thundering down on him--and he would be killed by
flying debris, or survive but be trapped in the rubble, legs pinned.
The kids would be on their own. Couldn't risk it.
Outside, the roar of the engine swelled nearer.
He caught up with the girls as Charlotte grasped the thumb-turn of the
dead-bolt lock on the kitchen door. He reached over her head, slapped
open the latch-bolt as she disengaged the lower lock.
The scream of the engine filled the world, curiously less like the sound
of a machine than like the savage cry of something huge and Jurassic.
The Beretta. Rattled by the telepathic contact and the hurtling Jeep,
he had forgotten the Beretta. It was on the living-room coffee table.
No time to go back for it.
Charlotte twisted the knob. The howling wind tore the door out of her
hand and shoved it into her. She was knocked off her feet.
Then wham, from the front of the house, like a bomb going off.
The big station wagon shot past Paige's hiding place so fast she knew
she wasn't going to have a chance to wait for the son of a bitch to
park, then creep up on him stealthily from tree to tree and shadow to
shadow in the manner of the good adventure heroine that she envisioned
herself. He was playing by his own rules, which meant no rules at all,
and his every action would be unpredictable.
By the time she scrambled to her feet, the Jeep was within seventy or
eighty feet of the cabin. Still accelerating.
Praying her cold-stiffened legs wouldn't cramp, she clambered over the
low rock formation. She raced toward the cabin, parallel to the
driveway, staying in the gloom of the woods, weaving between tree
trunks.
Because the BMW was not parked squarely in front of the cabin but to the
left, the Jeep had a clear shot at the porch steps. Less than an inch
of snow was insufficient to slow it down. The ground under that white
blanket wasn't frozen rock-solid as it would be later in the winter, so
the tires cut into bare earth, finding all the traction they needed.
The driver seemed to be standing on the accelerator. He was suicidal.
Or convinced of his invulnerability. The engine screamed.
Paige was still a hundred feet from the cabin when the left front tire
of the Jeep hit the low concrete porch steps and climbed them as if they
were a ramp. The right front tire spun through empty air for an
instant, then grabbed the porch floor as the bumper tore through the
wall of screen.
She expected the porch to give way under the weight. But the Jeep
seemed airborne as the rear left tire launched it off the top of the
three steps.
,. , Flying. Taking out panels of screen and the frames that hold
them in place, as if they're spider webs, gossamer.
Straight at the door. Like an incoming round of mortar fire. A two-ton
shell.
Closes his eyes. Windshield might implode.
Bone-jarring impact. Thrown forward. Safety harness jerks him back, he
exhales explosively, currents of pain briefly scintillate through his
chest.
A percussive symphony of boards splintering, jack studs cracking in
half, door jamb disintegrating, lintel fracturing. Then forward motion
ceases, the Jeep crashes down.
He opens his eyes.
The windshield is still intact.
The Jeep is in the living room of the cabin, facing a sofa and an
overturned armchair. It's tipped forward because the front wheels broke
through the flooring into the air space below.
The Jeep doors are above the cabin floor and unobstructed. He
disengages the seatbelt and gets out of the station wagon with one of
the .38 pistols in his right hand.
Move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.
He hears creaking overhead and looks up. The ceiling is broken and
sagging but will probably hold together. Powdery snow and dead brown
pine needles sift down through the cracks.
The floor is littered with broken glass. The windows flanking the cabin
door have shattered.
He is thrilled by the destruction. It inflames his fury.
The living room is deserted. Through the archway he can see most of the
kitchen, and no one's in there, either.
Two closed doors are featured in the wide pass-through between living
room and kitchen, one to the left and one to the right. He moves to the
right.
If the false father is waiting on the other side, the very act of
opening the door will trigger a fusillade.
He wants to avoid being shot if at all possible because he does not want
to have to crawl away to heal again. He wants to finish this now, here,
today.
If his wife and children have not already been replicated and replaced
by alien forms, they will surely not be permitted to remain human much
longer. Night is coming. Less than an hour away. From movies, he
knows these things always happen at night--alien assault, parasite
injection, attacks by shape-changers and soul-stealers and things that
drink blood, all at night, either when the moon is full or there is no
moon at all, but at night.
Instead of throwing the door open even from a safe position to one side,
he steps in front of it, raises the .38, and opens fire.
The door is not solid wood but a Masonite model with a foam core, and
the hollow-point rounds punch big holes at point-blank range.
Jolting through his arms, the recoil of the Chief's Special is
enormously satisfying, almost a sexual experience, bringing a small me
sure of relief from
his intense frustration and anger. He keeps
squeezing the trigger until the hammer clicks on empty chambers.
No screams from the room beyond. No sounds at all as the roar of the
last gunshot fades.
He throws the gun on the floor and draws the second .38 from the
shoulder holster under his varsity jacket.
He kicks open the door and goes inside fast, the gun thrust out in front
of him.
It's a bedroom. Deserted.
Soaring frustration fans the flames of rage.
Returning to the pass-through, he faces the other closed door.
For a moment the sight of the Jeep flying across the porch and slamming
through the front wall of the cabin brought Paige to a halt.
Although it was happening in front of her and though she had no doubt
that it was real, the crash had the unreal quality of a dream. The
station wagon seemed to hang in the air an impossibly long time,
virtually floating across the porch, wheels spinning. It appeared
almost to dissolve through the wall into the cabin, vanishing as if it
had never been. The destruction was accompanied by a great deal of
noise, yet somehow it was not cacophonous enough, not half as loud as it
would have been if the crash had taken place in a movie.
Immediately in the wake of it, the comparative quiet of the storm
reclaimed the day, with only the moaning of the wind, snow fell in a
soundless deluge.
The kids.
In her mind's eye, she saw the wall bursting in on them, the hurtling
Jeep right behind it.
She was running again before she realized it. Straight toward the
cabin.
She held the shotgun with both hands--left hand on the fore end slide
handle, right hand around the grip and finger on the trigger guard.
All she would have to do was halt, swing the bore toward the target,
slip her finger to the trigger, and fire. Earlier, loading the
Mossberg, she had pumped a round into the breech, so she could fit an
extra shell into the magazine tube.
As she sprinted out of the woods and into the driveway, when she was no
more than thirty feet from the porch steps, gunfire erupted in the
house. Five rounds in quick succession. Instead of giving her pause,
the shots spurred her across the driveway and shallow front yard as fast
as she could move.
She slipped in the snow and fell to one knee just as she reached the
foot of the porch steps. The pain wrung a soft, involuntary curse from
her.
If she hadn't stumbled, however, she would have been on the porch or all
the way into the living room when Charlotte rounded the corner of the
cabin. Marty and Emily appeared close behind Charlotte, running hand in
hand.
He fires three times into the door on the left side of the pass-through,
kicks it open, scuttles across the threshold fast and low, and finds
another deserted bedroom.
Outside, a car door slams.
Marty left the driver's door open while he got in behind the steering
wheel, fumbling under the seat with one hand in search of the keys, and
he didn't even think to warn Charlotte and Emily not to slam their door
until the act was done and the echo of it reverberated through the
surrounding trees.
Paige hadn't gotten into the BMW yet. She was standing at her open
door, watching the house, the Mossberg raised and ready.
Where were the damn keys?
He leaned forward, crunching down, trying to feel farther back under the
seat.
As Marty's fingers closed over the keys, the Mossberg boomed.
He snapped his head up as an answering shot missed Paige, passed through
the open car door, and smashed into the dashboard inches from his face.
A gauge shattered, showering him with shards of plas
"Down!" he shouted
to the girls in the back seat.
Paige fired the shotgun and again drew return fire.
The Other stood in the gaping hole where the front door of the cabin had
been, framed by jagged ruins, his right arm extended as he squeezed off
the shot. Then he ducked back into the living room, perhaps to reload.
Though the shotgun would keep him from coming any closer, he was too far
away to be greatly hurt by it, especially considering his unusual
recuperative abilities. His handgun, however, packed a solid punch at
that distance.
Marty jammed the key in the ignition. The engine turned over without a
protest. He released the hand brake, put the BMW in gear.
Paige got in the car, pulled her door shut.
He looked over his shoulder through the rear window, reversed past the
front of the cabin, and then turned into the tire tracks left by the
Jeep on its kamikaze run.
"Here he comes!" Paige cried.
Still backing up, Marty glanced through the windshield and saw The Other
bounding off the porch, down the steps, across the yard, a wine bottle
in each hand, rag wicks in the necks, flames leaping off both.
Jesus. They were burning furiously, might explode in his hands at any
second, but he seemed to have no concern for his own safety, a savage
and almost gleeful look on his face, as if he was born for this, nothing
but this. He skidded to a stop and cocked his right arm like a
quarterback ready to pass the ball to his receiver.
"Go!" Paige shouted.
Marty was already going, and he didn't need encouragement to go faster.
Instead of turning to look through the back window, he used the rearview
mirror to be sure he stayed on the driveway and didn't angle off into
any trees or ditches or jutting rocks, so he was aware of the first
bottle arcing through the snow and shattering against the BMW's front
bumper. Most of the contents splashed harmlessly onto the driveway,
where a patch of snow seemed to burst into flames.
The second bottle slammed into the hood, six inches from the windshield,
directly in front of Paige. It shattered, the contents exploded,
burning fluid washed the glass, and for a moment the only forward view
they had was of seething fire.
In the back, seatbelts engaged, staying down, holding tightly to each
other, the girls shrieked in terror.
Marty couldn't do anything to reassure them except to keep backing up,
as fast as he dared, hoping the fire on the hood would burn out and the
heat wouldn't cause the windshield to implode.
Halfway to the county road. Two-thirds. Accelerating. A hundred yards
to go.
The blaze on the windshield was extinguished almost at once, as the thin
film of gasoline on the glass was consumed, but flames continued to leap
off the hood and off the fender on the passenger side. The paint had
ignited.
Through fire and billowing black smoke, Marty saw The Other running
toward them again, not as fast as the car but not a whole lot slower,
either.
Paige fished two shotgun shells out of a pocket of her ski jacket and
stuffed them into the magazine tube, replacing the rounds she had
expended.
Sixty yards to the county road.
Fifty.
Forty.
Because of intervening
trees and vegetation, Marty could not see
downhill, and he was afraid he'd reverse into the path of an oncoming
vehicle. Yet he didn't dare slow down.
The roar of the BMW prevented him from hearing the shot. A bullet hole
appeared, with a sharp snap, in the windshield below the rearview
mirror, between him and Paige. An instant later a second round drilled
the windshield, three inches to the right of the first, so close to
Paige it was a miracle she wasn't hit. With the second violation, a
chain-reaction of millions of tiny cracks webbed across the tempered
glass, rendering it milky-opaque.
The transition between the end of the dirt lane and the pavement wasn't
smooth. They slammed backward onto the county road hard enough to make
them bounce in their seats, and the crazed safety glass collapsed inward
in gummy chunks.
Marty pulled the wheel to the right, reversing uphill, and braked to a
full stop when they were facing straight down the road. He could feel
the heat of the flames that were eating the paint off the hood, but they
didn't lick into the car.
A bullet ricocheted off metal.
Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder Page 48
