Toby's bones, Toby's skeleton? picked clean
I crossed the sun porch in three long strides, bounding like an antelope.
Picked clean
I tore open the door and went out into the black and snow-filled night.
Bones
'Toby!'
The cold slammed into me and rocked me badly, as if sharp icicles had been thrust deep into my joints, between muscle and sheath, through arteries and veins. That was the 'one' of a one-two punch that Nature had for me. The 'two' was the wind which was seething up the hill at better than fifty miles an hour: a mallet to drive the icicles deeper.
'Toby!'
No answer.
For four or five or six seconds, as I desperately searched the bleak night ahead, I couldn't see him. Then suddenly I got a glimpse of his bright red pajamas outlined against the snow and flapping like a flag in the wind.
'Toby, stop!'
He didn't obey, of course. And now he was nearly out of sight, for visibility was just about nil.
Bones
In the knee-deep snow-which was more likely hip-deep for him-I was able to make much better time than he did. Within a few seconds I reached him and caught him by the shoulder and pulled him around.
He struck me in the face with one small fist.
Surprised more than hurt by the blow, I tumbled backwards into a drift.
He pulled loose and turned and started down toward the woods once more.
Hundreds of big bear traps began to go off all around me: snapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnap! And then I realized that I was only hearing my teeth chattering. I was half-frozen although
I had spent no more than a minute in these sub-zero temperatures, lashed by this ferocious wind. Toby would have to be in even worse shape than I was, for his cotton pajamas offered less protection from the elements than did my jeans and thick flannel hunting shirt.
I pushed up and went after him, weaving like a drunkard in anxious pursuit of a rolling wine bottle. In a dozen steps I caught
Toby by the shoulder and stopped him and pulled him all the way around.
He swung at me a second time.
I ducked the blow.
As he pulled back to swing again, gazing through me with lifeless eyes, I threw both arms around him and lifted him off the ground.
He kicked me in the stomach.
The breath rushed out of me like air exploding from a pin-pricked balloon. I lost my balance, and we both collapsed in a heap.
He pulled loose and scrambled away.
I went after him on my hands and knees, which felt like four blocks of ice. I saw him, closed the gap, lunged, and brought him down with a tackle. I rolled with him, holding him close, holding him tightly so that he couldn't get hurt-and so he couldn't kick and punch.
He bit me.
Hard.
But that was all right with me because I pretty much had been expecting it and had steeled myself against both the pain and the surprise of it. As he chewed viciously at my shoulder, surely drawing blood but making no sound whatsoever, I clambered laboriously to my feet, still holding on to him.
A thin crust of snow had frozen in my eyelashes, welding them into a pair of brittle plates. Every time I blinked it felt as if two heavy wooden shutters were crashing into place. Furthermore, my face was numb, and my lips felt as if they had cracked and were bleeding.
I took several uncertain steps through the soft drifts until I grasped that I was moving downhill rather than up-and thus away from the farmhouse. I searched for the house, for the light in the living room-and saw, instead, a dozen or more radiant eyes, amber eyes, glowing at me from thirty yards away, strange circles of warm light that pulsed like beacons through the blizzard. Crying out involuntarily, I whirled and ran uphill as fast as I could lift and put down my ice-caked legs.
Toby squirmed against me, stopped biting, tried to use his knees and elbows to injure me. But I was holding him too tightly for him to get any leverage.
A familiar pressure bloomed suddenly around my head, sought entrance, quickly found a way in to me, and danced over the surface of my brain
No!
I resisted the contact.
Bones.. think of bones
I picked up speed.
Fear welled up in me as the pressure increased inside my skull; and it was a hideously potent fear, that biological terror that had made a raging madman of me in the forest earlier in the day. But I couldn't afford to lose my wits now. If I began to run blindly in circles, shouting and throwing punches at the empty air, the aliens would capture Toby and me; and before long they would go into the house and get Connie as well. Now that they had attempted to steal Toby from us, I was prepared to give serious consideration to that melodramatic and trite science fiction concept which I previously had found, if not impossible, highly improbable: that they viewed us as nothing more than a rich and convenient source of protein. Our survival, therefore, might well depend upon two things: how successfully I could resist the insistent mental probes-and how successfully I could cope with the disabling fear, the shattering terror, which the probes sparked in me.
Toby continued to struggle.
Clutching him against my chest, I managed to keep going.
The alien tried to sink thought-fingers into my mind, but I pinched and jabbed and scratched at his mental front, resisted and resisted and resisted.
Mindless fear slammed at me like hurricane seas, like gigantic waves battering a seawall. I held against them.
I kept running.
Lights were switched on ahead of me.
I could see the house, the sun porch.
Fifty feet. Maybe less.
I was winning.
Then I fell.
Still holding Toby-who had quieted considerably over the last few seconds I sat up in the snow and looked down the hill toward the forest. The amber eyes were closer than they had been only half a minute ago, no more than thirty or thirty-five feet away from us now.
Images formed behind my eyes, fragments of light and brilliant colors, alien scenes
No! Stay out of me!
Fear? crushing fear? terror? things in my head? spiders in my skull, things eating away in my brain
I had to fight it and I did fight it and I was nonetheless sure that I was losing where I had been winning an instant ago.
I started to get up. My feet slipped out from under me. I fell again and saw that the amber eyes were even closer, twenty feet away and moving rapidly in on me, and I saw that I was not going to get away and I started to cry and -
— and then Connie appeared beside me, stepping like a stage actress through the snow curtain. She was carrying the pistol that I had left at the head of the stairs. She was wearing a coat over her night gown, and her long hair was matted with snow that was crystalizing into ice. Bracing herself against the wind, holding the pistol with both hands, she fired at the approaching creatures.
