suggestion. He carried two cans upstairs and set them on the kitchen
floor beside the table.
'If the guns can't stop it,' he said, 'if it gets inside, and you're
backed into a corner, then the risk of fire might be worth taking.'
'Burn down the house?'
Heather asked disbelievingly. 'It's only a house. It can be
rebuilt.
If you have no other choice, then to hell with the house. If bullets
don't work--' He saw stark terror in her eyes. 'They will work, I'm
sure of that, the guns will stop it, especially that Uzi. But if by
some chance, some one-in-a-million chance, that doesn't stop it, fire
will get it for sure. Or at least drive it back. Fire could be just
what you need to give you time to distract the thing, hold it off, and
get out before you're trapped.'
She stared at him dubiously. 'Jack, why do you keep saying 'you'
instead of 'we'?' He hesitated. She wasn't going to like this. He
didn't like it much himself. There was no alternative. 'You'll stay
here with Toby and the dog while I--'
'No way.'
'--while I try to get to the Youngbloods' ranch for help.'
'No, we shouldn't split up.'
'We don't have a choice, Heather.'
'It'll take us easier if we split up.'
'Probably won't make a difference.'
'I think it will.'
'This shotgun doesn't add much to that Uzi.' He gestured at the
whiteout beyond the window. 'Anyway, we can't all make it through that
weather.' She stared morosely at the wall of blowing snow, unable to
argue the point.
'I could make it,' Toby said, smart enough to know that he was the weak
link. 'I really could.' The dog sensed the boy's anxiety and padded
to his side, rubbed against him. 'Dad, please, just give me a
chance.'
Two miles wasn't a great distance on a warm spring day, an easy walk,
but they were faced with fierce cold against which even their ski suits
were not perfect protection.
Furthermore, the power of the wind would work against them in three
ways: reducing the subjective air temperature at least ten degrees
below what it was objectively, pounding them into exhaustion as they
tried to make progress against it, and obscuring their desired route
with whirling clouds of snow that reduced visibility to near zero.
Jack figured he and Heather might have the strength and stamina
required to walk two miles under those conditions, with snow up to
their knees, higher in places, but he was sure Toby wouldn't get a
quarter of the way, not even walking in the trail they broke for him.
Before they'd gone far, they would have to take turns carrying him.
Thereafter, they would quickly become debilitated and surely die in
that white desolation.
'I don't want to stay here,' Toby said. 'I don't want to do what I
might have to do if I stay here.'
