'And I don't want to leave you here.' Jack squatted in front of him.
'I'm not abandoning you, Toby. You know I'd never do that, don't
you?'
Toby nodded somberly. 'And you can depend on your mom. She's tough.
She won't let anything happen to you.'
'I know,' Toby said, being a brave soldier.
'Good. Okay. Now I've got a couple of things to do yet, and then I'll
go. I'll be back fast as I can--straight over to Ponderosa Pines,
round up help, get back here with the cavalry. You've seen those old
movies. The cavalry always gets there in the nick of time, doesn't
it?
You'll be okay. We'll all be okay.' The boy searched his eyes. He
met his son's fear with a falsely reassuring smile and felt like the
most deceitful bastard ever born. He was not as confident as he
sounded. Not by half. And he did feel as if he was running out on
them. What if he got help-- but they were dead by the time he returned
to Quartermass Ranch?
He might as well kill himself then. Wouldn't be a point in going on.
Truth was, it probably wouldn't work out that them dead and him
alive.
At best he had a fifty-fifty chance of making it all the way to
Ponderosa Pines. If the storm didn't bring him down ... something else
might. He didn't know how closely they were being observed, whether
their adversary would be aware of his departure. If it did see him go,
it wouldn't let him get far. Then Heather and Toby would be on their
own. Nothing else he could do. No other plan made sense. Zero
options.
And time running out.
Hammer blows boomed through the house. Hard, hollow, fearful sounds.
Jack used three-inch steel nails because they were the largest he had
been able to find in the garage tool cabinet. Standing in the
vestibule at the bottom of the back stairs, he drove those spikes at a
severe angle through the outside door and into the jamb. Two above the
knob, two below. The door was solid oak, and the long nails bit
through it only with relentless hammering. The hinges were on the
inside. Nothing on the back porch could pry them loose. Nevertheless,
he decided to fix the door to the jamb on that flank as well, though
with only two nails instead of four. He drove another two through the
upper part of the door and into the header, just for good measure. Any
intruder that entered those back stairs could take two immediate routes
once it crossed the outer threshold, instead of just one as with the
other doors. It could enter the kitchen and confront Heathen-or turn
the other way and swiftly ascend to Toby's room. Jack wanted to
prevent anything from reaching the second floor because, from there, it
could slip into several rooms, avoiding a frontal assault, forcing
Heather to search for it until it had a chance to attack her from
behind. After he'd driven the final nail home, he disengaged the
dead-bolt lock and tried to open the door. He couldn't budge it, no
matter how hard he strained. No intruder could get through it quietly
