put her there, between the archways to the dining and living rooms.
But she was far enough from the back door to have a chance of
obliterating the creature if it erupted into the house with unnatural
speed and power. She stopped, put the gasoline can on the floor beside
the newel post, and clutched the Uzi in both hands again.
'Mom?'
'Sssshhhh.'
'What're we gonna do?' he pleaded.
'Sssshhhh. Let me think.'
Aspects of the intruder were obviously snakelike, although she couldn't
know if that was the nature of only its appendages or of its entire
body. Most snakes could move fast--or coil and spring substantial
distances with deadly accuracy.
The back door remained ajar. Unmoving. Wisps of snow followed drafts
through the narrow gap between the door and the jamb, into the house,
spinning and glittering across the tile floor.
Whether or not the thing on the back porch was fast, it was undeniably
big.
She'd sensed its considerable size when she'd had only the most
fleeting glimpse of it slipping away from the window. Bigger than she
was.
'Come on,' she muttered, her attention riveted on the back door. 'Come
on, if you're never afraid, come on.'
Both she and Toby cried out in surprise when, in the living room, the
television switched on, with the volume turned all the way up.
Frenetic, bouncy music. Cartoon music. A screech of brakes, a crash
and clatter, with comic accompaniment on a flute. Then the voice of a
frustrated Elmer Fudd booming through the house: 'OOOHHH, I HATE THAT
WABBIT!'
Heather kept her attention on the back door, beyond the hall and
kitchen, altogether about fifty feet away.
So loud each word vibrated the windows, Bugs Bunny said: 'EH, WHAT'S
UP, DOC' And then a sound of something bouncing: BOING, BOINC, BOING,
BOING, BOING.
'STOP THAT, STOP THAT, YOU CWAZY WABBIT!'
Falstaff ran into the living room, barking at the TV, and then scurried
into the hall again, looking past Heather to where he, too, knew the
real enemy still waited.
The back door.
Snow sifting through the narrow opening.
In the living room, the television program fell silent in the middle of
a long comical trombone crescendo that, even under the circumstances,
brought to mind a vivid image of Elmer Fudd sliding haplessly and
inexorably toward one doom or another. Quiet. Just the keening wind
outside.
One second. Two. Three.
Then the TV blared again, but not with Bugs and Elmer. It spewed forth
the same weird waves of unmelodic music that had issued from the radio
in the kitchen.
