'Pull your jacket ovel your nose, breathe through your jacket!'
But why did it matter whether they died by fire--or in less clean
ways?
Maybe fire was preferable.
The other Giver, slithering on the bedroom floor among the ruins of the
dead woman, suddenly shot a sinuous tentacle at Heather, snaring her
ankle.
She screamed.
The Eduardo-thing tottered nearer, hissing.
Behind her, sheltered between her and the door, Toby shouted, 'Yes!
All right, yes!'
'Too late,' she warned him; 'No!'
The driver of the grader was Harlan Moffit, and he lived in Eagle's
Roost with his wife, Cindi -- with an i -- and his daughters, Luci and
Nanci -each of those with an i as well-- and Cindi worked for the
Livestock cooperative, whatever that was. They were lifelong residents
of Montana and wouldn't live anywhere else. However, they'd had a lot
of fun when they'd gone to Los Angeles a couple of years ago and seen
Disneyland, Universal Studios and an old brokendown homeless guy being
mugged by two teenagers on a corner while they were stopped at a
traffic light. Visit, yes; live there, no. All this he somehow
imparted by the time they had reached the turnoff at Quartermas Ranch,
as he felt obliged to make Jack feel among friends and neighbors in his
time of trouble, regardless of what the trouble might be.
They entered the private lane at a higher speed than Jack would have
thought possible, considering the depth of the snow that had
accumulated in the past sixteen hours.
Harlan raised the angled plow a few inches to allow the speed. 'We
don't need to scoop off everything down to bare dirt and maybe risk
jamming up on a big bump in the road.' The top three quarters of the
snow cover plumed to the side.
'How can you tell where the lane is?' Jack worried, because the
rolling mantle of white blurred definitions.
'Been here before. Then there's instinct.'
'Instinct?'
'Plowman's instinct.'
'We won't get stuck?'
'These tires? This engine?'
Harlan was proud of his machine, and it really was churning along,
rumbling through the untouched snow as if carving its way through
little more than air.
'Never get stuck, not with me driving. Take this baby through hell if
I had to, plow away the melting brimstone and thumb my nose at the
devil himself.
So what's wrong up there with your family?'
'Trapped,' Jack said cryptically.
'In snow, you mean?'
'Yes.'
'Nothing steep enough around here for an avalanche.'
'Not an avalanche,' Jack confirmed.
