Jack started toward the kitchen, but Harlan Moffit put down the fuel
cans and grabbed him by the arm.
'What the hell's going on here?'
Jack tried to pull away from him. The chubby, bearded man was stronger
than he looked.
'You tell me your family's in danger, going to die any minute, trapped
somehow, but then we get here and what I see is your family is the
danger, setting fire to their own house by the look of it.'
From the second floor came a great creaking and a shuddering crash as
something caved in, wall or ceiling.
Jack shouted, 'Heather!'
He tore loose from Harlan and made it into the kitchen just as Heather
climbed out of the basement with two more cans. He grabbed one of them
from her and guided her toward the back door.
'Out of the house now,' he ordered.
'That's it,' she said. 'No more down there.'
Jack paused at the pegboard to get the keys to the caretaker's cottage,
then followed Heather outside.
Toby had already started up the long hill, trudging through snow that
was knee-high in some places, hardly up to his ankles in others. It
was nowhere as deep as out on the fields, because the wind relentlessly
swept the slope between the house and the higher woods, even scouring
it to bare ground in a few spots.
Falstaff accompanied him, a brand-new dog but as faithful as a lifelong
companion. Odd. The finest qualities of character--rare in humankind
and perhaps rarer still in what other intelligent species might share
the universe--were common in canines. Sometimes, Jack wondered if the
species created in God's image was, in fact, not one that walked erect
but one that padded on all fours with a tail behind.
Picking up one of the cans on the porch to go with the one she already
had, Heather hurried into the snow.
'Come on!'
'You going to burn down the house uphill now?' Harlan Moffit asked
dryly, evidently having glimpsed that other structure through the
snow.
'And we need your help.'
Jack carried two of the remaining four cans to the steps, knowing
Moffit must think they were all mad.
The bearded man was obviously intrigued but also spooked and wary.
'Are you people plumb crazy, or don't you know there's better ways of
getting rid of termites?'
There was no way to explain the situation in a reasonable and
methodical fashion, especially not when every second counted, so Jack
went for it, took the plunge off the deep end, and said, 'Since you
knew I was the new fella in these parts, maybe you also know I was a
cop in L.A. not some flaky screenwriter with wild ideas--just a cop, a
working stiff like you. Now, it's going to sound nuts, but we're in a
fight here against something that isn't of this world, something that
came here when Ed--'
'You mean aliens?' Harlan Moffit interrupted.
