Watchers (64 page)

Scuttling across the front porch, certain that Cornell was coming fast behind him, Vince decided to go into the house instead of heading for the woods. They would expect him to run for the trees, take cover, and reconsider his strategy. Instead, he’d go straight into the house and find a position from which he could see both the front and rear doors. Maybe he’d take them by surprise yet.

He was passing a large window, heading for the front door, when something exploded through the glass.

Vince cried out in surprise and fired his revolver, but the shot went into the porch ceiling, and the dog—Jesus, that’s what it was, the dog—hit him hard. The gun flew out of his hand. He was knocked backward. The dog clung to him, claws snagged in his clothes, teeth sunk in his shoulder. The porch railing disintegrated. They tumbled out into the front yard, into the rain.

Screaming, Vince hammered at the dog with his big fists until it squealed and let go of him. Then it went for his throat, and he just knocked it off in time to prevent it tearing open his windpipe.

His gut still throbbed, but he hitched and stumbled back to the porch, looking for his revolver—and found Cornell instead. Bleeding from his shoulder, Cornell was on the porch, looking down at Vince.

Vince felt a great wild surge of confidence. He knew that he had been right all along, knew that he was invincible, immortal, because he could look straight into the muzzle of the Uzi without fear, without the
slightest
fear, so he grinned up at Cornell. “Look at me,
look!
I’m your worst nightmare.”

Cornell said, “Not even close,” and opened fire.

In the kitchen Travis sat in a chair, with Einstein at his side, while Nora dressed his wound. As she worked, she told him what she knew about the man who had forced his way into the truck.

“He was a damn wild card,” Travis said. “No way we could ever have known he was out there.”

“I hope he’s the
only
wild card.”

Wincing as Nora poured alcohol and iodine into the bullet hole, wincing again as she bound the wound with gauze by passing it under his armpit, he said, “Don’t worry about making a great job of it. The bleeding’s not that bad. No artery’s been hit.”

The bullet had gone through, leaving a hideous exit wound, and he was in considerable pain, but for a while yet he would be able to function. He would have to seek medical attention later, maybe from Jim Keene to avoid the questions that any other doctor would surely insist on having answered. For now, he was only concerned that the wound be bound tight enough to allow him to dispose of the dead man.

Einstein was battered, too. Fortunately, he had not been cut when he smashed through the front window. He did not seem to have any broken bones, but he had taken several hard blows. Not in the best of shape to begin with, he looked bad—muddy and rain-soaked and in pain. He would need to see Jim Keene, too.

Outside, rain was falling harder than ever, pounding on the roof, gurgling noisily through gutters and downspouts. It was slanting across the front porch and through the shattered window, but they did not have time to worry about water damage.

“Thank God for the rain,” Travis said. “No one in the area will have heard the gunfire in this downpour.”

Nora said, “Where will we dump the body?”

“I’m thinking.” And it was hard to think clearly because the pain in his shoulder throbbed up and into his head.

She said, “We could bury him here, in the woods—”

“No. We’d always know he was there. We’d always worry about the body being dug up by wild animals, found by hikers. Better . . . there’re places along the Coast Highway where we could pull over, wait until there’s no traffic, drag him out of the bed of the truck, and toss him over the side. If we pick a place where the sea comes in right to the base of the slope, it’ll carry him out, move him away, before anyone notices him down there.”

As Nora finished the bandage, Einstein abruptly got up, whined. He sniffed the air. He went to the back door, stood staring at it for a moment, then disappeared into the living room.

“I’m afraid he’s hurt worse than he seems to be,” Nora said, applying a final strip of adhesive tape.

“Maybe,” Travis said. “But maybe not. He’s just been acting peculiar all day, ever since you left this morning. He told me it smelled like a bad day.”

“He was right,” she said.

Einstein returned from the living room at a run and went straight to the pantry, switching on the lights and pumping the pedals that released lettered tiles.

“Maybe he has an idea about disposing of the body,” Nora said.

As Nora gathered up the leftover iodine, alcohol, gauze, and tape, Travis painfully pulled on his shirt and went to the pantry to see what Einstein had to say.

THE OUTSIDER IS HERE.

Travis slammed a new magazine into the butt of the Uzi carbine, put an extra in one pocket, and gave Nora one of the Uzi pistols that was kept in the pantry.

Judging by Einstein’s sense of urgency, they had no time to go through the house, closing and bolting shutters.

The clever scheme to gas The Outsider in the barn had been built upon the certainty that it would approach at night and reconnoiter. Now that it had come in daylight and had reconnoitered while they were distracted by Vince, that plan was useless.

They stood in the kitchen, listening, but nothing could be heard above the relentless roar of the rain.

Einstein was not able to give them a more precise fix on their adversary’s location. His sixth sense was still not working up to par. They were just lucky that he had sensed the beast at all. His morning-long anxiety had evidently not been related to any presentiment about the man who had come home with Nora but had been, even without his knowledge, caused by the approach of The Outsider.

“Upstairs,” Travis said. “Let’s go.”

Down here, the creature could enter by doors or windows, but on the second floor they would at least have only windows to worry about. And maybe they could get shutters closed over some of those.

Nora climbed the stairs with Einstein. Travis brought up the rear, moving backward, keeping the Uzi aimed down at the first floor. The ascent made him dizzy. He was acutely aware that the pain and weakness in his injured shoulder was slowly spreading outward through his entire body like an ink stain through a blotter.

On the second floor, at the head of the stairs, he said, “If we hear it come in, we can back off, wait until it starts to climb toward us, then step forward and catch it by surprise, blow it away.”

She nodded.

They had to be silent now, give it a chance to creep into the downstairs, give it time to decide they were on the second floor, let it gain confidence, let it approach the stairs with a sense of security.

A strobe-flash of lightning—the first of the storm—pulsed at the window at the end of the hall, and thunder cracked. The sky seemed to have been shattered by the blast, and all the rain stored in the heavens collapsed upon the earth in one tremendous fall.

At the end of the hallway, one of Nora’s canvases flew out of her studio and crashed against the wall.

Nora cried out in surprise, and for an instant all three of them stared stupidly at the painting lying on the hall floor, half thinking that its poltergeist-like flight had been related to the great crash of thunder and the lightning.

A second painting sailed out of her studio, hit the wall, and Travis saw the canvas was shredded.

The Outsider was already in the house.

They were at one end of the short hall. The master bedroom and future nursery were on the left, the bathroom and then Nora’s studio on the right. The thing was just two doors away, in Nora’s studio, demolishing her paintings.

Another canvas flew into the hallway.

Rain-soaked, muddied, battered, still somewhat weak from his battle with distemper, Einstein nevertheless barked viciously, trying to warn off The Outsider.

Holding the Uzi, Travis moved one step down the hall.

Nora grabbed his arm. “Let’s not. Let’s get out.”

“No. We’ve got to face it.”

“On
our
terms,” she said.

“These are the best terms we’re going to get.”

Two more paintings flew out of the studio and clattered down on top of the growing pile of wrecked canvases.

Einstein was no longer barking but growling deep in his throat.

Together, they moved along the hall, toward the open door of Nora’s studio.

Travis’s experience and training told him they ought to split up, spread out, instead of grouping into a single target. But this was not Delta Force. And their enemy was not a mere terrorist. If they spread out, they would lose some of the courage they needed to face the thing. Their very closeness gave them strength.

They were halfway to the studio door when The Outsider shrieked. It was an icy sound that stabbed right through Travis and quick-froze his bone marrow. He and Nora halted, but Einstein took two more steps before stopping.

The dog was shuddering violently.

Travis realized he, too, was shaking. The tremors aggravated the pain in his shoulder.

Breaking fear’s hold, he rushed to the open door, treading on ruined canvases, spraying bullets into the studio. The weapon’s recoil, though minimal, was like a chisel chipping into his wound.

He hit nothing, heard nothing scream, saw no sign of the enemy.

The floor in there was littered with a dozen mangled paintings and glass from the broken window by which the thing had entered after climbing onto the front porch roof.

Waiting, Travis stood with his legs spread wide. The gun in both hands. Blinking sweat out of his eyes. Trying to ignore the seething pain in his right shoulder. Waiting.

The Outsider must be to the left of the door—or behind it on the right, crouched, ready to spring. If he gave it time, maybe it would grow tired of waiting and would rush him, and he could cut it down in the doorway.

No, it’s as smart as Einstein, he told himself. Would Einstein be so dumb as to rush me through a narrow doorway? No. No, it’ll do something more intelligent, unexpected.

The sky exploded with thunder so powerful it vibrated the windows and shook the house. Chain lightning sizzled through the day.

Come on, you bastard, show yourself.

He glanced at Nora and Einstein, who stood a few steps away from him, with the master bedroom on one side of them and the bathroom on the other side, the stairs behind them.

He looked again through the doorway, at the window glass among the debris on the floor. Suddenly he was certain that The Outsider was no longer in the studio, that it had gone out through the window, onto the roof of the front porch, and that it was coming at them from another part of the house, through another door, perhaps out of one of the bedrooms, or from the bathroom—or maybe it would explode at them, shrieking, from the top of the steps.

He motioned Nora forward, to his side. “Cover me.”

Before she could object, he went through the doorway, into the studio, moving in a crouch. He nearly fell in the rubble, but stayed on his feet and spun around, ready to open fire if the thing was looming over him.

It was gone.

The closet door was open. Nothing in there.

He went to the broken window and cautiously looked out onto the roof of the rain-washed porch. Nothing.

Wind keened over the dangerously sharp shards of glass still bristling from the window frame.

He started back toward the upstairs hall. He could see Nora out there, looking in at him, scared, but gamely clutching her Uzi. Behind her, the door to the future nursery opened, and it was
there,
yellow eyes aglow. Its monstrous jaws cracked wide, full of teeth far sharper than the wicked glass shards in the window frame.

She was aware of it, started to turn, but it struck at her before she had a chance to fire. It tore the Uzi out of her hands.

It had no chance to gut her with its razor-edged six-inch claws because, even as the beast was tearing the pistol out of her hands, Einstein charged it, snarling. With catlike quickness, The Outsider shifted its attention from Nora to the dog. It whipped around on him, lashed out as if its long arms were constructed with more than one elbow joint. It snatched Einstein up in both horrendous hands.

Crossing the studio to the hall door, Travis had no clear shot at The Outsider because Nora was between him and that hateful thing. As Travis reached the doorway, he cried out for her to fall down, to give him a line of fire, and she did, immediately, but too late. The Outsider scooped Einstein into the nursery and slammed the door, as if it were an evil nightmare-spawned jack-in-the-box that had popped out and popped back in with its prey, all in the blink of an eye.

Einstein squealed, and Nora rushed the nursery door.

“No!” Travis shouted, pulling her aside.

He aimed the automatic carbine at the closed door and emptied the rest of the magazine into it, punching at least thirty holes in the wood, crying out through clenched teeth as pain flared through his shoulder. There was some risk of hitting Einstein, but the retriever would be in worse danger if Travis did
not
open fire. When the gun stopped spitting bullets, he ripped out the empty magazine, took a full magazine from his pocket and slammed that into the gun. Then he kicked open the ruined door and went into the nursery.

The window stood open, curtains blowing in the wind.

The Outsider was gone.

Einstein was on the floor, against one wall, motionless, covered with blood.

Nora made a wrenching sound of grief when she saw the retriever.

At the window, Travis spotted splashes of blood leading across the porch roof. Rain was swiftly washing the gore away.

Movement caught his eye, and he looked toward the barn, where The Outsider disappeared through the big door.