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He had been so startled by the flour canister that he had not noticed fro, and it had fallen in such a fashion that he could not deduce the position of the creature that had hurled it He still did not know if the intruder was to the left or right of the doorway

He was not sure he any longer cared where it was Even with the 357 in hand, he did not think he would be wise to enter the kitchen Not if the da battle with an intelligent buzz saw, for Christ’s sake

The light in the east-facing kitchen indling, al roo Even behind them, in spite of the open front door andand the corner la with shadows

In the kitchen, the intruder hissed loudly, a sound like escaping gas, which was iht have been ainst a hard surface

Travis had caught Einstein’s tree of a spider’s web, about to step into a trap

He remembered Ted Hockney’s bitten, bloodied, eyeless face

Click-click

In antiterrorist training, he had been taught how to stalk ood at it But the problem here was that the yellow-eyed intruder was maybe as smart as a man but could not be counted on to think like a ht do next, how it ht respond to any initiative he made Therefore, he could never outthink it, and by its alien nature the creature had a perpetual and deadly advantage of surprise

Click

Travis quietly took a step back frogerated care, not wanting the thing to discover that he was retreating because only God knehat itout of its reach Einstein padded silently into the living rooer to put distance between himself and the intruder

When he reached Ted Hockney’s corpse, Travis glanced away fro for the least littered route to the front door-and he saw Nora standing by the arotten a butcher’s knife from the kitchenette in the Airstream and had coe but horrified to see her there in the glow of the corner la both

Einstein and Nora were on the verge of coain, because now they were both inside the house, both vulnerable, both possibly within striking distance of the thing in the kitchen

She started to speak

Travis shook his head and raised one hand to his lanced from him to the dead h the rubble, he was stricken by a feeling that the intruder had gone out the back of the house and was co being seen by neighbors in the gloo to enter behind the between Travis and the front door, so he would not have a clear shot at the creature if it came that way; hell, it would be all over Nora one second after it reached the door Trying not to panic, trying not to think of Hockney’s eyeless face, Travisthe crackle of so those small noises would not carry to the kitchen if the intruder was still out there Reaching Nora, he took her by the arm and propelled her toward the front door, out onto the stoop and down the stairs, looking left and right, half-expecting to see the living nightunshots and Nora’s shouting had drawn neighbors as far as their front doors all along the street A few had even come outside onto porches and lawns Somebody surely would have called the cops Because of Einstein’s status as a er as the yellow-eyed thing in the house

The three of them piled into the pickup Nora locked her door, and Travis locked his He started the engine and backed the truck-and the Airstream- out of the driveway, into the street He are of people staring

The twilight was going to be short-lived, as it alas near the ocean Already, the sunless sky was blackish in the east, purple overhead, and a steadily darkening blood-red in the west Travis was grateful for the oncoh he knew the yellow-eyed creature would be sharing it with thehbors, none of who his years of self-imposed solitude, and he turned at the first corner Nora held Einstein tightly, and Travis drove as fast as he dared The trailer rocked and swayed behind thereat a speed

"What happened in there?" she asked

"It killed Hockney earlier today or yesterday-"

"It?"

"-and it aiting for us to come home"

"It?" she repeated

Einstein mewled

Travis said, "I’ll have to explain later" He wondered if he could explain

No description he gave of the intruder would do it justice; he did not possess the words necessary to convey the degree of its strangeness

They had gone no hborhood that they had just left Travis drove another four blocks and parked in the eh school

"What now?" Nora asked

"We abandon the trailer and the truck," he said "They’ll be looking for both"

He put the revolver in her purse, and she insisted on slipping the butcher’s knife in there, too, rather than leave it behind

They got out of the pickup and, in the descending night, walked past the side of the school, across an athletic field, through a gate in a chain-link fence, and onto a residential street lined with mature trees