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He followed scents through the house, and that was interesting, not exciting but definitely interesting His coated patches ofroous in a room on the other side of the hall, several deposits of rat feces, the h one of the glassless s and broken a wing against a wall, and the still ripe carcass of a diseased coyote that had crawled into the kitchen to die

During the course of that inspection, Tucker realized the house did not offer ideal shelter The rooe and drafty, especially s broken out Though no huered on the air, he sensed that people still cah to be troublesome

In the kitchen, however, he found the entrance to the cellar, and he was excited by that subterranean retreat He led the others down the creaking stairs into that deeper darkness, where cold drafts could not reach them, where the floor and walls were dry, and where the air had a clean, lime smell that came off the concrete-block walls

He suspected that trespassers seldom ventured into the base into a lair from which they could not possibly escape

It was a perfect, less den Tucker prowled the peri on the floor He sniffed in corners and examined the rusted furnace He was satisfied they’d be safe They could curl up secure in the knowledge that they would not be found and if, by some chance, they were found, they could cut off the only exit and dispense with an intruder quickly

In such a deep, dark, secret place, they could beco they wanted, and no one would see the they wanted?

He was not sure where that thought originated or what ithe had initiated some process that was now beyond his conscious control, that soe Panic seized him He had shifted to an altered state ain But now … His fear was sharp only for a moment, because he could not concentrate on the proble," and was soon distracted by the female, anted to couple with hi at one another, thrusting and thrashing Their shrill, excited cries rose through the abandoned house, like ghost voices in a haunted place

6

Tick-tick-tick

Sah the , and confront the creature face to face, for he was eager to see what one of thes evidently were, a confrontation was certain to result in an attack and gunfire, which would draw the attention of the neighbors and then the police He couldn’t risk his current hiding place, for at the o

He clutched his revolver and kept one hand on Moose and re He heard voices, either wordless or so lass above his head The second creature had joined the first at the side of the house Their gruument

Silence followed

Sa for the voices to resume or for the a happened At last, as the an to cramp, he took his hand off Moose and eased up to theHe half expected the Boogeylass, but it was gone

With the dog accoround floor, looking out all the s on four sides of the house He would not have been surprised to find those creatures trying to force entry so on the roof and gurgling in the downspouts, the house was silent

He decided they were gone and that their interest in the house had been coincidental They weren’t looking for hilio if he had seen them But if they had come to deal with him, they apparently had decided that they could no lass and a noisy confrontation than he could, not in the heart of town They were secretive creatures They ht rarely cut loose with an eerie cry that would echo across Moonlight Cove, but only when in the grip of soe passion And thus far, for the most part, they had limited their attacks to people who had been relatively isolated

Back in the living rooain and stretched out on the sofa

Moose sat watching him for a while, as if unable to believe that he could cal what had been on the prowl in the rain

"Soht," he told the dog "So if I spooked easily, I’d probably never want to go to sleep again"

The dog yawned and got up and went out into the dark hall, where he boarded the elevator The motor hummed as the lift carried the Labrador upstairs

As he waited for sleep to steal over hiain, Sa pattern by concentrating on a few iood Mexican food, barely chilled Guinness Stout, and Goldie Hawn Ideally, he’d dreareat Mexican restaurant with Goldie Haho’d look evenGuinness and laughing

Instead, when he did fall asleep, he dreamed about his father, a mean-tee of seven, after his mother had died in the car crash

7

Nestled in the stack of grass-scented burlap tarps in the back of the gardener’s truck, Chrissie hen the autoroan and clatter She al where she was, she pulled her head under the top half-dozen tarps, which she was using as blankets She tried to shrink into the pile of burlap

She heard rain striking the roof It sliced into the gravel driveway just beyond the open door,noise like a thousand strips of bacon on an irier

"You got my lunch box, Sarah?"

Chrissie didn’t know Mr Eulane well enough to recognize his voice, but she supposed that was hinize, answered at once:

"Ed, I wish you’d just come back home after you drop me at the school Take the day off You shouldn’t work in such foul weather"

"Well, I can’t cut grass in this downpour," he said "But I can do some other chores I’ll just pull on my vinyl anorak Keeps h the Red Sea in that anorak and wouldn’t have needed God’s h the coarse, grass-stained cloth, Chrissie was troubled by a tickling sensation in her nose, all the way into her sinuses She was afraid that she was going to sneeze

STUPID YOUNG GIRL SNEEZES, REVEALING HERSELF TO RAVENOUS ALIENS; EATEN ALIVE; "SHE WAS A TASTY LITTLE MORSEL," SAYS ALIEN NEST QUEEN, "BRING US MORE OF YOUR ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BLOND FEMALES"