Invasion Read Online Free PDF Page B

looked back at me and said, "Don, you mustn't worry so much about what we think of you.
        We love you. We always will. We love you and trust you to take good care of us."
        I nodded, and she smiled at me. I watched her climb the steps until she was out of sight, and I wished that I could trust myself as much as she trusted me.
        Would I, could I, load and use the pistol if the time came for that sort of action-or would the weapon remind me of the war, Southeast Asia, all of those things that I had fled into catatonia in order to forget? Would I be able to defend my family -or would I back off from the gun like a man backing off from a rattlesnake? I simply didn't know; and until I did know, I didn't deserve her smile.
        In the den I dialed Sam Caldwell's number. It rang four times before he answered.
        "Sam? Don Hanlon."
        "You ready to be snowbound?" he asked.
        "You think it'll come to that?"
        "Sure do. Looks to me like we're in for the first big fall of the year."
        "Well, I'm kind of looking forward to it."
        "That's the proper attitude. Being snowbound is restful, peaceful."
        I decided that was enough
        Smalltalk. Neither of us cared much for long discussions about the weather, politics, or religion. Sam, especially, was scornful of wasted words; he was very much a taciturn, friendly, but totally self-sufficient and self-contained
        New Englander.
        He had come to the same conclusion a split second before I did.
        "What did you call for?" he asked in that brisk, short, but not impolite manner of his.
        "You hunt quite a lot."
        "That's true."
        "Do you know the spore of the animals most likely to be roaming through these woods?"
        "Sure do."
        "All of them?"
        "I've hunted nearly all of them."
        "Well, I've come across something pretty unusual. I never saw prints like these-and I can't seem to find them in any of the books I have out here."
        "You can't learn a wildcraft from a book."
        "That's precisely why I called you."
        "Shoot, then."
        I gave him a detailed description of the prints. I started to tell him about the amber eyes, about the creature that had been at the stable window and at our living room window-but I was cut off when the lights went out and the phone went dead at the same instant.
        "Sam?" I said, although I knew that the connection had been broken.
        The only response was silence.
        "Don!" Connie shouted.
        I put the receiver in the cradle and felt my way out of the den into the living room. The darkness seemed total at first and was only gradually mitigated by the phosphorescent glow of the snow fields which lay beyond the window and shone against the glass. "Are you all right?" I called to her.
        "The lights are out," she said. Before I could respond to that she said, "Well, isn't that silly of me?" She laughed nervously.
        "You know the lights are out."
        I could tell that, like me, she had been frightened by the sudden darkness. And, also like me, she had connected initially and irrationally-the power failure with the yellow-eyed animal that had terrified the horses.
        "The phone went dead too," I said.
        "Did Sam have any idea what-"
        "He didn't get a chance to say."
        After a brief hesitation she said,
        "I'm going to get Toby bundled up in a robe and bring him downstairs."
        "Don't try to get down the steps without a light," I said. "I'll find the candles in the kitchen and bring one up to you."
        That was considerably easier said than done. We had lived in the house only a little longer than half a year, and I was not so familiar with its layout that I could find my way easily in the dark.
        Crossing the living room was not so bad; but the kitchen was a battleground, for it had only one window to let in the