Winter Moon

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.
        He could think of no euphemism that was any less absurd. "Yeah.
        Aliens. They-"
        "I'll be a fucking sonofabitch!" Harlan Moffit said, and smacked one meaty fist into the palm of his other hand. A torrent of words burst from him: "I knew I'd get to see one sooner or later.
        Read about them all the time in the Enquirer. And books. Some are good aliens, some bad, and some you'll never figure out in a month of Sundays-just like people. These are real bad bastards, huh? Come whirling down in their ships, did they? Holy shit on a holy shingle!
        And me here for it!" He grabbed the last two cans of gasoline and charged off the porch, uphill through the bright reflections of flame that rippled like phantom flags across the snow. "Come on, come on-let's waste these fuckers!"
        Jack would have laughed if his son's sanity and life had not been balanced on a thin line, a thread, a filament. Even so, he almost sat down on the snow-packed porch steps, almost let the giggles and the guffaws come. Humor and death were kin, all right.
        Couldn't face the latter without the former. Any cop knew as much.
        And life was absurd, down to the deepest foundations of it, so there was always something funny in the middle of whatever hell was blowing up around you at the moment. Atlas wasn't carrying the world on his shoulders, no giant muscular hulk with a sense of responsibility, the world was balanced on a pyramid of clowns, and they were always tooting horns and wobbling and goosing each other. But even though it was absurd, though life could be disastrous and funny at the same time, people still died. Toby might still die. Heather. All of them.
        Luther Bryson had been making jokes, laughing, seconds before he took a swarm of bullets in the chest.
        Jack hurried after Harlan Moffit. The wind was cold.
        The hill was slippery.
        The day was hard and gray. o Climbing the sloped