The Taking

13

BY VIRTUE OF ITS EXTRAORDINARY VOLUME, ITS numbing roar, and its fearsome spectacle, the ceaseless rain inspired curious psychological reactions. The monotony of the phenomenon and its oppressive force had the power to depress and disorient.

As she drove slowly across the storm-swept western ridge line above Black Lake, toward the town of the same name, Molly Sloan was able to resist depression and disorientation. But she felt that something essential in herself was gradually being washed away.

Not hope. She would never lose hope; like calcium, hope was part of the structure of her bones.

The certainty of purpose that characterized her approach to life seemed, however, to be less firm than usual, turning soggy under the influence of this deluge, so quickly washed thin and bleached of its former intensity.

She didn't know where she was going, other than to town, or why, other than to seek sanctuary with neighbors. She had always planned her life not a month ahead, not even just a year ahead, but a decade or more in advance, setting goals and striving ever toward them. Now she was unable to see as far as the coming dawn, and without a clear purpose, without a long-term plan, she felt adrift.

She wanted to survive, of course. But survival had never before been enough for her, and it wasn't enough now. To be motivated, she needed a more profound purpose and greater meaning.

Pages crystallizing into chapters, chapters accreting into books: The story-painting, spell-casting, truth-telling work of a novelist had seemed to be a lifelong purpose. Her mother had taught her that talent is a gift from God, that a writer has a sacred obligation to her Creator to explore the gift with energy and diligence, to polish it, to use it to brighten the landscape of her readers' hearts.

In her haste to pack food, weapons, and other essentials for whatever perilous journey might be ahead of them, Molly had forgotten to bring her laptop. She had always written on a computer; she didn't know if her talent would flow as easily, or at all, from the point of a pen.

Besides, she had brought no pen, no pencil. She hadn't included any paper in her provisions, either, only the pages of her current, unfinished manuscript.

Perhaps purpose and meaning and ambitious plans would elude her until she better understood the current situation and, based on more hard facts than she now possessed, could begin to imagine what future might await them.

If understanding was to be achieved, questions needed to be answered.

Although driving at only ten miles per hour through the dismal downpour, she didn't look away from the road when she said to Neil, "Why T. S. Eliot?"

"What do you mean?"

"What Harry… the thing that used to be Harry… what it said to me. 'I think we are in rats' alley, Where the dead men lost their bones.' "

"Eliot is one of your favorites, right? Probably Harry would know that."

"Harry's body was there in the hall when he spoke to me, but his brains were in the bathroom, all the memories blown out of them."

Literally riding shotgun and wary of the night, Neil offered neither an explanation nor even a supposition.

Molly pressed: "How would your alien parasite have tapped the contents of Harry's mind if Harry didn't have a mind anymore?"

Scattered across the roadway were more fallen birds. Although they were clearly dead, she tried her best to drive around rather than over them.

Grimly, she wondered how soon she would encounter human cadavers heaped in similar numbers.

"Some sci-fi writer," Neil said at last, "I think it was Arthur C. Clarke, suggested that an extraterrestrial species, hundreds or thousands of years more advanced than us, would possess technology that would appear to us to be not the result of applied science but entirely supernatural, pure magic."

"In this case, black magic," she said. "Evil. What practical purpose could they have for turning a dead man into a marionette-except to terrorize?"

Ahead in the luminous storm, a separate light arose, and grew brighter as they approached it.

Molly slowed further, allowed the SUV to coast forward.

Out of the torrents loomed a blue Infiniti, standing in their lane, facing the same direction that they were traveling, but dead still. The lights of the car blazed. Three of its four doors hung open wide.

Molly rolled to a stop ten feet behind the vehicle. The engine was running: Pale exhaust vapor issued continuously from the car's tailpipe, but the skeins of rain washed the plume away before it could attain much length.

From this angle, Molly could see no driver, no passengers.

"Keep moving," Neil encouraged.

She swung the Explorer into the northbound lane and slowly drove around the Infiniti.

No one, either dead or alive, was slumped inside below the level of the windows.

The car had not failed its occupants, yet they had abandoned it and had chosen to continue on foot. Or had fled in panic. Or had been taken.

On the pavement in front of the Infiniti, illuminated by its headlights, lay three objects. A baseball bat. A butcher knife. A long-handled ax.

"Maybe they didn't have guns," Neil said, expressing Molly's very thoughts, "and had to arm themselves with whatever they could find."

During the confrontation that occurred here, the occupants of the Infiniti must have discovered that their weapons were useless and must have discarded them. Or perhaps they had been forcibly disarmed by something that was unimpressed by clubs and blades.

"Maybe we'll meet up with them somewhere on the road ahead," Neil suggested.

Molly didn't think that would happen. Those people were gone forever: to where, unknown; to what hideous end, unguessable.