The Taking

15

THE SECOND ABANDONED VEHICLE, A LINCOLN NAVIGATOR, stood in the northbound lane, facing the Explorer as it traveled southbound. The engine was idling, as had been the case with the Infiniti, and none of the tires was flat, suggesting that the SUV had in no way failed its driver.

The headlights were doused, but the emergency flashers flung off rhythmic flares, with stroboscopic effect, so that the million tongues of rain appeared to stutter, stutter in their fall.

On the Infiniti, three of four doors had stood open, but in this case only one. The rear door on the driver's side admitted rain and offered a view of the backseat illuminated by the Lincoln's interior lights.

"Neil, my God."

Molly braked, stopped, as Neil said, "What?"

The smeared glass in her door, the blurring rain, and the metronomic dazzle of the flashers all combined to deceive the eye, yet Molly knew what she saw, and knew what she must do.

"There's a child," she said, shifting the Explorer into park. "A baby."

"Where?"

"On the backseat of that Navigator," she said, and threw open her door.

"Molly, wait!"

If the rain was toxic, she had been poisoned beyond the hope of antidote when they had fled Harry Corrigan's house. Another dose could do no worse injury than the damage she had already sustained.

As if the rain were warmer than it was, the beaten blacktop sweated oil and made slick the path beneath her feet.

Molly slipped, slid, almost went down. Regaining her balance, she was gripped by the conviction that something watched her, some creature in hiding, and that if she had fallen, the nameless thing would have slithered out of the wet gloom, would have seized her in cruel jaws, and in an instant would have carried her off the pavement, over the crest of the ridge, into trees and weeds and brambles, down into the thorny belly of the night.

Reaching the open door of the Navigator, she discovered that the abandoned child-not an infant but a barefoot little girl in pink pedal pushers and a yellow T-shirt-was a large doll, only a couple of inches shorter than two feet. Its chubby jointed arms were extended as if in supplication or in hope of an embrace.

Molly looked into the front seat, then into the cargo space at the back of the SUV. No one.

The child to whom the doll belonged had gone wherever her parents had gone. To shelter, perhaps.

And what is the most enduring place of shelter if not death?

Rebelling against that thought, Molly pressed through the rain to the back of the Navigator.

Neil called worriedly to her. She turned and saw that he had gotten out of the Explorer and stood, shotgun in both hands, giving her cover.

Although she couldn't quite hear his words, she knew that he wanted her to get behind the wheel once more and drive them into town.

Shaking her head, she went around behind the Navigator and then to the passenger's side. She wanted to be sure that the child, the owner of the doll, had not crouched behind the vehicle, hiding from whatever menace might come along the highway, from whatever evil might have taken her parents.

No child huddled there. Nor under the SUV, either, when Molly dropped to her knees and searched that low space.

The shoulder of the road was narrow. Spalled-off asphalt and gravel and the sparkling shards of tossed-away bottles and the bright aluminum ring-pulls from uncounted beverage cans dimly reflected the luminous rain, a meaningless mosaic in an unstable bed of mud.

When Molly rose to her feet again, she thought that the woods, already crowding the highway before she dropped to her hands and knees, had grown closer while her back was turned. The saturated boughs of the looming evergreens hung like sodden vestments-capes and robes, cassocks and chasubles.

Unseen but acutely felt, alert observers watched her from the hooded cowls of those pines, creatures less ordinary than owls and raccoons, and less clean.

Frightened but sensing that a show of fear would invite attack, she did not at once retreat. Instead, she rubbed her muddied hands together, rinsing them in the downpour, though she would not feel clean again until she could wash off the rain itself.

Counseling herself that the hostile presences she sensed in the forest were only figments of her imagination, but knowing that her counsel was a lie, she continued unhurriedly around the Navigator, returning to the driver's side with a nonchalance that was pure performance.

Before retreating to the Explorer, she snatched the doll from the backseat of the Lincoln. Its shaggy blond hair, blue eyes, and sweet smile reminded her of a child who had died in her arms a long time ago.

Rebecca Rose, her name had been. She was a shy girl who spoke with the faintest lisp.

Her last words, whispered in delirium and making no apparent sense, had been, "Molly… there's a dog. So pretty… how he shines." For the first time in her life, there at the end of it, she had not lisped at all.

Having failed to save Rebecca, Molly saved this rough image of her, and when Neil got in the Explorer after her, she gave him the doll for safekeeping.

She said, "We might encounter the girl and her parents on the road into town."

Neil did not remind her that the Navigator had been traveling in the opposite direction when abandoned. He knew that she recognized this as clearly as he did.

She said, "It'll be nice to have the doll to give her. I'm sure she didn't intend to leave it behind."

Intellectually, she knew that the war of the worlds, if indeed it had begun, would not spare children.

Emotionally, however, she refused to acknowledge that no degree of innocence could guarantee immunity in a plague of genocide.

On one rainy afternoon long ago, Molly had saved some children and been unable to save others. But if the fine grain of hope in her heart were to be the foundation of a pearl, she must believe that no child would ever again suffer in her presence and that those who came under her care would be safe, protected, until she herself died defending them.

As the Explorer rolled forward and they resumed their journey into town, Neil said, "It's a beautiful doll. She'll be happy to see it again."

Molly loved him for always understanding precisely what words she needed to hear. He knew what motivated her at all times and in all circumstances, even in these.