The Taking

17

MOLLY EXPECTED THAT THE POWER GRID WOULD have failed by now and that the town would stand in darkness. Instead, the glimmer of shop lights and streetlamps was amplified by the refracting rain, so Black Lake looked as if it were the site of a festival.

With a year-round population of fewer than two thousand, the town was much smaller than Arrowhead and Big Bear, the two most popular destinations in these mountains. Lacking ski slopes, Black Lake didn't enjoy a winter boom, but in summer, campers and boaters outnumbered locals two to one.

The lake was fed by an artesian well, by a few small streams, and now by the deluge. Instead of mixing with the existing lake and being diluted by it, the accumulating rain seemed to float atop the original body of water, as oil would, its luminosity compounded by its volume, shining as if the moon had fallen here.

With inflow substantially exceeding the floodgate outflow, the lake already had risen beyond its banks. The marina was under water, the boats tethered to cleats on submerged docks, the belaying ropes stretched taut.

Silver fingers of water explored with blind patience among the shoreline buildings, learning the lay of the unfamiliar land, probing for weaknesses. If the rain continued unabated, within hours the houses and the businesses on the lowest street would disappear under the rising tide.

Molly had no doubt that during the coming day, the people of Black Lake would face worse threats than flooding.

With most houses brightened by lamplight in every window, the citizens were clearly alert to the dangers at their doorstep and to the momentous events in the world beyond these mountains. They knew that darkness was coming, in every sense of the word, and they wanted to press it back as long as possible.

Black Lake's residents were different from the former flatlanders and the vacation-home crowd drawn to the more glamorous mountain communities. These folks were at least third-or fourth-generation high-landers, in love with altitude and forests, with the comparative peaceful-ness of the San Bernardinos high above the overpopulated hills and plains to the west.

They were tougher than most city people, more self-sufficient. They were more likely to own a collection of firearms than was the average family in a suburban neighborhood.

The town wasn't big enough to have a police force of its own. Because of inadequate manpower spread over too much territory, the county sheriff's response time to a call from Black Lake averaged thirty-two minutes.

If some hopped-up loser, desperate for drug money or violent sex, broke into your house, you could be killed five times over in thirty-two minutes. Consequently, most of these people were prepared to defend themselves-and with enthusiasm.

Molly and Neil saw no faces at any windows, but they knew that they were being monitored.

Although they had friends throughout Black Lake, neither of them was keen to go door-knocking, partly because of all those guns and their anxious owners. They were also wary of walking into a situation as bizarre as that at the Corrigan place.

In the unrelenting downpour, the cozy houses with their lamplit windows appeared welcoming. To the hapless insect, of course, the Venus's-flytrap offers a pretty sight and an alluring scent, while the two-lobed leaves wait, jaws cocked and teeth poised.

"Some will have kept to their own homes," Neil said, "but not all. The more strategically minded have gathered somewhere, pooling ideas, planning a mutual defense."

Molly didn't inquire how even the most rugged individualists among these mountain rustics-or an army, for that matter-might be able to defend themselves against technology that could use weather as a weapon on a planetary scale. As long as the question remained unasked, she could pretend there might be an answer.

Black Lake had no grand public buildings that could serve as a nerve center in a crisis like this. Three elected councilmen, who shared the title of mayor on a rotating basis, held their meetings in a booth at Benson's Good Eats, one of only two restaurants in town.

No schoolhouse, either. Those kids who weren't home-schooled were bused to out-of-town schools.

Black Lake had two churches, one Catholic and one evangelical Baptist. When Molly cruised by them, both appeared deserted.

At last they found the master strategists on Main Street, in the small commercial district, safely above the steadily rising lake. They had gathered in the Tail of the Wolf Tavern.

A dozen vehicles were parked in front of the place, not along the curb, where the gutters overflowed, but almost in the middle of the street. They faced out from the building, forming an arc, as if they were getaway cars ready to make a fast break.

Under an overhanging roof, protected from the rain, two men stood watch outside the tavern. Molly and Neil knew them.

Ken Halleck worked at the post office that served Black Lake and a few smaller mountain towns. He was known for his smile, which could crease his rubbery face from muttonchop to muttonchop, but he was not smiling now.

"Molly, Neil," he said solemnly. "Always thought it would be the nutcase Islams who did us in, didn't you?"

"We aren't done yet," said Bobby Halleck, Ken's son, raising his voice higher than necessary to compete with the rain. "We got the Marines, Army Rangers, Delta Force, we got the Navy Seals."

Bobby was seventeen, a high-school senior and star quarterback, a good kid with a gee-whiz spunkiness like that of a character from a 1930s or '40s football movie with Jack Oakie and Pat O'Brien. He seemed not too young to be standing guard but certainly unseasoned, which was probably why his father, armed with a rifle, had given Bobby a pitchfork, which seemed an inadequate deterrent to alien storm troopers although less likely to be accidentally discharged.

Bobby said, "TV's gone kerflunk, so we aren't hearing about them, but you can bet the U.S. military is kicking ass."

Ken watched his son with affection that it was his nature to express openly and often, but now also with a grief that he would never dare put into words for fear that sadness would soon thicken into unrelieved despair, robbing their last hours or days together of what small joys they might otherwise share.

"The President's holed-up inside some mountain somewhere," Bobby said. "And we got secret nukes in orbit, I'll bet, so the bastards won't be as safe high up in their ships as they think they are. You agree, Mr. Sloan?"

"I'd never bet against the Marines," Neil told the son, and put a hand consolingly on the father's shoulder.

"What's happening here?" Molly asked Ken, indicating the tavern.

"The idea is mutual defense," he said. "The reality… I don't know. People have different ideas."

"About whether they want to live or die?"

"I guess they don't all see the situation that starkly." Of her disbelief, he said, "Molly, you know, folks in this town are still who've always lived here… except, as people, they aren't always the same as they used to be. Sometimes I think we'd be better off if the TV had gone kerflunk fifty years ago and never come back on."

The cold gray stone exterior of the tavern promised less warmth than the interior in fact delivered: worn mahogany floors, polished mahogany walls and ceiling, photographs of the town's early residents in that time, a century previous, when the streets were shared by automobiles and horses.

The air was redolent of stale beer spilled through the years, of fresh beer recently drawn from taps, of onions and peppers and the limy corn-tortilla fragrance of nachos, of damp wool and cotton clothing slowly steamed dry by body heat-and of a faint sour scent that she imagined might be the odor of communal anxiety.

Molly was dismayed to find only about sixty people, perhaps twenty of whom she knew. The bar held twice that many on an average Saturday night; it could have accommodated four times that number in this emergency.

Only six children were present, which worried her. She expected that families with kids would have been among the first to organize a community defense.

She had brought the doll with her, hoping that the girl who'd left it in the abandoned Navigator might be among those sheltering here. None of the children reacted to the sight of the doll, so Molly put it on the bar.

There was always a chance that the doll's owner would still arrive here, out of the storm. Always hope.

All six children were gathered at a large corner booth, but the adults had settled in four distinct groups. Molly sensed at once that they were divided by four different ideas about how best to respond to the crisis.

She and Neil were greeted by those they knew and studied by those they didn't know with a calculation that was almost wariness, as if they were viewed, first, not as allies by the simple virtue of being neighbors, but instead as outsiders to be greeted with greater warmth only when their opinions and loyalties were known.

More than anything else, the dogs surprised her and Neil. She'd once been to France, where she had seen dogs in both drab working-class bars and the finest restaurants. In this country, however, health codes confined them to open patios, and most restaurateurs did not even tolerate them in an al fresco setting.

She saw four, six, eight dogs at first count, in every corner of the room. There were mutts and purebreds, mid-size and larger specimens, but no lap dogs. More canines than children.

Almost as one, the dogs rose to their feet and turned their heads toward her and Neil: some comic faces, some noble, all solemn and alert. Then, after a hesitation, they did a peculiar thing.