The Taking

18

FROM ALL OVER THE TAVERN, BY DIFFERENT ROUTES, the dogs came to Molly. They didn't approach in the exuberant romp that expresses a desire to play or with the tail-tucked caution and the wary demeanor that is a response to an unfamiliar and vaguely troubling scent.

Their ears were pricked. Their tails brushed the air with slow tentative strokes. They were clearly drawn to her by curiosity, as if she were something entirely new in their experience-new but not threatening.

Her first count had been one short. Nine dogs were present, not eight, and each was intrigued by her. They circled, crowding against her, busily sniffing her boots, her jeans, her raincoat.

For a moment she thought they smelled the coyotes on her. Then she realized that when she had ventured onto the porch among those beasts, she had been in pajamas and robe, not in any of the clothes she currently wore.

Besides, most domesticated dogs had no sense of kinship with their wild cousins. They usually reacted to the scent of a coyote-and certainly to the cry of one in the night-with raised hackles and a growl.

When she reached down to them, they nuzzled her hands, licked her fingers, welcoming her with an affection that most dogs usually reserved for those people with whom they had enjoyed a much longer acquaintance.

From behind the bar, the owner of the tavern, Russell Tewkes, said, "What've you got in your pockets, Molly-frankfurters?"

The tone of his voice didn't match the jokey nature of the question. He spoke with a heavy note of insinuation that she didn't understand.

With the build of a beer barrel, the haircut and the merry face of a besotted monk, Russell was the image of a friendly neighborhood barkeep. For the woebegone, he had a sympathetic ear to rival that of any child's mother. Indefatigably good-natured, at times he came dangerously close to being jolly.

Now a squint of suspicion narrowed his eyes. His mouth set in a grim line. He regarded Molly as he might have reacted to a hulking Hell's Angel who had the word hate tattooed on both fists.

As the dogs continued to circle and sniff her, Molly realized that Russell was not alone in his distrust. Others in the bar, even people she knew well, who had a moment ago greeted her by name or with a wave, watched her not with the previous political calculation, but with unconcealed suspicion.

Suddenly she understood their change of attitude. They were as familiar with those alien-invasion movies as she and Neil were, and the creepshow currently playing in the theaters of their minds was one of those they-walk-among-us-passing-for-human tales, perhaps Invasion of the Body Snatchers or John Carpenter's The Thing.

The singular behavior of the dogs suggested that something about Molly must be different. Even though the nine members of this furry entourage wagged their tails and licked her hands, and seemed to be charmed by her, most if not all of the people in the tavern were no doubt wondering if the dogs' actions ought to be interpreted as a warning that something not of this earth now walked among them in disguise.

She could too easily imagine what their reaction would have been if all of the dogs-or even just one mean-tempered specimen-had greeted her with growls, hackles raised, ears flattened to their skulls. Such a display of hostility would have received but one interpretation, and Molly would have found herself in the position of an accused witch in seventeenth-century Salem.

In at least two places in the large room, rifles and shotguns leaned against the walls, arsenals within easy reach.

Many of these would-be defenders of the planet surely were packing handguns, as Molly was. Among them would be a few, wound tight by dread and frustrated by their powerlessness, who would be relieved, even beguiled, to have a chance to shoot something, someone, anyone.

In this fever swamp of paranoia, if the shooting started, it might not stop until every shooter had himself been shot.

Molly turned her attention toward the back of the room, where the children were gathered. They looked scared. From the moment that Molly had seen them, they had struck her as terribly vulnerable, and now more than ever.

"Go," she said to the dogs, "shoo, go."

Their reaction to her command proved as peculiar as their unanimous attraction to her. Instantly compliant, as if all nine of them had been trained by her, they retreated to the places they had been when she had entered.

This remarkable exhibition of obedience only sharpened the suspicion of the sixty people gathered in the tavern. But for the grumble of the rain, the room had fallen silent. Every stare made the same circuit: from Molly to the retreating dogs, and back to Molly again.

Neil broke the spell when he said to Russell Tewkes, "This is one strange damn night, weirdness piled on weirdness. I could use a drink. You doing business? You have any beer nuts?"

Russell blinked and shook his head, as though he had been in a trance of suspicion. "I'm not selling the stuff tonight. I'm giving it away. What'll you have?"

"Thank you, Russ. Got Coors in a bottle?"

"I only sell draft and bottled, no damn cans. Aluminum causes Alzheimer's."

Neil said, "What do you want, Molly?"

She didn't want anything that might blur her perceptions and cloud her judgment. Surely survival depended on sobriety.

Meeting Neil's eyes, however, she knew that he wanted her to drink something, not because she needed it but because most of the people in the tavern probably thought that under the circumstances she ought to need a drink-if she was merely human like them.

Survival would also depend on flexibility.

"Hit me with a Corona," she said.

While Molly had to study people and brood about them to arrive at a useful understanding of their natures, much in the rigorously analytic fashion that she built the cast of players in her novels, Neil formed an instinctive understanding of anyone he met within moments of the first introduction. His gut reactions were at least as reliable as her intellectual analysis of character.

She accepted the Corona and tipped it to her lips with an acute awareness of being the center of attention. She intended to take a small sip, but surprised herself by chugging a third of the beer.

When she lowered the bottle, the level of tension in the tavern dropped noticeably.

Inspired by Molly's thirst, half the assembled crowd lifted drinks of their own. Many of the teetotalers watched the drinkers with disapproval, worry, or both.

Having won their acceptance by such a meaningless-if not downright absurd-test of her humanity, Molly doubted that the human race could survive in even the most remote bunker, behind the most formidable fortifications, if in fact the invaders could assume convincing human form.

So many people had difficulty acknowledging the existence of unalloyed evil; they hoped to wish it away through positive thinking, to counsel it into remorse through psychotherapy, or to domesticate it with compassion. If they could not recognize implacable evil in the hearts of their own kind and could not understand its enduring nature, they were not likely to be able to see through the perfect biological disguise of an extraterrestrial species capable of exquisitely detailed mimicry.

From their various posts around the tavern, the dogs still watched her, some openly, others furtively.

Their continued scrutiny suddenly struck chords on that operatic pipe organ of paranoia that stands front and center in the theater of the human mind: She wondered if the dogs had rushed to greet her, grateful for human contact, because everyone else in the tavern was an imposter, even the children, all alien presences masquerading as friends, as neighbors.

No. The dogs hadn't reacted to Neil as they had to her, although Neil was unquestionably Neil and nothing else. The reason for their interest in Molly remained mysterious.

Pretending indifference, they were acutely alert to her every move, their lustrous eyes seeming to adore her, as if she were the still point of the turning world, where past and future are gathered, exalted beyond ordinary mortal status, the only thing in Creation worthy of their rapt attention.