The Taking

66

SHE AND NEIL, VIRGIL, TWO OTHER DOGS, AND EIGHT children took for themselves an abandoned house on a bluff above the sea.

In the early weeks of this new life, they had little time for contemplation, for puzzling out what had happened to them and to the world.

Supermarkets and warehouses stocked with canned food would last the reduced population for years, though not forever. Strategies for long-term survival had to be devised, and much hard work had to be done to implement those plans.

Remarkably (or perhaps not), the only adult survivors, the tutelaries, proved to be a diverse lot with a surprising breadth and depth of knowledge and experience for such a small number. They were doctors, dentists, nurses, engineers, architects, carpenters, skilled mechanics… When a complete directory was compiled of those living on this immediate section of the coast, it seemed as though every surviving adult had been chosen not just to save the children but for the talents he or she could bring to this larger purpose.

In mere days, selected public gathering places had electricity provided by portable generators. The grand scheme promised electrical service to some neighborhoods within a year.

Medical clinics were established. Drugs were scavenged from pharmacies, to be rationed until a simple pharmaceutical industry could be reestablished.

The millions of dead could not be found, nor any smallest example of the alien ecology that had flourished so briefly.

For a long time, the stars would be regarded with suspicion, and perhaps for even longer, dogs would be treated less like pets than like family.

Every day, in a thousand small ways, civilization was pulled back from the brink.

In October of that year, hardly a month after Armageddon, Molly became a teacher and discovered greater joy in this work than she had ever known on the other side of books.

Once a priest, Neil had left the Church when he reported his rector for child molestation and discovered that his bishop lacked the wisdom, the will, and the strength of faith to purge the offender from the priesthood. Here along the coast, he first served this new community as a first-rate cabinetmaker, but by Christmas he found himself with a congregation again.

Molly had met him on the last day of his priesthood. On an afternoon when her heart had been troubled, she'd gone into a church just to sit, to think. Eventually she'd gone forward in the deserted nave to light a votive candle in her mother's memory. Quietly saying goodbye to his church, Neil had been standing in the chancel, in the complicated geometry of colorful light from a stained-glass window. His face had been so perfect, his eyes so kind, that she had mistaken him for a statue of St. John the Divine, until he moved.

The New Year came and was marked by only quiet celebrations in respect of the dead, but there was pleasure in life, more by the day.

Through the winter and into the spring, Molly continued to be intrigued with the healthy psychology of the children. They had not forgotten their loved ones, and spoke of them often, but they seemed to be under a dispensation from grief. And from nightmares. They did remember the terrible things they had witnessed, but almost as if they had seen them in movies. More so than the adults, they were able to live in the moment, at the still point of the turning world, where the dance of life occurred.

In April, Molly learned that she was pregnant.