The Taking (11 page)

19

MOLLY AND NEIL CIRCULATED THROUGH THE tavern, listening to the experiences of others, seeking information that would allow them to better assess the situation both here in town and in the world beyond Black Lake.

Everyone at the Tail of the Wolf had seen the apocalyptic images on television. Perhaps they would be the last in human history to witness world-shaking news through the communal medium of the tube.

After the TV channels had filled with blizzards of electronic snow or with the enigmatic pulsations of color, some people had turned on their radios and had caught scraps of AM and FM broadcasts from cities far and near. Newsmen had spoken of terrifying presences in the streets—variously referred to as
monsters, ETs, aliens, demons,
or simply
things
—though often they were too consumed by horror to fully describe what they saw or else their reports abruptly ended in screams of terror, pain.

Molly thought of the man whose head had been cleaved in half, falling to the pavement on a street in Berlin, and she shuddered at the memory.

Others in the tavern had sought information on the Internet, where they had encountered such a raveled tapestry of wild rumor and fevered speculation that they had been more confused than informed. Then the phones—landline and cellular—had failed, as had cable service, whereupon the Internet had deconstructed as abruptly as a plume of steam in a gust of wind.

As Molly and Neil had seen clocks behaving oddly, mechanical devices—like the music boxes—running of their own accord, and impossible reflections in mirrors, so had numerous others among those gathered in the Tail of the Wolf. Battery-powered carving knives had suddenly buzzed and rattled in closed kitchen drawers. Computers switched themselves on, while across the screens scrolled hieroglyphs and ideograms from unknown languages. Out of CD players had come exotic and discordant music like nothing on the discs that were loaded in the machines.

They had stories of remarkable encounters with animals much like Molly’s experience with the coyotes, and with the mice in the garage. All the fauna of this world seemed to recognize that the present threat was unearthly, supplanting all previous and familiar dangers.

In addition,
everyone
had sensed something ominous overhead in the rainy night, what Neil called “a mountain coming down,” a mass of colossal size and crushing weight that first descended, then hovered, then moved east.

Norman Ling, who owned the town’s only food market, recounted how his wife, Lee, had awakened him with a cry of “the moon is falling.”

“I almost wish it had been the moon,” Lee said now, with a solemnity that matched the expression in her dark, anguished eyes. “It would all be over now if it had been the moon, all of us gone—and nothing worse to come.”

Nevertheless, though this cross-section of humanity had shared the same experiences and had drawn from them approximately the same conclusions—that their species was no longer the most intelligent on the planet and that their dominion of Earth had been usurped—they could not come together to devise a mutually agreeable response to the threat. Four philosophies divided the occupants of the tavern into four camps.

The drunks and those who worked diligently at becoming drunk made the smallest group. To their way of thinking, the most desirable comforts of human civilization were already lost beyond all hope of recovery. If they could not save the world, they would drink to the memory of its glories—and hope that when one kind of brutal death or another came to them, they would be unconscious, courtesy of Jack Daniel’s or Absolut.

More numerous than the drunks were the peace lovers, the meek who styled themselves as prudent and reasonable. They remembered movies like
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
in which well-meaning aliens, bringing gifts of peace and love to the people of Earth, are willfully misunderstood and become the targets of mindless human violence.

To this crowd, with or without benefit of liquor, the unfolding worldwide catastrophe was not proof of bad intentions, but rather a tragic consequence of poor communication, perhaps even the result of some unspecified, precipitous, and typically ignorant human action. These prudent, reasonable citizens were convinced—or pretended to be—that the current terrors would be satisfactorily explained in time, and rectified, by the benign ambassadors from another star.

In these circumstances,
The Day the Earth Stood Still
had less relevance to Molly than an old episode of
The Twilight Zone
in which aliens arrived with solemn promises to alleviate all human want and suffering, guided by a sacred volume whose title translated as
To Serve Man.
Too late, the sheepish people of Earth realized that the sacred volume was a cookbook.

Of the four groups, more numerous than the drunks and the peace lovers combined were the fence-sitters, who could not decide if the current crisis would best be addressed by a violent response or by peace overtures and songs of love—or perhaps even by consuming disabling quantities of alcoholic beverages. They claimed to need more information before they could make up their minds; they would no doubt be patiently awaiting further information even as a meat lover from Andromeda was basting them in butter.

Molly was dismayed to see friends among the fence-sitters. She would have had more respect for them if they had embraced either pacifism or inebriation.

The fourth group, only slightly less numerous than the fence-sitters, were those who preferred to stand up and fight, regardless of the odds against them. Among them were as many women as men, folks of all ages and persuasions. Angry, energized, they had brought most of the guns and were eager to strike back.

They pulled up two more chairs and welcomed Molly and Neil, inferring from the shotgun and the pistol that they might be like-minded. This spirited group had put half a dozen tables together to form a U, the better to jointly speculate on all the possible what-ifs, as well as to discuss strategy and tactics for each contingency.

Because they knew next to nothing about their enemy, all their theorizing and planning amounted to little more than blue-sky war gaming. Their discussions provided them with a sense of purpose, however, and purpose was at least a partially effective antidote to fear.

While they might dread the coming confrontation, they were also frustrated that the invaders had not yet shown themselves, at least not in Black Lake. Although they were willing to fight and ready to die if necessary in the struggle, they couldn’t battle an invisible adversary.

Molly felt at home among them—and glad that she and Neil at last had comrades.

The unofficial leader of this live-free-or-die faction appeared to be Tucker Madison, a former Marine, currently a deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. His composure, his calm voice, his clear direct gaze reminded Molly of Neil.

“The only thing that worries the skin off me,” Tucker said, surely understating the number of his concerns, “is that they won’t soon or often come out where we can see them. With the ability to control the weather all around the world, what reason do they have to risk our gunfire, even if our weapons probably are primitive by their standards?”

“Some of the godless bastards are apparently showing up in the cities,” said a squint-eyed, sixtysomething woman with sun-toughened skin, reminding Tucker of the news reports. “They’ll come here, too, eventually.”

“But none of us has actually seen one,” Tucker said. “Those things on the news might be just reconnaissance machines, drones, robots.”

Vince Hoyt, a history teacher and coach of the regional high school’s football team, had features as bold and commanding as those on ancient marble busts of the more iron-willed Roman emperors. His jaws looked strong enough to crack walnuts, and when he spoke in his gravelly voice, he sounded as if he had swallowed the shells.

“The big question is, what happens if this rain doesn’t stop for a week, two weeks, a month? Our homes won’t stand up to that kind of deluge. I already have leaks at my place, major damage, and no safe way to get on the roof to fix it in this downpour. They might think they can drown our will to resist, wash the fight right out of us.”

“If rain, why not wind?” asked a young man with curly blond hair, a gold ring in his left ear, and a red tattoo of a woman’s puckered lips on his throat. “Tornadoes, hurricanes.”

“Targeted lightning,” the sun-baked woman suggested. “Would that be possible? Could they do that?”

Molly thought of the enormous and evidently
artificially generated
waterspout churning up from the Pacific, sucking hundreds of thousands of gallons per minute from the sea. Targeted lightning didn’t sound as farfetched as it would have yesterday.

“Maybe even earthquakes,” said Vince Hoyt. “Before any of that happens, we’ve got to decide on a headquarters where we can maybe consolidate an arsenal, food, medicines, first-aid supplies—”

“Our market already has plenty of food,” said Norman Ling, “but it’s on a lower street. If the rain keeps up, the place will be underwater by this time tomorrow.”

“Besides,” Tucker Madison said, bringing his Marine experience to bear, “the market isn’t a defensible structure, not with all those big plate-glass windows. And I hate to mention this, but it’s not just ETs we have to worry about. With the collapse of communications, civil authority is breaking down out there. Maybe it’s already been swept away. I haven’t been able to get in touch with the sheriff’s office over in the county seat. No police. Maybe no National Guard, no coherent command-and-control systems to make proper use of the military…”

“Chaos, anarchy,” Lee Ling whispered.

As calmly as anyone could have discussed this terrifying aspect of civilization’s collapse, Tucker said, “Believe me, there are lots of bad people who’ll take advantage of chaos. And I don’t mean just outsiders. We’ve got our own thugs and creeps right here in town, thieves and rapists and violence junkies who’ll think anarchy is paradise. They’ll take what they want, do what they want to anyone, and the more they indulge their sickest fantasies, the sicker and more savage they’re going to become. If we’re not ready for them, they’ll kill us and our families before we ever come face-to-face with anything from the other end of the galaxy.”

A solemn silence settled over the group, and Lee Ling looked as if she were wishing again for a falling moon.

Molly thought of Render, the murderer of five children and the father of one, last seen walking north on the ridge road.

He would not have been the only monster freed from captivity this night. When prison and asylum staffs abandoned their posts, perhaps they had left the doors open behind them, either because they were careless or were motivated by misguided pity for the incarcerated. Or maybe in the chaos, the inmates seized control and freed themselves.

This was the Halloween of all Halloweens, six weeks early on the calendar, with no need of jack-o’-lanterns and cotton-bedsheet ghosts when the night was patterned with the pus trails of so many suppurating evils.

“The bank,” Neil suggested.

Eyes turned to him, blinking, as if each person at the table, like Molly, had been roused from a waking nightmare by his words.

“The bank,” Neil said, “is poured-in-place concrete clad in limestone, built in 1936 or ’37, when the state first enforced earthquake-resistant building codes.”

“And they made things to last in those days,” Molly said.

Tucker liked the idea. “The bank was designed with security in mind. One or two entrances. Not many windows, plus they’re narrow.”

“Barred, too,” Neil reminded him.

Tucker nodded. “Plenty of space for people and supplies.”

Vince Hoyt said, “I never coached a single game where I ever thought a loss was inevitable, not even in the final quarter when the other team had us by four touchdowns, and I have no intention of trading that attitude for a loser mentality now. Damn if I will. But there is one other good thing about the bank. The vault. Armored walls, thick steel door. It’ll make a hell of a final bolt-hole if it comes to that. If they want to tear the door off and come in after us, we’ll make a shooting gallery of them, and take a slew of the bastards with us.”

20

WITH THE CALCULATED CARRIAGE OF A DIGNIFIED landlubber trying to cross the deck of a yawing ship without making a fool of himself, Derek Sawtelle traveled from the camp of the swillpots to Molly’s chair among the fighters. He bent close to her. “Dear lady, even under these circumstances, you look enchanting.”

“And even under these circumstances,” she said affectionately, “you’re full of horseshit.”

“Might I have a word with you and Neil?” he asked. “In private?”

He was a genteel drunk. The more gin and tonic that he consumed, the more mannerly he became.

Having been a casual friend of Derek’s for five years, Molly knew that he had not been driven to the bottle tonight by the contemplation of civilization’s collapse. Managed inebriation was his lifestyle, his philosophy, his faith.

A long-tenured professor of literature at the state university in San Bernardino, nearing sixty-five and mandatory retirement, Derek specialized in American authors of the previous century.

His novelist heroes were the hard-drinking macho bullies from Hemingway to Norman Mailer. His admiration for them was based partly on his literary insights, but it also had the quality of a homely girl’s secret crush on a high-school football star.

Lacking an athletic physique, too kind to punch people out in barroom brawls or to cheer the bloody spectacle of a bullfight, or to dangle a wife from a high-rise window by her ankles, Derek could model himself after his heroes only by immersion in literature and gin. He had spent his life swimming in both.

Some professors might have made fine actors, for they approached teaching as a performance. Derek was one of these.

At his request, Molly had spoken to his students a few times and had seen him in action on his chosen stage. He proved to be an entertaining teacher but also an excellent one.

Here with the drums of Armageddon beating on the roof, Derek dressed as if he were soon to enter a classroom or attend a faculty reception. Perhaps mid-twentieth-century academics had never favored wool slacks and tweed jackets, harlequin-patterned sweater vests, foulard handkerchiefs, and hand-knotted bow ties; however, Derek had not only written his role in life but also had designed his costume, which he wore with authority.

When Molly rose from the table and, with Neil, followed Derek Sawtelle toward the back of the tavern, she saw that once more she had the full attention of the nine dogs.

Three of them—a black Labrador, a golden retriever, and a mutt of complex heritage—were roaming the room, sniffing the floor, teasing themselves with the lingering scents of bar food dropped in recent days but since cleaned up: here, a whiff of yesterday’s guacamole; there, a spot of grease from a dropped French fry.

Since the rain had begun, this was the first time that Molly had seen animals engaged in any activity that seemed right and ordinary. Nevertheless, while the roaming trio kept their damp noses to the plank flooring, they rolled their eyes to watch her surreptitiously from under their lowered brows.

At the quiet end of the bar, where they could not be overheard, Derek said, “I don’t want to alarm anyone. I mean more than they’re already alarmed. But I know what’s happening, and there’s no point in resisting it.”

“Derek, dear,” Molly said, “no offense, but is there anything in your life that you ever found much reason to resist?”

He smiled. “The only thing I can think of was the disgusting popularity of that dreadful cocktail they called a Harvey Wallbanger. In the seventies, at every party, you were offered that concoction, that abomination, which I refused with heroic persistence.”

“Anyway,” said Neil, “we all know what’s happening—in general if not the specific details.”

Gin seemed to serve Derek as an orally administered eyewash, for his gaze was crystalline clear, not bloodshot, and steady. “Before I explain, I must confess to an embarrassing weakness you know nothing about. Over the years, in the privacy of my home, I have read a great deal of science fiction.”

If he thought this secret required confession and penitence, perhaps he was drunker than Molly had realized.

She said, “Some of it’s quite good.”

Derek smiled brightly. “Yes, it is. Undeniably, it’s a guilty pleasure. None of it is Hemingway or Faulkner, certainly, but whole libraries of the stuff are markedly better than Gore Vidal or James Jones.”

“Now science fiction is science fact,” Neil acknowledged, “but what does that have to do with living through tomorrow?”

“In several science-fiction novels,” Derek said, “I encountered the concept of terraforming. Do you know what it is?”

Analyzing the word by its roots, Molly said, “To make earth—or to make a place like the planet Earth.”

“Yes, exactly, yes,” said Derek with the enthusiasm of a
Star Trek
fan recounting a delicious plot twist in his favorite episode. “It means altering the environment of an inhospitable planet to make it capable of supporting terrestrial life forms. Theoretically, for instance, one could build enormous machines, atmosphere processors, to liberate the composite molecules of a breathable atmosphere from the very soil and rock of Mars, turning a nearly airless world into one on which human beings, flora, and fauna would flourish. In such science-fiction stories, terraforming a planet takes decades or even centuries.”

Molly at once understood his theory. “You’re saying they aren’t using weather as a weapon.”

“Not primarily,” Derek said. “This isn’t the war of the worlds. Nothing as grand as that. To these creatures, wherever they may be from, we are as insignificant as mosquitoes.”

“You don’t go to war with mosquitoes,” Neil said.

“Exactly. You just drain the swamp, deny them the environment in which they can thrive, and build your new home on land that no longer supports such annoying bugs. They’re engaged in reverse terraforming, making Earth’s environment more like that on their home world. The destruction of our civilization is to them an inconsequential side effect of colonization.”

To Molly, who believed that life was a gift given with meaning and purpose, the perfect cruelty and monumental horror that Derek was describing could not exist in Creation as she understood it. “No. No, it’s not possible.”

“Their science and technology are hundreds if not thousands of years more advanced than ours,” Derek said. “Literally beyond our comprehension. Instead of decades, perhaps they can remake our world in a year, a month, a week.”

If this was true, humankind was indeed the victim of something worse than war, denied even the dignity of enemy status, viewed as cockroaches, as less than cockroaches, as an inconvenient mold to be rinsed out of existence with a purging solution.

When Molly’s chest tightened and her breath came less easily than before, when her heart began to race with anxiety, she told herself that her reaction to Derek’s premise was not an indication that she recognized the ring of truth in his words. She did not believe that the world was being taken from humanity with such arrogance and with no fear of the consequences. She
refused
to believe such a thing.

Evidently sensing her innate resistance to his theory, Derek said, “I have proof.”

“Proof?” Neil scoffed. “What proof could you possibly have?”

“If not proof, at least some damn convincing evidence,” Derek insisted. “Follow me. I’ll show you.”

He turned away from them, toward the back of the tavern, but then faced them again without having taken a step.

“Molly, Neil…I’m sharing this out of concern for you. I don’t mean to cause you any distress.”

“Too late,” Molly said.

“You’re my friends,” Derek continued. “I don’t want to see you waste your final hours or days in futile resistance to an inevitable fate.”

“We have free will. We make our own fate, even if it’s figured in the drift of stars,” Neil said, for so had he been taught, and still believed.

Derek shook his head. “Better to seize what pleasure you can. Make love. Raid Norman Ling’s market for your favorite foods before the place is underwater. Settle into a comforting haze of gin. If others want to go out with a bang…well, let them. But pursue what pleasures are still available to you before we’re all washed into that long, perfect, ginless darkness.”

He turned away from them once more and went to the back of the tavern.

Watching him, hesitating to follow, Molly saw Derek Sawtelle as she had never seen him before. He was still a friend but also other than a friend; he was now the embodiment of a mortal temptation—the temptation to despair.

She did not want to see what he wished to show them. Yet the refusal to look would be a tacit acknowledgment that she feared his evidence would be convincing; therefore, refusal would be the first step on a different road to despair.

Only by seeing his evidence could she test the fabric of her faith and have a chance to hold fast to her hope.

She met Neil’s eyes. He recognized her dilemma, and shared it.

Pausing at the archway that led to a short hall and the public rest rooms, Derek looked back and promised, “Proof.”

Molly glanced at the three lazily roaming dogs, and they looked at once away from her, pretending to be enthralled by the history of dropped food written on the stained wood floor.

Derek passed through the archway, disappearing into the hall.

After a hesitation, Molly and Neil followed him.