The Taking

Molly and Neil followed them, watchful but not any longer in the grip of hair-trigger paranoia.
        "The only thing we have to protect the kids from is people," Molly said. "Ordinary, born-of-man-and-woman people. The bad ones, the sick ones. But the ETs and everything that's come with them from their world… they'll leave the children untouched."
        "How can you know that?" he asked.
        She quoted the scarred man. " 'Kids ain't for sifting.' "
        "What?"
        "Things happened in that house, gave me a different perspective. I'll tell you later. The main thing is, the kids are untouchable."
        "Why?"
        "I'm not sure, but I'm working on a theory. Another thing is… I think those of us searching for them are untouchable, too."
        "Something sure touched your ear."
        "Not one of them, nothing… alien. There was this guy, this psycho, he killed their parents, was going to kill Bradley and Allison."
        "I thought I heard a shot. But it was muffled, and I couldn't be sure. I almost came in."
        "It was over by then."
        He regarded her with something more than amazement, perhaps wonder. "You used to just write books."
        "Did I? Maybe a long time ago."
        The shepherd led them into Black Lake's small downtown center.
        Swags of blackish moss draped all the trees and suffocated some of them. Moss had begun to clothe the buildings, as well: fringes along the rain gutters, the windowsills.
        "So," he asked, "are we rescuing or harvesting them?"
        "Rescuing, I think. And I feel better about the dogs."
        Quick dark figures capered across the roofs and porch roofs, in and out of the low fog layer, leaping from building to building. They were the size of monkeys, with the agility of macaques and capuchins, but without the playful spirit of monkeys. Their heads were too large for their bodies, which were covered in scales rather than fur, and from a distance their asymmetric faces appeared to have been half melted in a fire. With hands that featured as many fingers as-but a greater complement of knuckles than-the hands of man or monkey, they sometimes tore at themselves as if they were in torment, though the only sounds they made were choking noises that in some instances resembled a wicked chuckling.
        Fungi grew everywhere: across lawns and parks, in flower beds and flower boxes. They sprouted from cracks in sidewalks, on the walls of clapboard and wood-shingled buildings. They were not all pale white or black with yellow spots, but came in a great variety otshapes and colors that suggested not a fairyland panorama but a phantasmagoric wasteland of continuously mutating forms in the sweat-drenched dream journeys of a comatose junkie on the edge of overdose.
        "What I'm wondering," Molly said, "is if maybe we've been wrong to think the ETs are a monolithic force, a hive dedicated to a single mission, driven by a single desire."
        "It sure looks that way."
        "Yeah. But it's like bad data processing: garbage in, garbage out. Misperceptions in, misconceptions out. There could be factions among them just like there are among human beings. And maybe one of those factions doesn't believe in completely obliterating a species and its civilization."
        "If so, they're in the minority, and judging by what's happened so far, they don't have a hell of a lot of clout."
        "Except maybe they've won a concession that forbids targeting children."
        "But they're still taking our world from us," he said, "and how is anyone, especially a child, supposed to survive in this madhouse ecology?"
        She frowned. "They can't. Not with any happiness or hope. But we've got something about this wrong, and I'm trying to straighten it out in my head."
        Virgil led them to the bank. During the previous night, in a discussion with the live-free-or-die group at the tavern, Neil had recommended this building as the best place to fortify and defend, assuming there was any hope of meaningful defense or any point in making a last stand.
        At first, Molly thought they'd reached the end of their rescue mission. She expected to settle in here with those who chose to fight and to prepare to face the end, if it came, with what dignity and courage they could muster.
        Then she realized that no guards were stationed at the front door of the bank. The blinds were drawn at the windows, and as