The Taking

which rain poured in great cascades.
        "Gone," he said.
        "I felt something," she admitted. "But… what was it?"
        "Don't have a clue."
        He was not being candid with her, nor she with him.
        They had been formed by a culture drunk with the yearning for inter-galactic contact, the bedrock of a new faith in which God was but a supporting player. Everyone knew the doctrines of this quasi-religion better than most people remembered the words of the Lord's Prayer: We are not alone… watch the skies… the answer is out there… They had been Spielberged and Lucased and Shyamalaned. A thousand movies and TV shows, ten thousand books, had convinced the world that the new magi would be scientists riding not to Bethlehem on camels but to a UFO landing site in mobile labs with satellite dishes on the roofs, and that the salvation of humanity would come from another planet rather than from a higher realm.
        Molly knew the signs as prophesied by Hollywood and by science fiction writers. Neil knew them, too.
        This September night lay deep inside the Close Encounter Zone. In this territory, alien technology was the only font of miracles.
        She didn't want to put this understanding into words, however, and apparently neither did Neil. A pretense of bewilderment felt safer than candor.
        Perhaps their reticence had its roots in the fact that on this subject Hollywood offered two familiar scenarios-one in which the extraterrestrials were benign gods, one in which they were full of wrath and cruel judgment. Thus far, these recent events lacked the sweetness and the twinkle of G-rated family entertainment.
        Turning away from the window and from his inspection of the rain-choked sky, Neil said, "Not that we'll need it… but I'll get the shotgun."
        Recalling the half-glimpsed, sinuous figure that had flashed darkly across the moldering room in the mirror, Molly retrieved her handgun from the vanity and said, "I'll get some spare cartridges for this."

----

    5
        
        ON THE KITCHEN TABLE LAY THE SHOTGUN AND A box of shells. Beside it were the pistol, a spare magazine, and a box of 9-mm cartridges.
        Pleated window shades in the kitchen and the adjacent family room held back the night and the sight-though not the omnipresent sound- of the luminous rain.
        Molly couldn't shake the feeling that the surrounding forest, previously a friendly woods, now harbored unknown hostile observers. Neil apparently shared her paranoia; he had helped her lower the shades.
        They both intuited that the mysterious forces at work in this drenched night were not restricted to these mountains. Simultaneously they reached for the TV remote, and Neil got it first.
        They stood in front of the big screen, watching, too agitated to settle into chairs.
        Television reception was not what it should be. Some channels were so afflicted with electronic snow that only ghostly images could be seen through the blizzard. Broken voices spoke distorted words.
        One of the twenty-four-hour cable-news networks offered better sound and a relatively clear picture that rolled and flickered only occasionally.
        The young woman-Veronica something-anchoring the news desk was as lovely as any movie starlet. Her eyes were avaricious, her smile as genuine as that of a mannequin.
        She traded unscripted commentary with a young man, Jack, who might have been a successful underwear model for Calvin Klein if he had not gone to journalism school and majored in broadcasting. His smile, quick to come and quick to falter, revealed bleached-white teeth as square as those of a cow.
        War, politics, crime, and even the doings of Hollywood royalty had been washed entirely off the news wires by freakish weather of an unprecedented nature and ferocity.
        During the night, unpredicted, the largest continuous storm front ever recorded had formed at sea with impossible speed. It had moved ashore along the entire west coast of the Americas-South, Central, and North.
        Reports of a curiously scented rain falling at the rate of four, five, and even six inches an hour had been received, corroborated. Within a few hours, low-lying cities all the way from Argentina to Alaska had begun suffering various degrees of flooding.
        Live satellite feeds from both exotic and familiar metropolitan areas, sometimes distorted or grainy, showed cars