The Taking

diamond dust.
        A prescient awareness of pending horror kept Molly's attention riveted on the muted TV.
        The action seemed to be over, the mob having moved on to other territory, but she assumed that the accompanying audio must be telling an important story. Otherwise, the network would have cut away from Berlin when the camera struck the pavement and was not at once snatched up again.
        She still held the remote. She didn't press MUTE and summon the sound again because she didn't want to risk blotting out anything that her brother-in-law might say.
        On the phone, Paul's voice fell into an abyss, but just as Neil was about to hang up, the connection proved intact, and Paul rejoined them briefly again: "'… having great wrath because he knows that he hath but a short time.' "
        The line finally went dead, transmitting not even the click and scratch of static.
        "Paulie? Paulie, can you hear me?" Neil pumped the disconnect bar in the phone cradle, trying without success to get a dial tone.
        On the TV, as silent as a bubble drifting into frame, a human head, perhaps that of the luckless cameraman, precisely cleaved in half from brow through chin, dropped to the pavement, landing flat-side down, one dead terror-brightened eye peering along the microwave pipeline from Berlin to California.

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    8
        
        UNTIL NOW, MOLLY HAD NEVER FELT A NEED TO TAKE a loaded pistol to the bathroom.
        She put it on the yellow ceramic tiles beside the sink, the muzzle toward the mirror. The presence of the weapon gave her no comfort, but made her bowels quiver.
        In the quick, when either you had the heart for justice or you didn't, Molly could squeeze the trigger without hesitation. She'd done it once before.
        Nevertheless, the prospect of having to shoot someone half sickened her. She was a creator, not a killer.
        On her porcelain prie-dieu with flusher handle, she prayed that regardless of what might transpire in the hours ahead, she would not have to defend herself against other human beings. She wanted only enemies so alien that, after the shooting, there could be no cause for doubt, no reason for guilt.
        Although acutely aware of the multiple ironies and absurdities of both her position and her prayer, she sent each word to God with sincerity, in a fever of mind and bone. The humor of the moment was too bitter to tease from her even a wretched laugh.
        She had chosen the windowless half-bath off the kitchen. From beyond the door, through the white noise of the rain on the roof, came the clink and clatter of Neil packing two insulated coolers full of provisions to take with them in the SUV.
        Each of his two careers had required that he think ahead. These days he worked as a cabinetmaker. He knew the importance of having good plans and precise measurements before making the first cut.
        He worried that they would grow hungry before they were ready to come home. Worse, events might prevent them from returning home at all.
        More monk than adventurer, Diogenes to his Columbus, Molly regretted the need to leave. Her preferred strategy was to bar the doors, board the windows, press sleep from lidless eyes, and wait for trouble to knock. And hope that it never would.
        She knew, however, that Neil's argument for action was the wiser course. Whatever might be coming in the rain or on the wake of it, they would be more vulnerable alone than they would be in the company of their neighbors.
        Before she washed her hands, she lowered her face to the sink and warily breathed the steam rising from the gushing water. She could not detect any trace of the scent of the rain.
        The tainted storm had not yet found its way into the public water system. Or if it had found its way, it traveled now in this bland disguise, un-detectable.
        Before picking up the cake of soap, she transferred the pistol from the counter to the toilet tank-beyond the grasp of anything that might reach through the mirror.
        With such bizarre precautions already second nature only hours into this new reality, Molly wondered if she would know when she had gone mad. Perhaps she had already left sanity behind. Perhaps she had journeyed so far from rationality that Neil could never pack enough hampers of provisions to feed her during a return trip.
        She washed her hands.
        She remained the only presence