The Taking

note. Those alien words had a rhythm reminiscent of poetry, and when the inhuman voice on the radio repeated what it had said, she murmured along with it:
        "Yimaman see noygel, see refacull, see nod a bah, see naytoss, retee fo sellos."
        Although she knew nothing of their meaning, she sensed arrogance in those words: arrogance sharp with a sense of triumph, bitterness, blackest hatred, and rage beyond the capacity of the darkest of human hearts, rage beyond all understanding.
        "Yimaman see noygel… see refacull… see nod a bah… see naytoss… retee fo sellos," Molly said once more, though this time she spoke alone.
        On the radio, dead air gave way to the voice of the agitated newsman: "War of the worlds, America. Fight back, fight hard. If you have guns, use 'em. If you don't have guns, get 'em. If anyone out there in the government can hear me, for God's sake break out the nukes. There can be no surrender-"
        Neil switched off the radio.
        Rain. Rain. Rain.
        Dead astronauts above and the tempest below.
        Four miles to town-if the town still existed.
        If not the town, then how far to fellowship, how far to people gathered in mutual defense?
        "God have mercy on us," Neil said, for he had been schooled by Jesuits.
        Letting off the brake, driving once more, Molly refrained from praying for mercy because her faith had been sullied by primitive superstition: She feared that perverse fate would deny her what she asked for, and give her only what she did not request.
        Yet, as was her nature, she still had hope. Her heart clenched like a fist around a nugget of hope; and if not as much as a nugget, then at least a pebble; and if not a pebble, a grain. But around a single grain of sand, an oyster builds a pearl.
        Rain. Rain. Rain.

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    15
        
        THE SECOND ABANDONED VEHICLE, A LINCOLN NAVIGATOR, stood in the northbound lane, facing the Explorer as it traveled southbound. The engine was idling, as had been the case with the Infiniti, and none of the tires was flat, suggesting that the SUV had in no way failed its driver.
        The headlights were doused, but the emergency flashers flung off rhythmic flares, with stroboscopic effect, so that the million tongues of rain appeared to stutter, stutter in their fall.
        On the Infiniti, three of four doors had stood open, but in this case only one. The rear door on the driver's side admitted rain and offered a view of the backseat illuminated by the Lincoln's interior lights.
        "Neil, my God."
        Molly braked, stopped, as Neil said, "What?"
        The smeared glass in her door, the blurring rain, and the metronomic dazzle of the flashers all combined to deceive the eye, yet Molly knew what she saw, and knew what she must do.
        "There's a child," she said, shifting the Explorer into park. "A baby."
        "Where?"
        "On the backseat of that Navigator," she said, and threw open her door.
        "Molly, wait!"
        If the rain was toxic, she had been poisoned beyond the hope of antidote when they had fled Harry Corrigan's house. Another dose could do no worse injury than the damage she had already sustained.
        As if the rain were warmer than it was, the beaten blacktop sweated oil and made slick the path beneath her feet.
        Molly slipped, slid, almost went down. Regaining her balance, she was gripped by the conviction that something watched her, some creature in hiding, and that if she had fallen, the nameless thing would have slithered out of the wet gloom, would have seized her in cruel jaws, and in an instant would have carried her off the pavement, over the crest of the ridge, into trees and weeds and brambles, down into the thorny belly of the night.
        Reaching the open door of the Navigator, she discovered that the abandoned child-not an infant but a barefoot little girl in pink pedal pushers and a yellow T-shirt-was a large doll, only a couple of inches shorter than two feet. Its chubby jointed arms were extended as if in supplication or in hope of an embrace.
        Molly looked into the front seat, then into the cargo space at the back of the SUV. No one.
        The child to whom the doll belonged had gone wherever her parents had gone. To shelter, perhaps.
        And what is the most enduring place of shelter if not death?
        Rebelling against that thought, Molly pressed through the