The Taking

me."
        "He doesn't know where you live."
        "Somehow he found out."
        She shuddered when she realized what would have happened if they had chosen to ride out this storm at the house, mistaking home for security.
        "I can't see him anymore," Neil said. "I think… he continued north, the way he was going."
        In the rearview mirror, Molly saw only falling rain and clouds of back' spray from the tires.
        With a successful plea of insanity skillfully supported by a clever attorney, Render had avoided prison. He had spent the last twenty years in a series of mental institutions. The first had been a maximum-security facility, but with each transfer, he had moved to a less restrictive environment, and been allowed more amenities.
        Therapy and medications had helped him take slow steady steps out of his mental darkness. So the psychiatrists said, though their reports were written in circumlocutions and obfuscatory jargon meant to conceal that their conclusions were mere opinions unsupported by facts.
        They claimed that he'd come to regret his actions, which by their way of thinking merited more relaxed living conditions and more frequent therapy sessions. If eventually he progressed from regret to remorse, he might then be viewed as rehabilitated and, under certain circumstances, might even be judged to have been cured.
        The previous summer, his case had come up for mandatory review. The evaluating psychiatrists differed in their analyses of Render's condition. One recommended that he be released under supervision, but two opposed that recommendation, and he was remanded to the care of mental-health authorities for an additional two years.
        "What've the idiots done?" Molly wondered, and in her agitation, she accelerated too much.
        She half believed that the rearview mirror would sooner rather than later reveal Render in the backspray, running after her with inhuman balance and agility, with superhuman speed.
        "If they've let him loose," she said, "the crazy bastards are as sick as he is."
        "We don't know what's happening beyond these mountains, out in the wider world," Neil reminded her, "except that everything seems to be falling apart, breaking down. Not every last crewman on every sinking ship stays at his post."
        "Every man for himself," Molly said. "We've come to that now-if we haven't always been there."
        The pavement was greasy with oil, water. She felt the tires skating, but could not find the courage to slow down. Then gnawing tread bit blacktop, found purchase, and the four-wheel drive staved off a slide.
        Neil said, "This latest institution he was transferred to… It's not exactly a stone-cell, steel-door, straitjacket sort of place."
        A short bitter laugh escaped her. "Television in every room. Porn on demand, for its therapeutic value. High tea every afternoon, croquet on the south lawn. Maid service for those who promise, under penalty of the most severe disapproval, not to rape and kill the maids."
        She was in a dark humor that was new to her and, she sensed, dangerous to indulge.
        "If the staff skipped," Neil said, "and surely they did skip, the inmates wouldn't let ordinary locked doors and wire-glass windows hold them in for long."
        " 'We don't call them inmates,' " Molly said, quoting one of the psychiatrists. " 'We call them patients.' "
        "But the most recent place they were keeping him-it's far up north."
        "Two hundred fifty miles from here," she confirmed.
        "The storm, this nightmare-it didn't begin so long ago."
        Indeed, when Molly considered the swiftness with which the usual order seemed to have given way to chaos, a jittering terror crawled the darker hallways of her mind. Could human civilization crumble significantly, worldwide, in a matter of hours, in but a quarter of a day, as suddenly as the planet itself might convulse if struck by an asteroid the size of Texas? If their as yet unseen adversary, come down from the stars, could topple centuries-old kingdoms and overturn all of history so swiftly, without meaningful resistance, then surely it was easy to foresee-and impossible to prevent-the eradication of every human life, in every low habitation and high redoubt on Earth, in just twenty-four hours.
        If the technology of a greatly advanced extraterrestrial race would seem like purest magic to any