The Taking

Ling, who owned the town's only food market, recounted how his wife, Lee, had awakened him with a cry of "the moon is falling."
        "I almost wish it had been the moon," Lee said now, with a solemnity that matched the expression in her dark, anguished eyes. "It would all be over now if it had been the moon, all of us gone-and nothing worse to come."
        Nevertheless, though this cross-section of humanity had shared the same experiences and had drawn from them approximately the same conclusions-that their species was no longer the most intelligent on the planet and that their dominion of Earth had been usurped-they could not come together to devise a mutually agreeable response to the threat. Four philosophies divided the occupants of the tavern into four camps.
        The drunks and those who worked diligently at becoming drunk made the smallest group. To their way of thinking, the most desirable comforts of human civilization were already lost beyond all hope of recovery. If they could not save the world, they would drink to the memory of its glories-and hope that when one kind of brutal death or another came to them, they would be unconscious, courtesy of Jack Daniel's or Absolut.
        More numerous than the drunks were the peace lovers, the meek who styled themselves as prudent and reasonable. They remembered movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which well-meaning aliens, bringing gifts of peace and love to the people of Earth, are willfully misunderstood and become the targets of mindless human violence.
        To this crowd, with or without benefit of liquor, the unfolding worldwide catastrophe was not proof of bad intentions, but rather a tragic consequence of poor communication, perhaps even the result of some unspecified, precipitous, and typically ignorant human action. These prudent, reasonable citizens were convinced-or pretended to be-that the current terrors would be satisfactorily explained in time, and rectified, by the benign ambassadors from another star.
        In these circumstances, The Day the Earth Stood Still had less relevance to Molly than an old episode of The Twilight Zone in which aliens arrived with solemn promises to alleviate all human want and suffering, guided by a sacred volume whose title translated as To Serve Man. Too late, the sheepish people of Earth realized that the sacred volume was a cookbook.
        Of the four groups, more numerous than the drunks and the peace lovers combined were the fence-sitters, who could not decide if the current crisis would best be addressed by a violent response or by peace overtures and songs of love-or perhaps even by consuming disabling quantities of alcoholic beverages. They claimed to need more information before they could make up their minds; they would no doubt be patiently awaiting further information even as a meat lover from Andromeda was basting them in butter.
        Molly was dismayed to see friends among the fence-sitters. She would have had more respect for them if they had embraced either pacifism or inebriation.
        The fourth group, only slightly less numerous than the fence-sitters, were those who preferred to stand up and fight, regardless of the odds against them. Among them were as many women as men, folks of all ages and persuasions. Angry, energized, they had brought most of the guns and were eager to strike back.
        They pulled up two more chairs and welcomed Molly and Neil, inferring from the shotgun and the pistol that they might be like-minded. This spirited group had put half a dozen tables together to form a U, the better to jointly speculate on all the possible what-ifs, as well as to discuss strategy and tactics for each contingency.
        Because they knew next to nothing about their enemy, all their theorizing and planning amounted to little more than blue-sky war gaming. Their discussions provided them with a sense of purpose, however, and purpose was at least a partially effective antidote to fear.
        While they might dread the coming confrontation, they were also frustrated that the invaders had not yet shown themselves, at least not in Black Lake. Although they were willing to fight and ready to die if necessary in the struggle, they couldn't battle an invisible adversary.
        Molly felt at home among them-and glad that she and Neil at last had comrades.
        The unofficial leader of this live-free-or-die faction appeared to be Tucker Madison, a