The Taking

Derek insisted. "Follow me. I'll show you."
        He turned away from them, toward the back of the tavern, but then faced them again without having taken a step.
        "Molly, Neil… I'm sharing this out of concern for you. I don't mean to cause you any distress."
        "Too late," Molly said.
        "You're my friends," Derek continued. "I don't want to see you waste your final hours or days in futile resistance to an inevitable fate."
        "We have free will. We make our own fate, even if it's figured in the drift of stars," Neil said, for so had he been taught, and still believed.
        Derek shook his head. "Better to seize what pleasure you can. Make love. Raid Norman Ling's market for your favorite foods before the place is underwater. Settle into a comforting haze of gin. If others want to go out with a bang… well, let them. But pursue what pleasures are still available to you before we're all washed into that long, perfect, ginless darkness."
        He turned away from them once more and went to the back of the tavern.
        Watching him, hesitating to follow, Molly saw Derek Sawtelle as she had never seen him before. He was still a friend but also other than a friend; he was now the embodiment of a mortal temptation-the temptation to despair.
        She did not want to see what he wished to show them. Yet the refusal to look would be a tacit acknowledgment that she feared his evidence would be convincing; therefore, refusal would be the first step on a different road to despair.
        Only by seeing his evidence could she test the fabric of her faith and have a chance to hold fast to her hope.
        She met Neil's eyes. He recognized her dilemma, and shared it.
        Pausing at the archway that led to a short hall and the public rest rooms, Derek looked back and promised, "Proof."
        Molly glanced at the three lazily roaming dogs, and they looked at once away from her, pretending to be enthralled by the history of dropped food written on the stained wood floor.
        Derek passed through the archway, disappearing into the hall.
        After a hesitation, Molly and Neil followed him.

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    21
        
        WHEN DEREK HAD ASCERTAINED THAT THE MEN'S room was unoccupied, he propped the door open with a trash can and motioned for Molly and Neil to enter.
        A strong piney scent rose from the perfumed cakes in the two urinals. Under that astringent fragrance, the odor of stale urine persisted.
        The room had three inner doors. Two offered access to toilet stalls, and the third opened on a janitorial closet.
        "I had just washed my hands," Derek said, "and realized there were no paper towels in the dispenser. I opened the closet to look for some…"
        A light came on automatically when the closet door was opened, and would go off when it was closed.
        The closet contained metal shelves laden with supplies. A broom. A sponge mop and a rag mop. A bucket on wheels.
        "I noticed the leak at once," said Derek.
        The ceiling Sheetrock at the back of the closet was saturated. A blister had formed, then broken, and rain had dripped down through the open metal shelving, gradually saturating the supplies stored there.
        When Derek removed the bucket, broom, and mops, the closet proved large enough to allow the three of them to crowd inside.
        At the sight of Derek's promised evidence on the wet tile floor, Molly drew back a step, bumping against Neil. She thought the thing must be a snake.
        "It's probably a fungus," said Derek, "or the equivalent, I think. That would be the closest word we'd have for it."
        On reconsideration, she realized that a colony of mushroomlike fungi lay before her, fat and round and clustered in such a way that they resembled the coils of a gathered serpent.
        "It was the size of a round loaf of bread when I first saw it," Derek said. "That was hardly an hour ago, and already it's half again as big."
        The fungus was black overall, as shiny black as oiled rubber, with bright yellow ameboid spots edged in orange. That she could have mistaken it for a snake was no surprise, because it looked poisonous and evil.
        "The rain isn't a weapon," Derek said, stooping beside the fungus. "It's an instrument of radical environmental change."
        Crouching behind him, peering over his shoulder, Molly said, "I'm not sure I follow you."
        "The water is