The Taking

dogs, Molly again felt enlightenment teasing her from just beyond the open fields of conscious thought, a shapeless shape moving in the shadowy woods of the subconscious, both enticing and disturbing.
        "Besides the children," she asked Neil, "who else didn't cast a reflection in the mirror?"
        "I don't know. It all happened so fast, there wasn't time for a head count. Maybe a couple others. Or maybe just the eight of us-you, me, the kids."
        The soundless throbbing in the bones, the blood, the lymph, pulses sympathetic to the rhythms of the magnetic engines powering the behemoth overhead, began to subside.
        She sensed the great weight and the malevolent shadow passing off them as the vast ship moved south, and to avoid despondency, she dared not think about the hordes of inhuman creatures that must be aboard it and the cruel irresistible power it represented.
        Throughout the tavern, candle flames swelled brighter, as if their light had been oppressed in much the way that the tides of the seas are managed by the phases of the moon.
        Molly's mind seemed to function more quickly and clearly, too. She perceived purpose where before she had seen nothing but mists of confusion.
        Working it out step by step, she said to Neil, "What is Render, my father?"
        "What do you mean?"
        "What one word defines the essence of him?"
        "Psychopath," Neil said.
        "That's a distraction from the truth."
        "Murderer," he said.
        "More specifically?"
        "Murderer… of children."
        As Neil spoke, a dog came to their table-the German shepherd that had stood with the group of kids. It stared intently at Molly.
        She sat up straighter in the booth as her immediate future, previously all murk and mystery, began to clarify. "Yes-Render's a child murderer. And what am I?"
        "To me-everything," he said. "To the world-a writer."
        "I love you," she said, "and what we've had together. It doesn't get better. But if this is the last night of the world, if I've no more living left to define myself, then I'm defined forever by the best and worst things I've ever done."
        Frowning, Neil followed half a step behind in her series of conclusions. "The best… you saved the lives of those school kids."
        "He murders children. Once… I saved a few."
        With an anxious whine, the German shepherd drew her attention.
        She had thought that the dog wandered to their booth with no more purpose than to explore that section of the floor and to cadge tidbits from them if they had any food to share.
        Its gaze was unusually intense, however, and more than intense: strange, compelling.
        She considered how the dogs, en masse, had reacted to her when she had first arrived in the tavern. They had seemed to be watching her surreptitiously ever since.
        "Neil, we've been thinking pretty much only about ourselves, how to survive. That leaves us with nothing to do but find a hidey-hole, hunker down, and wait."
        He understood: "You've never lived that way-passive, just waiting for what's next."
        "Neither have you. There are children tonight, in this chaos, who aren't being given the shelter and protection they need, they deserve." She was relieved to have a purpose, to be suddenly filled with the urgency of meaningful commitment.
        "And if we can't save them?" Neil wondered.
        Ears pricked, head cocked, the dog turned to Neil.
        "Maybe no one can save anyone anymore," Neil continued, "not with the whole world lost."
        The dog whined at him as it had whined at Molly.
        Intrigued by the shepherd's attitude and behavior, she wondered if something extraordinary might be happening; but then the dog padded away, weaving through the crowd, soon out of sight.
        "If we can't save them," she said, "then we'll try to spare them from what pain and terror we can. We've got to put ourselves between them and whatever's coming."
        He glanced at the six children.
        Molly said, "I don't mean them. Their parents are here, and the group is big enough to protect them about as well as anyone can be protected in these circumstances. But how many kids are out there in town? Not teenagers. I mean, younger kids, small and vulnerable. One hundred? Two hundred?"
        "Maybe that many. Maybe even more."
        "How many of them have parents who are dealing