The Taking

dog. He stared at Molly.
        "I know it sounds crazy," she said.
        He looked at the long empty frame from which the bar mirror, peopled by the living dead, had shattered and fallen.
        "Then it's the dog," he said. "After all, what do we have to lose?"

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    30
        
        NAMED VIRGIL, ACCORDING TO THE LICENSE TAG ON his collar, the shepherd was young and trim, bright-eyed, affectionate, and eager to begin the work.
        Engraved under the license number were the name and address of his owner: James Weck, on Pine Street.
        A few inquiries among those in the tavern quickly established that Weck was not present. Apparently, Virgil had been loose in the night and had found his way here, alone.
        Russell Tewkes, swigging deeply from a large mug of beer, having chosen to tie his fate to that of his best customers, the inebriates, mocked those who were getting ready to depart on missions to stock and fortify the bank building. When he realized that Neil and Molly were preparing to leave as well, he said, "Can't you face reality? There's nowhere to hide from this."
        "We're not hiding," Molly assured him. Constrained by a sudden rush of paranoia, she decided not to tell him what their intentions were.
        "When they get up here in the mountains, the aliens-they'll gut you like fish and leave you flopping in the street," Tewkes said.
        Disturbed less by the tavernkeeper's prediction than by his demeanor, neither Molly nor Neil replied.
        Tewkes had not couched his words as a warning but had spoken in an ugly, taunting tone of voice. He almost seemed to hope that this horrendous fate would befall them, that the idea of Neil and Molly disemboweled and writhing in agony perversely pleased him.
        His merry-monk face had lost its humor, and monk could be used to describe it now only in reference to an angry ape, for it had a primitive cast, sly and stupidly calculating. His features were blotchy and red with barely throttled emotion. The Friar Tuck fringe of hair bristled in chaotic spikes, as if in a rage he had tried and failed to pull it out.
        As they began to turn away from Tewkes, he lurched one step closer, slopping beer from his mug, and said, "You go out there, you better be careful of your tender parts. The red-eyed scavengers are creeping."
        More Eliot from this most unlikely quoter of verse: The red-eyed scavengers are creeping…
        "Again," Neil said, for though he didn't share Molly's extensive knowledge of the poet, he recognized the incongruity of those words spoken by this individual.
        When Molly turned to Tewkes again, she saw in his wrenched red face and in his feverish eyes-far hotter than reflected candlelight could explain-mockery, contempt, and hatred. The arteries in his temples swelled and throbbed. His nostrils flared. His clenched jaws worked back and forth as though in his rage he were grinding his teeth into powder.
        She couldn't understand how such bitter emotion could have been seeded and made to flourish in the previously pleasant tavern owner from one hour to the next. More to the point, why should this enmity be focused with such intensity on her, when she hardly knew Russell Tewkes and had never done a thing to anger or indeed even annoy him?
        Raising his mug, Tewkes swilled a mouthful of beer, held it briefly in his bloated cheeks, then spat it on the floor at her feet.
        Neil started to move toward Tewkes, but Molly restrained him with a touch. Virgil growled, and she silenced him merely by the whispering of his name.
        If Russell Tewkes was still to any degree the man he had once been, then beyond doubt, he was something else as well. Parasite or spotted fungus, or some other corruption, had found its way into his mind and heart.
        The atmosphere inside the tavern had turned. She could not smell the change or taste it as she would have tasted airborne soot, could not see it, either, but she could feel it: an insistent abrasiveness. A darkness settled through the room, as well, not one related to the power failure, not one that any number of candles could relieve, but one akin to the dark matter of the universe, which physicists are unable to see but which they know exists by virtue of its ominous gravity.
        She wanted to get out of here. Quickly.
        Five of the children were with Deputy Tucker Madison's group, the fighters who intended