The Taking

mockery. Mockery. Travesty. Desecration, profanation.
        Here again was that unearthly power that did not differentiate between the living and the dead, or even between the organic and the inorganic. It seemed that Earth was being taken and remade not by ETs from another spiral arm of the Milky Way or from another galaxy, but by beings from another universe, where all the laws of nature were radically different from those in this one.
        Humanity's reality, which operated on Einsteinian laws, and the utterly different reality of humanity's dispossessors had collided, meshed. At this Einstein intersection, all things seemed possible now in this worst of all possible new worlds.
        In rising to their feet, the dead stirred within themselves the gases of decomposition. What had seemed to be the reek of the white fungus grew more pungent and could be identified more accurately.
        With a sense of smell at least ten thousand times more acute and more sophisticated than that of any human being, Virgil must have known what had been sitting in those shadowed pews, but he'd sounded no alarm as he had led her past them. He stood now among the five children. His dedication to their rescue exceeded even the most extraordinary canine behavior that Molly had ever seen before, and she was reminded that in some way she couldn't understand, the dog was more than he seemed to be.
        The mortician's stitches had not in every case held, and one among these nightmare parishioners had both eyes open. The beam of the flashlight did not reveal cataracted or corrupted eyes; instead, the contents of the skull bulged from the sockets-a familiar black fungus spotted with yellow.
        As effectively as a leech taking blood, fear suckled on Molly's hope. As her heart raced once more, however, she took courage, if not comfort, from the fact that these expatriates of the grave frightened her less than the encounter with Render at the tavern.
        Another cadaver, short on flesh and long on bone, caged a mass of the black-and-yellow fungus in its open ribs. Another colony wound its right arm, from shoulder to wrist, like an entwining serpent.
        The floor of the church shuddered again, planks creaked, planks cracked, as if something below had awakened in hunger, preparing for its hour to devour.
        Three candles fell off the communion railing. One extinguished itself, and Neil stamped out the other two.
        The dead began to move. They didn't shamble, didn't snarl or hiss, didn't thrash with rage, made none of the standard movie moves. They headed toward the aisles-north, south, central-blocking all the public routes out of the church, stepping slowly but with a strange stately dignity.
        To return to the narthex and escape by the front doors, Molly would have to confront at least three of these mock Lazaruses, which she would not-could not-do, especially not when she had the kids to think about, perhaps not even if she'd been alone, not with a pistol, not with a flamethrower.
        In sync with his wife's thoughts, Neil suggested an alternative: "There's another way. Through the sacristy, out the back door into the rectory yard."
        "That's no good," the tall man said in a voice thick with dour certainty.
        As if in confirmation, a clatter came out of the sanctuary beyond the communion railing, from the chanceled darkness past the reach of candle glow.
        Although she was loath to turn her flashlight away from the ten cadavers in the nave, Molly swung the beam toward the sound. A priest stood at the high altar.
        No. Not a priest. The remains of one.
        Father Dan Sullivan, who had served this parish for almost three decades, had died in August of the previous year. Now he had returned to the altar, as if the daily rituals of his life were encoded in the cells of his embalmed body, still compelling him to his work.
        From this angle, Molly had a view only of his profile, but she knew who he must be. He wore the black suit and Roman collar in which he had been buried thirteen months ago. His white hair-once red-was tangled with filth, his clerical suit streaked with mud.
        A moment after the light found him, the dead priest gripped fistfuls of the antependium, the embroidered cloth that draped the front of the altar, and jerked violently on it. The tabernacle crashed to the floor and burst open, scattering pyx, paten, and