The Taking

in the basement beneath them, the five children would be left outside alone. Easy pickings.
        On the other hand, if they took the children inside, they would be exposing them to perhaps the very horror from which they had saved them in the church-or to something worse, considering that something worse, hour after hour, was the specialty of the enemy.
        In this instance and in other situations to come, she and Neil would have to split up. If they didn't have the courage to act alone when necessary, they might as well go directly to the bank right now, with the five kids for whom they had made themselves responsible, and forget about the other children who might need them.
        Like Cassie. In the tavern.
        Neil wanted to go inside, but they agreed that whoever stayed with the kids ought to have the shotgun.
        Indicating the luminous craft hovering in the shrouding fog, Molly said, "Shotgun won't bring that down, but the spread pattern of buckshot ought to stop more big bugs and nasty animals than all the rounds in my pistol."
        Neil tried to give her the 12-gauge, but she wouldn't take it. She had never fired a shotgun before. She suspected that the hard recoil would compromise her effectiveness at least until she learned how to compensate for it.
        Only a fool or a suicidal depressive would choose to learn the proper handling of a new weapon while in the heat of battle.
        Neil would stay in the street, guarding the kids.
        Armed with the 9-mm pistol, Molly would go into the tavern, argue the wisdom of evacuation to those inside, and one way or another get Cassie out of there.
        Along Main Street, nothing moved in the moody half-light except the thin violet mist, which eddied lazily in the breathless morning.
        The silence of a fly in amber, of a fossil hidden in the heart of a stone, lay upon Black Lake.
        Then in the distance a man wept in misery. A weeping woman answered him. And then another.
        All three sounded as if they were torn with emotion, convincing, until you realized that the cadences of their grief were identical, one to another.
        The morning had grown warmer. Molly took off her raincoat.
        The red dragons of the trees might be watching from a distance. Maybe they only hunted in their arbors. Or maybe they came down to kill in the street; it didn't really matter, she supposed, because if not them, something else would.
        Fifteen feet overhead, the thick velvet fog was a curtain drawn between dying humanity-which was both the tragic protagonist and the audience-and the last act of Armageddon. Stagehands were moving into place the final scenery of doom.
        The luminous craft hovered, attentive. Molly had not grown accustomed to the all-penetrating scrutiny of those aboard it. She felt humbled, curiously ashamed, frightened, and angry.
        She nurtured the anger. Like hope, it staved off despair.
        Virgil nuzzled her left hand, then returned to his watchful patrol between the children and the dead town.
        Molly didn't need to tell Neil that she loved him. He knew. And she knew what she meant to him. They said it as well as it could be said with just a meeting of the eyes, a touch of hands.
        With the pistol and a flashlight, she went into the tavern.

----

    45
        
        FLAMES WORRIED WICKS IN SCORES OF AMBER GLASS globes, as before. The walls and ceiling of Russell Tewkes's tavern appeared to tremble like painted curtains in the lambent candlelight.
        The air itself seemed luminous, similar to the atmosphere in a dream of angels, and for a moment Molly was relieved to think that those who had been here when she'd left had later left themselves. No one sat in the booths or at the tables. No one stood at the bar, nor was Tewkes stationed behind it.
        Derek and the drunks were gone. As were the peace lovers. And the fence-sitters, with Cassie.
        Had she not studied the scene one second longer, had she turned and walked out, she might have thought that the lot of them had gone to the bank, after all, to assist in preparations for its defense. Lingering, however, she realized that her preferred scenario was not the one that had played out here.
        First, the guns. Rifles, shotguns, and handguns had been left behind.
        Neither the drunks nor the peace lovers had been armed, but many of the fence-sitters had been prepared to