The Taking

now.
        Those who had not been slaughtered had instead been taken and imprisoned to serve as subjects of experimentation or as objects of cruel play. Nothing lived in most of these houses anymore-unless otherworldly vermin crawled the damp rooms, unless unearthly plants rooted in cellars, in rich beds of decaying cadavers, spreading pale leaves and black blooms.
        Molly glanced back at the children and winced when she saw that they regarded her so hopefully, with such evident conviction that she could be relied upon. A few smiled thinly, and their pathetic confidence moved her. She looked forward again to prevent them from seeing the tears that she blinked away.
        Although she was prepared to die for them, she didn't deserve their trust. In this worldwide holocaust, during which entire armies had perished before one soldier could fire one shot, she was acutely aware that she and Neil were inadequate to the task before them.
        A failed writer with a pistol, a failed priest with a shotgun. In their lives they had succeeded-truly and unequivocally succeeded-at only one thing: love. In their enduring and always growing love for each other, they had found redemption, peace.
        Their enemy, however, was impervious to the power of love. Judging by all available evidence, these invaders lacked even the capacity to grasp the concept.
        Virgil turned right at the corner, onto Marine Avenue, and when Molly followed him, she thought for an instant that the humid air and the peculiar light had conspired to play a trick, the equivalent of a mirage or Fata Morgana. It seemed that an enormous mirror filled the intersection a block to the west, reflecting Virgil and the procession that followed him.
        Then she realized that the dog leading the other procession was not Virgil, but an Irish setter. Two armed women, not one, were at the head of the column, and one armed man-shorter and older than Neil-brought up the end. In the middle were a dozen children and half a dozen dogs.
        The other group was proceeding north on the cross street. They paused, staring uphill at Molly. She couldn't clearly see their faces in this poor light and at the distance of a block, but they must be astonished.
        She waved, and they returned the greeting.
        Their lead dog, the Irish setter, kept moving. After a brief hesitation, they decided to continue following it rather than turn onto Marine Avenue and come uphill to satisfy their curiosity. Their work was not finished.
        Besides, they recognized the task on which Molly and Neil were embarked, as she recognized theirs. The population of children in Black Lake was too large to be rescued by a single team. And if there were two teams, most likely there were three or more.
        This might have lifted Molly's spirits if she had not come to suspect that they were not rescuers but harvesters.
        The other group moved out of sight on the cross street.
        Virgil led Molly toward a nearby Victorian house that was elegant in its dormers, gables, and gingerbread.
        She glanced at her wristwatch. Almost noon. Ten hours had passed since she'd first seen the luminous rain, the coyotes on the porch. She sensed that they were running out of time and that the final blow of this war, whatever it might be, would be struck soon.

PART SEVEN
        
    "In my end is my beginning."

    -T. S. Eliot, East Coker

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    53
        
        DORMERS DECORATED WITH CARVED FLORAL-THEME pediments, a wealth of millwork applied with exuberance, primrose gardens surrounded by palisades of wrought iron, fluted porch columns with Italianate capitals, a paneled and intricately painted entry door with stained-glass window: This house was the epitome of architectural order, evidence of humanity's long struggle against chaos and of its search for meaning.
        During Molly's lifetime, architects had largely championed sterility, which is order bled of purpose, and celebrated power, which is meaning stripped of grace. By rejecting the fundamentals of the very civilization that made possible its rise, modernism and its philosophical stepchildren offered flash in place of genuine beauty, sensation in place of hope.
        All her life, she had watched civilization grow uglier, meaner; now as she followed Virgil up these porch steps, she was overcome by a devastating sense of loss. This beautiful house, on which so much love had been