The Taking Part 29

"They want the kids, kids more than anything, but they can't touch them."

"Who?"

"Them that rule the world now."

"Why can't they touch the kids?"

"Don't you know nothing? Kids ain't for sifting," he said. "But ain't no rules apply to me. me. If I do the kids, them with the power will be good to me." If I do the kids, them with the power will be good to me."

Molly felt like a blind woman reading lines of Braille in which random dots had been omitted. Some vital understanding loomed just beyond the limits of her vision.

He withdrew his arm from around her, but he dug the muzzle of the pistol harder against her throat, just under the hinge of the jawbone. "You pick up the flashlight on the desk and move slow and easy with me. Don't try nothin' or I'll blow your pretty head off."

The bleak afternoon brightened beyond the windows. Cold white radiance streamed down, rinsing the purple out of the air.

She recognized the quality of light. One of the silent, glowing craft must be hovering over the house.

As before, she felt closely observed, examined, but more than merely examined: She felt known known in heart and mind and body, known in terrifying completeness. in heart and mind and body, known in terrifying completeness.

Her a.s.sailant apparently felt the same thing, because his body stiffened and he shrank a step back from the windows, pulling her with him. "What's this s.h.i.t?"

Fear distracted him, and when the pressure of the muzzle eased at Molly's throat, she knew knew this was the time to act, for she was in the moment as seldom before, clear-eyed and quick of mind, all the experience of her past and all the hopes of her future focused here at the still point that was this was the time to act, for she was in the moment as seldom before, clear-eyed and quick of mind, all the experience of her past and all the hopes of her future focused here at the still point that was now. now.

From the desk she s.n.a.t.c.hed the scissors. Simultaneously she pulled away from him and heard the double click of the trigger but not the boom of a shot.

She swung toward him. The pistol a foot from her face. Muzzle so huge, so dark. He pulled the trigger again. The gun didn't fire.

As ruthless as any Fate snipping a lifeline, she slashed at his gun hand with the scissors. He cried out and dropped the weapon.

She threw the scissors at him, stooped, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the pistol off the floor.

Rising to full height, she saw him reach for her. She squeezed the trigger, and the gun bucked in her hand.

He served as the sacrifice that he had intended to make of the children. The bullet found his heart with such accuracy that he was dead before he could look surprised, a cooling corpse before he hit the floor.

His two misfires followed by her point-blank shot were not a series of coincidences, and the gun was not defective. Some power was at work on her behalf, some agency uncanny.

Behind the plaster, the teeming hive had fallen silent.

57.

THE BRILLIANCE OF THE HOVERING UFO, POURING through the windows, brought too much revealing light to this body-strewn abattoir. Molly retrieved her flashlight from the desk and departed by way of the bath that connected this study to another room.

A high window in the shower stall admitted light, which revealed her moving figure in the mirror-and the figure of another who was not present. She saw the other in a glance, halted in shock to look again, but only she herself was now reflected.

She didn't know if her mother, Thalia, glimpsed in the mirror, had actually been there or whether this vision had been merely the ephemeral expression of her fondest wish, hallucination, even perhaps a flicker of madness.

She wanted to linger, studying the mirror, but the lambs, having been spared from sacrifice, needed her. Through the next room, into the hall, her way was lighted by the vessel above, by virtue of windows and skylights.

When she reached the door near the head of the stairs, it swung open wide in front of her.

This was a girl's bedroom. Stuffed animals reclined against the headboard of a bed skirted in flounces. Satiny drapes trimmed with rickrack. Posters of teen idols on the walls, polished boys with an androgynous quality. Frills and thrills.

Two chairs stood back to back. The girl with the Cleopatra bangs, perhaps ten or eleven, and her dimpled brother sat in them, secured at wrists and ankles by duct tape.

Virgil guarded the children, and he had something formidable to guard against.

A colony of fungi-white spheres, pale lung sacs-crouched in a corner. A second colony, having sprouted those thick yet insectile legs, hung from the ceiling over the bed. Except for the inflating and deflating sacs, they were motionless, although busy life might be asquirm within them.

On the bed were the depleted roll of duct tape and the knife that the killer had used to cut it.

Hoping that the bright vessel would continue to hover over the house, shedding light through the windows, and that she would not be forced to work by flashlight in the company of the ambulatory fungi, Molly plucked the knife off the bed and sawed at the binding tape.

Their names were Bradley and Allison, and Molly did her best to soothe their fears as she also explained how directly and quickly they must leave the house. She lied about the fate of their parents when they asked anxiously after them.

Saving all these children's lives might be easier than helping them to accept a future founded on the shaky ground of personal tragedy and catastrophic destruction.

Resolutely, she turned her mind from that consideration. To do this work, she must live in the moment, and to give the children hope and counsel them out of the despair that came with dwelling on things forever lost, she must eventually teach them to live in the moment, too.

She realized only now that since stepping across the threshold at the front door of this house, she had at some point acquired the conviction that they would have a future, when previously she could not find reason to foresee long-term survival. She knew some of the reasons for this change of heart, but not all of them; evidently her subconscious had perceived other causes for optimism that it was not yet ready to share with her.

Because Bradley was young and more frightened than his sister, Molly freed him first and told him to stay close to Virgil, in whom most of her trust had been restored by recent events.

As she finished freeing Allison, Molly heard a wet, decidedly organic sound and looked up as the skin on a round, cantaloupe-size fungus in the overhead colony peeled back like the lids of an eyeball. Under those membranes lay a human face.

Of all the impossible and grotesque things that she had seen since the coyotes on the porch, this rated as the most bizarre, the least comprehensible, the most disturbing. Repulsed, she nevertheless could not avert her eyes.

A longer look revealed that the face in the fungus wasn't molded dimensionally. The surface of the sphere under the peeled-back lids was smooth and curved and transparent, and the human face appeared to float within it like an object in one of those Christmas snow globes.

This particular face was that of a man with blue eyes and blond mustache. His gaze turned to Molly, and he seemed to see see her. His expression was anguished and imploring, and he appeared to be crying out to her, though he produced no sound. her. His expression was anguished and imploring, and he appeared to be crying out to her, though he produced no sound.

White membranes peeled back from a second fungus in the colony, revealing another face held in another sphere: a woman screaming and in a state of abject torment. Her screams were silent.

These were not real faces, but watching them in a paralytic state of awe, of dread, Molly suspected-and quickly came to believe-that each represented a human consciousness, the mind and memory of someone who had actually lived. They had been stripped out of their physical bodies at death and somehow captured in these hideous structures.

Each colony of white fungi was some kind of organic penitentiary in which were imprisoned the consciousnesses of those people who died at the hands of the new masters of Earth. More accurately, perhaps, the colonies might be data-storage systems in which were acc.u.mulated human minds complete in every aspect, including memory, cognitive functions, and personality.

Molly's pounding heart seemed to tighten and shrink within her breast, as if withered by these considerations.

More lids peeled back, revealing additional faces, not only on the colony that crawled the ceiling but also on the one that crouched in the corner, and Molly suddenly knew, knew, from the way they focused on her and on the children, and from their expressions, that they were from the way they focused on her and on the children, and from their expressions, that they were aware aware in their prisons. Aware, alert, and desperate, some of them had been driven mad by their condition and raged insanely, silently. in their prisons. Aware, alert, and desperate, some of them had been driven mad by their condition and raged insanely, silently.

Wisely, Virgil split for the upstairs hall.

Anxious to spare Bradley and Allison from further exposure to this abomination, Molly hustled the kids after the dog.

At the doorway, she glanced back and saw another lid peel away from another sphere, revealing the face of the scarred man whom she had shot no more than two or three minutes ago. His gaze found her, and his features twisted with hate.

Abruptly the faces were allowed voices, and from them arose a shrill cacophony of weeping, wailing, screaming, pleas for help, shrieks of rage, cursing, and ululations of mad laughter.

As Molly fled behind the children, down the stairs, the bright craft hovering above the house moved on, leaving the windows muddy purple once more and casting the interior into darkness.

58.

NEIL WANTED TO EXAMINE HER MANGLED and blood-caked ear, but Molly insisted they must get on with the work. Virgil was already on the move, padding east along the street, back the way they had come.

This time the children-eight of them now-proceeded at the head of the column, behind the dog. Molly and Neil followed them, watchful but not any longer in the grip of hair-trigger paranoia.

"The only thing we have to protect the kids from is people," Molly said. "Ordinary, born-of-man-and-woman people. people. The bad ones, the sick ones. But the ETs and everything that's come with them from their world...they'll leave the children untouched." The bad ones, the sick ones. But the ETs and everything that's come with them from their world...they'll leave the children untouched."

"How can you know that?" he asked.

She quoted the scarred man. "'Kids ain't for sifting.'"

"What?"

"Things happened in that house, gave me a different perspective. I'll tell you later. The main thing is, the kids are untouchable."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure, but I'm working on a theory. Another thing is...I think those of us searching for them are untouchable, too."

"Something sure touched your ear."

"Not one of them, them, nothing...alien. There was this guy, this psycho, he killed their parents, was going to kill Bradley and Allison." nothing...alien. There was this guy, this psycho, he killed their parents, was going to kill Bradley and Allison."

"I thought I heard a shot. But it was m.u.f.fled, and I couldn't be sure. I almost came in."

"It was over by then."

He regarded her with something more than amazement, perhaps wonder. "You used to just write books."

"Did I? Maybe a long time ago."

The shepherd led them into Black Lake's small downtown center.

Swags of blackish moss draped all the trees and suffocated some of them. Moss had begun to clothe the buildings, as well: fringes along the rain gutters, the windowsills.

"So," he asked, "are we rescuing or harvesting them?"

"Rescuing, I think. And I feel better about the dogs."

Quick dark figures capered across the roofs and porch roofs, in and out of the low fog layer, leaping from building to building. They were the size of monkeys, with the agility of macaques and capuchins, but without the playful spirit of monkeys. Their heads were too large for their bodies, which were covered in scales rather than fur, and from a distance their asymmetric faces appeared to have been half melted in a fire. With hands that featured as many fingers as-but a greater complement of knuckles than-the hands of man or monkey, they sometimes tore at themselves as if they were in torment, though the only sounds they made were choking noises that in some instances resembled a wicked chuckling.

Fungi grew everywhere: across lawns and parks, in flower beds and flower boxes. They sprouted from cracks in sidewalks, on the walls of clapboard and wood-shingled buildings. They were not all pale white or black with yellow spots, but came in a great variety of shapes and colors that suggested not a fairyland panorama but a phantasmagoric wasteland of continuously mutating forms in the sweat-drenched dream journeys of a comatose junkie on the edge of overdose.

"What I'm wondering," Molly said, "is if maybe we've been wrong to think the ETs are a monolithic force, a hive dedicated to a single mission, driven by a single desire."

"It sure looks that way."

"Yeah. But it's like bad data processing: garbage in, garbage out. Misperceptions in, mis con con ceptions out. There could be factions among them just like there are among human beings. And maybe one of those factions doesn't believe in completely obliterating a species and its civilization." ceptions out. There could be factions among them just like there are among human beings. And maybe one of those factions doesn't believe in completely obliterating a species and its civilization."

"If so, they're in the minority, and judging by what's happened so far, they don't have a h.e.l.l of a lot of clout."

"Except maybe they've won a concession that forbids targeting children."

"But they're still taking our world from us," he said, "and how is anyone, especially a child, supposed to survive in this madhouse ecology?"

She frowned. "They can't. Not with any happiness or hope. But we've got something about this wrong, and I'm trying to straighten it out in my head."

Virgil led them to the bank. During the previous night, in a discussion with the live-free-or-die group at the tavern, Neil had recommended this building as the best place to fortify and defend, a.s.suming there was any hope of meaningful defense or any point in making a last stand.

At first, Molly thought they'd reached the end of their rescue mission. She expected to settle in here with those who chose to fight and to prepare to face the end, if it came, with what dignity and courage they could muster.

Then she realized that no guards were stationed at the front door of the bank. The blinds were drawn at the windows, and as best she could tell, no one watched the street from inside.

"Something's wrong," Neil said. "Something's happened."

"And five kids are in there," she said.

The work was not yet completed.

59.

IF THE CHILDREN WERE IN SOME WAY IMMUNIZED against ultimate violence, for whatever reason, they would be safe in the street, watched over by the dogs. Neil ought to be able to accompany Molly into the bank.

Their exemption from this holocaust, however, was no more than a theory, even though supported by some compelling evidence. With only theory to go by, Molly could not leave them without an adult defender.

If one of them had to go into the bank alone, Neil insisted on being the point man this time, but his intention was not met with enthusiasm by Virgil. The dog refused to accompany him. Indeed, the shepherd sat on the pavement in front of the door, blocking entrance.

Neil reached over the dog to open the door, but he discovered that it was locked.