The Taking by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Mystery, Fiction - Espionage, Fiction, Psychological, Suspense, Thrillers, Thriller
ISBN: 9780553593501
Publisher: Bantam Dell
Published: 2010-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

* * *

29

NEIL TOOK HER BY THE ARM AND LED HER TO AN empty booth along the north wall of the tavern.

She refused to sit. "We're running out of time."

"I hear the clock."

"We've got to do something, get ready."

"All right. But what? How?"

She said, "Maybe the bank is the best idea. Secure the place. Hunker down. At least go out fighting."

"Then we'll go there now, with the rest of them."

"That's just it. The rest of them. They were all dead in the mirror. Do they die at the bank? Is that where they get torn apart like that?"

She shook her head. She looked around the tavern. She could see the barely checked panic in people who, minutes ago, had been talking strategy, tactics, and the possibility of survival. Now they believed the mirror. They expected to die horribly, and soon.

"I'm scared," she said. "I've been handling this pretty well so far but I'm starting to lose it."

Neil put his arms around her. He always knew when to say nothing.

Molly trembled against him. She listened to his heart. Steady Neil.

When her heart had begun to time itself to his slower beat, he guided her into the booth and sat across from her.

This table had no candles, and she was grateful for the shadows. She didn't want anyone but Neil to see her tears. She prided herself on her toughness, her resilience.

Maybe honest pride didn't matter anymore, but for reasons she couldn't put into words, she thought it mattered more than ever.

Neil said, "Before we can figure out what to do, maybe we've got to ask ourselves what we know."

"Less and less."

With irony, he repeated the Eliot quote:" 'All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.' "

The booth benches featured open space under the seats. Molly tucked her legs back-and thought of the missing doll.

In the brief darkness between the loss of public power and the lighting of the candles, the doll could have crawled into this booth, under her seat. Eyeless but all-seeing. Tongueless mouth filled with the breathless silence of a stalking predator.

She resisted the urge to scramble out of the booth and search under it with a flashlight. To do so would be to succumb to the most childish of fears, after which she would find it more difficult to summon the courage to face the real and more serious terrors that surely were coming.

It was just a doll. And if she should feel a small hand on her ankle, it would be only the hand of a doll, no matter how demonically animated, just the hand of a doll.

She wiped at her damp cheeks. "Are they really taking our world from us?"

"The evidence says so."

"Or is that just the way we're reading the evidence?"

"I don't see how else to interpret it."

"Neither do I. That thing in the janitor's closet " She shuddered.

She could still feel the airborne titan overhead, and now when she turned her attention to the ceiling, she could sense the vessel's movement, too, as it progressed southward through the storm.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.