middle of the street, jumping up and down, with the sunbonnet flapping on
her head. With every jump she uttered little shrieks.
I saw Nancy in her car across the street and ran straight for it. She
had the motor going and when she saw me, she moved the car out from the
kerb, rolling slowly down the street. I put my hands on the back door and
vaulted into the back, then clambered up in front. By the time I got there
the car had reached the drugstore corner and was picking up some speed.
There were a couple of other cars heading out toward the highway, but Nancy
cut around them with a burst of speed.
‘Do you know what happened?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘Just that the barrier is moving.’
We came to the stop sign that guarded the highway, but Nancy didn’t
even slow for it. There was no reason that she should, for there was no
traffic on the highway. The highway was cut off.
She slewed the car out onto the broad slab of pavement and there, up
ahead of us, the eastbound lane was blocked by a mass of jam-packed cars.
And there, as well, was Gabe’s truck, its trailer lying in the ditch, with
my car smashed underneath it, and its cab half canted in the air. Beyond the
truck other cars were tangled in the westbound lane, cars which apparently
had crossed the centre strip in an effort to get turned around, in the
process getting caught in another minor traffic jam before the barrier had
moved.
The barrier was no longer there. You couldn’t see, of course, whether
it was there or not, but up the road, a quarter mile or so, there was
evidence of it.
Up there, a crowd of people was running wildly, fleeing from an
invisible force that advanced upon them. And behind the fleeing people a
long windrow of piled-up vegetation, including, in places, masses of
uprooted trees, marked the edge of the moving barrier. It stretched as far
as the eye could see, on either side of the road, and it seemed to have a
life of its own, rolling and tossing and slowly creeping forward, the masses
of trees tumbling awkwardly on their outstretched, roots and branches.
The car rolled up to the traffic jam in the westbound lane and stopped.
Nancy turned off the ignition. In the silence one could hear the faint
rustling of that strange windrow that moved along the road, a small whisper
of sound punctuated now and then by the cracking and the popping of the
branches as the uprooted trees toppled in their unseemly tumbling.
I got out of the car and walked around it and started down the road,
working my way through the tangle of the cars. As I came clear of them the
road stretched out before me and up the road the people still were running –
well, not running exactly, not the way they had been. They would run a ways
and then stand in little groups and look behind them, at the writhing
windrow, then would run a ways and stop to look again. Some of them didn’t
run at all, but just kept plodding up the road at a steady walk.
It was not only people. There was something else, a strange fluttering
in the air, a darting of dark bodies, a cloud of insects and of birds,
retreating before this inexorable force that moved like a wraith across the
surface of the land.
The land was bare behind the barrier. There was nothing on it except
two leafless trees. And they, I thought – they would be left behind. For
they were lifeless things and for them the barrier had no meaning, for it
was only life that the barrier rejected. Although, if Len Streeter had been
right, then it was not all life, but a certain kind, or a certain size, or a
certain condition of life.
But aside from the two dead trees, the ground lay bare.
There was no grass upon it, not a single weed, not a bush or tree. All
that was green was gone.
I stepped off the roadbed onto the shoulder and knelt down and ran my
fingers along the barren ground. It was not only bare; it was ploughed and
harrowed, as if some giant agricultural rig had gone over it and made it
ready for new seed. The soil, I realized, had been loosened by the uprooting
of its mat of vegetation. In all that ground, I knew, no single root
existed, no fragment of a root, down to the finest rootlet. The land had
been swept clean of everything that grew and all that once had grown here
was now a part of that fantastic windrow that was being swept along before
the barrier.
Above me a dull rumble of thunder rippled in the sky and rolled along
the air. I glanced backward over my shoulder, and saw that the thunderstorm
which had been threatening all morning now was close upon us, but it was a
ragged storm, with wind-twisted clouds, broken and fragmented, fleeing
through the upper emptiness.
‘Nancy,’ I said, but she did not answer.
I got quickly to my feet and swung around. She had been right behind me
when I’d started through the traffic tangle, but now there was no sign of
her.
I started back down the road to find her and as I did a blue sedan that
was over on the opposite shoulder rolled off down the shoulder and swung out
on the pavement – and there, behind the wheel, was Nancy. I knew then how
I’d lost her. She had looked among the cars until she had found one that was
not blocked by other cars and with the key still in the lock.
The car came up beside me, moving slowly, and I trotted along to match
its speed. Through the half-open window came the sound of an excited
commentator on the radio. I got the door open and jumped in and slammed the
door behind me.
‘…called out the national guard and had officially informed
Washington. The first units will move out in another – no, here is word just
now that they have already moved out…’
‘That,’ said Nancy, ‘is us he’s talking about.’
I reached out and twisted the dial. ‘… just came in. The barrier is
moving! I repeat, the barrier is moving. There is no information how fast
it’s moving or how much distance it has covered. But it is moving outward
from the village. The crowd that had gathered outside of it is fleeing
wildly from it. And here is more – the barrier is moving no faster than a
man may walk. It already has swept almost a mile…’
And that was wrong, I thought, for it was now less than half a mile
from its starting point.
‘… question, of course, is will it stop? How far will it move? Is
there some way of stopping it? Can it keep on indefinitely; is there any end
to it?’
‘Brad,’ Nancy said, ‘do you think it will push everyone off the earth?
Everyone but the people here in Millville?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, rather stupidly.
‘And if it does, where will it push them’? Where is there to go?’
‘… London and Berlin,’ blared the radio speaker. ‘Apparently the
Russian people have not as yet been told what is happening. There have been
no official statements. Not from anywhere. Undoubtedly this is something
about which the various governments may have some difficulty deciding if
there should be a statement. It would seem, at first thought, that here is a
situation which came about through no act of any man or any government. But
there is some speculation that this may be a testing of some new kind of
defence. Although it is difficult to imagine why, if it should be such, it
be tested in a place like Millvile. Ordinarily such tests would take place
in a military area and be conducted in the greatest secrecy.’
The car had been moving slowly down the road all the time we’d been
listening to the radio and now we were no more than a hundred feet or so
behind the barrier. Ahead of us, on either side of the pavement, the great
windrow of vegetation inched itself forward, while further up the road the
people still retreated.
I twisted around in the seat and glanced through the rear window, back
toward the traffic snarl. A crowd of people stood among the cars and out on
the pavement just beyond the cars. The people from the village had finally
arrived to watch the moving barrier.
‘…sweeping everything before it,’ screamed the radio.
I glanced around and we were almost at the barrier.
‘Careful there,’ I warned. ‘Don’t run into it.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ said Nancy, just a bit too meekly.