‘… like a wind,’ the announcer said, ‘blowing a long line of grass
and trees and bushes steadily before it. Like a wind…’
And there was a wind, first a preliminary gust that raised spinning
dust devils in the stripped and denuded soil behind the barrier, then a
solid wall of wind that slewed the car around and howled against the metal
and glass.
It was the thunderstorm, I thought, that had stalked the land since
early morning. But there was no lightning and no thunder and when I craned
my neck to look out the windshield at the sky, there still were no more than
ragged clouds, the broken, fleeing tatters of a worn-out storm.
The wind had swung the car around and now it was skidding down the
road, pushed by the roaring wind, and threatening to tip over. Nancy was
fighting the wheel, trying to bring the car around, to point it into the
direction of the wind.
‘Brad!’ she shouted.
But even as she shouted, the storm hit us with the hard, peppering
sound of raindrops splashing on the car.
The car began to topple and this time I knew that it was going over,
that there was nothing in the world that could keep it from going over. But
suddenly it slammed into something and swung upright once again and in one
corner of my mind I knew that it had been shoved against the barrier by the
wind and that it was being held there.
With one corner of my mind, for the greater part of it was filled with
astonishment at the strangest raindrops I had ever seen.
They weren’t raindrops, although they fell like raindrops, in drumming
sheets that filled the inside of the car with the rolling sound of thunder.
‘Hail,’ Nancy shouted at me.
But it wasn’t hail.
Little round, brown pellets hopped and pounded on the car’s hood and
danced like crazy buckshot across the hard flatness of the pavement.
‘Seeds!’ I shouted back. ‘Those things out there are seeds!’ It was no
regular storm. It was not the thunderstorm, for there was no thunder and the
storm had lost its punch many miles away. It was a storm of seeds driven by
a mighty wind that blew without regard to any earthly weather;
There was, I told myself, in a flash of logic that was not, on the face
of it, very logical, no further need for the barrier to move. For it had
ploughed the ground, had ploughed and harrowed it and prepared it for the
seed, and then there’d been the sowing, and everything was over.
The wind stopped and the last seed fell and we sat in a numbing
silence, with all the sound and fury gone out of the world. In the place of
sound and fury there was a chilling strangeness, as if someone or something
had changed all natural law around, so that seed fell from the sky like rain
and a wind blew out of nowhere.
‘Brad,’ said Nancy, ‘I think I’m beginning to get scared.’
She reached out a hand and put it on my arm. Her fingers tightened,
hanging onto me.
‘It makes me mad,’ she said, ‘I’ve never been scared, never my life.
Never scared like this.’
‘It’s all over now,’ I said. ‘The storm is ended and the barrier has
stopped moving. Everything’s all right.’
‘It’s not like that at all,’ she told me. ‘It’s only just beginning.’
A man was running up the road toward us, but he was the only one in
sight. All the other people who had been around the parked cars were no
longer there. They had run for cover, back to the village, probably, when
the blast of wind had come and the seeds had fallen.
The running man, I saw, was Ed Adler, and he was shouting something at
us as he run.
We got out of the car and walked around in front of it and stood there,
waiting for him.
He came up to us, panting with his running.
‘Brad,’ he gasped, ‘maybe you don’t know this, but Hiram and Tom
Preston are stirring up the people. They think you have something to do with
what’s happening. Some talk about a phone or something.’
‘Why, that’s crazy!’ Nancy cried.
‘Sure it is,’ said Ed, ‘but the village is on edge. It wouldn’t take
too much to get them thinking it. They’re ready to think almost anything.
They need an explanation; they’ll grab at anything. They won’t stop to think
if it’s right or wrong.’
I asked him: ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘You better hide out, Brad, until it all blows over. In another day or
two . . .’
I shook my head. ‘I have too many things to do.’
‘But, Brad…’
‘I didn’t do it, Ed. I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t have a
thing to do with it.’
‘That don’t make no difference.’
‘Yes, it does,’ I said.
‘Hiram and Tom are saying they found these funny phones…’
Nancy started to say something, but I jumped in ahead of her and cut
her off, so she didn’t have a chance to say it. ‘
‘I know about those phones,’ I said. ‘Hiram told me all about them. Ed,
take my word for it. The phones are out of it. They are something else
entirely.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nancy staring at me.
‘Forget about the phones,’ I said.
I hoped she’d understand and apparently she did, for she didn’t say a
thing about the phones. I wasn’t actually sure that she’d intended to, for I
had no idea if she knew about the phone in her father’s study. But I
couldn’t take a chance.
‘Brad,’ warned Ed, ‘you’re walking into it.’
‘I can’t run away,’ I told him. ‘I can’t run somewhere and hide. Not
from anyone, especially not from a pair like Tom and Hiram.’
He looked me up and down.
‘No, I guess you can’t,’ he said. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘You can see that Nancy gets home safely. I’ve got a
thing or two to do.’
I looked at Nancy. She nodded at me. ‘It’s all right, Brad, but the
car’s just down the road. I could drive you home.’
‘I’d better take a short cut. If Ed is right, there’s less chance of
being seen.’
‘I’ll stay with her,’ said Ed, ‘until she’s inside the house.’
Already, in two hour’s time, I thought, it had come to this – to a
state of mind where one questioned the safety of a girl alone upon the
street.
10
Now, finally, I had to do a thing I had intended to do ever since this
morning – a thing I probably should have done last night – get in touch with
Alf. It was more important now than ever that I get in touch with him, for
in the back of my mind was a growing conviction that there must be some
connection between what was happening here in Millville and that strange
research project down in Mississippi.
I reached a dead-end street and started walking down it. There was not
a soul in sight. Everyone who could either walk or ride would be down in the
business section.
I got to worrying that maybe I’d not be able to locate Alf, that he
might have checked out of the motel when I failed to get there, or that he
might be out gawping at the barrier with a lot of other people.
But there was no need to worry, for when I reached my house the phone
was ringing and Alf was on the line.
‘I’ve been trying for an hour to get you,’ he said. ‘I wondered how you
were.’
‘You know what happened, Alf?’
He told me that he did. ‘Some of it,’ he said.
‘Minutes earlier,’ I said, ‘and I would have been with you instead of
penned up in the village. I must have hit the barrier when it first
appeared.’
I went ahead and told him what had happened after I had hit the
barrier. Then I told him about the phones.
‘They told me they had a lot of readers. People who read books to
them…’
‘A way of getting information.’
‘I gathered that was it.’
‘Brad,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a terrible hunch.’
‘So have I,’ I said.
‘Do you think this Greenbriar project…?’
‘That’s what I was thinking, too.’
I heard him drawing a deep breath, the air whistling in his teeth.’
‘It’s not just Millville, then.’
‘Maybe a whole lot more than Millville.’
‘What are you going to do now, Brad?’
‘Go down into my garden and have a hard look at some flowers.’
‘Flowers?’
‘Alf,’ I told him, ‘it’s a long, long story. I’ll tell you later. Are
you staying on?’
‘Of course I am,’ said All ‘The greatest show on earth and me with a