Clifford D. Simak. All flesh is grass
1
When I swung out of the village street onto the main highway, there was
a truck behind me. It was one of those big semi jobs and it was really
rolling. The speed limit was forty-five on that stretch of road, running
through one corner of the village, but at that time in the morning it wasn’t
reasonable to expect that anyone would pay attention to a posted speed.
I wasn’t too concerned with the truck. I’d be stopping a mile or so up
the road at Johnny’s Motor Court to pick up Alf Peterson, who would be
waiting for me, with his fishing tackle ready. And I had other things to
think of, too – principally the phone and wondering who I had talked with on
the phone. There had been three voices and it all was very strange, but I
had the feeling that it may have been one voice, changed most wonderfully to
make three voices, and that I would know that basic voice if I could only
pin it down. And there had been Gerald Sherwood, sitting in his study, with
two walls lined by books, telling me about the blueprints that had formed,
unbidden, in his brain. There had been Stiffy Grant, pleading that I not let
them use the bomb. And there had been, as well, the fifteen hundred dollars.
Just up the road was the Sherwood residence, set atop its hill, with
the house almost blotted out, in the early dawn, by the bulking blackness of
the great oak trees that grew all around the house. Staring at the hill, I
forgot about the phone and Gerald Sherwood in his book-lined study with his
head crammed full of blueprints, and thought instead of Nancy and how I’d
met her once again, after all those years since high school. And I recalled
those days when we had walked hand in hand, with a pride and happiness that
could not come again, that can come but once when the world is young and the
first, fierce love of youth is fresh and wonderful.
The road ahead was clear and wide; the four lanes continued for another
twenty miles or so before they dwindled down to two. There was no one on the
road except myself and the truck, which was coming up behind me and coming
fairly fast.
Watching the headlights in my rear vision mirror, I knew that in just a
little while it would be swinging out to pass me.
I wasn’t driving fast and there was a lot of room for the truck to pass
me, and there was not a thing to hit and then I did hit something.
It was like running into a strong elastic band. There was no thump or
crash. The car began slowing down as if I had put on the brakes. There was
nothing I could see and for a moment I thought that something must have
happened to the car – that the motor had gone haywire or the brakes had
locked, or something of the sort. I took my foot off the accelerator and the
car came to a halt, then started to slide back, faster and faster, for all
the world as if I’d run into that rubber band and now it was snapping back.
I flipped the drive to neutral because I could smell the rubber as the tires
screeched on the road, and as soon as I flipped it over, the car snapped
back so fast that I was thrown against the wheel.
Behind me the horn of the truck blared wildly and tires howled on the
pavement as the driver swung his rig to miss me. The truck made a swishing
sound as it went rushing past and beneath the swishing, I could hear the
rubber of the tires sucking at the roadbed, and the whole thing rumbled as
if it might be angry at me for causing it this trouble. And as it went
rushing past, my car came to a halt, over on the shoulder of the road.
Then the truck hit whatever I had hit. I could hear it when it struck.
It made a little plop. For a single instant, I thought the truck might break
through whatever the barrier might be, for it was heavy and had been going
fast and for a second or so there was no sign that it was slowing down. Then
it began to slow and I could see the wheels of that big job skidding and
humping, so that they seemed to be skipping on the pavement, still moving
forward doggedly, but still not getting through.
It moved ahead for a hundred feet or so beyond the point where I had
stopped. And there the rig came to a halt and began skidding back. It slid
smoothly for a moment, with the tires squealing on the pavement, then it
began to jackknife. The rear end buckled around and came sideways down the
road, heading straight for me.
I had been sitting calmly in the car, not dazed, not even too much
puzzled. It all had happened so fast that there had not been time to work up
much puzzlement. Something strange had happened, certainly, but I think I
had the feeling that in just a little while I’d get it figured out and it
would all come right again.
So I had stayed sitting in the car, absorbed in watching what would
happen to the truck. But when it came sliding back down the road,
jackknifing as it slid, I slapped the handle of the door and shoved it with
my shoulder and rolled out of the seat. I hit the pavement and scrambled to
my feet and ran.
Behind me the tires of the truck were screaming and then there was a
crash of metal, and when I heard the crash, I jumped out on the grassy
shoulder of the road and had a look behind me. The rear end of the truck had
slammed into my car and shoved it in the ditch and now was slowly, almost
majestically, toppling into the ditch itself, right atop my car
‘Hey, there!’ I shouted. It did no good, of course, and I knew it
wouldn’t. The words were just jerked out of me.
The cab of the truck had remained upon the road, but it was canted with
one wheel off the ground. The driver was crawling from the cab.
It was a quiet and peaceful morning. Over in the west some heat
lightning was skipping about the dark horizon. There was that freshness in
the air that you never get except on a summer morning before the sun gets up
and the beat closes down on you. To my right, over in the village, the
street lights were still burning, hanging still and bright, unstirred by any
breeze. It was too nice a morning, I thought, for anything to happen.
There were no cars on the road. There were just the two of us, the
trucker and myself, and his truck in the ditch, squashing down my car. He
came down the road toward me.
He came up to me and stopped, peering at me, his arms hanging at his
side. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he asked. ‘What did we run into?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry about your car,’ he told me. ‘I’ll report it to the company.
They’ll take care of it.’
He stood, not moving, acting as if he might never move again. ‘Just
like running into nothing,’ he declared. ‘There’s nothing there.’
Then slow anger flared in him.
‘By God,’ he said, ‘I’m going to find out…’
He turned abruptly and went stalking up the highway, heading toward
whatever we had hit. I followed along behind him.
He was grunting like an angry hog.
He went straight up the middle of the road and he hit the barrier, but
by this time he was roaring mad and he wasn’t going to let it stop him, so
he kept ploughing into it and he got a good deal farther than I had expected
that he would. But finally it stopped him and he stood there for a moment,
with his body braced ridiculously against a nothingness, leaning into it,
and with his legs driving like well-oiled pistons in an attempt to drive
himself ahead. In the stillness of the morning I could hear his shoes
chuffing on the pavement.
Then the barrier let him have it. It snapped him back. It was as if a
sudden wind had struck him and was blowing him down the road, tumbling as he
rolled. He finally ended up jammed half underneath the front end of the cab.
I ran over and grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him out and stood
him on his feet. He was bleeding a little from where he’d rubbed along the