Bay threw down the apple core and stomped it into the soft loam until only a little mound of dirt was left. The bells from a distant steeple—the highest point of a tiny village nestled in the New England hills—were just striking twelve. It was Sunday. That would mean even less traffic than usual, less chance of truckers and easy pick-ups, especially as this wasn’t a highway, only a double-lane country road.
He tightened the straps of the knapsack over his shoulders and loped off the ridge back down onto the road. He tried to adjust his mind and body for a long afternoon walk, trying to stay off the frayed edge of the macadam and on the dirt as much as possible, to make the trek easier on his feet.
After ten minutes or so, he still hadn’t seen a car. Everyone must be at home, having dinner. The dark gray of the road shot away from under his feet down a long incline, rising up to another ridge half a mile away where it hid from sight, then rose straight up to another ridge, rising and dipping, again and again, into the spine of hills—like a ribbon grabbed by the wind.
Bay was just bracing his legs for the long incline when a rush of air and force slashed past him. Swop, swop, it went, knocking him to the ground amid a flurry of dust and small pebbles.
Whatever it was, it had been too fast for him to catch sight of it going by. He picked himself up, brushed off his denims, looked back in the direction he had come from, muttered a few curses, then started off again. Then he noticed something.
Ahead, like mechanical insects rapidly climbing down the side of a wall, two small, very fast vehicles were moving toward him along the ribbon of road. They fell out of sight behind a lower ridge for a second, and as they did, two identical vehicles appeared at the top of the road beginning the drop down toward him.
They were coming so fast that as he refocused from one pair to another, they seemed to change places. Then he saw the effect was being caused by a third pair of identical vehicles, which had now appeared at the very topmost point of the road he could make out.
They flashed so brightly in the noontime sun that Bay could scarcely see them coming at him. He could make out that they were low, squarish, and painted a metallic green. But what was so odd after seeing no cars at all was that these seemed so regular, systematic—each one side by side, covering both lanes of the road, the second and third pairs exactly as far away from each other, exactly as distant from the first pair, as though they were in formation. Bay was reminded of a slot-car set he’d once owned and played with as a kid.
Then a pair of vehicles was upon him. Then passing him. As they went, they made the same sound: swop, swop.
That left no doubt. An earlier pair must have knocked him down. This time he was braced. Even so, he could barely stay on his feet in the dust and blast of their passing.
He followed their squat, retreating figures down the road, only a double blur by now, in all the dust they lifted, following them like little cyclones. How fast were they going? Over 100, maybe 150 miles per hour? Maybe more?
He couldn’t help feeling there was something more than a little odd about the vehicles. He braced himself on overhanging shelf of rock and shaded his eyes, trying to catch a better look at the next pair as they passed. When they did, he was even more unnerved by what he could discern.
They were indeed unlike any other vehicles he had ever seen: low, flat boxes, angled toward some indefinable apex three-quarters along their length. No lights he could make out, front or back. No chrome or any other kind of decoration. And no glass—and therefore no way for him to see inside them—if, that is, they even had an inside. He had thought at first they were painted a metallic green, and in truth, seeing them closer, that was still the closest he could come in describing their color and material to himself. But it wasn’t metal, not really. And it wasn’t green either. At least not any green he’d ever seen. More shimmering, like the bodies of some of those Japanese beetles that liked to chew on rosebuds. The material was an unknown substance, refracting light in a way he’d never seen any material do, with a color that seemed to both shimmer and absorb light. Worse, as the vehicles had lifted slightly going over the ridge of road, they had lifted slightly off the road—going 150, 180 miles per hour, any vehicle would do so—and they had no wheels!
Bay was thinking whether he had noticed any military base in the area on the filling station map he carried with him. No. None. Could this instead be a testing ground for an automobile company? These could be experimental cars? No?
The last pair finally shot past him, interrupting his thoughts, and making that dull swop, swop sound again. He turned to see if any more were coming. No, none. Then he turned to watch the last pair speed off in the direction of their predecessors, and he was amazed to see that they were instead slowing down, and then almost stopping, before swerving off the road and onto a pasture very close to the same ridge where he’d spent the night.
All the curiosity and vague discomfort he’d felt came to a head. He had to see what these vehicles were. He turned around and ran back toward the stopped vehicles.
It was only a few minutes back to the crags that he had left shortly before overhanging the open meadows. But in the short while, the occupants of the vehicle had gotten out and transformed the area.
What had been a dry grass pasture now seemed to be a cleared area of some hundred feet in radius, roughly circular. Dark-clothed, helmeted figures moved about stiffly, if quickly, carrying strange objects. Two figures bent into the now-opened backs or fronts (he wasn’t certain) of the vehicles parked at the circle’s edge.
Two other figures were setting up a hollow-looking platform exactly in the center of the circle. From a long-snouted tool one of them wielded, a pressurized liquid shot out onto the ground and hardened into a concrete-like substance the instant it touched the dirt and grass.
As they worked, the first pair of figures edged a canister-like object out of one vehicle and onto the ground. Although Bay was concentrating on the object and the figures, he could see inside the vehicles now, and they were artificially lighted, half-pink, half-yellow, blinking on and off.
The canister must have been extremely heavy or very fragile, as the figures carrying it moved very slowly, in exaggeratedly mechanical, yet dainty steps. At length, they got the canister into the center of the cleared circle and sank it slowly into the cement material. Another shower from the spray tool covered the canister completely so it was no longer visible.
The four figures then retreated to beyond the edge of the circle and one of them pulled a little hand-sized cartridge out of a deep pocket in his form-fitting suit. He adjusted one or two buttons on the little panel, and the trod-down grass began springing up again in the clearing, so quickly and so completely that even from his bird’s-eye perch Bay could scarcely make out the exact location of the platform and sunken canister.
The entire operation had taken perhaps eight minutes. All of it had been completely hidden from any possible view by the ridge of rock from the top of which Bay watched them. Even had there been a traffic jam on the road to see it, no one would have. And where the canister had been sunk, it now looked like nothing at all happened.
That was when Bay began to feel a tingling along the back of his neck. He’d had that feeling once or twice before in his life. Once when he was being followed down the dark, deserted street of a Midwestern city by a stranger who kept falling out of view whenever Bay turned to check up on him; another time when he had heard prowling, heavy steps outside a tent he had pitched in the Green River Mountains of Utah. Both times before it had meant danger, and now he knew it meant that whatever was in that canister was about to go off, and go off big. Without stopping to ask why or how, Bay knew something momentous had been sunk in that meadow. He had to get away fast! Now!
He almost stumbled running down the ridge onto the roadway when he remembered he had taken off his backpack and left it on the rock. Leave it! he thought. Go! he thought. Then: No! I have to have it! I have to get away fast! In a car! That thing’s going to go off any minute now. I need a car to get away from it. The backpack will get me a ride.
He was tying on the pack when he reached the road again. No cars, and those two which had been here had vanished totally. He started to walk as fast as he could, following the direction he’d begun in before.
Why this way? This is where the vehicles had come from. They might have laid a whole chain of these things. They might be laying down more at this moment, behind him. He had to go north. North.
There had to be a northern crossover ahead. He must get to it. But first he needed a lift. Still no cars. Damn. He felt a little calmer now as he strode along the road, knowing he at least had a direction now, a way out. The thin hot trickle was still burning a network into the back of his neck and his shoulders, and he was beginning to feel a sharp little pain in his side from his exertion. He was sure the first was adrenaline rising, and the extrasensory fear of whatever was going to happen.
If it was, just supposing it was what he thought it was, what could its radius be? Two miles? Five? What had been the radius of the last test? Five miles, no? Or was that only the radius of total destruction? And if so, what was the radius of the firestorms? Another five or ten miles?
He turned to look behind him. No cars. As he turned back, one coming toward him passed by—but it sped on as it neared him and he scarcely had the chance to flag it down anyway, he was so intent on walking hard and getting away, straining to keep up a fast pace, yet stay in control, to keep himself from simply running ahead blindly, breaking away totally. No. He had to stay in control. To let go meant to invite the end. Survival lay only in holding on. Holding on.
And still the burning of his nerve ends. It seemed stronger the further he got away from the canister. Still no cars.
Then there was one coming up behind him. Dark and sleek. Bay almost fell as he stumbled to a stop and thrust his arm dangerously out over the edge of the road.
The driver saw him and made a great show of screeching to a halt, braking so fiercely that half the car was under Bay’s outstretched hand when it came to a full stop. One of those little German coupes that looked like metal race cars he’d played with as a child.
He ducked down to open the passenger side door.
“Haven’t asked you yet!” a voice said.
Bay removed his hand from the door handle. Oh, God, no! Not a joker! Not now!
“Sorry!” he said. “C’n I have a lift?”
“Sure.” The passenger side lock snapped open.
Bay got in, closed the door, was encased in the pervasive odor of leather and new car. The man faced ahead. Nothing but profile. Why wasn’t he starting the car?
“Where you headed?”
“North!” he said with a determination that surprised him.
“This way’s west.”
“There’s a crossover a few miles up. I’ll get off there,” Bay said, thinking, Let’s go!
“No need to. I’m going north there myself.”
A joker. Great. Finally, he threw it into gear. Bay was still doing up his seat belt shoulder straps when the car took off.
At least the backpack was loose. He swung it onto the floor and sat back watching the rounded V-shaped hood lap up the dark macadam.
“Nice car,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
Thank God he’s not in the mood for company, Bay thought. Imagine having a conversation about the weather now. It might just slow him down. Drive faster!
“You seemed to be in a bit of hurry there,” the driver said nonchalantly: “As though you were running from someone.”
Did he know? Could he know? Could he be connected up with those pairs of vehicles? Could he be their scout? Or not, rather their cleanup man. Here to get rid of any possible witnesses?
Bay said nothing.
“Of course,” the driver went on, “there seemed to be no one and nothing to run away from where I picked you up. Right? Just a coupla nothing farms in the distance.” He laughed and Bay looked at him. His own age. Good-looking in a city-slick way, like his car. Heavy, straight, almost blue-black hair. Sultry eyelids over dark eyes. Tanned. Spoiled-looking. But otherwise all right. Like a hundred others.
“Nothing farms and a coupla cows, eh?” He laughed again.
Even if the driver didn’t know about the canister, he still might be off. Christ! Just what I need now!
Before Bay knew it, they’d reached the crossing and the driver flicked the wheel left and spun across the other lane right onto the crossroad. “No!” Bay shouted. “That’s wrong! We’re going south.” He almost jumped out of his seat.
“What?” the driver said, and cupped one hand to his ear, as if he were hard of hearing. Bay began frantically repeating and explaining that they were going the wrong way. But the car was already in the middle of a U-turn, then across the road again.
“You seem a mite nervous, friend,” the driver said, with a little smile.
“Maybe.”
“A smidgen stressed, I’d say.”
“A smidgen.”
“Doubtless on account of those nothing farms and coupla cows.” He laughed.
Bay all but collapsed back into the bucket seat. But he felt little relief. This guy was a jerk and a joker, and who knew, maybe he was insane too. And the burning fear from the knowledge that Bay was still within range of the canister was getting worse now, pricking every nerve of his skin.
How the hell had he gotten into such a situation anyway?
How had he? He was trying to recall and coming up blank. Well, no, not entirely blank. He knew he was hitching east. He remembered that yesterday he’d caught a ride out of Albany and into Kingston, New York. There he recalled he’d eaten a hamburger and malt shake at a roadside Friendly’s, had ridden with a car through the Berkshire Mountains, and had been dropped off in small town called South Egremont. He’d been picked up there by a truck driver, literate guy who talked about the fact that Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne and all kinds of nineteenth-century writers had lived in the area, if not regularly then part-time, during the summer. Bay had ridden along with the guy, who was looking for an ear to listen to his chatter, and he’d finally allowed himself to be dropped off not far from where he’d spent the night. And before yesterday? Well, that wasn’t quite so clear to him. He’d traveled, he believed. Hitchhiked through mountains, plains, around cities, past deserts, all of it blurred and kind of vague now, unimportant, not all that detailed.
Bay was feeling certain that whatever was inside the canister would go off soon. Why and who had set it were no longer real questions. He knew that being there and witnessing it being sunk into the ground had somehow forged a link to it, a connection, and that might be why he carried the knowledge of it within him, as though both it and now he were a time bomb, literally running out of time.
“How far do you think we are?” Bay asked, trying to sound casual.
“From where?”
“I don’t know, say from Boston? Or say how about from where you picked me up?”
“About hundred and fifty from Boston. Sixteen and a half from where I picked you up,” he tapped a dial sunk into the leather plush of the dashboard, “according to Mr. Odometer here.”
“Is that all?” Bay asked.
“What do you mean?” The driver sounded slightly offended. “That’s pretty good.”
“For going sixty-five miles per hour,” Bay agreed. “I thought this car went a lot faster.”
“I’m in no hurry,” the driver said.
“Speedometer reads, what is it? One forty? Or are those just numbers painted on?”
“It’ll do one forty. These roads are lousy. You want me to rip up the underside, just so you can have a joy-ride?” Already the speedometer had tilted up to 70 mph.
“Car like this was probably built to cruise at a hundred or more,” Bay said, very wise-guy. Speedometer now read 75.
“I sometime cruise it around a hundred. On good roads.” The speedometer was nearing 80 now.
“German, right?” Bay said. “Tested on the autobahn?”
“That’s right.” Closer to 85 now.
“Which has no top speed, am I correct?” Bay asked.
“It’s a perfect road, that autobahn.” He was close to 88 now.
“I was told that these high-performance vehicles, if you don’t really open them up every once in a while, their oil lines clog up.”
90 now. “Is that right?”
“That’s what I heard,” Bay said. The car was pushing 95 now and the car seemed to be slipping along the road. It was taking the dips so fast it was getting Bay a little queasy. The landscape began shooting by, trees going flick, flick, flick, so fast they began to bunch and blur as they reached 95. Alongside ran a stream that seemed to appear and vanish, reappear and snap and curl along past, like kids shaking a dark rope along the ground, playing snake.
Up to 100 miles per hour now.
Bay’s nerves were on fire. He could hardly keep still in his seat for the twitching. Soon. Soon. Any minute now. He had to brace himself. prepare himself. Looking at the odometer he saw that they’d managed another ten miles, up to what, twenty-seven, maybe thirty by now, but would that be far enough? He’d have to get out of the car when it happened. Throw himself out clear. That would be suicide at this speed. Better get the guy to stop and find cover. Where? Cover where?
There! The stream, down in the water. The water would protect him, keep him from being badly burned. But how?
“Stop!” Bay shouted, and grabbed at the wheel. “Stop. I get off here.”
“What the hell?” The car sped on as they wrestled for control.
“Stop! Stop! You’ve got to stop!”
“Get your hands off the wheel.” He’d already slowed down to 70.
“Okay, but you’ve got to stop here. Now!”
“You’re nuts. There’s nothing here.”
“Stop now! Here!” Bay tried opening the door.
“Sit down. You’ll be killed!”
The car braked and swerved to a halt, twanging and spinning around two-thirds of a circle.
Before it was even fully stopped, Bay felt an agony all over his body. He threw his door open, flung himself out, and ran to the side of the road and thrust a hand into the water. Only a few feet deep, then brackish mud. But it would have to do.
Behind him he heard the driver muttering to close the damn car.
Bay grabbed up two hollow reeds and broke them off at both edges. He put one end into his mouth and breathed. Then he slid, back first, into the stream, face sideways, hearing the car rev up and take off as he got underwater and felt the sludge against the bare parts of his legs and neck, trying to stay calm as he immersed himself and slowly began to turn over sideways, to get his face as far away from the air as possible while keeping the air coming in.
The tubes worked; even bent like this, they let him breathe. He opened his eyes, but the stream was totally muddied now and he closed them instantly to not get any silt into his eyes. The agony was gone. He felt totally calm. Very calm. This was the right thing to do. Yes, exactly right. How did he think of it? Was it instinct? Some life-preserving instinct?
Abruptly, he twitched all over, as though he were having a brief epileptic spasm, from every nerve and muscle, from every cell of his body. Even facing mostly down, and with his eyes closed, his sight was flooded with a whiteness, a light that surpassed any white he’d ever known or thought to know, a white that explored depths and subtleties of sheer white light he’d never suspected even existed, a white that grabbed at every inch of him, illuminated his entire body from without. It seemed to grow in intensity, to throb, and as it did, the sludge around him seemed to grow tepid, then warm, then hot. And still the white blared on, even whiter if possible, brain-hurting white, a thousand brass instruments all playing white. He could feel the water and sludge receding from around his head and hands. Then the reeds in his mouth were hot, useless, since he couldn’t breathe anymore, and he spat them out, dropped them and turned over, directly onto his face, finding an empty space there and filling his lungs from dark, quickly drying pockets of dank around him, while the universe continued to go white, white, white, seemingly forever.
A giant pulse slung along the land, seemingly lifting his body inches even within the mud. He held on for dear life. Then it was gone, after having flung itself right through his insides.
The white became yellow, then orange, then red, then dark red, then a deep, flickering magenta.
But the twitching was over, and the pain, and the fear. The hair on the back of his head no longer felt on fire. The sludge around his face had begun to boil and bubble, but now it subsided. When he was able to lift his head a few inches and use his hands to pry open his crusted-over eyes, he could see the stream bed around him was dried to aridity, desert dried, and like that dried and crusted all over his face and hands.
Cautiously he rolled over onto his back. Cautiously he tried to breathe. The air was oven-warm. Acrid, with the smell of burning. Breathable. He took a few more breaths. They hurt his nasal cavities and his throat. He swallowed once or twice and it was better. The air was cooling rapidly. That was better. He tried to sit up, had to use his hands to help himself. He flicked the crusted dirt off his hands and picked the dried crust off his face.
The sky around him was pink. Pink and purple and orange, but mostly pink, a deep roseate, Valentine’s Day pink. Everything lining the stream bed was black. He knelt and then managed to stand. The land around him was totally blackened. Road and meadow all the same color, the only difference being that the road was partly melted, buckled in places. In the distance, across flat charred fields, he could see a grove of pine trees burning like a huge torch. The air was still warm. But the worst was over.
Shakily, he reached his feet, checking for breaks, fractures, bruises, and finding none, he stood up on his feet. His knees felt weak. Instantly, he began to retch, and then vomited chunks of his apple into the thick cracked bed of what had once been a stream. He immediately felt lighter and stronger, wiped his mouth, stood up straight. He lumbered out of the stream bed, afraid to touch anything, and stumbled forward along the half-melted, disfigured road.
Everywhere were fires. Showers of ashes descended all around him like rain. God knew from what. But he was all right. He had gotten through it.
He walked on, just looking. Then, around a bend in the road, through trunks of trees in flames, he made out the dull metal shine of a car. It was stopped dead in the middle of the road, as if its driver had just stopped a minute to take a leak on the side of the road and would be back any second.
As he got nearer, Bay saw there was no glass.
Even closer, most of the outside of the car—sheet metal, bumpers, fenders, roof—seemed intact, but as though heated and simultaneously pounded by a hundred thousand tiny hammers. Then he saw that it was the same car that had picked him up before, and he made out the back of the man’s head, erect, sunk into the backrest.
And if weren’t for the millions of gently trembling shards of glass splinters covering his head like a delicate lace helmet, and the red trickles that stained their edges, the driver would have looked as if he were alive—merely staring ahead, a little surprised.
Even the seats and floor and dashboard were rimed with glass shards. But the dashboard dials were still lighted, and the motor was still idling in neutral. The driver must have been suddenly blinded by the light, and by reflex stopped the car. Then the blast and the glass hit him, and who knew, but probably the fire too that had dappled the sheet metal, seared the leather inside the car, and his flesh and skin too, until they were all the same mottled half-brown, half-bright-pink color.
Bay opened the car driver’s door, swept a drift of glass shards off the metal with his foot, then gently pulled at the corpse from behind, until the body fell over onto the road. The smell of burnt flesh was stronger. Sweetly awful like a charred loin of pork.
He cleared the front seat, reached the glove compartment where he found a piece of chamois to help him do the job better, and used that to wrap around the still hot, partly fused steering wheel. Would it work? It turned normally. There was still dangerous-looking glass left in the windshield and side vents. He knocked them out.
When he was done, Bay sat in the driver’s seat wondering for a minute whether instinct would tell him what to do next. He gunned the engine. It worked. It whined, but it worked.
“I’ll go north,” he said, aloud. “North.”
He moved the lever from park into drive and the car whined, then leapt forward.
*
Two hours later he ran out of gas.
He’d been surprised, even a little alarmed that there were so few cars on the road. Where had everyone gone to? Were they all dead? In hiding? Where? The further away he drove, the less there seemed to be damage, even signs of what happened. But everything seemed abandoned. Everything meaning the few clapboard roadside diners and brick gas stations he’d passed. If he’d only thought to stop and get gas…
He left the car on the shoulder of the highway and began walking, again north—always north. Every once in a while, Bay would turn around and look behind, seeing the sky still pink, with clouds of ashes falling in the distance, and one area to the southeast—could it be Boston?—bright red and orange, as though the air itself were consumed by flames.
He reached a weathered wood-shake house off the side of the road, behind a picket fence and gate. Several sedans and a pickup truck were parked on the grassy side road. There had to be someone inside. Maybe they had gasoline. Or would be able to drive him to the next gas station.
Aside from the blown-in windows all about, the house didn’t seem at all damaged. The front door swung open. Bay called “hello,” and when he received no response, he walked in.
It seemed deserted. The kitchen had been in use recently: Food was half-cooked in pots on the big double range—two cups of coffee were set out on an old table, untasted. Bay called out again. Still no answer. He half-absently picked up a coffee cup.
Would it be all right to drink it? Would it be radioactive?
He went to the sink instead, an old-fashioned metal pump and basin, and pumped himself out a glass of water. It was cool, slightly mineral, but good. He had another glassful.
Was that a sound behind that door? Voices? Or one voice maybe droning on?
“Hello,” he called out to whoever would be on the other side of the door. “Anyone there? My car ran out of gas down the road!”
No answer. But the droning seemed to go on.
Bay went to the door and tried its handle. It opened. He carefully turned the knob and stepped aside, not knowing what to expect to come charging out at him.
A steep, well-lighted stairway, leading up.
As he ascended, the hard, cracked old voice he’d first heard became clearer. Bay thought he heard the words, “And behold! There came up out of the river seven well-favored kine,” followed by a pause and what seemed to be the shuffling of several pairs of shoes upon bare wood.
At the top of the stairs, he found himself in a long corridor with closed doors, and on the floor itself, a worn, multicolored knitted oval rug, looking like a faded rainbow.
One door was ajar. Beyond it, the old voice took up again. Bay approached and slowly pushed open the door wide enough to look in.
His first impression was a room filled with people: men, women, children, old folks, all sitting or standing behind wooden dining room chairs or leaning against the side of the room where, because of the angle of the light all but blinding him, all Bay could make out was the shadowed figure of what was an elderly man.
Bay stepped into the room silently. The old man was still in obscurity, although now Bay could make out a dark leather-bound, frayed-edge book, open on a lectern in front of the man, and in full view.
“So Pharaoh slept and dreamed a second time,” the old voice went on, toneless. Neither the reader nor anyone else in the room turned to look at Bay.
The old man paused again, and there was a murmur from the assembled group. One little boy, no longer able to hold back his curiosity, peeked back at Bay from behind the protection of a woman’s shoulder. As Bay noticed him, the lad darted back into hiding, then timidly edged back into sight.
Half of the child’s pale blond hair was gone. The remaining scalp, a purple splotch with large brown blisters and smaller broken-pus pink sores, looked as though he’d been raked from the crown of his head down over the single closed, congealed eye and red-black chin with an acetylene torch. It took Bay a great effort to look away from the boy and to fix his sight upon the worn natural grain of the wood floor.
“And behold! Seven ears of corn came upon one stalk,” the old man read on, “fat and good.”
Everyone murmured their approval. Bay looked at the boy again. But now he was hidden by the bulk of the woman, his mother perhaps, who turned out of profile toward Bay. She too was burned and mispigmented, as though a swath of intense fire had been whipped across her face and torso.
Bay backed up against the door he’d come in through, holding tightly to the dry wooden molding behind, spreading his feet apart for support as he surveyed the others in the room.
Everyone else he saw was blasted, burned, discolored, bleeding, or suppurating.
“And behold! Seven thin ears of corn, blasted by the east wind, sprung up after the others,” the old man intoned, voice as dry as the planking Bay gripped so hard it was beginning to flake off under his fingernails.
A woman closest to Bay, her arms crossed over her cotton-print housedress, turned to him as though first noticing him. Purple splotches mantled all but a tiny central triangle of her face. Her lips were charred lines. Her teeth almost glowed green as she smiled. Only a few clumps of glossy auburn hair still flowed, held in place by a blackened hair-band.
Bay had to look down at the floor again, but he also couldn’t stop himself from looking up again, now at one, then at another of the listeners, all of them quietly, attentively, listening to the man reading, monstrously ignoring what happened to them.
“And the seven thin ears of corn devoured the seven fat and full ones.”
The people seemed animated by these words, moving about unsettled in their seats, gesturing, and in doing so revealing new facets of their horror. One scabrous-faced man with only a projected bone of nose left leaned over to whisper into the blasted shell of what should have been another’s ear.
Bay shut his eyes, fighting down what was in front of him, declaring he wouldn’t open his eyes.
He was out in the corridor now.
“And it came to pass in the morning,” the old man went on, “that Pharaoh’s spirit was greatly troubled by what he’d beheld in his sleep.”
Bay shut the door, held it shut, knowing they could jump up from their chairs and smash it open on him. His skin felt as though every pore were bursting with poisonous filth and infection.
When nothing happened, and the voice went on droning behind the door, Bay fled, leaping down the stairs, stumbling over his own feet to get down, almost tearing the stairway’s bottom door off its hinges as he careened out, fleeing the house onto the roadway, running.
When he stopped running, his body aching with the sudden exertion, he was far from the house. No one had followed him. Ahead, over rolling country, he couldn’t see any other hamlet within sight. What was the difference if the people there would be as mutilated and as oddly unconcerned with their fate as this group?
Past a stand of trees on the road, he came upon a local bread delivery van parked. No driver, the key still in the ignition. Had this driver been struck by the blinding glare, burned to the bones of his skull, and staggered off, maimed, into the high grass, or worse, back into that house?
When Bay turned the van’s key, the tank light on the dashboard showed half-full. Should he siphon it off? Or just take the van?
Before he could really make up his mind, his hands had done it for him. The ignition was switched on and he’d thrown the clutch. All around him, he smelled fresh bread. He reached for a loaf of pumpernickel, tore the plastic wrapper off and ate three pieces, gulping them down. He threw the van into gear and took off.
He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. He ate the entire loaf of bread as he drove.
The van couldn’t go anywhere near as fast as the sports coupe had gone, but it was taking him north all the same. He couldn’t help but think that there were going to be more bombs, more trouble, and that he’d be safer the further north he got.
He’d reached the deep humps of the Green Mountains when he realized that the buzzing he’d been semi-hearing ever since he’d gotten into the van must be coming from the radio. The driver must have left it on when he’d stopped.
Bay tried tuning it. For a few minutes all he got was cracking and popping. Universal static. Then he managed to capture a voice, distant, faint, high-pitched.
“…to report to their local distribute…eleven oh seven two four…all battalions followed by codes J as in Jester, H as in Happy, R as in Rebel, S as in Standing…”
Then it was gone, no matter how much he turned the dial to tune it.
He continued to fumble at the radio, having to lean across the side of the high dashboard to do so. Finally, he reached another clear station,
“…ime Minister and the British Parliament declared full neutrality in the startling, total conflict between the government of the United Sta…” Then it too drifted. Bay kept on trying to tune it back in, and after some time received “… participating member of the Geneva Convention, the Commonwealth of Canada has opened all borders to evacuees from the States. Emergency centers, food depots, and shelter are being offered to all…” Then it was gone again.
So that was it, full nuclear attack on a massive scale. But Canada was neutral. There was food, shelter, safety there. He’d been right all along to head north. Bay pressed down the gas pedal as far as it would go, then tried to retune the radio.
After fifteen minutes of nothing but hisses and words isolated in radio-drift, Bay pressed one of the buttons on the front of the set that had the word “emergency” marked on it, thinking that’s a weird thing to have, but then again maybe it would provide a direct line between the bread van driver and his home base. For a long while, nothing happened but more static. He turned it down a bit lower, but left the radio on at the emergency bandwidth, in case it might catch some signal. He drove on, thinking.
He’d been close, but lucky. Too close, and very lucky. If he’d still been in Albany, or already reached Boston…any city, really, it would have been all over for him. That was one certainty. And he had been lucky to be this close to Canada too. He could visualize hordes of evacuees from the cities trying to reach Canada over hundreds of miles of melted and disfigured thoroughfares. Horrible. It was a lot easier for him. Only another hour or two and he would cross the border. That was the value of hanging loose, traveling light, being on your own. Nothing, no one, to hold you back. Always in the right spot when you needed to be for survival. Survival.
He paused once on the top of a high ridge of mountains the road ascended to, and got out to look back, feeling like Lot in the Old Testament, seeing the destruction behind him. The skies south were still orange, fading to pink. The sun itself seemed to be contained, almost cradled, within a flaming new corona, one that rose from the earth. A flock of birds were rushing north over the mountains. They knew. They knew where it would be safe. He got back in the van and started off again.
There was more static on the radio station. He raised the volume and tried catching the station. That static was unnerving, almost dizzying. There were voices behind it, he was sure of that, although he couldn’t make them out clearly or hear what they were saying. Two men talking. He turned the volume higher.
What was really odd was that it didn’t sound like news, emergency news. But more like a private conversation he was overhearing. Had he somehow picked up two ham radio operators conversing? And if so, why were they so damned calm?
He now shut both van windows to cut off the wind current sound and turned the radio volume up higher.
“So far,” he heard very clearly, “the case exactly parallels our projected graph of reaction.” Then it was very clear. “Quite extraordinary. Almost classic.” The voice was so calm it was annoying. Didn’t they know what had happened?
“And you’re quite certain,” the second, somewhat less confident voice asked, “that the sudden communication will not be too much of a shock? I mean, given the intensity of the application?”
“That shock,” the first voice responded, “is precisely what we want. You see, by cutting the possibilities down to only two—one a total nightmare—the patient will invariably opt for the other choice—reality, compromised though it may be. He should do so voluntarily. Even willingly. The knowledge that there is a choice, when there wasn’t any chance of that moments before, should override any shock from the communication itself.”
Static returned over the radio, and puzzled by what he was hearing and wanting to hear more, Bay fiddled with the dial. He got back onto the channel again, but now it was merely silent, no talking at all, so he left it there and continued to drive, divided now between the bizarre and bizarrely serene dialogue he’d somehow overhead, and what he could see out the windshield: the country completely destroyed, about to submit to an invasion by…by who?
“Bay! Can you hear me?”
He almost jumped out of the car seat. Then he realized that the voice came from the radio. It sounded like one of the two men who’d been talking. The man said:
“Bay! This is Dr. Joralemon. Can you hear me?”
What the hell was going on?
“Dr. Elbert is here with me too. You remember Dr. Elbert, don’t you, Bay? If you can hear us and understand me, and if for some reason you can’t answer, then shake your head from left to right. Do you understand? Left to right, slowly.”
Bay did as he was told.
“Very good!” Enthusiasm and a little relief too in the voice. “Now, Bay, do you remember who I am? Dr. Joralemon. If you remember me, shake your head again.”
The name wasn’t familiar. The voice was. Or was it?
“Bay? Did you hear what I just said?”
This time Bay did nod from left to right, thinking, what the hell am I doing that for? Where are these voices coming from? The radio? He opened the window and flipped the back mirror all over the road behind to see if anyone was following him. No. No one there. Nothing but forest now, sparse, mountainous forest.
“Now, Bay, do you remember Dr. Elbert?”
“Bay?” The other voice came on. “This is Jim Elbert. I’m your doctor. Or at least I was. Do you hear me?”
Yes, yes, Jim, Bay thought. “Jim,” Bay said. “How can I hear you through the radio? It doesn’t look like a short-wave.”
“Bay,” Elbert’s voice interrupted his own. “If you remember who I am, then shake your head as you did before. I see that you’re trying to talk, but I can’t hear you.”
Bay nodded vigorously. What the hell was Elbert doing on the radio? Where was he? And how had he managed to locate Bay?
“Do you remember me, Bay?” It was the other voice. The one that called himself Dr. Joralemon. And now Bay did recall the voice. But not the way he recalled Elbert, which was pleasant, like a friend, like growing up and playing stickball and going around driving together as a teenager. That’s how he remembered Jim Elbert. But not how he remembered Dr. Joralemon.
Dr. Joralemon repeated his question, and Bay heard rooms in his voice, rooms and doors. Far-away rooms in pastel colors. Venetian blinds half-closed all the time. The constant, insistent murmur of someone’s muffled groans and sobs.
Bay nodded much more slowly in answer.
“Good,” Joralemon said.
“Bay?” It was Jim Elbert again. “Now that we’ve made contact and communicated, you must understand that what I’m going to tell you is the truth. I’ve never lied to you before and I’m not lying now. Do you understand that? Do you believe me? Do you have any reason not to believe me?”
No, Bay thought, I don’t have any reason to not believe you, Jim. He nodded, then reversed the motion of his nodding.
“All right, I’m taking that to mean we’re okay,” Elbert said. “Now, listen, some twelve hours ago, you underwent a brand-new approach that’s been developed in cerebral surgery. It’s only indicated in the most hopeful of…well, to be honest, of extreme cases. Dr. Joralemon invented the procedure. He calls it Trans-Morphing. It’s a sort of active interference into the dreaming state. A kind of probe.”
“So far,” Joralemon interrupted, “We’ve had close to one hundred percent effectiveness with Trans-Morphing.”
“What it does, Bay,” Elbert went on, “I mean what it is actually is a combination of a psychotropic drug that operates within the cerebral cortex at a precisely specific given area, and with it a series of carefully calibrated electrical shocks to the brain. Its purpose is to channel your fears and anxieties into one major fear and anxiety. Sort of like dumping it all into one box. And that process builds up and builds up into an experience you fully believe you are having. Generally, and from what our previous cases have said, this is a tremendously catastrophic experience.”
Bay heard the words and understood them well enough. He just didn’t really understand what Elbert was getting at.
“What I’m saying,” Elbert went on, “is that whatever you are doing and wherever you think you are, it’s not so. You’re actually in a semi-comatose state, close to a somewhat overstimulated R.E.M. sleep. You may think you’re awake. But you’re not.”
Bay gripped the steering wheel. Sleeping? Who was he kidding?! The trees were whizzing by on either side of the van, clumps of Scotch and blue pine at a time. Still no vehicles behind him, but the air was scented with pine. Of course, he’d not seen a car or truck in a while. Still, he hit the dashboard hard, and it impacted his hand, making it throb. That was real enough.
“That’s right, Bay,” Jim Elbert continued. “Semi-comatose but sleeping. Dreaming. Everything that you believe has happened to you, and it must have been a humdinger, given how your EKG and EECs reacted, all that actually happened while you were asleep and dreaming.”
“We realize that it’s not an ordinary dream.” Joralemon put his two cents in. “That’s how this new drug works. It doesn’t attempt to approximate reality with silly symbols and inane inaccuracies the way most dreams work. Its effect is to make it seem real, intensely, unbearably real.”
“You must realize, Bay,” Jim Elbert now said in the defensive tone of voice that Bay knew so well, “that this was a desperation measure, Bay. At first I was against using it. But your increasing catatonia, your growing lack of any affect at all…well, I let Dr. Joralemon persuade me to accept that it was the only route left for us.”
“Do you understand us, Bay?” Joralemon asked.
Understand what, Bay thought, total folly? A stupid joke in bad taste?
“Bay?” Elbert was talking again. “Can you still hear us?”
He half nodded.
“I know this may be difficult to believe,” Joralemon said, “because it was so concentrated in its effect, so every aspect of it, every detailed impression seemed completely real and accurate to life.”
“In effect,” Elbert said. “It was another, a parallel, reality.”
“An alternate parallel reality,” Joralemon corrected. “Do you understand?”
Bay didn’t, no. Whoever these jokers were, they were clearly off their rockers. He looked up to see if there was a helicopter chasing him. Looked out the windows. No. Nothing there. But how did they stay in contact with him? How could they be tracking him? The radio alone wasn’t the answer. By satellite? Maybe the combo. Maybe if he shut off the radio. Maybe that had a tracking device in it that allowed their satellite beam to locate him.
“Fine,” Joralemon said, all hale and hearty. “We’re guessing that it’s a pretty horrible alternate reality you’re experiencing there, Bay. But everything is going to be all right now. You don’t have to fear, you don’t have to run anymore. You’ve experienced a catastrophic alternate reality. You’ve faced up to the very worst that you believe you ever could have faced—and you’ve survived, haven’t you? Yes, Bay, that was the most extreme, the furthest that you could possibly go in the direction that you’ve been headed in all these past months. But now you’re going to come back and you’re going to be all right.”
“We’re going to help you come back,” Elbert put in.
“Right,” Joralemon said, with that smug, arrogant edge back in his voice. “Because you see, Bay, you don’t really have that much of a choice. Do you? If you don’t come back with us, then you’ll have to continue living in that nightmare reality you’ve constructed. True, you’re over the worst, the climax has come and gone, but given that, what can you truly expect to follow: a catalogue of horrors one worse than another. That’s the logical extrapolation of the monumental trauma you’ve just gone though.”
“Now, Bay,” Elbert put in, “to get you out of that alternate reality and back with us, all you really need do is break through the sleep paralysis the drug has induced. To do that, all you have to do is move your right hand. It’s not going to be easy, but you’ve got to do it, Bay.”
Bay drove lefty. His right hand lay idle by his side.
“Okay, Bay,” Elbert was at his most professional now. “Move your right hand so it lifts up.”
Who were these guys anyway? Bay wondered. And why were they trying to stop him from going north? Could they be the enemy? The same people who’d planted the bombs? Destroyed so much? Killed so many? Almost killed him?
Bay decided to string them along for a while. He had to be getting close to the Canadian border. He’d been driving so long. He moved his hand off the car seat.
“Great, Bay! Now move your hand over to where your heart is. Can you do that?’
I can, quite easily, Bay thought and did so.
“Terrific! Now you ought to be touching a pocket. Can you feel it there?”
Of course, there was a pocket in his flannel shirt. Big deal.
“There’s something very important in that pocket, Bay. We’d like you to reach inside and take it out of the pocket. Can you do that?”
Bay reached into the pocket, felt around, and touched something small, smooth, and flat. He pulled it out. A Plasticine packet of something. How did that get there? What in hell was that stuff in the packet?
The road he was driving on suddenly began to angle downward, dipping now and again, but clearly descending out of the mountains he’d been driving through for so long. This might be the last stretch before he reached the border.
“Open up that packet, Bay!” Elbert commanded.
He did. Inside were two small pellets, shaped like pink barrels.
“Good,” Elbert said. “We want you to take those pills.”
“At first,” Joralemon came on now, “after you’ve taken the pills, you’ll appear to fall asleep. But that’s only to you, where you are now. What will really happen is that you will wake up. Do you understand that, Bay?”
Sure, sure, Bay thought, and black is white. Whatever these pellets were, how had they gotten into his pocket? He hadn’t put them there. Had somebody else? While he was sleeping last time, maybe? And if the pellets actually were exactly what this guy who sounded like his buddy Jim said they were, what would that really mean? That he was asleep in some hospital? Some asylum? Follow the logic, Bay. That’s what he was telling you. In some nut house, probably strapped down. No sir.
“Can you understand, Bay?”
He nodded.
“Fine. So just pop those pills into your mouth. Both at once.”
Bay rolled the pellets in his fingers.
“Is there some problem, Bay?” Joralemon asked.
“It’s going to be all right, Bay,” the guy who sounded like Jim Elbert said.
Bay kept rolling them in the fingers of one hand.
“Is it,” the Jim-one asked, “that you aren’t in a position to take them in your alternate reality?”
Bingo. He nodded.
“Let’s see. You’re walking or driving or something? Is that it?”
Double bingo.
“And you’re afraid to take them and go to sleep while you’re engaged in that particular activity?”
What do you think, mister?
“Because then you’ll go sleep and fall or crash or something?”
They could be poison, right? Arsenic? Cyanide? Planted by those guys with the quiet cars without wheels, the faceless guys? While he slept?
“I’m assuring you, Bay,” the Joralemon-one went on, sounding terrifically sincere, “that it’s going to be fine. Pull to the side of the road, or go sit down if you need to. Then take the pills.”
“I’m also assuring you, Bay,” the Elbert-faker added. God, he was good. “In a day or two you’ll be well enough to get up and walk around, maybe leave the facility a day later. You’ll be proud of yourself. You won’t be afraid anymore, Bay. Think of that. Not afraid of anything!”
Afraid? He wasn’t afraid.
Afraid? And far-away rooms. Walls painted odd shades of green and blue and canary yellow. Walls converging, tilting at odd angles, then falling in on him. And no matter how much he screamed, no one ever came to help him. No one, except for sometimes a quick glance, lying words, another syringe-full. Murmurs of soft crying all about him, insistent, constant, interminable. Maybe even his own sobs and groans, heard as though rooms away, through locked doors and very far away.
“Now, Bay,” Joralemon was being a Dutch uncle, “we’ve got great confidence in you. Great faith in you. That’s why you were selected for the procedure over other possibilities, other patients who…”
“Is there a reason you can’t take the pills?” Elbert’s pretender asked.
Bay nodded. Of course there was a reason. He had to reach Canada. He’d be at the border any minute now. He’d just passed a small sign saying, “Customs and Immigration—Slow Down Now. Stop Ahead.” Of course, there might be other cars and trucks there already, before him. He vaguely remembered several roads converging on this spot. So there would be others ahead of him, others closer to safety than he was. There might even be a longish wait. The road dropped more sharply now. He must be close.
“Whatever the reason is that you can’t take the pills, whatever it is that you may be doing,” one of the two was saying now, trying not to sound panicky, “you have to stop, Bay. Stop and take the pills! These pellets are the antidote to the pill he gave you. Do you understand?”
“Bay? No one wants to hurt you!”
Pastel rooms and medical smells. Shadows squatting and burbling. Grotesqueries in the guise of humans burbling and muttering and occasionally the ear-hurting screams cutting through it all. Shadows vomiting, screaming, colliding. And always, the distant sobbing and moaning.
“Please, Bay. I’m begging you now. Take the pills and wake up!”
“You have to take the pills, Bay!”
But Bay wasn’t nodding or anything like it. Ahead, along the road, he could see the highway rise slightly, and two other roads converged, and their center was a kind of wooden log cabin, with windows and dormers, belonging to the Canadian Mounted Police.
“Bay! Bay! We’re going to have to come in and get you if you don’t take the pills.”
“I don’t know, Elbert. I’ve never injected the antidote before. We simply don’t have any idea what that will do. Or where exactly it will leave him.”
“You mean it won’t bring him out of this?”
“I don’t know. It’s never been used. We’ve never had anyone opt for the alternate reality before.”
“Inject it!”
“I’m going to need authorization for that.”
“I’m giving you authorization. Inject it! Do it!”
No, you don’t, Bay thought. As the van coasted down the road to the border crossing, he lifted his right foot off the gas pedal and kicked the radio as hard as he could, so hard, it crumpled in the middle, the voices jumbled then turned to static, then died completely.
There weren’t any cars there. Just a Mountie waving at Bay, urging him on.
Bay waved back out the window, laughing out loud. In his hand were the pink pellets. He threw them out the car window, clear into the woods. Then he slowed down at the station, stopping inches from the big, healthy-looking Mountie.
“Welcome!” the Mountie said, smiling at Bay.
He would be safe in Canada.