"I'm no good to my family if I'm dead."

"Then why'd you agree to come along?"

"I didn't know it would be like this. You had better sense, because you had an idea what it would be like."

"I had an idea."

"Nobody can blame us if we fail. After all, we've

tried."

"What about all those people in Boston you made me

a speech about?"

"They're probably dead by now. The plague isn't a thing that takes its time, you know?"

"What about that guy Brady? He died to get us the

news."

"He tried, and God knows I respect the attempt. But we've already lost four guys. Now should we make it six, just to show that everybody tried?"

"Greg, we're a lot closer to Boston than we are to L.A.

now. The tanks should have enough fuel in them to get us where we're going, but not to take us back from here."

"We can refuel in Salt Lake."

"I'm not even sure we could make it back to Salt

Lake."

"Well, it'll only take a minute to figure it out. For that matter, though, we could take the bikes for the last hun- dred or so. They use & lot less gas,"

"And you're the guy who was calling me names.

You're the citizen was wondering how people like me happen. You asked me what they ever did to me, I told you, too: Nothing. Now maybe I want to do something for them, just because I feel like it. I've been doing a lot of thinking.**

168 .

"You ain't supporting any family. Hell. I've got other people to worry about beside myself.

"You've got a nice way of putting things when you want to chicken out. You say I'm not really scared, but I've got my mother and my brothers and sisters to worry about, and I got a chick I'm hot on. That's why I'm back- ing down. No other reason,

"And that's right, too! I don't understand you. Hell!

I don't understand you at all! You're the one who put this idea in my head in the first place!"

"So give it back, and let's get moving."

He saw Greg's hand slither toward the gun on the door, so he flipped his cigarette into his face and managed to hit him once, in the stomach-a weak, left-handed blow, but it was the best he could manage from that position.

Then Greg threw himself upon him, and he felt him- self borne back into his seat. They wrestled, and Greg's fingers clawed their way up to his face toward his eyes.

Tanner got his arms free above the elbows, seized Greg's head, twisted and shoved with all his strength.

Greg hit the dashboard, went stiff, then went slack.

Tanner banged his head against it twice more, just to be sure he wasn't faking. Then he pushed him away and moved back into the driver's seat. He checked all the screens while he caught his breath. There was nothing menacing approaching.

He fetched cord from the utility chest and bound Greg's hands behind his back. He tied his ankles together and ran a line from them to his wrists. Then he posi- tioned him in the seat, reclined it pan way and tied him in place within it.

He put the car into gear and headed toward Ohio.

Two hours later Greg began to moan, and Tanner turned the music up to drown him out. Landscape had appeared once more: grass and trees, fields of green, orchards of apples, apples still small and green, white farm houses and brown barns and red barns far removed from the roadway he raced along; rows of corn, green and swaying, brown tassels already visible and obviously tended by someone; fences of split timber, green hedges;

lofty, star-leafed maples, fresh-looking road signs, a green-shingled steeple from which the sound of a bell came forth.

The lines in the sky widened, but the sky itself did not

169.

darken, as it usually did before a storm. So he drove on into the afternoon, until he reached the Dayton Abyss.

He looked down into the fog-shrouded canyon that had caused him to halt. He scanned to the left and the right, decided upon the left and headed north.

Again, the radiation level was high. And he hurried.

slowing only to skirt the crevices, chasms and canyons that emanated from that dark, deep center. Thick yel- low vapors seeped forth from some of these and filled the air before him. At one point they were all about him, like a clinging, sulphurous cloud, and a breeze came and parted them. Involuntarily then, he hit the brake, and the car jerked and halted and Greg moaned once more.

He stared at the thing for the few seconds that it was visible, then slowly moved forward again.

The sight was not duplicated for the whole of his passage, but it did not easily go from out of his mind, and he could not explain it where he had seen it. Yel- low, hanging and grinning, he had seen a crucified skele- ton there beside the Abyss. People, he decided. That ex- plains everything.

When he left the region of fogs the sky was still dark.

He did not realize for a time that he was in the open once more. It had taken him close to four hours to skirt Day- ton, and now as he headed across a blasted heath, going east again, he saw for a moment, a tiny piece of the sun, like a sickle, fighting its way ashore on the northern bank of a black river in the sky, and failing.

His lights were turned up to their fullest intensity, and as he realized what might follow he looked in every di- rection for shelter.

There was an old barn on a hill, and he raced toward it. One side had caved in, and the doors had fallen down.

He edged in, however, and the interior was moist and moldy looking under his lights. He saw a skeleton which he guessed to be that of a horse within a fallen-down stall.

He parked and turned off his lights and waited.

Soon the wailing came again and drowned out Greg's occasional moans and mutterings. There came another sound, not hard and heavy like gunfire, as that which he

170 .

had heard in L.A., but gentle, steady and almost purr- ing-

He cracked the door, to hear it better.

Nothing assailed him, so he stepped down from the cab and walked back a way. The radiation level was al- most normal, so he didn't bother with his protective suit. He walked back toward the fallen doors and looked outside. He wore the pistol behind his belt.

Something gray descended in droplets and the sun fought itself partly free once more.

It was rain, pure and simple. He had never seen rain, pure and simple, before. So he lit a cigarette and watched it fall.

It came down with only an occasional rumbling and nothing else accompanied it. The sky was still a bluish color beyond the bands of black.