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.
"… 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.