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into violence. At the front of the surging, roaring mass, he found Mayor Garris. And the Mayor's pallid face showed that panic had infected him too. Shouldn't we go? he shouted to Kenniston over the uproar of horns and motors. Everyone seems ready here! McLain's running the traffic movement, and we've got to stick to his orders! he shouted back. But if these people break loose the Mayor began. He stopped. Over the shrieking horns and thundering motors, a new sound was rising. A distant, banshee wail, a faraway scream that swelled into a hoarse, giant howl. The auto horns, the shouting voices from the cars, fell silent. Only the sound of motors was background to that unending scream that wailed across Middletown like a requiem. That's the Tube Mill whistle! cried Lauber. That's the signal! Kenniston sent the jeep jumping ahead. Okay, let those trucks roll! But keep people in line, back of them! No stampeding! Chapter 6 caravan into tomorrow 27 The City at World's End The big Diesels that barricaded the way began to snort and rumble, and then started to move out, as ponderously as elephants. Kenniston's jeep swung in front. But almost at once, cars behind pressed to get around them. Run the trucks three abreast, in front! he shouted to Lauber. It'll keep them from getting around! Down Jefferson Street, down over the muddy bed of the vanished river, past the old houses with their doors carefully shut and locked, past the playground that looked as forlorn as though it knew the children were going, never to return. Past Home Street, past the silent mills, past the beer signs of South Street, where from an upstairs window a drunken man shouted and waved a bottle at them. Past the last rows of drab frame houses, the last brave little yards whose flowers were blackened now by frost. Kenniston saw ahead of them the line of demarcation, the boundary between the past and what was now Earth. They reached it, passed it And then the rolling, ocher-yellow plains were all about them, barren and drab beneath the great, firelashed red eye of the Sun. The cold wind whooped around them, as they started to climb the easy slope toward the ridge. Behind his jeep, Diesels, jalopies, buses, shiny station wagons rolled with roaring, sputtering, purring motors. Kenniston looked back down the slope at them. Already the other Ward was moving out, and he rode at the head of a huge caravan of vehicles crawling endlessly out of Middletown a caravan out of the Earth that was gone forever, into this unguessable tomorrow. Chapter 7 under the dome When they came up over the ridge, and for the first time had view of the distant domed city that shimmered in the wan light far out on the desolate plain, Kenniston could sense the shock of doubt and fear that ran through all of this host who were seeing it for the first time. He could see it in all their peering faces, pale and strained in the red light of the dying Sun. Even he, seeing it for only the second time, felt an inner recoiling. With his mind still filled with every sight and sound and smell of the old town they had left, the alien, solemn, deathly city of the dome seemed to him impossible as a refuge. He choked down that feeling, he had to choke it down; it was go on or die. Keep moving! he shouted, sounding the jeep's horn to command attention, gesturing authoritatively forward. Keep going! He conquered that brief pause of recoil, got them moving over the ridge, skidding and sliding down the other slope, in clouds of heavy dust. He glimpsed Mayor Garris staring ahead, his plump face shocked and pallid. He wondered what Carol was thinking, as she looked out at the lonely shining bubble in the sad wastes. The endless caravan, shrouded in dust, was halfway down the long slope when Kenniston heard a raging of horns and looked back. An old sedan had stopped squarely in the middle of the narrow track the trucks had beaten down across a shallow gully. Cars were pulling out around it, wallowing in soft earth, jamming their low-hung frames against the banks, getting inextricably tangled. Behind them, the line was damming up. Chapter 7 under the dome 28 The City at World's End Kenniston yelled to Lauber to keep the head of the caravan moving on toward the distant dome, and then sent his jeep snorting back along the line. A knot of people had collected now around the offending sedan. Kenniston hastily shouldered his way through them. What the hell's going on here? he demanded. Whose car is this? A weatherbeaten, middle-aged man turned to him, half-scared, half-apologetic. Mine my car. I'm John Borzak. He gestured to the back seat of the old sedan. My wife, she's having a baby in there. He added, as an afterthought, My fifth. Oh, Christ, that's all we needed! Kenniston cried. Borzak looked instantly guilty. He looked so sad that Kenniston began to laugh. Suddenly all of them were laughing, in sheer relief from nervous tension. He set men scurrying to get a doctor and ambulance out of the procession, and meanwhile willing hands carefully rolled the old sedan a little aside. The dammed-up lines of cars began to roll again. But the pause, the waiting, the minutes spent in staring at the drear landscape, had been too much for some of those in line. Kenniston saw cars, only a few of them as yet, curving out of line and scrambling on the slope to swing back toward Middletown. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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