Fairlie told him, "That's all evacuated territory, you know. Closed out and empty, officially. Which means—dangerous."
Wales looked at him. "In that case, I'll want something else to wear than this uniform. Also I'll want a car—and weapons."
It was late afternoon by the time Wales got the car clear of the metropolitan area, out of the congested evacuation traffic. And it was soft spring dusk by the time he crossed the Delaware at Stroudsburg and climbed westward through the Poconos.
The roads, the towns, were empty. Here and there in villages he saw gutted stores, smashed doors and windows—but no people.
As the darkness came, from behind him still echoed the boom-boom of thunder, ever and again repeated, of the endless ships of the Marslift riding their columns of flame up into the sky.
By the last afterglow, well beyond Stroudsburg, he looked back and thought he saw another car top a ridge and sink, swiftly down into the shadow behind him.
Wales felt a queer thrill. Was he being followed? If so, by whom? By casual looters, or by some who meant to thwart his mission? By the society of the Atonement?
He drove on, looking back frequently, and once again he thought he glimpsed a black moving bulk, without lights, far back on the highway.
He saw only one man that night, on a bridge at Berwick. The man leaned on the rail, and there was a bottle in his hand, and he was very drunk.
He turned a wild white face to Wales' headlights, and shook the bottle, and shouted hoarsely. Only the words, "—Kendrick's World—" were distinguishable.