He strode down the quiet hillside toward the broad highway that stretched across the valley. He sang:
"We're happy, so happy,
Don't want to reach a star;
We're happy, always happy,
Just the way we are."
Strange about that tune, he thought. He hated popular music, but in a regrettable moment of optimism he'd once purchased a second-hand battery video. After a three-day saturation with tooth paste and soap commercials he'd consigned the monstrosity to a remote corner of the woods, but that tune—of all the dubious products of civilization—had somehow stuck in his memory.
Suddenly he stopped singing, as if some inexplicable pressure had seized his throat, stopping the flow of words. It was quiet—so incredibly, alarmingly, terrifyingly quiet. Just ahead of him was the highway, its gray smooth ribbon clearly visible through a thin wall of elms. But there was no swish-swish of speeding cars.
And there were no bird twitterings and no insect hummings and no skitterings of squirrels at the bases of trees and no droning of gyro-planes. There was only silence.
He broke out onto the highway which was dotted with cars, and the cars were motionless. Some of them were crushed, charred wrecks on the side of the road; some had collided in the center of the road to become ugly little mountains of twisted metal, and others were simply parked. But all were motionless.
"Come on, Sandy. Something's happened!"