He closed the door and ran to the back. The alley was crowded but not nearly so packed as the street.
Perhaps half an hour had passed since Tanner had appeared in the hoop, he thought. He had five and a half hours to go before the bombs started dropping.
His back pained him and he could feel the blood start to well where he had been shot. He grimaced and struggled on. A man next to him was lugging a small, portable radio and Stan could hear the frightened announcer reading off the government's mobilization orders and exhortations to remain calm.
They were useless, Stan thought bitterly. They could have no more effect on the tidal waves of humanity leaving its cities than Xerxes had on the ocean, when he had ordered it to be whipped. Humanity was leaving its huddling places and there was nothing that could stop them.
An hour later and he made two miles through the packed outskirts of the city. The crowd was thinning now and he thought he could make out the wooded sections of the park, not more than three or four blocks ahead. It couldn't be too much longer, he thought. He wasn't sure of how much more he could take....
His shirt was torn and the wound in his back was bleeding freely. Worse than that had been the sights he had seen on the way—women and children trampled underfoot, and the few neurotic souls who had given up and taken the short way out by leaping from windows.
It was slaughter, even without the war, he thought. Humanity was destroying itself in senseless panic. And then he was in the wooded area that had grown close to the city. He pushed through the brush and trees until he found a small clearing. The mass of people streamed past it, anxious to put miles between themselves and the buildings that so obviously spelled destruction.
He had waited for perhaps an hour when a small life boat rocket put down in the clearing. He looked at his watch before stepping aboard.
Time had narrowed to three hours.