Now the sun was higher in the sky. The cold was gone now. But still there was something surrounding her, enclosing her, almost like a prison wall. Yet she could not see it.
Radiation!
Radiation from the long exploded bombs. It poisoned the air. It killed all vegetation. It killed all the animals. All except the two of them, the woman and her child. It had spared them. Not because it wanted to, but because it had to. Vaguely she remembered....
She and Robbie had been sitting in a Chicago park when the first bomb dropped. It fell quite near them, about three miles away. She remembered the bright blinding flash. Above them the branch of a tree cracked. It fell to a point twenty feet over their heads. Then it stopped. It was as if some force held it back. The force, whatever it was, also held back the heat. But it didn't stop her from fainting in terror.
When she regained consciousness, the burned and broken city lay all around them. Buildings were fused together. Everywhere was destruction. Everywhere except around she and Robbie. There, the grass was green and flowers grew. At the edge where the green ended and the black began, there was a pile of rubbish piled up as if leaning against something. She picked up a stick nearby and threw it. It reached the point where the green stopped and then it too stopped, in the middle of the air. Finally it fell to the ground.
She arose and walked over to where the stick lay. She extended her hand a few feet in front of her, and touched something. Something tangible, yet she could not see it. And no matter how hard she pushed, she could not extend her hand beyond a given point.
A dome was covering them and protecting them!
For weeks she and Robbie stayed under the dome while the wind took some of the radiation away. Each morning, when they awoke, a package of food lay by their side. Strange food, food they had never tasted or seen before. Alien food.
They had been spared by—what?