STRANGE EXODUS
By ROBERT ABERNATHY
Gigantic, mindless, the Monsters had come out of
interstellar space to devour Earth. They gnawed
at her soil, drank deep of her seas. Where, on
this gutted cosmic carcass, could humanity flee?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Westover got a shock when he stumbled onto the monster, for all that he knew one had been through here.
He had been following the high ground toward the hills, alternately splashing through waist-deep water and climbing onto comparatively dry knolls. To right and left of him was the sullen noise of the river in flood, and behind him, too, the rising water he had barely escaped. The night was overcast, the moon a faint disk of glow that left river and hills and even the mud underfoot invisible.
He had not sought in his mind for the flood's cause, but had merely taken it numbly as part of the fury and confusion of a world in ruin. Anyway, he was dead tired out on his feet.
He sensed more than saw the looming wall before him, but he thought it the bare ledge-rock of a stripped hillside until he stepped into a small pot-hole and lurched forward, and his outflung hands sank into the slime that covered a surface faintly, horrifyingly resilient.
He recoiled as if seared, and retreated, slithering in the muck. For moments his mind was full of dark formless panic; then he took a firm hold on himself and tried to comprehend the situation.