Martial law wasn’t working in many states because the National Guardsmen couldn’t reach mobilization points, or were too occupied dealing with situations right where they were to go anywhere else or, in some instances, had no mobilization point left to go to.
People, by millions, were streaming in their cars and on foot and by boat and train and rail and ferry and bridge from all the cities of U.S.A. Unhit cities feared that they would be next.
Nothing stopped these people. Word that no further waves of Red planes had appeared anywhere did nothing to stop them. Even shooting at them as they stampeded did no good. They just piled over the dead and went on.
These items had boiled up out of the babble on the walkie-talkie and out of gossip between parties using it and on the ham set to which Ted had at first been assigned duty. He thought about some of them for a while.
Finally, he got up from the curb, feeling more tired than when he’d sat down. Just around the comer, he saw a drugstore. It was dark inside, of course, not on fire, and without windows.
He hurried toward it, licking his lips thirstily. The soda fountain seemed intact, except for broken glass. The water spiggot didn’t produce, but the soda spiggot did. He got a wax paper cup and filled it and drank and filled it and drank until he was not thirsty any more.
When he came out, he saw, in the flickering semidark, somebody on the top steps of a red brick residence across the street. He thought it was a woman; he didn’t know why. Because she was sitting down, he went over to see. When he got near, he could see well enough, too well.
She must have been knocked out for a long time. But not so she couldn’t get up finally, and make it through her front door. Then—her insides must have popped. At least, she was sitting in a great puddle of blood, trying—his gelid eyes saw—to push things back inside her.
But what stopped Ted was the fact that her organs seemed to be moving with a convulsive, blood-camouflaged, separate life. She kept pushing them against the rent across her abdomen and all of a sudden the biggest object let out a blat and Ted knew what it was: a baby, unborn—
born, rather, right then, when she had stood up to run out—and the woman was trying to get it back within herself—probably it was too soon.