And who would set the pace for this flood of depopulation? Who but the worst elements, frightened beyond caring, doing what had thitherto been only fantasy, having a last fling—criminal, psychopathic—in the presence of the end of the world?
Green Prairie had tried to brace itself even against that; Chuck prayed they were succeeding.
River City had not even tried.
The vehicle surged over a hill. Across the prairie was the village of Harmondale. It had stood there as long as Chuck could remember, like a post-card village, like a Grant Wood painting, neat and crisp, stores and steeples, white houses and red barns—a pretty cluster of orderly habitation.
Now, even across intervening miles, it had changed. Flames licked up the church spires; smoke rose over Main Street. And all around the village was a multitude, with its trucks and cars and luggage and duffel-a dark smear of humanity closing in on the hamlet, scores of attackers for every defender. Harmondale was fighting, still, for whatever remained of its life. As Chuck’s driver slowed, they could hear a constant fusillade of guns in the town.
But what could his men do against that human amoeba? The village would be sacked and abandoned. The amoeba would go on, hungrily.
14
Beth Conner trudged home. She had waited awhile in line, for a ride, with other women being relieved. But many of them lived farther away; and some didn’t even have homes of their own to rest in any longer. She decided to walk and. she moved along in the smoky streets, still carrying her suitcase, breathing whitely in the frigid air.
It was Christmas morning, she thought dazedly. When she saw the house, she stood for a long time, with tears in her eyes that did not fall.
It didn’t sit quite right any more. A chunk of the roof was gone, up over the boys’ room in the attic. The front yard was a pile of debris—some from the house, but most of it tree limbs shoved aside by bulldozers going down Walnut Street. The windows weren’t there any more.