…Thou shalt have no other peoples before me…. Thou shalt make unto them no covenant against me…. Thou shalt not foreswear thyself to them, nor serve them… for I am a jealous people…
Amos lay through the day in the house to which he had dragged Doc’s body. He did not even look for food. For the first time in his life since his mother had died when he was five, he had no shield against his grief. There was no hard core of acceptance that it was God’s_. will to hide his loss at Doc’s death. And with the realization of that, all the other losses hit at him as if they had been no older than the death of Doc.
He sat with his grief and his newly sharpened hatred, staring toward Clyde. Once, during the day, he slept. He awakened to a sense of a tremendous sound and shaking of the earth, but all was quiet when he finally became conscious. It was nearly night, and time to leave.
For a moment, he hesitated. It would be easier to huddle here, beside his dead, and let whatever would happen come to him. But within him was a sense of duty that drove him on. In the back of his mind something stirred, telling him he still had work to do.
He found part of a stale loaf of bread and some hard cheese and started out, munching on them. It was still too light to move safely, but he was going through woods again, and he heard no alien planes. When it grew darker, he turned to the side roads that led in the direction of Wesley.
In his mind was the knowledge that he had to return there. His church lay there; if the human fighters had pushed the aliens back, his people might be there. If not, it was from there that he would have to follow them.
His thoughts were too deep for conscious expression, and too numbed with exhaustion. His legs moved on steadily. One of his shoes had begun to wear through, and his feet were covered with blisters, but he went grimly on. It was his duty to lead his people, now that the aliens were here, as he had led them in easier times. His thinking had progressed no further.
He holed up in a barn that morning, avoiding the house because of the mutilated things that lay on the doorstep where the aliens had apparently left them. And this time he slept with the soundness of complete fatigue, but he awoke to find one fist clenched and extended toward Clyde. He had been dreaming that he was Job, and that God had left him sitting unanswered on his boils until he died, while mutilated corpses moaned around him, asking for leadership he would not give.
It was nearly dawn before he realized that he should have found himself some kind of a car. He had seen none, but there might have been one abandoned somewhere. Doc could probably have found one. But it was too late to bother, now. He had come to the outskirts of a tiny town, and started to head beyond it, before realizing that all the towns must have been well searched by now. He turned down the small street, looking for a store where he could find food.
There was a small grocery with a door partly ajar. Amos pushed it open, to the clanging of a bell. Almost immediately a dog began barking, and a human voice came sharply from the back.
“Down, Shep! Just a minute, I’m acoming.” A door to the rear opened, and a bent old man emerged, carrying a kerosene lamp. “Darned electric’s off again! Good thing I stayed. Told them I had to mind my store, but they wanted to take me with them. Had to hide out in the old well. Darned nonsense about…”
He stopped, his eyes blinking behind thick lenses, and his mouth dropped open. He swallowed, and his voice was startled and shrill.
“A man who just escaped from the aliens,” Amos told him. He hadn’t realized the shocking appearance he must present $y” now. “One in need of food and a chance to rest until night. But I’m afraid I have no money on me.”
The old man tore his eyes away slowly, seeming to shiver. Then he nodded, and pointed to the back. “Never turned nobody away hungry yet,” he said, but the words seemed automatic.
An old dog backed slowly under a couch as Amos entered. The man put the lamp down and headed into a tiny kitchen to begin preparing food. Amos reached for the lamp and blew it out. “There really are aliens—worse than you heard,” he said.
The old man bristled, met his eyes, and then nodded slowly. “If you say so. Only it don’t seem logical God would let things like that run around in a decent state like Kansas.”
He shoved a plate of eggs onto the table, and Amos pulled it to him, swallowing a mouthful eagerly. He reached for a second, and stopped. Something was violently wrong, suddenly. His stomach heaved, the room began to spin, and his forehead was cold and wet with sweat. He gripped the edge of the table, trying to keep from falling. Then he felt himself being dragged to a cot. He tried to protest, but his body was shaking with ague, and the words that spilled out were senseless. He felt the cot under him, and waves of sick blackness spilled over him.
It was the smell of cooking food that awakened him finally, and he sat up with a feeling that too much time had passed. The old man came from the kitchen, studying him. “You sure were sick, Mister. Guess you ain’t used to going without decent food and rest. Feeling okay?”
Amos nodded. He felt a little unsteady, but it was passing. He pulled on the clothes that had been somewhat cleaned for him, and found his way to the table. “What day is it?”
“Saturday, evening,” the other answered. “At least the way I figure. Here, eat that and get some coffee in you.” He watched until Amos began on the food, and then dropped to a stool to begin cleaning an old rifle and loading it. “You said a lot of things. They true?”
For a second, Amos hesitated. Then he nodded, unable to lie to his benefactor. “I’m afraid so.”
“Yeah, I figured so, somehow, looking at you.” The old man sighed. “Well, I hope you make wherever you’re going.”
“What about you?” Amos asked.
The old man sighed, running his hands along the rifle. “I ain’t leaving my store for any bunch of aliens. And if the Lord I been doing my duty by all my life decides to put Himself on the wrong side, well, maybe He’ll win. But it’ll be over my dead body!”
Nothing Amos could say would change his mind. The old man sat on the front step of the store, the rifle on his lap and the dog at his side, as Amos headed down the street in the starlight.
Amos felt surprisingly better after the first half-mile. Rest and food, combined with some treatment of his sores and blisters, had helped. But the voice inside him was driving him harder now, and the picture of the old man seemed to lend it added strength. He struck out at the fastest pace he could hope to maintain, leaving the town behind and heading down the road that the old man had said led to Wesley.
It was just after midnight when he saw the lights of a group of cars or trucks moving along another road. He had no idea whether they were driven by men or aliens, but he kept steadily on. There were sounds of traffic another time, on a road that crossed the small one he followed. But he knew now that he was approaching Wesley, and he speeded up his pace.
When the first dawn light came, he made no effort to seek shelter. He stared at the land around him, stripped by grasshoppers that could have been killed off if men had worked as hard at ending the insects as they had at their bickerings and wars. He saw the dry, arid land, drifting into dust and turning a fertile country into a nightmare. Men could put a stop to that.
It had been no act of God that had caused this ruin, but man’s own follies. And without help from God, man might set it right in time.
God had deserted men. But mankind hadn’t halted. On his own, he’d made a path to the moon and had unlocked the atom. He’d found a means, out of his raw courage, to use hydrogen bombs against the aliens when miracles were used against him. He had done everything but conquer himself—and he could do that, if he were given time.
Amos saw a truck stop at the crossroads ahead and halted, but the driver was human. He saw the open door and quickened his step toward it. “I’m bound for Wes-ley!”
“Sure.” The driver helped him into the seat. “I’m going back for more supplies myself. You sure look as if you need treatment at the aid station there. I thought we’d rounded up all you strays. Most of them came in right after we sent out the word on Clyde.”
“You’ve taken it?” Amos asked.
