He stepped over the vines as he went, noticing that they were not quite as thick, or abundant, as they had been only a short ways back. He hoped the keys would be there and that the truck would start. If not, he supposed, he could cross the Street to a new car lot that he had noticed. He would prefer the old Chevy, but if there was no choice he would cross the Street and take one of the shiny new pickups that sat on the lot.
He supposed he would even be better off taking one of the newer vehicles, but he didn't want to. Even the old Chevy was newer than any truck he had ever driven, and all of the newer trucks he had seen, seemed more like cars than real trucks.
He had marveled while walking through the downtown district at how much things had changed. He had been awed at the huge steel and glass architecture of the buildings, and equally awed at some of the abandoned cars and trucks. He wasn't sure what some of them were, cars? Trucks? He couldn't tell for sure. To him they were all strange and futuristic looking.
Ira had made it barely into the fifties, and so it was understandable that he would be amazed at how much things had changed, in what seemed to him only a short span of time. Some of the building styles were the same, but the steel and glass structures seemed cold and alien to him, ugly even, he thought.
He found the keys on a small board in the cluttered office, and headed back to the old Chevy. He had to pump it several times before it would start, but it eventually had caught and started, with a large cloud of black smoke pouring out of the rusty tail-pipe when it did. Almost flooded it, he thought. The smoke cleared as the truck warmed up, and he sat and waited for the idle to fall off before he pulled out onto the roadway once more and headed out of the city of Oswego.
The truck was far better suited to the task of bumping over the somewhat smaller vines than the little car had been. A few short hours later he stopped for a rest in the town of Sodus at a small gas station.
He siphoned gas from the underground tanks, and scrounged a light lunch from the combination gas and food mart, dragged a beat looking aluminum lawn chair out from behind the station, and sat down to eat. He sipped at a warm beer as he ate. He hadn't tasted beer in forever, it seemed to him, and he enjoyed it even though it was warm. He finished his lunch and climbed back into the cab of the truck. It started without hesitation this time. He nosed it out of the small station and headed towards Rochester once more.
Ten miles down the road, as he passed through the small town of Williamson, the vines suddenly stopped. The line where they stopped was clearly drawn across the road, as if burned into the pavement. Ira had stopped to look.
The green vines didn't just end as it had appeared from the truck, they did extend slightly over the line. On the one side the vines were green and healthy looking, and on the other they were burned and shriveled, as if the roadway had been so hot it had simply scorched the life from them. The line that resulted was surprisingly straight, and marched across the road in both directions. He had hated the vines, but it was unnerving to see them end so suddenly, and Ira had climbed back into the truck and left, after looking for only a few minutes.
As he drew closer to Rochester the stalled traffic thickened, and when he reached the Webster exit a light rain began to fall, which slowed him down even more. He followed the muddy tracks that cut into the steep grassy embankment down to the road below the overpass. He slid the last twenty feet to the pavement, and proceeded slowly along the rain slicked Street and out of the small town towards the village of Fairport.
He had just left the Webster town limits, when he noticed a fresh set of muddy tracks that cut across the road into a field on the right. He slowed the truck, and let his eyes follow the tracks into the field of standing hay.
A gray Lincoln rested in the middle of the field, at the end of the deep muddy grooves it had cut as it plowed through it. It had slued around at the end, and now sat facing the road. Ira shivered as a cold chill crept down his neck and into his spine. He couldn't explain the feeling that had crept into him when he had spotted the car, but it set him on edge immediately.
He stopped, but did not leave the truck. Instead he stared through the rain slicked windshield at the car. It appeared to have been abandoned after it became stuck in the field. The rain streamed across the darkened glass of its windows, and down the sides of the gray steel body. He fought the urge to get out and check the car. Someone could still be in it, hurt maybe, he reasoned. But he couldn't bring himself to check. He felt unreasonably positive that the car wasn't empty, and was watching him as he sat idling in the road. He put the truck back in drive and drove past, shaking off the chill that had passed through him, and sped up a little as he left the car behind in the muddy
