THE JOURNEY
75
thirty
miles wide. What
if
we had had engine trouble, and been forced
to land? The plane cast its shadow on the abandoned brown earth.
Near one farm (where a cluster of farm buildings still stood), the
skeletons of eight cows were ranged in an almost perfect circle
around a tractor, itself hunched forward: a beast that had died on its
knees. No grass grew through those bones. A little farther on, the
skeletons were of trees. Then we saw the husks of the Zone's one city
a few
miles
ahead of us and to the right. At first the cathedral looked
intact. The bare walls of the nave still held, supported by massive
buttresses, though the towers were gone, and of course the roof. The
plane was going to take us directly over the cathedral. We were
coming up on it from behind. The dead city lay there beneath us in
its silence. The plane seemed to creep more slowly still. Its shadow
was now wide enough to cover what had once been a modern street
carved through the warren of the medieval town. One could still
make out, from the ruins, the geography of the place.
Then the cathedral was behind us, and a man at the front of
the plane shrieked. He was standing at the front of the plane,
pointing down. Then everyone was at the windows to look.
In the center of a great square, where the basin of a fountain was
still visible, a band of young people-there must have been twenty
or more-were lounging or sleeping in the sun. Their sacks were
scattered over a wide area of crushed stone. They scarcely seemed
to notice the plane. A few stared up but didn't wave.
Then as we looked back-for the pilot was banking as to turn
back to check the reality of this ghastly vision-we saw one of the
men stand and aim a rifle at the belly of the plane. But it must have
been only to scare us. He did not fire. I even think he was laughing
as, abruptly, he passed out of our sight. Then everyone on the plane
was talking, loud and very fast-as if to separate himself, who
might live a number of years yet, from these silent young people on the
ground. Ten minutes later we had landed at a large airport. And
here the only dead were the great jets of the old times, abandoned
and rusting at the end of the runway, where the hangars and repair
shops used
to be.
I
think
of these bands of youngsters. There are many more about
than three months ago: the groups of fifteen and twenty threadbare
adolescents, traveling in a pack. In the hill regions where we pushed
