There really was a Polk County, Nebraska. At first that had given him a start, but he had traveled all over the last few years. He must have talked to somebody who mentioned Polk County, or who had come from Polk County, and his conscious mind had just forgotten it. There was a Route 30, too. But he couldn't really believe, at least not in the bright day of this early morning, that they were actually going to find an old Negro woman sitting on her porch in the middle of a field of corn and accompanying herself on a guitar while she sang hymns. He didn't believe in precognition or in visions. But it seemed important to go somewhere, to look for people. In a way he shared Fran Goldsmith's and Stu Redman's urge to regroup. Until that could be done, everything would remain alien and out of joint. There was danger everywhere. You couldn't see it but you could feel it, the way he thought he had felt the presence of the dark man in that cellar yesterday. You felt that danger was everywhere, inside the houses, around the next bend in the highway, maybe even hiding beneath the cars and trucks littered all over the main roads. And if it wasn't there, it was in the calendar, hidden just two or three leaves down. Danger, every particle of his being seemed to whisper it. BRIDGE OUT. FORTY MILES OF BAD ROAD. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR PERSONS PROCEEDING BEYOND THIS POINT.
Part of it was the tremendous, walloping psychological shock of the empty countryside. As long as he had been in Shoyo, he had been partially protected from it. It didn't matter if Shoyo was empty, at least not too much, because Shoyo was so small in the scheme of things. But when you got moving, it was as if... well, he remembered a Walt Disney movie he had seen as a kid, a nature thing. Filling the screen was this tulip, this one tulip, so beautiful it just made you want to hold your breath. Then the camera pulled back with dizzying suddenness and you saw a whole field filled with tulips. It knocked you flat. It produced total sensory overload and some internal circuit breaker fell with a sizzle, cutting off the input. It was too much. And that was how this trip had been. Shoyo was empty and he could adjust to that. But McNab was empty, too, and Texarkana, and Spencerville; Ardmore had burned right to the ground. He had come north on Highway 81 and had only seen deer. Twice he had seen what were probably signs of living people: a campfire perhaps two days old, and a deer that had been shot and neatly cleaned out. But no people. It was enough to screw you all up, because the enormity of it was steadily creeping up on you. It wasn't just Shoyo or McNab or Texarkana; it was America, lying here like a huge discarded tin can with a few forgotten peas rolling around in the bottom. And beyond America was the whole world, and thinking of that made Nick feel so dizzy and sick that he had to give up.
He bent over the atlas instead. If they kept rolling, maybe they would be like a snowball going downhill, getting bigger. With any luck they would pick up a few more people between here and Nebraska (or be picked up themselves, if they met a larger group). After Nebraska he supposed they would go somewhere else. It was like a quest with no object in view at the end of it - no Grail, no sword plunged into an anvil.
We'll cut northeast, he thought, up into Kansas. Highway 35 would take them to another version of 81, and 81 would take them all the way to Swedeholm, Nebraska, where it intersected Nebraska Route 92 at a perfect right angle. Another highway, Route 30, connected the two, the hypotenuse of a right triangle. And somewhere in that triangle was the country of his dream.
Thinking about it gave him a queer, anticipatory thrill.
Movement at the top of his vision made him look up. Tom was sitting, both fists screwed into his eyes. A cavernous yawn seemed to make the whole bottom half of his face disappear. Nick grinned at him and Tom grinned back.
"We gonna ride some more today?" Tom asked, and Nick nodded. "Gee, that's good. I like to ride my bike. Laws, yes! I hope we never stop!"
Putting the atlas away Nick thought: And who knows? You may get your wish.
They turned east that morning and ate their lunch at a crossroads not far from the Oklahoma-Kansas border. It was July 7, and hot.
Shortly before they stopped to eat, Tom brought his bike to its customary skidding halt. He was staring at a signpost which had been sunk into a cement plug half-buried in the soft shoulder at the side of the road. Nick looked at it. The sign said: YOU ARE LEAVING HARPER COUNTY, OKLAHOMA - YOU ARE ENTERING WOODS COUNTY, OKLAHOMA.
"I can read that," Tom said, and if Nick had been able to hear, he would have been partly amused and partly touched by the way Tom's voice climbed into a high, reedy, and declamatory register: "You are now going out of Harper County. You are now going into Woods County." He turned to Nick. "You know what, mister?"
Nick shook his head.
"I never been out of Harper County in my life, laws, no, not Tom Cullen. But once my daddy took me out here and showed me this sign. He told me if he ever caught me t'other side of it, he'd whale the tar out of me. I sure hope he don't catch us over there in Woods County. You think he will?"
Nick shook his head emphatically.
"Is Kansas City in Woods County?"
Nick shook his head again.
"But we're going into Woods County before we go anyplace else, ain't we?"
Nick nodded.
Tom's eyes gleamed. "Is it the world?"
Nick didn't understand. He frowned... raised his eyebrows... shrugged.
"The world is the place I mean," Tom said. "Are we going into the world, mister?" Tom hesitated and then asked with hesitant gravity: "Is Woods the word for world?"
Slowly, Nick nodded his head.