ndow, both Nora and Frank
half-expected to see other forms moving up and down Madison Street. But
there was no one. Only the unreal desolation of the lonely pavement and
the dark-windowed buildings.

"The biggest ghost town on earth," Frank muttered.

Nora's hand had slipped into Frank's. He squeezed it and neither of them
seemed conscious of the contact.

"I wonder," Nora said. "Maybe this is only one of them. Maybe all the
other big cities are evacuated too."

Jim Wilson and Minna were walking ahead. He turned. "If you two can't
sleep without finding out what's up, it's plenty easy to do."

"You think we could find a battery radio in some store?" Frank asked.

"Hell no! They'll all be gone. But all you'd have to do is snoop around
in some newspaper office. If you can read you can find out what
happened."

It seemed strange to Frank that he had not thought of this. Then he
realized he hadn't tried very hard to think of anything at all. He was
surprised, also, at his lack of fear. He's gone through life pretty much
taking things as they came--as big a sucker as the next man--making more
than his quota of mistakes and blunders. Finding himself completely
alone in a deserted city for the first time in his life, he had
naturally fallen prey to sudden fright. But that had gradually passed,
and now he was able to accept the new reality fairly passively. He
wondered if that wasn't pretty much the way of all people. New
situations brought a surge of whatever emotion fitted the picture. Then
the emotion subsided and the new thing became the ordinary.

This, he decided, was the manner in which humanity survived. Humanity
took things as they came. Pile on enough of anything and it becomes the
ordinary.

Jim Wilson had picked up a garbage box and hurled it through the window
of an electric shop. The glass came down with a crash that shuddered up
the empty darkening street and grumbled off into silence. Jim Wilson
went inside. "I'll see what I can find. You stay out here and watch for
cops." His laughter echoed out as he disappeared.

Minna stood waiting silently, unmoving, and somehow she reminded Frank
of a dumb animal; an unreasoning creature with no mind of her own,
waiting for a signal from her master. Strangely, he resented this, but
at the same time could find no reason for his resentment, except the
feeling that no one should appear as much a slave as Minna.

Jim Wilson reappeared in the window. He motioned to