The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Howard Fast

got up and walked to the broad windows that faced north, and I saw that it was finished and that they were picking up the scenery, rolling it up, either for good and to be disposed of however they dispose of such things, or to be used again elsewhere.
    I mentioned before that it was a startlingly clear night, as if they could make white, incandescent moonlight for their own needs, and I suppose I could see a long way north. In any case, I saw clearly how the forested slopes were being rolled up, the way one might roll up a thick and unusual carpet, leaving underneath the gray, sere stuff that the riders to the moon had seen and described with such loathing. The green countryside was being taken up in great pieces, miles wide, and wherever the rolling up and lifting away was finished, the dry, dead gray stuff remained.
    I did not watch for long, because I felt almost immediately that I must not witness the finish of this alone. I had to be with others. I had to pass a word. I had to comment, to speculate, to bewail, perhaps, to doubt my own eyes, to plead for some explanation other than the simple and obvious fact that the play was over and the curtain had come down—and because of this I bolted out of the house and into my car.
    The car started easily, and I sent it plunging over the dirt road toward Route 22, over the shortest way, which would connect through the Wankhaus Overpass, a dirt road over a shoulder that linked the Old Turkey Gobbler Road with South Pike Road and so to Route 22. But they took up the Wankhaus Overpass; they had humor, and they could be bothered with small games, but I don’t suppose they were vengeful. They left me alone there, and I sat in my car, staring through the windshield at the gray pumice that remained after they had taken up the road and the trees and the rocks, rolling it back and away and then casting it off somewhere in the wings. I mean, they let me back up, which wasn’t vengeful, while the wind blew gray powder over my car and filled my nostrils with the dry, dead smell of it. I had to back up for over two hundred yards before I was able to turn into South Pike, but with three miles more to drive than would have been the case the other way, and then they let me find my way to Route 22. They were busy to the north and the west, and there I saw a whole town, factories, motor lodges, main street, Civil War monument, new business machines plant, car dealers—everything rolled up and dragged away. But silently. Well, my windows were up and I was too far away to hear people screaming. If they screamed; I didn’t know, you see, because I had not uttered a sound, never protested or wailed or prayed or pleaded.
    It surprised me as I drove south along Route 22 and then onto the Saw Mill River Parkway that I saw no other cars. Was it later than I could have imagined? I felt for my watch, and then I found that I had left it behind at the house, so I really had no idea at all of what time it was.
    I was impressed myself by how well I drove, how fast, and with such quiet control—all things considered—and without undue excitement and panic. The Saw Mill River Parkway is one of the older Westchester parkways, two rather narrow lanes in each direction and not built for speed, but rather meandering over the hills like an old carriage road; yet I was able to build my speed up to and past seventy miles an hour—and still in my rearview mirror I could see tracts of houses rolled up and flung aside, hillsides stripped, and even the road behind me rolled up as I left it. But not at seventy miles an hour, and by the time I reached the Hawthorne Circle I could no longer see where they were gathering up the scenery and putting it away.
    Even at the circle there were no cars, and past the circle I cut into the Tappan Zee approach, and then, crossing it, down onto the Thruway. Never before had I seen the Tappan Zee approach without traffic, without the endless stream of heavy