The farmers didn't want to go back to their farms, and the grocers didn't want to return to their groceries. Oh, some did. Many did, for a while. But not for long. Everyone talked about high ideals, but it was just talk, just like before. For six months Jane and I struggled along, not getting much to eat, frightened by the mobs that surged around New York. Finally, we decided to move out. We joined the exodus leaving New York, drifted through Pennsylvania, and headed North. The country was disrupted, but it pulled itself together again, after a fashion. Thousands were starving, then millions. Some had food, but they weren't very willing to share it. They were figuring what they'd do for ten years, if they shared their food. Money they'd still hand out in basketfuls. It wasn't worth anything. In nine months a million dollars wouldn't buy a rotten turnip. As time passed, fewer and fewer stayed on the job. The money they got wouldn't buy anything. Besides, why work when the end was so near? Why work for someone else? In about a year there was the Bulgaria incident. An American in Sophia disappeared. He just vanished. The American Embassy complained. They were told to go home. The Bulgarians didn't want any interference for their last nine years of existence. Besides, they added that they didn't know where the man was. Maybe they were telling the truth. People vanish even here. Anyhow, after our third ultimatum we bombed them. The attack coincided with a bombing launched on us by China, who decided we were interfering with her trade with Japan. Great Britain was bombed, and bombed someone else. Everyone started bombing everyone else. * * * * * I took Jane out of the city where we were staying, and headed for the open country. We ran and stumbled over the fields, with the roar of the planes above us. We hid in ditches. Jane was cut down by machine gun bullets in one raid. Perhaps she was fortunate. She missed the atom bombs the next week, and she missed the hydrogen bombs a week later. I wasn't around when they dropped the H bomb. I was in central Canada, and heading for open country. But I heard the noise, I saw the smoke. They had bombed New York. After that, everyone threw the biggest bombs they had, as fast as they could, at anything that might be called a target. Radioactive dust followed, and bacteria followed that. Gas was used, some stuff that hung close to the ground for days; only a good sized storm or two would blow it away. At this time I was heading North. Most of the traffic was South, because there was a famine in the North. But I figured I'd rather take my chances with starvation than with the bacteria and dust. As it was, the germs almost got me. I was sick for a day. I wanted to die. If I'd had a gun I would have shot myself. But I lived, and the bacteria never touched me again.