Alas, Babylon Read online

  Randy drove on, although at reduced speed, for sight of a fatal accident always compels temporary caution. The incident was important only because it was self-revelatory. Randy knew he would have to play by the old riles. He could not shuck his code, or sneak out of his era.

  With respite for anxiety about what went on beyond his own sight and hearing, he clicked on his radio, tuned to a Conelrad frequency, 640, and turned it up to maximum power.

  All he heard was a distant and incoherent babble.

  He tried the other frequency, 1240. He heard a steady hum, and then the familiar voice of Happy Hedrix, the disk jockey on WSMF, in San Marco. “This is a Civil Defense broadcast. Listen carefully, because we are only allowed to broadcast for thirty seconds, after which there will be two minutes of silence. An AP dispatch from Jacksonville says that a Red Alert was declared about thirty minutes ago. Another dispatch from Jacksonville says it is believed the country is under attack. Since that time, there has been disruption of communications between Jacksonville and the north.” Happy’s voice, usually so glib, was shaky and halting, and he seemed to have difficulty reading. “Obey the orders of your local Civil Defense Director. Do not use the telephone except for emergencies. You will receive further instructions later. This station will return to the air in two minutes.”

  Randy tuned in 640 again. Again, he heard many voices, far away and indistinguishable. He knew that under the Conelrad system all stations were required to operate at low power. He surmised that he was hearing a broadcast from Orlando or Ocala, but with interference from stations in other nearby cities, perhaps Daytona, or Leesburg and Eustis, not far off in Lake County. With every station confined to two frequencies, and limited to low-power operation, the confusion was understandable.

  A year before, Mark had warned him that the Conelrad system was tricky, and might not work at all. Mark had said, further, that the enemy was not dependent on radio homing devices to find the targets. “Conelrad,” Mark had said, “is as obsolete as the B-two-nine. Neither missiles nor jets equipped with modern radar and inertial guidance would think of homing on a radio beam. In the first phase, Conelrad is going to be next to useless, I’m afraid, except for local instructions. The news you get will be only as fresh and accurate as the news that comes in on the teletypes in your local stations. That news flows from the national news agencies. When their teletype circuits go out of business which will happen immediately when the big cities blow—everything will be screwed up. You’re not likely to find out anything until Phase Two—that’s the mopping-up stage when the first attack is over. In Phase Two the government will use clear channel stations to tell you what’s happening.”

  Mark apparently had been right about the inadequacy of Conelrad, as about all else. He wondered whether Mark was also right in his prediction that Offutt and the Hole would be one of the primary targets. Randy wondered whether Mark still lived, and how long it would be before he found out.

  On the edge of town he began to encounter traffic, heavier than usual and extraordinarily erratic. People were tensed over their wheels like racing drivers, even while moving at normal speeds, mouths set, eyes fixed, each intent on a personal crisis. Some obeyed the stop signs. Other cars progressed as if no hand were at the wheel.

  A dozen cars were lined up at Jerry Kling’s service station, blocking the sidewalk. Jerry was standing beside one of his pumps, filling a tank, and at the same time listening to three men, all gesticulating, all obviously demanding priority service. One of the men had a billfold in his hand and was waving money before Jerry’s eyes.

  Randy skirted Marines Park, a green triangular area, its walks lined with tall palms, its apex lapped by the waters of both Timucuan and St. Johns. Here, at the junction of the rivers, Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee Peyton had erected the original Fort Repose. The fort’s palm logs long ago had disintegrated, but relics remained, two small brass cannon. They were now mounted in concrete, and flanked the bandstand. Usually, on a bright Saturday morning, the tennis courts were occupied and the pre-breakfast lawn bowlers and shuffle boarders active. But today the park was deserted except for two youths slumped on a bench.

  He turned north on Yulee Street, and, three blocks further, into the driveway of Riverside Inn, which with its grounds occupied a block facing the St. Johns. The Riverside Inn catered to a vanishing race of hotel dwellers—widows, widowers, and elderly couples, supported by trusts, annuities, and dividends, spending their summers in New England or the Poconos, and each November migrating to Florida with the coots and mallards.

  Randy parked and went into the inn. Its ordered regimen had exploded with the first missile.

  The guests were milling around in the lobby like first-class passengers on a liner that has struck an iceberg, and that they suspect may founder at any moment. Some swarmed around the bellboys and assistant manager, babbling questions and demands. “I’ve been waiting in the dining room for fifteen minutes and I can’t seem to find a single waitress…. Are you sure you can’t get me a reservation on the Champion that leaves Orlando for New York tomorrow?… I’d like to know what’s wrong with the phone service? If my daughter doesn’t hear from me, she’ll be frantic…. The television in my room isn’t working. All television is off the air? Gracious, this really must be serious!… I’ve been a guest at this hotel for twenty-two seasons and this is the first time I’ve ever asked for anything special…. Is there any reason the hotel station wagon can’t take us to Tampa?… Please don’t think me timid, but I would like to know the location of a shelter…. It was that damned Roosevelt, at Yalta…. Do you think plane schedules will be interrupted for long?… You mean to say that your cooks have all cravenly left for their homes? I never heard of such a thing! They ought to be arrested. How, then, are we going to eat?… My husband slipped in the shower. I can’t seem to get him up….”

  A retired major general, in full-dress uniform and displaying all his ribbons, burst out of the elevator. “Attention!” he cried. “Attention, everybody! Let’s have order here. You will all please be quiet. There is no cause for alarm!”

  Nobody heeded him.

  A bowlegged man, in Bermuda shorts and a bright red cap, a golf bag slung over one shoulder, and carrying two suitcases, bulled his way toward the entrance. He was followed by a woman wearing a fur coat over pajamas. She also was weighted with a golf bag, and held a jewel box under one arm and a make-up kit under the other. These two had a sanctuary, and a means of getting there, or so they believed. For most of the others, there was no place to go. They were rootless people. If the Riverside Inn sank, they must go down with the ship.

  Dan Gunn’s suite was on the second floor. Randy ignored the elevator and took the stairs two at a time.

  Dan’s rooms were empty, and his doctor’s bag missing. He was probably out on an emergency call, or at the clinic in the Medical Arts Building. Randy tried Dan’s private phone. There was no dial tone, only sounds like static. He lifted the room telephone. The hotel switchboard failed to answer.

  Randy heard voices in the hall, high-pitched and angry. He threw open the door.

  Feet apart and braced a thin, sallow woman, very pregnant, leaned against the wall. Her bony arms supported her abdomen, and she was sniffling. In the center of the hallway two men argued. The taller man was Jennings, manager of the Riverside Inn. The other man was John Garcia, a Minorcan fishing guide. Randy recognized the woman as Garcia’s wife.

  Jennings was saying, “She can’t have her baby here in the hotel. There’s too much confusion here already. You people will have to get out!”

  Garcia, an undersized man with face browned and shrunken by wind and sun, stepped back. His hand went to his hip pocket and he brought out a short, curved pruning knife, suitable for cutting lines, or slitting the bellies of perch and bass.

  Randy stepped between them. “Put that thing up, John,” he told Garcia. “I’ll get the Doctor.” He turned on Jennings. “Where’s Doctor Gunn?”

  “He’s busy,”
Jennings said. “He’s very busy with one of our guests. A heart case. Tell these people to go to his clinic and wait.”

  “Where is he?”

  “It doesn’t matter. These people are trespassing.”

  Randy’s left hand grasped Jennings’ lapels. He slapped Jennings savagely across the face. He did this without any conscious thought except that it was necessary to slap the hysteria out of Jennings in order to locate Dan Gunn. He said, “Where is he?”

  Jennings’ knees buckled and Randy pinned him against the wall. “Let go! You’re choking me! Gunn is in two forty-four.” Randy relaxed his grip. The left side of Jennings’ face was flaming red and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Randy was astonished. This was the first time in his adult years that he had struck anyone, so far as he recalled, except one snarling North Korean line—Grosser. Jennings backed away, mumbling that he would call the police, and disappeared down the stairs. Randy told Garcia, “Take your wife in there. She can lie down on the bed. I’ll get Doctor Gunn.”

  Randy went down the hall and entered Room 244 without bothering to knock. It was a single room. On the bed lay a mound of gray flesh, a corpulent man past middle age, dead. Randy felt no sense of surprise or shock whatsoever. He had become a familiar of sudden death in Korea. This familiarity had left him, as a foreign language is quickly forgotten once you leave the country where it is spoken. Now it returned, as a foreign tongue is swiftly reacquired in its native land.

  Dan Gunn came out of the bathroom, drying his hands. “You’ve got more trouble waiting in your room,” Randy said. “A woman’s having a baby, or about to. Garcia’s wife.” Dan dropped his towel across the foot of the bed and pulled the sheet over the corpse. “Everybody who was going to have a coronary just had one,” he said, “and I suppose that every woman who was due to have a baby in the next two months is having one now. What’s your trouble, Randy?”

  “Peyton’s blind. You remember her from last year, don’t you? Helen’s little girl—not so little—eleven. I know you’re swamped, Dan, but—”

  Dan raised his immensely long, hairy arms and cried out, “Oh, God! Why? Why to that child?”

  He looked and sounded like a rebellious Old Testament prophet. He looked and sounded half-mad. The worst thing that Randy could imagine, at that moment, was that Dan Gunn should lose his mental equilibrium. Randy said, “God had nothing to do with it. This was strictly man-made. The one that dropped on MacDill, or somewhere in the Tampa area. Peyton was looking right at it when it blew.”

  “Oh, the foul, life-destroying, child-destroying bastards! Those evil men, those evil and callous men! God damn them!” He used the expression as a true and awful curse, and then Dan’s arms drooped, his anger spent. He visibly shook off the madness. He said, “Sounds like a retina flash burn. To the human eye it’s what overexposure is to film. Her eyes can recover from that.”

  He looked down at the form on the bed. “Not much I can do for cardiacs. This was the third, right here in the hotel. Maybe the other two will live, for a while. It’s fear that kills ’em, and the worst fear is that they’ll have a shock and not be able to reach the doctor. I pity all the other cardiacs around here, with the phones out. I pity them, but I can’t help them. You don’t have to worry so much with women having babies. They’ll have them whether I’m there or not, and chances are that both mother and baby will do all right.” He grasped Randy’s elbow. “Now let’s take a look at the Garcia woman, and then I’ll see about Peyton.” They left the room, and its lonely dead.

  Marie Garcia said her pains were coming at four—or five minute intervals. Dan said, “It’ll be much better if you can have the baby at home. It’ll be easier for me, too. This hotel is no place to be having a baby. Do you think you can make it?”

  Marie looked at her husband and nodded. Garcia said, “You’ll follow us, Doc?”

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Dan promised. He helped Marie to her feet. Leaning on John Garcia, she left, her lips compressed, awaiting the next clamp of pain, but her fear gone.

  Dan went into his bathroom and came out with a small bottle. “Eyedrops,” he said. “Once every three hours.” He dug into his bag and handed Randy a pillbox. “Sedative. One every four hours. And give her a couple of aspirins as soon as you get home. She stays in a dark room. Better yet, put a dark cloth over her eyes. As long as she knows she can’t see, she won’t strain her eyes trying. And it won’t frighten her so much. It’s frightening to open your eyes and not see.”

  “You’re coming out, aren’t you?” Randy asked.

  “Certainly. As soon as I can. I have to deliver this baby, and I have to check in at the clinic—God knows what’s waiting for me there—and I have to see Bloomfield. Somehow we have to coordinate what little we’ll be able to do. But soon as I can, I’ll be out to see Peyton. There really isn’t anything more I can do for her than you can do right now. And Randy—”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you get those prescriptions filled?”

  “No. I never had time.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it for you. I’ll bring the stuff out when I come.”

  They left the hotel together. A gibbering woman, red-dish wig astray on her head like an ill-fitting beret, clawed at Dan’s arm. He shook himself loose. She dove for his medicine bag. He snatched it away and ran.

  Outside, they parted. Randy drove through town. Traffic was piling up. Those stores that opened early on Saturdays were crowded, and groups waited in front of others, and on the steps of the bank. There was as yet no disorder. It was a shopping rush, as on Christmas Eve. At the corner of Yulee and St. Johns he saw Cappy Foracre, the Fort Repose Chief of Police, directing traffic. He stopped and yelled, “Cappy, there’s a woman dead in a wreck out on River Road.”

  “That’s outside the town limits,” Cappy shouted. “Nothing I can do about it. I’ve got plenty of trouble right here.”

  Randy drove on, tuning his radio to the Conelrad frequencies, scouting for news. As before, the 640 channel brought only an incoherent jumble of distant voices, but Happy Hedrix was still broadcasting over WSMF, from San Marco, on 1240, although, obeying the Conelrad rules, he never mentioned the call sign. The AP ticker from Jacksonville told of a sea and air battle off the coast. The Governor had issued a pronouncement from Tallahassee—all target cities were to be evacuated at once. The cities named included Orlando and Jacksonville. There was no mention of Miami or Tampa.

  Randy wondered why the evacuation order originated in Tallahassee, instead of from a Civil Defense headquarters. Of the national situation, there was no word at all. Up to now, it sounded as if Florida were fighting the war alone. More than anything, Randy wanted news—real news. What had happened? What had happened everywhere? Was the war lost? If it was still being fought who was winning?

  On River Road he passed a dozen convicts, white men, clad in their blue denim with the white stripe down the trouser leg. They were straggling toward Fort Repose. Two of the convicts carried shotguns. Another had a pistol strapped to his waist. This was wrong. Road gang guards, not convicts, should be carrying the weapons. But the guards were missing. It wasn’t difficult to guess what had happened. The guards, some of them, were dour and sadistic men, skilled in unusual and degrading punishments. It was likely that any breakdown in government and authority would begin with a revolt of prisoners against road gang guards. There was a convict camp between Fort Repose and Pasco Creek. Randy guessed that these prisoners were being transported, by truck, to their work area, when the nuclear attack came. With realization, rebellion, and perhaps murder of the guards, had been almost instantaneous.

  He passed the wrecked car. The woman’s body still lay on the roadside. The luggage had been looted. Dresses, shoes, and lingerie littered the grassy shoulder. A pink-silk pajama top fluttered from a palmetto, a forlorn flag to mark the end of a vacation.

  As Randy reached his home, Florence Wechek’s Chevy bounced out of her driveway. He yelled, “
Hey, Florence!” Florence stopped. Alice Cooksey was in the car with her. “Where are you going?” Randy asked.

  “To work,” Florence said. “I’m late.”

  “Don’t you know what’s happened?”

  “Certainly I know. That’s why it’s very important I open up the office. People will have all sorts of messages. This is an emergency, Randy.”

  “It sure is,” Randy said. “On the way to town you’ll see some convicts. They’re armed. Don’t stop.”

  Florence said, “I’ll be careful.” Alice smiled and waved. They drove on.

  On Friday night, Florence and Alice had split a bottle of sherry, an unaccustomed dissipation, and stayed up long past midnight, exchanging confidences, opinions, and gossip. As a result, Florence had neglected to set her alarm, and they had overslept. The explosions far to the south had shaken them awake, but it was not until some time later, when they had seen the glow in the sky, that Alice had thought to turn on the radio, and they first realized what was happening.

  Immediately, Florence wanted to start for the office. Having no close relatives, and approaching an age beyond which she could not reasonably hope for a proposal of marriage, and when even speculative second looks from rakish or lonely widowers had grown rare, her whole life centered in the office. Western Union didn’t expect her to open the wire until eight, but she was usually a bit early. Afternoons, she dreaded the relentless downsweep of the hour hand, which at five guillotined her day. After five, nothing awaited her except lovebirds, tropical fish, and vicarious journeys back to more romantic centuries via historical novels. In the office she was part of a busy and exciting world, a necessary communicating link in affairs of great importance to others. On this day of crisis, she could be the most important person in Fort Repose.