Alas, Babylon Read online

  “Some of you may have guessed how it happens that I, the head of the most junior of government departments and a woman, have been forced to assume the duties and responsibilities of Chief Executive on this, the most terrible day in our history.

  “One of the first targets of the enemy was Washington.

  “So far as we have been able to discover at this hour, neither the President nor the Vice President, nor any other Cabinet member, nor the leaders of House or Senate survived. It appears certain that only a small percentage of the members of the Congress escaped. I survive only by chance, because this morning I was in another city, on an inspection tour. I am now in a military command post of relative safety. I have designated this command post Civil Defense Headquarters, as well as temporary seat of government.”

  Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown coughed and choked, recovered herself and continued: “With a sick heart, but the resolution to lead the nation to victory and peace, I leave you for the time being.”

  The radio hummed for a second, the carrier wave cut off, and then there was silence.

  Randy said, “It’s about what I expected, but it’s awful to hear it.”

  “Still,” Helen said, “there is a government.”

  “I guess that’s some comfort. I wonder what’s left. I mean, what cities are left.”

  Helen looked up at Randy. She looked at him, and through him, and far away. Her hands came together on the table, and her fingers intertwined; when she spoke it was in a soft, almost inaudible voice, as if her thoughts were so fragile that they would be shattered by more than a whisper. “Do you think—is it possible—that the military command post she spoke of could be Offutt Field? Do you think she might be down in what we call the Hole, at SAC Headquarters? If she is at SAC, you know what that means, don’t you?”

  “It could mean that Mark is okay. But Helen—”

  “Yes?

  Randy didn’t think it likely that Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown was speaking from Omaha. The odds were against it. There were many headquarters, and the first one the enemy would try to destroy, after Washington itself, was SAC. Mark had feared this, and so did he. He said, “I don’t think we should count on it.”

  “I’m not counting on it. I’m just praying. If Mark is alive how long do you think it’ll be before we hear from him?”

  “I can’t even guess. But I do know who can make an educated guess. Admiral Hazzard. He lives on the other side of the Henrys’ place. He listens to short wave and keeps up with every thing that goes on. He served a tour in ONI, and later was on the Intelligence staff of the Joint Chiefs—I think that was his last duty before they retired him. So if anybody around here should know what’s happening then old Sam Hazzard should know.”

  “Can we see him?”

  “Of course we can see him. Any time we want. It’s only a quarter mile. But we can’t leave Peyton alone and I don’t have any idea what time Dan Gunn will get here.” His arms felt wooden, and detached, and his head too heavy for his neck. His chin dropped on his chest. “And I’m so blasted tired, Helen. I feel that if I don’t get a couple of hours of real sleep I’ll go off my rocker. If I don’t get some rest I won’t be much good from here in, and God knows what’ll happen tonight.”

  Helen said, “I’m sorry, Randy. Of course you’re groggy. Go on up stairs and get some sleep. I’m going to drive to town. There’s so much stuff we’ve just got to have.”

  “Suppose Peyton calls? I’ll never wake up.”

  “Ben Franklin will be here. I’ll tell him to wake you up if anything serious happens.”

  “Okay. Be careful. Don’t stop for anybody on the way to town.” Randy went upstairs, each step an effort. It was true, he thought, that women had more stamina than men.

  Randy decided not actually to take off his clothes and get into bed because once he got under the covers he would never get up. Instead, he took off his shoes and dropped down on the couch in the living room. He stared at the gunrack on the opposite wall. Until very recent years guns had been an important part of living on the Timucuan. Randy guessed they might become important again. He had quite an arsenal. There was the long, old-fashioned 30-40 Krag fitted with sporting sights; the carbine he had carried in Korea, dismantled, and smuggled home; two .22 rifles, one equipped with a scope; a twelve-gauge automatic, and a light, beautifully balanced. twenty-gauge double-barreled shotgun. In the drawer of his bedside table was a .45 automatic and a .22 target pistol hung in a holster in his closet.

  Ammo. He had more than he would ever need for the big rifle, the carbine, and the shotguns. But he had only a couple of boxes of .22’s, and he guessed that the .22’s might be the most useful weapons he owned, if economic chaos lasted for a long time, a meat shortage developed, and it became necessary to hunt small game. He rose and went into the hallway and shouted down at the stairwell, “Helen!”

  “Yes?” She was at the front door.

  “If you get a chance drop in at Beck’s Hardware and buy some twenty-two caliber long-rifle hollow points.”

  “Just a second. I’ll write it down on my list. Twenty-two long-rifle hollow points. How many?”

  “Ten boxes, if they have them.”

  Helen said, “I’ll try. Now, Randy, get some sleep.”

  Back on the couch, he closed his eyes, thinking of guns, and hunting. In his father’s youth, this section of Florida had been a hunter’s paradise, with quail, dove, duck, and deer in plenty, and even black bear and a rare panther. Now the quail were scattered and often scarce. Three coveys roamed the grove, and the hammock behind the Henrys’ place. Randy had not shot quail for twelve years. When visitors noticed his gunrack and asked about quail shooting, he always laughed and said, “Those guns are to shoot people who try to shoot my quail.” The quail were more than pets. They were friends, and wonderful to watch, parading across lawn and road in the early morning.

  Only the ducks were now truly plentiful in this area, and they were protected by Federal law. Once in a while he shot a rattlesnake in the grove, or a moccasin near the dock. And that was all he shot. Still, there were rabbits and squirrels, and so the .22 ammo might come in handy. A long time ago—he could not have been more than fourteen or fifteen—he remembered hunting deer with his father, and shooting his first deer with buckshot from the double-twenty. His first, and his last, for the deer had not died instantly, and had seemed small and piteous, twitching in the palmetto scrub, until his father had dispatched it with his pistol. He could still see it, and the round, bright red spots on the green fronds. He shivered, and he slept.

  Randy awoke in darkness. Graf was barking, and he heard voices downstairs. He turned on a light. It was nine-thirty. He had slept almost four hours. He felt refreshed, and good for whatever might come through the night. He was putting on his shoes when the door opened and Helen came into his apartment, followed by Ben Franklin and Dan Gunn.

  “I was just going to wake you up,” Helen said. “Dan is going in to look at Peyton.”

  Dan’s eyes were hollowed, and his face carved with fissures of exhaustion. Randy said, “Have you eaten anything today, Dan?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  Helen said, “You’ll eat, Doctor, right after you’ve seen Peyton. Do you want me to go in with you?”

  “You and Randy can both come in with me. But don’t say anything. Let me do the talking.”

  They went into the child’s room. Randy flicked on the overhead light. “Not that one,” Dan said. “I want a dim light at first.” He turned on a lamp on the dressing table.

  Peyton’s hands crept out from under the sheet and touched the bandages over her eyes. “Hello,” she said, her voice small and frightened.

  “Hello, dear,” Helen said. “Doctor Gunn is here to see you. You remember Doctor Gunn from last year, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. Hello, Doctor.”

  Dan said, “Peyton, I’m going to take the bandage off your eyes. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see anything. There is
n’t much light in the room.”

  Randy found he was holding his breath. Dan removed the bandage, saying, “Now, don’t rub your eyes.”

  Peyton tried to open her eyes. She said, “They’re stuck. They feel all gooey.”

  “Sure,” Dan said. He moistened cotton in a borax mixture and wiped Peyton’s eyes gently. “That better?”

  Peyton blinked. “Hey, I can see! Well, sort of. Everything looks milky.” Helen moved and Peyton said, “Isn’t that you, Mother?”

  “Yes. That’s me.”

  “Your face looks like a balloon but I could tell it was you.” Dan smiled at Randy and nodded. She was going to be all right.

  He rummaged in his bag and brought out a small kit, a bottle, and applicator, a tube. He said, “Peyton, you can stop worrying now. You’re not going to be blind. In perhaps a week, you’ll be able to see fine. But until then you’ve got to rest your eyes and we’ve got to treat them. This is going to sting a little.”

  He held her eyelids open and, his huge hands sure and gentle, applied drops, and an ointment. “Butyn sulphate,” he said. “This is really outside my line, but I remembered that butyn sulphate was what Air-Sea Rescue used for rescued fliers. After floating around in a raft for two or three days, the glare would blind them just as Peyton was blinded. It fixed them up, and it ought to fix her up.”

  Dan turned to Helen. “Did you see how I did it?”

  “I was watching.”

  “I’ll try to get out here at least once a day, but if I don’t make it, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

  “I won’t have any trouble. Peyton’s quite brave.”

  Peyton said, “Mommy, I’m not. I’m not brave at all. I’m scared all the time. Have you heard from Dad, yet? Do you think Dad’s all right?”

  “I’m sure he’s all right, dear,” Helen said: “But we can’t expect to hear right away. All the phones are out, and I suppose the telegraph too.”

  “I’m hungry, Mother.”

  Helen said, “I’ll bring something right up.”

  They turned off the light. Helen went downstairs. Dan Gunn came into Randy’s rooms. He took off his wrinkled jacket and dropped it on a chair and said, “Now I can use a drink.”

  Randy mixed a double bourbon. Dan drank half of it in a gulp and said, surprised, “Aren’t you drinking, Randy?”

  “No. Don’t feel like I want one.”

  “That’s the first good news I’ve heard all day. I’ve already treated two fellows who’ve drunk themselves insensible since morning. You could’ve been the third.”

  “Could I?”

  “Well, not quite. You react to crisis in the right way. You remember what Toynbee says? His theory of challenge and response applies not only to nations, but to individuals. Some nations and some people melt in the heat of crisis and come apart like fat in the pan. Others meet the challenge and harden. I think you’re going to harden.”

  “I’m really not a very hard guy,” Randy said, looking across the room at his guns and thinking, oddly, of the young buck he’d shot when a boy, and how he’d never been able to shoot a deer since that day. To change the subject he said, “You must’ve had a pretty harrowing day.”

  Dan drank the second half of his bourbon and water. “I have had such a day as I didn’t think it was possible to have. Seven cardiacs are dead and a couple more will go before morning. Three miscarriages and one of the women died. I don’t know what killed her. I’d put down ‘fright’ on the death certificate if I had time to make out death certificates. Three suicides—one of them was Edgar Quisenberry.”

  Randy said, “Edgar—why?”

  Dan frowned. “Hard to say. He still had as much as anybody else, or more. He wasn’t organically ill. I’ll refer to Toynbee again. Inability to cope with a sudden change in the environment. He swam in a sea of money, and when money was transmuted back into paper he was left gasping and confused, and he died. You’ve read the history of the ’twenty-nine crash, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dozens of people killed themselves for the same reason. They created and lived in an environment of paper profits, and when paper returned to paper they had to kill themselves, not realizing that their environment was unnatural and artificial. But it wasn’t the adults that got me down, Randy, it was the babies. Give me another drink, a small one.”

  Randy poured another.

  “Eight babies today, three of them preemies. I’ve got the preemies in San Marco hospital. I don’t know whether they’ll make it or not. The hospital’s a mess. Cots end to end on every corridor. A good many of them are accident cases, a few gunshot wounds. And all this, mind you, with only three casualties caused directly by the war—three cases of radiation poisoning.”

  “Radiation?” Randy said. “Around here?” Suddenly the word had a new and immediate connotation. It was now a sinister word of lingering death, like cancer.

  “No. Refugees from Tallahassee. They drove through pretty heavy fallout, I guess. We estimate at the hospital that they received fifty to a hundred roentgens. Anyway, a pretty hefty dose, but not fatal.”

  “Are we getting any radiation, do you think?”

  Dan considered. “Some, undoubtedly. But I don’t think a dangerous dose. There isn’t a Geiger in town, but there is a dosimeter in the San Marco hospital and I guess we’re getting what San Marco gets. Most of the radioactive particles decay pretty fast, you know. Not cesium or strontium 90 or cobalt or carbon 14. Those will always be with us.”

  “Lucky east wind,” Randy said, and then was surprised at his words. The danger of radiation was still there, and might increase. Long before this day scientists had been worried about tests of nuclear weapons, even when conducted in uninhabited areas under rigid controls. Now the danger obviously was infinitely greater, but since there were other and more immediate dangers—dangers that you could see, feel, and hear-radiation had become secondary. He wasn’t thinking of its effect upon future generations. He was concerned with the present. He wasn’t exercised over the fallout blanketing Tallahassee from the attack on Jacksonville. He was worried about Fort Repose. He suspected that this was a necessary mental adjustment to aid self reservation. The exhausted swimmer, struggling to reach shore, isn’t worried about starving to death afterwards.

  When Helen called, they sat down to a dinner table that, under the circumstances, seemed incongruous. The meal was only soup, salad, and sandwiches, but Helen had laid the table as meticulously as if Dan Gunn had agreed to stay for a late supper on an ordinary evening. When Ben Franklin sat down Helen said, “Did you wash your hands?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, do so.”

  And Ben disappeared and returned with his hands washed and hair combed. They listened to the radio as they ate, hearing only the local broadcasts from San Marco at two-minute intervals. Their ears had become dulled to the repetitive, unimportant announcements and warnings, as those who live on the seashore fail to hear the sea. But any fresh news, or break in the routine, instantly alerted and silenced them.

  Several times they heard a brief bulletin: “County Civil Defense authorities warn everyone not to drink fresh milk which may have been exposed to fallout. Canned milk, or milk delivered this morning prior to the attack, can be presumed safe.”

  Dan Gunn explained that this precaution was probably a little premature. It was designed primarily for the protection of children. Strontium 90, probably the most dangerous of all fallout materials, collected in calcium. It caused bone cancer and leukemia. “In a week or so it can be a real hazard,” he said. “It can’t be a hazard yet, because the cows haven’t had time to ingest strontium 90 in their fodder. Still, the quicker these dangers are broadcast, the more people will be aware of them.”

  Helen asked, “What happens to babies?”

  “Evaporated or condensed canned milk is the answer—while it lasts. After that, it’s mother’s milk.”

  “That will be old-fashioned, won’t it?”
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  Dan nodded and smiled. “But the mothers will have to be careful of what they eat.” He looked down at the lettuce. “For instance, no greens, or lettuce, if your garden has received fallout. Trouble is, you won’t know, really, whether your ground, or your food, is safe or not. Not without a Geiger counter. We’ll all have to live as best we can, from day to day.”

  Ben Franklin looked up at the ceiling, listening. He said, “Listen!”

  The others heard it, very faintly.

  “A jet,” Ben said. “A fighter, I think.”

  The sound faded away. Randy discovered he had been holding his breath. He said, “I guess it’s still going on.”

  Helen laid her salad fork on the plate. She had eaten very little. She said, “I have to know what’s happening—I just have to. Can’t we go over to see your retired admiral tonight, Randy?”

  “Sure, we can see him. But what about Peyton? We can’t leave her alone.”

  Helen looked at Ben Franklin and Ben said, “Is this what I’m going to be—a professional baby-sitter?”

  Dan Gunn rose. “I’ve got to get back to town. I’ve got to check in at the clinic and then I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Why don’t you stay here for the night, Dan?” Randy said.

  “I can’t. They’re expecting me at the clinic. And Randy, I brought the emergency kit for you.” He turned to Helen. “It was a wonderful supper. Thanks. I was so hungry I was weak. I didn’t realize it.”

  Randy walked him to his car. Dan said, “That poor girl.”

  “Peyton?”

  “No. Helen. Uncertainty is the worst. She’d be better off if she knew Mark was dead. See you tomorrow, Randy.”

  “Yes. Tomorrow.” He walked back to the house and paused on the porch to look at the thermometer and barometer. The barometer was steady, very high. Temperature was down to fifty five. It would get colder tonight. It might go to forty before morning. From across the river, far off, he heard a string of shots.

  In this stillness, at night, and across water, the sound of shots carried for miles. He could not tell from whence the sound came, or guess why, but the shots reminded him of a nervous sentry on post cutting loose with his carbine. It sounded like a carbine, or an automatic pistol.