Alas, Babylon

by Harry Hart Frank Pat Frank

  “Yes. But that’s not what was wonderful.” Dan’s smile disappeared. “You see, this was the first live baby, full term. I had two other pregnancies that ended prematurely. Nature’s way of protecting the race, I think, although you can’t reach any statistical conclusion on the basis of three pregnancies. Anyway, now we know that there’s going to be a human race, don’t we?”

  “I’d never really thought there might not be.”

  “I had,” Dan said quietly.

  In November a tall pine, split by lightning during the summer, dropped its brown needles and died and Randy and Bill felled it with a two-man saw and ax. It was arduous work and neither of them knew the technique. It was at times like this that Randy missed and thought of Malachai. Nevertheless they got the job done and trimmed the thick branches. The wood was valuable, for another winter was coming.

  Randy went to bed early that night, exhausted. He woke suddenly with a queer sound in his ears, like music, almost. He looked at his watch. It was a bit after midnight. Lib slept quietly beside him. He was frightened. He nudged her. She lifted her head and her eyes opened. “Sweetheart,” he said, “do you hear anything?”

  “Go to sleep,” she said, and her head fell back on the pillow. It bounced up again. “Yes,” she said, “I do hear something. It sounds like music. Of course it can’t be music but that’s what it sounds like.”

  “I’m relieved,” Randy said. “I thought it was in my head.” He listened intently. “I could swear that it sounds like ‘In the Mood.’ If I didn’t know better I could swear it was that great Glenn Miller recording.”

  She kicked him. “Get up! Get up!”

  He flung himself out of bed and opened the door to the upstairs living room, lit by a lamp on the bar, turned low. It was necessary to keep fire in the house for they no longer had matches, flints, or lighter fluid. Randy thought, it must be the transistor radio, started up again, but at the same time he knew this was impossible because he long ago had thrown away the dead batteries. Nevertheless he picked up the radio and listened. It was silent yet the music persisted.

  “It’s coming from the hall,” Lib said.

  They opened the door into the hallway. The rhythm was louder but the hall was empty. Randy saw a crack of light under Peyton’s door. “Peyton’s room!” he said.

  He put his hand on the door handle but decided it would be gentlemanly to knock first. After all, Peyton was twelve now. He knocked.

  The music stopped abruptly. Peyton said, in a small, frightened voice, “Come in.”

  Peyton’s room was illuminated by a lamp Randy had never seen before. Peyton didn’t have a lamp of her own. On Peyton’s desk was an old-fashioned, hand crank phonograph with flaring horn. Stacked beside it were albums of records.

  Randy said, softly, “Put it on again, Peyton.”

  Peyton stopped plucking at the front of her pajamas, hand me-downs from Ben Franklin, just as Ben’s pajamas were hand-me downs from Randy, so fast did children grow. She started the record, from the beginning. Hearing it, Randy realized how much he had missed music, how music seasoned his civilization. In the Henry house Missouri often sang, but in the Bragg house hardly anyone could carry a tune, or even hum.

  Over the rhythm, Lib whispered, “Where did you get it, Peyton? Where did it come from?”

  “The attic. I went up the little ladder in the back hall. Mother will be furious. She told me never to go up there because the rungs were cracked and I might fall.”

  “Your mother was up in the attic a few months ago. She didn’t see anything.”

  “I know. I was crawling around behind the big trunk and there was a door, a board door that looked like part of the wall. I opened it and there was another room, smaller.”

  Randy said, “Why did you do it, Peyton?”

  “I don’t know. I was lonely and there wasn’t anything else to do and I’d never been up there. You know how it is. When you’ve never been some place, you want to go.”

  Randy opened one of the albums. “Old seventy—Bights,” he said, his voice almost reverent. “Classic jazz. Listen to this. By Tommy Dorsey—‘Come Rain or Shine,’ ‘Stardust,’ ‘Chicago,’ Carmen Cavallaro’s ‘Stormy Weather.’ Also ‘Body and Soul.’ Artie Shaw’s ‘Back Bay Shuffle.’ All the best by the best. I guess I’m certain this must have been Father’s collection. I’ve never seen this machine before, but I remember the records.”

  ‘In the Mood’ ended. Randy said, “Turn it over, Peyton. No. Put on this one.”

  “You’re not angry, Randy?” Peyton said.

  “Angry! I should say not!”

  “I found some other stuff in there too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, there’s an old-time sewing machine—the kind you work with your feet. There are some big kerosene lamps, the kind that hang. This one on the desk I found up there, too. All I had when I went up was a little stub candle. Then there’s an old potbellied stove and a lot of iron pipe. Oh, and lots of other junk. I left it because I wanted to try the record player. The only other thing I brought down I brought for you and Dan, Randy. It’s there on the bed.”

  Randy picked up the black leather case. It looked familiar. He had seen it before. He opened it and saw the two matched straight-edge razors that had belonged to his father.

  He leaned over and kissed the top of Peyton’s head. “Don’t worry about what your mother will say,” he told her. “I’ll handle everything for you. If I had medals to give, I would pin one on you, Peyton, right now.”

  In this manner, Peyton became a heroine.

  Chapter 13

  One morning in November, when Randy was breakfasting early and alone, Dan Gunn came downstairs smooth-shaven, his jaw looking oddly pallid in contrast to brown forehead, nose, cheekbones, and neck. “Good morning,” Randy said. “You swore you’d never shave again! Why?”

  “Well,” Dan said lamely, “I had the razor and it seemed a shame not to use it after Peyton gave it to me. Then there was the soap.” Within the past few weeks, bars of homemade soap had appeared in Marines Park, produced by Mrs. Estes, who had been senior teller at the bank, and two former co-workers. Everyone agreed that it would be a prosperous and rewarding business. “The truth, Dan!” Randy said.

  “Helen asked me to do it. She said she was getting tired of trimming it.”

  “Oh, that’s different. You’d better be home in time for dinner tonight. John Garcia just made another run up to Blue Crab Pool and he’s dropping off a washtub of crabs here. In exchange for one quart of lightning.”

  Dan said, “I’m very fond of Helen. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “Why do anything without her?”

  “Randy, I want to marry her.”

  Randy rose from the table, bowed, and said, “I give you my blessing!”

  “It isn’t funny.”

  “Marriage is rarely funny.”

  “She won’t marry me.”

  “Then why did you shave off your beard?”

  “Damn it, Randy, I love her. And she loves me. She admitted it. She wants to marry me. But she won’t. She thinks there’s a chance Mark’s still alive. She’s afraid that if we married then Mark would turn up alive and there’d be one of those awful messes we’ve all heard about or read about. Like when men were reported dead in the Philippines or Korea and they turned up after the war in an enemy prison camp. They came home and found their wives happily married to someone else. Sometimes there were children. It’s always a mess.”

  “It’s happened,” Randy said, “but in this case I don’t think there’s a chance. Want me to talk to her?”

  Dan rubbed his face where his beard had been. “I feel naked. No, Randy, thanks. I don’t think Helen would want it discussed. Not yet, anyway. She just has this feeling, and I’m afraid she’ll have to empty it herself.”

  It was in this month that the first low-flying plane frightened and exhilarated them.

  At irregular times planes had been re
ported before, but always jets, flying very high, usually no more than a silver splinter in the sky, or contrail, in day, and only sound at night.

  But in the second week in November a big four-engined transport roared over Fort Repose at a thousand feet. It bore Air Force markings. In Marines Park everyone screamed and waved. It did not even waggle its wings, but went on, south. Dan Gunn, who was in town, saw it directly overhead. Randy heard and saw it from River Road. The Admiral, who was out on the river in his flagship, was able to observe it through binoculars.

  That night Randy and Lib and Dan and Helen went to Sam Hazzard’s house to hear his opinion. “I noticed two cylinders slung under the wing,” he said. “Not extra gas tanks. I think they might be air traps. I think they might be taking radiation samples.”

  A week later the same plane, or one like it, came over again. This time it circled Fort Repose, and a stream of what appeared to be confetti, at the distance, fell from its belly and drifted down on the river banks and in the town.

  Randy was in Marines Park, at the time, discussing an alarm system with officers of his company. Church bells had been used in England during the second World War, and there were bells in the Catholic and Episcopal churches. It was possible to evolve a code by which his troopers could understand the type and location of the emergency. The plane came over and everyone yelled, as before, as if they could hear up there. Then the leaflets fluttered down. They read:

  DO NOT BE ALARMED

  This leaflet comes from a United States Air Force plane conducting atmospheric surveys of the Contaminated Zones.

  At a future date a more precise survey will be undertaken by helicopters.

  Should a helicopter land in or near your community do not interfere with the activities of personnel aboard. Lend them your cooperation if requested.

  This activity is an essential preliminary to bringing relief to the Contaminated Zones.

  In a sense, it was disappointing. But it was something. It was something you could put your hands on, that you could feel, that had come from the outside. It was proof that the government of the United States still functioned. It was also useful as toilet paper. Next day, ten leaflets would buy an egg, and fifty a chicken. It was paper, and it was money.

  In December the helicopter came. It made a fearful racket, wind milling over Fort Repose. At various open spaces, including Marines Park, it hovered low and dropped a long wire from its belly, a small cylinder on the end of the wire actually touching the earth. It was like a gigantic bug dipping for honey.

  It came up the Timucuan and circled the Bragg house.

  The children were down at the dock; Helen and Lib were in the house; Randy was visiting with Sam Hazzard.

  It circled four times. The two women ran up to the captain’s walk. They had the best view. They waved their arms and then Helen took off her pink apron and waved that.

  Inside the helicopter they saw faces and the pilot opened a window and waved back. Then it went away, up the Timucuan. In five minutes Randy, the Admiral, and the children, all out of breath, were at the house.

  Helen was weeping. “He waved!” she said. “He waved at us! Nobody else, us! I’m sure he came just to see us!”

  “Now let’s not get too excited,” Randy said. “It may be that he was just looking for people—not anyone in particular—and saw the kids out on the dock and then circled the house to encourage us and give us heart.”

  Helen wiped her face with her apron. She said, “Oh, I wish he’d come back. Please, God, send him back!”

  At that moment, they heard it coming back.

  The children ran up to the roof. Randy went outside and sat on the porch steps. He was still out of breath and he wasn’t going to run upstairs. If the damn helicopter wanted to see him it would have to come here. He couldn’t go to it. Sam Hazzard sat down beside him.

  Randy watched for it. From the sound he knew it was circling again. It came low over the trees and hovered over the lawn. Everything else was overgrown and choked with weeds and sprouting saplings but this single stretch between house and road Randy kept in lawn. It was one of Ben Franklin’s chores to mow once a week, and it was a link between the house and the time before The Day, like shaving.

  It hovered there and slowly lowered. Randy said, “It’s coming in!” He rose to receive it.

  Its wheels touched the ground, its engines cut off, and its rotors drooped and slowed. Peyton ran down the steps and Randy grabbed her. “Don’t go out there until the rotors stop!” he ordered. “Cut your head off!”

  Now that it was down, the helicopter looked ungainly and enormous. There were five men in it.

  The rotors stopped.

  They waited in stillness so complete that they heard the creak of hinges as the hatch opened. A metal ladder fell from its side and two men climbed down. Plastic helmets covered their heads and they were encased in silver, translucent plastic suits, oxygen tanks strapped to their backs. Like divers, Randy thought, or maybe spacemen. Peyton and Ben Franklin had run out on the lawn. Now they shrank back. One of the men, laughing silently inside his helmet, held up his hand in a gesture, “Wait!”

  The two men carried machines that looked like miniature vacuum cleaners, a cylindrical nozzle in one hand, an oblong black box in the other. They allowed these nozzles to sniff at grass and earth. “Geiger counters,” Sam Hazzard said. “Maybe we’re hot.”

  One of the men approached them, hesitated, and selected Randy. He bent over and allowed the nozzle to sniff Randy’s last pair of boat shoes, big toe protruding through the canvas, soles reinforced with possum hide. The nozzle investigated the tattered shorts, the belt, and finally Randy’s hair. At each point, the head in the helmet glanced at a dial in the box. It was very efficient.

  The man swept off his helmet, slammed his hand on Randy’s shoulder as if in congratulations, and called back to the helicopter, “Okay, Colonel. The terrain’s clear and they’re clear. You can come down.”

  His back toward them, a man climbed down. He wore a blue, zippered Air Force flight suit with the eagles of a full colonel on his shoulders.

  When he turned and stepped forward, Randy did not immediately recognize him, he was so changed.

  It was not until the man held out his hand, and spoke, that Randy saw it was Paul Hart, who had been a light colonel, sandy haired instead of gray, his face cheery and freckled instead of lined and aged, when he saw him last. Randy could think of nothing to say except, “Come on in, Paul, and bring your people. We’re just about to sit down for lunch.”

  Lib cried, “The quail!” and dashed into the house, letting the screen door bang.

  “My wife,” Randy said. “It’s her lunch day.”

  “Your wife? Congratulations. My wife—I’ll save it for later.” Randy saw that the men with the Geiger counters had stripped off their plastic suits. “You’ll all have a drink before lunch?” he suggested, thinking that this had been the proper thing to say, long ago, and would still be proper and expected.

  “Why, I’d be delighted!” Paul said. “I haven’t had a drink since—” he asked a question: “You people haven’t saved your liquor all this time, have you?”

  “Oh, no. This stuff is new. Well, it’s aged a bit. In a charcoal keg. We think it’s very good.”

  He led them up to his apartment and mixed sours with the corn whiskey and fat, ripe limes. Then there were the introductions. There was a Captain Bayliss, the pilot, a Lieutenant Smith, chief radiologist, and the two sergeant technicians. They all considered the sour very good and Paul said, “It’s impossible to find anything to drink, even in Denver. Not even beer. Shortage of grains, you know. Nobody would dare make his own whiskey in the clear zones. He’d go to jail. The older people say it’s worse than prohibition.”

  There were a thousand questions Randy wanted to ask but at that moment he only had time for one because Lib called from downstairs. Lunch was ready. The men all wore brassards with the letters D.C. on the right arms. “What’s that?�
� Randy asked, touching Paul’s brassard. “District of Columbia?”

  “Oh, no,” Paul said. “there isn’t any District of Columbia. Denver’s the capital. That stands for Decontamination Command. It’s the biggest command, nowadays, and really the only one that counts. I was seconded to the D.C. last spring. I put in for a C.Z. right away and asked for Florida and Florida was the C.Z. I got.”

  Paul Hart thought the soup was wonderful and said he had never tasted anything exactly like it before and Randy replied that he wasn’t surprised. They always kept the big soup pot simmering on the fire and everything went into it. “This particular soup,” he explained, “is sort of a combination. Armadillo, gopher, and turkey carcass.”

  Lib brought a dozen quail, and more were broiling, and placed pitchers of orange juice in front of them and they all drank it greedily. Captain Bayliss kept mumbling that he felt they were imposing, and that there were K-rations in the helicopter and that he actually expected to find C.Z. people all starving, because certainly most of them were in other parts of the country. He also kept on eating.

  “How does it happen,” Randy asked Hart, “that you found us?”

  Hart said, “You haven’t heard anything from my wife, Martha, have you?”

  Randy shook his head, no, apprehending Paul’s tragedy. “Of course that’s why I asked for duty in this C.Z. I wanted to find out what happened to Martha and the children.” He looked up. “It was just a year ago, wasn’t it, that I met you at McCoy Operations? Wasn’t it on the day before H-Day?”

  “H-Day? We just call it The Day.”

  “Hell day or Hydrogen Day or The Day, it’s all the same thing.”

  “Yes. That was the last time I saw you.”

  “It was also the last day I saw Martha except to kiss her goodbye the next morning. Post-strike we went on to Kenya, in Africa. When I got back to this country I learned right away, of course, that McCoy received one. But it wasn’t until I flew over Orlando last week that I gave up hope. I suppose you know what happened to Orlando.”