by Rod Serling
“Oh, yes,” he said, with a smile. “The good doctor’s bomb shelter. I think we might as well forgive him for that, despite the fact that what he thinks is farsightedness on his part is a pain in the neck to all the rest of us on this street. The concrete trucks, the nocturnal hammering, and all the rest of it.”
They all laughed again, and Bill Stockton looked around quizzically, knife in hand.
“I can tell you all this,” he said. “You don’t get any cake until the windbag is finished.”
“Why, Bill Stockton!” his wife said, with gentle admonition.
“Bill’s right,” Marty interjected. “Go ahead, Jerry, get it over with while we’re still sober enough to eat.”
Harlowe picked up his wine glass again. “This is the end right here. When Grace mentioned that it was your birthday, we took it on ourselves to handle the proceedings. And just as a little personal aside, let me conclude this way. A toast to Dr. William Stockton, whom I’ve known for better than twenty years. To all the nice things he’s done for a lot of people—and because he’s forty-four years old, and because we wish him a minimum forty-four more to keep being the same kind of guy he is, and the way he always has been. Happy birthday, you old bastard.”
He took a long swig and Rebecca Weiss suddenly began to cry.
“Oh, my dear God,” announced Marty. “Down goes a speech, up come my wife’s tears.”
Bill Stockton blew out the candles, then looked up with a mock sardonic look. “I don’t blame her,” he said. “First a surprise party—and I abhor surprise parties—and then a sloppy sentimental speech.”
He turned toward Harlowe and held out his hand. “But just between you and me and the American Medical Association—you’re nice people to have around, whether you pay your bills or not.” He turned and looked down the length of the table, and held up his own glass. “May I reciprocate, my friends. To my neighbors—with my thanks that you’re in the neighborhood.”
“Amen,” whispered Marty Weiss, and turned to his wife. “And if you cry again, I’ll belt you.” He leaned over and kissed her, and Bill Stockton started to cut the cake.
“Hey, pop.”
It was Stockton’s son, Paul, who came into the dining room He was a twelve-year-old mass of freckles and looked like a pintsize version of the doctor.
“The television set just went out.”
Stockton held out his hands in dismay. “Gad, crisis, crisis, crisis! And how can the world survive without the Untouchables and Huckleberry Hound?”
“It was the U.S. Steel Hour,” the boy said seriously. “And the picture went out and then there was some kind of crazy announcement. Something about...”
He continued to speak, but he was drowned out by Martha Harlowe laughing at something Rebecca had said to her. But Marty Weiss, closest to the boy, suddenly looked serious. He got out of his seat and turned to the others.
“Hold it, everybody,” he said tensely. Then he turned toward Paul. “What did you say, Paul?”
“The announcer said something about turning to the Conelrad station on the radio. What’s that mean? Hasn’t that got something to do with—”
He stopped abruptly. There was a sudden absolute stillness.
“You must have heard it wrong, Paul,” his father said quietly.
The boy shook his head. “I didn’t hear it wrong, pop. That’s what he said. To turn on your Conelrad station. Then everything went blank.”
A gasp came from Jerry Harlowe. A woman let out a cry. They ran into the living room behind Stockton, who immediately turned the knob on a small table-model radio, and stared down at it grimly. After a moment, there came the voice of an announcer...
“Direct from Washington, D.C. Repeating that. Four minutes ago, the President of the United States made the following announcement—I quote: ‘At eleven-o-four P.M. Eastern Standard Time, both our Distant Early Warning and Ballistics Early Warning lines reported radar evidence of unidentified flying objects, flying on a course due southeast. As of this moment, we have been unable to determine the nature of these objects, but for the time being, in the interest of national safety, we are declaring a state of Yellow Alert.’”
There was a moment’s silence, and Grace seized the doctor’s arm. With her free hand, she reached for Paul and drew him to her.
Rebecca Weiss started to cry, and her husband, Marty, just stood there, his face white.
The voice on the radio continued:
“The Civil Defense authorities request that if you have a shelter already prepared, go there at once. If you do not have a shelter, use your time to move supplies, food, water, and medicine to a central place. Keep all windows and doors closed. We repeat: If you’re in your home, go to your prepared shelters or to your basement...”
The voice of the announcer continued, went on and on, repeating the unbelievable introduction to an incredible horror.
They all stood gaping at the radio, and in one fragment of a moment they thought:
The baby, Rebecca Weiss thought. The tiny baby asleep in their house across the street Four months old. And they had kidded about it this morning. Marty had said they should send her to Vassar, and she’d chuckled about it all morning. Send the baby to Vassar. And suddenly, in searing agony, it occurred to hey that they would have no baby. This infant thing they had built their lives around-she would cease to exist. I don’t believe it, Marty thought. He shook his head. He rejected it. It simply wasn’t happening. It was a magazine story or a movie. It was some idle chatter at a party. It was a pamphlet that some kook had left on a doorstep, but it wasn’t happening-it couldn’t be happening... but all the time he knew it was. It was true. It was happening.
I want to cry, thought Jerry Harlowe. I want to cry. I can feel the tears inside me. But I mustn’t—I’m a man. But the claims... the insurance claims. My God—they’d be enormous! He could go bankrupt! It was like a joke. A cold, formless joke. Humor in an insane asylum. A crazy accountant trying to add up an earthquake. Sure—he’d go bankrupt. The world would turn into a jungle. And he’d go bankrupt.
The roses, Jerry’s wife, Martha, thought suddenly The beautiful American Beauties that she’d so lovingly and painstakingly cared for—and this year they had come up so wonderfully They were so beautiful. Then she clenched her fists and let her fingernails dig into the flesh of her palms, hating herself for the thought. What about the children? What about Ann and Charley? How, in God’s name, could a mother think about a rose garden at this moment when death had just been announced over the radio? She shut her eyes tightly, wishing it all away—but when she opened them, the room was there and all the people in it. She felt a sudden nausea rising up inside herd wave of sickness that left her weak and perspiring.
The pain, Dr. Stockton thought. The incredible pain. He could remember reading about Hiroshima. The bum cases. The radiation poisoning. The scarred, agonized flesh that sent a protracted scream over the dying city. He remembered it was something the Japanese doctors could not cope with. It had been too sudden, too unexpected, agony on a mass scale. This thing that hovered over them now, was whole streets and cities and states; millions and millions of people suddenly thrust into a maelstrom—a slaughterhouse on a scale that couldn’t even be measured by the holocaust that was Hiroshima.
So each stood there with a secret thought, while the voice of the radio announcer, quivering with a barely perceptible tension, kept on repeating the announcements over and over again in the same studiedly dispassionate voice—the well-rehearsed ritual of a modern Paul Revere on a twentieth-century night-ride. One if by land or two if by sea, but there was no opposite shore. They were all in this together. There was no escape. There was no defense. Death was en route to them over the Alaskan snow, and all anyone could do was simply to announce its coming.
***
They ran out of the Stockton house, frantic, panicky with vague plans for survival propelling them to their own houses. But then a siren rang out—its eerie shriek piercing the sum
mer night, pinioning their thoughts in the night’s darkness and holding them in fear—frozen suspension until once again they could break loose and race toward their homes.
And, in each of them, as they ran frantically across the street and down sidewalks and across lawns, was one single awareness. The street was somehow different. It had no familiarity. It was as if each of them had been away for a hundred years and suddenly returned. It was a vast place of strangeness.
And the siren continued to scream its discordant wail through the summer night.
Bill Stockton had placed the radio in the kitchen where Grace was filling water jugs.
“This is Conelrad, your emergency broadcasting station. You will find Conelrad at either six forty or twelve forty on your dial. Remain tuned to this frequency. We repeat our previous announcement. We are in a state of Yellow Alert. If you have a shelter already prepared, go there at once. If you do not have a shelter, use your time to move supplies of food, water, and medicine to a central place. Keep all windows and doors closed. We repeat: If you’re in your home, go to your prepared shelters or to your basement...”
The water dribbled out of the faucet, the pressure growing weaker each moment.
Paul hurried through the kitchen, carrying a box of canned goods, and went down the cellar steps.
Bill Stockton came into the kitchen after him and picked up two of the filled jugs of water on the floor.
“Fill up as many as you can, Grace,” he said tersely. “I’m going to start the generator up in the shelter in case the power goes off.”
He looked toward the fluorescent light over the sink. Already it was beginning to dim. Stockton looked grim.
“That may happen any moment,” he said.
“There’s hardly any water coming through the tap,” Grace said, a catch in her voice.
“That’s because everybody and his brother is doing the same thing we are. Keep it on full force until it stops.” He turned toward the basement door.
“Here,” Grace called out after him. “Take this one with you. It’s filled.”
She started to remove the heavy jug from the sink. It slipped out of her hand and fell, smashing to the floor and sending glass cascading around the room.
Grace let out one sob and shoved a fist into her mouth to hold back any more. For just one moment she felt herself falling into hysteria, wanting to scream, wanting to run frantically somewhere, anywhere, wanting unconsciousness to release her from the nightmare that was going on inside her kitchen.
Bill Stockton took hold of her and held her tight. His voice was gentle, but it didn’t sound like his voice at all.
“Easy, honey—easy.” He pointed to the broken jug. “Make believe it’s perfume and it cost a hundred bucks an ounce.” He stared down at the bottle of water at his feet. “Maybe in an hour,” he said thoughtfully, “it’ll be worth more than that.”
Paul came up from the basement.
“What else, pop?”
“All the canned goods down?”
“All that I could find.’
“How about the fruit cellar?” Grace asked him, keeping her voice steady.
“I put all those in, too,” Paul responded.
“Get my bag from the bedroom,” Stockton said. “Put that down there, too.”
“What about books and stuff?” Paul said.
When Grace spoke her voice broke and the words came out tight and loud—louder than her son could ever remember, and different, too.
“Dammit! Your father told you to get his bag—!”
The boy let out an incredulous gasp. It was his mother, but it wasn’t his mother. The voice wasn’t hers. The expression wasn’t hers. He gave a frightened sob.
“That’s all right,” Stockton said softly, pushing the boy out. “We’re just frightened, Paul. We’re not ourselves. Go ahead, son.”
Then he turned to his wife. “We’ll need books, Grace. God knows how long we’ll have to stay down there.” Then, in a gentle tone, almost supplicating, “Honey, try to get hold of yourself. It’s the most important thing on God’s earth now.”
He watched her for a moment, then very deliberately turned to look toward the cupboards to the left of the sink.
“What about light bulbs?” he asked. “Where do you keep the light bulbs?”
Grace pointed. “Top shelf in that cupboard there.” Then she bit her lip. “We don’t have any. I ran out yesterday. I was going to buy some at the store. There was a sale on—”
She leaned against the sink and felt the tears running down her face. “Oh, my God!” she said. “I’m talking like an idiot. A sale at the store. Oh, God in heaven! The world is about to explode and I’m talking about a sale at the store!”
Stockton reached out and touched her face.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” he said to her quietly. ‘You can mouth all the idiocies you want to. Just don’t panic, Grace. That’s the most important thing now.” He held her hand tightly. “We mustn’t panic.”
“How much time do we have?”
“There’s no telling. I think I remember reading some place that from the first alarm, we might have anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour.”
Grace’s eyes grew large. “Fifteen minutes?”
He shook his head. “I’m guessing, Grace. I don’t know for sure. I don’t think anyone does.”
He went into the dining room. “Keep getting the water,” he said to her over his shoulder.
Paul came down the steps through the front hall and into the living room. He carried an armful of books and magazines, and on top of them his father’s medical bag.
“I got everything, pop.”
“Let me give you a hand,” said Stockton, taking the things out of his arms.
Paul turned, and started toward the front door.
“Paul!” Stockton shouted at him. “Are you out of your mind? Stay inside here.”
“My bike’s outside,” the boy said.
“You won’t need it. Go on down to the shelter.”
“But if they do drop a bomb or something, it’ll bum everything up. I know, pop. I read it. If it’s a hydrogen bomb, there won’t be anything left standing.”
Stockton let the magazines drop to the floor He walked over to his son and gripped him by the shoulders. There was a fierceness to his voice.
“Don’t even think that! Don’t let yourself think that—and don’t say anything about it in front of your mother. She’s counting on us, Paul. We’re the men here.”
He released the boy with one last gentle squeeze.
“As a matter of fact...as a matter of fact, we may be out of the danger zone. We might be two or three hundred miles from where the bomb drops. We may not even know that it’s dropped—”
“Pop,” Paul interrupted. “We’re forty miles from New York. If they dropped a hydrogen bomb. He looked into his father’s eyes. “We’ll know it all right, pop.”
Stockton stared at this replica of himself, filled with love and pride. “If we do, Paul,” he said quietly, “then we do, that’s all—but for the time being our job is to stay alive and you’re not going to stay alive running out in the night trying to find a bicycle.”
Grace’s voice came from the kitchen, shaky and high. “Bill?” She appeared at the dining-room door. “Bill, there’s no more water.”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” Stockton said. “I think we’ve got enough now anyway Bring a jug with you, Grace. Paul and I will come back up for the rest of it.”
They carried the jugs and the rest of the things down the basement steps and through the door of the shelter, which was at the far end of the cellar.
Grace put down the jug and looked around the small room. Bunk beds, can-laden shelves, the generator, stacks of books and magazines, medical supplies. Suddenly their whole existence had telescoped into this tiny place loaded with things that up to half an hour ago had had no great significance. Half an hour ago! Grace suddenly recollected that i
n thirty minutes everything on earth had turned upside down. Every value, every belief, every frame of reference, had suddenly ceased to exist or had taken on a vast life-or-death importance. She watched her husband and Paul leave the shelter and start up the steps toward the kitchen.
Stockton stopped halfway up.
“I forgot,” he said. “There’s a five-gallon can of gasoline in the garage. Paul, you run out and get that. We’ll need it for the generator.”
“Right, pop.”
Stockton looked briefly across the cellar toward the open door of the shelter. Grace sat on one of the bunk beds staring at nothing. He hesitated a moment, then hurried up to the kitchen, picked up two of the three remaining jugs of water, and went downstairs again.
Grace looked up as he entered the shelter. Her voice was a whisper. “Bill...Bill, this is so incredible. We must be dreaming. It can’t really be happening.”
Stockton knelt down in front of her and took both her hands.
“I just told Paul,” he said to her, “if it’s a bomb, there’s no certainty that it’ll land near us. And if it doesn’t—”
Grace pulled her hands away.
“But if it does,” she said. “If it hits New York, we’ll get it, too. All of it. The poison, the radiation—we’ll get it, too.”
“We’ll be in the shelter, Grace,” Stockton said, “And with any luck at all, we’ll survive. We’ve got enough food and water to last us at least two weeks...maybe even longer, if we use it wisely.”
Grace looked at him blankly. “And then what?” she asked, in a still voice. “Then what, Bill? We crawl out of here like gophers to tiptoe through all the rubble up above. The rubble and the ruins and the bodies of our friends...”
She stopped, and stared down at the floor. When she looked up at him again, there was a different expression on her face—deeper than panic, more enveloping than fear—resignation, abject surrender.
“Why is it so necessary that we survive?” she asked in a flat voice. “What’s the good of it, Bill?—wouldn’t it be quicker and easier if we just...” She let the word dangle.
Paul’s voice called, “I got the gasoline, pop. Is that all you need from out here?”