Alas, Babylon

by Pat Frank

  But Sam Hazzard's principal hobby was listening to shortwave radio. He was not a ham operator. He had no transmitter. He listened. He did not chatter. He monitored the military frequencies and the foreign broadcasts and, with his enormous background of mili­tary and political knowledge; he kept pace with the world outside Fort Repose. Sometimes, perhaps, he was a bit ahead of everyone.

  It was ten to eleven when Randy knocked on Ad­miral Hazzard's door. It opened immediately. The Admiral was a taut, neatly made man who had weighed 133 when he boxed for the Academy and who weighed 133 now. He was dressed in a white turtleneck sweater, flannels, and boat shoes. A halo of cottony hair encircled his sunburned bald spot. Otherwise, he was not saintly. His nose had been flattened in some long-forgotten brawl in Port Said or Marseilles. His gray eyes, canopied by heavy white brows, were red-rimmed, and angry. For the Admiral, this had been a day of frustration, help­lessness, and hatred - hatred for the unimaginative, purblind, selfish fools who had not believed him, and frustration because on this day of supreme danger and need, his lifetime of training and experience was not and could not be put to use. The Admiral said, "I saw your headlights coming down the road. Come in." He squinted at Helen.

  "My sister-in-law, Helen Bragg," Randy said.

  "An evil day to receive a beautiful woman," the Ad­miral said, his voice surprisingly mild and mannered to issue from such a pugnacious face. "Come on in to my Combat Plot, and listen to the war, if such a massacre can be called a war."

  He led them to his den. A heavily planked work­bench ran along the wall under the windows overlook­ing the river. On this bench was a large, black, professional-looking shortwave receiver, a steaming coffee-maker, notebooks and pencils. The radio screeched with power, static, interference, and occasional words in the almost unintelligible language of conflict.

  On two other walls, cork-covered, were pinned maps - the polar projection and the Eurasian land mass on one wall, a military map of the United States on the other.

  A hoarse voice broke through the static: "This is Adelaide Six-Five-One. I am sitting on a skunk at Al­pha Romeo Poppa Four. Skunk at Alpha Romeo Poppa Four."

  A different voice replied immediately: "Adelaide Six-Five-One, this is Adelaide. Hold one."

  There was silence for a moment, and then the second voice continued: "Adelaide Six-Five-One-Adelaide. Have relayed your message to Hector. He is busy but will be free in ten to fifteen minutes. Squat on that skunk and wait for Hector."

  "Adelaide from Adelaide Six-Five-One. Charley."

  Helen sat down. For the first time that day, she was showing fatigue. The Admiral said, "Coffee?"

  "I'd love a cup," she said.

  Randy said, "Sam, what was that on the radio? Part of the war?"

  The Admiral poured coffee before he replied. "A big part of it, for us. Right now I'm tuned to a Navy and Air Force ASW frequency in the five megacycle band."

  "ASW?"

  "Anti-submarine warfare. I'll interpret. A Navy super-Connie with a saucer radome has located a skunk - an enemy submarine - at coordinates Alpha Romeo Poppa Four. I happen to know that's about three hundred miles off Norfolk. The radar picket has called home base - Adelaide - and Adelaide is sending Hector to knock off the skunk. Hector is one of our killer subs. But Hector is presently engaged. When he is free, he will communicate directly with Adelaide Six-­Five-One. The plane will give Hector a course and when he is in range Hector will cut loose with a homing torpedo and that will be the end of the skunk. We hope."

  "Who's winning?" Randy asked, aware that it was a ridiculous question.

  "Who's winning? Nobody's winning. Cities are dying and ships are sinking and aircraft is going in, but no­body's winning."

  Helen asked the question she had come to ask. "Did you hear Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown on the radio a while ago?"

  "Yes."

  "Where do you think she was speaking from?"

  The Admiral walked across the room and looked at the map of the United States. It was covered with ace­tate overlay and ten or twelve cities were ringed with red-crayon goose eggs, in the way that a unit position is marked on an infantry map. The Admiral scratched the white stubble on his chin and said, "I think Denver. Hunneker, the three-star she named Chief of Staff, was Army representative on NORAD, in Colorado Springs. Chances are that he was in Denver this morning, or she was in Colorado Springs, when the word came through that Washington had been atomized."

  Helen set down her coffee cup. Her fingers trembled. "You're sure that she couldn't have been in Omaha?"

  "Omaha!" said the Admiral. "That's the last place she'd be speaking from! You notice that whenever I've heard a broadcast, of any kind, that allowed me to iden­tify a city, I ringed it on the map. I've heard no ama­teurs talking from Omaha, and I haven't heard SAC since the attack. Ordinarily, I can pick up SAC right away. They're always talking on their single side band transmitters to bases out of the country. Their call sign was 'Big Fence.' I haven't heard 'Big Fence' all day on any frequency. And the enemy hates and fears SAC, more, even, than they fear the Navy, I'll admit. Scratch Omaha."

  Sam Hazzard noticed the effect of his words on Helen's expression; he recalled that Randy's brother, her hus­band, was an Air Force colonel, and he sensed that he had been tactless. "Your husband isn't in Omaha, is he, Mrs. Bragg?"

  "It's our home."

  "I'm terribly sorry that I said anything."

  A tear was quivering on her cheek. Her first, Randy thought. He felt embarrassed for Sam.

  Helen said, "There's nothing to be sorry about, Ad­miral. Mark expected Omaha would be hit, and so did I. That's why I'm here, with the children. But even if Omaha is gone, Mark may still be there, and all right. He had the duty this morning. He was in the Hole."

  "Oh, yes," the Admiral said. "The Hole. I've never been in it, but I've heard about it. A tremendous shel­ter, very deep. He may be perfectly safe. I sincerely hope so."

  "I'm afraid not," Helen said, "since you haven't heard any SAC signals."

  "They may have shifted communications or changed code names." The Admiral looked at his maps. "Be­sides, I'm only guessing. I'm just playing games with myself, trying to G-two a war with no action reports or intelligence. I do this because I haven't anything else to do. I just scramble around and move pins and make marks on the maps and try to keep myself from think­ing about Sam, Junior. He's a lieutenant JG with Sixth Fleet in the Med, if Sixth Fleet is still in the Med. I don't think it is. For the Russkies, it must have been like shooting frogs in a puddle." He turned to Helen again, "We inhabit the same purgatory, Mrs. Bragg, the dark level of not knowing."

  Randy asked a question. "What are the Russians say­ing? Can you still get Radio Moscow?"

  "I get a station that calls itself Radio Moscow in the twenty-five meter band. But it isn't Moscow. All the voices on the English-language broadcasts are different so we can be pretty certain Moscow isn't there any more. However, the Russian leaders all seem to be alive and well, and they issue the kind of statements you'd expect. The very fact that they are alive indicates that they took shelter before it started. They probably aren't anywhere close to a target area."

  "Couldn't the President have escaped?"

  "He probably had fifteen minutes' warning. He could have been in a helicopter and away. But in that fifteen minutes he had to make the big decisions, and so my guess is that he deliberately chose to stay in Washing­ton, either at his desk in the White House, or in the Pentagon Command Post. It was the same for the Joint Chiefs, and probably for the Secretarys of Defense and State. As to the other Cabinet members, they probably received it in their sleep, or were just getting up. Do you want to hear something strange?" The Admiral changed the wave length on his receiver. He said, "Now listen."

  All Randy heard was static.

  "You didn't hear anything, did you?" the Admiral; said. "Right now, on this band, you ought to be hearing the BBC, Paris, and Bonn. I haven't heard any of them all day. They must've truly clobber
ed England."

  "Then you do think we're finished?" Randy said.

  "Not at all. SAC may have been able to launch up to fifty percent of its aircraft, counting the planes they al­ways have airborne. And remember that the Navy does have a few missile submarines and the carriers must've got in some licks. Also, I'm pretty sure they weren't able to take out all our SAC bases, including the auxil­iaries. For all I know, the enemy may be finished."

  "Doesn't exactly hearten me."

  The lights went out in the room, the radio died, and at the same time the world outside was illuminated, as at midday. At that instant Randy faced the window and he would always retain, like a color photograph printed on his brain, what he saw - a red fox frozen against the Admiral's green lawn. It was the first fox he had seen in years.

  The white flashed back into a red ball in the south­east. They all knew what it was. It was Orlando, or McCoy Base or both. It was the power supply for Ti­mucuan County.

  Thus the lights went out, and in that moment civiliza­tion in Fort Repose retreated a hundred years.

  So ended The Day.

  [7]

  When nuclear fireballs crisped Orlando and the power plants serving Timucuan County, refrigeration stopped, along with electric cooking. The oil fur­naces, sparked by electricity, died. All radios were useless unless battery powered or in automobiles. Washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, fryers, toasters, roasters, vacuum cleaners, shavers, heaters, beaters - all stopped. So did the electric clocks, vibrating chairs, elec­tric blankets, irons for pressing clothes, curlers for hair.

  The electric pumps stopped, and when the pumps stopped the water stopped and when the water stopped the bathrooms ceased functioning.

  Not until the second day after The Day did Randy Bragg fully understand and accept the results of the loss of electricity. Temporary loss of power was nothing new in Fort Repose. Often, during the equinoctial storms, poles and trees came down and power lines were sev­ered. This condition rarely lasted for more than a day, for the repair trucks were out as soon as the wind abated and the roads became passable.

  It was hard to realize that this time the power plants themselves were gone. There could be no doubt of it. On Sunday and Sunday night a number of survivors from Orlando's suburbs drove through Fort Repose, foraging for food and gasoline. They could not be posi­tive of what had happened, except that the area of de­struction extended for eight miles from Orlando airport, encompassing College Park and Rollins College, and another explosion had centered on McCoy Air Force Base. The Orlando Conelrad stations had warned of an air raid just before the explosions, so it was presumed that this attack had not come from submarine-based missiles or ICBM's, but from bombers.

  Randy did not hear Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown again, or any further hard news or instructions on the clear channel stations on Sunday or Monday. He did hear WSMF announcing that it would be on the air only two minutes each hour thereafter, since it was operating on auxiliary power. He knew that the hospital in San Marco possessed an auxiliary diesel generator. He con­cluded that this source of power was being tapped, each hour on the hour, to operate the radio station.

  Each hour the county Conelrad station repeated­ warnings - boil all drinking water, do not drink fresh milk, do not use the telephone, and, in the Sunday morning hours after the destruction of Orlando, warn­ings to take shelter and guard against fallout and radia­tion. There had been no milk deliveries and the tele­phones hadn't worked since the first mushroom sprouted in the south; nor were there any actual shelters in Fort Repose. All Sunday, Randy insisted that Helen and the children stay in the house. He knew that any shelter, even a slate roof, insulation, walls and roof, was better than none. There was no time to dig. The time to dig had been before The Day. After Orlando, digging seemed wasted effort. Anyway, there were so many other things to do, each minor crisis demanding instant attention. While radiation was a danger, it could not be felt or seen, and therefore other dangers, and even an­noyances, seemed more imperative.

  At two o'clock Monday afternoon Helen was in Ran­dy's apartment, and they were listening to the hourly Conelrad broadcast, when Ben Franklin marched in and announced, "We're just about out of water."

  "That's impossible!" Randy said.

  "It's Peyton's fault," said Ben Franklin. "Every time she goes to the john she has to flush it. The tub in our bathroom is empty, and she's been dipping water out of mother's bathtub too."

  Randy looked at Helen. This was a mother's prob­lem.

  "Peyton's a fastidious little girl," Helen said. "After all, one of the first things a child learns is always to flush the john. What're we going to do?"

  Randy said, "For now, Ben Franklin and I will drive down to the dock and fill up what washtubs and buck­ets we have out of the river. You can't drink river water without boiling it but it'll be okay for the toilets. And from now on Peyton - all of us - can't afford to be so fastidious. We'll flush the toilets only twice a day. Then I guess we'll have to dig latrines out in the grove be­cause I can't haul water from the river forever. Matter of gasoline."

  Randy looked out on the grove, noticing a thin pow­der of dust on the leaves. There had been a long dry spell. The fine, clear, crisp days with low humidity were wonderful for people but bad for the orange crop. He would have to turn on the sprinklers in the grove.

  He slammed his fist on the bar counter and shouted, "I'm a damn fool! We've got all the water we want!"

  "Where?" Helen asked.

  "Right out there!" Randy waved his arms. "Artesian water; unlimited!"

  "But that's in the grove, isn't it?"

  "I'm sure we can pipe it into the house. After all, that's the same water the Henrys use every day. I think there are some big wrenches in the garage and Malachai will know how to do it. Come on, Ben, let's go over to the Henrys'."

  Randy and the boy walked down the old gravel and clay road that led from the garage through the grove and to the river. Randy's navels had been picked, but the Valencias were still on the trees. They would not be picked this year. Matching strides with Randy, Ben Franklin said, "I just thought of something."

  "Yes?"

  "I don't have to go to school any more.''

  "What makes you think you don't have to go to school? As soon as things get back to normal you're going to school, young feller. Want to grow up to be an ignoramus?"

  Ben Franklin scuffed a pebble, looked up sideways at Randy, and grinned. "What school?"

  "Why, the school in Fort Repose, of course, until you can go back to Omaha, or wherever your father is sta­tioned.

  Ben stopped. "Just a minute, Randy. I'm not fooling myself. Nobody's going back to Omaha, maybe ever. And I don't think I'll ever see Dad again. The Hole wasn't safe, you know. Maybe you think so. I know Mother does. But I'm not fooling myself, Randy, and don't you try to fool me."

  Randy put his hands on the boy's shoulders and looked into his face, measuring the depth of courage be­hind the brown eyes, finding it at least as deep as his own. "Okay, son," he said, "I'll level with you. I'll level with you, and don't you ever do anything less with me. I think Mark has had it. I think you're the man of the family from now on."

  "That's what Dad said."

  "Did he? Well, you're a man who still has to go to school. I don't know where, or when, or how. But as soon as school reopens in Fort Repose, or anywhere around, you go. You may have to walk."

  "Golly, Randy, walk! It's three miles to town."

  "Your grandfather used to walk to school in Fort Re­pose. When he was your age there weren't any school busses. When he couldn't hitch a ride in a buggy, or one of the early automobiles, he walked." Randy put his arm around the boy's shoulder. "Let's get going. I guess we'll both have to learn to walk again."

  They walked down to the dock, and then followed a trail that led through the dense hammock to the Henrys' cleared land.

  The Henrys' house was divided into four sections, representing four distinct periods in their fortunes and histo
ry. The oldest section had originally been a one­-room log cabin. It was the only surviving structure of what had once been the slave quarters, and Randy re­called that his grandfather had always referred to the Henrys' place as "the quarters." In recent years the cabin had been jacked up and a concrete foundation laid under the stout cypress logs. The logs, originally chinked with red clay, were bound together with white­washed mortar. It was now the Henrys' living room.

  Late in the nineteenth century a two-room pine shack had been added to the cabin. In the 'twenties another room, and a bath, more soundly constructed, had been tacked on. In the 'forties, after Two-Tone's marriage to Missouri, the house had been enlarged by a bedroom and a new kitchen, built with concrete block. It was a comfortable hodgepodge, its ugliness concealed under a patina of flame vine, bougainvillea, and hibiscus. A neat green bib of St. Augustine grass fell from the screened porch to the river bank and dock. In the back yard was a chicken coop and wired runs, a pig pen, and an ancient barn of unpainted cypress leaning wearily against a scabrous chinaberry tree. The barn housed Balaam, the mule, the Model-A, and a hutch of white rabbits.

  Fifty yards up the slope Preacher Henry and Balaam solemnly disked the land, moving silently and evenly, as if they perfectly understood each other. Caleb lay flat on his belly on the end of the dock, peering into the shadowed waters behind a piling, jigging a worm for bream. Two-Tone sat on the screened porch, rocking languidly and lifting a can of beer to his lips. From the kitchen came a woman's deep, rich voice, singing a spir­itual. That would be Missouri, washing the dishes. Hot, black smoke from burning pine knots issued from both brick chimneys. It seemed a peaceful home, in time of peace.