Alas, Babylon

by Pat Frank

  Ben Franklin yelled, "Hey, Caleb!"

  Caleb's face bobbed up. "Hi, Ben," he called. "Come on out."

  "What're you catching?"

  "Ain't catchin,' just jiggin'."

  Randy said, "You can go out on the dock if you want, Ben, but I'll probably need your help in a while."

  Ben looked surprised. "Me? You'll need my help?"

  "Yep," Randy said. "A man of the house has to do a man's work."

  Preacher Henry dropped his reins, yelled, "Ho!" and Balaam stopped. Preacher walked across the dusty field, to be planted in corn in February, to meet Randy. Malachai came out of the barn. He had been under the Model-A. Two-Tone stopped rocking, put down his can of beer, and left the porch. Inside, Missouri stopped singing.

  Randy walked toward the back door and the Henrys converged on him, their faces apprehensive. Malachai said, "Hello, Mister Randy. Hope everything's all right."

  "About as right as they could be, considering. Every­thing okay here?"

  "Just like always. How's the little girl? Missouri told me she was about blinded."

  "Peyton's better. She can see now and in a few days she'll be allowed outside again. No permanent injury."

  "The Lord be merciful!" said Preacher Henry. "The Lord has spared us, for the now. I knew it was a­comin', for it was all set down, Alas, Babylon!" Preacher's eyes rolled upward. Preacher was big­framed, like Malachai, but now the muscles had shrunk around his bones, and age and troubles deeply wrinkled and darkened his face.

  Randy addressed his words to Preacher because Preacher was the father and head of the household. "We don't have water in our house. I want to take up some pipe out of the grove and hook it on to the arte­sian system."

  "Yes, sir, Mister Randy! I'll drop my diskin' right now and help."

  "No, you stick with the disking, Preacher. I thought maybe Malachai and Two-Tone could help."

  Two-Tone, who was called Two-Tone because the right side of his face was two shades lighter than the left side, looked stricken. "You mean now?" Two-Tone said.

  Malachai grinned. "You heard the man, Two-Tone. He means now."

  The three men, with Ben Franklin and Caleb helping , required two hours to lift the pipes and connect the artesian line with the water system in the pumphouse.

  It was the hardest work Randy remembered since climbing and digging in Korea. The palm of his right hand was blistered from the pipe wrench, and a swatch of skin flapped loose. He was exhausted and wet with sweat despite the chill of evening. He was grateful when Malachai offered to carry the tools back to the garage. He said, "Thanks, Malachai. You know that two hundred bucks I loaned you?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Just consider the debt canceled."

  They both grinned.

  Randy and Ben Franklin went back into the house. Randy turned on the tap in the kitchen sink. It gurgled, coughed, sputtered, and then spurted water.

  "Isn't it beautiful!" Helen said.

  Randy washed the grime from his hands, the water stinging the broken blisters. He filled a glass. The arte­sian water still smelled like rotten eggs. He gulped it. It tasted wonderful.

  Just after dawn on the third day after The Day a heli­copter floated over Fort Repose and then turned toward the upper reaches of the Timucuan. Randy and Helen, hearing it, ran up to the captain's walk on the roof. It passed close overhead, and they distinguished the Air Force insignia.

  This was also the day of disastrous overabundance.

  That morning, when Helen apprehensively opened the freezer, she found several hundred pounds of choice and carefully wrapped meat floating in a noxious sea of melted ice cream and liquified butter. As any housewife would do under the circumstances, she wept.

  This disaster was perfectly predictable, Randy real­ized. He had been a fool. Instead of buying fresh meat, he should have bought canned meats by the case. If there was one thing he certainly should have forseen, it was the loss of electricity. Even had Orlando escaped, the electricity would have died within a few weeks or months. Electricity was created by burning fuel oil in the Orlando plants. When the oil ran out, it could not be replenished during the chaos of war. There was no longer a rail system, or rail centers, nor were tankers plying the coasts on missions of civilian supply. It was Sam Hazzard's guess that few major seaports had es­caped. After the first wave of missiles from the subma­rines, they could still be taken out by atomic torpedoes, atomic mines, or bombs or missiles from aircraft. It was Sam Hazzard's guess that what had been the great ports were now great, water-filled craters. Even those sections of the country which escaped destruction entirely would not long have lights. Their power would last only as long as fuel stocks on hand.

  They stared into the freezer, Helen sniffling, Randy numb, Ben Franklin fascinated. Ben dipped his finger into a pool of liquid chocolate and licked it. "Still tastes good but it isn't even cool," he said. "All that ice cream! I could've been eating ice cream all yesterday; Peyton, too."

  Helen stopped sniffling. "The meat won't spoil for another twenty-four hours. I'm going to salvage what I can."

  "How?" Randy asked.

  "Boil it, salt it, preserve it, pickle it. I've got a dozen Mason jars in the closet. There may be more around somewhere. Perhaps you can get some downtown, Randy."

  "Town and back means a half-gallon of gas," Randy said.

  "It's worth it, if you can just find a few. And we'll need more salt."

  "Okay, I'll give it a try. Maybe I can find jars at the hardware store, if Beck is still keeping it open."

  Helen reached into the freezer and lifted out two steaks, six-pounders two inches thick. She brought out two more steaks, even thicker. "Steaks, steaks, steaks. Everywhere steaks. How many steaks can Graf eat to­night? How does Graf like his steaks, charcoal-broiled?"

  Graf, lying in the doorway between kitchen and util­ity room, ears cocked and alert at sound of his name, sniffed the wonderful odor of ripening meat in quantity.

  "He likes 'em and I like 'em," Randy said, "and we've got a few sacks of charcoal in the garage. So let's have a party. A steak party to end all steak parties. Lit­erally, that is. We'll have the Henrys, and the McGoverns."

  "I've always believed in mixing crowds at my par­ties," Helen said. "But what about mixing colors?"

  "It'll be all right. I'll ask Florence Wechek and Alice Cooksey and Sam Hazzard too. And Dan Gunn, if I can find him. And I'll scrounge around for more charcoal. It'll be a relief from cooking in the fireplace."

  "Don't forget the salt," Helen said. "We're going to need a lot to save this meat."

  On this, the third day after The Day, the character of Fort Repose had changed. Every building still stood, no brick had been displaced, yet all was altered, especially the people.

  Earlier, Randy had noticed that some of the plate-glass store windows had cracked under the shock waves from Tampa and Orlando. Now the windows of a num­ber of stores were shattered entirely, and glass littered the sidewalks. From alleyways came the sour smell of uncollected garbage.

  Most of the parking spaces on Yulee and St. Johns incongruously were occupied, but the cars themselves were empty, and several had been stripped of wheels.

  There was no commerce. There were few people. Al­together, Randy saw only four or five cars in motion. Those who were not out of gas hoarded what remained in their tanks against graver emergencies to come.

  The pedestrians he saw seemed apprehensive, hurry­ing along on missions private and vital, shoulders hunched, eyes directed dead ahead. There were no women on the streets, and the men did not walk in pairs, but alone and warily. Randy saw several ac­quaintances who must have recognized his car. Not one smiled or waved.

  Four young men, strangers, idled in front of the drugstore. The store's windows were broken, but Randy saw the grim, unhappy face of Old Man Hock­statler, the druggist, at the door. He was staring at the young men, and they were elaborately ignoring him. They were waiting for something, Randy felt. They were waiting like
vultures. They were outwaiting Old Man Hockstatler.

  Randy pulled into the parking lot alongside Ajax Super-Market. It appeared to be empty. The front door was closed and locked but Randy stepped through a smashed window. The interior looked as if it had been stripped and looted. All that remained of the stock, he noticed immediately, were fixtures, dishes, and plastics on the home-hardware shelves. Significantly nobody had bothered to buy or take electric cords, fuses, or light bulbs. As for food, there seemed to be none left.

  Randy tried to remember where the salt counter had been, but salt was something one bought without thought, like razor blades or toothpaste, not bothering about it until it was needed. He thought of razor blades. He was low on them. Finally he examined the guidance signs hanging over the empty shelves. He saw, "Salt, Flour, Grits, Sugar," over a wall to his left. The space where these commodities should have been was bare. Not a single bag of salt remained.

  As Randy turned to leave he heard a noise, wood scraping on concrete, in the stockroom in the rear of the store. He opened the stockroom door and found himself looking into the muzzle of a small, shiny revolver. Be­hind the gun was the skinny, olive-colored face of Pete Hernandez. Pete lowered the gun and jammed it into a hip pocket. "Gees, Randy," he said, "I thought it was some goddam goon come back to clean out the rest of the joint."

  "All I wanted was some salt."

  "Salt? You out of salt already?"

  "No. We want to salt down some meat. We thought we could save part of the meat in the freezer." Randy saw a grocery truck drawn up to the loading platform behind the store. It was half-filled with cases, and Pete had been pushing other cases down the ramp. So Pete had saved something. "What happened here?" Randy asked.

  "We'd sold out of just about everything by closing time yesterday. When I tried to close up they wouldn't leave. They wouldn't pay, neither. They started hollerin' and laughin' and grabbin'. I locked myself in back here and that's how come I've got a little something left." Pete winked. "Bet I can get some price for these canned beans in a couple of weeks."

  Randy sensed that Pete, perhaps because he had never had much of it, still coveted money. He said, "I'll give you a price for salt right now."

  Pete's eyes flicked sideways. There was a cart in the corner. It was filled with sacks - sugar and salt. Pete said, "I've hardly got enough salt to keep things goin' at home. We're in the same boat you are, you know. Freezer full of meat. Maybe Rita will be saltin' meat down too."

  Randy brought out his wallet. Pete looked at it. Pete looked greedy. Randy said, "What'll you take for two ten-pound sacks of salt?"

  "I ain't got much salt left."

  "I'll give you ten dollars a pound for salt."

  "That's two hundred dollars. Bein' it's you, okay."

  Randy gave him four fifties.

  Pete felt the bills. "Ten bucks a pound for salt!" he said. "Ain't that something!"

  Randy cradled the sacks under each arm. "Better go out the back way," Pete said. "Don't tell nobody where you got it. And Randy-"

  "Yes?"

  "Rita wonders when you're coming to see her. She's all the time talking about you. When Rita latches on to a guy she don't let go in a hurry. You know Rita."

  Randy rejected the easy evasion of excuses. One of the things he hadn't liked about Rita was her posses­siveness, and another was her brother. He was irritated because he had placed himself in the position of being forced to discuss personal matters with Pete. He said, "Rita and I are through."

  "That's not what Rita says. Rita says that other girl - that Yankee blonde - won't look so good to you now. Rita says this war's going to level people as well as cities."

  Randy knew it was purposeless to talk about Rita, or anything, with Pete Hernandez. He said, "So long, Pete," and left the market.

  Beck's Hardware was still open, and Mr. Beck, look­ing tired and bewildered, presided over rows of empty shelves. On The Day itself everything that could be im­mediately useful, from flashlights and batteries to can­dles and kerosene lanterns, had vanished. In the continu­ing buying panic, almost everything else had disappeared. "Only reason I'm still here," Mr. Beck explained, "is because I've been coming here every weekday for twenty-two years and I don't know what else to do."

  In the warehouse Beck found a dusty carton of Ma­son jars. "People don't go in much for home canning nowadays," Beck said. "I'd just about forgotten these."

  "How much?" Randy asked.

  Beck shook his head. "Nothing. That safe is full up to the top with money. That's all I've got left - money. Ain't that funny - nothing but money?" Mr. Beck laughed. "Know what, I could retire."

  Randy drove on to the Medical Arts Building. Here, he had expected to find activity. He found none, but he did see Dan Gunn's car in the parking lot.

  There were reddish brown stains on the sidewalk and the green concrete steps. The glass in the front door was shattered and the door itself swung open. The waiting room was ominously empty. There was no one at the reception desk. Randy possessed a country dweller's keen sense of smell. Now he smelled many alarming odors - disinfectant, ether, spilled drugs, spilled blood, stale urine. He called, "Dan! Hey, Dan!"

  "I'm back here. Who's that?" Dan's voice emerged muffled after echoing through a corridor.

  "It's me - Randy."

  "Come on back. I'm in my office."

  In the corridor's gloom Randy stumbled over a pair of feet, and he stepped back, shivering. A body lay athwart the doorway of the examination room, legs in the corridor, torso in the room, face up, arms outstretched. The face was half blown away, but when put together with the uniform, it was recognizable as Cappy Foracre, Fort Repose's Chief of Police.

  Randy hurried on. A fireproof door hung crazily from one hinge. It had been axed open. Behind the door was the laboratory and drug storage. The smell of chemicals that came from the laboratory was choking and overpowering. Within, Randy glimpsed a hillock of smashed jars and bottles. The clinic had been wrecked, insanely and deliberately.

  He was relieved to find Dan Gunn standing in his office. Dan's face was more deeply shadowed with fa­tigue and a two-day growth of beard, his shirt was torn, and he looked dirty, but he apparently was unhurt. Two medical bags were open on his desk. He was examining and sorting vials and bottles. Randy said, "What hap­pened?"

  "A carload of addicts - hopheads - came through last night. About three this morning, rather. Jim Bloom­field was here, sleeping on the couch in his office. We'd split up the duty. He took one night, I took the next. You see, with no phones people don't know what else to do except rush to the clinic in an emergency. Anyway, the addicts - there were six of them, all armed - came in and woke Jim up. They wanted a fix. Poor old Jim was something of a puritan. If he'd given them a fix he might've got rid of them."

  Dan picked up a hypodermic syringe and slowly squeezed the plunger with his tremendous fingers. "I'd have given 'em a fix all right - three grains of morphine and that would've finished them." Dan dropped the syringe into one of the bags and shook his head. "That probably wouldn't have been smart either. Three grains would kill a normal man but it wouldn't faze an addict. Anyway, Jim told them to go to hell. They beat him up. They emptied these bags and found what they were after. That wasn't enough. They took the fire ax and broke into the lab and drug storage. They cleaned us out of narcotics - everything, not only morphine but all the barbiturates and sodium amytal and pentothal and stimulants like benzedrine and dexedrine. What they didn't take they smashed."

  "What about Cappy Foracre?" Randy asked.

  "Some woman came in and heard the commotion and ran out and got Cappy. He was sleeping in the firehouse. Cappy and Bert Anders - you know, that kid as­sistant - came screaming over here. Literally, screaming, with their siren going, the darn fools. So the hopheads were set for them. There was a battle. More like a fire fight, an ambush, I guess. Cappy caught a shotgun load in the face. Anders got one in the belly. Cappy was dead when I got here, about fifteen minutes later."


  "And old Doc Bloomfield?" Randy asked.

  Dan swayed and rested his palms on the desk. His head bent. When he spoke it was in a monotone. "I drove Anders and Jim Bloomfield to the hospital in San Marco. I couldn't operate here, you see. No anesthesia. Couldn't even sterilize my instruments. Everything sep­tic. Young Anders was dead when I got there. Jim was still alive. I thought he was going to be all right. Beaten up, maybe a rib or two caved in, maybe concussion. Still, he was able to tell me, quite coherently, what had happened. Then he slipped away from me. I don't know why. He had lived a long time and after this thing hap­pened maybe he didn't want to live any longer. Maybe he didn't want to belong to the human race any more. He resigned. He died."

  Randy said, "The bastards! Where did they come from? Where did they go?"

  Dan Gunn shivered. The night had been chilly and it had warmed only slightly during the day and of course there was no heat in the building. He shook his head and slowly straightened, like a great storm-beset ship that has been wallowing in the trough of the sea but will not founder. "Where did they come from?" he said, slipping on his coat. "Maybe they broke out of a state hospital. But more likely they were hoods from St. Louis or Chicago driving to Miami or Tampa for the season. Probably they were addicts as well as pushers. The war caught them between sources of supply. So by last night they were wild for junk, and the quickest way to get it was to detour to some little town like this and raid the clinic. As to where they're going, I don't care so long as it's far from here."

  Randy resolved never again to leave the house unless he was armed. "You should carry a gun, Dan. I am, from now on."

  Dan said, "No! No, I'm not going to carry a gun. I've spent too many years learning how to save lives to start shooting people now. I'm not worried about pun­ishment for the addicts. They carry a built-in torture chamber. Eventually - I'd say within a few weeks - no matter how many people they kill they'll find no drugs. After this big jag they're bound to have withdrawal sickness. They will die, horribly I hope."