Madame Atomos Strikes Back

by André Caroff

  André Caroff’s

  MADAME ATOMOS

  #3 - Madame Atomos Strikes Back

  Translated by

  Michael Shreve

  A Black Coat Press Book

  Introduction

  This volume collects the third installment of the saga of Madame Atomos, a series of 18 novels published between 1964 and 1970 in the “Angoisse” horror imprint of French publisher Fleuve Noir.1 Our introduction to Volume 1 contains a biography of its author, André Carpouzis, a.k.a. André Caroff (1924-2009). More information about Fleuve Noir and its popular brands of science fiction and horror can be found in the introductions to the other volumes translated from their imprints and published by Black Coat Press: Richard Bessière’s The Gardens of the Apocalypse, Gérard Klein’s The More in Time’s Eye and Kurt Steiner’s Ortog.

  The saga of Madame Atomos (her real name is Kanoto Yoshimuta) is about a brilliant but twisted middle-aged female Japanese scientist who is out for revenge against the United States for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—where she was born, and where her family died in the nuclear holocaust.

  Madame Atomos seeks to repay the United States by unleashing deadly new threats, such as radioactive zombies, giant spiders, a madness-inducing ray, flaming tornadoes, etc. The heroes opposing her are Smith Beffort of the FBI, Dr. Alan Soblen, and Yosho Akamatsu of the Japanese Secret Police.

  Now read on…

  Jean-Marc Lofficier

  MADAME ATOMOS STRIKES BACK

  Chapter I

  Peter Anton looked long and hard at the landscape in front of him. He moved his easel over a few feet, considered the result and sat on his folding stool with a sigh of satisfaction. Farther away, pretty much in the middle of the huge clearing, Lisa Anton was dozing on a deckchair. Her son, Bob, and her daughter, Bette, both students at the College of San Jose, were boning up on the next day’s classes without too much enthusiasm.

  That Sunday, September 13, was particularly beautiful and, below them the water in the San Francisco Bay shimmered in the sun. The Anton family had been there since the morning and had just emptied the picnic basket packed for lunch.

  Peter Anton was an engineer and his wife worked on the editorial staff of a Santa Clara newspaper. Bob was finishing his second year of medical school while his sister, engaged now for a few months, was starting to really dislike school. This is to say that the Antons lived a very practical life. Far from daydreams and speculations, they were used to analysis, calculation and logical thinking. Of course Peter painted to relax, but this artistic side of his personality was ruined by the stiffness of his brush strokes in which you could see a man used to getting things done without a hitch. And Bette Anton was certainly feeling a little down in the dumps. Her fiancé was on a business trip for two weeks. Going out with her parents was no fun and made the young lady feel like she had been left far behind and she was a little bitter about it. But this did not in any way stop her from judging things clearly.

  It was exactly 3 p.m. when she had a weird feeling. The air was warm and there was no wind; it was completely silent under the blue sky. So, nothing had changed from one minute to the next and yet Bette Anton was convinced that something had just happened. She looked up, saw Mount Hamilton rising up not far from the clearing and then her gaze swept over the trees and finally feel upon the canvas her father was painting.

  Then the young lady had a shock. She jumped up, went up to the easel and looked dumbfounded at the red trees, the black sky and the trunks that the amateur artist was painting yellow with meticulous care. “What are you doing, dad?” she muttered.

  Peter stared at his daughter. “It seems to me that it needs no explanation,” he said, pretending to be annoyed. “Maybe I’m no genius, but until now, no one has asked what my splashes mean!”

  “But, come on,” Bette said, “it’s a joke!”

  Peter broke out laughing. “And to top it all off you disrespect me,” he said good-naturedly. “Where do you see a joke hiding in this wonderful landscape, eh? Oh, my sweet little girl, I get the feeling that your lover’s absence is making you mean!”

  Bette shrugged her shoulders, turned around and went back the way she came. Lisa Anton opened her eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asked softly and then, before her daughter could answer, she added, “My God, it’s hot! You’d almost think that the sun was beating down hotter than it was just a minute ago… What’s your father doing?”

  “He’s painting red trees.”

  “Funny,” Lisa showed a total lack interest. “Aren’t you hot, Bette?”

  “No…”

  Suddenly Bob, who was reading off to the side, threw his book carelessly on the grass—which was surprising because it was pretty expensive—pulled on his sweater and declared, “It feels like it’s cooling down, doesn’t it, Rembrandt?”

  Peter glanced menacingly at him. “You need vitamins, son,” he said ironically. “I’m certain the temperature has risen several degrees since noon… Look, I’m sweating.”

  Bob went up to him while straightening his sweater. “You have high blood pressure,” he started, “it’s bad…” and then he saw the picture. He whistled in admiration and continued with obvious sincerity. “Wow, pop, that’s really good!”

  Humbled, Peter looked down. He was blushing and smiling.

  “I’ve never seen such a good painting,” Bob went on. “How did you manage to get those extraordinary colors?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter confessed and looked a little surprised himself. “I think it happened all by itself… and yet, I see that it’s by far my best painting! Damn but it’s hot in this clearing! Hey! Did you just throw your book, Bob?”

  The young man waved it off. “It’s not very interesting. In fact, I’m starting to get a little tired of school. At my age it’s a waste of time. You know, pop, I’m thinking of dropping out.”

  Bob had never talked like that before, but his father did not seem surprised with his sudden turnaround. He mopped his brow, unbuttoned his sweat-stained shirt and said, “I haven’t felt heat like this in years… My brush is burning!”

  He dropped the paintbrush, looked at his hand and saw that it had burn marks. “Wow!”

  “And then,” Bob stretched out on the grass, “sick people bug me. I hate when they moan and groan about nothing. I wouldn’t make a good doctor. I really think I should do something else.”

  “I wonder how a stick of wood could burn me,” Peter mumbled.

  Bob chuckled, “Right now I don’t want to work.”

  “It’s just a stick,” Peter repeated.

  Bob put his arm under his head. “Work,” he said with conviction, “is tiring. Truthfully, I know nothing more tiring…”

  Peter shook his head with a stupid look on his face and gnashed his teeth. “No! Getting burned by a stick!”

  While this conversation of the deaf went on, Lisa Anton was undressing. Her hands also had burn marks where the armrests of the deckchair had touched her skin, but she went on with a blank stare, paying no attention to it. “I’m hot,” she said. “When I get all these old rags off, I’ll feel a lot better…”

  Normally Lisa would avoid saying “old rags”. She always spoke with refinement and never, never got naked right in the middle of a clearing. But then again, no one took offense. Peter was still studying his hands, Bob was talking to himself and Bette was relentlessly combing her hair. Each of them was ignoring the others and totally preoccupied with themselves and their individual problems. No one was yelling or making a fuss.

  When Lisa was completely naked, she suddenly felt cold and started putting her clothes back on, muttering under her breath. Bette could not comb her hair enough to her liking and started o
ver and over again, gazing at herself in the window of the car that was parked nearby.

  Thus the Anton family kept busy for hours at these preposterous tasks and at the end of the afternoon, the obvious slowing down of their movements showed only that their condition was getting much worse. Around 7 p.m. Peter passed out. A few minutes later, his wife, who had just got dressed again, also fainted. Naturally neither Bob nor his sister batted an eyebrow.

  There was a moment of calm and then the girl just collapsed and did not move.

  Bob was the one whose body held out for the longest, but this was surely due to the fact that he had been lying down for hours and his muscles were less tired. In spite of all this, however, he lost consciousness around 8 p.m. while the night was slowly stretching over the mountain.

  When the moon rose, its rays cast an ominous light on the clearing. The shadow of the easel lay on the ground bisected by the unfinished canvas that gave it the appearance of a cross…

  A park ranger named Seamus Holley discovered the Antons the next morning, September 14, around 9 a.m. After confirming that they were alive, he ran off to the closest aid station and immediately alerted the San Jose police.

  The Antons were taken to the hospital and put in intensive care. The car, the picnic and outdoor equipment as well as the easel were all impounded. Because the authorities had no reason to keep the news secret, special editions came out, but of course only in the local papers.

  At the end of the morning the Anton family awoke from the coma they had been plunged in since the night before. The doctors noticed right away that their patients, although absolutely fine on a physical level, presented disturbing mental troubles that were very similar to psychasthenia. This sudden mental debility was characterized mainly by an obsessive repetition of movements or words.

  Peter was dumbfounded at having been burned by his paintbrush handle that was, he specified, made of wood. Bette, even though her comb had been taken away, kept combing her hair with her curved fingers. Bob repeated that he was going to leave school, that work was tiring, that he was good like this and did not want to do anything. Lisa claimed that she was dying of heat and threw off her blanket. A little later she said the temperature was dropping and disappeared under the covers with her teeth chattering.

  The specialists labored over them until evening and finally released this report, which was almost a death sentence: The Anton family, according to all evidence, has completely lost its mind. None of the patients are able to answer a question or pay any attention to anything but their obsession. It is as if the mental life of these beings was suddenly blocked after some particularly violent emotional shock whose cause, for the moment, is impossible to explain. Consequently, the advice of the six doctors whose names are below is that there is no choice but to transfer the patients immediately to a psychiatric clinic…

  Of course the report was instantaneously communicated to the public by the newspapers, radio and television. The accident (for, it could be nothing else) started a wildfire that pushed into second place the election campaigns of the two candidates running for President of the United States.

  When there is a train wreck, a plane crash or a car accident, the courts as well as the insurance companies send an investigating committee to the site of the drama. Strangely enough, when it came to the Antons, no one considered it any use to examine the clearing where it all began and as a result the place stayed open to the public.

  On Tuesday the 15, or 48 hours after the event took place, around 50 curious people were in the clearing. They had come to see. As there was nothing very exciting to look at, many of them got back in their cars and went home to the city.

  At 3 p.m. two families thought of changing the trip into a picnic and found themselves lords of the land, flooded with a veritable summer sun. All of them were younger than Peter and Lisa Anton. The oldest child was not yet ten and the youngest was sleeping with clenched fists in its portable cradle. There was Eddy Timber, a sales representative in a pharmacy, his wife June and their three daughters, one of whom was in the cradle; and Samuel Turner, a businessman from Sacramento on Stockton Boulevard, his wife Eva and their two sons, the oldest of whom was not yet ten…

  So there were nine, perfectly healthy human beings having a good time—except for the littlest Timber in the cradle apparently—when the park ranger Seamus Holley came by around 3:30 p.m. Seamus made his rounds on foot. He followed his route, climbed up to the 812 mark, two miles from the Lick Observatory, and met his colleague Dillon. The two rangers drank a cup of coffee in the aid station located there, smoked a cigarette and talked about the good weather and the rain. Then they went their separate ways.

  Seamus made a wide hook, keeping to the south side of Mount Hamilton and then, driven by an irresistible premonition, he decided to finish his day by passing by the clearing. As he got closer, the ranger pricked up his ears, but did not heard a sound. He figured that the group he had seen two hours before had left. Still, he continued towards it because in coming back this way, at this point, he had lost a lot of time. When he finally reached the clearing, he could not stop himself from screaming.

  There were eight bodies scattered on the ground and a little baby in the cradle was crying faintly, although could not see it. Seamus shook one of the men and checked to see if he was still alive. Then, with the recent experience in mind, he took the baby in his arms and ran to the telephone in the aid station. While he was alerting the police, the baby smiled at him. Seamus was sure that he had saved its life and that the infant was not at all affected by the awful infliction. He was relieved and happy for this so he yelled into the microphone, “Hurry up! I have a John Doe in my arms who’s crying for a bottle!”

  And on second thought he added for himself, “A boy doesn’t pee when you touch him… I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a Jane Doe…”

  That same evening doctors confirmed Seamus Holley’s on-the-spot diagnostic: little Shirley Timber, eight months old, had escaped the terrible mental problems that affected her family and the Turners. While the new group of patients was being taken to the clinic where they were treating the Antons, the papers, radio and television went crazy again. They broadcast far-fetched hypotheses, each one wilder than the last, explaining nothing but managing to keep the public waiting with bated breath.

  In his office in New York a man almost immediately guessed who was responsible for these dramatic events. His name was Smith Beffort, he was an FBI agent and he had been fighting for more than a year and half against the sinister Madame Atomos.

  Of course the Japanese woman had been left for dead six months earlier at the bottom of Lake Whitney2, but in spite of all their dredging they never found her body. Therefore, considering the strangeness and suddenness of the harm that hit the 12 victims on Mount Hamilton, Beffort would have bet his life that Madame Atomos had just launched a new attack against the population of the United States.

  Knowing the methods of his enemy, Beffort was only waiting for confirmation. It came at 11 p.m. through the newscaster Doug Willington. The man was experienced and levelheaded. In the course of his career he had reported a number of catastrophes, but even after the death of President Kennedy his mask was not as downtrodden as it was this evening. Willington unfolded a typed sheet of paper and his voice changed, “Dear viewers, you know that I am here to announce some very bad news. I hope you will forgive my abruptness, but it is absolutely necessary that those in charge of your safety be informed of the return of Madame Atomos.”

  Willington balked for a minute and Beffort was surprised at the unbelievable silence that had just descended upon New York. Without needing to budge from his chair he saw the stopped cars with the drivers listening to their radios, other people glued to their television screens, and he easily imagined that the deep, unbearable silence must have fallen over the entire country.

  Willington wiped away the beads of sweat on his forehead and spoke in a distant voice, “Here, in fact, is the message that the W
hite House has just received and that I have been asked to read to you: The submarine in Lake Whitney was a con, Mister Beffort! As you know I have just unleashed my first attack on the slopes of Mount Hamilton and you can see how effective it was! From now on I will show no mercy and soon the United States will succumb to insanity! Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Compliments of Madame Atomos.

  Smith Beffort turned off his radio, threw on his coat and raced down the stairs. Since everything was starting over again, the FBI, represented by him, Beffort, whom Madame Atomos had addressed personally, was going to have to fight to the death!

  Chapter II

  The special aircraft carrying Smith Beffort and Dr. Alan Soblen landed softly on the runway of the Oakland International Airport and came to a halt near a group of police cars. Beffort got off the plane, made sure Soblen was following him and headed directly for Max Ritter, the bureau chief of the FBI in San Francisco. The two men shook hands and Beffort asked, “What’s then meaning of bringing out the police force?”

  Ritter’s laugh had no joy in it. “Boss’ orders. Seems that old lady Atomos wants your hide.”

  “That’s nothing new,” Beffort grumbled. “What’s new here?”

  Ritter greeted Dr. Soblen and said bitterly, “Absolutely nothing. The sick are still in the clinics and the doctors can’t shake them out of their lethargy. They’re practically the living dead! They have to be fed, washed, cared for like little babies…”

  He trailed off and Soblen took the opportunity to say, “I have followed the matter since the beginning and I know that the specialists cannot explain the cause of the illness, but it seems to me that right now we should be finding out why so many of the patients burned their hands. Do you have any details on that?”