Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25)

by Fletcher, John

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  CITIES VAPORIZED ACROSS AMERICA

  It was the day the world had long dreaded. The Communists had finally made the big “nuclear” move. Devastation enveloped the entire world. Who would save humanity when the trusted leaders of government could no longer be trusted?

  In this riveting portrayal of the horrors of nuclear war, veteran sci- author Irving Cox shows his readers that it would be the “little people” who would survive. In the aftermath of nuclear horror it would be the little people who would band together to bring back peace and a semblance of sanity to a broken civilization in a world gone mad.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  JERRY BONHILL

  A young idealist, a leader—with a big body and big fists. He is the new beginning in a world rocked by a nuclear holocaust.

  CHERYL FINEBERG

  She found a friend in Jerry, this fiery, strong-willed redhead. Along with the rest of her generation, she inherited chaos!

  GEORGE KNIGHT

  A gentle Quaker whose ideals were the centerpiece of his life. Was he prepared to give his life in defense of peace?

  ANTON ZERGOFF

  He was a beast with a man’s body. He waded knee-deep in blood—but found no victory.

  DR. STEWART ROSWELL

  This brilliant educator stood face to face with the brutality he had previously only written of in his books.

  BORIS YOROVICH

  His strong principles gave him a change of heart about his role as an enemy invader.

  WILLIE CLAPPER

  This ex-minister was a traitor for profit. The Judas-Man who found contempt wherever he turned.

  ONE OF OUR CITIES IS MISSING

  By

  IRVING COX

  ARMCHAIR FICTION

  PO Box 4369, Medford, Oregon 97501

  The original text of this novel was first

  published by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.

  Armchair Edition, Copyright 2011, by Gregory J. Luce

  All Rights Reserved

  For more information about Armchair Books and products, visit our website at…

  www.armchairfiction.com

  Or email us at…

  armchairfiction@yahoo.com

  ORIGINAL COVER ART

  For some reason Irving Cox, Jr. is something of a mystery in science fiction circles. He wrote a large number of short stories in the 1950s, but no one seems to know that much about him and not even the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) lists a nationality for him. But he’s definitely a U.S. writer—born in Philadelphia in 1917. The “Introducing the Author” column in the July 1955 issue of Imagination clearly establishes this. Cox’s nuclear scare novel, “One of Our Cities is Missing” appeared in the April, 1958 issue of Amazing Stories. It was the featured novel, but the issue’s cover art had nothing to do with Cox’s story. So we had so search for a graphic that would work with Cox’s doomsday theme. We found one on the cover of the November 1957 issue of Amazing, and frankly it worked perfectly for Cox’s nuclear holocaust tale. It’s a beautiful (gasp!) rendition of an American city being blown sky high. It was created by science fiction artist extraordinaire, Ed Valigursky.

  Getting this cover ready for our paperback release of Armchair Fiction Double Novel D-25 was a bit of a chore. There was quite a bit of text to be removed, which definitely took some time, but the main problem here were dozens of tiny smudges and wear marks that each had to be cloned out individually using Photoshop. The final result, though, has a nice, rich appearance. What follows here are four different covers. First is the cover of the original issue of Amazing that Cox’s novel appeared in followed by three different stages of the cover we ended up using, the last being the final Armchair paperback cover from 2011.

  Greg Luce

  Editor-in-Chief

  Armchair Fiction

  Amazing Stories, April 1958 Issue

  Amazing Stories, November 1957 Issue

  Partially completed Armchair Double Novel cover

  Armchair Fiction Paperback Edition, 2011

  INTERIOR ILLUSTRATION #1

  Artist Unknown

  CHAPTER ONE

  The First Twelve Hours

  I. The City—Thursday, 6:50 P.M. Dr. Stewart Roswell

  THERE were no crowds in the churches, no mobs in the bars. People did what they always had. It was an amazing strength of mind or a terrifying blindness: I didn’t know which.

  Half an hour before the broadcast, I drove downtown. I parked my car and walked toward the big hotel on the beach. Two women came out of a beauty parlor; I heard one of them whisper, “They say Dr. Clapper took off for the hills early this afternoon. He has a cabin up there, stocked with enough food to last him ten years.”

  On the terrace of the hotel I stopped to light a cigarette, shielding my face from the cold sea wind. The sun flamed red on the Pacific horizon. In the harbor I saw the dark silhouettes of freighters at anchor. At noon the navy had sailed for Hawaii.

  A girl, as dream-like as the yellow organdy she was wearing, sat alone on a stone bench at the far end of the terrace. She was twenty, perhaps. Black hair framed her face like an ivory cameo. Her lips were very red, her eyes large and dark, her cheeks cold marble.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” she said, smiling at me. “I wanted—I wanted something; it isn’t here.”

  “My dear, no one can live a lifetime in an hour.”

  “The truth is, I was afraid.”

  “We all are tonight.”

  “I thought it would be easier if I could be where there were other people. It doesn’t help.”

  I tossed my cigarette over the railing and sat on the bench beside her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of yet. Perhaps they’ve found a way to work it out.”

  “Not this time; they can’t.”

  “They always have before.” I glanced at my watch. “It’s almost time for the broadcast.”

  She put her hand on mine. It was long and graceful, as cold as alabaster. “Wait a little longer, please; I can’t go back in there yet. I felt as if the walls were closing in on me, choking me; that’s why I came out here—” She was suddenly shy, like a small child. “But I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. I don’t even know your name.”

  “Dr. Stewart Roswell,” I told her. “I teach history at the State College.”

  “The Stewart Roswell? I’ve read your books.”

  That surprised me. My half-dozen books, warmly reviewed in the scholarly publications, gave me prestige but skimpy royalties. They were not what a young girl would pick up for light reading. The style was pedantic; the theme, international relations.

  “I’m Maria D’Orlez.” She held my hand gravely. “I was going to enroll at State next fall, Dr. Roswell. I counted on taking your classes.”

  Inside the hotel the throb of the dance orchestra stopped. I heard the sharp static of a public address system and the muffled voice of a radio announcer.

  “The broadcast is beginning, Maria.”

  “Don’t go in!” She drew me down on the stone bench. “We know what he’s going to say—what he has to say.”

  For a time we sat together in silence. The girl was tense and her body trembled. I heard no sound but the muffled voice of the broadcast and, farther away, the rhythmic washing of waves on the beach. Even the traffic on the boulevard was still.

  Suddenly people erupted from the hotel, running toward the street. Maria D’Orlez pulled me close.

  “Stay with me,” she whispered. “Stay with me.”

  II. The Highway—Thursday, 7:00 P.M. Jerry Bonhill

  MOM stood in the doorway, twisting her hands in her apron. Dad sat on the couch, his face blank as if he were asleep with his eyes open. Mom gave him his usual glass of beer, but it stood untouched on the end table. We were watching the last part of “Doodle-Dan the Indian Man,” kid stuff with a lot of old cartoons squeezed between
the interminable commercials. But the program didn’t matter. Not then.

  Mom asked in a whisper, “Do you think he’s worked something out?”

  Dad shrugged and ran his hand through his gray hair. “We’ll know in a few minutes, Abby.”

  I’m the baby in the Bonhill clan, nineteen last March. Dad sometimes calls me Postscript because I was born fifteen years after my sister Jane. I would have been in the army the way her husband Ronny was, but instead I joined the R. O. T. C. at the university.

  “Doodle-Dan the Indian Man” ended with a trumpet fanfare. A flag came on the TV screen; we heard the national anthem. A network announcer said,

  “We take you now to a government shelter somewhere near the nation’s capital for this special report to the American people. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

  Visual static disturbed the image for a moment. Then we saw the face of the President.

  “Forty-eight hours ago,” he said, with none of the usual boom you expect from a politician, “Enemy troops occupied Paris. The government of the United States submitted a formal protest to Moscow, which has been ignored. This afternoon the Soviets proposed a high-level diplomatic conference for the negotiation and readjustment of our differences. We have conferred before and the agreements have been subsequently violated by Soviet arms. We have lost Asia to Moscow at the conference table; we have lost Africa; one by one we have lost our allies in Europe, until today only England remains beyond the Iron Curtain.

  “I speak tonight fully conscious of the unspeakable horror of atomic war. I give you my solemn assurance that your government has explored every honorable means for keeping the peace. If we are to survive as free men, we have no recourse left to us but war.

  “Tonight I have asked Congress for a declaration of war—a holy war and a just war, to free the uncounted millions who are now enslaved by the Communist dictatorship. Many of you who are listening to me will die; many of our cities will be destroyed. But victory, when it is ours—”

  The screen went suddenly dark. We heard another voice, a machine-gun burst of words.

  “Red Alert, Pacific Coast. At five-fifty tonight enemy planes crossed the radar defense screen in Northern Canada. Estimated number, five thousand heavy bombers. Following this announcement, all television channels will go off the air. Tune to local radio stations for additional directions.”

  For more than a minute we sat looking blankly at the screen. Mom clenched her fist against her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. Dad got up and put his arm around her. Neither of them seemed to know what to do. I went to my room and brought out my portable. Only one Los Angeles station was still broadcasting. We were prepared for that. It was part of the C. D. plan, which had been discussed for weeks in all the papers.

  As I tuned in, the announcer was repeating the Red Alert. He was choked off before he finished, and we heard a second voice, rasping and shrill with fear:

  “The Civil Defense Organization orders the evacuation of Los Angeles. Use private vehicles as much as possible. Municipal buses will be available at terminal points. Speed is essential; the city must be cleared within four hours. Safe evacuation areas are designated as the Mojave or the Owens Valley.”

  The order was repeated over and over. I snapped off the radio to save the batteries.

  In five minutes we were ready. I strapped our warmest clothes into a bundle and I scared up two flashlights. I crammed the medicines from the bathroom chest into a beach bag. I took an axe, a hammer, and a couple of screwdrivers, as well as my hunting rifle.

  As Dad backed our car out of the drive, I saw cars leaving other houses along the street.

  “They always told us the shelters would be safe,” said Mom. “It’s sabotage, Chris; I’m sure of it. Subversives took over the station and made that announcement, just to get everybody on the street when the bombers came.”

  Dad snapped on the car radio. “In that case, there should be a correction by this time.” He tuned in the proper band, but all we heard was the same evacuation bulletin.

  “Dr. Clapper said it would happen like this,” Mom persisted, “if we kept coddling our subversives.”

  “Clapper!” Dad spat the word like profanity. “That’s all we need right now—advice from that knuckle-headed half-wit.”

  Willie Clapper was Mom’s knight in shining armor. Lots of people—women, particularly—fell for his line. He had once been a minister of a reputable church, but the congregation had kicked him out. Every Sunday, for more than five years, Willie Clapper had put on a half-hour TV network show; the time was paid for by an anonymous millionaire. Almost everybody made Clapper’s subversive list: businessmen, professors, priests, writers.

  Dad pulled the car to a stop when we were on the freeway and asked me to drive. “We have to make time, Jerry,” he said. “You handle the car better than I do.”

  It was the first time he ever made that concession.

  From time to time I snapped on the car radio. Once I picked up the whisper of a San Francisco station, but that was all. The San Francisco announcer was reading an official bulletin. The invading fleet was close to the U.S.-Canadian border, still flying high in the stratosphere. The Nike and interceptor fighters had brought down better than a third of the bombers, and the government was confident that none of the enemy ships would reach any important targets.

  The bombers, which had fallen, carried H-bombs built to explode on contact. A gapping wound had been torn across the face of Canada; most of the peripheral defense positions were wiped out; fire on a fifteen-hundred-mile front swept the north woods. Scattered information from the surviving radar outposts reported a second enemy fleet had crossed the Arctic Circle shortly after seven o’clock.

  “They’re gambling everything,” Dad said as the broadcast faded under a blanket of static, “on knocking us out with one sneak attack.”

  “Dr. Clapper warned us,” Mom chimed in. “He said, if we didn’t build our border defenses—”

  “Damn it, Abby!” Dad raked his fingers through his hair. “This is real; this is for keeps! Can’t you get that through your head?”

  Mom and Dad always tore into each other when Willie Clapper’s name came up. I was trying to think of a way to sidetrack the argument, when we heard the dull thunder of an explosion somewhere behind us.

  Mom screamed. There were more explosions. Flashes of light, like heat lightning, flickered on the western horizon.

  We were close to San Bernardino by that time. Both sides of the highway were crowded with cars, but we were moving at a good speed. The planes came suddenly, slashing out of the night sky.

  Bullets splattered the cars. Somewhere ahead of us a gas tank exploded. I heard the terrified screams and the grinding of metal upon metal, as automobiles piled up on the road. The planes came again. Holes appeared in a diagonal line across our windshield. Mom cried out and covered her eyes. Dad slumped on the seat beside her.

  I twisted the wheel desperately to miss the wreckage. The car banged through the guardrail into a ditch. It lurched sickeningly, and righted itself again. Dad slid off the seat.

  The rear wheels spun in the mud, caught suddenly, and hurled the car into an orange grove beside the highway. I jammed down the brake as the front bumper came up against a tree trunk. My head snapped against the broken windshield. I blacked out.

  III. The City—Thursday, 9:25 P.M. Dr. Stewart Roswell

  I STOPPED a stranger as he left the hotel; he said the Civil Defense Organization had ordered the evacuation of Los Angeles. For years they had told us not to jam the highways during an emergency. This last minute change seemed pure hysteria, not good sense.

  “Are you leaving, Dr. Roswell?” Maria D’Orlez asked.

  “My dear child, I’m nearly sixty; at my age, a man doesn’t start running for his life.”

  “You aren’t afraid of the bomb?”

  “I’ve learned to live with it.”

  “And the Russians: are you afraid
of them?”

  She asked the question seriously, her dark eyes large and intent. I tried to give her an honest, rational answer. “The Russian people are like other human beings; like ourselves. The tragedy of our time is that we were never able to find a basis for mutual understanding. The iron wall that separates us—”

  “You wrote in one of your books, ‘The common man in the Soviet world is no more aggressive, no more warlike, than the average American.’ Do you still believe that, Dr. Roswell?”

  It surprised me that she had the wording so accurately. “I was writing about the general traits common to all people,” I explained, “not a form of government. Keep that in mind, Maria.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t being critical!” Her eyes were wide with innocence. “I agree with you completely.”

  I looked at her sharply. I had a feeling she was mocking me. She slipped her hand into mine. “Will you drive me home, Dr. Roswell?”

  When we got into my car, Maria moved very close to me. “I don’t want to go home yet. I want to see what other people are doing.”

  “But your parents, Maria—”

  She smiled mysteriously. “They’ll understand.”

  We drove through residential streets, where families were packing clothing and food into cars. I was surprised at the general orderliness of the evacuation, the absence of panic. You might have thought the people were all going on a mass picnic. They were cheerful, as if the whole thing was a lark; they called jokes back and forth; they were helping each other.