Alas, Babylon

by Pat Frank

  Beside Ace's desk, a tape recorder steadily turned, monitoring phone calls and conversations. The General glanced at it and said, "Do you realize that everything said in this room is being recorded for posterity?"

  They all smiled. On all the clocks another minute flipped.

  The direct line from NORAD, North American Air Defense, in Colorado Springs, buzzed. Ace picked it up, said, "Atkins, SAC Operations," listened, said, "Roger. I repeat. Object, may be missile, fired from Soviet base, Anadyr Peninsular."

  The emergency priority teletype machine from NOR­AD began to clatter.

  It's only one, Mark thought. It could be a meteor. It could be a Sputnik. It could be anything.

  The NORAD line buzzed again. Ace answered and repeated the flash, as before, for the General and the tape recorder. "DEW Line high sensitivity radar now has four objects on its screens. Speed and trajectory in­dicates they are ballistic missiles. Presque Isle and Homestead report missiles coming in from sea. We are skipping the yellow. This is your red alert."

  The General gave an order.

  Mark rose and said, "I think I'd better get back to my desk."

  The General nodded and smiled thinly. He said, "Thanks for the ninety-five seconds."

  [5]

  At first Randy thought someone was shaking the couch. Graf, nestled under his arm, whined and slipped to the floor. Randy opened his eyes and elevated himself on his elbow. He felt stiff and grimy from sleeping in his clothes. Except for the daschund, tail and ears at attention, the room was empty. Again the couch shook. The world outside still slept, but he dis­cerned movement in the room. His fishing rods, hanging by their tips from a length of pegboard, inexplicably swayed in rhythm. He had heard such phenomena ac­companied earthquakes, but there had never been an earthquake in Florida. Graf lifted his nose and howled.

  Then the sound came, a long, deep, powerful rumble increasing in crescendo until the windows rattled, cups danced in their saucers, and the bar glasses rubbed rims and tinkled in terror. The sound slowly ebbed, then boomed to a fiercer climax, closer.

  Randy found himself on his feet, throat dry, heart pounding. This was not the season for thunder, nor were storms forecast. Nor was this thunder. He stepped out onto the upstairs parch. To his left, in the east, an orange glow heralded the sun. In the south, across the Timucuan and beyond the horizon, a similar glow slowly faded. His sense refused to accept a sun rising and a sun setting. For perhaps a minute the spectacle numbed reaction.

  What had jolted Randy from sleep - he would not learn all the facts for a long, a very long time after - were two nuclear explosions, both in the megaton range, the warheads of missiles lobbed in by submarines. The first obliterated the SAC base at Homestead, and inci­dentally sank and returned to the sea a considerable area of Florida's tip. Ground Zero of the second missile was Miami's International Airport, not far from the heart of the city. Randy's couch had been shaken by shock waves transmitted through the earth, which travel faster than through the air, so he had been awake when the blast and sound arrived a little later. Gazing at the glow to the south, Randy was witnessing, from a dis­tance of almost two hundred miles, the incineration of a million people.

  The screen door banged open. Ben Franklin and Peyton, barefoot and in flannel pajamas, burst out onto the porch. Helen followed. The sight of war's roseate birthmark on the sky choked back their words. Helen grabbed Randy's arm tightly in both hands, as if she had stumbled. Finally, she spoke. "So soon?" It was a moan, not a question.

  "I'm afraid it's here," Randy said, his mind churning among all the possibilities, including their own dangers, seeking a clue as to what to do, what to do first.

  Helen was wearing a flowered kimono and straw slip­pers, booty from one of Mark's inspection trips to the Far East. Her chestnut hair was disheveled, her eyes, a deep and stirring blue, round in apprehension. She seemed very slight, in need of protection, and hardly older than her daughter. She was, at this moment, less composed than the children.

  Ben Franklin, staring to the south, said, "I don't see any mushroom cloud. Don't they always have a mush­room cloud?"

  "The explosions were very far off," Randy said. "Probably a lot of haze, or other clouds, between us and the mushrooms. What we see is a reflection in the sky. It's dying, now. It was much brighter when I first came out here."

  "I see," Ben Franklin said, satisfied. "What do you think they clobbered? I'd guess Homestead and the Boca Chica Navy base at Key West."

  Randy shook his head. "I don't see how we could get rocked from that distance. Maybe they hit Palm Beach and Miami. Maybe they missed and pitched two into the Glades."

  "Maybe," Ben said, not as if he believed they had missed.

  It was so quiet. It was wrongly quiet. They ought to hear sirens, or something. All Randy heard was a mockingbird tuning up for his morning aria.

  Helen released her grip on his arm. Thoughts seemed to parallel his, she said, "I haven't heard any planes. I don't hear any now. Shouldn't we hear fighters, or something?"

  "I don't know," Randy said.

  Ben Franklin said, "I heard 'em. That's what first woke me. I heard jets - they sounded like B-Forty­-sevens - climbing. Traveling that way." He showed them with a sweep of his arm. "That's southwest to northeast, isn't it?"

  "That's right," Randy said, and at that instant he heard another aircraft, whining under full power, fol­lowing the same path. They all listened. "That one will be from MacDill," Randy decided, "heading across."

  Before its sound faded they heard another, and then a third.

  They all pressed close to the porch screen, looking up.

  High up there, where it was already sunlight, they saw silver arrows speeding and three white contrails boldly slashed across morning's washed blue sky.

  Ben Franklin whispered, "Go, baby, go!"

  Terror departed Helen's eyes. "Could we go up on the captain's walk?" she said. "I want to watch them. They're mine, you know."

  Ben and Peyton sprinted for the ladder.

  "No!" Randy said. "Wait!"

  Ben stopped instantly. Peyton ran on. Her mother said, "Peyton! That was an order!"

  Peyton, her hand on the ladder, went no further. She said, "Shucks."

  "You might as well start learning to obey your uncle Randy, just as you obey your father, right now!"

  Peyton said, "Why can't we go up on the roof?"

  Randy had spoken instinctively. He found it difficult to put his objection into words. "I think it's too exposed," he said. "I think we all ought to be under­ground right now, but there isn't any cellar and it's too late to start digging."

  Ben Franklin said, "You're right, Randy. If they laid an egg close, we could get flash burns. Then there's ra­diation." The boy looked at the weathercock on the ga­rage steeple. "Wind's from the east, so we won't get any fallout, anyway not now. But suppose they hit Patrick? We're almost exactly west of Patrick, aren't we? Patrick could cook us."

  "Where did you learn all that stuff about fallout?" Randy asked.

  "I thought everybody knew it." Ben frowned. "I don't think they'll hit Patrick. It's a test center, not an operational base. Patrick can't hurt them, but MacDill and McCoy, they can't hurt them. And, brother, they will."

  Randy, Helen, and Ben Franklin were facing the east, where the missile test pads on Cape Canaveral lay, and where the fat red sun now showed itself above the horizon. Peyton, nose pressed against the screen, was still trying to follow the contrails of the B-47's. A stark white flash enveloped their world. Randy felt the heat on his neck. Peyton cried out and covered her face with her hands. In the southwest, in the direction of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota, another unnatural sun was born, much larger and infinitely fiercer than the sun in the east.

  Automatically, as a good platoon leader should, Randy looked at his watch and marked the minute and second in his memory. This time he would know the point of impact exactly, using the flash-and-sound sys­tem learned in Korea.

 
; A thick red pillar erected itself in the southwest, its base the unnatural sun.

  The top of the pillar billowed outward. This time, the mushroom was there.

  There was no sound at all except Peyton's whimper­ing. Her fists were pressed into her eyes.

  A bird plunged against the screen and dropped to earth, trailed by drifting feathers.

  Within the pillar and the cloud, fantastic colors played. Red changed to orange, glowed white, became red again. Green and purple ropes twisted upward through the pillar and spread tentacles through the cloud.

  The gaudy mushroom enlarged with incredible speed, angry, poisonous, malignant. It grew until the mush­room's rim looked like the leading edge of an approach­ing weather front, black, purple, orange, green, a can­cerous man-created line squall.

  They shrank from it.

  Peyton screamed, "I can't see! I can't see, Mommy. Mommy, where are you?" Her eyes were wide, her face tearstained and mottled. Arms outstretched, she was moving across the porch with tiny, stiff, uncertain steps.

  Randy scooped her into his arms. She seemed weightless. Helen opened the door and he rushed into the living room. Talking to her, saying, "Easy, Peyton, honey! Easy! Stop rubbing your eyes. Keep your eyes closed." He stretched the child out on the couch.

  Helen was at his side, a wet towel in her hands. She laid the towel over her daughter's eyes. "This will make you feel better, baby."

  "Mommy?"

  "Yes." This was the first time, since she was six, that Peyton had used Mommy instead of Mother.

  "All I can see is a big white ball. I can see it with my eyes closed. It hurts me, Mommy, right through my head."

  "Sure, just like a big flashlight bulb. Lie still, Peyton, you're going to be all right." Now, with fear for her child's sight supplanting all other fears, Helen steadied. Again she was composed, able, efficient, and she knew the moment of panic would not return. She told Randy, calmly, "Hadn't you better call Dan Gunn?"

  "Of course." Randy, hurried into his office. Dan had two phones in his suite in the Riverside Inn. Randy dialed the private number. It was busy. He dialed Riv­erside Inn. Again, he heard the impersonal busy-beep. The inn had a switchboard. All its lines shouldn't be busy. He tried the clinic building, although he knew it was most unlikely that Dan, or anybody, would be there at this hour. It was busy. He dialed operator. The same beep sounded in his ear. Once again, Randy tried Dan's private number. The infuriating beep persisted. He gave up and announced, "I'll have to drive into town and bring Dan out here."

  At that moment the ground-conducted shock wave rocked the house.

  Peyton cried out, in her sightless terror. Helen pressed her down on the couch, murmuring reassuring mother words. Randy noticed that Ben Franklin was missing from the room.

  The blast and sound wave covered them, submerging all other sound and feeling. Again the kitchenware and glasses and china danced. A delicate vase of Viennese crystal crumpled into powder and shards on the mantle. The glass protecting a meticulous and vivid still life, a water color by Lee Adams, shattered in its frame with a loud report.

  Randy looked at his watch, marked the time, and did the flash-and-sound arithmetic in his head.

  Helen, watching him while soothing Peyton's tense body with her fingers, watching and understanding, said, "What was it?"

  "That was MacDill," Randy said. "Six minutes and fifteen seconds. That means seventy-five miles, just right for MacDill."

  "MacDill means Tampa," Helen said.

  "And St. Petersburg. You'll be all right until I get back?"

  "We'll be all right."

  Randy banged into Ben Franklin on the stairs. "Where've you been?"

  "Opening up the windows and doors downstairs. Just made it. Not a window broke."

  "Smart boy. Now you go on up and help your mother take care of Peyton. I'm going for the Doctor."

  "Randy-"

  "Yes?"

  "I'm going to fill up all the pails and sinks and tubs with water. That's what you're supposed to do, you know."

  "I didn't know." Randy put his hand on Ben's shoul­der. "But if that's what you're supposed to do, go ahead and do it."

  Randy ran outside in time to see the Golden Dew Dairy truck careen past on River Road

  , headed for Fort Repose. The milkman was always a little late with his Saturday deliveries, since orders were heavier than on weekdays. He must have barely begun his route when the first blasts illuminated the sky in the south. Now he was racing home to his wife and children.

  As Randy reached his car he heard the undulating tocsin of the siren atop Fort Repose's firehouse. A little redundant, he thought. Still, there was no sound quite like a siren wailing its air-raid alarm to spur people to constructive action - or paralyze them in fear.

  Randy caught and passed the milk truck before the turn in the road. A minute later he saw a big, new se­dan overturned in the ditch, wheels still spinning. He slowed, and saw that the sedan's front end was tele­scoped, its windshield shredded; that it bore New York plates. On the shoulder of the road lay a woman, arms outstretched, one bare leg grotesquely twisted under her back. Pallid flesh showed under blue and yellow checked shorts. Her upturned face was a red smear and he judged she was dead.

  In this second Randy made an important decision. Yesterday, he would have stopped instantly. There would have been no question about it. When there was an accident, and someone was hurt, a man stopped. But yesterday was a past period in history, with laws and rules archaic as ancient Rome's. Today the rules had changed, just as Roman law gave way to atavistic bar­barism as the empire fell to Hun and Goth. Today a man saved himself and his family and to hell with everyone else. Already millions must be dead and other millions maimed, or doomed by radiation, for if the en­emy was hitting Florida, they would hardly skip SAC bases and missile sites in more densely populated areas. Certainly they would not spare Washington and New York; the command posts and communication center of the whole nation. And the war was less than a half hour old. So one stranger on the roadside meant nothing, particularly with a blinded child, his blood kin, dependent on his mission. With the use of the hydrogen bomb, the Christian era was dead, and with it must die the tradition of the Good Samaritan.

  And yet Randy stopped. He touched the power brakes and burned rubber, swearing, and thinking him­self soft and stupid. He backed, got out of the car, and examined the wreck. The woman was dead, her neck broken. She had been traveling alone. Examining tire marks and a shattered cabbage palm, he deduced she was driving at high speed when the explosion at Mac­Dill - he could see an orange patch in the southwest, probably fire storms consuming Tampa and St. Peters­burg - unnerved or blinded her. She had swerved, hit the tree, and catapulted through the windshield. In the car were several pigskin bags, locks burst by the impact, and a pocketbook. He touched nothing. He would re­port the wreck to a road patrolman or deputy sheriff, if he could find one and when there was time.

  Randy drove on, although at reduced speed, for sight of a fatal accident always compels temporary caution. The incident was important only because it was self­revelatory. Randy knew he would have to play by the old rules. He could not shuck his code, or sneak out of his era.

  With respite for anxiety about what went on beyond his own sight and hearing, he clicked on his radio, tuned to a Conelrad frequency, 640, and turned it up to maxi­mum power.

  All he heard was a distant and incoherent babble.

  He tried the other frequency, 1240. He heard a steady hum, and then the familiar voice of Happy Hed­rix, the disk jockey on WSMF, in San Marco. "This is a Civil Defense broadcast. Listen carefully, because we are only allowed to broadcast for thirty seconds, after which there will be two minutes of silence. An AP dis­patch from Jacksonville says that a Red Alert was de­clared about thirty minutes ago. Another dispatch from Jacksonville says it is believed the country is under at­tack. Since that time, there has been disruption of com­munications between Jacksonville and the north." Hap­py's
voice, usually so glib, was shaky and halting, and he seemed to have difficulty reading, "Obey the orders of your local Civil Defense Director. Do not use the tele­phone except for emergencies. You will receive further instructions later. This station will return to the air in two minutes."

  Randy tuned in 640 again. Again, he heard many voices, far away and indistinguishable. He knew that under the Conelrad system all stations were required to operate at low power. He surmised that he was hearing a broadcast from Orlando or Ocala, but with interfer­ence from stations in other nearby cities, perhaps Day­tona, or Leesburg and Eustis, not far off in Lake County. With every station confined to two frequencies, and limited to low power operation, the confusion was understandable.

  A year before, Mark had warned him that the Conelrad system was tricky, and might not work at all. Mark had said, further, that the enemy was not dependent on radio homing devices to find the targets. "Conelrad," Mark had said, "is as obsolete as the B-two-nine. Nei­ther missiles nor jets equipped with modern radar and inertial guidance would think of homing on a radio beam. In the first phase, Conelrad is going to be next to useless, I'm afraid, except for local instructions. The news you get will be only as fresh and accurate as the news that comes in on the teletypes in your local sta­tions. That news flows from the national news agencies. When their teletype circuits go out of business - which will happen immediately when the big cities blow­everything will be screwed up. You're not likely to find out anything until Phase Two - that's the mopping-up stage when the first attack is over. In Phase Two the government will use clear channel stations to tell you what's happening."

  Mark apparently bad been right about the inade­quacy of Conelrad, as about all else. He wondered whether Mark was also right in his prediction that Offutt and the Hole would be one of the primary targets. Randy wondered whether Mark still lived, and how long it would be before he found out.