Alas, Babylon

  “Next time you come over,” Hazzard said, “I want you to look at my invention.”

  “Are you inventing something too? Everybody’s inventing something.”

  “Yes. It’s called a sailboat. It is a means of propulsion that replaces the gasoline kicker. I sacrificed my flagpole and patio awning to make it. The cutting and sewing was done by Florence Wechek and Missouri and Hannah Henry. I can now recommend them as experienced sailmakers.”

  “Thanks, Sam.” Randy grinned. “That’s a wonderful invention and will become popular. I know I’m going to get one right away, and I will use your firm of sailmakers.”

  They walked to the path along the river bank. Swinging at its buoy Randy saw the Admiral’s compact little cruiser with covered foredeck, useless kicker removed, a slender mast arcing its tip at a multitude of stars. There were many sailboats on Florida’s lakes; but Randy had seen very few in the upper reaches of the St. Johns, or on the Timucuan.

  “I love the Admiral,” Lib said. “I worry about him. I wonder whether he gets enough to eat.”

  “The Henrys see that he eats. And Missouri keeps his place neat. The Henrys love him too.”

  “As long as we have men like that I can’t believe we’re so decadent. We won’t go like Rome, will we?”

  He didn’t answer. He swung her around to face him and circled her waist with his hands. His fingers almost met, she was so slim. He said, “I love you. I worry about you. I wonder whether I tell you enough how I love you and want you and need you and how I am diminished and afraid when you are not with me and how I am multiplied when you are here.”

  His arms went around her and he felt her body arch to him, molding itself against him. “There never seems to be enough time,” he said, “but tonight there is time. When we get home.”

  She said, “Yes, Randy.” They walked on, his arm around her waist. “This is a bad time for love,” she said. “Oh, I don’t mean tonight is a bad time, I mean the times. When you love someone, that should be what you think of most, the first thing when you wake in the morning and the last thing before you sleep at night. Before The Day that’s how I thought of you. Did you know that? First in the morning, last at night.”

  Randy knew, without her saying it, that it must be the same for her as it was for him. At day’s end a man was exhausted—physically, mentally, emotionally. Each sun heralded a new crisis and each night he bedded with old, relentless fears. He awoke thinking of food and fell onto his couch at night still hungry, his head whirling with problems unsolved and dangers unparried. The Germans, in their years of methodical madness, had discovered in their concentration camps that when a man’s diet fell below fifteen hundred calories his desire and capacity for all emotions dwindled. Randy guessed that he managed to consume almost fifteen hundred calories each day in fish and fruit alone. His vigor was being expended in survival, he decided. That, and worry for the lives dependent upon him. Even now, he could not exclude worry for Dan Gunn from his mind.

  The hodgepodge outlines of the Henry place loomed out of the darkness above them. They were within fifty yards of the barn and Ben Franklin was somewhere in that shadow, shotgun over his knees, enjoined to silence, alert to shoot anything that moved; and they were moving, silhouetted against the star-silvered river. He stopped and held Lib fast. “Ben!” he called. “Ben Franklin! Do not answer. Do not answer. This is Randy. We’re on our way home.”

  They walked on.

  “You know, you sounded just like that radio call on the Air Force frequency,” Lib said.

  “I did sound like that, didn’t I?” He smiled in the darkness, snapped his fingers, and said, “I think I know now what was going on. It wasn’t the way Sam thought. It was just the other way around. Big Rock was the plane, and Sky Queen the base. Big Rock had been somewhere and was coming home and was telling Sky Queen not to shoot, just like I told Ben Franklin.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. Not that it matters to us. I’ve heard them up there on still nights, but they never come low enough to see. The Admiral hears them talk on the radio but they never have a word for us. Maybe they’ve forgotten us. Maybe they’ve forgotten all the contaminated zones. We’re unclean. It makes me feel lonely and, well, unwanted. Isn’t that silly? Does it make you feel like that?”

  “They’ll come back,” he said. “They have to. We’re still apart of the United States, aren’t we?”

  They came to the path that led though their grove from house to dock. “Let’s go out on the dock,”

  Lib said. “I like it out there. No sound, not even the crickets. Just the river whispering around the pilings.”

  “All right.”

  They turned left instead of right. As their feet touched the planking the ship’s bell spoke. It clanged three times rapidly, then twice more. It kept on ringing. “Oh, damn it to hell!” Randy grabbed her hand and they started the run for the house, an uphill quarter mile in sand and darkness. After a hundred yards she released his hand and fell behind.

  By the time he reached the back steps Randy couldn’t climb them. He was wobbling and his knees had jellied, but before The Day he could not have run the distance at all. He paused, sobbing, and waited for Lib. The Model-A wasn’t in the driveway or the garage. He concluded that Dan hadn’t returned and something frightful had happened to Helen, Peyton, or Bill McGovern.

  He was wrong. It had happened to Dan. Dan was in the dining room, a ruined hulk of man overflowing the captain’s chair, arms hanging loose, legs outstretched, shirt blood-soaked, beard blood-matted. Where his right eye should have been, bulged a blue-black lump large as half an apple.

  His nose was twisted and enlarged, his left eye only a slit in swollen, discolored flesh. He’s wrecked the car, Randy thought. He went through the windshield and his face took along the steering wheel.

  Helen laid a wet dish towel over Dan’s eyes. Peyton, face white and pinched, stood behind her mother with another towel. It dripped. Except for Dan’s choked breathing, the dripping was for a moment the only sound in the room.

  Dan spoke. The words came out slowly and thickly, each an effort of will. “Was that you, Randy, who came in?”

  “It’s me, Dan. Don’t try to talk yet.” Shock, Randy thought, and probably concussion. He turned to Helen. “We should get him into bed. We have to get him upstairs.”

  “I don’t know if he can make it,” Helen said. “We could hardly get him this far.” Helen’s dress and Bill McGovern’s arms were blood stained.

  “Bill, with your help I can get him up all right.”

  So, with all his weight on their shoulders, they got Dan upstairs and stretched out on the sleigh bed.

  Bill said, “I’m going to be sick.” He left them. Helen brought clean, wet towels. Dan’s body shook and quivered. His skin grew clammy. He was having a chill. Randy lifted his thick wrist and after a time located the pulse. It was faint, uneven, and rapid. This was shock, all right, and dangerous. Randy said, “Whiskey!”

  Helen said, “I’ll handle this, Randy. No whiskey. Blankets.”

  He respected Helen’s judgment. In an emergency such as this, Helen functioned. This was what she was made for. He found extra blankets in the closet. She covered Dan and disappeared. She returned with a glass of fluid, held it to Dan’s lips, and said, “Drink this. Drink all you can.”

  “What are you giving him?” Randy asked.

  “Water with salt and soda. Much better than whiskey for shock.”

  Dan drank, gagged, and drank more. “Keep pouring this into him,” Helen ordered. “I’m going to see what’s in the medicine cabinet.”

  “Almost nothing,” Randy said. “Where’s his bag? Everything’s in there.”

  “They took it; and the car.”

  “Who took it?”

  “The highwaymen.”

  He should have guessed that it hadn’t been an accident. Dan was a careful driver and rarely were two cars on the same road. Traffic was no longer a problem. In his concern for Dan, he did n
ot immediately think of what this loss meant to all of them.

  Helen found peroxide and bandages. This, with aspirin, was almost all that remained of their reserve medical supply. She worked on Dan’s face swiftly and efficiently as a professional nurse.

  Randy felt nauseated, not at the sight of Dan’s injuries—he had seen worse—but in disgust at the beasts who in callous cruelty had dragged down and maimed and destroyed the human dignity of this selfless man. Yet it was nothing new. It had been like this at some point in every civilization and on every continent. There were human jackals for every human disaster. He flexed his fingers, wanting a throat in them. He walked into the other room.

  Lib’s head lay across her arms on the bar. She was crying. When she raised her face it was oddly twisted as when a child’s face loses form in panic or unexpected pain. She said, “What are you going to do about it, Randy?”

  His rage was a hard cold ball in his stomach now. When he spoke it was in a monotone, the voice of someone else “I’m going to execute them.”

  “Let’s get with it.”

  “Yes. As soon as I find out who.”

  At eleven Dan Gunn came out of shock, relaxed and then slept for a few minutes. He awoke announcing he was hungry. He looked no better, he was in pain, but obviously he was out of danger.

  Randy was dismayed at the thought of Dan, in his condition, loading his stomach with cold bream and catfish, orange juice, and remnants of salad. What he needed, coming out of shock, was hot, nourishing bouillon or broth. On occasion, when Malachai or Caleb discovered a gopher hole and Hannah Henry converted its inhabitant to soup, or when Ben Franklin successfully stalked squirrel or rabbit, such food was available; but not on this night.

  The thought of broth triggered his memory. He shouted, “The iron rations!” and ran into his office. He threw open the teak sea chest and began digging.

  Lib and Helen stood behind him and watched, perplexed. Helen said, “What’s wrong with you now, Randy?”

  “Don’t give him any food until you see what I’ve got!” He was sure he had tucked the foil covered carton in the corner closest to the desk. It wasn’t there. He wondered whether it was something he had dreamed, but when he concentrated it seemed very real. It had been on the day before The Day, after his talk with Malachai. In the kitchen he had collected a few nourishing odds and ends, tinned or sealed, and dubbed them iron rations, for a desperate time. Now that the time was desperate, he couldn’t find them.

  He found the carton in the fourth corner he probed. He lifted it out, tore at the foil, and exposed it for them to see. “I put it away for an emergency. I’d forgotten it.”

  Lib whispered, “It’s beautiful.” She examined and fondled the jars and cans.

  “There’s beef broth in here—lots of other stuff.” He gave up the carton. “Give him everything he wants.”

  Dan drank the broth and chewed hard candies. Randy wanted to question him but Helen stopped it.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, “when he’s stronger.” Helen and Lib were still in the bedroom when Randy stretched out on the living-room couch. Graf jumped up and nuzzled himself a bed under Randy’s arm, and they slept.

  Randy awoke with a gunshot echoing in his ears and Graf, whining, struggling to be free of his arm.

  He heard a second shot. It was from the double twenty, he was sure, and it came from the direction of the Henrys’ house. He slipped on his shoes and raced down the stairs, Graf following him. He grabbed the .45 from the hall table and went through the front door. Now was the time he wished he had live flashlight batteries.

  The moon was up now so it wasn’t too difficult, running down the path. From the moon’s height he guessed it was three or four o’clock. Through the trees he saw a lantern blinking. He hoped Ben Franklin hadn’t shot the shadows.

  He wasn’t prepared for what he saw at the Henrys’ barn.

  He saw them standing there, in a ring: Malachai with a lantern in one hand and in the other the ancient single-barreled shotgun that would sometimes shoot; Ben with his gun broken, extracting the empty shells, the Admiral in pajamas, Preacher in a nightshirt, Caleb, his eyes white-rimmed, tentatively poking with his spear at a dark form on the ground.

  Randy joined the circle and put his hand on Ben Franklin’s shoulder. At first he thought it was a wolf.

  Then he knew it was the biggest German shepherd he had ever seen, its tremendous jaws open in a white snarl of death. It wore a collar. Graf, tail whipping, sniffed the dead dog, whined, and retreated.

  Randy leaned over and examined the brass plate on the collar. Malachai held the lantern closer.”

  “ ‘Lindy,’ ” Randy read aloud. “ ‘Mrs. H. G. Cogswell, Rochester, New York. Hillside five one-three-seven-nine.’ “

  “That dog came an awful long way from home,” Preacher said.

  “Probably his owners were visiting down here, or on vacation,” Randy guessed.

  “Well,” Malachai said, “I can see why we’ve been losin’ hens and how he could take off that pig. He was a mighty big dog, mighty big! I’ll get rid of him in the day, Mister Randy.”

  Walking home, Ben Franklin said nothing. Suddenly he stopped, handed Randy the shotgun, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed. Randy squeezed his shoulder, “Take it easy, Ben.” Randy thought it was reaction after strain, excitement, and perhaps terror.

  “I did exactly what you told me,” the boy said. “I heard him coming. I didn’t hardly breathe. I didn’t pull until I knew I couldn’t miss. When he kicked and I thought he was getting up I let him have the choke barrel. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known he was a dog. Randy, I thought it was a wolf!”

  Randy stopped in the path and said, “Look at me, Ben.”

  Ben looked up, tear streaks shining in the moonlight.

  “It was a wolf,” Randy said. “It wasn’t a dog any longer. In times like these dogs can turn into wolves. You did just right, Ben. Here, take back your gun.”

  The boy took the gun, tucked it under his arm, and they walked on.

  10

  RANDY was having a pleasant, recurrent, Before-The-Day dream. He was awaking in a hotel in Miami Beach and a waitress in a white cap was bringing his morning coffee on a rolling table. Sometimes the waitress looked like Lib McGovern and sometimes like a girl, name forgotten, he had met in Miami.

  She was always a waitress in the morning, but at night she became an airline stewardess and they dined together in a little French restaurant where he embarrassed her by eating six chocolate eclairs. She said, as always, “Your coffee, Randy darling.” He could hear her saying it and he could smell the coffee. He drew up his knees and hunched his shoulders and scrunched his head deeper into the pillow so as not to disturb the dream.

  She shook his shoulder and he opened his eyes, still smelling coffee, and closed them again.

  He heard her say, “Damn it, Randy, if you won’t wake up and drink your coffee I’ll drink it myself.”

  He opened his eyes wide. It was Lib, without a white cap. Incredibly, she was presenting him a cup of coffee. He reached his face out and tasted it. It burned his tongue delightfully. It was no dream. He swung his feet to the floor and took the saucer and cup. He said, “How?”

  “How? You did it yourself, you absent-minded monster. Don’t you remember putting a jar of coffee in what you called your iron rations?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you did. A six-ounce jar of instant. And powdered cream. And, believe it or not, a pound of lump sugar. Real sugar, in lumps. I put in two. Everybody blesses you.”

  Randy lifted his cup, the fog of sleep gone entirely. “How’s Dan?”

  “Terribly sore, and stiff, but stronger. He had two cups of coffee and two eggs and, of course, orange juice.”

  “Did everybody get coffee?”

  “Yes. We had Florence and Alice over for breakfast—it’s ten o’clock, you know—and I put some in another jar and took it over to the Henrys. The Admiral was out fishing. We’
ll have to give him his share later. Helen has earmarked the broth and bouillon for Dan until he’s better; and the candy for the children.”

  “Don’t forget Caleb.”

  “We won’t.”

  Again, he had slept in his clothes and felt grimy. He said, “I’m going to shower,” and went into the bathroom. Presently he came out, towel around his middle, and began the hopeless process of honing the hunting knife. “Did you know,” he said, “that Sam Hazzard has a straight razor? He’s always used one. That’s why his face is so pink and unscarred and clean. After I’ve talked to Dan I’ve got to see Sam.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a military man and I need help for a military operation,”

  “Can I go with you?”

  “Darling, you are my right arm. Where I goeth you can go—up to a point.”

  She watched him while he shaved. All women, he thought, from the youngest on up, seemed fascinated by his travail and agony.

  Dan was sitting up in bed, his back supported by pillows, his right eye and the right side of his face hidden by bandages. His left eye was purpled but not quite so swollen as before. Helen sat in a straight-backed chair close to the pillows. She had been reading to him. Of all things, she had been reading the log of Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee Peyton, heaved up from the teak sea chest during last night’s burrowing for iron rations. “Well, you’re alive,” Randy said. “Tell me the tale. Start at the beginning. No, start before the beginning. Where had you been and where were you going?”

  “If the nurse will let me have one more cup of coffee—just one—I’ll talk,” Dan said. He spoke clearly and without hesitation. There had been no concussion.

  Each day when he completed his calls it was Dan Gunn’s custom to stop at the bandstand in Marines Park. One of the bandstand pillars had become a special bulletin board on which the people of Fort Repose tacked notices summoning the doctor when there was an emergency. Yesterday, there had been such a notice. It read: