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Title: Alas, Babylon
Author: Frank, Pat [Frank, Harry Hart] (1907-1964)
Date of first publication: March 1959
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Bantam Books, undated
   [third printing of "New Bantam edition" of August 1976]
Date first posted: 27 March 2018
Date last updated: 27 March 2018
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1519

This ebook was produced by Cindy Beyer, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






ALAS, BABYLON

by Pat Frank




FOREWORD


I have an acquaintance, a retired manufacturer, a practical man, who has
recently become worried about international tensions, intercontinental
missiles, H-bombs, and such.

One day, knowing that I had done some writing on military subjects, he
asked: "What do you think would happen if the Russkies hit us when we
weren't looking--you know, like Pearl Harbor?"

The subject was on my mind. I had recently returned from a magazine
assignment at Offutt Field, Headquarters of the Strategic Air Command,
several SAC operational bases, and the Missile Test Center on Cape
Canaveral. More to the point, I had been discussing just such a
possibility with several astute British staff officers. The British have
lived under the shadow of nuclear-armed rockets longer than we. Also,
they have a vivid memory of cities devastated from the skies, as have
the Germans and Japanese.

A man who has been shaken by a two-ton blockbuster has a frame of
reference. He can equate the impact of an H-bomb with his own
experience, even though the H-bomb blast is a million times more
powerful than the shock he endured. To someone who has never felt a
bomb, bomb is only a word. An H-bomb's fireball is something you see on
television. It is not something that incinerates you to a cinder in the
thousandth part of a second. So the H-bomb is beyond the imagination of
all but a few Americans, while the British, Germans, and Japanese can
comprehend it, if vaguely. And only the Japanese have personal
understanding of atomic heat and radiation.

It was a big question. I gave him a horseback opinion, which proved
conservative compared with some of the official forecasts published
later. I said, "Oh, I think they'd kill fifty or sixty million
Americans--but I think we'd win the war."

He thought this over and said, "Wow! Fifty or sixty million dead! What a
depression that would make!"

I doubt if he realized the exact nature and extent of the
depression--which is why I am writing this book.

PAT FRANK




CHAPTER ONE


In Fort Repose, a river town in Central Florida, it was said that
sending a message by Western Union was the same as broadcasting it over
the combined networks. This was not entirely true. It was true that
Florence Wechek, the manager, gossiped. Yet she judiciously classified
the personal intelligence that flowed under her plump fingers, and
maintained a prudent censorship over her tongue. The scandalous and the
embarrassing she excised from her conversation. Sprightly, trivial, and
harmless items she passed on to friends, thus enhancing her status and
relieving the tedium of spinsterhood. If your sister was in trouble, and
wired for money, the secret was safe with Florence Wechek. But if your
sister bore a legitimate baby, its sex and weight would soon be known
all over town.

Florence awoke at six-thirty, as always, on a Friday in early December.
Heavy, stiff and graceless, she pushed herself out of bed and padded
through the living room into the kitchen. She stumbled onto the back
porch, opened the screen door a crack, and fumbled for the milk carton
on the stoop. Not until she straightened did her china-blue eyes begin
to discern movement in the hushed gray world around her. A jerky-tailed
squirrel darted out on the longest limb of her grapefruit tree. Sir
Percy, her enormous yellow cat, rose from his burlap couch behind the
hot water heater, arched his back, stretched, and rubbed his shoulders
on her flannel robe. The African lovebirds rhythmically swayed, heads
pressed together, on the swing in their cage. She addressed the
lovebirds: "Good morning, Anthony. Good morning, Cleo."

Their eyes, spectacularly ringed in white, as if embedded in mint Life
Savers, blinked at her. Anthony shook his green and yellow plumage and
rasped a greeting. Cleo said nothing. Anthony was adventurous, Cleo
timid. On occasion Anthony grew raucous and irascible and Florence
released him into limitless freedom outside. But always, at dusk,
Anthony waited in the Turk's-cap, or atop the frangipani, eager to fly
home. So long as Cleo preferred comfortable and sheltered imprisonment,
Anthony would remain a domesticated parrot. That's what they'd told her
when she bought the birds in Miami a month before, and apparently it was
true.

Florence carried their cage into the kitchen and shook fresh sunflower
seed into their feeder. She filled Sir Percy's bowl with milk, and
crumpled a bit of wafer for the goldfish in the bowl on the counter. She
returned to the living room and fed the angelfish, mollies, guppies, and
vivid neons in the aquarium. She noted that the two miniature catfish,
useful scavengers, were active. She was checking the tank's temperature,
and its electric filter and heater, when the percolator chuckled its
call to breakfast. At seven, exactly, Florence switched on the
television, turned the knob to Channel 8, Tampa, and sat down to her
orange juice and eggs. Her morning routine was unvaried and efficient.
The only bad parts of it were cooking for one and eating alone. Yet
breakfast was not her loneliest meal, not with Anthony ogling and
gabbling, the six fat goldfish dancing a dreamy oriental ballet on
diaphanous fins, Sir Percy rubbing against her legs under the table, and
her cheery friends on the morning show, hired, at great expense, to
inform and entertain her.

As soon as she saw Dave's face, Florence could sense whether the news
was going to be good or bad. On this morning Dave looked troubled, and
sure enough, when he began to give the news, it was bad. The Russians
had sent up another Sputnik, No. 23, and something sinister was going on
in the Middle East. Sputnik No. 23 was the largest yet, according to the
Smithsonian Institution, and was radioing continuous and elaborate coded
signals. "There is reason to believe," Frank said, "that Sputniks of
this size are equipped to observe the terrain of the earth below."

Florence gathered her pink flannel robe closer to her neck. She glanced
up, apprehensively, through the kitchen window. All she saw were
hibiscus leaves dripping in the pre-dawn ground fog, and blank gray sky
beyond. They had no right to put those Sputniks up there to spy on
people. As if it were on his mind also, Frank continued:

    "Senator Holler, of the Armed Services Committee, yesterday
    joined others of a Midwest bloc in demanding that the Air Force
    shoot down Sputniks capable of military espionage if they
    violate U.S. air space. The Kremlin has already had something to
    say about this. Any such action, the Kremlin says, will be
    regarded the same as an attack on a Soviet vessel or aircraft.
    The Kremlin pointed out that the United States has traditionally
    championed the doctrine of Freedom of the Seas. The same
    freedom, says the Soviet statement, applies to outer space."

The newsman paused, looked up, and half-smiled in wry amusement at this
complexity. He turned a page on his clipboard.

    "There is a new crisis in the Middle East. A report from Beirut,
    via Cairo, says that Syrian tanks of the most modern Russian
    design have crossed the Jordanian frontier. This is undoubtedly
    a threat to Israel. At the same time Damascus charges that
    Turkish troops are mobilizing...."

Florence flipped to Channel 6, Orlando, and country music. She did not
understand, and could not become interested in, the politics of the
Middle East. Sputniks seemed a closer and more personal menace. Her best
friend Alice Cooksey, the librarian, claimed to have seen a Sputnik one
evening at twilight. If you could see it, then it could see you. She
stared up through the window again. No Sputnik. She rinsed the dishes
and returned to her bedroom.

As she wrestled with her girdle, Florence's thought gravitated to the
equally prying behavior of Randy Bragg. She adjusted the venetian blinds
until she could peer out. He was at it again. There he was, brazenly
immodest in checked red and black pajamas, sitting on his front steps,
knees akimbo and binoculars pressed to his eyes. Although he was perhaps
seventy-five yards distant, she was certain he stared directly at her,
and could see through the tilted louvers. She ducked back against the
bedroom wall, hands protecting her breasts.

Almost every evening for the past three weeks, and on a number of
mornings, she had caught him at it. Sometimes he was on the piazza, as
now, sometimes at a second-floor window, and sometimes high up on the
captain's walk. Sometimes he swept the whole of River Road with his
glasses, pretending an interest elsewhere, but more often he focused on
her bungalow. Randolph Rowzee Bragg a Peeping Tom! It was shocking!

Long before Florence's mother moved south and built the brown-shingle
bungalow, the Braggs had lived in the big house, ungainly and
monolithic, with tall Victorian windows and bellying bays and broad
brick chimneys. Once it had been the show place of River Road. Now, it
appeared shabby and outmoded compared with the long, low, antiseptic
citadels of glass, metal, and tinted block constructed by rich
Northerners who for the past fifteen years had been "discovering" the
Timucuan River. Still, the Bragg house was planked and paneled with
native cypress, and encased in pine clapboard, hard as iron, that might
last another hundred years. Its grove, at this season like a full green
cloak flecked with gold, trailed all the way from back yard to river
bank, a quarter mile. And she would say this for Randy, his grounds were
well kept, bright with poinsettias and bougainvillea, hibiscus,
camellias, gardenias, and flame vine. Florence had known Randolph's
mother, Gertrude Bragg, well, and old Judge Bragg to speak to. She had
watched Randolph graduate from bicycle to jalopy, vanish for a number of
years in college and law school, reappear in a convertible, vanish again
during the Korean War, and finally come home for good when Judge Bragg
and Mrs. Bragg were taken in the same year. Now here was Randy, one of
the best known and most eligible young men in Tumucuan County, even if
he did run around with Pistolville girls and drink too much, a--what was
it the French called it?--a _voyeur_. It was disgusting. The things that
went on in small towns, people wouldn't believe. Florence faced the
bureau mirror, wondering how much he had seen.

Many years ago a man had told her she looked something like Clara Bow.
Thereafter, Florence wore her hair in bangs, and didn't worry too much
about her chubby figure. The man, an imaginative idealist, had gone to
England in 1940, joined the Commandos, and got himself killed. She
retained only a vague and inexact memory of his caresses, but she could
never forget how he had compared her to Clara Bow, a movie star. She
could still see a resemblance, provided she sucked in her stomach and
lifted her chin high to erase the fleshy creases in her neck--except her
hair was no longer like Clara's. Her hair had thinned, and faded to
mottled pink. She hurriedly sketched a Clara Bow pout on her lips, and
finished dressing.

When she stepped out of the front door, Florence didn't know whether she
should cut Randy dead or give him a piece of her mind. He was still
there on the steps, the binoculars in his lap. He waved, grinned, and
called across lawn and road, "Morning, Miss Florence." His black hair
was tousled, his teeth white, and he looked boyish, handsome, and
inoffensive.

"Good morning, Randy," Florence said. Because of the distance, she had
to shout, so her voice was not formal and frigid, as she had intended.

"You look real pretty and chipper today," he yelled.

She walked to the carport, head averted as if avoiding a bad odor, her
stiff carriage a reprimand, and did not answer. He really was nervy,
sitting there in those vile pajamas, trying to sweet-talk her. All the
way to town, she kept thinking of Randy. Who would ever guess that he
was a deviate with a compulsion to watch women dress and undress? He
ought to be arrested. But if she told the sheriff, or anybody, they
would only laugh at her. Everybody knew that Randy dated lots of girls,
and not all of them virgins. She herself had seen him take Rita
Hernandez, that little Minorcan tart from Pistolville, into his house
and, no doubt, up to his bedroom since the lights had gone on upstairs
and off downstairs. And there had been others, recently a tall blonde
who drove her own car, a new Imperial with Ohio plates, into the
circular driveway and right up to the front steps as if she owned the
place, and Randy. Nobody would believe that he found it necessary to
absorb his sex at long range through optic nerves and binoculars. Yet it
was strange that he had not married. It was strange that he lived alone
in that wooden mausoleum. He even had his office in there, instead of in
the Professional Building like the other lawyers. He was a hermit, and a
snob, and a nigger-lover, and no better than a pervert. God knows what
he did with those girls upstairs. Maybe all he did was make them take
off their clothes and put them on again while he watched. She had heard
of such things. And yet--

She couldn't make herself believe there was anything basically wrong
with Randy. She had voted for him in the primaries and stood up for him
at the meetings of the Frangipani Circle when those garden club biddies
were pecking him to bits. After all, he was a Bragg, and a neighbor, and
besides--

He obviously needed help and guidance. Randy's age, she knew, was
thirty-two. Florence was forty-seven. Between people in their thirties
and forties there wasn't too wide a gap. Perhaps all he needed, she
decided, was a little understanding and tenderness from a mature woman.

****

Randy watched Florence's ten-year-old Chevy diminish and disappear down
the tunnel of live oaks that arched River Road. He liked Florence. She
might be a gossipy old maid but she was probably one of the few people
on River Road who had voted for him. Now she was acting as if he were a
stranger trying to cash a money order without credentials. He wondered
why. Maybe she disapproved of Lib McGovern, who had been in and out of
the house a good deal in the last few weeks. What Florence needed, he
guessed, was the one thing she was unlikely to get, a man. He rose,
stretched, and glanced up at the bronze weathercock on the garage
steeple. Its beak pointed resolutely northeast. He checked the large,
reliable marine barometer and its twin thermometer alongside the front
door. Pressure 30.17, up twenty points in twelve hours. Temperature
sixty-two. It would be clear and warm and the bass might start hitting
off the end of the dock. He whistled, and shouted, "Graf! Hey, Graf!"
Leaves rustled under the azalea bed and a long nose came out, followed
by an interminable length of dachshund. Graf, his red coat glistening
and tail whipping, bounded up the steps, supple as a seal. "Come on, my
short-legged friend," Randy said, and went inside, binoculars swinging
from his neck, for his second cup of coffee, the cup with the bourbon in
it.

Except for the library, lined with his father's law books, and the
gameroom, Randy rarely used the first floor. He had converted one wing
of the second-floor into an apartment suitable in size to a bachelor,
and to his own taste. His taste meant living with as little exertion and
strain as possible. His wing contained an office, a living room, a
combination bar and kitchen alcove, and bedroom and bath. The dcor was
haphazard, designed for his ease, not a guest's eye. Thus he slept in an
outsize mahogany sleigh bed imported from New England by some remote
ancestor, but it was equipped with foam rubber mattress and contour
nylon sheets. When, in boredom, he wasted an evening preparing a full
meal for himself, he ate from Staffordshire bearing the Bragg crest, and
with silver from Paul Storr, and by candlelight; but he laid his place
on the formica bar separating living room from efficient kitchen. Now he
sat on a stool at this bar, half-filled a fat mug with steaming coffee,
dropped two lumps of sugar into it, and laced it with an inch of
bourbon. He sipped his mixture greedily. It warmed him, all the way
down.

Randy didn't remember, exactly, when he had started taking a drink or
two before breakfast. Dan Gunn, his best friend and probably the best
medic north of Miami, said it was an unhealthy practice and the hallmark
of an alcoholic. Not that Dan had reprimanded him. Dan had just advised
him to be careful, and not let it become a habit. Randy knew he wasn't
an alcoholic because an alcoholic craved liquor. He never craved it. He
just drank for pleasure and the most pleasurable of all drinks was the
first one on a crisp winter morning. Besides, when you took it with
coffee that made it part of breakfast, and therefore not so depraved. He
guessed he had started it during the campaign, when he had been forced
to load his stomach with fried mullet, hush puppies, barbecued ribs
dripping fat, chitlins, roasted oysters gritty with sand, and to wash
all down with warm beer and raw rotgut. After such nights, only mellow
bourbon could clear his head and launch him on another day. Bourbon had
buoyed him during the campaign, and now bourbon mercifully clouded its
memory. He could have beaten Porky Logan, certainly, except for one
small tactical error. Randy had been making his first speech, at Pasco
Creek, a cow town in the north end of the county, when somebody shouted,
"Hey, Randy, where do y' stand on the Supreme Court?"

He had known this question must come, but he had not framed the right
kind of answer: the moderate Southern quasi-liberal, semi-segregationist
double-talk that would have satisfied everybody except the palmetto
scrub woolhats, the loud-mouthed Kluxers and courthouse whittlers who
would vote for Porky anyway, and the Georgia and Alabama riffraff
crowding the Minorcans for living space in the shanties and three-room
bungalows of Pistolville. The truth was that Randolph Bragg himself was
torn by the problem, recognizing its dangers and complexities. He had
certain convictions. He had served in Korea and Japan and he knew that
the battle for Asia was being lost in counties like Timucuan. He also
knew that Pasco Creek had no interest in Asia. He believed integration
should start in Florida, but it must begin in the nursery schools and
kindergartens and would take a generation. This was all difficult to
explain, but he did voice his final conviction, inescapable because of
his legal heritage and training, and the oaths he had taken as voter and
soldier. He said: "I believe in the Constitution of the United
States--all of it."

There had been snickers and snorts from the rim of the crowd, and his
listeners, except for the reporters from Tampa, Orlando, and the county
weekly, had drifted away. In later speeches, elsewhere, he attempted to
explain his position, but it was hopeless. Behind his back he was called
a fool and a traitor to his state and his race. Randolph Rowzee Bragg,
whose great-grandfather had been a United States Senator, whose
grandfather had been chosen by President Wilson to represent his country
as Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary in time of war,
whose father had been elected, without opposition, to half a dozen
offices, Randolph was beaten five-to-one in the Democratic primaries for
nomination to the state legislature. It was worse than defeat. It was
humiliation, and Randy knew he could never run for public office again.
He refilled his mug, this time with more bourbon than coffee, and
Missouri, his maid, shuffled in the hallway and knocked. He called,
"Come in, Mizzoo."

Missouri opened the door, pushing a vacuum cleaner and carrying a pail
filled with cans, bottles and rags. Missouri was the wife of Two-Tone
Henry, neighbor as well as maid. She was six inches shorter than
Two-Tone, who was just Randy's height, five-eleven, but Two-Tone claimed
she outweighed him by a hundred pounds. If this was true, Missouri
weighed around two-forty. But on this morning, it seemed to Randy that
she had dwindled a bit. "You dieting, Mizzoo?" he said.

"No, sir, I'm not dietin'. I got nerves."

"Nerves!" Missouri had always seemed nerveless, solid, and placid as a
broad, deeply rooted tree. "Two-Tone been giving you a bad time again?"

"No. Two-Tone been behavin'. He down on the dock fishin' right now. To
tell you the truth, Mister Randy, it's Mrs. McGovern. She follow me
around with white gloves."

Missouri worked two hours each morning for Randy, and the rest of the
day for the McGoverns, who lived half a mile closer to town. The
McGoverns were the W. Foxworth McGoverns, the Central Tool and Plate
McGoverns, formerly of Cleveland, and the parents of Lib McGovern, whose
proper name was Elizabeth. "What do you mean, Mizzoo?" Randy asked,
fascinated.

"After I dust, she follow me around with white gloves to see has I
dusted. I know I cleans clean, Mister Randy."

"You sure do, Mizzoo."

Missouri plugged in the vacuum cleaner, started it, and then shut it
off. She had more on her mind. "That ain't all. You been in that house,
Mister Randy. You ever seen so many ashtrays?"

"What's wrong with ashtrays?"

"She don't allow no ashes in 'em. That poor Mister McGovern, he has to
smoke his cigars outside. Then there was that roach. Big roach in the
silver drawer. Mrs. McGovern opened that drawer yesterday and saw that
roach and screeched like she'd been hit by a scorpion. She made me go
through every drawer in the kitchen and dining room and put down fresh
paper. Was that roach sent me to Doctor Gunn yesterday. Mrs. McGovern
she can't 'bide bugs or little green lizards and she won't go out of the
house after dark for fear of snakes. I don't think the McGoverns going
to be with us long, Mister Randy, because what's Florida except bugs and
lizards and snakes? I think they leave around May, when bug season
starts good. But Miss McGovern, she won't want to leave. She stuck on
you."

"What makes you think so?"

Missouri smiled. "Questions she asks. Like what you eats for breakfast."
Missouri glanced at the decanter on the bar. "And who cooks for you. And
does you have other girls."

Randy changed the subject "You say you went to see Doctor Gunn. What'd
he say?"

"Doctor says I'm a complicated case. He says I got high blood, on
account of I'm heavy. He says it's good I'm losin' weight, because that
lowers the high blood, but frettin' about Mrs. McGovern white-glovin' me
is the wrong way to do it. He says quit eatin' grits, eat greens. Quit
pork, eat fish. And he gives me tranquil pills to take, one each day
before I go to work for Mrs. McGovern."

"You do that, Mizzoo," Randy said, and, carrying his mug, walked out on
to the screen upstairs porch overlooking grove and river. He then
climbed the narrow ship's ladder that led to the captain's walk, a
rectangle sixteen by eight feet, stoutly planked and railed, on the
slate roof. Reputedly, this was the highest spot in Timucuan County.
From it he could see all the riverfront estates, docks, and boats, and
all of the town of Fort Repose, three miles downstream, held in a crook
of sun-flecked silver where the Timucuan joined the broader St. Johns.

This was his town, or had been. In 1838, during the Seminole Wars, a
Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee Peyton, USN, a Virginian, had been dispatched
to this river junction with a force of eighteen Marines and two small
brass cannon. Lieutenant Peyton journeyed south from Cow's Ford, its
name patriotically changed to Jacksonville, by longboat. His orders from
General Clinch were to throttle Indian communications on the rivers,
thus protecting the flank of the troops moving down the east coast from
St. Augustine. Lieutenant Peyton built a blockhouse of palm logs on the
point, his guns covering the channel. In two years, except during one
relief expedition overland to New Smyrna, he fought no battles or
skirmishes. But he shot game and caught fish for the garrison pot, and
studied botany and the culture of citrus. The balmy weather and idyllic
life, described in a log now in a teak chest in Randy Bragg's office,
inspired the Lieutenant to name his outpost Fort Repose.

When the wars subsided, the fort was decommissioned and Lieutenant
Peyton was assigned to sea duty. Four years later he returned to Fort
Repose with a wife, a daughter, and a grant from the government for one
hundred acres. He had picked this precise spot for his homestead because
it was the highest ground in the area, with a steep gradient to the
river, ideal for planting the oranges just imported from Spain and the
Far East. Peyton's original house had burned. The present house had been
built by his son-in-law, the first Marcus Bragg, a native of
Philadelphia and a lawyer eventually sent to the Senate. The captain's
walk had been added for the aging Lieutenant Peyton, so that with his
brass spyglass he could observe what happened at the junction of rivers.

Now the Bragg holdings had dwindled to thirty-six acres, but thirty were
planted in prime citrus--navels, mandarins, Valencias, and Temples--all
tended and sold in season by the county co-operative. Each year Randy
received checks totaling eight to ten thousand dollars from the
co-operative. Half went to his older brother, Mark, an Air Force colonel
stationed at Offutt Field, Headquarters of the Strategic Air Command,
near Omaha. With his share, plus dividends from a trust established by
his father, and his occasional fees as an attorney, Randy lived
comfortably. Since he drove a new car and paid his bills promptly, the
tradespeople of Fort Repose thought him well-to-do. The rich newcomers
classed him with the genteel poor.

Randy heard music below, and knew that Missouri had started his record
player and therefore was waxing the floor. Missouri's method was to
spread the wax, kick off her shoes, wrap her feet in rags, and then
polish by dancing. This was probably as efficient, and certainly more
fun, than using the electric waxer.

He dropped into a deck chair and focused his binoculars on Preacher
Henry's place, looking for that damn bird in the hammock of pines,
palmettos, and scrub oak. The Henrys had lived here as long as the
Braggs, for the original Henry had come as slave and manservant to
Lieutenant Peyton. Now the Henrys owned a four-acre enclave at the east
boundary of the Bragg groves. Preacher Henry's father had bought it from
Randolph's grandfather for fifty dollars an acre long before the first
boom, when land was valued only for what it grew. Preacher was hitching
his mule, Balaam--the last mule in Timucuan County so far as anyone
knew--to the disk. In this month Preacher harrowed for his yam and corn
planting, while his wife, Hannah, picked and sold tomatoes and put up
kumquat preserves. He ought to go down and talk to Preacher about that
damn bird, Randy thought. If anyone was likely to observe and recognize
a Carolina parakeet floating around, it was Preacher, because Preacher
knew all the birds and their calls and habits. He shifted his glasses to
focus on the end of the Henrys' rickety dock. Two-Tone had five bamboo
poles out. Two-Tone himself reclined on his side, head resting on his
hand, so he could watch the corks without effort. Preacher's younger
son, Malachai, who was Randy's yardman, and reliable as Two-Tone was
no-account, was not about.

Randy heard the phone ringing in his office. The music stopped and he
knew Missouri was answering. Presently she called from the piazza,
"Mister Randy, it's for you. It's Western Union."

"Tell her I'll be right down," Randy said, lifted himself out of the
deck chair, and backed down the ladder, wondering who would be sending
him a telegram. It wasn't his birthday. If something important happened,
people phoned. Unless--he remembered that the Air Force sent telegrams
when a man was hurt, or killed. But it wouldn't be Mark, because for two
years Mark had been flying a desk. Still, Mark would get in his flying
time each month, if possible, for the extra pay.

He took the phone from Missouri's hand and braced himself. "Yes?" he
said.

"I have a telegram, Randy--it's really a cable--from San Juan, Puerto
Rico. It's signed by Mark. It's really very peculiar."

Randy let out his breath, relieved. If Mark had sent the message, then
Mark was all right. A man can't pick his relatives, only his friends,
but Mark had always been Randy's friend as well as brother. "What's the
message say?"

"Well, I'll read it to you," Florence said, "and then if you want me to
read it again I'll be glad to. It says, 'Urgent you meet me at Base Ops
McCoy noon today. Helen and children flying to Orlando tonight. Alas,
Babylon.'" Florence paused. "That's what it says, 'Alas, Babylon.' Do
you want me to repeat the whole thing for you, Randy?"

"No thanks."

"I wonder what 'Alas, Babylon' means? Isn't it out of the Bible?"

"I don't know. I guess so." He knew very well what it meant. He felt
sick inside.

"There's something else, Randy."

"Yes?"

"Oh, it's nothing. I'll tell you about it next time I see you--and I
hope not in those loud pajamas. Goodbye, Randy. You're sure you have the
message?"

"I'm sure," he said, hung up and dropped into the swivel chair. Alas,
Babylon was a private, a family signal. When they were boys, he and Mark
used to sneak up to the back of the First Afro-Repose Baptist Church on
Sunday nights to hear Preacher Henry calling down hell-fire and
damnation on the sinners in the big cities. Preacher Henry always took
his text out of the Revelation of St. John. It seemed that he ended
every lurid verse with, "Alas, Babylon!" in a voice so resonant you
could feel it, if you rested your fingertips gently on the warped pine
boards of the church. Randy and Mark would crouch under the rear window,
behind the pulpit, fascinated and wide-eyed, while Preacher Henry
described the Babylonian revels, including fornication. Sometimes
Preacher Henry made Babylon sound like Miami, and sometimes like Tampa,
for he condemned not only fornication--he read the word right out of the
Bible--but also horse racing and the dog tracks. Randy could hear him
yet: "And I'm telling you right now, all wife-swappers, whisky-drinkers,
and crap-shooters are going to get it! And all them who come out of
those sin palaces on the beach, whether they be called hotels or motels,
wearing minks and jewels and not much else, they is goin' to get it! And
them fast-steppers in Cadillacs and yaller roadsters, they is going to
get it! Just like it says here in the Good Book, that Great City that
was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold
and precious stones and pearls, that Great City was burned off the face
of the earth in an hour. Just one hour. Alas, Babylon!"

Either Preacher Henry was too old, or the Afro-Repose congregation had
tired of his scolding and awful prophecies, for he no longer preached
except on those Sundays when Afro-Repose's new minister, a light-skinned
college graduate, was out of town. Randy and Mark never forgot Preacher
Henry's thundering, and from it they borrowed their private synonym for
disaster, real or comic, past or future. If one fell off the dock, or
lost all his cash at poker, or failed to make time with a promising
Pistolville piece, or announced that hurricane or freeze was on the way,
the other commiserated with, "Alas, Babylon!"

But in this telegram it had very special and exact meaning. Mark had
secured leave at Christmas season last year, and flown down with Helen
and the two children, Ben Franklin and Peyton, for a week. On their last
evening at Fort Repose, after the others were in bed, Mark and Randy had
sat here, in this office, peering into the bourbon decanter and the deep
anxieties of their hearts, trying to divine the future. Christmas had
been a time of troubles, a time of confusions at home and tensions
abroad, but in his whole life, Randy could recall no other sort of time.
There had always been depression, or war, or threat of war.

Mark, who was in SAC Intelligence, had rolled the old-fashioned globe,
three feet through, from its place in the window bay, so that the desk
lamp shone on it. It was a globe purchased by their grandfather, the
diplomat, before the First World War, so that the countries, some with
unfamiliar names, seemed oddly scrambled. The continents and seas were
the same, which was all that mattered. As Mark talked, his face became
grave, almost gaunt, and his index finger traced great circle routes
across the cracking surface--missile and bomber trajectories. He then
drew a rough chart, with two lines that intersected. The line that
continued upward after the intersection belonged to the Soviet Union,
and the time of the intersection was right then.

"How did it happen?" Randy had asked. "Where did we slip?"

"It wasn't lack of money," Mark had replied. "It was state of mind.
Chevrolet mentalities shying away from a space-ship world. Nations are
like people. When they grow old and rich and fat they get conservative.
They exhaust their energy trying to keep things the way they are--and
that's against nature. Oh, the services were to blame too. Maybe even
SAC. We designed the most beautiful bombers in the world, and built them
by the thousands. We improved and modified them each year, like new
model cars. We couldn't bear the thought that jet bombers themselves
might be out of style. Right now we're in the position of the Federal
Navy, with its wooden steam frigates, up against the Confederate
iron-clad. It is a state of mind that money alone won't cure."

"What will?" Randy asked.

"Men. Men like John Ericsson to invent a _Monitor_ to face the
_Merrimac_. Bold men, audacious men, tenacious men. Impatient, odd-ball
men like Rickover pounding desks for his atomic sub. Ruthless men who
will fire the deadheads and ass-kissers. Rude men who will tell the
unimaginative, business-as-usual, seven-carbon sons of bitches to go
take a jump at a galloping goose. Young men because we've got to be a
young country again. If we get that kind of men we may hack it--if the
other side gives us time."

"Will they?"

Mark had spun the globe and shrugged. "I don't know. If I think the
balloon is about to go up I'm going to send Helen and the kids down
here. When a man dies, and his children die with him, then he is dead
entirely, leaving nothing to show."

"Do you think they'd be safer here than in Omaha? After all, we've got
the Jax Naval Air complex to the north of us, and Homestead and Miami to
the south, and Eglin to the northwest, and MacDill and Tampa to the
southwest, and the Missile Test Center on Canaveral to the east, and
McCoy and Orlando right at the front door, only forty miles off. What
about fallout?"

"There isn't any place that'll be absolutely safe. With fallout and
radiation, it'll be luck--the size of configuration of the weapons,
altitude of the fireball, direction of the wind. But I do know Helen and
the children won't have much chance in Omaha. SAC Headquarters has got
to be the enemy's number one target. I'll bet they've programmed three
five-megaton IC's for Offutt, and since our house is eight miles from
the base any kind of near-miss does it--" Mark snapped his
fingers--"like that. Not that I think it'll do the enemy any
good--command automatically shifts to other combat control centers and
anyway all our crews know their targets. But they'll hit SAC
Headquarters, hoping for temporary paralysis. A little delay is all
they'd need. I'll have to be there, at Offutt, in the Hole, but the
least a man can do is give his children a chance to grow up, and I think
they'd have a better chance in Fort Repose than Omaha. So if I see it's
coming, and there is time, I'll send Helen and the kids down here. And
I'll try to give you a warning, so you can get set for it."

"How?"

Mark smiled. "I won't call you up and say, 'Hey, Randy, the Russians are
about to attack us.' Phones aren't secure, and I don't think my C-in-C,
or the Air Staff, would approve. But if you hear 'Alas, Babylon,' you'll
know that's it."

Randy had forgotten none of this talk. A week or so later, thinking
about Mark's words, Randy had decided to go into politics. He would
start in the state legislature, and in a few years be ready to run for
Congress. He'd be the kind of leader Mark wanted.

It hadn't worked out that way. He couldn't even beat Porky Logan, a
gross man whose vote could be bought for fifty bucks, who bragged that
he had not got beyond the seventh grade but that he could get more new
roads and state money for Timucuan County than any half-baked radical,
undoubtedly backed by the burrheads and the N.A.A.C.P., who didn't even
know that the Supreme Court was controlled by Moscow. So Randy's fiasco
had been inspired by that night, and now the night bore something worse.

He wondered what Mark was doing in Puerto Rico, and why his warning had
come from there. It should have come from Washington or London or Omaha
or Colorado Springs rather than San Juan. It was true that SAC had a big
base, Ramey, in Puerto Rico, but--It was no use guessing. He'd know at
noon. Of one thing he was certain, if Mark expected it to come, it would
probably come. His brother was no alarmist. Randy sometimes allowed
emotions to distort logic, Mark never did. Mark was capable of
calculating odds, in war or poker, to the final decimal, which was why
he was a Deputy Chief of Intelligence at SAC, and soon would have his
star.

Randy knew there were a thousand things he should be doing, but he
couldn't think of any of them. He became aware of a rhumba rhythm in the
living room, and presently Missouri skated into view, feet bundled with
waxing cloths, shoulders moving and hips bouncing with elephantine
elegance, intent on her polishing. He yelled, "Missouri!"

"Yessir?" Her forward motion stopped, but her hips continued to wobble
and feet shuffle.

"Quit that struttin' and make up the three bedrooms on the front.
Colonel Bragg's family will be here tomorrow."

"Oh, ain't that nice! Just like last year."

"No, not like last year. The Colonel's not coming with them. Just Mrs.
Bragg and Ben Franklin and Peyton."

Missouri peered through the door at him. "Mister Randy, you don't look
good. Them telegrams are yellow death. You get bad news or something?
Ain't nuthin' happen to Colonel Mark?"

"No. I'm driving over to McCoy to meet him at noon."

"Oh, that's good. How come the children up north get out of school so
quick?"

"I don't know."

"I'll dust good, and make up the beds, and put towels and soaps in the
bathrooms just like last year."

"Thanks, Mizzoo. That's fine."

"Caleb's going to be happy to see Ben Franklin," Missouri said. Caleb
was Missouri's son, and just Ben's age, thirteen. Last year, Randy had
let them take the boat out on the river, fishing, just as Randy, as a
boy, had fished with Caleb's uncle, Malachai, except that twenty years
ago the boat was a skiff, powered by muscle and oars, instead of a sleek
Fiberglas job with a thirty-horse kicker.

Missouri gathered up her cleaning materials and left Randy alone with
his nightmare. He shook his head, but he didn't wake up. The nightmare
was real. Slowly, he forced his mind to function. Slowly, he forced
himself to imagine the unimaginable....

He must make a list of the things Helen and the children would need. He
recalled that there was nothing stocked in the big kitchen downstairs,
and little in the utility room except some steaks in the freezer and a
few canned staples. My God, if there was going to be a war they'd need
stocks of everything! He looked at his watch. He had yet to shave and
dress, and he must allow an hour and a half for the drive to McCoy, ten
miles south of Orlando, when you considered the main highways clogged
with tourists, and Orlando's infuriating and hopeless traffic tangle on
a sunny payday less than three weeks before Christmas. And there might
be some delay at the McCoy gate. He decided to give himself two hours on
the road.

Still, he could start the list, and there was one thing he should do
right away. Ben Franklin drank a quart of milk a day and Peyton, his
eleven-year-old sister, even more. He telephoned Golden Dew Dairy and
revised his delivery order drastically upward. This was Randy's first
act to meet the emergency, and it was to prove the least useful.




CHAPTER TWO


Randy left the house in time to see Missouri wedge herself under the
wheel of the Henrys' Model-A Ford, an antique--so certified with a "Q"
tag issued by the state--but kept in perfect running order by Malachai's
mechanical ingenuity. "I haven't finished but I got to go now," she
said. "Mrs. McGovern, she holds the clock on me. I'll be back tomorrow."

The Model-A, listing to port with Missouri's weight, bounced down the
pebbled driveway. Randy got into his new Bonneville. It was a sweet car,
a compromise between a sports job and a hardtop, long, low, very fast,
and a lot of fun, even though its high-compression engine drank premium
fuel in quantity.

At eleven, approaching Orlando on Route 50, he turned on the radio for
the news. Turkey had appealed to the UN for an investigation of border
penetrations by Syria. Syria charged Israel with planning a preventive
war. Israel accused Egypt of sending snooper planes over its defenses.
Egypt claimed its ships, bound from the Black Sea to Alexandria, were
being delayed in the Straits, and charged Turkey with a breach of the
Montreux Convention.

Russia accused Turkey and the United States of plotting to crush Syria,
and warned France, Italy, Greece, and Spain that any nations harboring
American bases would be involved in a general war, and erased from the
earth.

The Secretary of State was somewhere over the Atlantic, bound for
conferences in London.

The Soviet Ambassador to Washington had been recalled for consultation.

There were riots in France.

It all sounded bad, but familiar as an old, scratchy record. He had
heard it all before, in almost the same words, back in '57 and '58. So
why push the panic button? Mark could be wrong. He couldn't know, for
certain, that the balloon was going up. Unless he knew something fresh,
something that had not appeared in the newspapers, or been broadcast.

****

Shortly before noon Florence Wechek hung her "Back At One" sign on the
office door and walked down Yulee Street to meet Alice Cooksey at the
Pink Flamingo. Fridays, they always lunched together. Alice, tiny, drab
in black and gray, an active, angry sparrow of a woman, arrived late.
She hurried to Florence's table and said, "I'm sorry. I've just had a
squabble with Kitty Offenhaus."

"Oh, dear!" Florence said. "Again?" Kitty was secretary of the PTA,
past-president of the Frangipani Circle, treasurer of the Women's Club,
and a member of the library board. Also, she was the wife of Luther
"Bubba" Offenhaus, Chief Tail-Twister of the Lions Club, Vice President
of the Chamber of Commerce, and Deputy Director of Civil Defense for the
whole county. He owned the most properous business in town, the
Offenhaus Mortuary, and a twin real estate development, Repose-in-Peace
Park.

Alice lifted the menu. It fluttered. She set it down quickly and said,
"Yes, again. I guess I'll have the tunafish salad."

"You should eat more, Alice," Florence said, noticing how white and
pinched her friend's face looked. "What happened?"

"Kitty came in and said she'd heard rumors that we had books by Carl
Rowan and Walter White. I told her the rumors were true, and did she
want to borrow one?"

"What'd she say?" Florence put down her fork, no longer interested in
her chicken patty.

"Said they were subversive and anti-South--she's a Daughter of the
Confederacy--and ordered me to take them off the shelves. I told her
that as long as I was librarian they would stay there. She said she was
going to bring it before the board and if necessary take it up with
Porky Logan. He's on the investigating committee in Tallahassee."

"Alice, you're going to lose your job!" Kitty Offenhaus was the most
influential person in Fort Repose, with the exception of Edgar
Quisenberry, who owned and ran the bank.

"I don't think so. I told her that if anything like that happened I'd
call the _St. Petersburg Times_ and _Tampa Tribune_ and _Miami Herald_
and they'd send reporters and photographers. I said, 'Kitty, can't you
see your picture on the front page, and the headline--Undertaker's Wife
Cremates Books?'"

This was the most fascinating news Florence had heard in weeks. "What
happened then?"

"Nothing at all. If I may borrow an expression from one of my younger
readers, she left in an eight-cylinder huff."

"You wouldn't really call the papers, would you?"

Alice spoke carefully, understanding fully that everything would soon be
repeated. "I certainly would! But I don't think I'll have to. You see,
publicity would hurt Bubba's business. One third of Bubba's customers
are Negroes, and another third Yankees who come down here to live on
their pensions and stay to die." She lifted her bright, fiercely blue
eyes and added, as if repeating one of the Commandments: "Censorship and
thought control can exist only in secrecy and darkness."

"And that was all?"

"That was all." Alice tried her salad. "What've you been doing,
Florence?"

Florence could think of no adventure, or even any news culled from the
wire, that could compete with telling off Kitty Offenhaus--except her
experience with Randy Bragg. She had pledged herself not to say anything
about Randy to anyone, but she could trust Alice, who was worldly-wise
in spite of her appearance, and who might even, when younger, have
encountered a Peeping Tom herself. So Florence told about Randy and his
binoculars and how he had stared at her that morning. "It's almost
unbelievable, isn't it?" she concluded.

"It is unbelievable," Alice said flatly.

"But I saw him at it!"

"I don't care. I know the Bragg boys. Even before you came here,
Florence, I knew them. I knew Judge Bragg well, very well."

Florence remembered vague reports, many years back, of Alice Cooksey
having gone with Judge Bragg before the judge married Gertrude. But that
made no difference to what went on in the Bragg house now. "You'll have
to admit that those Bragg boys are a little peculiar," Florence said.
"You should have seen the cable Randy got from Mark this morning. Urgent
they meet at McCoy today. Helen and the children flying to Orlando
tonight--you know those children can't be out of school yet--and the
last two words didn't make any sense at all. 'Alas, Babylon.' Isn't that
crazy?"

"Those boys aren't crazy," Alice said. "They've always been bright boys.
Full of hell, yes, but at least they could read, which is more then I
can say for the children nowadays. Do you know that Randy read every
history in the library before he was sixteen?"

"I don't think that has anything to do with his sex habits," Florence
said. She leaned across the table and touched Alice's arm. "Alice, come
out to my house tonight for the weekend. I want you to see for
yourself."

"I can't. I keep the library open Saturdays. That's my only chance to
get the young ones. Evenings and Sundays, they're paralyzed by TV."

"I'm open Saturday mornings, too, so we can drive in together. I'll pick
you up when you're through tomorrow evening. It'll be a change for you,
out in the country, away from that stuffy room."

Alice hesitated. It would be nice to visit with Florence, but she hated
to accept favors she couldn't repay. She said, "Well, we'll see."

****

When Alice returned to the library, three old-timers, too old for
shuffleboard or the Lawn Bowlers Club, were bent over the periodical
table. Like mummies, she thought, partially unwrapped. One of the
mummies leaned slowly over until his nose fell into the fold of
_Cosmopolitan_. Alice walked over to the table and made certain he still
breathed. She let him nap on, smiled at the other two, and darted into
the reference room, with its towering, topheavy stacks. From the first
stack, religious and spiritual works in steady demand, she brought down
the King James Bible. She believed she would find the words in
Revelation, and she did. She read two verses, lips moving, words
murmuring in her throat:

    And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and
    lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for
    her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

    Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas,
    alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour
    is thy judgment come.

Alice put the Bible back on its shelf and walked, head down, to her
cracked oak desk, like a schoolmarm's desk on a dais, in the main
hallway. She sat there, staring at the green blotter, at the antiquated
pen and the glass inkwell, at the wooden file filled with readers'
cards, at the stack of publishers' spring lists. Alone of all the people
in Fort Repose, Alice Cooksey knew Mark Bragg well enough, and had
absorbed sufficient knowledge of the world's illness through the printed
word, to understand that the books she had ordered from those spring
lists might never be delivered. She had small fear of death, and of man
none at all, but the formlessness of what was to come overwhelmed her.
She always associated Babylon with New York, and she wished, now, that
she lived on Manhattan, where one could die in a bright millisecond,
without suffering, without risking the indignity of panic.

She picked up the telephone and called Florence. She would come out for
the weekend, or even longer, if Florence was agreeable. When she set
down the phone Alice felt steadier. If it came soon, she would have a
friendly hand to hold. She would not be alone.

The Air Police sergeant at McCoy's main gate questioned Randy, and then
allowed him to call Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hart, a squadron commander,
and friend of Mark's. Hart had been to Fort Repose to fish for bass,
first as Mark's guest, and later, on several occasions, as a guest of
Randy, so he was something more than an acquaintance. Randy said he had
had a wire from Mark to meet him at noon, and Hart said, "He whistled
through here yesterday. Didn't expect him back so soon. Anyway, drive to
Base Ops. We'll go out on the line and meet him together. Let me talk to
the Air Police. I'll clear you through."

Driving through the base, Randy sensed a change since his last visit,
the year before. Physically, McCoy looked the same. It felt different.
The Air Police questioning had been sharper, and more serious. That
wasn't the difference. He realized something was missing; and then he
had it. Where were all the people? McCoy seemed almost deserted, with
less activity, and fewer men and fewer cars than a year ago. He saw no
other civilians. He saw no women, not even around the clubs and the BX.
The most congested area on the base was the steps and lawn in front of
the alert barracks opposite wing headquarters, where standby crewmen,
rigid and stiff in pressure suits, talked and smoked. Trucks, tail gates
down, were backed to the curb. Drivers slouched over their wheels as if
they had been there a long time.

He drove onto Base Operations and parked close to the flight-line fence.
Last year he had seen B-47's, tankers, and fat transports stretching
their wings, tip to tip, the length of the line--miles. Now, their
numbers had dwindled. He counted fewer than twenty B-47's, and guessed
that the wing was in Africa or Spain or England on ninety-day foreign
duty. But this could not be so, because Paul Hart, winner of bombing and
navigation trophies, a Select Crew Aircraft Commander, would have led
the flight.

Hart, a stocky, bandy-legged man with punched-in nose, a fighter's chin,
and an easy grin, met him at the door of Operations. "Hi, Randy," he
said. "Just checked the board. Mark will touch down in eight minutes.
How's the fishing?"

"It's been lousy." He looked up at the wind sock. "But it'll get better
if this high sticks around and the wind holds from the east. What's he
flying?"

"He's not flying anything. He's riding soft and plush in a
C-One-thirty-five--that's the transport version of our new jet
tanker--with a lot of Offutt brass. Other brass, that is. I hear he gets
his star soon. Only promotion I'll ever get is to a B-Five-eight."

"Penalty for being a hot pilot," Randy said. "What's going on around
here? Looks like a ghost town. You boys shutting up shop?"

"You haven't heard about SAC's interim dispersal?"

"Vaguely, yes, on some of the commentaries."

"Well, we're not shouting about it. We try to keep half the wing off
this base, because where we're standing right now is a primary target.
We farm out our planes to fighter fields and Navy fields and even
commercial airports. And we try to keep ten percent of the wing airborne
at all times, and if you look down there in front of the jumbo hangar
you'll see four standby Forty-sevens, bombed up and ready to go. Damn
expensive way to run an air force."

Randy looked. They were there, wings drooping with full tanks, bound to
earth by slender umbilical cords, the starter cables. "I didn't mean the
planes so much as the people," Randy said. "Where's everybody?"

"Oh, that." Hart frowned, as if deciding how much could be said and what
words to use. "The papers know about it but they aren't printing it," he
said finally, "and the people around Orlando must know about it by now
so it can't be any great secret. We've been on sort of a modified alert
for four or five weeks. Maybe I should call it a creeping evacuation.
We've cleared the area of all civilian and nonessential personnel, and
we're encouraging everybody to move their families out of the blast
zone. You see, Randy, we can't expect three to six hours' warning any
more. If we're lucky, we might get fifteen minutes."

Randy nodded. He noticed long red missiles slung under the wings of the
standby B-47's. He recognized them, from the newspaper photographs, as
the Rascal, an air-to-ground H-bomb carrier. "Is that red baby much
help?" he asked.

"That red baby," Hart said, "is what we call the crew-saver. The
Russkies are no dopes. They'll try to stop us with missiles air-to-air
and ground-to-air, beam-riders, heat-seekers, sound-finders, and, for
all I know, smellers. It'll be no milk run but with the Rascal--and some
other gadgets--we don't have to write ourselves off as a kamikaze corps.
We won't have to penetrate their inner defense zones. We can lay off
target and let that red baby fly. It knows where to go. Do you know
what?"

"What?"

Paul Hart's smile had vanished, and he looked older, and when he spoke
it was gravely. "When the whistle blows, I'll have a better chance if
I'm in my aircraft, headed for target, than if I'm sitting at home with
my feet propped up, drinking a Scotch, and Martha rubbing the kinks out
of my neck--and our little place on the lake is five miles from here. So
I'm a man of peace. I wish Martha and the kids lived in Fort Repose."

Randy heard the low whine of jet engines at fractional power and saw a
cigar-shaped C-135 line up with the runway in its swoop downward.
Presently it wheeled into a taxi strip and braked in front of
Operations. A flag, three white stars on a blue field, popped out of the
cockpit, indicating that a lieutenant general was aboard, and alerting
McCoy to provide the courtesies due such rank.

The three-star general was first down the ramp, his pink-cheeked aide
scurrying about his heels like an anxious puppy. Mark was last off.
Randy waved and caught his eye and Mark waved back but did not smile.
Coming down the ramp and across the concrete, knees bare in tropical
uniform, Mark looked like a slightly larger edition of Randy, an inch
taller, a shade broader. At thirty feet they looked like twins, with the
same jet hair, white teeth behind mobile lips, quizzical eyes set deep,
the same rakish walk and swing of shoulders, cleft in chin and emphatic
nose with a bony bump on the bridge. At three feet, fine, deep lines
showed around Mark's eyes and mouth, gray appeared in his black thicket,
his jaw thrust out an extra half-inch, his face was leaner. At three
feet, they were entirely different, and it was apparent Mark was the
older, harder, and probably wiser man.

Mark put one hand on Hart's shoulder and the other on Randy's, and
walked them toward the building. "Paul," he told Hart, "you better get
with General Heycock. He's hungry and when he gets hungry he gets
fierce. How about helping his aide dig up some transport and get him
over to the O Club? We're only here to gas up. Takeoff is in fifty
minutes."

Hart looked up and saw three blue Air Force sedans swing up the
driveway. "There's the General's transport right there," he said, and
then, realizing that Mark had tactfully implied he wanted to be alone
with his brother, added, "But I'll go along to the O Club, and get the
mess officer on the ball." He shook hands and said, "See you, Mark, next
time around."

"Sure," Mark said. He turned to Randy. "Where's your car? I've got a lot
to say and not much time to say it. We can talk in the car. But first
let's get some candy, or something, inside Ops. We didn't load any
flight lunches at Ramey."

The front seat of the Bonneville was like a sunny, comfortable private
office. Randy asked the essential question first: "What time do Helen
and the children get in?"

Mark brought a notebook out of his hip pocket. "Three-thirty tomorrow
morning, local time, at Orlando Municipal. Carmody--he's Wing Commander
at Ramey--has a friend in the Eastern office in San Juan. He ramrodded
it through for me. The plane leaves Omaha at seven-ten tonight. One
change, in Chicago."

"Isn't that a little rough on Helen and the kids?"

"They can sleep all the way from Chicago to Orlando. It'll be just as
tough on you, meeting them. The important thing is I got the
reservation. This time of year, it took some doing."

"What's the great rush?" Randy demanded. "What the hell's going on?"

"Contain yourself, son," Mark said. "I'm going to give you a complete
briefing."

"Have you told Helen yet?"

"I sent her a cable from San Juan. Just told her I'd made reservations
for tonight. She'll understand." He squinted at the gaudy dials and
gleaming knobs on the dash. "Some buggy you've got here, Randy. Won't be
worth a damn to you. About Helen, she and I thrashed all this out long
ago, but she won't like it. Not at all will she like it, now that the
time has come. But I'll have her on that plane if I have to truss her up
and send her air freight."

Randy said nothing. He simply tapped the car clock, a reminder.

"Okay," Mark said, "I'll brief you. First strategic, then tactical." He
pushed a peanut-butter cracker into his mouth, found his pen, and began
to sketch in his notebook. He drew a rough map, the Mediterranean.

Mark doesn't cerebrate until he has a pen in his hand, Randy thought,
and can see a map. Probably makes him feel comfortable, like he's
holding a pointer in the SAC War Room.

"The key is the Med," Mark said. "For three hundred years the Russians
have tried to pry open the Straits and debouch into the Mediterranean.
Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Czar Alexander, they all tried it.
Now, more than ever, control of the Med means control of the world."

Randy nodded. Conquerors knew or sensed this. Caesar had done it,
Xerxes, Napoleon, and Hitler failed. "If Xerxes had won at Salamis," he
said, "we'd all be speaking Persian--but that was a long time
pre-Sputnik, and pre-ICBM. I thought the fight, now, was for control of
space. Who controls space controls the world."

Mark smiled. "It can also happen just the other way around. We--by we I
mean the NATO coalition--aren't going to be allowed time to catch up
with them in operational IC's, much less control space. Now don't argue
with me. We have their War Plan."

Randy took a deep breath and sat up straight.

"For the first time Russia has bridgeheads in the Mediterranean--here,
here, and here--" Mark drew ovals on the map. "They have a fleet in the
Med as powerful as ours when you match their submarine strength against
our carriers. They have Turkey ringed on three sides, and if they could
upset the Turkish government, and force capitulation of the Bosporus and
Dardanelles, they would have won the war without fighting. The Med would
be theirs, Africa cut off from Europe, NATO outflanked on the south, and
one by one all our allies--except England--would fall into their laps or
declare themselves neutral. SAC's bases in Africa and Spain would be
untenable and melt away. NATO would fold up, and the IR sites we're
planning never be finished."

"That was their gambit in 'fifty-seven, wasn't it?" Randy asked.

"You have a good memory, Randy, and that's a good simile. The Russians
are great chess players. They rarely make the same mistake twice. Now,
today, they're making moves. It's the same gambit--but with a tremendous
difference. In 'fifty-seven, when it looked like they were going to make
another Korea out of Turkey, we warned the Kremlin that there'd be no
sanctuary inside Russia. They took a look at the board and resigned the
game. Then in 'fifty-eight, after the Iraq king was assassinated, we
grabbed the initiative and landed Marines in Lebanon. We got there
fastest. They saw that we were ready, and could not be surprised. They
were caught off balance, and didn't dare move. This time it's different.
They're ready to go through with it, because the odds have changed."

"How can you know this?"

"Remember reading about the Russian General who came over, in Berlin? An
air general, a shrewd character, a human being. He brought us their War
Plan, in his head. This time, they're not resigning the game. They'd
still like to win the war without a war, but if we make any military
countermove, we're going to receive it."

For a moment, they were both silent. On the other side of the
flight-line fence, three ground-crewmen were throwing a baseball. Two
were pitching, an older sergeant, built like Yogi Berra, catching. The
plate was a yellow parachute pack. The ball whirred and plopped sharply
into mitt. "That tall boy has a lot of stuff," Randy said. Again, he
felt he moved in the miasma of a dream. Something was wrong. Either Mark
shouldn't be talking like this, or those airmen shouldn't be throwing a
baseball out there in the warm sunlight. When he lit a cigarette, his
fingers were trembling again.

"Have a bad night, Randy?"

"Not particularly. I'm having a bad day."

"I'm afraid it's going to get worse. Here's the tactical part. They know
that the only way they can do it is knock off our nuclear capability
with one blow--or at least cripple us so badly that they can accept what
retaliatory power we have left. They don't mind losing ten or twenty
million people, so long as they sweep the board, because people, per se,
are only pawns, and expendable. So their plan--it was no surprise to
us--calls for a T.O.T. on a worldwide scale. You get it?"

"Sure. Time-on-target. You don't fire everything at the same instant.
You shoot it so it all arrives on target at the same instant."

Mark glanced at his watch, and then looked up at the big jet transport,
still loading fuel through four hoses from the underground tanks.
"That's right. It won't be Zero Hour, it'll be Zero Minute. They'll use
no planes in the first wave, only missiles. They plan to kill every base
and missile site in Europe and Africa and the U.K. with their T-2 and
T-3 IR's. They plan to kill every base on this continent, and in the
Pacific, with their IC's, plus missiles launched from subs. Then they
use SUSAC--that's what we call their Strategic Air Force--to mop up."

"Can they get away with it?"

"Three years ago they couldn't. Three years hence, when we have our own
ICBM batteries emplaced, a big fleet of missile-toting subs, and
Nike-Zeus and some other stuff perfected, they couldn't. But right now
we're in what we call 'the gap.' Theoretically, they figure they can do
it. I'm pretty sure they can't--we may have some surprises for them--but
that's not the point. Point is, if they _think_ they can get away with
it, then we have lost."

"I don't understand."

"LeMay says the only way a general can win a modern war is not fight
one. Our whole _raison d'tre_ was deterrent force. When you don't deter
them any longer, you lose. I think we lost some time ago, because the
last five Sputniks have been reconnaisance satellites. They've been
mapping us, with infrared and transitor television, measuring us for the
Sunday punch."

Randy felt angry. He felt cheated. "Why hasn't anybody--everybody been
told about this?"

Mark shrugged. "You know how it is--everything that comes in is stamped
secret or top secret or cosmic or something and the only people who dare
declassify anything are the big wheels right at the top, and the people
at the top hold conferences and somebody says, 'Now, let's not be hasty.
Let's not alarm the public.' So everything stays secret or cosmic.
Personally, I think everybody ought to be digging or evacuating right
this minute. Maybe if the other side knew we were digging, if they knew
that we knew, they wouldn't try to get away with it."

"You really think it's that close?" Randy said. "Why?"

"Two reasons. First, when I left Puerto Rico this morning Navy was
trying to track three skunks--unidentified submarines--in the Caribbean,
and one in the Gulf."

"Four subs doesn't sound like enough force to cause a big flap," Randy
said.

"Four subs is a lot of subs when there shouldn't be any," Mark said.
"It's like shaking a haystack and having four needles pop out at your
feet. Chances are that haystack is stiff with needles." He rubbed his
hand across his eyes, as if the glare hurt, and when he spoke again his
voice was strained. "They've got so blasted many! CIA thinks six
hundred, Navy guesses maybe seven-fifty. And they don't need launchers
any more. Just dump the bird, or pop it out while still submerged. The
ocean itself is a perfectly good launching pad."

Randy said, "And the other reason?"

"Because I'm on my way back to Offutt. We flew down yesterday on a
pretty important job--figure out a way to disperse the wing on Ramey.
There aren't enough fields in Puerto Rico and anyway the island is
rugged and not big enough. We'd just started our staff study when we got
a zippo--that's an operational priority message--to come home. And two
thirds of the Ramey wing was scrambled with flyaway kits for--another
place. I made my decision right then. I just had time to arrange Helen's
reservation and send the cables."

Mark spoke more of the Russian General, with whom he had talked at
length, and whom apparently he liked. "He isn't a traitor, either to his
country or to civilization. He came over in desperation, hoping that
somehow we could stop those power-crazed bastards at the top. He doesn't
think their War Plan will work any more than I do. Too much chance for
human or mechanical error." Mark used phrases like "maximum capability,"
and "calculated risk," and "acceptance of any casualties except
important people," and "decentralization of industry and control,
announced as an economic measure, but actually military."

Randy listened, fascinated, until he saw three blue sedans turn a corner
near wing headquarters. "Here comes your party," he said. "Anything else
I ought to know?"

Mark brushed cracker crumbs and slivers of chocolate from his shirt
front. "Yes. Also, there's something I have to give you." He found a
green slip of paper in his wallet and handed it to Randy. "Made out to
you," he said.

Randy unfolded the check. It was for five thousand. "What am I supposed
to do with this?" he asked.

"Cash it--today if you can. Don't deposit it, cash it! It's a reserve
for Helen and Ben Franklin and Peyton. Buy stuff with it. I don't know
what to tell you to buy. You'll think of what you'll need as you go
along."

"I did start a list, this morning."

Mark seemed pleased. "That's fine. Shows you're looking ahead. I don't
know whether money will help Helen or not, but cash in hand, in Fort
Repose, will be better than an account in an Omaha bank."

Randy kept on looking at the check, feeling uncomfortable. "But suppose
nothing happens? Suppose--"

"Spend some of it on a case of good liquor," Mark said. "Then if nothing
happens we'll have a wonderful, expensive toot together, and you can
laugh at me. I won't care."

Randy slipped the check into his pocket. "Can I tip off anybody else?
There are a few people--"

"You've got a girl?"

"I don't know whether she's my girl or not. I've been trying to find
out. You don't know her. New people from Cleveland. Her family built on
River Road."

Mark hesitated. "I don't see any objection. It is something Civil
Defense should have done weeks--months ago. Use your own judgment. Be
discreet."

Randy noticed that the jet transport's wings were clear of hoses. He saw
the three blue sedans pull up at Operations. He saw Lieutenant General
Heycock get out of the first car. He felt Mark's hand on his shoulder,
and braced himself for the words he knew must come.

Mark spoke very quietly. "You'll take care of Helen?"

"Certainly."

"I won't say be a good father to the children. They love you and they
think you're swell and you couldn't be anything but a good father to
them. But I will say this, be kind to Helen. She's--" Mark was having
trouble with his voice.

Randy tried to help him out. "She's a wonderful, beautiful gal, and you
don't have to worry. Anyway, don't sound so final. You're not dead yet."

"She's--more," Mark said. "She's my right arm. We've been married
fourteen years and about half that time I've been up in the air or out
of the country and I've never once worried about Helen. And she never
had to worry about me. In fourteen years I never slept with another
woman. I never even kissed another woman, not really, not even when I
had duty in Tokyo or Manila or Hongkong, and she was half a world away.
She was all the woman I ever needed. She was like this: Back when I was
a captain and we were moving from rented apartment to rented apartment
every year or so, I got a terrific offer from Boeing. She knew what I
wanted. I didn't have to tell her. She said, 'I want you to stay in SAC.
I think you should. I think you ought to be a general and you're going
to be a general.' There's an old saying that anyone can make colonel on
his own, but it takes a wife to make a general. I guess there wasn't
quite enough time, but had there been time, she would've had her star."

Randy saw Lieutenant General Heycock walk from the Operations building
toward the plane. "It's time, Mark," he said.

They got out of the car and walked quickly toward the gate, and Mark
swung an arm around Randy's shoulders. "What I mean is, she has
tremendous energy and courage. If you let her, she'll give you the same
kind of loyalty she gave me. Let her, Randy. She's all woman and that's
what she's made for."

"Stop worrying," Randy said. He didn't quite understand and he didn't
know what else to say.

Heycock's aide fidgeted at the end of the ramp. "Everybody's in,
Colonel," he said. "The General was looking for you at lunch. The
General wondered what happened to you. He was most anxious--"

"I'll see the General as soon as we're airborne," Mark said sharply.

The aide retreated two steps up the ramp, then waited stubbornly.

They shook hands. Mark said, "Better try to catch a nap this evening."

"I will. When I get home shall I call Helen and tell her you're on the
way?"

"No. Not much use. This aircraft cruises at five-fifty. By the time you
get back to Fort Repose, we'll be west of the Mississippi." He glanced
down at his bare knees. "Looks like I'll have to change into a real
uniform on the aircraft. I'd look awfully funny in Omaha."

"So long, Mark."

Without raising his head, Mark said, "Goodbye, Randy," turned away, and
climbed the ramp.

Randy walked away from the transport, got into his car, and drove slowly
through the base. At the main gate he surrendered his visitor's pass. He
turned into a lonely lane outside the base, near the village of
Pinecastle, and stopped the car in a spot shielded by cabbage palms.
When he was sure no one watched, and no car approached from either
direction, he leaned his head on the wheel. He swallowed a sob and
closed his eyes to forbid the tears.

He heard wind rustle the palms, and the chirp of cardinals in the brush.
He became aware that the clock on the dash, blurred, was staring at him.
The clock said he had just time to make the bank before closing, if he
pushed hard and had luck getting through Orlando traffic. He started the
engine, backed out of the lane into the highway, and let the car run. He
knew he should not have spared time for tears, and would not, ever
again.




CHAPTER THREE


Edgar Quisenberry, president of the bank, never lost sight of his
position and responsibilities as sole representative of the national
financial community in Fort Repose. A monolithic structure of Indiana
limestone built by his father in 1920, the bank stood like a gray
fortress at the corner of Yulee and St. Johns. First National had
weathered the collapse of the 1926 land boom, had been unshaken by the
market crash of 'twenty-nine and the depression that followed. "The only
person who ever succeeded in closing First National," Edgar often
boasted, "was Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 'thirty-three, and he had to
shut down every other bank in the country to do it. It'll never happen
again, because we'll never have another s.o.b. like him."

Edgar, at forty-five, had grown to look something like his bank, squat,
solid, and forbidding. He was the only man in Fort Repose who always
wore a vest, and he never wore sports clothes, even on the golf links.
Each year, when he attended the branch Federal Reserve convention in
Atlanta, two new suits were tailored, one double-breasted blue, one
pin-stripe gray, both designed to minimize, or at least dignify, what he
called "my corporation."

First National employed two vice presidents, a cashier, an assistant
cashier, and four tellers, but it was a one-man bank. You could put it
in at any window, but before you took it out on loan, or cashed an
out-of-town check, you had to see Edgar. All Edgar's loans were based on
Character, and Character was based on cash balance, worth of
unencumbered real estate, ownership of bonds and blue-chip stocks. Since
Edgar was the only person in town who could, and did, maintain a mental
index of all these variables, he considered himself the sole accurate
judge of Character. It was said you could gauge a grove owner's crop by
the way Edgar greeted him on Yulee Street. If Edgar shook his hand and
chatted, then the man had just received a big price for his fruit. If
Edgar spoke, cracked his face, and waved, the man was reasonably
prosperous. If Edgar nodded but did not speak, nemotodes were in the
citrus roots. If Edgar didn't see him, his grove had been destroyed in a
freeze.

When Randolph Bragg burst into the bank at Four minutes to three, Edgar
pretended not to see him. His antipathy for Randy was more deeply rooted
than if he had been a bankrupt. Bending over a desk as if examining a
trust document, Edgar watched Randy scribble his name on the back of a
check, smile at Mrs. Estes, the senior teller, and skid the check
through the window. Randy's manner, dress, and attitude all seemed an
affront. Randy had no respect for institutions, persons, or even money.
He would come bouncing in like this, at the last minute, and demand
service as casually as if The Bank were a soda fountain. He was a lazy,
insolent odd-ball, with dangerous political ideas, who never made any
effort to invest or save. Twice in the past few years he had overdrawn
his account. People called the Braggs "old family." Well, so were the
Minorcans old family--older, the descendants of Mediterranean islanders
who had settled on the coast centuries ago. The Minorcans were shiftless
no-goods and the Braggs no better. Edgar disliked Randy for all these,
and another, secret reason.

Edgar saw Mrs. Estes open her cash drawer, hesitate, and speak to Randy.
He saw Randy shrug. Mrs. Estes stepped out of the cage and Edgar knew
she was going to ask him to okay the check. When she reached his side he
purposely ignored her for a moment, to let Randy know that The Bank
considered him of little importance. Mrs. Estes said, "Will you initial
this, please, Mr. Quisenberry?"

Edgar held the check in both hands and at a distance, examining it
through the bottom lens of his bifocals, as if it smelled of forgery.
Five thousand, signed by Mark Bragg. If Randy irritated Edgar, Mark
infuriated him. Mark Bragg invariably and openly called him by his
school nickname, Fisheye. He was glad that Mark was in the Air Force and
rarely in town. "Ask that young man to come here," he told Mrs. Estes.
Perhaps now he would have the opportunity to repay Judge Bragg for the
humiliation of the poker game.

Five years before, Edgar had been invited to sit in the regular Saturday
night pot-limit game at the St. Johns Country Club in San Marco, county
seat and largest town of Timucuan. He had sat opposite Judge Bragg, a
spare, straight, older man. Except for a small checking account, the
Judge banked and did his business in Orlando and Tallahassee, so Edgar
knew him hardly at all.

Edgar prided himself on his cagey poker. The idea was to win, wasn't it?
Judge Bragg played an open, swashbuckling game, as if he enjoyed it. On
occasion he bluffed, Edgar deduced, but he seemed to be lucky so it was
difficult to tell whether he was bluffing or not. In the third hour a
big pot came along--more than a thousand dollars. Edgar had opened with
three aces and not bettered with his two-card draw, and the Judge had
also drawn two cards. After the draw, Edgar bet a hundred and the men
who had taken only one card dropped out and that left it up to the
judge. The judge promptly raised the size of the pot. Edgar hesitated,
looked into the Judge's amused dark eyes, and folded. As the Judge
embraced and drew in the hill of chips, Edgar reached across the table
and exposed his hand--three sevens and nothing else. Judge Bragg had
said, very quietly, "Don't ever touch my cards again, you son of a
bitch. If you do, I'll break a chair over your head."

The five others in the game had waited for Edgar to do or say something,
but Edgar only tried to laugh it off. At midnight, the Judge cashed in
his chips and said, "See you all next Saturday night--if this tub of
rancid lard isn't here. He's a bore and a boor and he forgets to ante."
That was the first and last time Edgar played at the St. Johns Club. He
had never forgotten it.

Randy walked into the bank's office enclosure, wondering why Edgar
wanted to see him. Edgar knew perfectly well that Mark's check was okay.
"What's the trouble, Edgar?" he asked.

"Isn't it a little late to bring in a big check like this, and ask us
for cash?"

The clock said 3:04. "It wasn't late when I came in," Randy said. He
noticed other customers still in the bank--Eli Blaustein, who owned
Tropical Clothing; Pete Hernandez, Rita's older brother and manager of
Ajax Super-Market; Jerry Kling, from the Standard station; Florence
Wechek, with her Western Union checks and receipts. It was their custom
to hurry to the bank just at three.

"It's all right for business people to make deposits after closing hour,
but I think we ought to have more time to handle an item like this,"
Edgar said.

Randy noticed that Florence, finished at the teller's window, had
wandered within hearing. Florence didn't miss much. "How much time do
you need to cash a check for five thousand?" he asked. He was sure his
face was reddening. He told himself he must not lose his temper.

"That isn't the point," Edgar said. "The point is that your brother
doesn't have an account here."

"You don't doubt that my brother's check is good, do you?" Randy was
relieved to find that his voice, instead of rising, sounded lower and
steadier.

"Now, I didn't say that. But it wouldn't be good banking procedure for
me to hand you five thousand dollars and wait four or five days for it
to clear all the way from Omaha."

"I endorsed it, didn't I?" Randy loosened his shoulders and flexed his
toes and fingers and looked intently at Edgar's face. It would squash,
like a potato.

"I doubt that your account would cover it."

Randy's account stood below four hundred. This had been little to worry
about, with his citrus checks due on the first of the year. Now,
considering Mark's urgency, it was dangerously low. He decided to probe
Edgar's weakness. He said, "Penny-wise, pound-foolish, that's you,
Edgar. You could have been in on a very good thing. Give me back the
check. I'll cash it in San Marco or Orlando in the morning."

Edgar realized he might have made an error. It was most unusual for
anyone to want five thousand in cash. It indicated some sort of a quick,
profitable deal. He should have found out why the cash was needed. "Now,
let's not be in a rush," he said.

Randy held out his hand. "Give me the check."

"Well, if I knew exactly why you had to have all this cash in such a
hurry I might be able to make an exception to banking rules."

"Come on. I don't have time to waste."

Edgar's pale, protruding eyes shifted to Florence, frankly listening,
and Eli Blaustein hovering nearby, interested. "Come into my office,
Randolph," he said.

After Randy had the cash, in hundreds, twenties and tens, he said, "Now
I'll tell you why I wanted it, Edgar. Mark asked me to make a bet for
him."

"Oh, the races!" Edgar said. "I very rarely play the races, but I know
Mark wouldn't be risking that much money unless he had a sure thing.
Running in Miami, tomorrow, I suppose?"

"No. Not the races. Mark is simply betting that checks won't be worth
anything, very shortly, but cash will. Good afternoon, Fisheye." He left
the office and sauntered across the lobby. As Mrs. Estes unlocked the
bank door she squeezed his arm and whispered, "Good for you!"

Edgar rocked in his chair, furious. It wasn't a reason. It was a riddle.
He repeated Randy's words. They made no sense at all, unless Mark
expected some big cataclysm, like all the banks closing, and of course
that was ridiculous. Whatever happened, the country's financial
structure was sound. Edgar reached a conclusion. He had been tricked and
bluffed again. The Braggs were scoundrels, all of them.

****

Randy's first stop was Ajax Super-Market. It really wasn't a
super-market, as it claimed. Fort Repose's population was 3,422,
according to the State Census, and this included Pistolville and the
Negro district. The Chamber of Commerce claimed five thousand, but the
Chamber admitted counting the winter residents of Riverside Inn, and
people who technically were outside the town limits, like those who
lived on River Road. So Fort Repose had not attracted the big chain
stores. Still, Ajax imitated the super-markets, inasmuch as you wheeled
an aluminum cart around and served yourself, and Ajax sold the same
brands at about the same prices.

Randy hated grocery shopping. None of the elaborate surveys, and studies
in depth of the buying habits of Americans had a classification for
Randolph Bragg. Usually he grabbed a cart and sprinted for the meat
counter, where he dropped a written order. Then he raced up and down the
aisles, snatching cans and bottles and boxes and cartons from shelves
and freezers apparently at random, running down small children and
bumping old ladies and apologizing, until his final lap brought him past
the meat counter again. The butchers had learned to give his order
priority, for if his meat wasn't cut he didn't stop, simply made a
violent U-turn and barreled off for the door. When the checker rang up
his bill Randy looked at his watch. His record for a full basket was
three minutes and forty-six seconds, portal to portal.

But on this day it was entirely different, because of the length of his
list to which he had been adding, the quantities, and the Friday
afternoon shopping rush. After he'd filled three carts, and the meat
order had already been carried to the car, he was still only halfway
down the list, but physically and emotionally exhausted. His toes were
mashed, and he had been shoved, buffeted, butted in the ribs, and rammed
in the groin. His legs trembled, his hands shook, and a tic had
developed in his left eye. Waiting in the check-out line, maneuvering
two topheavy carts before and one behind, he cursed man's scientific
devilishness in inventing H-bombs and super-markets, cursed Mark, and
swore he would rather starve than endure this again.

At last he reached the counter. Pete Hernandez, acting as checker,
gaped. "Good God, Randy!" he said. "What're you going to do, feed a
regiment?" Until the year before, Pete had always called him "Mr.
Bragg," but after Randy's first date with Pete's sister their
relationship naturally had changed.

"Mark's wife and children are coming to stay with me a while," he
explained.

"What's she got--a football team?"

"Kids eat a lot," Randy said. Pete was skinny, chicken-breasted, his
chin undershot and his nails dirty, completely unlike Rita except for
black eyes and olive skin.

Pete began to play the cash register with two fingers while the car boy,
awed, filled the big sacks. Randy was aware that seven or eight women,
lined up behind him, counted his purchases, fascinated. He heard one
whisper, "Fifteen cans of coffee--fifteen!" The line grew, and he was
conscious of a steady, complaining murmur. Unaccountably, he felt
guilty. He felt that he ought to face these women and shout, "All of
you! All of you buy everything you can!" It wouldn't do any good. They
would be certain he was mad.

Pete pulled down the total and announced it loudly: "Three hundred and
fourteen dollars and eighty cents, Randy! Gees, that's our record!"

From habit, Randy looked at his watch. One hour and six minutes. That,
too, was a record. He paid in cash, grabbed an armful of bags, nodded
for Pete's car boy to follow, and fled.

He stopped at Bill Cullen's bar, short-order grill, package store, and
fish camp, just outside the town limits. There was space for two cases
in the front seat, so he'd lay in his whisky supply. Bill and his wife,
a straw-haired woman usually groggy and thick-tongued with spiked wine,
operated all this business in a two-room shack joined to a covered
wharf, its pilings leaning and roof askew, in a cove on the Timucuan.
The odors of fried eggs, dead minnows, gasoline and kerosene fumes,
decaying gar and catfish heads, stale beer and spilt wine oozed across
land and water.

Ordinarily, Randy bought his bourbon two or three bottles at a time. On
this day, he bought a case and a half, cleaning out Bill's supply of his
brand. He recalled that Helen, when she drank at all, preferred Scotch.
He bought six fifths of Scotch.

Bill, inquisitive, said, "Planning a big barbecue or party or something,
Randy? You figure you'll try politics again?"

Randy found it almost impossible to lie. His father had beaten him only
once in his life, when he was ten, but it had been a truly terrible
beating. He had lied, and the Judge had gone upstairs and returned with
his heaviest razor strop. He had grabbed Randy by the neck and bent him
across the billiard table, and implanted the virtue of truth through the
seat of his pants, and on bare hide, until he screamed in terror and
pain. Then Randy was ordered to his room, supperless and in disgrace.
Hours later, the Judge knocked and came in and gently turned him over in
the bed. The Judge spoke quietly. Lying was the worst crime, the
indispensable accomplice of all others, and would always bring the worst
punishment. "I can forgive anything except a lie." Randy believed him,
and while he could no longer remember the lie he had told, he never
forgot the punishment. Unconsciously, his right hand rubbed his buttocks
as he thought up an answer for Bill Cullen.

"I'm having visitors," Randy said, "and Christmas is coming." This was
the truth, if not the whole truth. He couldn't risk saying more to Bill.
Bill's nickname was Bigmouth and his lying not limited to the size of
yesterday's catch. Bigmouth Bill could spark a panic.

When he turned into the driveway, Randy saw Malachai Henry using a
scuffle hoe in the camellia beds screening the garage. "Malachai!" he
called. "How about helping me get this stuff into the house?"

Malachai hurried over. His eyes, widening, took in the cartons, bags,
and cases filling the trunk and piled on the seats. "All this going up
to your apartment, sir?"

"No. It goes into the kitchen and utility room. Mrs. Bragg and the
children are flying in from Omaha tomorrow."

As they unloaded, Randy considered the Henrys. They were a special
problem. They were black and they were poor but in many ways closer to
him than any family in Fort Repose. They owned their own land and ran
their own lives, but in a sense they were his wards. They could not be
abandoned or the truth withheld from them. He couldn't explain Mark's
warning to Missouri. She wouldn't understand. If he told Preacher, all
Preacher would do was lift up his face, raise his arms, and intone,
"Hallelujah! The Lord's will be done!" If he told Two-Tone, Two-Tone
would consider it an excuse to get drunk and stay that way. But he
could, with confidence, tell Malachai.

With the meat packed in the freezer and everything else stacked in
cupboards and closets Randy said, "Come on up to my office, Malachai,
and I'll give you your money." He paid Malachai twenty-five dollars a
week for twenty hours. Malachai picked his own days to mow, rake,
fertilize, and trim, days when he had no fruit picking, repairing, or
better paying yard jobs elsewhere. Randy knew he was never short-timed,
and Malachai knew he could always count on that twenty-five a week.

Malachai's face was expressionless, but Randy sensed his apprehension.
Malachai never before had been asked upstairs to receive his pay. In the
office, Randy dropped into the high-backed, leather-covered swivel chair
that had come from his father's chambers. Malachai stood, uncertain.
"Sit down," Randy said. Malachai picked the least comfortable straight
chair and sat down, not presuming to lean back.

Randy brought out his wallet and looked up at the portrait of his
bald-headed grandfather, Woodrow Wilson's diplomat, with the saying for
which he was known stamped in faded gold on the discolored frame: "Small
nations, when treated as equals, become the firmest of allies."

It was difficult. From the days when they fished and hunted together, he
had always felt close to Malachai. They could still work in the grove,
side by side, and discuss as equals the weather and the citrus and the
fishing but never any longer share any personal, any important matters.
They could not talk politics or women or finances. It was strange, since
Malachai was much like Sam Perkins. He had as much native intelligence
as Sam, the same intuitive courtesy, and they were the same size,
weighing perhaps 180, and the same color, cordovan-brown. Randy and Sam
Perkins had been lieutenants in a company of the 7th (Custer) Regiment
of the First Cav. Together, Randy and Sam had dug in on the banks of the
Han and Chongchon, and faced the same bugle-heralded human wave charge
at Unsan, and covered each other's platoons in advance and retreat. They
had slept side by side in the same bunker, eaten from the same mess
tins, drunk from the same bottle, flown to Tokyo on R. and R. together
and together bellied up to the bar of the Imperial Hotel. They had (if
it were learned in Fort Repose he would be ostracized) even gone to a
junior-officer-grade geisha house together and been greeted with equal
hospitality and favors. So it was a strange thing that he could not
speak to Malachai, whom he had known since he could speak at all, as he
had to Sam Perkins in Korea. It was strange that a Negro could be an
officer and a gentleman and an equal below Parallel Thirty-eight, but
not below the Mason-Dixon Line. It was strange, but this was not the
time for social introspection. His job was to tell Malachai to brace and
prepare himself and his family.

Randy took two tens and a five from his wallet and shoved them across
the desk. "That's for the week."

"Thank you, sir," Malachai said, folding the bills and tucking them into
the breast pocket of his checked shirt.

Perhaps the difference was that Malachai had not been an officer, like
Sam Perkins, Randy thought. Malachai had been in service for four years,
but in the Air Defense Command, a tech sergeant babying jet engines.
Perhaps it was their use of the language. Sam spoke crisp upstate-New
York-Cornell English, but when Malachai talked you didn't have to see
him to know he was black. "Malachai," Randy said, "I want to ask you a
serious question."

"Yes, sir."

"What would you say if I told you I have very good information--about as
good as you can get--that before long a war is coming?"

"Wouldn't surprise me one bit."

The answer surprised Randy. His swivel chair banged upright. "What makes
you say that?"

Malachai smiled, pleased with Randy's reaction. "Well, sir, I keep up
with things. I read all I can. I read all the news magazines and all the
out-of-state papers I can get hold of and some service journals and lots
of other stuff."

"You do? You don't subscribe to them all, do you?"

Malachai tried to control his grin. "Some I get from you, Mister Randy.
You finish a magazine and throw it away and Missouri finds it and brings
it home in her tote bag. And every day she collects the Cleveland papers
and the business magazines from Mrs. McGovern's. Mondays I work for
Admiral Hazzard. He saves _The New York Times_ and the Washington papers
for me and the Naval Institute _Proceedings_ and technical magazines.
And I listen to all the commentators."

"How do you find the time?" Randy had never realized that Malachai read
anything except the _San Marco Sun_ ("It Shines for Timucuan County").

"Well, sir, there's not much for a single, non-drinkin' man to do around
Fort Repose, week nights. So I read and I listen. I know things ain't
good, and the way I figure is that if people keep piling up bombs and
rockets, higher and higher and higher, someday somebody's going to set
one off. Then blooey!"

"More than one," Randy said, "and soon--maybe very soon. That's what my
brother believes and that's why he's sending Mrs. Bragg and the children
down here. You'd better get set for it, Malachai. That's what I'm
doing."

Malachai's smile was gone entirely. "Mister Randy, I've thought about it
a lot, but there's not a doggone thing we can do about it. We just have
to sit here and wait for it. There's not much we can lay up--" he patted
his breast pocket. "This twenty-five dollars, with what Missouri brings
home this evening, is it. Fast as we make it, it goes. Of course, we
don't need much and we've got one thing hardly anybody else has got."

"What's that?"

"Water. Running water. Artesian water that can't be contaminated. You
all only use it in the sprinkling system because it smells funny, some
say like rotten eggs. But that sulphur water ain't bad. You gets to like
it."

Until that moment, Randy hadn't thought of water at all. His
grandfather, in a year of freakish drought, at great cost had drilled
nearly a thousand feet to find the artesian layer and irrigate the
grove. And his grandfather had allowed the Henrys to tap the main pipe,
so the Henrys had a perpetual flow of free water, although it was hard
with dissolved minerals and Randy hated to taste it out of the sprinkler
heads in grove and garden, even on a hot summer day.

"I'm afraid I'd never get used to it," he said. He counted out two
hundred dollars in twenties and thrust the money across the desk. "This
is for an emergency. Buy what you need."

The new notes felt slippery in Malachai's fingers. "I don't know when I
can pay this back."

"Don't worry about it. I'm not asking you to pay it back."

Malachai folded the bills. "Thank you, sir."

"See you next week, Malachai."

Malachai left and Randy mixed a drink. You turned a tap and lo, water
came forth, sweet, soft water without odor, pumped from some sub-surface
pool by a silent, faithful servant, a small electric motor. Every family
on River Road, except the Henrys, obtained its water in the same way,
each with its own pump and well. More important than anything he had
listed was water, free of dangerous bacilli, unpolluted by poisons
human, chemical, or radioactive. Pure water was essential to his
civilization, accepted like pure air. In the big cities, where even a
near-miss would rupture reservoirs, demolish aqueducts, and smash mains,
it would be hell without water. Big cities would become traps deadly as
deserts or jungles. Randy began to consider how little he really knew of
the fundamentals of survival. Helen, he guessed, would know a good deal
more. It was a required subject in the education of Air Force wives. He
decided to talk to Bubba Offenhaus, who ran Civil Defense in Fort
Repose. Bubba must have pamphlets, or something, that he could study.

Downstairs Graf began to bark, an insistent, belligerent alarm
announcing a strange car in the driveway. Randy went to the head of the
stairs, shouted, "Shut up, Graf!" and waited to see who would knock.

Nobody knocked but the door opened and Randy saw Elizabeth McGovern in
the front hall, bending over Graf, her face curtained by shoulder-length
blond hair. She stroked Graf's hackles until his tail wigwagged a
friendly signal. Then she looked up and called, "You decent, Randy?"

One day she would barge in like this and he would be indecent. She
bewildered him. She was brash, unpredictable, and sometimes
uncomfortably outspoken. "Come on up, Lib," he said. Like the Henrys,
she was a special problem.

All through the summer and early fall Randy had watched the McGoverns'
house and dock go up, while landscapers spotted palms in orderly rows,
laid down turf, and planted flower pots and shrubbery. On a sultry
October afternoon, trolling for bass in the channel, he had seen a pair
of faultlessly curved and tapered legs incongruously stretched toward
the sky from the McGovern dock. Since she was lying on the
canvas-covered planking, heels propped up on a post, the legs were all
that could be seen from water level. He turned the prow toward shore to
discover whose body was attached to these remarkable and unfamiliar
legs. When his boat was almost under the dock he'd spoken, "Hello,
legs."

"You may call me Lib," she'd said. "You're Randy Bragg, aren't you? I've
sort of been expecting you'd call."

When they'd become something more than friends, although less than
lovers, he'd accused her of luring him with her lovely legs. Lib had
laughed and said, "I didn't know, then, that you were a leg man but I'm
glad you are. Most American males have a fixation about the mammary
gland. A symptom of momism, I think. Legs are for men's pleasure,
breasts for babies'. Oh, that's really sour grapes. I only said it
because I know my legs are my only real asset. I'm flat and I'm not
pretty." Technically, she was accurate. She was no classic beauty when
you considered each feature individually. She was only beautiful in
complete design, in the way she moved and was put together.

She came up the stairs and curled a bare arm around his neck and kissed
him, a brief kiss, a greeting. "I've been trying to get you on the phone
all day," she said. "I've been thinking and I've reached an important
conclusion. Where've you been?"

"My brother stopped at McCoy, flying back to Omaha. I had to meet him."
He led her into the living room. "Drink?"

"Ginger ale, if you have it." She sat on a stool at the bar, one knee
raised and clasped between her hands. She wore a sleeveless, turquoise
linen blouse, doeskin shorts, and moccasins.

He tumbled ice into a glass and poured ginger ale and said, "What's this
important conclusion?"

"You'll get mad. It's about you."

"Okay, I'll get mad."

"I think you ought to go to New York or Chicago or San Francisco or any
city with character and vitality. You should go to work. This place is
no good for you, Randy. The air is like soup and the people are like
noodles. You're vegetating. I don't want a vegetable. I want a man."

He was instantly angry, and then he told himself that for a number of
reasons, including the fact that her diagnosis was probably the truth,
it was silly to be angry. He said, "If I went away and left you here,
wouldn't you turn into a noodle?"

"I've thought it all out. As soon as you get a job, I'll follow you. If
you want, we can live together for a while. If it's good, we can get
married."

He examined her face. Her mouth, usually agile and humorous, was drawn
into a taut, colorless line. Her eyes, which reflected her moods as the
river reflected the sky, were gray and opaque. Under the soft tan
painted by winter's sun her skin was pale. She was serious. She meant
it. "Too late," he said.

"What do you mean, 'too late'?"

Yesterday, there might have been sense and logic to her estimate, and he
might have accepted this challenge, invitation, and proposal. But since
morning, they had lived in diverging worlds. It was necessary that he
lead her down into his world, yet not too abruptly, lest sight and
apprehension of the future imperil her capacity to think clearly and act
intelligently. "My sister-in-law and her two children are coming to stay
with me," he began. "They get in tonight--in the morning, really. Three
thirty."

"Fine," she said. "Meet them, turn the house over to them, and then pick
yourself a city--a nice, big, live city. They can have this place all to
themselves and while they're here you won't have to worry about the
house. How long are they staying?"

"I don't know," Randy said. Maybe forever, he almost added, but didn't.

"It won't matter, really, will it? When they leave you can rent the
house. If they leave soon you ought to get a good price for it for the
rest of the season. What's your sister-in-law like?"

"I haven't told you the reason they're coming." He reached out and
covered her hands. Her fingers, long, round, strong, matched her throat.
Her nails were tinted copper, and carefully groomed. He tried to frame
the right words. "My brother believes--"

Graf, lying near Randy's stool, rolled to his feet, hair bristling like
a razorback pig, tail and ears at attention, and then raced into the
hallway and down the stairs, barking wildly.

"That's the loudest dog I've ever met!" Lib said. "What's eating him
now?"

"He's got radar ears. Nothing can get close to the house without him
knowing." Randy went downstairs. It was Dan Gunn at the door. An
angular, towering man, sad-faced and saturnine, wearing heavy-framed
glasses, awkward in movement and sparing of speech, he stepped into the
hallway, not bothering to glance at Graf. Dan said, "You got a woman
upstairs, Randy? I know you have because her car is in the driveway." He
removed his pipe from his mouth and almost smiled. "I'd like to talk to
her. About her mother. Her father, too."

"Go on up to the apartment, Dan," Randy said. "I'll just wander around
in the yard." He guessed that Dan had just come from a professional
visit to the McGoverns. Lib's mother had diabetes. He didn't know what
her father had, but if Dan was going to discuss family illnesses with
Lib, he would politely vanish.

"I don't think Elizabeth will mind if you sit in on this," Dan said.
"Practically one of the family by now, aren't you?"

Going upstairs Randy decided that Dan, too, should know of Mark's
warning. If anybody ought to know, it was a doctor. And at the same time
Randy realized he had not included drugs in his list, and the medicine
cabinet held little except aspirin, nasal sprays, and mouthwash. With
two children coming, he should've planned better than that. Anyway, Dan
was the man to tell him what to get, and write the prescriptions.

Randy mixed Dan a drink and said, "Our medic is here to see you, Lib,
not me. When he's finished talking, I've got something to say to both of
you."

Dan looked at him oddly. "Sounds like you're about to make a
pronouncement."

"I am. But you go first."

"It's nothing urgent or terribly important. I was just making the
placebo circuit and dropped in to see Elizabeth's mother."

"The what?" Lib asked. Randy had heard Dan use the phrase before.

"Placebo, or psychosomatic circuit--the middle-aged retirees and
geriatrics who have nothing to do but get lonely and worry about their
health. The only person they can call who can't avoid visiting them is
their doctor. So they call me and I let them bend my ear with symptoms.
I give them sugar pills or tranquilizers--one seems about as good as the
other. I tell them they're going to live. This makes them happy. I don't
know why."

At thirty-five, Dan was a souring idealist. After medical school in
Boston he'd started practice in a Vermont town and in his free hours
slaved at post-graduate studies in epidemiology. His target had been the
teeming continents and the great plagues--malaria, typhus, cholera,
typhoid, dysentery--and he was angling for a World Health Organization
or Point Four appointment. Then he'd married. His wife--Randy did not
know her name because Dan never uttered it--apparently had been
extravagant, a nympho, a one-drink alcoholic, and a compulsive gambler.
She'd recoiled at the thought of living in Equatorial Africa or a delta
village in India, and pestered him to set up practice in New York or Los
Angeles, where the big money was. When Dan refused, she took to spending
weekends in New York, an easy pickup at her favorite bar in the Fifties.
So he'd been a gentleman and let her go to Reno and get the divorce.
When her luck ran out she returned East, filed suit for alimony, and the
judge had given her everything she'd asked. Now she lived in Los Angeles
and each week shovelled the alimony into bingo games or pari-mutuel
machines, and Dan's career was ended before it had begun. A World Health
or Point Four salary would barely pay her alimony and leave nothing for
him, and a doctor can't skip, except into the medical shadowland of
criminal practice. He had come to Florida because the state was growing
and his practice and fees would be larger and he thought he'd eventually
accumulate enough money to offer her a cash settlement and suture the
financial hemorrhage.

In Fort Repose, Dan shared the one-story Medical Arts Building with an
older man, Dr. Bloomfield, and two dentists. He lived frugally in a
two-room suite in the Riverside Inn, where he acted as house physician
for the aging guests during the winter season. His gross income had
doubled. While he delivered babies for Pistolville and Negro families
for $25, he balanced this with ten-dollar house calls on the placebo
circuit. In a single two-hour sweep up River Road, handing out placebos
and tranquilizers, he often netted $100. It did him no good. He
discovered he was inexorably squeezed between alimony and taxes. Taxes
rose with income and the escalator clause in his alimony order took
effect. Once, he and Randy figured out that if his gross rose to more
than $50,000 a year he would have to go into bankruptcy. Dan could
imagine no combination of circumstances that would allow him to amass
enough capital to buy off his former wife and set him free to fight the
plagues. So he was a bitter man, but, Randy believed, a kind man,
perhaps even a great one.

Lib said, "You don't consider our house a stop on the placebo circuit,
do you?"

"No," Dan said, "and yes. Your mother does have diabetes." He paused, to
let her understand that was not all that was wrong. "She called me
today. She was very much upset. She wondered whether she could change
from insulin to the new oral drug. You've been giving her her insulin
shot every morning, haven't you?"

"Yes," Lib said. "She can't bear to stick herself and she won't let my
father do it. She says he's too rough. Says Dad jabs her like he enjoys
it."

This was something Randy hadn't known before.

Dan said, "She wants me to get her oranise because she says you're
talking about leaving her."

Lib said, "Yes, I do intend to leave. I'm going to leave when Randy
leaves."

Randy started to speak, but checked himself. He could wait a moment.

Dan wiped his glasses. His face dropped unhappily. "I don't know about
experimenting," he said. "Your mother is balanced at seventy units of
insulin a day. A pretty solid shot. I don't want to take her off
insulin. She'll have to learn to use the hypodermic herself. Now, let's
move on to your father."

"My father! Nothing's wrong with Dad, is there?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. He's turning into a zombie, Elizabeth.
Doesn't he have any hobbies? Can't he start a new business? He's only
sixty-one and, except for a little hypertension, in good shape
physically. But he is dying faster than he should. The better a man is
at business, the worse in retirement. One day he's running a big
corporation and the next day he isn't allowed to run anything, even his
own home. He wishes himself dead, and he dies."

Lib had been listening intently. She said, "It's even harder on Dad. You
see, he didn't retire by choice. He was fired. Oh, we all call it
retirement, and he gets his pension, but the board eased him out--he
lost a quiet little proxy fight--and now he doesn't think he is of any
use to anyone at all."

"I felt," Dan said, "it was something like that." He was silent a moment
"I'd like to help him. I think he's worth saving."

Now Randy knew it was time to speak. "When you came in, Dan, I was about
to tell Lib what Mark told me today, out at McCoy. He is afraid--he is
sure--that we are on the verge of war. That's why Helen and the children
are being sent down here. Mark thinks the Russians are already staged
for it."

Randy watched them. Comprehension seemed to come first to Elizabeth. She
said, softly, "Oh, God!" Her fingers locked in her lap and grew white.

Dan's head shook, a negative tremor. He looked at the decanter and
Randy's half-empty glass on the bar. "You haven't been drinking, have
you, Randy?"

"First today--since breakfast."

"I didn't think you'd been drinking. I was just hoping." Dan's massive
head, with the coarse, wiry, reddish hair at the temples, bent forward
as if his neck could no longer support it. "I guess that makes
everything hypothetical," he said. "How soon?"

"Mark doesn't know and I can't even guess. Today--tomorrow--next
week--next month--you name it."

Lib looked at her watch. "News at six," she said. A portable radio no
larger than a highball glass stood at the end of the bar. She turned it
on.

Randy kept the portable tuned to WSMF (Wonderful San Marco, Florida) the
biggest station in the county. The dance music faded and the voice of
Happy Hedrix, the disk jockey, said:

    "Well, all of you frozen felines, I've got to take the needle
    out of the groove for five minutes so the cubes--a cube is a
    square anyway you look at him, hah, hah--can get hip with what
    cooks around the sphere. So let's start in with the weather.
    It's sixty-nine outside our studios right now and the forecast
    for Central Florida is fair and mild with light to moderate east
    winds tomorrow, and no frost danger through Tuesday. That's good
    fishing weather, folks, and to prove it here's a story from
    Tavares, over in Lake County, Jonas Corkle, of Hyannis,
    Nebraska, today caught a thirteen pound, four-ounce bigmouth in
    Lake Dora to take the lead in Lake County's Winter Bass
    Tournament. He used a black eel bait. A UP item from Washington
    says the Navy has ordered preventive action against unidentified
    jet planes which have been shadowing the Sixth Fleet in the
    Eastern Mediterranean. At Tropical Park today, Bald Eagle won
    the Coral Handicap by three lengths, paying eleven-sixty.
    Careless Lady was second and Rumpus third. Now, turning to news
    of Wall Street, stocks closed mixed, with missiles up and
    railroads off, in moderate trading. The Dow-Jones averages..."

Lib turned off Happy Hendrix. She said, "What's it mean?"

Randy shrugged. "That business in the Mediterranean? It's happened
before. I guess that's one of the dangerous things about it. We get
shockproof. We've been conditioned. Standing on the brink of war has
become our normal posture." He turned to Dan. "I think we should lay in
some drugs--an emergency kit. How about prescribing for war, Doctor?"

Dan fumbled in his jacket pocket and brought out a pad. He moved slowly
and seemed very tired. "I'll give you both some," he said, starting to
write. "Stuff you can use yourselves without my help. And for your
mother, Elizabeth, extra bottles of insulin. Also, I'll order some
oranise from a drug house in Orlando. Local pharmacy doesn't carry it
yet."

"I thought you'd decided not to experiment with it on Mother?" Lib said.

"Insulin," Dan said, continuing to write, "requires refrigeration."

Dan dropped the prescriptions on the bar. "Good night," he said. "I'm
delivering a baby at the clinic at seven. Caesarian section. Life goes
on. At least that's what I'm going to believe until proved otherwise."
He rose and shambled out of the room.

Lib walked around the counter. "Hold me," she said.

Randy held her, crushed her, strangely without any passion except fear
for her. Usually he had only to feel her body, or brush his lips across
her hair and smell what she called "my courting perfume" to become
aroused. Now his arms were completely encircling and completely
protective. All he asked was that she live and he live and that things
remain the same.

She kept rolling her smooth head against his throat. She was saying no
to it. She was willing and praying the clock to stand still, as Randy
was; but, as Mark had said, this was against nature.

She raised her head and gently pushed herself away and said, "Thanks,
Randy. I get strength from you. Did you know that? Now tell me, what
should I do?"

"You'd better drive back to your house and speak with your mother and
father."

"I don't think they'll believe it. They don't pay much attention to the
international situation and Mother doesn't ever like to talk about
anything unpleasant."

"They probably won't believe it. After all, they don't know Mark. Put it
up to your father, as a business proposition. Tell him it's like taking
out insurance. Anyway, be sure and get Dan's prescriptions filled."

"I'll get the medicines tomorrow," she said. "Food isn't a problem. Our
cupboard isn't exactly bare. What are you going to do, Randy? Hadn't you
better get some rest if you have to be at the airport at three-thirty?"

"I'll try." He took her into his arms again and kissed her, this time
not feeling protective at all, and she responded, her fears contained.

They left the house as the distended red sun dropped into the river
where it joined the wide St. Johns. She got into the car. He touched her
lips again. "If you need me, call."

"Don't worry. I will. See you tomorrow, Randy."

"Yes, tomorrow."

****

Now at this hour, when the cirrus clouds stretched like crimson ribbons
high across the southwest sky, in such a hush that not even a playful
eddy dared stir moss or palm fronds, the day died in calm and in beauty.
This was Randy's hour, this and dawn, time of stillness and of peace.

His eye was attracted by movement in a clump of Turk's-cap across the
road, and then again, he saw the damn bird. There could be little doubt
of it. Even at this distance, without binoculars, he could distinguish
the white-rimmed eyes. Moving very slowly and in silence, drifting from
bush to bush, he crossed the lawn.

If he could cross the road and Florence Wechek's front yard without
frightening it, he might make a positive identification.

Florence and Alice Cooksey watched him. Florence had been observing him
from behind the bedroom blinds while he talked with the McGovern girl,
and kissed her goodbye, a disgusting public exhibition. She had watched
him stand in the driveway, hands on hips, alone and, for a long time,
motionless. Then incredulously, she had seen him bend over and
stealthily move toward her, and she had called Alice. "There he is!" she
said triumphantly. "I told you so. Come and see for yourself. He's a
Peeping Tom, all right!"

Alice, peering through the louvers, said, "I think he's stalking
something."

"Yes, me."

They watched while he crossed the road, placing his feet carefully as a
heron feeding on minnows in the shallows. "The sneak!" Florence said.

He reached Florence's lawn and for a moment hid behind a clump of
boxwood. "He's going around the side of the house," Florence said. "I
think we can watch better from the dining room." She ran into the dining
room, Alice following.

Bent almost double, he advanced from the boxwood toward the Turk's-cap.
Suddenly he straightened, threw an imaginary hat to the ground, and
Florence heard him say distinctly, "Oh, Goddam!" At the same time she
heard Anthony shaking the cage on the back porch. Anthony had come home
for the night. Then she heard Randy on the back porch. Anthony squawked.
Randy swore, and shouted, "Hey, Florence!"

She opened the kitchen door and said, "Now look here, Randolph Bragg,
I'm not having any more of your prowling around the house and staring at
me while I'm dressing. You ought to be ashamed!"

Randy, mouth open, astonished, stared at the two birds, Anthony on the
outside of the cage, Cleo fluttering within. He said, "Is that your
bird?" He pointed at Anthony.

"Certainly it's my bird."

"What kind of a bird is it?"

"Why he's an African lovebird, of course."

Randy shook his head. "I'm a dope. I thought he was a Carolina parakeet.
You know, the Carolina parakeet is, or was, our only native parrot. A
specimen hasn't been identified since 1925. They're supposed to be
extinct. If that isn't one, I'm willing to admit they are."

"Is that why you've been spying on me? I saw you at it this morning,
with glasses."

"I haven't been spying on you, Florence. I've been spying on that fake
Carolina parakeet." He noticed Alice Cooksey standing behind Florence,
smiling. Alice was one of his favorite people. He really ought to tell
Alice about Mark, and what Mark predicted. Ought to tell Florence as
well, but Florence still looked upset and angry. He said, "Now,
Florence, cool off. I've got something important to tell you."

"Bird watcher!" Florence shrieked. She slammed the kitchen door in his
face and fled into the house.

Randy put his hands in his pockets and strolled home. The world was real
crazy. He'd talk to Florence and Alice in the morning, after Florence
settled down.

In his kitchen, Randy made himself a cannibal sandwich. Lib considered
his habit of eating raw ground round, smeared with horseradish and
mustard and pressed between slices of rye bread, barbarous. He'd
explained it was simply a bachelor's meal, quick and lazy, and anyway he
liked it.

He trotted downstairs and examined the purchases lined on shelves and
stacked in closets. Some of it was pretty exotic stuff for an emergency.
Perhaps he should make up a small kit of delicacies. If the worst
happened, this would be their iron rations for a desperate time. If
nothing happened, it would all keep. He selected a jar of English beef
tea, a sealed package of bouillon cubes, a jar of Swiss chocolates and a
sealed tin of hardcandies, a canned Italian cheese and a few other small
items. He placed them all in a small carton, wrapped the carton in foil,
and took it up to the apartment. The teak chest in the office was a fine
place to hide it and forget it. He rummaged through the chest,
rearranging old legal documents, abstracts, bundles of letters, a packet
of Confederate currency, peeling photograph albums. Lieutenant Peyton's
log and a half-dozen baby books--all family memorabilia judged not
valuable enough to warrant space in a safe deposit vault but too
valuable to throw away--and made space for the iron rations at the
bottom.

At seven o'clock he listened to the news. There was nothing startling.
He flopped down on a studio couch, picked up a magazine, and started to
read an article captioned, "Next Stop--Mars." Presently the words danced
in front of his eyes, and he slept.

****

When it was seven Friday evening in Fort Repose, it was two o'clock
Saturday morning in the Eastern Mediterranean, where Task Group 6.7
turned toward the north and headed for the narrow seas between Cyprus
and Syria. The shape of the task group was a giant oval, its periphery
marked by the wakes of destroyers and guided-missile frigates and
cruisers. The center of Task Group 6.7, and the reason for its
existence, was the U.S.S. _Saratoga_, a mobile nuclear striking base. In
_Saratoga_'s Combat Information Center two officers watched a bright
blip on the big radar repeater. It winked on and off, like a tiny green
eye opening and closing. Interrogated by a "friend or foe" radar
impulse, it had not replied. It was hostile. For thirty-six hours, ever
since passing Malta, _Saratoga_ had been shadowed. This blip was the
latest shadower.

One of the officers said, "No use sending up a night fighter. That bogy
is too fast. But an F-11-F could catch him. So we'll let him hang
around, let him close in. Maybe he'll come close enough for a missile
shot from _Canberra_. If not, we'll launch F-11-F's at first light."

The other officer, an older man, a senior captain, frowned. He disliked
risking his ship in an area of restricted maneuver while under enemy
observation. He always thought of the Mediterranean as a sack, anyway,
and they were approaching the bottom of it. He said, "All right. But be
damn sure we chase him out of radar range before we enter the Gulf of
Iskenderun."




CHAPTER FOUR


Helen Bragg's battle was over, and she had lost. The tickets were in her
handbag. Their luggage--Mark had made them pack almost all the clothes
they owned and paid an outrageous sum for the extra weight--was piled on
the baggage cart already wheeled outside on the concrete, fine snow
settling on it. She had lost, and yet fifteen minutes before plane time
she still protested, not in the hope that Mark would change his mind. It
was simply that she felt miserable and guilty. She said, "I still don't
think I ought to go. I feel like a deserter."

They stood together in the terminal lobby, a tiny island oblivious to
the human eddies around them. Her gloved hand held to his arm, her cheek
was pressed tightly against his shoulder. He pressed her hand and said,
"Don't be silly. Anybody with any sense gets out of a primary target
area at a time like this. You aren't the first to leave, and you won't
be the last."

"That doesn't make it right and it isn't right. My place is here with
you."

He pulled her around to face him, so that her upturned mouth was inches
from his own. "That's just it. You can't stay with me. If and when it
comes I'll be in the Hole, protected by fifty feet of concrete and steel
and good earth. That's where my place is and that's where you can't be.
You'd be somewhere on the surface exposed. If you could come down into
the Hole with me, then you could stay, darling."

This was something he had not said before, a fact she had not
considered. Somehow it made her feel a bit better, yet she continued to
argue, although dispiritedly. "Still, I think my job is here."

His fingers banded her arm and when he spoke his voice was flat, a
direct order. "Your job is to survive because if you don't the children
won't survive. That is your job. There is no other. You understand that,
Helen?"

On the other side of the draughty terminal Ben Franklin and Peyton
buzzed around the newsstand, each with a dollar to spend on candy, gum,
and magazines. They knew only that they were getting out of school a
week early, and were spending Christmas vacation in Florida. That's all
Helen had told them, and in the excitement of packing, and greeting
their father, and then packing more bags, there had been no questions.
Helen said, "I understand." Her head dropped against Mark's chest. "If
this business blows over you'll let us come right home, won't you?"

"Sure."

"You promise?"

"Certainly I promise."

"Maybe we could be home before the next school term."

"Don't count on it, darling. But I'll call you every day, and as soon as
I think it's safe I'll give you the word."

The loudspeaker announced Flight 714 for Chicago, connecting with
flights east and south.

The children ran over to them. Peyton carried a quiver and bow slung
over her shoulder. Ben Franklin a cased spinning rod, his Christmas
present from Randy the year before.

Mark shepherded them outside, and toward Gate 3. He lifted Peyton off
the ground and held her a moment and kissed her, disarranging her red
knitted cap. "My hair!" she said, laughing, and he put her down.

He noticed other passengers filtering through the gate. He drew Ben
Franklin aside. He said, "Behave yourself, son."

Ben looked up at him, his brown eyes troubled. When he spoke, his voice
was intentionally low. "This is an evacuation, isn't it, Dad?"

"Yes." It was Mark's policy never to utter an untruth when replying to a
question from the children.

"I knew it as soon as I got home from school. Usually Mother gets all
excited and happy about traveling. Not today. She hated to pack. So I
knew it."

"I hate to send you away but it's necessary." Looking at Ben Franklin
was like looking at a snapshot of himself in an old album. "You'll have
to be the man of the family for a while."

"Don't worry about us. We'll be okay in Fort Repose. I'm worried about
you." The boy's eyes were filling. Ben Franklin was a child of the
atomic age, and knowledgeable.

"I'll be all right in the Hole."

"Not if... Anyway, Dad, you don't have to worry about us," he
repeated.

Then it was time. Mark walked them to the gate, Peyton's glove in his
left hand, Ben Franklin's in his right. Helen turned and he kissed her
once and said, "Goodbye, darling. I'll phone you tomorrow afternoon.
I've got the duty tonight and I'll probably sleep all morning but I'll
call as soon as I get up."

She managed to say, "Tomorrow."

He watched them walk to the plane, a small procession, and out of his
life.

****

At nine o'clock Randy awoke, aware of a half-dozen problems accumulated
in his subconscious. The problem of transportation he had neglected
entirely. He certainly ought to have a reserve of gas and oil. Half his
grocery list remained to be purchased. He had not filled Dan Gunn's
prescriptions. He had yet to visit Bubba Offenhaus and collect Civil
Defense pamphlets. He went into his bathroom, turned on the lights, and
washed the sleep out of his eyes. Lights! What would happen if the
lights went out? Several boxes of candles, two old-fashioned kerosene
lamps, and three flashlights were cached in the sideboard downstairs, a
provision against hurricane season. He had a flashlight in his bedroom
and another in the car. He added candles, kerosene, and flashlight
batteries to his list. Everything, except the gasoline, would have to
wait until tomorrow anyway. With Helen to help him fill in the gaps, it
would be easy to lay in all the essentials Saturday.

He changed his clothes, shivering. The nights were getting cooler.
Downstairs the thermometer read sixty-one and he turned up the
thermostat. The Bragg house had no cellar--they were rare in Central
Florida--but it did have a furnace room and was efficiently heated by
oil. Oil! He doubted that he'd have to worry about oil. The fuel tank
had been filled in November and thus far the winter had been mild.

In the garage Randy found two empty five-gallon gasoline cans. He put
them in the car trunk and drove to town.

Jerry Kling's station was still open, but Jerry had already turned off
his neon sign and was checking the cash register. Jerry filled the tank,
and the two extra cans, and as an afterthought Randy asked for a gallon
of kerosene and five extra quarts of oil.

Driving back on River Road, Randy slowed when he reached the McGoverns'.
All the lights were on in the McGoverns' house. He turned into the
driveway. It was ten-thirty. It was not necessary that he leave for the
Orlando airport until two A.M.

****

It was near dawn in the Eastern Mediterranean when _Saratoga_, working
up speed in narrowing waters between Cyprus and Lebanon, catapulted four
F-11-F Tigers, the fastest fighters in its complement. By then, the
reconnaissance jet that had shadowed Task Group 6.7 through the darkness
hours had vanished from the radar screens. The Admiral's staff was
convinced another would take its place, as on the previous morning, but
this day the snooper would receive a surprise. Task Group 6.7's primary
mission was to take station in Iskenderun Gulf and give heart to the
Turks, who were under heavy political and propaganda pressure. The
force's security would be endangered if its perilously tight formation,
in this confined area, was observed.

Quite often the flood of history is undammed or diverted by the
character and actions of one man. In this case the man was not an
official in Washington, or the Admiral commanding Task Group 6.7, or
even the Captain or Air Group Commander of _Saratoga_. The man was
Ensign James Cobb, nicknamed Peewee, the youngest and smallest pilot in
Fighter Squadron 44.

Ensign Cobb was assigned Combat Air Patrol duty on this Saturday morning
simply because it was his turn. He was scarcely five feet, six inches
tall, weighed 124, and looked younger than his twenty-three years. Under
a flat-top haircut, his red head appeared knobby and outsized. His face
was pinched, and mottled with freckles. In the presence of girls, he was
shy to the point of panic. In the wonderful ports of Naples, Nice, and
Istanbul, he distinguished himself as the only pilot in Fighting
Forty-Four who never found reason to request a night's liberty ashore.

When he climbed into the cockpit of his aircraft, Peewee Cobb's whole
character changed. The instant his hands and feet were on the controls,
he became as large and fast as his supersonic fighter, and as powerful
as its armament. As compensation for outer physical deficiencies, he was
gifted with superb reactions and eyesight. He was rated superior in
rocketry and gunnery. He got a fierce thrill in pushing his F-11-F
through the mach, and to the limit of its capability. He could outfly
anybody in the squadron, including the Lieutenant Commander who led it,
and who had once said, "Peewee may be a mouse aboard ship, but he's a
tiger in a Tiger. If I sent him up with orders to shoot down the moon,
he'd try."

Now, for the first time, Peewee Cobb was flying CAP under wartime
conditions, in a fighter armed with live rockets and with orders to
intercept and destroy a snooper if it appeared. Climbing steadily in the
darkness, he prayed that if the bogy came back, it would attempt to
penetrate his sector. If it did, nobody would laugh at his size, his
squeaky voice, his face, or his ineffectual awkwardness with women, ever
again.

Peewee Cobb had been given a code name, Sunflower Four, and instructions
to orbit over an area of sea off Haifa, astern of Task Group 6.7. If the
hostile reconnaissance jet came in from a base in Egypt or Albania, he
would be in a position to intercept. His fighter was armed with
Sidewinders, ingenious, single-minded rockets, heat-seekers. A
Sidewinder's nose was sensitive to infra-red rays from any heat source.
Peewee had fired two in practice. They not only had destroyed the
targets, but had unerringly vanished up the tail pipes of the drones.

At thirty thousand feet, Peewee judged he was on station and called for
a radar fix. The missile-cruiser _Canberra_, closest ship in the
formation, confirmed his position. As he circled, the sky in the
southeast grew light. When the sun touched his wingtips, the sea was
still dark below. Then gradually, the shape and color of sea and earth
became plain. He felt entirely alone and apart from this transformation,
as if he watched from a separate planet. He checked his map. Far to the
east he picked out Mount Carmel, and a river, and beyond were the hills
of Megiddo, also called Armageddon. He continued to orbit.

His earphones crackled and he acknowledged _Saratoga_. The fighter
controller's voice said, "Sunflower Four, we have a bogy. He is at
angels twenty-five, his speed five hundred knots. Your intercept course
is thirty degrees. Go get him!"

So the snooper was already north of him and racing up the coast, hoping
to hang on to the flank of the task group and observe it by radar from a
position close to friendly Syrian territory. Peewee took his heading and
pushed his throttle up to ninety-nine percent power. He slid through the
mach with a slight, thrilling tremor. Every fifteen or twenty seconds he
made minute alterations in course in response to directions from
_Saratoga_, which was holding both planes on its screens.

Then he saw it, flicker of sun on metal, diving at great speed.

He pushed the Tiger's nose over and followed, reporting, "I am closing
target." He touched the switch that armed his rockets, and another
calling for manual fire, singly.

The chase had carried him down to nine thousand feet and the bogy was
still losing altitude. It was a two-engined jet, an IL-33, Peewee
believed, and remarkably fast at this low level. There was no doubt the
bogy knew he was on its tail, for reconnaissance aircraft would be well
equipped with radar. His speed held steady at mach 1.5, but his rate of
closure slowed.

Far ahead Peewee saw the Syrian port of Latakia, reputedly built into an
important Red submarine base. Within a few seconds he would be within
Syrian territorial waters, and a few more would carry him over the port
itself.

At this point Peewee should have dropped the chase, for they had been
strictly warned, in the briefing, against violating anyone's borders. He
hung on. In another five seconds--

The bogy jinked violently to the right, heading for the port and its
anti-aircraft and rocket batteries and perhaps the sanctuary of an
airfield in the brown hills and dunes beyond.

Peewee turned the F-11-F inside him, instantly shortening the range.

He pushed the firing button.

The Sidewinder, leaving a thin pencil mark of smoke, rushed out ahead.

For an instant the Sidewinder seemed to be following the flight of the
bogy beautifully, and Peewee waited for it to merge into the tail pipe
of one of the jet engines. Then the Sidewinder seemed to waver in its
course.

Peewee believed, although he could not be certain, that the bogy had cut
its engines and was in a steep glide. Following the Sidewinder, Peewee
lost sight of the bogy.

The Sidewinder darted downward, toward the dock area of Latakia.

It seemed to be chasing a train.

That crazy rocket, Peewee thought.

There was an orange flash and an enormous ball of brown smoke and black
bits of debris rushing up to meet him. Peewee kicked his rudder hard and
climbed away from it, compressed within his G-suit and momentarily
losing his vision. Then the shock wave kicked him in the rear and he was
out over the Mediterranean again. He was asking for a vector back to his
ship when another flash reflected on his instrument panel. He banked to
look back, and saw a black cloud, red flames at its base, rising from
Latakia.

Fifteen minutes later Ensign Cobb, freckles standing out on his white
face like painted splotches, was standing in Admiral's Country of
_Saratoga_ trying to explain what had happened.

****

Randy Bragg pulled up in the rear driveway of the McGovern house,
wondering whether he should go in. He was not exactly popular with the
elder McGoverns, which was why Lib visited him more often than he
visited her.

Whenever he entered the McGovern home, Randy felt as if he were stepping
into an enormous department-store window. The entire front of the house,
facing the Timucuan, was plate-glass clamped between thin stainless
steel supports, and every piece of furniture appeared unused, as if a
price tag and warranty would be found tied to one of the legs. Lavinia
McGovern herself had thought up the basic plan, collaborated with the
architect, and supervised the construction. The architect, pleading a
hotel commission in Miami, had returned part of his fee and absented
himself from Fort Repose before the foundation was laid.

On his first visit, Randy had not endeared himself to Lavinia. She took
him on what she called "the grand tour," proudly showing off the
multiple heat pumps insuring constant year-round temperature; the
magnificent kitchen with electronic ovens and broilers operated from a
central control panel; the cunning round holes in the ceiling which
sprayed gentle light on dining room table, bar, bridge table, and
strategically located abstract statuary; the television screens faired
into the walls of bedrooms, living room, dining room, and even kitchen;
and the master bathroom's free form tub, which extended through the wall
and into a tiny, shielding garden. There were no fireplaces, which she
called "soot-producers," or bookshelves, which were "dust catchers." All
was new, modern, and functional. "When we came down here," Lavinia said,
"we got rid of everything in Shaker Heights and started fresh, bright,
and new. See how I've brought the river right to our feet?" She
indicated the expanse of glass. "What do you think of it?"

Randy tried to be at once tactful and truthful. "It reminds me of an
illustration out of _Modern Living_, but--"

"But?" Lavinia inquired, nervously.

Randy, feeling he was being helpful, pointed out that in the summer
months the sun's direct rays would pour through the glass walls, and
that the afternoon heat would become unbearable no matter how large and
efficient the air-conditioning system. "I'm afraid that in summer you'll
have to shutter that whole southwest side of the house," he said.

"Is there anything else you think is wrong?" Lavinia asked, her voice
dangerously sweet.

"Well, yes. That indoor-outdoor bath is charming and original, but come
spring it'll be a freeway for moccasins and water snakes. On cool nights
they'll plop in and swim or crawl right into the house."

At this point Lavinia had squealed and clutched at her throat as it
suffocating, and her husband and daughter had half-carried her to the
bedroom. The next day plumbers and masons remodeled the sunken tub,
eliminating the outdoor feature. Later, Lib explained that her mother
dreaded snakes, and had been solely responsible for the design of the
house. Randy never felt comfortable in Lavinia's presence thereafter.
And Lavinia, while attempting to be gracious, sometimes became pale and
grew faint when he appeared.

Randy's relations with Bill McGovern were little better. On occasion,
after a few extra drinks, he disagreed with Mr. McGovern on matters
political, social, and economic. Since Bill for many years had been
president of a manufacturing concern employing six thousand people, few
of whom ever disagreed with him about anything, he had been affronted
and angry. He considered Randy an insolent young loafer, an example of
decadence in what once might have been a good family, and a sadly
scrambled egghead, and had so informed his daughter.

So Randy, sitting in his car, hesitated. He was certain to be coolly
received. Lib didn't expect to see him until the next day, but he had a
hunch she needed him now. He guessed a considerable argument was going
on inside. Lib would be verbally overpowered by her father, and Mark's
warning go unheeded. Randy got out of his car.

Lib opened the north door before he could ring. "I thought I heard a car
in the drive," she said. "I'm glad it's you. I've got troubles."

Bill McGovern was standing in the living room, wrapped in an
ankle-length white bathrobe, smiling as if nothing were funny. Lavinia
McGovern, her eyes swollen and pink against pallid skin, lay back on a
chaise. She held a hankerchief to her nose. Bill was bald, square
shouldered, and rather tall. His nose was beaked and his chin prominent
and strong. In his toga of toweling, and with feet encased in leather
sandals, he looked like an angry Caesar. "So here comes our local Paul
Revere," he greeted Randy. "What are you trying to do, frighten my wife
and daughter to death?"

Randy regretted having come in, but now that he was in he saw no point
in being anything less than frank. "Mr. McGovern," he said--ordinarily
he addressed Lib's father as Bill--"you aren't as bright as I thought.
If I gave you a hot tip, from a good source, on the market, you would
listen. This is somewhat more important than the market. I thought I was
doing you a favor." He turned to leave.

Lib touched his arm. "Please, Randy, don't go!"

"Elizabeth,"--when her parents were present he always called her
Elizabeth--"I'll leave things the way they are. If you need me, call."

Lavinia began to sniffle, audibly. In a worried voice Bill said, "Now
don't rush off half-cocked, Randy. I'm sorry if I was rude. There are
certain things you don't understand."

"Like what?" Randy asked.

Bill's voice was conciliatory. "Just sit down and I'll explain."

Randy continued to stand.

"Now I'm twice as old as you are," Bill said, "and I think I know more
about what goes on in this world. After all, I know quite a few big
men--the biggest. All these war scares are concocted by the Pentagon--no
offense meant to your brother--to get more appropriations, and give more
handouts to Europe, and jack up taxes. It's all part of the damnable
inflationary pattern that's designed to cheat people on pensions and
with fixed incomes and so forth. Now I know your brother thinks he's
doing the right thing, and I appreciate your telling Elizabeth. But
chances are your brother's been taken in too."

"Have you been listening to the news for the past few days?"

"Yes. Oh, I'll admit it looks bad in the Mideast but that doesn't scare
me. We might have a little brushfire war, like Korea, sure. But no
atomic war. Nobody's going to use atomic bombs, just like nobody used
gas in the last war."

"You'll guarantee that, eh, Bill?"

Bill locked his hands behind his back. "I can't guarantee it, of course,
but only the other day I was talking to Mr. Offenhaus. You must know
him. Runs Civil Defense here. Well, he isn't worried. Says the only real
danger we face is being overrun by people swarming out of Orlando and
Tampa. He doesn't even think there's much chance of that. Fort Repose
isn't on any main highway. But he does say we'll have to watch out for
the dinges. Keep 'em under control."

"Please, Bill!" Lavinia said. "Say darkies!"

"Darkies, hell! The dinges are liable to panic and start looting. Oh,
the local niggers, like Daisy, our cook and Missouri, the cleaning
woman, may be all right. Mr. Offenhaus was talking about the migrant
labor, the orange pickers and so forth. So if Mr. Offenhaus isn't
worried, then I'm not worried. Mr. Offenhaus strikes me as a pretty
solid businessman."

Randy knew that Bubba Offenhaus had been picked to head Civil Defense
because he owned the only two ambulances, which with the addition of
black scrollwork doubled as hearses, in Fort Repose. "Did you talk to
him about fallout?" he asked.

"Well, no, I didn't," Bill said. "Mr. Offenhaus said they sent him some
booklets from Washington but he's not passing them around because
they're too gruesome. Says why worry about something you can't see,
feel, hear, or smell? Says it's just as bad to frighten people to death
as kill them with radiation, and I must say that I agree with him."

Lavinia said, "If it came I suppose we'd have rationing like last time
and all kinds of shortages. Bill, don't you think we ought--no, I won't
think of it. Please, let's not talk about it any more. It's horrid." She
dabbed at her eyes and tried to smile. "Randolph, when your
sister-in-law comes won't you bring her over for dinner? Afterwards, we
could play bridge. Perhaps you'd like to play a rubber now? I know
you're going to stay up to meet the plane, and I'm too overwrought to
sleep."

"I'm sure Helen will be delighted to come to dinner," Randy said. "As
for bridge, I'll take a rain check. I still have some things to do at
home. Good night, Lavinia. Sorry I upset you."

Lib came out to the car with him. "Didn't get very far, did I?" he said.

"You started Dad thinking. That's far."

Overhead he heard multi-engined jets. On that night there was three
quarters of the moon. He looked up, and seeing nothing, knew the jets
were military aircraft, too high for their running lights to show
against the bright sky. On any night, if you listened for a while, you
could hear the B-52's and 47's and 58's, but on this night there seemed
to be more of them.

"Where are they from?" Lib asked. "Where are they going?"

"I guess they're from McCoy and MacDill and Eglin and Homestead," Randy
said, "and I don't think they're going anywhere much. They're just
stooging around up there because they're safer up there than on the
ground. When you can hear them floating around like that, high, you know
you're all right."

"I see," Lib said. For the second time, he kissed her good night.

****

When he reached home it was almost midnight. He made coffee and,
yawning, turned on the radio and tuned an Orlando station for the late
network news. The first bulletin jerked him wide awake:

    "From Washington--The official Arab radio, in a broadcast from
    Damascus, claims that American carrier planes are conducting a
    violent bombing attack on the harbor of Latakia. This news broke
    in Washington just a few minutes ago. There has been no reaction
    from the Pentagon, which at this hour of night is lightly
    staffed. However, it is reported that high Navy and Defense
    Department officials are being summoned into emergency
    conference. We will give you more on this as we receive it from
    our Washington newsroom. Here is the text of the official Arab
    broadcast: 'At about six-thirty o'clock this morning'--please
    remember that it is morning in the Eastern Mediterranean, which
    is seven hours ahead of American Eastern Standard
    Time--'low-flying jet aircraft, of the type used on United
    States aircraft carriers and bearing United States insignia,
    brutally and without warning bombed the harbor area of Latakia.
    It is reported that civilian casualties are high and that many
    buildings are in flames.' That was the text of the Arab
    broadcast and that is all the hard news we have at the moment.
    Latakia is the most important Syrian harbor. Within the last few
    years it has been heavily fortified, and there has been
    extensive construction of submarine pens under the direction of
    Russian technicians. It is generally regarded as one of the most
    powerful anti-Western naval bases in the Mediterranean. It is
    known that units of the United States Sixth Fleet are now in the
    Eastern Mediterranean, and that these units have been shadowed
    by fast, unidentified aircraft...."

The network announcer went on to other news, and Randy's phone rang.

He picked it up, irritated. It was Bill McGovern. "Did you hear the
news?" Bill asked.

"Yes. I'm trying to get more of it."

"What do you think?"

"I don't think anything, yet. I want to hear our side of it."

"Sounds to me like we're starting a small preventive war," Bill said.

"I don't believe that for an instant," Randy said. "You don't prevent a
war by starting one."

"Well, we'll see who's right in the morning."

****

Mark Bragg missed the first news flash on Latakia. At that moment he was
straightening up the house before driving to Offutt to assume direction
of Intelligence analysis in the Hole. He had been recalled from the
Puerto Rico mission because SAC's Commander in Chief, General Hawker,
felt that in this newest crisis senior members of his Operations and
Intelligence staffs should maintain a round-the-clock watch. An attack
is rarely planned to conform to a victim's five-day, forty-hour week so
Hawker divided his most experienced officers into three shifts covering
the whole day. As SAC's third-ranking Intelligence officer, junior to
the A-2 and his deputy, both brigadiers, Colonel Bragg naturally drew
the most onerous hours--midnight to 0800.

At eleven P.M., Omaha time, while the Damascus broadcast was being
repeated around the world, Mark was in the children's rooms, feeling
like an intruder. It was the silence that discomforted him. He found
himself tiptoeing, listening for the missing sounds. The house was still
as northern woods in winter, when all the creatures are gone.

Ben Franklin's room looked as if it had been ransacked by a band of
monkeys rather than that a thirteen-year-old boy had packed. Mark closed
dresser drawers and picked up ties, clothes-hangers, and shoes and
socks, never in pairs. He supposed all boys were like that. Peyton's
room looked no different than if this had been an ordinary day, as if
she had been invited to a slumber party at the home of a friend and
would return in the morning. Her bedspread was uncreased, and the furry
toy animal that held her pajamas rested precisely in its center, as
always. She had forgotten it. Her doll collection, carefully propped up
on a tier of shelves, formed a silent audience to his silent inspection.
Peyton hadn't asked to take her dolls to Florida. Perhaps she was
outgrowing dolls. Or perhaps she didn't realize, when she left them,
that it might be forever. Her desk was neat, pencils aligned as if at
squads right, schoolbooks stacked in a pyramid. He picked up the books
and took them downstairs. He would mail them from Offutt in the morning,
after he was off duty. Peyton was a tidy and thoughtful little girl, in
looks and temperament much like her mother. He loved her. He loved them
both. They had been very satisfactory children. The house was
intolerably quiet. In the whole house the only sound was the ticking of
clocks.

Driving toward Offutt, and his job, Mark felt better. When he turned
into the four-lane highway that ran south to the base he saw that it was
eleven-thirty and flipped on the car radio. It was then that he heard
the Arab charge that Latakia had been bombed by American planes and, in
addition, a rather strange statement from Washington. "A Navy Department
spokesman," the newscaster said, "denies that there has been any
intentional attack on the Syrian coast."

Mark stepped down on the accelerator and watched the speedometer needle
pass seventy-five. On a turn the back wheels weaved. Ice. He forced
himself to concentrate on his driving. Soon he would know everything
that was known in the Hole, which meant everything that was known to
American Intelligence, and the worldwide news networks, everywhere.
Meanwhile it was pointless to guess, or end up in a ditch, a useless
casualty with no Purple Heart.

Twelve minutes later Mark entered the War Room, fifty feet underground.
Blinking in the brilliant but shadowless artificial sunlight, he glanced
at the map panels. Nothing startling. He walked on to the offices of
A-2, Intelligence. In the inner office Dutch Klein, Deputy A-2 and a
buck general in his early forties, waited for his relief. An electric
coffee-maker steamed on Dutch's desk. Two ashtrays were filled with
crushed cigarette butts. Dutch had been busy. Dutch said, "I guess
you've heard the news."

"I caught it on the radio. It's not true, is it?"

"It's fantastic!" Dutch touched a sheaf of pink flimsies, decoded
priority messages, on his desk. "Two hours ago Sixth Fleet scrambled
fighters to intercept a jet snooper. An ensign from _Saratoga_--an
ensign, mind you--sighted the bogy and chased him all the way up the
Levant. He closed at Latakia and fired a bird. Whether it was human
error or an erratic rocket isn't clear. Anyway, everything blew." Dutch,
a muscular, keg-shaped man with round, rubbery face, groaned and sank
back into his chair.

Automatically the fortifications of the port area of Latakia came into
focus in Mark's mind. "Large stores of conventional mines, torpedoes,
and ammo," he said. "They usually have four to eight subs in the new
pens and a couple of cruisers and escort vessels in the harbor." He
hesitated, thinking of something else, worse. "The fire and blast could
have cooked off nuclear weapons, if they were in combat configuration.
That could well be. What do you make of it?"

"Worst foul-up on record," Dutch said. "Glad it's the Navy and not us."

"I mean, how do you think the Russians will react?" Mark asked the
question not because he thought Dutch could give him the answer, but as
a catalyst to his own imagination. Intelligence wasn't Dutch's primary
interest. On the way up to two stars and command of an air division,
Dutch had been forced to assimilate two years of staff, part of his
education. To Mark, the Intelligence job, with all its political and
psychological facets, was a career in itself. He had a feel for it, the
capacity to stir a headful of unrelated facts until they congealed into
a pattern arrowing the future.

Dutch said, "Maybe it'll throw them off balance."

"It might upset their timetable," Mark agreed, "but I'm afraid they're
all set. It might just give the Kremlin a _casus belli_, an excuse."

Dutch lifted himself out of the chair. "I leave it with you. The C in C
was here until a few minutes ago. He said he had to get some sleep
because it might get even hairier tomorrow. If there are any important
political developments you're to call him. Operations will handle the
alert status, as usual."

For thirty minutes Mark concentrated on the pile of flimsies, the latest
intelligence from NATO, Smyrna, Naples, the Philippines, Eastern Sea
Frontier, and the summaries from Air Defense Command and the CIA. When
he was abreast of the situation he crossed the War Room to Operations
Control.

The Senior Controller on duty was Ace Atkins, a former fighter pilot,
like Mark an eagle colonel. He was called Ace because he had been one,
in two wars. Because of proven courage and absolute coolness, he was at
the desk now occupied, with the red phone a few inches from his fingers.
One code word into Ace's red phone would cock SAC's two thousand bombers
and start the countdown at the missile sites. It would take another
word, either spoken by General Hawker or with his authority, to launch
the force.

Ace, slight and wiry, looked up and said, "Welcome to Bedlam!" The
Control Room, separated from the War Room by heavy glass, was utterly
quiet.

Mark said, "I'm worried. I wish Washington would come forth with a
complete statement. As things stand now, most of the world will believe
we attacked Latakia deliberately."

"Why don't the Navy information people give out?"

"They want to. They've got a release ready. But they're low echelon and
you know Washington."

"Not very well."

"I know it well," Mark said, "and I think I can pretty well guess what's
happening. Everybody wants to put his chop on it because it's so
important but for the same reason nobody wants to take the
responsibility. The Navy PIO probably called an Assistant Secretary, and
the Assistant Secretary called the Secretary and the Secretary probably
called the Secretary of Defense. By that time the Information Agency and
State Department were involved. By now more and more people are getting
up and they are calling more and more people." Mark looked at the
clocks, above the War Room maps, telling the time in all zones from Omsk
to Guam. "It's two A.M. in Washington now. As each man gives his okay to
the release it turns out that somebody else has to be consulted.
Eventually they'll have the Secretary of State out of bed and then the
White House press secretary. Maybe he'll wake up the President. Until
that happens, I don't think there'll be any full statement."

Ace said, "My God! That sounds awful."

"It is, but what worries me most is Moscow."

"What's Moscow saying?"

"Not a word. Not a whisper. Usually Radio Moscow would be screaming
bloody murder. That's what worries me. As long as people keep talking,
they're not fighting. When Moscow quits talking, I'm afraid they're
acting." Mark borrowed a cigarette and lit it. "I think the chances are
about sixty-forty," he said, "that they've started their countdown."

Ace's fingers stroked the red phone. "Well," he said, "we're as ready as
we ever will be. Fourteen percent of the force is airborne now and
another seventeen percent on standby. I'm prepared to hold that ratio
until we're relieved at 0800. How's that sound to you, Mark?"

As always, the responsibility to act lay with A-3. Mark Bragg, as A-2,
could only advise. He said, "That's a pretty big effort. You can't keep
the whole force in the air and on standby all the time. I know that, and
yet--" He stretched. "I'll trot back to my cave and see what else comes
in. I'll check with you in an hour."

On his desk, Mark found copies of three more urgent dispatches. One,
from the Air attach in Ankara, reported Russian aerial reconnaissance
over the Azerbaijan frontier. Another, from the Navy Department, gave a
submarine-sighting two hundred miles off Seattle, definitely a skunk.
The third, received by the State Department from London in the highest
secret classification, said Downing Street had authorized the RAF to arm
intermediate range missiles, including the Thor, with nuclear warheads.

In an hour Helen's plane would touch down in Orlando. In two hours, if
the plane was on time, Helen and the children would be in an area of
comparative safety. Mark prayed that for the next two hours, at least,
nothing more would happen. He held fast to the thought, so long as there
was no war, there was always a chance for peace. As the minutes and
hours eroded away, and no word came from Moscow, he became more and more
certain that a massive strike had been ordered. He diagnosed this
negative intelligence as more ominous than almost anything that could
have happened, and determined to awaken General Hawker if it persisted.

****

At three-thirty in the morning Randolph Bragg waited in Orlando's air
terminal for Helen's flight. With only a few night coaches scheduled in
from New York, plus the non-stop from Chicago, the building was almost
empty except for sweepers and scrubwomen. When he saw a plane's landing
lights, Randy walked outside to the gate. On the other side of the
field, near the military hangars used by Air-Sea Rescue Command, he saw
the silhouettes of six B-47's, part of the wing from McCoy, he deduced,
using this field in accordance with a dispersal plan. The military
hangars and Operations building were bright with light, which at this
hour was not usual.

The big transport came in for its landing, approached on the taxi strip,
pivoted to a halt before him, and cut its engines. He saw that only a
few people were getting off. Most would be going on to Miami. He saw
Peyton and Ben Franklin come down the steps, Ben incongruously wearing
an overcoat, Peyton carrying a bow, a quiver of arrows over her
shoulder. Then he saw Helen and she waved and he ran out to meet them.

Randy rumpled Ben Franklin's hair. The children were both owl-eyed and
tired. He leaned over, kissed Peyton, and relieved her of the bow slung
over her shoulder. Helen said, "She's been watching Robin Hood. She
thinks she's Maid Marion."

Helen was wearing a long cashmere coat and carrying a fur cape over her
arm. She appeared fresh, as if starting rather than completing a
journey. She was slight--Mark sometimes referred to her as "my pocket
Venus--" yet Randy was never aware of that except when he saw her
completely relaxed. At all other times her body seemed to obey the
physical law that kinetic energy increases mass. Her abundant vitality
she somehow communicated to others, so that when Helen was present
everyone's blood flowed a little faster, as Randy's did now. She tiptoed
to kiss him and said, "I feel like ten kinds of a fool, Randy."

He said, "Don't be silly."

They walked toward the terminal. She presented him with a sheaf of
baggage checks. "Mark made me take everything. We're going to be an
awful nuisance. Also, I feel like a coward."

"You won't when you hear what's just happened in the Med."

Ben Franklin turned, suddenly awake, and said, "What happened in the
Med, Randy?"

Randy looked at Helen, inquiringly. She said, "It's all right. Both of
them know all about it. I didn't realize it until we were on the plane.
Children are precocious these days, aren't they? They learn the facts of
life before you have a chance to explain anything."

While they waited for the luggage, Randy spoke of the news. They
listened gravely. Ben Franklin alone commented. "Sounds like the
kickoff. I guess Dad knew what he was doing."

Nothing more was said about it for a time.

Randy felt relieved when the suburbs of Orlando were behind them and,
with traffic thin at this hour, he was holding to a steady seventy. He
thought his apprehension illogical. Why should he be upset by the remark
of a thirteen-year-old boy? When he was sure the children slept in the
back seat, he said, "They take it calmly, almost as a matter of course,
don't they?"

"Yes," Helen said. "You see, all their lives, ever since they've known
anything, they've lived under the shadow of war--atomic war. For them
the abnormal has become normal. All their lives they have heard nothing
else, and they expect it."

"They're conditioned," Randy said. "A child of the nineteenth century
would quickly go mad with fear, I think, in the world of today. It must
have been pretty wonderful to have lived in the years, say, between 1870
and 1914, when peace was the normal condition and people really were
appalled at the idea of war, and believed there'd never be a big one. A
big one was impossible, they used to say. It would cost too much. It
would disrupt world trade and bankrupt everybody. Even after the first
World War people didn't accept war as normal. They had to call it The
War to End War or we wouldn't have fought it. Helen, what has become of
us?"

Helen, busy tuning the car radio, trying to bring in fresh news, said,
"You're a bit of an idealist, aren't you, Randy?"

"I suppose so. It's been an expensive luxury. Maybe one day I'll get
conditioned. I'll accept things, like the children."

Helen said, "Listen!" She had brought in a Miami station, and the
announcer was saying the station was remaining on the air through the
night to give news of the new crisis.

    "Now we have a bulletin from Washington," he said: "The Navy
    Department has finally released a full statement on the Latakia
    incident. Early today a Navy carrier-based fighter fired a
    single air-to-air rocket at an unidentified jet plane which had
    been shadowing units of the Sixth Fleet. This rocket exploded in
    the harbor area of Latakia. The Navy calls it a regrettable
    mechanical error. It is possible that this rocket struck an
    ammunition train and started a chain explosion, the statement
    admits. The Navy categorically denies any deliberate bombardment
    We will bring you further bulletins as they are received."

The Miami station began to broadcast a medley of second World War
patriotic songs which Randy remembered from boyhood. One was "Praise the
Lord and Pass the Ammuniton." It sounded tinny and in poor taste, but
Miami's entertainment was usually in poor taste.

Randy said, "Do you believe it? Is it possible?"

Helen didn't answer. She was staring straight ahead, as if hypnotized by
the headlights' beam, and her lips were moving. He realized that her
mind was far away. She had not heard him.

Randy had them all in their rooms, and asleep, by five-thirty. He had
carried all their luggage, eleven bags, upstairs.

He went to his own apartment and collapsed on the studio couch in the
living room. Graf jumped up and snuggled under his arm. Almost at once,
without bothering to loosen his belt or remove his shoes, Randy slept.

****

It was 0500 at Offutt Field, with dawn still more than two hours
distant, when General Hawker, unbidden, returned to the Hole. The
General followed in the tradition of Vandenberg, Norstad, and LeMay. He
had received his fourth star while still in his forties, and now, at
fifty, considered it part of his job that he remain slim and in
excellent physical condition. Once warfare, except among the untutored
savages, had been fought during the daylight hours. This had changed
during the twentieth century until now rockets and aircraft recognized
neither darkness nor bad weather, and were handicapped neither by oceans
nor mountains nor distance. Now, the critical factor in warfare was
time, measured in minutes or seconds. Hawker had adjusted his life to
this condition. In the past week he had not slept more than four hours
at a stretch. He had trained himself to catnap in his office for ten- or
twenty-minute periods, after which he felt remarkably refreshed.

The engineers who designed the Hole had arranged that the Commander in
Chief's Command Post be on a glass-enclosed balcony, from which he could
see all the War Room maps, and all the activity on the floor below, and
be surrounded by his staff.

In this moment it wasn't operating like that at all. Hawker had his feet
up on the desk in the Control Room. He was drinking black coffee from a
green dimestore mug, and rapidly reading through a stack of the more
important operational and intelligence dispatches. Occasionally, the
General fired a question at one or the other of his two colonels, Atkins
and Bragg.

An A-2 staff sergeant came into the room with two pink flimsies and
handed them to Mark Bragg. The General looked up, inquiringly.

Mark said, "From the Eastern Sea Frontier. Patrol planes on the
Argentina-Bermuda axis report three unidentified contacts. These skunks
are headed for the Atlantic coast."

"Sounds bad, doesn't it?"

"I think this one sounds worse," Mark said. "All news service and
diplomatic communications between Moscow and the United States have been
inoperative for the last hour. This comes from USIA. The news agencies
have been calling their Moscow correspondents. All the Moscow operators
will say is, 'Sorry. I am unable to complete the call.'"

"And there's been no reaction to Latakia from Moscow at all?"

"None, sir. Not a whisper."

The General shook his head, slowly, frowning, lines appearing and
deepening around mouth and eyes, his whole face undergoing a
transformation, growing older, as if in a few seconds all the strain and
fatigue of weeks, months, years had accumulated and were marking his
face and bowing his shoulders.

Hawker said, "This is the witching hour, you know. This is the bad one.
Their submarines have had a whole night to run in on the coast if that's
what they're doing. We're in darkness. They'll soon be in daylight. Dawn
is the bad time. What time does it start to get light in New York and
Washington?"

"Sunrise on the seaboard is seven-ten Eastern Standard," Ace Atkins
said. Washington's clock read 6:41.

Mark Bragg's mind raced ahead. If an attack came, they could count on no
more than fifteen minutes' warning. If they used every one of those
minutes with maximum efficiency, retaliation could be decisive. But Mark
feared a minute, or even two, might be lost in necessary communication
with Washington. He made a bold proposal. "May I suggest, sir, that we
ask for the release of our weapons?"

This was the one mandatory, essential act that must precede the terrible
decision to use the weapons. Under the law, the President of the United
States "owned" the nuclear bombs and missile warheads. General Hawker
was entrusted with their custody only. Before SAC could use the weapons,
the permission of the President--or his survivor in a line of
succession--must be secured. If an attack were underway, that permission
would come almost, but not quite, instantly.

The General seemed a little startled. "Don't you think we can wait,
Mark?"

"Yes, sir, we can wait, but if we get it out of the way, it could save
us a minute, maybe two. The danger, and the necessity of not having a
communications' snafu, must be just as apparent in the Pentagon, or the
White House, or wherever the President is, as it is here."

"What do you think, Ace?" Hawker asked.

"I'd like to have it behind us, sir."

The General picked up one of the four phones on Atkins' desk, the phone
connecting directly with the Pentagon Command Post. In this CP, day and
night, was a general officer of the Air Force. This duty officer was
never out of communication with the President, the Secretary of Defense,
and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The General spoke briefly into the phone and then waited, keeping it
pressed against his ear. Mark's eyes followed the red second hand on the
desk clock. This was an interesting experiment. The General said, "Yes,
John, this is Bob Hawker. I want the release of my weapons." Mark knew
that "John" was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. "Yes, I'll hold," the
General said. The seconds raced away. The General said, "Thank you,
John. It is now eleven forty-four, Zulu. You will confirm by teletype?
Goodbye, John."

The General reached across the desk and wrote in Ace Atkins' log:
"Weapons released to SAC at 11:44, Zulu." The Operations log was kept in
Greenwich Time.

Mark said, "I timed it. One minute and thirty-five seconds."

"I hope we don't need it," Hawker said, "but I'm glad to have it." The
worry lines became less conspicuous around his mouth and eyes. His back
and shoulders straightened. Now that the responsibility was his, with
complications and entanglements minimized, he accepted it with
confidence. His manner said that if it came he would fight it from here,
and by God win it, as much as it could be won.

The General poured himself another cup of coffee. Ace Atkins told the
General, "With your permission, I'm going to scramble fifty percent of
all our tankers at Bluie West One, Thule, Limestone, and Castle. They'd
be sitting ducks for missiles from subs. They're right under the gun.
They wouldn't get fifteen minutes." The General nodded. Ace flipped two
keys on the intercom and dictated an order.

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."




CHAPTER FIVE


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 porch. 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 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 tear-stained 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 self-revelatory. 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 blow--everything 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 had 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.

****

On the edge of town he began to encounter traffic, heavier than usual
and extraordinarily erratic. People were tensed over their wheels like
racing drivers, even while moving at normal speeds, mouths set, eyes
fixed, each intent on a personal crisis. Some obeyed the stop signs.
Other cars progressed as if no hand were at the wheel.

A dozen cars were lined up at Jerry Kling's service station, blocking
the sidewalk. Jerry was standing beside one of his pumps, filling a
tank, and at the same time listening to three men, all gesticulating,
all obviously demanding priority service. One of the men had a billfold
in his hand and was waving money before Jerry's eyes.

Randy skirted Marines Park, a green triangular area, its walks lined
with tall palms, its apex lapped by the waters of both Timucuan and St.
Johns. Here, at the junction of the rivers, Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee
Peyton had erected the original Fort Repose. The fort's palm logs long
ago had disintegrated, but relics remained, two small brass cannon. They
were now mounted in concrete, and flanked the bandstand. Usually, on a
bright Saturday morning, the tennis courts were occupied and the
pre-breakfast lawn bowlers and shuffle boarders active. But today the
park was deserted except for two youths slumped on a bench.

He turned north on Yulee Street, and, three blocks further, into the
driveway of Riverside Inn, which with its grounds occupied a block
facing the St. Johns. The Riverside Inn catered to a vanishing race of
hotel dwellers--widows, widowers, and elderly couples, supported by
trusts, annuities, and dividends, spending their summers in New England
or the Poconos, and each November migrating to Florida with the coots
and mallards.

Randy parked and went into the inn. Its ordered regimen had exploded
with the first missile.

The guests were milling around in the lobby like first-class passengers
on a liner that has struck an iceberg, and that they suspect may founder
at any moment. Some swarmed around the bellboys and assistant manager,
babbling questions and demands. "I've been waiting in the dining room
for fifteen minutes and I can't seem to find a single waitress....
Are you sure you can't get me a reservation on the Champion that leaves
Orlando for New York tomorrow?... I'd like to know what's wrong with
the phone service? If my daughter doesn't hear from me, she'll be
frantic.... The television in my room isn't working. All television
is off the air? Gracious, this really must be serious!... I've been a
guest at this hotel for twenty-two seasons and this is the first time
I've ever asked for anything special.... Is there any reason the
hotel station wagon can't take us to Tampa?... Please don't think me
timid, but I would like to know the location of a shelter.... It was
that damned Roosevelt, at Yalta.... Do you think plane schedules will
be interrupted for long?... You mean to say that your cooks have all
cravenly left for their homes? I never heard of such a thing! They ought
to be arrested. How, then, are we going to eat?... My husband slipped
in the shower. I can't seem to get him up...."

A retired major general, in full-dress uniform and displaying all his
ribbons, burst out of the elevator. "Attention!" he cried. "Attention,
everybody! Let's have order here. You will all please be quiet. There is
no cause for alarm!"

Nobody heeded him.

A bowlegged man, in Bermuda shorts and a bright red cap, a golf bag
slung over one shoulder, and carrying two suitcases, bulled his way
toward the entrance. He was followed by a woman wearing a fur coat over
pajamas. She also was weighted with a golf bag, and held a jewel box
under one arm and a make-up kit under the other. These two had a
sanctuary, and a means of getting there, or so they believed. For most
of the others, there was no place to go. They were rootless people. If
the Riverside Inn sank, they must go down with the ship.

Dan Gunn's suite was on the second-floor. Randy ignored the elevator and
took the stairs two at a time.

Dan's rooms were empty, and his doctor's bag missing. He was probably
out on an emergency call, or at the clinic in the Medical Arts Building.
Randy tried Dan's private phone. There was no dial tone, only sounds
like static. He lifted the room telephone. The hotel switchboard failed
to answer.

Randy heard voices in the hall, high-pitched and angry. He threw open
the door.

Feet apart and braced a thin, sallow woman, very pregnant, leaned
against the wall. Her bony arms supported her abdomen, and she was
sniffling. In the center of the hallway two men argued. The taller man
was Jennings, manager of the Riverside Inn. The other man was John
Garcia, a Minorcan fishing guide. Randy recognized the woman as Garcia's
wife.

Jennings was saying, "She can't have her baby here in the hotel. There's
too much confusion here already. You people will have to get out!"

Garcia, an undersized man with face browned and shrunken by wind and
sun, stepped back. His hand went to his hip pocket and he brought out a
short, curved pruning knife, suitable for cutting lines, or slitting the
bellies of perch and bass.

Randy stepped between them. "Put that thing up, John," he told Garcia.
"I'll get the Doctor." He turned on Jennings. "Where's Doctor Gunn?"

"He's busy," Jennings said. "He's very busy with one of our guests. A
heart case. Tell these people to go to his clinic and wait."

"Where is he?"

"It doesn't matter. These people are trespassing."

Randy's left hand grasped Jennings' lapels. He slapped Jennings savagely
across the face. He did this without any conscious thought except that
it was necessary to slap the hysteria out of Jennings in order to locate
Dan Gunn. He said, "Where is he?"

Jennings' knees buckled and Randy pinned him against the wall. "Let go!
You're choking me! Gunn is in two forty-four."

Randy relaxed his grip. The left side of Jennings' face was flaming red
and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Randy was astonished.
This was the first time in his adult years that he had struck anyone, so
far as he recalled, except one snarling North Korean line-crosser.
Jennings backed away, mumbling that he would call the police, and
disappeared down the stairs.

Randy told Garcia, "Take your wife in there. She can lie down on the
bed. I'll get Doctor Gunn."

Randy went down the hall and entered Room 244 without bothering to
knock. It was a single room. On the bed lay a mound of gray flesh, a
corpulent man past middle age, dead. Randy felt no sense of surprise or
shock whatsoever. He had become a familiar of sudden death in Korea.
This familiarity had left him, as a foreign language is quickly
forgotten once you leave the country where it is spoken. Now it
returned, as a foreign tongue is swiftly reacquired in its native land.

Dan Gunn came out of the bathroom, drying his hands.

"You've got more trouble waiting in your room," Randy said. "A woman's
having a baby, or about to. Garcia's wife."

Dan dropped his towel across the foot of the bed and pulled the sheet
over the corpse. "Everybody who was going to have a coronary just had
one," he said, "and I suppose that every woman who was due to have a
baby in the next two months is having one now. What's your trouble,
Randy?"

"Peyton's blind. You remember her from last year, don't you? Helen's
little girl--not so little--eleven. I know you're swamped, Dan, but--"

Dan raised his immensely long, hairy arms and cried out, "Oh, God! Why?
Why to that child?"

He looked and sounded like a rebellious Old Testament prophet. He looked
and sounded half-mad. The worst thing that Randy could imagine, at that
moment, was that Dan Gunn should lose his mental equilibrium. Randy
said, "God had nothing to do with it. This was strictly man-made. The
one that dropped on MacDill, or somewhere in the Tampa area. Peyton was
looking right at it when it blew."

"Oh, the foul, life-destroying, child-destroying bastards! Those evil
men, those evil and callous men! God damn them!" He used the expression
as a true and awful curse, and then Dan's arms drooped, his anger spent.
He visibly shook off the madness. He said, "Sounds like a retina flash
burn. To the human eye it's what overexposure is to film. Her eyes can
recover from that."

He looked down at the form on the bed. "Not much I can do for cardiacs.
This was the third, right here in the hotel. Maybe the other two will
live, for a while. It's fear that kills 'em, and the worst fear is that
they'll have a shock and not be able to reach the doctor. I pity all the
other cardiacs around here, with the phones out. I pity them, but I
can't help them. You don't have to worry so much with women having
babies. They'll have them whether I'm there or not, and chances are that
both mother and baby will do all right." He grasped Randy's elbow. "Now
let's take a look at the Garcia woman, and then I'll see about Peyton."
They left the room, and its lonely dead.

Marie Garcia said her pains were coming at four- or five-minute
intervals. Dan said, "It'll be much better if you can have the baby at
home. It'll be easier for me, too. This hotel is no place to be having a
baby. Do you think you can make it?"

Marie looked at her husband and nodded. Garcia said, "You'll follow us,
Doc?"

"I'll be right behind you," Dan promised. He helped Marie to her feet.
Leaning on John Garcia, she left, her lips compressed, awaiting the next
clamp of pain, but her fear gone.

Dan went into his bathroom and came out with a small bottle. "Eyedrops,"
he said. "Once every three hours." He dug into his bag and handed Randy
a pill-box. "Sedative. One every four hours. And give her a couple of
aspirins as soon as you get home. She stays in a dark room. Better yet,
put a dark cloth over her eyes. As long as she knows she can't see, she
won't strain her eyes trying. And it won't frighten her so much. It's
frightening to open your eyes and not see."

"You're coming out, aren't you?" Randy asked.

"Certainly. As soon as I can. I have to deliver this baby, and I have to
check in at the clinic--God knows what's waiting for me there--and I
have to see Bloomfield. Somehow we have to coordinate what little we'll
be able to do. But soon as I can, I'll be out to see Peyton. There
really isn't anything more I can do for her than you can do right now.
And Randy--"

"Yes?"

"Did you get those prescriptions filled?"

"No. I never had time."

"Don't worry about it. I'll handle it for you. I'll bring the stuff out
when I come."

They left the hotel together. A gibbering woman, reddish wig astray on
her head like an ill-fitting beret, clawed at Dan's arm. He shook
himself loose. She dove for his medicine bag. He snatched it away and
ran.

Outside, they parted. Randy drove through town. Traffic was piling up.
Those stores that opened early on Saturdays were crowded, and groups
waited in front of others, and on the steps of the bank. There was as
yet no disorder. It was a shopping rush, as on Christmas Eve. At the
corner of Yulee and St. Johns he saw Cappy Foracre, the Fort Repose
Chief of Police, directing traffic. He stopped and yelled, "Cappy,
there's a woman dead in a wreck out on River Road."

"That's outside the town limits," Cappy shouted. "Nothing I can do about
it. I've got plenty of trouble right here."

Randy drove on, tuning his radio to the Conelrad frequencies, scouting
for news. As before, the 640 channel brought only an incoherent jumble
of distant voices, but Happy Hedrix was still broadcasting over WSMF,
from San Marco, on 1240, although, obeying the Conelrad rules, he never
mentioned the call sign. The AP ticker from Jacksonville told of a sea
and air battle off the coast. The Governor had issued a pronouncement
from Tallahassee--all target cities were to be evacuated at once. The
cities named included Orlando and Jacksonville. There was no mention of
Miami or Tampa.

Randy wondered why the evacuation order originated in Tallahassee,
instead of from a Civil Defense headquarters. Of the national situation,
there was no word at all. Up to now, it sounded as if Florida were
fighting the war alone. More than anything, Randy wanted news--real
news. What had happened? What had happened everywhere? Was the war lost?
If it was still being fought who was winning?

On River Road he passed a dozen convicts, white men, clad in their blue
denim with the white stripe down the trouser leg. They were straggling
toward Fort Repose. Two of the convicts carried shotguns. Another had a
pistol strapped to his waist. This was wrong. Road gang guards, not
convicts, should be carrying the weapons. But the guards were missing.
It wasn't difficult to guess what had happened. The guards, some of
them, were dour and sadistic men, skilled in unusual and degrading
punishments. It was likely that any breakdown in government and
authority would begin with a revolt of prisoners against road gang
guards. There was a convict camp between Fort Repose and Pasco Creek.
Randy guessed that these prisoners were being transported, by truck, to
their work area, when the nuclear attack came. With realization,
rebellion, and perhaps murder of the guards, had been almost
instantaneous.

He passed the wrecked car. The woman's body still lay on the roadside.
The luggage had been looted. Dresses, shoes, and lingerie littered the
grassy shoulder. A pink-silk pajama top fluttered from a palmetto, a
forlorn flag to mark the end of a vacation.

As Randy reached his home, Florence Wechek's Chevy bounced out of her
driveway. He yelled, "Hey, Florence!"

Florence stopped. Alice Cooksey was in the car with her.

"Where are you going?" Randy asked.

"To work," Florence said. "I'm late."

"Don't you know what's happened?"

"Certainly I know. That's why it's very important I open up the office.
People will have all sorts of messages. This is an emergency, Randy."

"It sure is," Randy said. "On the way to town you'll see some convicts.
They're armed. Don't stop."

Florence said, "I'll be careful." Alice smiled and waved. They drove on.

****

On Friday night, Florence and Alice had split a bottle of sherry, an
unaccustomed dissipation, and stayed up long past midnight, exchanging
confidences, opinions, and gossip. As a result, Florence had neglected
to set her alarm, and they had overslept. The explosions far to the
south had shaken them awake, but it was not until some time later, when
they had seen the glow in the sky, that Alice had thought to turn on the
radio, and they first realized what was happening.

Immediately, Florence wanted to start for the office. Having no close
relatives, and approaching an age beyond which she could not reasonably
hope for a proposal of marriage, and when even speculative second looks
from rakish or lonely widowers had grown rare, her whole life centered
in the office. Western Union didn't expect her to open the wire until
eight, but she was usually a bit early. Afternoons, she dreaded the
relentless downsweep of the hour hand, which at five guillotined her
day. After five, nothing awaited her except lovebirds, tropical fish,
and vicarious journeys back to more romantic centuries via historical
novels. In the office she was part of a busy and exciting world, a
necessary communicating link in affairs of great importance to others.
On this day of crisis, she could be the most important person in Fort
Repose.

Yet she allowed Alice to persuade her not to start at once. For such a
wisp of a woman, Alice seemed remarkably brave and cool. Alice pointed
out that Florence had better eat breakfast, because she'd need her
strength and it might be many hours before she'd have an opportunity to
eat again. And Alice had volunteered to go to town with her, although
Florence had insisted it wasn't necessary. "Who's going to do any
reading today?" she asked. "Why bother with the library?"

"Maybe a good many people will be reading," Alice said, "once they find
out that Civil Defense pamphlets are stocked in the library. Not that
it's likely to be much help to them now, but perhaps it'll help some.
Bubba Offenhaus claimed they were taking up too much space in his
office. So I offered to store them."

"You were farsighted."

"Do you think so? When two ships are on a collision course, and the men
at the wheel inflexibly hold to that course, there is going to be a
collision. You don't have to be farsighted to see that."

And Alice had suggested that it would be wise for them to use their time
and resources to buy provisions while they were in town. "Canned goods
would be best, I think," she said, "because if the lights go out,
refrigeration goes too."

"Why should the lights go out?" Florence asked.

"Because Fort Repose's power comes from Orlando."

Florence didn't quite understand this reasoning. Nevertheless, she
followed Alice's advice, listing certain essentials they would need and
filling pails and bathtub with water before they left.

Florence and Alice passed the dead woman and pillaged wreck on the way
to town. It frightened them. But, when far ahead Florence saw the
procession of convicts, and two of them, one armed, stepped into the
middle of the road to wave her down, she stamped on the accelerator. The
car quivered at a speed she never in her life had dared before. At the
last second the two men jumped to safety and the others shook their
fists, their mouths working but their curses unheard. Florence didn't
slow until she reached Marines Park. She dropped Alice at the library.
She parked behind Western Union, which occupied a twenty-foot frontage
in a one-story block of stores on Yulee Street. Her fingers were
trembling and her legs felt numb. It was several seconds before her
heart stopped jumping, and she found sufficient courage to enter her
office. Fourteen or fifteen men and women, some of them strangers,
swarmed in behind her. "Just a minute! Just a minute!" Florence said,
and barricaded herself behind the protection of the counter.

This was the first morning in years that she had been late, and so, on
this of all mornings, waiting at the door would be more customers than
she might customarily expect in a whole day. In addition, on Saturdays,
Gaylord, her Negro messenger boy, was off. His bicycle stood in the back
of the office. "Now you will all have to wait," she said, "while I open
the circuit."

Fort Repose was one of a dozen small towns on a local circuit
originating in Jacksonville and terminating in Tampa. Florence switched
on her teleprinter and announced: "THIS IS FR RETURNING TO SERVICE."

Instantly the machine chattered back at her from JX, which was
Jacksonville: "YOU ARE LIMITED TO ACCEPTING AND TRANSMITTING OFFICIAL
DEFENSE EMERGENCY MESSAGES ONLY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. NO MESSAGES
ACCEPTED FOR POINTS NORTH OF JACKSONVILLE."

Florence acknowledged and inquired of Jacksonville: "ANY INCOMERS?"

JX said curtly: "NO. FYI TAMPA IS OUT. JX EVACUATION ORDERED BUT WE
STICKING UNTIL CIVIL DEFENSE FOLDS UP HERE."

Florence turned to her customers behind the counter, started to speak,
and was battered by demands: "I was expecting a money order from
Chattanooga this morning. Where is it?... I want you to get this off
for New York right away.... Can I send a cable from here? My husband
is in London and thinks I'm in Miami and I'm not in Miami at all. What
is the name of this place?... This is a very important message. I
tried to phone my broker but all the lines are tied up. It's a sell
order and I want you to get it right out. I'll make it worth your
while.... I can't even telephone Mount Dora. Can I send a telegram to
Mount Dora from here?... If I wire Chicago for money, how soon do you
think before I'll get an answer?..."

Florence raised her hands. "Please be quiet--That's better. I'm sorry,
but I can't take anything except official defense emergency messages.
Anyway, nothing is going through north of Jacksonville."

She watched the transformation in their faces. They had been grim,
determined, irritated. Suddenly, they were only frightened. The woman
whose husband was in London murmured, "Nothing north of Jacksonville?
Why, that's awful. Do you think..."

"I've just told you all I know," Florence said. "I'm sorry. I can't take
any messages. And nothing has come in, nothing for anybody." She pitied
them. "Come back in a few hours. Maybe things will be better."

****

At a quarter to nine Edgar Quisenberry, the president of the bank,
stepped into the Western Union office. His face was pink and shaven, he
was dressed in a new blue suit, white handkerchief peeping from the
breast pocket, and he wore a correct dark blue tie. His manner was
brisk, confident, and businesslike, which was the way a banker should
behave in time of crisis. In his hand he carried a telegram, already
typed up at the bank. "Good morning, Miss Wechek," he said, and smiled.

Florence was surprised. The bank was her best customer, and yet she
rarely saw Edgar Quisenberry, in person, and she never before had seen
him smile. "Good morning, Mr. Quisenberry," she said.

"Really can't say there's anything good about it," Edgar said. "Reminds
me of Pearl Harbor Day. That bunch in Washington have been caught
napping again. I'd like you to send this message for me--" he slid it
across the counter--"the telephone seems to be out of order,
temporarily, or I would have called."

She picked up the telegram. It was addressed to the Atlanta branch of
the Federal Reserve Bank, and it read: "URGENTLY NEED DIRECTIVE ON HOW
TO HANDLE CURRENT SITUATION."

Florence said, "I've just received orders not to accept anything but
official defense emergency messages, Mr. Quisenberry."

Edgar's smile disappeared. "There isn't anything more official than the
Federal Reserve Bank, Miss Wechek."

"Well, now I don't know about that, Mr. Quisenberry."

"You'd better know, Miss Wechek. Not only is this message official, but
in a defense emergency there isn't anything more important than
maintaining the financial integrity of the community. You will get this
message off right away, Miss Wechek." He looked up at the clock. "It is
now thirteen to nine. I'm going to ask for a report on exactly how
quickly this is delivered."

Florence was flustered. She knew Edgar Quisenberry could make a great
deal of trouble for her. However, Atlanta was far north of Jacksonville.
She said, "We don't have any communication with any points north of
Jacksonville, Mr. Quisenberry."

"That's ridiculous!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Quisenberry."

"Very well." Edgar snatched the telegraph blank from the counter and
revised the address. "There. Send it to the Jacksonville sub-branch."

Hesitating, Florence took the message and said, "I'll see if they'll
accept it, Mr. Quisenberry."

"They'd better. I'll wait."

She sat down at the teleprinter called in JX, and typed: "I HAVE MESSAGE
FOR JX SUB-BRANCH OF FEDERAL RESERVE. SENDER IS EDGAR QUISENBERRY,
PRESIDENT OF FIRST NATIONAL BANK. WILL YOU TAKE IT?"

JX replied: "IS IT AN OFFICIAL DEF..."

Florence blinked. For an instant it seemed that someone had flashed
mirrored sunlight into her eyes. At the same instant, the message from
JX stopped. "That's funny," she said. "Did you see anything, Mr.
Quisenberry?"

"Nothing but a little flash of light. Where did it come from?"

The teleprinter chattered again, "PK TO CIRCUIT, BIG EXPLOSION IN
DIRECTION JX. WE CAN SEE MUSHROOM CLOUD." PK meant Palatka, a small town
on the St. Johns south of Jacksonville.

Florence rose and walked to the counter with Edgar's message. "I'm very
sorry, Mr. Quisenberry," she said, "but I can't send this. Jacksonville
doesn't seem to be there any more."

Fort Repose's financial structure crumbled in a day.

During the winter season the First National was open on Saturday
mornings from nine until noon, and Edgar saw no reason why a war should
interfere with banking hours. Like almost everyone else, he was awakened
by the rumble of the first distant explosions, and he felt a thrill of
fear when the siren on the firehouse let loose. He urged his wife,
Henrietta, to make breakfast at once while he tried to put through a
long distance call to Atlanta. When his phone made strange noises, and
the operator would not respond, he listened to the scanty, thirty-second
local news broadcasts. Hearing nothing that sounded immediately alarming
for Fort Repose, he reminded Henrietta that nothing drastic had occurred
after Pearl Harbor. On the Monday after Pearl Harbor there had been no
runs, and no panic. Nevertheless, he could not force himself to finish
his bacon and eggs. He left for the bank fifteen minutes earlier than
usual.

But at the bank nothing was right. The phones weren't working there,
either, and at eight-thirty, when his staff should have reported for
work, half his people hadn't shown up. At about the same time he noticed
a line of depositors forming at the front entrance, and it was this that
made him decide to send a wire to Federal Reserve. He had never received
any instructions on what to do in an emergency of this kind, and, as a
matter of fact, had never even considered it.

Western Union's failure to send his telegram worried Edgar somewhat, but
he told himself that it was impossible that the enemy could have bombed
all these big cities at once. It was probably some sort of mechanical
trouble that would be cleared up before long, just as repairmen would
soon have the Fort Repose phone system back in working order.

When the bank's doors opened at nine the people seemed orderly enough.
It was true that everyone was withdrawing cash, and nobody making
deposits. Edgar wasn't overly worried. There was almost a quarter
million cash on hand, a far higher ratio of cash than regulations
required, but consistent with his conservative principles.

In ten minutes Edgar's optimism dwindled. Mrs. Estes, his senior teller,
turned over her cage to the bookkeeper and entered his office. "Mr.
Quisenberry," she said, "these aren't ordinary withdrawals. These people
are taking out everything--savings accounts and all."

"No reason for that," Edgar snapped. "They ought to know the bank is
sound."

"May I suggest that we limit withdrawals? Let them take out enough so
that each family can buy what's necessary in the emergency. In that way
we can stay open until noon, and there won't be any panic. It'll protect
the merchants, too."

Edgar was incensed by her effrontery, practically amounting to
insubordination. "When you are president of this bank," he said, "then
it will be up to you to make such decisions. But let me tell you
something, Mrs. Estes. The only way to stop a run on a bank is to shovel
out the cash. As soon as you do that, people regain confidence and the
run stops."

"It's entirely different today, Mr. Quisenberry. Don't you see that? You
have to assume some sort of leadership or there's going to be a panic."

"Mrs. Estes, will you please return to your cage. I'll run the bank."

This was Edgar's first, and perhaps his vital error.

Corrigan, the mailman, came in and dropped a packet of letters on the
secretarial desk. Edgar was heartened to see Corrigan. The good old U.S.
government still functioned. "Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night,"
Edgar said, smiling.

"This is my last delivery," Corrigan said. "Planes and trains aren't
running, and the truck didn't come in from Orlando this morning. This
batch is from last night. We can accept outgoing mail but we don't
guarantee when it will go out, if ever."

Corrigan left and wedged himself into a queue before one of the teller
windows.

Paralysis of the United States mail was more of a shock to Edgar
Quisenberry than anything that had occurred thus far. At last, he
confessed to himself the impossible reality of the day. Realization did
not come all at once. It could not, for his mind refused to assimilate
it. He attempted to accept the probability that the Treasury in
Washington, Wall Street, and Federal Reserve banks everywhere, all were
now radioactive ash. No longer any clearinghouses or correspondent
banks. He was sickened by the realization that a great part of his own
assets--that is, the assets of his bank--were no longer assets at all.
Of what use were Treasury bonds and notes when there was no Treasury?
What good were the municipal bonds of Tampa, Jacksonville, and Miami
when there were no municipalities? Who would straighten all this out,
and how, and when? Who would tell him? Who would know? With all
communications out, he could not even confer with fellow bankers in San
Marco. He began to sweat. He took out his fountain pen and began jotting
down figures on a scratch pad. If he could just get everything down in
figures, they ought to balance. They always had.

Edgar's cashier came into the office and said, "We're not cashing any
out-of-town checks, are we, Mr. Quisenberry?"

"Certainly not! How can we cash out-of-town checks when we don't know
whether a town's still there?" Edgar flinched, remembering that only
yesterday he had cashed a big check for Randolph Bragg on an Omaha bank.
Certainly Omaha, right in the center of the country, ought to be safe.
Edgar had never given much thought to all the talk about rockets and
missiles and such. He always prided himself on keeping his feet firmly
on the ground, and examining the facts in a hardheaded, practical
manner. And the facts, as he had publicly stated, were that Russia
intended to defeat the United States by scaring us into an inflationary,
socialistic depression, and not by tossing missiles at us. The country
was basically sound and the Russians would never attack a basically
sound country. And yet they had attacked, and if they could hit Florida
they could hit Omaha--or anywhere.

His cashier, Mr. Pennyngton, a thin man with a veined nose and nervous
stomach, a man given to fretting over detail, clasped his hands tightly
together as if to prevent his fingers from flying off into space. He
asked another question, haltingly: "Mr. Quisenberry, what about
travelers checks? Do we cash those?"

"No sir! Travelers checks are usually redeemed in New York, and between
me and you, I don't think there'll be much left of New York."

"And what about government savings bonds, sir? There are some people in
line who want to cash in their bonds."

Edgar hesitated. To refuse to cash government savings bonds was
fiduciary sacrilege so awful that the possibility never before had
entered his head. Yet here he was, faced with it. "No," he decided, "we
don't cash any bonds. Tell those individuals that we won't cash any
bonds until we find out where the government stands, or if."

The news that First National was refusing to honor travelers checks and
government bonds spread through Fort Repose's tiny business section in a
few minutes. The merchants, grocers, druggists, the proprietors of
specialty shops and filling stations, deduced that if travelers checks
and government bonds were worthless, then all checks would soon be
worthless. Since opening their doors that morning, all sales records had
been smashed. Everybody was buying everything, which to the shopkeepers
was exhilarating as well as frightening. Most of them, from the first,
had been cautious, refusing to accept out-of-town checks, except, of
course, payroll and annuity and government pension checks, which
everyone assumed were always as good as cash. When the bank acted, their
first reaction was to regard all paper except currency as probably
worthless.

Their next reaction was to race to the bank and attempt to convert their
suddenly suspect paper assets into currency.

Looking out through the office door, Edgar watched the queues in the
lobby, hoping they would shorten. Instead, they lengthened. He called
Mr. Pennyngton and together they checked the cash position. Incredibly,
in a single hour it had been reduced to $145,000. If continued at this
rate, the bank would be stripped of currency by eleven-thirty, and Edgar
guessed that the rate of withdrawals would only increase.

Edgar Quisenberry made his decision. He went into the four tellers'
cages and, one by one, removed the cash drawers and carried them into
the vault. He then closed and locked the vault. He walked back to the
lobby, stepped up on a chair, and raised his hands. "Quiet please," he
said.

At that moment, there were perhaps sixty people in the queues. They had
been murmuring. They were silent.

"For the benefit of all depositors, I have been forced to order that the
bank be temporarily closed," Edgar said.

They were all looking up at him. He was relieved to see Cappy Foracre,
the Chief of Police, and another officer, turning people away from the
door. Apparently, they had sensed there might be trouble. Yet Edgar saw
no menace in the faces below. They looked confused and uncomprehending,
dumb and ineffectual as cattle barred from the barn at nightfall. He
said, "This temporary closing has been ordered by the government as an
emergency measure." It was only a white lie. He was quite sure that had
he been able to get in touch with Federal Reserve, this is the course
that would have been advised.

His depositors continued to stare at him, as if expecting something
more. He said, "I can assure you that your savings are safe. Remember,
all deposits up to ten thousand dollars are insured by the government.
The bank is sound and will be reopened as soon as the emergency is over.
Thank you."

He stepped down and returned to his office, careful to maintain a
businesslike and dignified attitude. The people trickled out. He kept
his staff busy until past noon balancing books and accounts. When all
was in order, he advanced each employee a week's salary, in cash, and
informed them that he would get in touch with them when they were
needed. When all had left, and he was entirely alone, he felt relieved.
He had saved the bank. His position was still liquid. Dollars were good,
and the bank still had dollars. Since he was the bank, and the bank was
his, this meant that he possessed the ready cash to survive personally
any forseeable period of economic chaos.

Edgar's calculations were not correct. He had forgotten the implacable
law of scarcity.

Like most small towns, Fort Repose's food and drug supply was dependent
upon daily or thrice weekly deliveries from warehouses in the larger
cities. Each day tank trucks replenished its filling stations. For all
other merchandise, it was dependent upon shipments by mail, express, and
highway freight, from jobbers and manufacturers elsewhere. With the Red
Alert, all these services halted entirely and at once. Like thousands of
other towns and villages not directly seared by war, Fort Repose became
an island. From that moment, its inhabitants would have to subsist on
whatever was already within its boundaries, plus what they might
scrounge from the countryside.

Provisions and supplies melted from the shelves. Gasoline drained
steadily from the pumps. Closing of the First National failed to inhibit
the buying rush. Before closing, the bank had injected an extra $100,000
in cash into the economy, unevenly distributed. And strangers appeared,
eager to trade what was in their wallets for necessities of the moment
and the future.

The people of Fort Repose had no way of knowing it, but establishments
on the arterial highways leading down both coasts, and crisscrossing
between the large cities, had swiftly been stripped of everything. From
the time of the Red Alert, the highways had been jammed with carloads of
refugees, seeking asylum they knew not where. The mushroom cloud over
Miami emptied Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. The tourists instinctively
headed north on Route 1 and A1A, as frightened birds seek the nest. By
nightfall, they would be stopped outside the radioactive shambles of
Jacksonville. Some fled westward toward Tampa, to discover that Tampa
had exploded in their face. The evacuation of Jacksonville, partially
accomplished before missiles sought out the Navy Air complex, sent some
of its people toward Savannah and Atlanta. Neither city existed. Others
sped south, toward Orlando, to meet the evacuees from Orlando rushing
toward the holocaust in Jacksonville. When the authorities in
Tallahassee suspected that the fallout from Jacksonville, carried by the
east wind, would blanket the state capital, they ordered evacuation.
Some from Tallahassee drove south on Route 27, toward Tampa, unaware
that Tampa was no longer there.

This chaos did not result from a breakdown in Civil Defense. It was
simply that Civil Defense, as a realistic buffer against thermonuclear
war, did not exist. Evacuation zones for entire cities had never been
publicly announced, out of fear of "spreading alarm." Only the families
of military personnel knew what to do, and where to go and assemble.
Military secrecy forbade radio identification of those cities already
destroyed, since this might be information for the enemy.

In Florida alone several hundred thousand families were on the move, few
with provisions for more than one day and some with nothing at all
except a car and money. So of necessity they were voracious and
all-consuming as army ants. The roadside shops, restaurants, filling
stations, bars, and juice stands along the four-lane highways were
denuded of stocks, or put out a sign claiming so. Only the souvenir
shacks, with their useless pink flamingos and tinted shells, were not
picked clean. This is why strangers, swinging off these barren highways,
invaded Fort Repose and other little towns off the main traffic streams.

Those people in Fort Repose who remembered rationing from the second
World War also remembered what goods had been in short supply, back in
'forty-two and 'forty-three, and bought accordingly. There were runs on
tires, coffee, sugar, cigarettes, butter, the choicer cuts of beef, and
nylon stockings. Some proprietors, realizing that these items were
vanishing, instituted their own rationing systems.

The more thoughtful wives bought portable radios and extra batteries,
candles, kerosene lanterns, matches, lighter fluid and flints, first-aid
kits, and quantities of soap and toilet paper.

When news spread that armed convicts, escaped from road gangs, had been
seen near the town, Beck's Hardware sold out of rifles, shotguns,
pistols, and very nearly out of ammunition.

By afternoon the cash registers of Fort Repose were choked with
currency, but many shelves and counters were bare and others nearly so.
By afternoon the law of scarcity had condemned the dollar to degradation
and contempt. Within a few more days the dollar, in Fort Repose, would
be banished entirely as a medium of exchange, at least for the duration.

Sitting alone in his office, Edgar Quisenberry was aware of none of
these facts, nor could his imagination anticipate the dollar's fall, any
more than he could have imagined the dissolution of the Treasury and the
Federal Reserve System in the space of a single hour. Methodically, he
read through the last batch of mail. There was nothing of any great
importance, except heartening items in the Kiplinger Letter, predicting
another increase in FHA mortgage rates, and better retail business in
the South during the Christmas season. Also, from Detroit there was
notice of a ten-percent stock dividend in automobile shares in his
personal portfolio. He'd certainly got in on the ground floor of that
one, he thought. He hoped nothing happened to Detroit, but he had a
disquieting feeling that something would, or had.

At two o'clock, as always on Saturdays, he left the bank, first setting
the time lock on the vault for eight-thirty Monday morning. His car was
a black Cadillac, three years old. He recalled that during the last big
war automobile production had halted. He decided that on Monday, or
perhaps this very afternoon, he would drive to San Marco and see what
sort of a trade he could make on a new Caddy. Henrietta would be
pleased, and it would be a hedge against long disruption of the economy.

When he started the engine he saw that his gas was low, and on the way
home stopped at Jerry Kling's service station. He was surprised that
there was no line of cars waiting, as there had been early that morning.
Then he saw the big cardboard sign with its emphatic red lettering:
SORRY. NO MORE GAS.

Edgar honked and Jerry came out of the station, looking worn and limp.
"Yes, Mr. Quisenberry?" Jerry said.

"That's just to keep away tourists and floaters and such, isn't it?"
Edgar said.

"No, sir. I'm not only out of gas. I'm out of tires, spark plugs,
batteries, thirty-weight oil, vulcanizing kits, drinks and candy, and
low on everything else."

"I've got to have gas. I'm just about out."

"I should've put up that sign an hour after I opened. You know what, Mr.
Quisenberry? I sold plumb out of tires before I got to thinking I needed
new tires myself. I just let myself be charmed by that bell on the cash
register. What a damn fool! I've got nothing but money."

"I don't know that I can get home," Edgar said.

"I think we'll all be walking pretty soon, Mr. Quisenberry." Jerry
sighed. "I'll tell you what I'll do. You're an old customer. I've got a
drum stashed away in the stockroom. I'll let you have three gallons.
Back that thing up by the ramp, so nobody'll see."

When he had his three gallons, Edgar brought out his wallet and said,
"How much?"

Jerry laughed and raised his hands in a gesture of repugnance. "Keep it!
I don't want money. What the hell's money good for? You can't drive it
and you can't eat it and it won't even fix a flat."

Edgar drove on slowly, hunched over the wheel. He knew, vaguely, that in
the second World War the Greek drachma and Hungarian pengo had become
utterly worthless. And in the War of the Revolution the shilling of the
Continental Congress hadn't been worth, in the British phrase, a
Continental damn. But nothing like this had ever happened to the dollar.
If the dollar was worthless, everything was worthless. There was a
phrase he had heard a number of times, "the end of civilization as we
know it." Now he knew what the phrase meant. It meant the end of money.

When Edgar reached home Henrietta's car was gone. He found a note in the
salver on the hall table. It read:

    1:30.

    EDGAR--tried to get you all morning but the phone is still out
    of order. The radio doesn't say much but I am frightened.
    Nevertheless, I am off to do the grocery shopping. I hope the
    stores aren't crowded. I do think that henceforth I will shop on
    Tuesdays or Wednesdays instead of Saturdays.

    Hadn't we better have both cars filled with gas? There may be a
    shortage. You remember how it was last time, with those silly A
    and B ration cards.

    You didn't leave any money when you rushed off this morning, but
    I can always cash checks. It may be hard for a while, but life
    goes on.

                                                           HENRIETTA

Edgar went up to the master bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. What
a fool she was. Life goes on, she said. How could life go on with no
Federal Reserve, no Treasury, no Wall Street, no bonds, no banks?

Henrietta didn't understand it at all. How could life go on if dollars
were worthless? How could anybody live without dollars, or credit, or
both? She didn't understand that the Bank had become only a heap of
stone filled with worthless paper, so his credit would be no better than
anybody's credit. If dollars were worthless then there was nothing they
could buy. You couldn't even buy a ticket, say, to South America, and
even if you could how would you get to an airport? Grocery shopping,
indeed! How would they shop a week, or a month from now?

Henrietta was a fool. This was the end. Civilization was ended. Of one
thing, Edgar was certain. He would not be crushed with the mob. He had
been a banker all his life and that was the way he was going to die, a
banker. He would not allow himself to be humiliated. He would not be
reduced to begging gasoline or food, and be dragged down to the level of
a probationary teller. He thought of all the notes outstanding that now
would never be paid, and how his debtors must be chuckling. He scorned
the improvident, and now the improvident would be just as good as the
careful, the sound, the thrifty. Well, let them try to go on without
dollars. He would not accept such a world.

He found the old, nickel-plated revolver, purchased by his father many
years before, in the top drawer of his bureau. Edgar had never fired it.
The bullets were green with mold and the hammer rusted. He put it to his
temple, wondering whether it would work. It did.




CHAPTER SIX


Always before, important events and dates had been marked in memory with
definite labels, not only such days as Thanksgiving, New Year's, and
Lincoln's Birthday, but Pearl Harbor Day, D-Day, VE-Day, VJ-Day, Income
Tax Day. This December Saturday, ever after, was known simply as The
Day. That was sufficient. Everybody remembered exactly what they did and
saw and said on The Day. People unconsciously were inclined to split
time into two new periods, before The Day, and after The Day. Thus a man
might say, "Before The Day I was an automobile dealer. Now I operate a
trotline for catfish." Or a mother might boast, "Oh, yes, Oscar passed
his college boards. Of course that was before The Day." Or a younger
mother say, "Hope was born after The Day, I wonder about her teeth."

This semantic device was not entirely original. Several generations of
Southerners had referred to before and after "The War" without being
required to explain what war. It seemed incongruous to call The Day a
war--Russo-American, East-West, or World War III--because the war,
really was all over in a single day. Furthermore, nobody in the Western
Hemisphere ever saw the face of a human enemy. Very few actually saw an
enemy aircraft or submarine, and missiles appeared only on the most
sensitive radar screens. Most of those who died in North America saw
nothing at all, since they died in bed, in a millisecond slipping from
sleep into deeper darkness. So the struggle was not against a human
enemy, or for victory. The struggle, for those who survived The Day, was
to survive the next.

This truth was not quickly or easily assimilated by Randy Bragg,
although he was better prepared for it than most. It was totally outside
his experience and without precedent in history.

On The Day itself, whatever else he might be doing, he was never beyond
sound of a radio, awaiting the news that ought to accompany war--news of
victories or defeats, mobilization, proclamations, declarations, a
message from the President, words of leadership, steadfastness and
unity. Altogether, there were seven radios in the house. All of them
were kept turned on except the clock-radio in Peyton's room where the
child, her eyes lubricated and bandaged, slept with the help of Dan
Gunn's sedatives.

Even when he ran up or down stairs, or discovered imperative duties
outside, Randy carried his tiny transistor portable. Twice he left the
grounds, once on a buying mission to town, again briefly to visit the
McGoverns. The picture window on the river side of the McGovern home had
been cracked by concussion, and this, rather than the more terrifying
and deadly implications of The Day, had had a traumatic effect on
Lavinia. She had been fed sleeping pills and put to bed. Lib and her
father were functioning well, even bravely. Randy was relieved. He could
not escape his primary duty, which was to his own family, his brother's
wife and children. He could not devote his mind and energy to the
protection of two houses at once.

Until midafternoon, Randy heard only the quavery and uninformative
thirty-second broadcasts from WSMF.

Now he was downstairs, in the dining room with Helen. She had been
making an inventory of necessities in the house, discovering a
surprising number of items she considered essential, war or no war,
which Randy had entirely forgotten. He was eating steak and
vegetables--Helen, disapproving of his cannibal sandwiches, had insisted
on cooking for him--and washing it down with orange juice. Leaning back
in the scarred, massive captain's chair he relaxed for the first time
since dawn. A weariness flowed upward from his throbbing legs. He had
slept only two or three hours in the past thirty-six, and he knew that
when he finished eating the fatigue would seep through his whole body,
and it would be necessary to sleep again. Across the circular, waxed
teak table, looking fresh and competent, Helen sipped a Scotch and
checked what she called her "must" list. "One of us," she was saying,
"has got to make another trip to town. I have to have detergent for the
dishwasher and washing machine, soap powder, paper napkins, toilet
paper. We ought to have more candles and I wish I could get my hand on
some more old-fashioned kerosene lamps. And, Randy, what about
ammunition? I don't like to sound scary, but--"

The radio, in an interval of silence between the local Conelrad
broadcasts, suddenly squealed with an alien and powerful carrier wave.
Then they heard a new voice. "This is your national Civil Defense
Headquarters...."

The front legs of Randy's chair hit the floor. He was wide awake again.
The voice was familiar, the voice of a network newscaster, not one of
the best known New York or Washington correspondents, but still
recognizable, a strong and welcome voice connecting them with the world
beyond the borders of Timucuan County. It continued:

    "All local Conelrad stations will please leave the air now, and
    whenever they hear this signal. This is an emergency clear
    channel network. If the signal strength is erratic, do not
    change stations. It is because the signal is rotated between a
    number of transmitters in order to prevent bombing by enemy
    aircraft. The next voice you hear will be that of the Acting
    Chief Executive of the United States, Mrs. Josephine
    Vanbruuker-Brown--"

Randy couldn't believe it. Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown was Secretary of
Health, Education and Welfare in the President's Cabinet, or had been
until this day.

Then they heard her Radcliffe-Boston voice. It was Mrs.
Vanbruuker-Brown, all right. She said:

    "Fellow countrymen. As all of you know by now, at dawn this
    morning this country, and our allies in the free world, were
    attacked without warning with thermonuclear and atomic weapons.
    Many of our great cities have been destroyed. Others have been
    contaminated, and their evacuation ordered. The toll of innocent
    lives taken on this new and darker day of infamy cannot as yet
    even be estimated."

These first sentences had been clearly and bravely spoken. Now her voice
faltered, as if she found it difficult to say what it was now necessary
to say. "The very fact that I speak to you as the Chief Executive of the
nation must tell you much."

They heard her sob. "No President," Helen whispered.

"No Washington," Randy said. "I guess she was out of Washington, at
home, or speaking somewhere, and wherever she lives--"

Randy hushed. Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown was talking again:

    "Our reprisal was swift, and, from the reports that have reached
    this command post, effective. The enemy has received terrible
    punishment. Several hundred of his missile and air bases, from
    the Chukchi Peninsula to the Baltic, and from Vladivostok to the
    Black Sea, have certainly been destroyed. The Navy has sunk or
    damaged at least a hundred submarines in North American waters.

    "The United States has been badly hurt, but is by no means
    defeated.

    "The battle goes on. Our reprisals continue.

    "However, further enemy attacks must be expected. There is
    reason to believe that enemy air forces have not as yet been
    fully committed. We must be prepared to withstand heavy blows.

    "As Chief Executive of the United States, and Commander in Chief
    of the Armed Forces, I hereby declare a state of unlimited
    national emergency until such time as new elections are held,
    and Congress reconvenes.

    "In the devastated areas, and in those other areas where normal
    functions of government cannot be carried out, I hereby declare
    martial law, to be administered by the Army. I appoint
    Lieutenant General George Hunneker Army Chief of Staff, and
    Director of Martial Law in the Zone of the Interior, which means
    within the forty-nine states.

    "There have been grave dislocations of communications, of
    industrial, economic, and financial functions. I declare,
    effective at this moment, a moratorium on the payment of all
    debts, rents, taxes, interest, mortgages, insurance claims and
    premiums, and all and any other financial obligations for the
    duration of the emergency.

    "From time to time, God willing, I will use these facilities to
    bring you further information, as it is received, and to issue
    further decrees as they become necessary. I call upon you to
    obey the orders of your local Civil Defense directors, state and
    municipal authorities, and of the military. Do not panic.

    "Some of you may have guessed how it happens that I, the head of
    the most junior of government departments and a woman, have been
    forced to assume the duties and responsibilities of Chief
    Executive on this, the most terrible day in our history.

    "One of the first targets of the enemy was Washington.

    "So far as we have been able to discover at this hour, neither
    the President nor the Vice President, nor any other Cabinet
    member, nor the leaders of House or Senate survived. It appears
    certain that only a small percentage of the members of the
    Congress escaped. I survive only by chance, because this morning
    I was in another city, on an inspection tour. I am now in a
    military command post of relative safety. I have designated this
    command post Civil Defense Headquarters, as well as temporary
    seat of government."

Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown coughed and choked, recovered herself and
continued: "With a sick heart, but the resolution to lead the nation to
victory and peace, I leave you for the time being."

The radio hummed for a second, the carrier wave cut off, and then there
was silence.

Randy said, "It's about what I expected, but it's awful to hear it."

"Still," Helen said, "there is a government."

"I guess that's some comfort. I wonder what's left. I mean, what cities
are left."

Helen looked up at Randy. She looked at him, and through him, and far
away. Her hands came together on the table, and her fingers interwined;
when she spoke it was in a soft, almost inaudible voice, as if her
thoughts were so fragile that they would be shattered by more than a
whisper. "Do you think--is it possible--that the military command post
she spoke of could be Offutt Field? Do you think she might be down in
what we call the Hole, at SAC Headquarters? If she is at SAC, you know
what that means, don't you?"

"It could mean that Mark is okay. But Helen--"

"Yes?"

Randy didn't think it likely that Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown was speaking
from Omaha. The odds were against it. There were many headquarters, and
the first one the enemy would try to destroy, after Washington itself,
was SAC. Mark had feared this, and so did he. He said, "I don't think we
should count on it."

"I'm not counting on it. I'm just praying. If Mark is--alive--how long
do you think it'll be before we hear from him?"

"I can't even guess. But I do know who can make an educated guess.
Admiral Hazzard. He lives on the other side of the Henrys' place. He
listens to short wave and keeps up with everything that goes on. He
served a tour in ONI, and later was on the Intelligence staff of the
Joint Chiefs--I think that was his last duty before they retired him. So
if anybody around here should know what's happening then old Sam Hazzard
should know."

"Can we see him?"

"Of course we can see him. Any time we want. It's only a quarter mile.
But we can't leave Peyton alone and I don't have any idea what time Dan
Gunn will get here." His arms felt wooden, and detached, and his head
too heavy for his neck. His chin drooped on his chest. "And I'm so
blasted tired, Helen. I feel that if I don't get a couple of hours of
real sleep I'll go off my rocker. If I don't get some rest I won't be
much good from here in, and God knows what'll happen tonight."

Helen said, "I'm sorry, Randy. Of course you're groggy. Go on upstairs
and get some sleep. I'm going to drive to town. There's so much stuff
we've just got to have."

"Suppose Peyton calls? I'll never wake up."

"Ben Franklin will be here. I'll tell him to wake you up if anything
serious happens."

"Okay. Be careful. Don't stop for anybody on the way to town." Randy
went upstairs, each step an effort. It was true, he thought, that women
had more stamina than men.

Randy decided not actually to take off his clothes and get into bed
because once he got under the covers he would never get up. Instead, he
took off his shoes and dropped down on the couch in the living room. He
stared at the gunrack on the opposite wall. Until very recent years guns
had been an important part of living on the Timucuan. Randy guessed they
might become important again. He had quite an arsenal. There was the
long, old-fashioned 30-40 Krag fitted with sporting sights; the carbine
he had carried in Korea, dismantled, and smuggled home; two .22 rifles,
one equipped with a scope; a twelve-gauge automatic, and a light,
beautifully balanced twenty-gauge double-barreled shotgun. In the drawer
of his bedside table was a .45 automatic and a .22 target pistol hung in
a holster in his closet.

Ammo. He had more than he would ever need for the big rifle, the
carbine, and the shotguns. But he had only a couple of boxes of .22's,
and he guessed that the .22's might be the most useful weapons he owned,
if economic chaos lasted for a long time, a meat shortage developed, and
it became necessary to hunt small game. He rose and went into the
hallway and shouted down at the stairwell, "Helen!"

"Yes?" She was at the front door.

"If you get a chance drop in at Beck's Hardware and buy some twenty-two
caliber long-rifle hollow points."

"Just a second. I'll write it down on my list. Twenty-two long-rifle
hollow points. How many?"

"Ten boxes, if they have them."

Helen said, "I'll try. Now, Randy, get some sleep."

Back on the couch, he closed his eyes, thinking of guns, and hunting. In
his father's youth, this section of Florida had been a hunter's
paradise, with quail, dove, duck, and deer in plenty, and even black
bear and a rare panther. Now the quail were scattered and often scarce.
Three coveys roamed the grove, and the hammock behind the Henrys' place.
Randy had not shot quail for twelve years. When visitors noticed his
gunrack and asked about quail shooting, he always laughed and said,
"Those guns are to shoot people who try to shoot my quail." The quail
were more than pets. They were friends, and wonderful to watch, parading
across lawn and road in the early morning.

Only the ducks were now truly plentiful in this area, and they were
protected by Federal law. Once in a while he shot a rattlesnake in the
grove, or a moccasin near the dock. And that was all he shot. Still,
there were rabbits and squirrels, and so the .22 ammo might come in
handy. A long time ago--he could not have been more than fourteen or
fifteen--he remembered hunting deer with his father, and shooting his
first deer with buckshot from the double-twenty. His first, and his
last, for the deer had not died instantly, and had seemed small and
piteous, twitching in the palmetto scrub, until his father had
dispatched it with his pistol. He could still see it, and the round,
bright red spots on the green fronds. He shivered, and he slept.

****

Randy awoke in darkness. Graf was barking, and he heard voices
downstairs. He turned on a light. It was nine-thirty. He had slept
almost four hours. He felt refreshed, and good for whatever might come
through the night. He was putting on his shoes when the door opened and
Helen came into his apartment, followed by Ben Franklin and Dan Gunn.

"I was just going to wake you up," Helen said. "Dan is going in to look
at Peyton."

Dan's eyes were hollowed, and his face carved with tissues of
exhaustion. Randy said, "Have you eaten anything today, Dan?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

Helen said, "You'll eat, Doctor, right after you've seen Peyton. Do you
want me to go in with you?"

"You and Randy can both come in with me. But don't say anything. Let me
do the talking."

They went into the child's room. Randy flicked on the overhead light.
"Not that one," Dan said. "I want a dim light at first." He turned on a
lamp on the dressing table.

Peyton's hands crept out from under the sheet and touched the bandages
over her eyes. "Hello," she said, her voice small and frightened.

"Hello, dear," Helen said. "Doctor Gunn is here to see you. You remember
Doctor Gunn from last year, don't you?"

"Oh, yes. Hello, Doctor."

Dan said, "Peyton, I'm going to take the bandage off your eyes. Don't be
surprised if you don't see anything. There isn't much light in the
room."

Randy found he was holding his breath. Dan removed the bandage, saying,
"Now, don't rub your eyes."

Peyton tried to open her eyes. She said, "They're stuck. They feel all
gooey."

"Sure," Dan said. He moistened cotton in a borax mixture and wiped
Peyton's eyes gently. "That better?"

Peyton blinked. "Hey, I can see! Well, sort of. Everything looks milky."
Helen moved and Peyton said, "Isn't that you, Mother?"

"Yes. That's me."

"Your face looks like a balloon but I could tell it was you."

Dan smiled at Randy and nodded. She was going to be all right.

He rummaged in his bag and brought out a small kit, a bottle, and
applicator, a tube. He said, "Peyton, you can stop worrying now. You're
not going to be blind. In perhaps a week, you'll be able to see fine.
But until then you've got to rest your eyes and we've got to treat them.
This is going to sting a little."

He held her eyelids open and, his huge hands sure and gentle, applied
drops, and an ointment. "Butyn sulphate," he said. "This is really
outside my line, but I remembered that butyn sulphate was what Air-Sea
Rescue used for rescued fliers. After floating around in a raft for two
or three days, the glare would blind them just as Peyton was blinded. It
fixed them up, and it ought to fix her up."

Dan turned to Helen. "Did you see how I did it?"

"I was watching."

"I'll try to get out here at least once a day, but if I don't make it,
you'll have to do it yourself."

"I won't have any trouble. Peyton's quite brave."

Peyton said, "Mommy, I'm not. I'm not brave at all. I'm scared all the
time. Have you heard from Dad, yet? Do you think Dad's all right?"

"I'm sure he's all right, dear," Helen said. "But we can't expect to
hear right away. All the phones are out, and I suppose the telegraph
too."

"I'm hungry, Mother."

Helen said, "I'll bring something right up."

They turned off the light. Helen went downstairs. Dan Gunn came into
Randy's rooms. He took off his wrinkled jacket and dropped it on a chair
and said, "Now I can use a drink."

Randy mixed a double bourbon. Dan drank half of it in a gulp and said,
surprised, "Aren't you drinking, Randy?"

"No. Don't feel like I want one."

"That's the first good news I've heard all day. I've already treated two
fellows who've drunk themselves insensible since morning. You could've
been the third."

"Could I?"

"Well, not quite. You react to crisis in the right way. You remember
what Toynbee says? His theory of challenge and response applies not only
to nations, but to individuals. Some nations and some people melt in the
heat of crisis and come apart like fat in the pan. Others meet the
challenge and harden. I think you're going to harden."

"I'm really not a very hard guy," Randy said, looking across the room at
his guns and thinking, oddly, of the young buck he'd shot when a boy,
and how he'd never been able to shoot a deer since that day. To change
the subject he said, "You must've had a pretty harrowing day."

Dan drank the second half of his bourbon and water. "I have had such a
day as I didn't think it was possible to have. Seven cardiacs are dead
and a couple more will go before morning. Three miscarriages and one of
the women died. I don't know what killed her. I'd put down 'fright' on
the death certificate if I had time to make out death certificates.
Three suicides--one of them was Edgar Quisenberry."

Randy said, "Edgar--why?"

Dan frowned. "Hard to say. He still had as much as anybody else, or
more. He wasn't organically ill. I'll refer to Toynbee again. Inability
to cope with a sudden change in the environment. He swam in a sea of
money, and when money was transmuted back into paper he was left gasping
and confused, and he died. You've read the history of the 'twenty-nine
crash, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Dozens of people killed themselves for the same reason. They created
and lived in an environment of paper profits, and when paper returned to
paper they had to kill themselves, not realizing that their environment
was unnatural and artificial. But it wasn't the adults that got me down,
Randy, it was the babies. Give me another drink, a small one."

Randy poured another.

"Eight babies today, three of them preemies. I've got the preemies in
San Marco hospital. I don't know whether they'll make it or not. The
hospital's a mess. Cots end to end on every corridor. A good many of
them are accident cases, a few gunshot wounds. And all this, mind you,
with only three casualties caused directly by the war--three cases of
radiation poisoning."

"Radiation?" Randy said. "Around here?" Suddenly the word had a new and
immediate connotation. It was now a sinister word of lingering death,
like cancer.

"No. Refugees from Tallahassee. They drove through pretty heavy fallout,
I guess. We estimate at the hospital that they received fifty to a
hundred roentgens. Anyway, a pretty hefty dose, but not fatal."

"Are we getting any radiation, do you think?"

Dan considered. "Some, undoubtedly. But I don't think a dangerous dose.
There isn't a Geiger in town, but there is a dosimeter in the San Marco
hospital and I guess we're getting what San Marco gets. Most of the
radioactive particles decay pretty fast, you know. Not cesium or
strontium 90 or cobalt or carbon 14. Those will always be with us."

"Lucky east wind," Randy said, and then was surprised at his words. The
danger of radiation was still there, and might increase. Long before
this day scientists had been worried about tests of nuclear weapons,
even when conducted in uninhabited areas under rigid controls. Now the
danger obviously was infinitely greater, but since there were other and
more immediate dangers--dangers that you could see, feel, and
hear--radiation had become secondary. He wasn't thinking of its effect
upon future generations. He was concerned with the present. He wasn't
exercised over the fallout blanketing Tallahassee from the attack on
Jacksonville. He was worried about Fort Repose. He suspected that this
was a necessary mental adjustment to aid self-preservation. The
exhausted swimmer, struggling to reach shore, isn't worried about
starving to death afterwards.

When Helen called, they sat down to a dinner table that, under the
circumstances, seemed incongruous. The meal was only soup, salad, and
sandwiches, but Helen had laid the table as meticulously as if Dan Gunn
had agreed to stay for a late supper on an ordinary evening. When Ben
Franklin sat down Helen said, "Did you wash your hands?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well, do so."

And Ben disappeared and returned with his hands washed and hair combed.
They listened to the radio as they ate, hearing only the local
broadcasts from San Marco at two-minute intervals. Their ears had become
dulled to the repetitive, unimportant announcements and warnings, as
those who live on the seashore fail to hear the sea. But any fresh news,
or break in the routine, instantly alerted and silenced them.

Several times they heard a brief bulletin: "County Civil Defense
authorities warn everyone not to drink fresh milk which may have been
exposed to fallout. Canned milk, or milk delivered this morning prior to
the attack, can be presumed safe."

Dan Gunn explained that this precaution was probably a little premature.
It was designed primarily for the protection of children. Strontium 90,
probably the most dangerous of all fallout materials, collected in
calcium. It caused bone cancer and leukemia. "In a week or so it can be
a real hazard," he said. "It can't be a hazard yet, because the cows
haven't had time to ingest strontium 90 in their fodder. Still, the
quicker these dangers are broadcast, the more people will be aware of
them."

Helen asked, "What happens to babies?"

"Evaporated or condensed canned milk is the answer--while it lasts.
After that, it's mother's milk."

"That will be old-fashioned, won't it?"

Dan nodded and smiled. "But the mothers will have to be careful of what
they eat." He looked down at the lettuce. "For instance, no greens, or
lettuce, if your garden has received fallout. Trouble is, you won't
know, really, whether your ground, or your food, is safe or not. Not
without a Geiger counter. We'll all have to live as best we can, from
day to day."

Ben Franklin looked up at the ceiling, listening. He said, "Listen!"

The others heard it, very faintly.

"A jet," Ben said. "A fighter, I think."

The sound faded away. Randy discovered he had been holding his breath.
He said, "I guess it's still going on."

Helen laid her salad fork on the plate. She had eaten very little. She
said, "I have to know what's happening--I just have to. Can't we go over
to see your retired admiral tonight, Randy?"

"Sure, we can see him. But what about Peyton? We can't leave her alone."

Helen looked at Ben Franklin and Ben said, "Is this what I'm going to
be--a professional baby-sitter?"

Dan Gunn rose. "I've got to get back to town. I've got to check in at
the clinic and then I've got to get some sleep."

"Why don't you stay here for the night, Dan?" Randy said.

"I can't. They're expecting me at the clinic. And Randy, I brought the
emergency kit for you." He turned to Helen. "It was a wonderful supper.
Thanks. I was so hungry I was weak. I didn't realize it."

Randy walked him to his car. Dan said, "That poor girl."

"Peyton?"

"No. Helen. Uncertainty is the worst. She'd be better off if she knew
Mark was dead. See you tomorrow, Randy."

"Yes. Tomorrow." He walked back to the house and paused on the porch to
look at the thermometer and barometer. The barometer was steady, very
high. Temperature was down to fifty-five. It would get colder tonight.
It might go to forty before morning. From across the river, far off, he
heard a string of shots. In this stillness, at night, and across water,
the sound of shots carried for miles. He could not tell from whence the
sound came, or guess why, but the shots reminded him of a nervous sentry
on post cutting loose with his carbine. It sounded like a carbine, or an
automatic pistol.

He walked into the house, head down, and went up to his bedroom and
pulled on a sweater. He called Ben Franklin to the living room and Ben
came in, his mother following. "Ben," Randy said, "ever shoot a pistol?"

"Only once, on the range at Offutt."

"What about a rifle?"

"I've shot a twenty-two. I'm pretty good with a twenty-two."

"Okay," Randy said, "I'm going to give you what you're good at."

He walked to the gunrack. The Mossberg was fitted with a sixpower scope,
and a scope was not good for snap shooting, and hard to use at night. He
took down the Remington pump, a weapon with open sights, a present from
his father on his thirteenth birthday. He handed it to Ben.

The boy took it, pleased, worked the action and peered into the chamber.

"It's not loaded now," Randy said, "but from now on every gun in this
house is going to be loaded. I hope we never have to use them but if we
do there probably won't be any time to load up."

Helen said, "I forgot to tell you, Randy. I couldn't get ten boxes of
the ammunition you wanted but I did get three. They're somewhere in the
kitchen. I'll find them later."

"Thanks," Randy said. He took a package of cartridges out of his
ammunition case and handed it to Ben. "You load up your gun, Ben," he
said. "It's yours now. Never point it at a man unless you intend to
shoot him, and never shoot unless you mean to kill. You understand
that?"

Ben's eyes were round and his face sober. "Yes, sir."

"Okay, Ben. You can baby-sit now. We should be back in an hour."

When Rear Admiral Hazzard retired he embarked upon what he liked to call
"my second life." He and his wife had prepared carefully for retirement.
They had wanted an orange grove to supplement his pension and a body of
water upon which he could look and in which he could fish. While still a
four-striper he had located this spot on the Timucuan, and bought it for
a surprisingly reasonable sum. The real estate agent had carefully
explained that the low price included "niggers for neighbors," meaning
the Henrys. At the same time the agent had grumbled at the Braggs, who
had allowed the Henrys to buy water-front property in the first place,
thereby lowering values along the entire river, or so he said.

The Hazzards first had planted a grove. A few years later they built a
comfortable six-room rambler and started landscaping the grounds.
Thereafter they lived in the house one month each year, when Sam took
his annual leave, trying it and wearing it until it fitted perfectly.

On his sixty-second birthday Sam Hazzard retired, to the relief of a
number of his fellow admirals. There were rivalries within, as well as
between, the armed services. In the Navy, the rivalry had once been
between the battleship and carrier admirals. When it became a rivalry
between atomic subs and super-carriers, Hazzard had outspokenly favored
the submarines. Since he once had commanded a carrier task force, and
never had been a submariner, the carrier admirals regarded his stand as
just short of treason. Worse, for years he had claimed that Russia's
most dangerous threat was the terrible combination of submarines
equipped with missiles armed with nuclear warheads. Such a theory, if
unchallenged, would force the Navy to spend a greater part of its energy
and money on anti-submarine warfare. Since this, _per se_, was defense,
and since the Navy's whole tradition was to take the offensive, Hazzard
spent his final years of duty conning a desk.

Two days after his retirement his wife died, so she never really lived
in the house on the Timucuan, and she never physically shared his second
life. Yet often she seemed close, when he trimmed a shrub she had
planted, or when in the evenings he sat alone on the patio, and reached
to touch the arm of the chair at his side.

The Admiral discovered there were not enough hours in the day to do all
the things that were necessary, and that he wanted to do. There was the
citrus, the grounds, experiments with exotic varieties of bananas and
papaya, discreet essays to be written for the United States Naval
Institute _Proceedings_ and not-so-discreet articles for magazines of
general circulation. Sam Hazzard found that the Henrys were
extraordinarily convenient neighbors. Malachai tended the grounds and
helped design and build the dock. Two-Tone, when in the mood--broke and
sober--worked in the grove. The Henry women cleaned, and did his
laundry. Preacher Henry was the Admiral's private fishing guide, which
meant that the Admiral consistently caught more and bigger bass than
anyone on the Timucuan, and possibly in all of Central Florida.

But Sam Hazzard's principal hobby was listening to shortwave radio. He
was not a ham operator. He had no transmitter. He listened. He did not
chatter. He monitored the military frequencies and the foreign
broadcasts and, with his enormous background of military and political
knowledge, he kept pace with the world outside Fort Repose. Sometimes,
perhaps, he was a bit ahead of everyone.

It was ten to eleven when Randy knocked on Admiral Hazzard's door. It
opened immediately. The Admiral was a taut, neatly made man who had
weighed 133 when he boxed for the Academy and who weighed 133 now. He
was dressed in a white turtleneck sweater, flannels, and boat shoes. A
halo of cottony hair encircled his sunburned bald spot. Otherwise, he
was not saintly. His nose had been flattened in some long-forgotten
brawl in Port Said or Marseilles. His gray eyes, canopied by heavy white
brows, were red-rimmed, and angry. For the Admiral, this had been a day
of frustration, helplessness, and hatred--hatred for the unimaginative,
purblind, selfish fools who had not believed him, and frustration
because on this day of supreme danger and need, his lifetime of training
and experience was not and could not be put to use. The Admiral said, "I
saw your headlights coming down the road. Come in." He squinted at
Helen.

"My sister-in-law, Helen Bragg," Randy said.

"An evil day to receive a beautiful woman," the Admiral said, his voice
surprisingly mild and mannered to issue from such a pugnacious face.
"Come on in to my Combat Plot, and listen to the war, if such a massacre
can be called a war."

He led them to his den. A heavily planked work-bench ran along the wall
under the windows overlooking the river. On this bench was a large,
black, professional-looking shortwave receiver, a steaming coffee-maker,
notebooks and pencils. The radio screeched with power, static,
interference, and occasional words in the almost unintelligible language
of conflict.

On two other walls, cork-covered, were pinned maps--the polar projection
and the Eurasian land mass on one wall, a military map of the United
States on the other.

A hoarse voice broke through the static: "This is Adelaide Six-Five-One.
I am sitting on a skunk at Alpha Romeo Poppa Four. Skunk at Alpha Romeo
Poppa Four."

A different voice replied immediately: "Adelaide Six-Five-One, this is
Adelaide. Hold one."

There was silence for a moment, and then the second voice continued:
"Adelaide Six-Five-One--Adelaide. Have relayed your message to Hector.
He is busy but will be free in ten to fifteen minutes. Squat on that
skunk and wait for Hector."

"Adelaide from Adelaide Six-Five-One. Charley."

Helen sat down. For the first time that day, she was showing fatigue.
The Admiral said, "Coffee?"

"I'd love a cup," she said.

Randy said, "Sam, what was that on the radio? Part of the war?"

The Admiral poured coffee before he replied. "A big part of it, for us.
Right now I'm tuned to a Navy and Air Force ASW frequency in the five
megacycle band."

"ASW?"

"Anti-submarine warfare. I'll interpret. A Navy super-Connie with a
saucer radome has located a skunk--an enemy submarine--at coordinates
Alpha Romeo Poppa Four. I happen to know that's about three hundred
miles off Norfolk. The radar picket has called home base--Adelaide--and
Adelaide is sending Hector to knock off the skunk. Hector is one of our
killer subs. But Hector is presently engaged. When he is free, he will
communicate directly with Adelaide Six-Five-One. The plane will give
Hector a course and when he is in range Hector will cut loose with a
homing torpedo and that will be the end of the skunk. We hope."

"Who's winning?" Randy asked, aware that it was a ridiculous question.

"Who's, winning? Nobody's winning. Cities are dying and ships are
sinking and aircraft is going in, but nobody's winning."

Helen asked the question she had come to ask. "Did you hear Mrs.
Vanbruuker-Brown on the radio a while ago?"

"Yes."

"Where do you think she was speaking from?"

The Admiral walked across the room and looked at the map of the United
States. It was covered with acetate overlay and ten or twelve cities
were ringed with red-crayon goose eggs, in the way that a unit position
is marked on an infantry map. The Admiral scratched the white stubble on
his chin and said, "I think Denver. Hunneker, the three-star she named
Chief of Staff, was Army representative on NORAD, in Colorado Springs.
Chances are that he was in Denver this morning, or she was in Colorado
Springs, when the word came through that Washington had been atomized."

Helen set down her coffee cup. Her fingers trembled. "You're sure that
she couldn't have been in Omaha?"

"Omaha!" said the Admiral. "That's the last place she'd be speaking
from! You notice that whenever I've heard a broadcast, of any kind, that
allowed me to identify a city, I ringed it on the map. I've heard no
amateurs talking from Omaha, and I haven't heard SAC since the attack.
Ordinarily, I can pick up SAC right away. They're always talking on
their single side band transmitters to bases out of the country. Their
call sign was 'Big Fence.' I haven't heard 'Big Fence' all day on any
frequency. And the enemy hates and fears SAC, more, even, than they fear
the Navy, I'll admit. Scratch Omaha."

Sam Hazzard noticed the effect of his words on Helen's expression; he
recalled that Randy's brother, her husband, was an Air Force colonel,
and he sensed that he had been tactless. "Your husband isn't in Omaha,
is he, Mrs. Bragg?"

"It's our home."

"I'm terribly sorry that I said anything."

A tear was quivering on her cheek. Her first, Randy thought. He felt
embarrassed for Sam.

Helen said, "There's nothing to be sorry about, Admiral. Mark expected
Omaha would be hit, and so did I. That's why I'm here, with the
children. But even if Omaha is gone, Mark may still be there, and all
right. He had the duty this morning. He was in the Hole."

"Oh, yes," the Admiral said. "The Hole. I've never been in it, but I've
heard about it. A tremendous shelter, very deep. He may be perfectly
safe. I sincerely hope so."

"I'm afraid not," Helen said, "since you haven't heard any SAC signals."

"They may have shifted communications or changed code names." The
Admiral looked at his maps. "Besides, I'm only guessing. I'm just
playing games with myself, trying to G-two a war with no action reports
or intelligence. I do this because I haven't anything else to do. I just
scramble around and move pins and make marks on the maps and try to keep
myself from thinking about Sam, Junior. He's a lieutenant JG with Sixth
Fleet in the Med, if Sixth Fleet is still in the Med. I don't think it
is. For the Russkies, it must have been like shooting frogs in a
puddle." He turned to Helen again, "We inhabit the same purgatory, Mrs.
Bragg, the dark level of not knowing."

Randy asked a question. "What are the Russians saying? Can you still get
Radio Moscow?"

"I get a station that calls itself Radio Moscow in the twenty-five meter
band. But it isn't Moscow. All the voices on the English-language
broadcasts are different so we can be pretty certain Moscow isn't there
any more. However, the Russian leaders all seem to be alive and well,
and they issue the kind of statements you'd expect. The very fact that
they are alive indicates that they took shelter before it started. They
probably aren't anywhere close to a target area."

"Couldn't the President have escaped?"

"He probably had fifteen minutes' warning. He could have been in a
helicopter and away. But in that fifteen minutes he had to make the big
decisions, and so my guess is that he deliberately chose to stay in
Washington, either at his desk in the White House, or in the Pentagon
Command Post. It was the same for the Joint Chiefs, and probably for the
Secretarys of Defense and State. As to the other Cabinet members, they
probably received it in their sleep, or were just getting up. Do you
want to hear something strange?" The Admiral changed the wave length on
his receiver. He said, "Now listen."

All Randy heard was static.

"You didn't hear anything, did you?" the Admiral said. "Right now, on
this band, you ought to be hearing the BBC, Paris, and Bonn. I haven't
heard any of them all day. They must've truly clobbered England."

"Then you do think we're finished?" Randy said.

"Not at all. SAC may have been able to launch up to fifty percent of its
aircraft, counting the planes they always have airborne. And remember
that the Navy does have a few missile submarines and the carriers
must've got in some licks. Also, I'm pretty sure they weren't able to
take out all our SAC bases, including the auxiliaries. For all I know,
the enemy may be finished."

"Doesn't exactly hearten me."

The lights went out in the room, the radio died, and at the same time
the world outside was illuminated, as at midday. At that instant Randy
faced the window and he would always retain, like a color photograph
printed on his brain, what he saw--a red fox frozen against the
Admiral's green lawn. It was the first fox he had seen in years.

The white flashed back into a red ball in the southeast. They all knew
what it was. It was Orlando, or McCoy Base or both. It was the power
supply for Timucuan County.

Thus the lights went out, and in that moment civilization in Fort Repose
retreated a hundred years.

So ended The Day.




CHAPTER SEVEN


When nuclear fireballs crisped Orlando and the power plants serving
Timucuan County, refrigeration stopped, along with electric cooking. The
oil furnaces, sparked by electricity, died. All radios were useless
unless battery powered or in automobiles. Washing machines, dryers,
dishwashers, fryers, toasters, roasters, vacuum cleaners, shavers,
heaters, beaters--all stopped. So did the electric clocks, vibrating
chairs, electric blankets, irons for pressing clothes, curlers for hair.

The electric pumps stopped, and when the pumps stopped the water stopped
and when the water stopped the bathrooms ceased functioning.

Not until the second day after The Day did Randy Bragg fully understand
and accept the results of the loss of electricity. Temporary loss of
power was nothing new in Fort Repose. Often, during the equinoctial
storms, poles and trees came down and power lines were severed. This
condition rarely lasted for more than a day, for the repair trucks were
out as soon as the wind abated and the roads became passable.

It was hard to realize that this time the power plants themselves were
gone. There could be no doubt of it. On Sunday and Sunday night a number
of survivors from Orlando's suburbs drove through Fort Repose, foraging
for food and gasoline. They could not be positive of what had happened,
except that the area of destruction extended for eight miles from
Orlando airport, encompassing College Park and Rollins College, and
another explosion had centered on McCoy Air Force Base. The Orlando
Conelrad stations had warned of an air-raid just before the explosions,
so it was presumed that this attack had not come from submarine-based
missiles or ICBM's, but from bombers.

Randy did not hear Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown again, or any further hard news
or instructions on the clear channel stations on Sunday or Monday. He
did hear WSMF announcing that it would be on the air only two minutes
each hour thereafter, since it was operating on auxiliary power. He knew
that the hospital in San Marco possessed an auxiliary diesel generator.
He concluded that this source of power was being tapped, each hour on
the hour, to operate the radio station.

Each hour the county Conelrad station repeated warnings--boil all
drinking water, do not drink fresh milk, do not use the telephone, and,
in the Sunday morning hours after the destruction of Orlando, warnings
to take shelter and guard against fallout and radiation. There had been
no milk deliveries and the telephones hadn't worked since the first
mushroom sprouted in the south; nor were there any actual shelters in
Fort Repose. All Sunday, Randy insisted that Helen and the children stay
in the house. He knew that any shelter, even a slate roof, insulation,
walls and roof, was better than none. There was no time to dig. The time
to dig had been before The Day. After Orlando, digging seemed wasted
effort. Anyway, there were so many other things to do, each minor crisis
demanding instant attention. While radiation was a danger, it could not
be felt or seen, and therefore other dangers, and even annoyances,
seemed more imperative.

****

At two o'clock Monday afternoon Helen was in Randy's apartment, and they
were listening to the hourly Conelrad broadcast, when Ben Franklin
marched in and announced, "We're just about out of water."

"That's impossible!" Randy said.

"It's Peyton's fault," said Ben Franklin. "Every time she goes to the
John she has to flush it. The tub in our bathroom is empty, and she's
been dipping water out of mother's bathtub too."

Randy looked at Helen. This was a mother's problem.

"Peyton's a fastidious little girl," Helen said. "After all, one of the
first things a child learns is always to flush the John. What're we
going to do?"

Randy said, "For now, Ben Franklin and I will drive down to the dock and
fill up what washtubs and buckets we have out of the river. You can't
drink river water without boiling it but it'll be okay for the toilets.
And from now on Peyton--all of us--can't afford to be so fastidious.
We'll flush the toilets only twice a day. Then I guess we'll have to dig
latrines out in the grove because I can't haul water from the river
forever. Matter of gasoline."

Randy looked out on the grove, noticing a thin powder of dust on the
leaves. There had been a long dry spell. The fine, clear, crisp days
with low humidity were wonderful for people but bad for the orange crop.
He would have to turn on the sprinklers in the grove....

He slammed his fist on the bar-counter and shouted, "I'm a damn fool!
We've got all the water we want!"

"Where?" Helen asked.

"Right out there!" Randy waved his arms. "Artesian water, unlimited!"

"But that's in the grove, isn't it?"

"I'm sure we can pipe it into the house. After all, that's the same
water the Henrys use every day. I think there are some big wrenches in
the garage and Malachai will know how to do it. Come on, Ben, let's go
over to the Henrys'."

Randy and the boy walked down the old gravel and clay road that led from
the garage through the grove and to the river. Randy's navels had been
picked, but the Valencias were still on the trees. They would not be
picked this year. Matching strides with Randy, Ben Franklin said, "I
just thought of something."

"Yes?"

"I don't have to go to school any more."

"What makes you think you don't have to go to school? As soon as things
get back to normal you're going to school, young feller. Want to grow up
to be an ignoramus?"

Ben Franklin scuffed a pebble, looked up sideways at Randy, and grinned.
"What school?"

"Why, the school in Fort Repose, of course, until you can go back to
Omaha, or wherever your father is stationed."

Ben stopped. "Just a minute, Randy. I'm not fooling myself. Nobody's
going back to Omaha, maybe ever. And I don't think I'll ever see Dad
again. The Hole wasn't safe, you know. Maybe you think so. I know Mother
does. But I'm not fooling myself, Randy, and don't you try to fool me."

Randy put his hands on the boy's shoulders and looked into his face,
measuring the depth of courage behind the brown eyes, finding it at
least as deep as his own. "Okay, son," he said, "I'll level with you.
I'll level with you, and don't you ever do anything less with me. I
think Mark has had it. I think you're the man of the family from now
on."

"That's what Dad said."

"Did he? Well, you're a man who still has to go to school. I don't know
where, or when, or how. But as soon as school reopens in Fort Repose, or
anywhere around, you go. You may have to walk."

"Golly, Randy, walk! It's three miles to town."

"Your grandfather used to walk to school in Fort Repose. When he was
your age there weren't any school busses. When he couldn't hitch a ride
in a buggy, or one of the early automobiles, he walked." Randy put his
arm around the boy's shoulder. "Let's get going. I guess we'll both have
to learn to walk again."

They walked down to the dock, and then followed a trail that led through
the dense hammock to the Henrys' cleared land.

The Henrys' house was divided into four sections, representing four
distinct periods in their fortunes and history. The oldest section had
originally been a one-room log cabin. It was the only surviving
structure of what had once been the slave quarters, and Randy recalled
that his grandfather had always referred to the Henrys' place as "the
quarters." In recent years the cabin had been jacked up and a concrete
foundation laid under the stout cypress logs. The logs, originally
chinked with red clay, were bound together with whitewashed mortar. It
was now the Henrys' living room.

Late in the nineteenth century a two-room pine shack had been added to
the cabin. In the 'twenties another room, and a bath, more soundly
constructed, had been tacked on. In the 'forties, after Two-Tone's
marriage to Missouri, the house had been enlarged by a bedroom and a new
kitchen, built with concrete block. It was a comfortable hodgepodge, its
ugliness concealed under a patina of flame vine, bougainvillea, and
hibiscus. A neat green bib of St. Augustine grass fell from the screened
porch to the river bank and dock. In the back yard was a chicken coop
and wired runs, a pig pen, and an ancient barn of unpainted cypress
leaning wearily against a scabrous chinaberry tree. The barn housed
Balaam, the mule, the Model-A, and a hutch of white rabbits.

Fifty yards up the slope Preacher Henry and Balaam solemnly disked the
land, moving silently and evenly, as if they perfectly understood each
other. Caleb lay flat on his belly on the end of the dock, peering into
the shadowed waters behind a piling, jigging a worm for bream. Two-Tone
sat on the screened porch, rocking languidly and lifting a can of beer
to his lips. From the kitchen came a woman's deep, rich voice, singing a
spiritual. That would be Missouri, washing the dishes. Hot, black smoke
from burning pine knots issued from both brick chimneys. It seemed a
peaceful home, in time of peace.

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 a-comin', for it was all set down, Alas,
Babylon!" Preacher's eyes rolled upward. Preacher was big-framed, 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."

Dan closed the two bags. "So ends the clinic in Fort Repose. Can you
give me a lift to the hotel, Randy? I think my gas tank is dry."

"I'll take you to your hotel only so you can pack," Randy said. "On
River Road, we've got food, and good water, and wood fireplaces. At the
hotel you don't have any of those things." He picked up one of the bags.
"Now don't argue with me, Dan. Don't start talking about your duty.
Without food and water and heat you can't do anything. You can't even
sterilize a scalpel. You won't have strength enough to take care of
anybody. You can't even take care of yourself."

When they entered the hotel Randy smelled it at once, but not until they
reached the second floor did he positively identify the odor. Like
songs, odors are catalysts of memory. Smelling the odors of the
Riverside Inn, Randy recalled the sickly, pungent stench of the honey
carts with their loads of human manure for the fields of Korea. Randy
spoke of this to Dan, and Dan said, "I've tried to make them dig
latrines in the garden. They won't do it. They have deluded themselves
into believing that lights, water, maids, telephone, dining room
service, and transportation will all come back in a day or two. Most of
them have little hoards of canned foods, cookies, and candies. They eat
it in their rooms, alone. Every morning they wake up saying that things
will be back to normal by nightfall, and every night they fall into bed
thinking that normalcy will be restored by morning. It's been too big a
jolt for these poor people. They can't face reality."

Dan had been talking as he packed. As they left the hotel, laden with
bags and books, Randy said, "What's going to happen to them?"

"I don't know. There's bound to be a great deal of sickness. I can't
prevent it because they won't pay any attention to me. I can't stop an
epidemic if it comes. I don't know what's going to happen to them."

Dan moved into the house on River Road that day. Thereafter he slept in
the sleigh bed, the only bed in the house that could comfortably
accommodate his frame, in Randy's apartment, while Randy occupied the
couch in the living room.

That night, afterwards, was remembered as "the night of the steak orgy."
Yet it was not for the rich taste of meat well hung that Randy
remembered the night. He and the Admiral and Bill McGovern cooked the
steaks outside, and then brought them into the living room. Fat wood
burned in the big fireplace and a kettle steamed on hot bricks. At a few
minutes before ten Randy clicked on his transistor radio, and they all
listened. Lib McGovern was sitting on the rug next to him, her shoulder
touching his arm. The room was warm, and comfortable, and somehow safe.

They heard the hum of a carrier wave, and then the voice of an announcer
from the clear channel station somewhere deep in the heart of the
country. "This is your Civil Defense Headquarters. I have an important
announcement. Listen carefully. It will not be repeated again tonight.
It will be repeated, circumstances permitting, at eleven o'clock
tomorrow morning."

Randy felt Lib's long fingers circle his forearm, and grasp tight.
Around the group before the fire, all the faces were anxious, the white
faces in the front row, the Negro faces, eyes white and large, behind.

    "A preliminary aerial survey of the country has been completed.
    By order of the Acting Chief Executive, Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown,
    certain areas have been declared Contaminated Zones. It is
    forbidden for people to enter these zones. It is forbidden to
    bring any material of any kind, particularly metal or metal
    containers, out of these zones.

    "Persons leaving the Contaminated Zones must first be examined
    at check points now being established. The location of these
    check points will be announced over your local Conelrad
    stations.

    "The Contaminated Zones are:

    "The New England States."

Sam Hazzard, sitting in a prim cherry-wood rocker which, like Sam, had
originated in New England, drew in his breath.

The newscaster continued:

    "All of New York State south of the line Ticonderoga-Sacketts
    Harbor.

    "The state of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.

    "The District of Columbia.

    "Ohio east of the line Sandusky-Chillicothe. Also in Ohio, the
    city of Columbus and its suburbs.

    "In Michigan, Detroit and Dearborn and an area of fifty-mile
    radius from these cities. Also in Michigan, the cities of Flint
    and Grand Rapids.

    "In Virginia, the entire Potomac River Basin. The cities of
    Richmond and Norfolk and their suburbs.

    "In South Carolina, the port of Charleston and all territory
    within a thirty-mile radius of Charleston.

    "In Georgia, the cities of Atlanta, Savannah, Augusta and their
    suburbs.

    "The state of Florida."

Randy felt angry and insulted. He shifted his weight and started to get
to his feet. "Not the whole state!" he said, at the same time realizing
his protest was completely irrational.

"Sh-h!" Lib said, and pulled him back to the rug.

The voice went on, ticking off Mobile and Birmingham, New Orleans and
Lake Charles.

It moved into Texas, obliterating Fort Worth and Dallas, and everything
within a fifty-mile radius of these two cities, and Abilene, Houston,
and Corpus Christi.

It moved northward again:

    "In Arkansas, Little Rock and its suburbs, plus an area of forty
    miles to the west of Little Rock."

Missouri, who through the whole evening had said nothing except in
answer to questions, now said something. "How come they hit Little
Rock?"

The Admiral said, "There's a big SAC base in Little Rock, or was."

The voice moved up to Oak Ridge, in Tennessee, and then spoke of
Chicago, and everything around Chicago in northern Indiana, and crept up
the western shore of Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, and Milwaukee's
suburbs. Inexorably, it uttered the names of Kansas City, Wichita, and
Topeka.

The voice continued:

    "In Nebraska, Lincoln. Also in Nebraska, Omaha and all the
    territory within a fifty-mile radius of Omaha."

There goes all hope of Mark, Randy thought. More than one missile for
Omaha. Probably three, as Mark had expected. From the moment of the
double dawn on The Day, he had known it was probable. Now he must accept
it as almost certain. He looked across the circle, at three faces in the
firelight. Peyton's face was half-hidden against her mother's breast.
Helen's face bent down, and her arms were around Peyton's shoulders. Ben
Franklin stared into the fire, his chin straight. Randy could see the
tear path down Helen's face, and the unshed tears in Ben's eyes.

The announcements went on, the voice calling out portions of states, and
cities--Seattle, Hanford, San Francisco, all the southern California
coast, Helena, Cheyenne--but Randy only half-heard them. All he could
hear, distinctly, were the sharp sobs out of Peyton's throat.

Randy's heart went out to them but he said nothing. What was there to
say? How do you say to a little girl that you are sorry she no longer
has a father?

Close to his side Lib stirred and spoke, two words only, to Helen. "I'm
sorry." Randy had noticed, that evening, a tenseness between Helen and
Lib. Nothing was said, and yet there was a watchfulness, a hostility,
between them. So he was glad that Lib had spoken. He wanted them to like
each other. He was puzzled that they didn't.

Then it was over. The radio stilled. More than ever, Randy felt cut off
and isolated. Florida was a prohibited zone, and Fort Repose a tiny,
isolated sector within that zone. He could appreciate why the whole
state had been designated a contaminated area. There were so many bases,
so many targets which had been hit, with resulting contamination. They
had been extraordinarily fortunate in Fort Repose. The wind had favored
them. They had received only a residue of fallout from Tampa and
Orlando, and none at all from Miami and Jacksonville. Even a reasonably
clean weapon on Patrick would have rained radioactive particles on Fort
Repose, but the enemy had not bothered to hit Patrick.

Standing on the other side of the room, Preacher Henry had been
listening, but he did not fully understand the designation of
contaminated zones or comprehend the implications. He did feel and
understand the shock and grief the broadcast brought to the Braggs, and
he sensed it was time for him to leave. He nudged Malachai, touched
Two-Tone's rump with his toe, caught the attention of Hannah and
Missouri, and said, with dignity, "We be going now. I thank you, Mister
Randy, for a real fine steak dinner. I hopes we can sometime repay it."

Randy rose to his feet and said, "Good night, Preacher. It was good to
have you all."

****

On the fourth day after The Day, Randy, Malachai, and Two-Tone extended
the artesian water system to the houses of Admiral Hazzard and Florence
Wechek. Stretching pipe across the grove to the Admiral's house was
simple, but to provide water for Florence Wechek and Alice Cooksey it
was necessary to dig through the macadam of River Road with picks.

****

On the night of the sixth day the Riverside Inn burned. With no water in
the hydrants, and the hotel's sprinkler system inoperative, the fire
department was all but helpless. Only a few reserve firemen showed up,
and only one pumper was got into action, using river water. It was a
puny effort, and far too late. The old, resinous wooden structure was
burning brightly before the first stream touched the walls. Soon the
heat drove the firemen away. A few minutes thereafter the last scream
was heard from the third floor.

Dan had been summoned an hour later, and Randy had driven him into town.
By then, there was nothing to do except care for the survivors. They
were few. Some of these died of smoke poisoning or fear--it was hard to
diagnose--within a few hours. The burned were taken to San Marco in
Bubba Offenhaus' hearse-ambulances. The uninjured were lodged in the
Fort Repose school. There was no heat in the school, or food, or water.
It was simply shelter, less comfortable than the hotel, and within a few
days more squalid.

Dan Gunn suspected that the fire had started in a room where the guests
were using canned heat in an attempt to boil water. Or perhaps someone
had built a makeshift wood stove. It was, Dan said, inevitable.

****

On the ninth day after The Day, Lavinia McGovern died. This, too, had
been inevitable ever since the lights went out and refrigeration ceased.
Since Lavinia McGovern suffered from diabetes, insulin had kept her
alive. Without refrigeration, insulin deteriorated rapidly. Not only
Lavinia, but all diabetics in Fort Repose, dependent upon insulin, died
at about the same period as the drug lost its potency.

Randy and Dan had done their best to save her. They had driven to San
Marco hoping to find refrigerated insulin, or the new oral drug, at the
hospital.

It was eighteen miles to San Marco. Even driving at the most economical
speed in his heavily horsepowered car, Randy estimated that the trip
would consume three gallons of gasoline. He estimated he had only five
gallons remaining in his tank, plus a five-gallon can in reserve.

Randy made a difficult decision. By then, the Bragg home was linked to
the houses of Admiral Hazzard, Florence Wechek, and the Henrys not only
by an arterial system of pipes fed by nature's pressure, but by other
common needs. The Henrys' Model-A was neither beautiful nor comfortable
but its engine was twice as thrifty as Randy's rakish sports hardtop.
Sam Hazzard's car gulped gasoline as fast as Randy's. Dan's was empty.
The Model-A was even more economical than Florence's old Chevy. Randy
decided that henceforth the Model-A would furnish community
transportation. So it was in the Model-A that Randy and Dan made the
trip to San Marco.

The trip was a failure. The hospital no longer possessed insulin or
substitutes for insulin. Like the pharmacies, the hospital had purchased
its supplies in small quantities, and was dependent on weekly or
bi-weekly deliveries from jobbers in the large cities. Its insulin had
already gone to meet the demand in its own community. Further, the
hospital's auxiliary generator was operated only during the evening
hours, for emergency operations, and for a few minutes each hour on the
hour to supply power for WSMF. It was necessary to conserve fuel, and
unless the generator ran continuously it was inadequate for
refrigeration.

Bouncing back to Fort Repose in the Model-A, Dan grumbled, "The place we
should have built up stockpiles was out in the country, like Timucuan
County. Stockpiles weren't going to be of much use in the cities because
after The Day there weren't going to be any cities left. But where were
the stockpiles? In the cities, of course. It was easier."

So Lavinia McGovern, after forty-eight hours in coma, died.

Alice Cooksey was at her bedside after midnight on the ninth day, when
Lavinia died. Lavinia's husband and daughter, both exhausted from the
effort to keep the house in some sort of order, slept. Alice did not
awaken them, or anybody, until morning. She kept vigil alone, dozing on
a chaise. Nothing could help Lavina, but everybody needed sleep.

Alice brought the news to the Bragg house in the morning. A fire blazed
in the dining room, which smelled pleasantly of bacon and coffee. Randy,
Helen, the children, and Dan Gunn were at breakfast--a breakfast exactly
like one they would have eaten ten days before, with one important
exception. There was orange juice, freshly squeezed, fresh eggs from the
Henrys' yard, bacon, coffee. There was no toast, because there was no
bread. Randy already was beginning to miss bread, and he wondered why he
had not thought to buy flour. By the time Helen had put flour on their
list the shelves were bare of it. He suspected that the older housewives
of Fort Repose, remembering a time when people baked their own bread
instead of buying it packaged, sliced, with vitamins re-injected, had
cleaned the stores out of flour on The Day. He resolved, when he could,
to trade for flour. It would be June before they could look forward to
corn bread from Preacher Henry's crop.

Alice had bicycled from the McGovern house. Before she closed the
Western Union office, Florence Wechek had salvaged the messenger's
bicycle. It was a valuable possession. Now that all their remaining
gasoline was pooled to operate one car, the bicycle was primary
transportation for Alice and Florence. Alice was for the first time in
her life dressed in slacks, a necessity for bicycling. She accepted
coffee and told of Lavinia's death. Bill McGovern and Elizabeth, she
said, were taking it well, but they didn't know what to do with the
body. They needed help with the burial.

"I'll go to see Bubba Offenhaus right away," Dan said, "and try to
arrange for burial. I've got to talk to Bubba anyway. I can't seem to
impress upon him the importance of burying the dead as quickly as
possible. He suddenly seems to hate his profession."

"That's not like Bubba," Alice Cooksey said. "Bubba always bragged that
he was the most efficient undertaker in Florida. He used to say, 'When
the retireds started coming to Fort Repose, they found a mortuary with
all modern conveniences.'"

"That's the trouble," Dan said. "Bubba abhors unorthodox funerals. He
almost wept when I insisted that the poor devils who died in the fire be
buried at once in a single grave. We had to use a bulldozer, you know.
Bubba claims Repose-in-Peace Park is ruined for good."

Randy had been silent since Alice brought the news. Now he spoke, as if
he had been holding silent debate with himself, and had finally reached
a conclusion. "They'll have to live here."

Helen set down her coffee cup. "Who'll have to live here?"

"We'll have to ask Lib and Bill McGovern to stay with us."

"But we don't have room! And how will we feed them?"

Randy was puzzled and disturbed. He had never thought of Helen as a
selfish woman, and yet obviously she didn't want the McGoverns. "We
really have plenty of room," he said. "There's still an empty bedroom
upstairs. Bill can have it, and Lib can sleep with you."

"With me?"

He could see that Helen was angry. "Well, you have twin beds in your
room, Helen. But if you seriously object, Bill can sleep in my
apartment--there's an extra couch--and Lib can have the room."

"After all, it's your house," Helen said.

"As a matter of fact, Helen, the house is half Mark's, which makes it
half yours. So the decision is yours as well as mine. Lib and Bill have
no water and no heat and not much food left because almost all their
food reserve was in their freezer. They don't even have a fireplace.
They've been cooking and boiling water on a charcoal grill in the
Florida room."

Helen shrugged and said, "Well, I guess you'll have to ask them.
Elizabeth can sleep with me. But I hope it isn't a permanent
arrangement. After all, our food supply is limited."

"It is limited," Randy said, "and it's going to get worse. Whether the
McGoverns are here or not, we're all going to have to scrounge for food
pretty quick."

Dan rose and said, "I'd better get going."

Randy followed him. He had cultivated the habit of leaving his .45
automatic on the hall table and pocketing it as he left the house, as a
man would put on his hat. Since he never wore a hat, and never before
had carried a gun except in the Army, he still had to make a conscious
effort to remember.

When they were in the car Randy said, "That was a strange way for Helen
to behave. Don't know what's eating her."

"Not at all strange," Dan said. "Just human. She's jealous."

"That's ridiculous!"

"No. Helen is a fiercely protective woman--protective of her children.
With Mark gone, you and the house are her security and the children's
security. She doesn't want to share you and your protection. Matter of
self-preservation, not infatuation."

"I see," Randy said, "or at least I think I see."

****

They drove up to the front of the McGovern house. Randy said, "It's
pointless for both of us to go in. Nothing you can do here. While you
get Bubba Offenhaus, I'll tell them they're going to move and get them
going."

"Right," Dan said. "Economy of effort and forces. Always a good rule of
war."

Randy walked to the house, wondering a bit about himself. Without being
conscious of it, he had begun to give orders in the past few days. Even
to the Admiral he had given orders. He had assumed leadership in the
tiny community bound together by the water pipes leading from the
artesian well. Since no one had seemed to resent it, he guessed it had
been the proper thing to do. It was like--well, it wasn't the same, but
it was something like commanding a platoon. When you had the
responsibility you also had the right to command.

The McGovern house was damp and it was chilly. It retained the cold of
night. Lib, wearing corduroy jodhpurs and a heavy blue turtleneck
sweater, greeted him at the door. She said, "I heard the jalopy and I
knew it was you. Thanks for coming, Randy."

She held out her hands to him and he kissed her. Her hands felt cold and
when he looked down at them he saw that her fingernails, always so
carefully kept, were broken and crusted with dirt. Still she was
dry-eyed and calm. Whatever tears she had had for her mother were
already shed. Randy said, "Alice told us. We're all terribly sorry,
darling." He knew it sounded insincere, and it was. With so many
dead--so many friends for whom he had as yet not had time even for
thought--the death of one woman, whom he did not admire overmuch and
with whom he had never been and could not be close, was a triviality.
With perhaps half the country's population dead, death itself, unless it
took someone close and dear, was trivial.

She said, "Come on in and talk to Dad. He's worried about how we're
going to bury her."

"We're arranging that," Randy said, and followed her into the house.

Bill McGovern sat in the living room, staring out on the river. He had
not bothered to dress, or shave. Over his pajamas and robe he had pulled
a topcoat. Randy turned to Lib. "Have either of you had any breakfast?"

She shook her head, no.

Bill spoke without turning his head. "Hello, Randy. I'm not much of a
success, am I, in time of crisis? I can't feed my daughter, or myself,
or even bury my wife. I wish I had enough guts to swim out into the
channel and sink."

"That can't help Lavinia and wouldn't help Elizabeth, or anybody. You
and Lib are going to live with me. Things will be better."

"Randy, I'm not going to impose myself on you. I might as well face it.
I'm finished. You know, I'm over sixty. And do you know what the worst
thing is? Central Tool and Plate. I spent my whole life building it up.
What is it now? Chances are, just a mess of twisted and burned metal.
Junk. So there goes my life and what good am I? I can't start over.
Central Tool and Plate is junk and I'm junk."

Randy stepped over and stood between Bill and the cracked window, so as
to look into his face. "You might as well stop feeling sorry for
yourself," he said. "You're going to have to start over. Either that or
die. You have to face it."

Lib touched her father's shoulder. "Come on, Dad."

Bill didn't move, or reply.

Randy felt anger inside him. "You want to know what good you are? That
means what good you are to somebody else, not to yourself, doesn't it?
If you're no good to anybody else I guess you'd better take the long
swim. You know something about machinery, don't you?"

McGovern pushed himself in his chair. "I know as much about machine
tools as any man in America."

"I didn't say machine tools. I said machinery. Batteries, gasoline
engines, simple stuff like that."

"I didn't start at Central Tool as president, or board chairman. I
started in the shop, working with my hands. Sure, I know about
machinery."

"That's fine. You can help Malachai and Admiral Hazzard. We've taken the
batteries out of my car, and the admiral's car, and hooked them on to
the Admiral's shortwave set so we can find out what cooks around the
world. Only it doesn't work right--something's wrong with the
circuit--and the batteries are fading and I don't know how we can charge
'em."

"Very simple," said Bill. "Power takeoff from the Model-A. It'll work so
long as you have gas."

"Fine," Randy said. "That's your first job, Bill, helping Malachai."

"Malachai? Isn't he the brother of our cleaning woman, Missouri? Your
yardman?"

"That's him. First-class mechanic."

Bill McGovern smiled. "So I'll be mechanic, second class?"

"That's right."

Bill rose. "All right. It's a deal. I'll dress, and then--" He stopped.
"Oh, Lord, I forgot. Poor Lavinia. Randy, what am I going to do about
her--" he hesitated as if the word were crude but he could find no
other--"body?"

"We're attending to that," Randy said. "Dan Gunn has gone up to get
Bubba Offenhaus. I hope Bubba will handle the burial. Meanwhile, I think
you and Lib better start packing. We'll have to make three or four
trips, I guess. How much gas have you got in your car?"

Lib said, "A couple of gallons, I think."

"That'll be enough to make the move, and you won't need the car after
that. We can use the battery for Sam Hazzard's short-wave set."

While they packed, Randy prowled the house searching for useful items.
In a kitchen cupboard he discovered an old, pitted iron pot of
tremendous capacity, and, forgetting the presence of death in the house,
whooped with delight.

Lib raced into the kitchen, demanding a reason for the shouting. He
hefted the pot. "I'll bet it'll hold two gallons," he said. "What a
find!"

"It's just an old pot Mother bought when we were in New England one
summer. An antique. She thought it would look wonderful with a plant. It
looked awful."

"It'll look beautiful hanging in the dining room fireplace," Randy said,
"filled with stew."

The old pot was the most useful object--indeed it was one of the few
useful objects--he found in the McGovern house.

Twenty minutes later Dan Gunn returned, alone and worried. "Bubba
Offenhaus," he said, "can't help us. Bubba would like to bury himself.
He's got dysentery. Running at both ends. He and Kitty were certain it
was radiation poisoning. Symptoms are pretty much alike, you know. Both
of them were in panic. He'll get over it in a few days, but that's not
helping us now."

Randy said, "So what do we do?"

Dan looked at Bill McGovern, fully dressed now but still unwashed and
unshaven, for there was no water in the house except a jug, for
drinking, that Randy had brought to them the day before. Dan said, "I
think that's up to you to decide, Bill."

"What is there to decide?" Bill asked.

"Whether to bury your wife here or in the cemetery. You don't have a
plot in Repose-in-Peace but I'm sure Bubba won't mind. Anyway, there's
nothing he can do about it, and you can settle with him later."

Bill McGovern turned to his daughter. "What do you say, Elizabeth?"

"Well, of course I think Mother deserves a proper funeral in a cemetery.
It seems like the least we can do for her. And yet--" She turned to
Randy. "You don't agree, do you, Randy?"

Randy was glad that she asked. Intervening in this private and personal
matter was brutal but necessary. "No, I don't agree. It's six miles to
the cemetery. We'd have to make the trip in two cars because of
the--because of Lavinia. That's twenty-four miles' worth of gasoline,
round trip, and we can't afford it. We will have to bury Lavinia here,
on the grounds."

"But how--" Lib began.

"Where do you keep the shovels, Bill?"

"There's a tool shed back of the garage."

While handing a shovel to Dan, and selecting one for himself, Randy
examined the other tools. There was a new ax. It would be very useful.
There were pitchforks, edgers, a scythe, a wheelbarrow. He would bring
Malachai over before dark and they would divvy up the McGovern tools. In
everything he did, now, he found he looked into the needs of the future.

Between house and river, a crescent-shaped azalea bed flanked the west
border of the McGovern property. The bitter-blue grass had been
carefully tended, and the bed was shaded from afternoon's hot sun by a
live oak older than Fort Repose. Looking around, Randy could find no
spot more suitable for a grave. He stepped off six feet and marked a
rectangle within the crescent. He and Dan began to dig.

After a few minutes Randy removed his sweater. This was no easy job. Dan
stopped and inspected his plans. He said, "I'm getting ditchdigger's
hands. Very bad for a surgeon." They continued to dig, steadily, until
it was awkward working from the surface. Randy stepped into the
deepening grave. They had made a discovery. A grave designed to
accommodate one person must be dug by one person alone.

When Randy paused, winded, Bill McGovern stepped down and took the
shovel, saying, "I'll spell you."

From above, Lib watched. Presently she said, "That's enough for you,
Dad. Remember the blood pressure. I don't want to lose you too." She
stepped into the hole and relieved him of the shovel. After he climbed
out, panting and white-faced, she thrust the shovel savagely into the
sand. As she dug, her stature increased in Randy's eyes. She was like a
fine sword, slender and flexible, but steel; a woman of courage. It was
not gentlemanly, but Randy allowed her to dig, recognizing that physical
effort was an outlet for her emotions. When her pace slowed he dropped
into the hole and took the shovel. "That's enough. Dan and I will
finish. You and your father had better go back to the house and get on
with your packing."

"You don't want us to help you carry her out, do you?"

"I think it would be better if you didn't."

Dan reached down and lifted her out of the hole.

When the grave was finished, they wrapped Lavinia's emaciated body in
her bedsheets, her coffin was an electric blanket and her hearse a
wheelbarrow. They lowered her into the five-foot hole and packed in the
sand and loam afterwards, leaving an insignificant mound. Randy knew
that when spring came the mound would flatten with the rains, the grass
would swiftly cover it, and by June it would have disappeared entirely.

Randy called the McGoverns. There was no service, no spoken word. They
all stood silent for a moment and then Bill McGovern said, "We don't
even have a wooden marker for her, or a sliver of stone, do we?"

"We could take something out of the house," Randy suggested, "a statue
or a vase or something."

"It isn't necessary," Lib said. "The house is my mother's monument."

This of course was true. They turned from the grave and back to their
work.

****

That evening Bill McGovern, with some eagerness, walked to the Henrys'
house and talked to Malachai. Together they went along the river bank to
Sam Hazzard's house and conferred with him on a plan for supplying power
for the Admiral's short-wave receiver.

Dan Gunn drove to Fort Repose to visit the homeless, some of them sick
or burned, lodged in the school.

Randy and Lib McGovern sat alone on the front porch steps, Lib's elbows
on her knees, her chin supported by her hands, Randy's arms encircling
her shoulders. She was speaking of her mother. "I'm sure she never
really comprehended what happened on The Day, or ever could. Perhaps I
am only rationalizing, but I think her death was an act of mercy."

Randy heard someone running up the driveway and then he saw the figure
and recognized Ben Franklin. "Ben!" he called. "What's the matter?"

Ben stopped, out of breath, and said, "Something's happened at Miss
Wechek's!"

Randy rose, ready to get his pistol. "What happened?"

"I don't know. I was just walking by her house and I heard somebody
scream. I think Miss Wechek. Then I heard her crying."

Randy said, "We'd better take a look, Lib. You stay here, Ben."

Yellow candlelight shone from Florence's kitchen. They went to the back
door. Florence was wailing and Randy entered without bothering to knock.

As he opened the screen door green and yellow feathers fluttered around
his feet. Florence's head rested on her arms on the kitchen table. She
was dressed in a quilted, rose-hued robe. Alice Cooksey was with her,
coaxing water to a boil on a Sterno kit. Randy said, "What seems to be
the trouble?"

Florence raised her head. Her untidy pink hair was moist and stringy.
Her eyes were swollen. "Sir Percy ate Anthony!" she said. She began to
sob.

"She's had a terrible day," said Alice Cooksey. "I'm trying to make tea.
She'll be better after she's had tea."

"What all happened?" Randy asked.

"It really began yesterday," Alice said. "When we woke up yesterday
morning the angelfish were dead. You know how cold it was night before
last, and of course without electricity there's no heat for the
aquarium. And this morning all the mollies and neons were dead. As a
matter of fact nothing's alive in the tank except the miniature catfish
and a few guppies. And then, this evening--"

"Sir Percy," Florence interrupted, "a murderer!"

"Hush, dear," Alice said. "The water will be boiling in a moment." She
turned to Randy. "Florence really shouldn't blame Sir Percy. After all,
there's been no milk for him, and very little of anything else. As a
matter of fact, we haven't seen Sir Percy in three or four days--I
suppose he was out hunting for himself--but a few minutes ago when
Anthony flew home Sir Percy was on the porch."

"Ambushed poor Anthony," Florence said. "Actually ambushed him. Killed
him and ate him right there on the porch. Poor Cleo."

"Where's Sir Percy now?" Randy asked.

"He's gone again," Alice said. "He'd better not come back."

Randy was thoughtful. Hunting cats would be a problem. And what would
happen to dogs? He still had a few cans of dog food for Graf, but he
could foresee a time when humans might look upon dog food as a delicacy.
He said aloud, but speaking to himself rather than the others, "Survival
of the fittest."

"What do you mean?" Lib said.

"The strong survive. The frail die. The exotic fish die because the
aquarium isn't heated. The common guppy lives. So does the tough
catfish. The house cat turns hunter and eats the pet bird. If he didn't,
he'd starve. That's the way it is and that's the way it's going to be."

Florence had stopped crying. "You mean, with humans? You mean, we humans
are going to have to turn savage, like Sir Percy? Well, I can't do it. I
don't want to live in that kind of a world, Randy."

"You'll live, Florence," Randy said.

Walking back to his own house, Randy said, "Florence is a guppy, a nice,
drab little guppy. That's why she'll survive."

"What about you and me?" Lib said.

"We're going to have to be tough. We're going to have to be catfish."




CHAPTER EIGHT


On a morning in April, four months after The Day, Randy Bragg awoke and
watched a shaft of sunlight creep down the wall. At the foot of the
couch, Graf squirmed and then wormed his way upward under the blanket.
During the January cold spell Randy had discovered a new use for Graf.
The dachshund made a most satisfactory footwarmer, mobile, automatic,
and operating on a minimum of fuel which he would consume anyway. Randy
flung off the blanket and swung his feet to the floor. He was hungry. He
was always hungry. No matter how much he ate the night before, he was
always starving in the morning. He never had enough fats, or sweets, or
starches, and the greater part of each day was usually spent in physical
effort of one kind or another. Downstairs, Helen and Lib would be
preparing breakfast. Before Randy ate he would shower and shave. These
were painful luxuries, almost his only remnant of routine from before
The Day.

Randy walked to the bar-counter and began to sharpen his razor. The
razor was a six-inch hunting knife. He honed its edges vigorously on a
whetstone and then stropped it on a belt nailed to the wall. A clean,
smooth, painless shave was one of the things he missed, but not what he
missed most.

He missed music. It had been a long time since he had heard music. The
record player and his collection of LP's of course were useless without
electricity. Music was no longer broadcast, anywhere. Anyway, his second
and last set of batteries for the transistor radio was losing strength.
Very soon, they would have neither flashlights nor any means of
receiving radio except through the Admiral's short wave. WSMF in San
Marco was no longer operating. Something had happened to the diesel
supplying the hospital and the radio station and it was impossible to
find spare parts. This was the word that had come from San Marco,
eighteen miles away. It had required two days for the word to reach Fort
Repose.

He missed cigarettes, but not so much. Dan Gunn still had a few pounds
of tobacco, and had lent him a pipe. Randy found more pleasure in a pipe
after each meal, and one before bedtime, than he had ever found in a
whole carton of cigarettes. With tobacco so limited, each pipe was a
luxury, relaxing and wonderful.

He missed whiskey not at all. Since The Day, he had drunk hardly
anything, nor found need for it. He no longer regarded whiskey as a
drink. Whiskey was Dan Gunn's emergency anesthetic. Whiskey, what was
left of his supply, was for medical use, and for trading.

He missed his morning coffee most. It had been, he calculated, six or
seven weeks since he had tasted coffee. Coffee was more precious than
gasoline, or even whiskey. Tobacco could be grown, and doubtless was
being grown in a strip all the way from northwest Florida to Kentucky,
Maryland and Virginia in the rural areas still habitable. Whiskey you
could make, given the proper equipment and ingredients. But coffee came
from South America.

Randy tested his knife on a bit of paper. It was as sharp as he could
ever make it. He went into the bathroom and showered. The cold water no
longer chilled him as it had through January and February. He was inured
to it. Soap he used sparingly. The house reserve was down to three
cakes.

He dried and stepped on the scales. One fifty-two. This was exactly what
he had weighed at eighteen, as a freshman at the University. Even after
three months on the line in Korea, he had dropped only to one fifty-six.
He had lost an average of a pound a week for the past sixteen weeks, but
now, he noted, his weight loss was slower. He had held one fifty-two for
the past three days. He was leaner and harder, and, truthfully, felt
better than before The Day.

There was a knock on the living-room door. That would be Peyton. He
slipped on his shorts and said, "Come in."

Peyton came in, carefully balancing the tiny pot of steaming water
allotted for his morning shave. She set the pot before him on the
counter as if it were a crystal bowl filled with flowers. "There," she
said. "Can I watch you shave this morning, Randy?"

The sight of Peyton enriched Randy's mornings. She was brash and
buoyant, bobbing like a brightly colored cork in the maelstrom,
unsinkable and unafraid. "Why do you like to watch me shave?" he asked.

"Because you make such funny faces in the mirror. You should see
yourself."

"I do."

"No, you don't really see yourself. All you watch is the knife, as if
you're afraid of cutting your throat."

Dan Gunn came out of the bedroom, dressed in levis and a blue checked
sports shirt. Until The Day, Dan had used an electric razor. Now, rather
than learn to shave with a knife or whatever was available, he did not
shave at all. His beard had bloomed thick and flaming red. He looked
like a Klondike sourdough or Paul Bunyan transplanted to the
semi-tropics. On those rare days when his beard was freshly trimmed and
he dressed formally in white shirt and a tie, he looked like a
physician, outsized 1890 model.

"You can't watch today," Randy told the child. "I want to talk to Doctor
Gunn." He poured his hot water into the basin and returned the pot to
Peyton. Peyton smiled at Dan and left.

Randy soaped and soaked his face. "Did you know that Einstein never used
shaving soap?" he said. "Einstein just used plain soap like this.
Einstein was a smart man and what was good enough for Einstein is good
enough for me." He scraped at his beard, winced, and said, "Einstein
must have had an awfully good razor. Einstein must've used a fresh blade
every morning. I'll bet Einstein never shaved with a hunting knife."

Dan said, "I had an awful dream last night. Dreamed I'd forgotten to pay
my income tax and was behind in my alimony and the Treasury agents and a
couple of deputy sheriffs were chasing me around the courthouse with
shotguns. They finally cornered me. They were arguing about whether to
send me to the Federal pen or state prison. I tried to sneak out. I
think they shot me. Anyway, I woke up, shaking. All I could think of was
that I really hadn't paid my income tax, or alimony either. What day is
it, anyway?"

"I don't know what day it is but I know the date. April fourteenth."

Dan smiled through the red beard. "My subconscious must be a watchdog.
Income tax day tomorrow. And we don't have to file a return, Randy. No
tax. No alimony. Let us count our blessings. Never thought I'd see the
day."

"No coffee," Randy said. "I would gladly pay my tax tomorrow for a pound
of coffee. Dan, if you drive to town today I want to go with you. I want
to trade for coffee."

Dan had evolved a barter system for his services. He charged a gallon of
gas, if the patient had it, for house calls. Most families had somehow
managed to obtain and conserve a few gallons of gasoline. It was their
link with a mobile past, insurance of mobility in some emergency of the
future. Sickness and injury were emergencies for which they would gladly
dip into their liquid reserve. Dan made little profit. Perhaps half his
patients were able and willing to pay with gasoline. Still, he managed
to keep the Model-A's tank nearly full, and on his rounds he was
continuously charging batteries. Bill McGovern had instituted a system
of rotating the batteries in the car. In turn, the charged batteries
powered Admiral Hazzard's short-wave receiver. Not only was the car
transport for Randy's water-linked enclave of families, it was necessary
to maintain their ear to the world outside. Not that the world, any
longer, said much.

Dan said, "Sure, Randy, but it's going to take all morning. I've got a
bad situation in town."

"What's the trouble?"

From downstairs they heard Helen's voice, "Breakfast!"

"Tell you later," Dan said.

Randy was last to reach the dining room. There was a tall glass of
orange juice at his place, and a big pitcher of juice in the center of
the table. Whatever else they might lack, there was always citrus. Yet
even orange juice would eventually disappear. In late June or early July
they would squeeze the last of the Valencias and use the last
grapefruit. From then until the new crop of early oranges ripened in
October, citrus would be absent from their diet.

He saw that this morning there was a single boiled egg and small portion
of broiled fish left over from the night before. "Where's my other
boiled egg?" he said.

"Malachai only brought over eight eggs this morning," Helen said. "The
Henrys have been losing chickens."

"What do you mean, losing them?"

"They're being stolen."

Randy put down his juice. Citrus, fish, and eggs were their staples. A
drop in the egg supply was serious. "I'll bet it's an inside job," he
said. "I'll bet that no-good Two-Tone has been swapping hens for
liquor."

Lib spoke. "Malachai thinks it's wild cats--that is, house cats that
have gone wild."

"That's not the worst of it," Helen said. "One of the Henrys' pigs is
missing. They heard it squeal, just once. Preacher thinks a wolf took
it. Preacher says he found a wolf track."

"No wolves in Florida," Randy said. "No four-legged wolves." The loss of
hens was serious, but the loss of pigs disastrous. The Henry sow had
produced a farrow that in a few weeks would add real meat to everybody's
diet. Even now they weighed twelve to fifteen pounds. Each evening, all
food scraps from the Bragg, Wechek, and Hazzard households were carried
to the Henry place to help feed the pigs and chickens. Every day, Randy
had to argue with Helen and Lib to save scraps for Graf. Randy was
conscious that the Henrys supplied more than their own share of food for
the benefit of all. When Preacher's corn crop ripened in June, the
disparity would be even greater. And it had been Two-Tone, of all
people, who had suggested that they grow sugar cane and then had
explored the river banks in the Henrys' leaky, flat-bottomed skiff until
he had found wild cane. He had sprigged, planted, and cultivated it.
Because of the Henrys, they could all look forward, one day, to a
breakfast of corn bread, cane syrup, and bacon. He was sure they would
find a way to convert the corn to meal, even if they had to grind it
between flag-stones. "I don't think we're doing enough for the Henrys,"
Randy said. "We'll have to give them more help."

"What kind of help?" Bill McGovern asked.

"At the moment, help them guard the food supply. Keep away the
prowlers--cats, wolves, humans, or whatever."

"Can't the Henrys do it themselves?" Helen asked. "Don't they have a
gun?"

"They've got a gun--an old, beat-up single barrel twelve-gauge--but they
don't have time. You can't expect Preacher and Malachai to work as hard
as they do every day and then sit up all night. And I wouldn't trust
Two-Tone. He'd just sleep. Do I hear volunteers?"

"Me!" said Ben Franklin.

Randy's first impulse was to say no, that this wasn't a job for a
thirteen-year-old boy. Yet Ben was eating as much as a man, or more, and
he would have to do a man's work. "I thought you and Caleb were chopping
firewood today?"

"I can chop wood and stand watch too."

"Better let me take it the first night," said Bill McGovern. "I wouldn't
want to see anything happen to those pigs." Bill was thinner, as they
all were, and yet it seemed that he had dropped years as well as weight.
With his fork he touched a bit of fish at the edge of his plate. "You
know, for years I looked forward to my vacation in the bass country.
That's why I built a house on the Timucuan when I retired. But now I can
hardly look a bass in the face. I want meat--real red meat."

Randy made his decision. "All right, Bill, you can take the watch
tonight, and we'll rotate thereafter. I'm sure the Admiral will take a
night too."

"Do I get a night?" Ben Franklin asked. His eyes were pleading.

"You get a night, Ben. I'll make up a schedule and post it on the
bulletin board." A bulletin board in the hallway, with assignment of
duties, had become a necessity. In this new life there was no leisure.
If everybody worked as hard as he could until sundown every day, then
everybody could eat, although not well. Each day brought a crisis of one
kind or another. They faced shortages of the most trivial but necessary
items. Who would have had the foresight to buy a supply of needles and
thread? Florence Wechek owned a beautiful new sewing machine, electric
and useless of course. Florence, Helen, and Hannah Henry did the sewing
for Randy's community. Yesterday Florence had broken a needle and had
come to Randy, close to tears, as if it were a major disaster, as indeed
it was. And everybody had unthinkingly squandered matches, so that now
there were no matches. He still had five lighter flints and one small
can of lighter fluid. Luckily, his old Army lighter would burn gasoline,
but flints were priceless and impossible to find. Within a few months it
might be necessary to keep the dining room fire going day and night in
spite of unwelcome heat and added labor. Nor would their supply of wood
last forever. They would have to scout farther and farther afield for
usable timber. Hauling it would become a major problem. When Dan could
no longer collect his gasoline fees and the tank in the Model-A finally
ran dry their life was bound to change drastically, and for the worse.

Staring down at his plate, he thought of all this.

Lib said, "Randy, finish your fish. And you'd better drink another glass
of orange juice. You'll be hungry before lunch, if Helen and I can put a
lunch together."

"I hate orange juice!" Randy said, and poured himself another glass.

****

Dan drove. Randy sat beside him. It was warm, and Randy was comfortable
in shorts, boat shoes, and a pullover shirt. He carried his pistol
holstered at his hip. The pistol had become a weightless part of him
now. He had dry-fired it a thousand times until it felt good in his
hand, and even used it to kill a rattlesnake in the grove and two
moccasins on the dock. Shooting snakes was a waste of ammunition but he
was now confident of the pistol's accuracy and the steadiness of his
hand. In Randy's lap, encased in a paper bag, was the bottle of Scotch
he hoped to trade for coffee. They smoked their morning pipes. Randy
said, "Dan, what's this bad situation in town?"

"I haven't said anything about it," Dan said, "because I can't get to
the bottom of it and I didn't want to frighten anybody. I've got three
serious cases of radiation poisoning."

"Oh, God!" Randy said, not an exclamation but a prayer. This was the
sword that had been hanging over all of them. If a man kept busy enough,
if his troubles and problems were immediate and numerous, if he was
always hungry, then he could for a time wall off this thing, forget for
a time that he lived in what had officially been designated a
contaminated zone. He could forget the insidious, the invisible, the
implacable enemy, but not forever.

"This is very strange," Dan said. "I can't believe it's caused by
delayed fallout. If it were, I'd have three hundred cases, not three.
This is more like a radium or X-ray burn. All of them have burned hands
in addition to the usual symptoms--nausea, headache, diarrhea, hair
falling out."

"When did it start?" Randy asked.

"Porky Logan was the first man hit. His sister caught me at the school
three weeks ago and begged me to look at him."

"Wasn't Porky somewhere in the southern part of the state on The Day?
Couldn't he have picked up radiation then?"

"Porky was perfectly all right when he got back here and since then he
hasn't received any more exposure than the rest of us. And the other two
have not left Fort Repose. Porky's a mess. Every time I see him he's
drunk. But the radiation is killing him faster than the liquor."

"Who else is sick?"

"Bigmouth Bill Cullen--we'll stop at his fish camp on the way to
town--and Pete Hernandez."

"It couldn't be sort of an epidemic, could it?" Randy asked.

"No, it couldn't. Radiation's not a germ or a virus. You can eat or
drink radioactive matter, like strontium 90 in milk. It can fall on you
in rain. It can sift down on you in dust, or in particles you can't see
on a day that seems perfectly clear. You can track it into the house on
your shoes, or pick it up by handling any metal or inorganic matter that
has been exposed. But you can't catch it by kissing a girl, unless, of
course, she has gold teeth."

At the bend of River Road they caught up with Alice Cooksey riding
Florence's Western Union bicycle. Alone of all the people in Fort
Repose, Alice continued with her regular work. Every morning she left
the Wechek house at seven. Often, ignoring the unpredictable dangers of
the road, she did not return until dark. Since The Day, the demand for
her services had multiplied. They slowed when they overtook her, shouted
a greeting, and waved. She waved back and pedaled on, a small, brave,
and busy figure.

Watching the car chuff past, Alice reminded herself that this evening
she must bring back new books for Ben Franklin and Peyton. It was a
surprise, and a delight, to see children devour books. Without ever
knowing it, they were receiving an education. Alice would never admit it
aloud, but for the first time in her thirty years as librarian of Fort
Repose she felt fulfilled, even important.

It had not been easy or remunerative to persist as librarian in Fort
Repose. She recalled how every year for eight years the town council had
turned down her annual request for air-conditioning. An expensive frill,
they'd said. But without air-conditioning, how could a library compete?
Drugstores, bars, restaurants, movies, the St. Johns Country Club in San
Marco, the lobby of the Riverside Inn, theaters and most homes, were air
conditioned. You couldn't expect people to sit in a hot library during
the humid Florida summer, which began in April and didn't end until
October, when they could be sitting in an air-conditioned living room
coolly and painlessly absorbing visual pablum on television. Alice had
installed a Coke machine and begged old electric fans but it had been a
losing battle.

In thirty years her book budget had been raised ten percent, but the
cost of books had doubled. Her magazine budget was unchanged, but the
cost of magazines had tripled. So while Fort Repose grew in population,
book borrowings dwindled. There had been so many new distractions,
drive-in theaters, dashing off to springs and beaches over the weekends,
the mass hypnosis of the young every evening, and finally the craze for
boating and water-skiing. Now all this was ended. All entertainment, all
amusements, all escape, all information again centered in the library.
The fact that the library had no air conditioning made no difference
now. There were not enough chairs to accommodate her readers. They sat
on the front steps, in the windows, on the floor with backs against
walls or stacks. They read everything, even the classics. And the
children came to her, when they were free of their chores, and she
guided them. And there was useful research to do. Randy and Doctor Gunn
didn't know it, but as a result of her research they might eat better
thereafter. It was strange, she thought, pedaling steadily, that it
should require a holocaust to make her own life worth living.

****

At the town limits, Dan turned into Bill Cullen's fish camp, caf, and
bar. The grounds were more dilapidated and filthier than ever. The
liquor shelves were bare. The counters in the boathouse tackle shop were
empty. Not a plug, fly, or hook remained. Bigmouth Bill had been cleaned
out months before. His wife, straw-haired and barrel-shaped, stepped out
of the living quarters. Randy sniffed. She didn't smell of spiked wine
this day. She simply smelled sour. Alone of all the people he had seen,
she had gained weight since The Day. Randy guessed that she had cached
sacks of grits and had been living on grits and fried fish. She said,
"He's in here, Doc."

Dan didn't go in immediately. "Does he seem any better?" he asked.

"He's worse. His hands is leakin' pus."

"How do you feel? You haven't had any of his symptoms, have you?"

"Me? I don't feel no different. I've felt worse." She giggled, showing
her rotting teeth. "You ever had a hangover, Doc? That's when I've felt
worse. Right now I wish I felt worse so I could take a drink and feel
better. You get it, Doc?" She came closer to Dan and lowered her voice.
"He ain't goin' to die, is he?"

"I don't know."

"The old tightwad better not die on me now. He's not leavin' me nuthin',
Doc. He don't even own this place free and clear. He ain't never even
made no will. He's holdin' out on me, Doc. I can tell. He had six cases
stashed away after The Day. Claims he sold all six to Porky Logan. But
he don't show me no money. You know what, Doc? I think he's got that six
cases hid!"

Dan brushed past her and they entered the shack. Bill Cullen lay on a
sagging iron bed, a stained sheet pulled up to his bare waist. In the
bad light filtering through the Venetian shade over the single window,
he was at first unrecognizable to Randy. He was wasted, his eyes sunken,
his eyeballs yellow. Tufts of hair were gone from one side of his head,
exposing reddish scalp. His hands, resting across his stomach, were
swollen, blackened, and cracked. He croaked, "Hello, Doc." He saw Randy
and said, "I'll be damned--Randy."

The stench was too much for Randy. He gagged, said, "Hello, Bill," and
backed out. He leaned over the dock railing, coughing and choking, until
he could breathe deeply of the sweet wind from the river. When Dan came
out they walked silently back to the car together. All Dan said was,
"She was right. He's worse. I'll swear he's had a fresh dose of
radiation since I saw him last."

They drove on to Marines Park. The park had become the barter center of
Fort Repose. Dan said, "Do you want to go on with me to the
schoolhouse?"

"No, thanks," Randy said. He was glad he wasn't a doctor. A doctor
required special courage that Randy felt he did not possess.

"I'll pick you up here in an hour. Then I'll see Hernandez and Logan and
then home."

"Okay." Randy got out of the car.

"Don't swap for less than two pounds. Scotch is darn near as scarce as
coffee."

"I'll make the best deal I can," Randy promised. Dan drove off.

Randy tucked the bottle under his arm and walked toward the bandstand,
an octagon-shaped wooden structure, its platform elevated three feet
above what had once been turf smooth as a gold green, now unkempt,
infiltrated with weeds and booby-trapped with sandspurs. A dozen men,
legs dangling, sat on the platform and steps. Others moved about, the
alert, humorless smile of the trader on their faces. Three bony horses
were tethered to the bandstand railing. Like Randy, some of the men
carried holsters at their belts. A few shotguns and an old-fashioned
Winchester leaned against the planking. The armed men had come in from
the countryside, a risk.

A third of the traders in Marines Park, on this day, were Negroes. The
economics of disaster placed a penalty upon prejudice. The laws of
hunger and survival could not be evaded, and honored no color line. A
back-yard hen raised by a Negro tasted just as good as the gamecocks of
Carleton Hawes, the well-to-do realtor who was a vice president of the
county White Citizens Council, and there was more meat on it. Randy saw
Hawes, a brace of chickens dangling from his belt, drink water,
presumably boiled, from a Negro's jug. There were two drinking fountains
in Marines Park, one marked "White Only," the other "Colored Only."
Since neither worked, the signs were meaningless.

Hawes saw Randy, wiped his mouth, and called, "Hey, Randy."

"Hello, Carleton."

"What're you trading?"

"A bottle of Scotch."

Hawes' eyes fixed on the paper bag and he moved closer to Randy,
cautious as a pointer blundered upon quail. Randy recalled from Saturday
nights at the St. Johns Club that Scotch was Hawes' drink. "What's your
asking price?" Hawes asked.

"Two pounds of coffee."

"I'll swap you these two birds. Both young hens. See how plump they are?
Better eating you'll never have."

Randy laughed.

"Being it's you, I'll tell you what I'll do. I've got eggs at home. I'll
throw in a couple of dozen eggs. Have 'em here tomorrow. On my word. If
you don't believe me, you can take the birds now, as a binder."

"The asking price," Randy said, "is also the selling price. Two pounds
of coffee. Any brand will do."

Hawes sighed. "Who's got coffee? It's been three months since I've had a
drink of Scotch. Let me look at the bottle, will you?"

Randy showed him the label and moved on to the bandstand.

The square pillars supporting the roof had become a substitute for the
county weekly's want-ad section and the radio station announcements.
Randy read the notices, some in longhand, some hand printed, a few
typewritten, pinned to the timbers.

    WILL SWAP--_Late model Cadillac Coupe de Ville, radio, heater,
    air-conditioned, battery run down but undamaged, for two good
    28-inch bicycle tires and pump._

    DESPERATELY NEED _evaporated milk, rubber nipple and six safety
    pins. Look over our house and make your own deal._

    HAVE SMALL CANNED HAM, _want large kettle, Encyclopaedia
    Britannica, box 12-gauge No. 7 shells, and toothpaste_.

Randy closed his eyes. He could taste that ham. He had an extra kettle,
the encyclopedia, the shells, and toothpaste. But he also had prospects
of fresh ham if they could preserve the Henrys' young pigs from
marauders, wolves or whatever. Anyway, it was too big a price to pay for
a small ham.

    WANTED--_Three 2/0 fishhooks in exchange for expensive fly rod,
    reel, assorted lures._

Randy chuckled. Sports fishing no longer existed. There were only meat
fishermen now.

    WILL TRADE _50-HP Outboard motor, complete set power tools,
    cashmere raglan topcoat for half pound of tobacco and ax_.

Randy saw a notice that was different:

                            EASTER SERVICES

    An interdenominational Easter Sunrise Service will be held in
    Marines Park on Sunday, April 17th. All citizens of Fort Repose,
    of whatever faith, are invited to attend.

    Signed,

    Rev. John Carlin, First Methodist Church

    Rev. M. F. Kenny, Church of St. Paul's

    Rev. Fred Born, Timucuan Baptist Church

    Rev. Noble Watts, Afro-Repose Baptist Church

The name of the Rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, where there had
always been a Bragg pew, was missing. Dr. Lucius Somerville, a gentle,
white-haired man, a boyhood companion of Judge Bragg, had been in
Jacksonville on the morning of The Day and therefore would not return to
his parish.

Randy wasn't much of a churchgoer. He had contributed to the church
regularly, but not of his time or himself. Now, reading this notice, he
felt an unexpected thrill. Since The Day, he had lived in the imperative
present, not daring to plan beyond the next meal or the next day. This
bit of paper tacked on peeling white paint abruptly enlarged his
perspective, as if, stumbling through a black tunnel, he saw, or thought
he saw, a chink of light. If Man retained faith in God, he might also
retain faith in Man. He remembered words which for four months he had
not heard, read, or uttered, the most beautiful words in the
language--faith and hope. He had missed these words as he had missed
other things. If possible, he would go to the service. Sunday, the
seventeenth. Today was the fourteenth, and therefore Thursday.

He stepped up on the platform. The men lounging there, some of them
acquaintances, some strangers, were estimating the shape of bulk of the
sack he held, like a football, under his arm. Dour, bearded, hair
unshorn or ludicrously cropped, they looked like ghost-town characters
in a Western movie, except they were not so well fed as Hollywood
extras, and their clothing, flowered sports shirts, shorts, or slacks,
plaid or straw-peaked caps, was incongruous. John Garcia, the Minorcan
fishing guide, asked the orthodox opening question, "What're you
trading, Randy?"

"A fifth of Scotch--twelve years old--the best."

Garcia whistled. "You must be hard up. What're you askin'?"

"Two pounds of coffee."

Several of the men on the platform shifted their position. One
snickered. None spoke. Randy realized that these men had no coffee,
either for trading or drinking. No matter how well stocked their
kitchens might once have been, or what they had purchased or pillaged on
The Day and in the chaotic period immediately after, four months had
exhausted everything. Randy's community was far more fortunate with the
bearing groves, fish loyally taking bait, the industrious Henrys and
their barnyard, and some small game--squirrels, rabbits, and an
occasional possum.

John Garcia was trading two strings of fish, a four-pound catfish and
small bass on one, warmouth perch and bream on the other. Garcia's brown
and weathered skin had shriveled on his slight frame until he seemed
only bones loosely wrapped in dried leather. The sun was getting warm.
With his toe Garcia nudged his fish into the shadow. "Wouldn't trade for
fish, would you, Randy?" he asked, smiling.

"Fish we've got," Randy said.

"You River Road people do all right by yourselves, don't you?" a
stranger said. "If you got Scotch likker, you got everythin'. Us, we
ain't got nuthin'." The stranger was trading a saw, two chisels, and a
bag of nails. Randy guessed he was an itinerant carpenter settled in
Pistolville.

Randy ignored him and asked Marines Park's inevitable second question,
"What do you hear?"

Old Man Hockstatler, who was trading small tins of aspirins and
tranquilizers, salvage from his looted pharmacy, said, "I hear the
Russians are asking that we surrender."

"No, no, you got that all wrong," said Eli Blaustein. "Mrs.
Vanbruuker-Brown demanded that the Russians surrender. They said no and
then they said we should be the ones to surrender."

"Where did you hear that?" Randy asked.

"My wife got it from a woman whose husband's battery set still works,"
Blaustein said. Blaustein was trading work pants and a pair of white
oxfords and he was asking canned corn beef or cheese. Randy knew that as
the sun got higher John Garcia's asking price for his fish would drop
lower. At the same time Blaustein's hunger would grow, or he would be
thinking of his protein-starved family. Before the fish were tainted,
there would be a meeting of minds. John Garcia would have a new pair of
work pants and Blaustein would have food.

"What I would like to know," said Old Man Hockstatler, "is who won the
war? Nobody ever tells you. This war I don't understand at all. It isn't
like World Wars One or Two or any other wars I ever heard of. Sometimes
I think the Russians must've won. Otherwise things would be getting back
to normal. Then I think no, we won. If we hadn't won the Russians would
still be bombing us, or they would invade. But since The Day I've never
seen any planes at all."

"I have," said Garcia. "I've seen 'em while I was fishing for cats at
night. No, that ain't exactly right. I've heard 'em. I heard one two
nights ago."

"Whose?" Blaustein asked.

Garcia shrugged. "Beats me."

This discussion, Randy knew, would continue through the day. The
question of who won the war, or if the war still continued, who was
winning, had replaced the weather as an inexhaustible subject for
speculation. Each day you could hear new rumors, usually baseless and
always garbled. You could hear that Russian landing craft were lined up
on Daytona Beach or that Martian saucers were unloading relief supplies
in Pensacola. Randy believed nothing except what he himself heard or
saw, or those sparse hard grains of fact sifted from the air waves by
Sam Hazzard. Randy had been leaning on the bandstand railing. He
straightened, stretched, and said, "Guess I'll circulate around and look
for somebody who's holding coffee."

John Garcia said, "You coming to the Easter service, Randy?"

"Hope so. Hope to come and bring the family." As he stepped from the
bandstand he looked again at the two useless drinking fountains. There
was something important about them that he could not recall. This was
irritating, as when the name of an old friend capriciously vanishes from
memory. The drinking fountains made his mind itch.

He saw Jim Hickey, the beekeeper, a picnic basket under his long,
outstretched legs, relaxed on a bench. Before The Day Jim had rented his
hives to grove owners pollinating young trees. Before The Day, Jim's
honey was a secondary source of income; "gravy," he called it. Now,
honey was liquid gold, and beeswax, with which candles could be dipped,
another valuable item of barter. Jim Hickey, who was Mark's age, had
learned beekeeping at the College of Agriculture in Gainesville. It
would never make him rich, he had been warned, and until The Day it
hadn't. Now he was regarded as a fortunate man, rich in highly desirable
commodities endlessly produced by tens of thousands of happy and willing
slaves. "What are you trading?" he greeted Randy.

"A bottle of Scotch. Are you holding coffee?"

"No. I've been trying to trade for coffee myself. Can't find any. All I
hold is honey." He lifted the lid of the picnic basket. "Lovely stuff,
isn't it?"

It was lovely. Randy thought of Ben Franklin and Peyton, whose need and
desire for sweets could not be wholly supplied by the sugar content of
citrus. It would be weeks before Two-Tone's cane crop matured. Randy
wondered whether he was being selfish, trading for coffee. It was true
that he would share the coffee with the other adults on River Road, but
the children didn't drink it. There were no calories or vitamins in
coffee and it was of no use to them. He forced himself to be judicial.
When you examined the facts judicially, and asked which would provide
the greatest good for the greatest number, there could be only one
answer. Coffee would furnish only temporary and personal gratification.
He said, "Jim, maybe I could be persuaded to trade for honey."

"I'm sorry, Randy. We're Adventists. We don't drink whiskey or trade in
it."

This contingency Randy had never imagined. Half-aloud he said, "Well, I
tried."

"I suppose you wanted the honey for Mark's children," Hickey said.

"Yes. I did."

Hickey reached into the basket and brought out two square, honey-packed
combs. "I wouldn't like to see Mark's kids go without," he said. "Here.
I'd give you more except my supply is 'way down. There's something wrong
with my bees this spring. Half my broods are foul, full of dead pupae
and larvae. At first I thought it was what we call sacbrood, or queen
failure. I've been to the library, reading up on it, and now I wonder
whether it couldn't be radiation. We must've had fallout on The
Day--after all, the whole state is a contaminated zone--and maybe it
affected some of my queens and drones. I don't know what to do about it.
It isn't something they taught us at the University."

Randy removed the bottle from his paper bag, locked it under his arm,
and replaced it with the honeycombs. He was overwhelmed. He knew that
Mark and Hickey had been in the same grade in primary school, but they
had never been close friends. Hickey was no more than an acquaintance.
He lived in a neat, sea-green, five-room concrete block house far out on
the road to Pasco Creek. Randy, before The Day, rarely saw him, and then
only to wave a greeting. Randy said, "Jim, this is the nicest, most
generous thing I can remember. I just hope I can repay you some way,
some day."

"Forget it," Hickey said. "Children need honey. My kids have it every
meal."

Randy heard the Model-A's horn, raucous as an angry goose, and saw it
pull up to the curb. Walking to the car, he noticed that it was a clear
and beautiful spring day, a better day than yesterday. The spores of
kindness, as well as faith, survived in this acid soil.

Randy climbed into the car and showed the honey to Dan and explained how
it had been given to him. "The world changes," Dan said. "People don't.
I still have one old biddy in the schoolhouse who prunes and trims the
camellias, and weeds the beds. They aren't her camellias and nobody
gives a damn about flowers any more, except her. She loves flowers and
it doesn't matter where she is or what happens she's going to take care
of 'em. This same old lady--Mrs. Satterborough, she's been spending her
winters at the Riverside Inn for years--she picks up the telephone in
the principal's office every morning and dials Western Union. She thinks
that one day the phone will be working just fine and that she'll get off
a telegram to her daughter. She's certain of it. Her daughter lives in
Indiana."

"I don't understand how those old people stay alive," Randy said. He
knew that Dan brought them oranges by the bushel, and Randy sent them
fish whenever there was a surplus catch.

"Most of them didn't. Death can be merciful, especially for the old and
sick. I was about to say old, sick, and broke, but it doesn't matter any
longer whether you're broke. Only five alive out of the Riverside Inn
now. Maybe three will get through the summer. I don't think any will get
through next winter."

Driving north on Yulee, the business district, while deserted, seemed no
more battered than it had the month before, or the month before that. A
few optimistic storekeepers had prudently boarded windows, split by
blast on The Day or broken by looters afterwards, against water and
wind. On the two principal business blocks-glass had been swept from the
sidewalks. Abandoned cars, stripped of wheels, batteries, radios, and
spark plugs, rusted in gutters like the unburied carcasses of giant
beetles.

They turned off Yulee into Augustine Road, with its broken macadam and
respectable but decaying residences. They bounced along for a block and
then Randy smelled Pistolville. Another block and they were in it.

There had been no garbage collections since The Day. In Pistolville each
hut or house squatted in a mound of its own excretion--crushed crates
and cartons, rusting tin cans, broken bottles, rotting piles of citrus
rusks and pecan shells, the bones of fowl, fish and small animals. A
tallow-faced, six-year-old girl, clad in a man's castoff, riddled
T-shirt, crouched on the curb, emptying her bowels in the dust. She
cried out shrilly and waved as the Model-A bounced past. A bearded,
long-haired man burst out of a doorway and jogged down the street on
bandy legs, peeling and eating a banana, turning his head as if he
expected to be followed. At the corner a scrawny boy of eighteen
urinated against a lamp post, not bothering to raise his eyes at the
sound of the car. Buzzards, grown arrogant, roosted in the oaks and
foraged in the refuse. Of mongrel dogs, cats, partihued pigs, chickens,
and pigeons--all normal impediments to navigation on the streets of
Pistolville--no trace remained.

Once before in his life, in Suwon, immediately after its recapture and
before the Military Government people had begun to clean up, Randy had
seen degradation such as this. But this was America. It was his town,
settled by his forebears. He said, "We've got to do something about
this."

"Yes?" Dan said. "What?"

"I don't know. Something."

"Torches and gasoline," Dan said, "except there isn't enough gasoline.
Anyway, these poor devils are as well off in their own houses as they
would be in the woods, or in caves. No better off, mind you. But they
have shelter."

"In four months," Randy said, "we've regressed four thousand years.
More, maybe. Four thousand years ago the Egyptians and Chinese were more
civilized than Pistolville is right now. Not only Pistolville. Think
what must be going on in those parts of the country where they don't
even have fruit and pecans and catfish."

As they approached the end of Augustine Road the houses were newer and
larger, constructed of concrete block or brick instead of pitch-sweating
pine clapboard. Between these houses grass grew shin-high, fighting the
exultant weeds for sunlight and root space. There was less filth, or at
least it was concealed by greenery, and the smell was bearable. In this
airier atmosphere lived the upper crust of Pistolville, including Pete
and Rita Hernandez and Timucuan County's Representative in the state
legislature, Porky Logan.

"How long has it been since you've seen Rita?" Dan asked.

"Not since before The Day--quite a while before."

"Does Lib know about her?"

"She knows all about it. She says Rita doesn't bother her, because Rita
is part of the past, like Mayoschi's in Tokyo. You know who worries Lib?
Helen. Imagine that."

They were at the Hernandez house. Dan stopped the car. He said, "I can
imagine it. Lib is an extremely sensitive, perceptive woman. About some
things, she has more sense than you have, Randy. And all rules are off,
now."

Randy wasn't listening. Rita had stepped out of the doorway. In Hawaii
Randy had seen girls of mixed Caucasian, Polynesian, and Chinese blood,
hips moving as if to the pulse of island rhythm even when only crossing
the street, who reminded him of Rita. She was not like a girl of Fort
Repose. She was a child of the Mediterranean and Carribean, seeming
alien; and yet certainly American. Her ancestors included a Spanish
soldier whose caravel beached in Matanzas Inlet before the Pilgrims
found their rock, and Carib Indian women, and the Minorcans who spread
inland from New Smyrna in the eighteenth century. She had not gone to
college but she was intelligent and quick. She had an annulled high
school marriage and an abortion behind her. She no longer made such
foolish errors. Her hobby was men. She sampled and enjoyed men as other
women collected and enjoyed African violets, Limoges teacups, or
sterling souvenir teaspoons. She was professional in her avocation,
never letting a man go without some profit, not necessarily material,
and never trading one man for another unless she thought she was
bettering her collection.

Under any circumstances Rita was an arresting woman. Her hair was cut in
straight bangs to form an ebony frame for features carved like a Malayan
mask in antique ivory. She could look, and behave, like an Egyptian
queen of the Eighteenth Dynasty or a Creole whore out of New Orleans. On
this morning she wore aquamarine shorts and halter. Cradled easily under
her right arm was a light repeating shotgun. She was smoking a cigarette
and even from the road Randy could see that it was a real, manufactured
filtertip and not a stubby homemade, hand-rolled with toilet paper. She
called, "Hello Doctor Gunn. Come on in." Then she recognized the
passenger and yelled, "Hey! Randy!"

Dan put the car keys in his pocket and said, "Better bring the whiskey
and honey, Randy. I never leave stuff in the car when I make a call in
Pistolville."

As he walked to the house, Randy noticed the Atlas grocery truck and a
big new sedan in the Hernandez carport and a Jaguar XK-150 sports car in
the driveway. A latrine had been dug behind the carport and partly
shielded from the road by a crude board fence.

Rita swung open the screen door. "You'll pardon the artillery," she
said. "The goons down the street are envious. When I hear a car or
anything I grab a gun. They killed my dog. She was a black poodle,
Randy. Her name was Poupe Vivant. That means Livin' Doll in French.
Cracked her skull with an ax handle while Pete was lying sick and I was
off fetching water. I found the ax handle but not the body. The goddamn
cracker scum! Ate her, I guess."

Randy thought how he would feel if someone killed and ate Graf. He was
revolted. And yet, it was a matter of manners and mores. In China men
for centuries had been eating dogs stuffed with rice. It happened in
other meat-starved Asian countries. The Army had put him through a
survival course, once, and taught him that in an emergency he could
safely eat pulpy white grubs found under bark. It could happen here. If
a man could eat grubs he could eat dogs. Pistolville was meat-starved
and, as Dan had said, the rules were off. All Randy said was, "I'm
sorry, Rita."

Randy walked through the door and stopped, astonished. The two front
rooms of the Hernandez place looked like show windows in a Miami auction
house. He counted three silver tea services, two chests of flat silver,
three television sets, and was bewildered by a display of statuary,
silver candelabra, expensive leather cases, empty crystal decanters,
table lighters, chinaware. Gold-framed oils and watercolors, some fairly
good, plastered one wall. Table clocks and wall clocks raised their
hands and swore to different times. "Great God!" Randy said. "Have you
people gone into the junk business?"

Rita laughed. "It's not junk. It's my investment."

Dan said, "How's Pete, Rita?"

"I think he's a little better. He's not losing any more hair but he's
still weak."

Dan was carrying his black bag. It held little except instruments now.
He said, "I'll go back and see him."

Dan walked down the hall and Randy was alone with her. She offered him a
cigarette. Her perfume opened the gates of memory--the movies in
Orlando, the dinners and dancing at the hotel in Winter Park, the
isolated motel south of Canaveral, the morning they found a secluded
pocket behind the dunes and were buzzed by a light plane and how the
pilot almost sideslipped into the sea banking around for a second look,
and most of all, his apartment. It seemed so long ago, as if it had
happened while he was in college, before Korea, but it was not so long,
a year only. He said, "Thanks, Rita. First real cigarette I've had in a
long, long time. You must be getting along all right."

She looked at the bottle. "You didn't bring me a present, did you,
Randy?" The corners of her mouth quivered, but she did not quite smile.

He remembered the evenings he had come to this house, a bottle beside
him on the seat, and they had gone tooting off together; and the
evenings he had brought bottles in gift packages, discreet gratuities
for her brother; and the nights in the apartment, sharing a decanter
drink for drink because she loved her liquor. He realized that this is
what she intended he remember. She was expert at making him feel
uncomfortable. He said, "No, Rita. Trade goods. I've been in Marines
Park, trying to trade for coffee."

"Don't your new women like Scotch, Randy? I hear you've got two women in
your house now. Which one are you sleeping with, Randy?"

Suddenly she was a stranger, and he looked upon her as such. Examined
thus, with detachment, she looked ridiculous, wearing high heels and
costume jewelry with shorts and halter at this hour of the morning and
in this time of troubles. Her darkling ivory skin, once so satiny,
appeared dry and mottled. Her hair was dull and the luster in her eyes
reflected only spiteful anger. She looked used and tired. He said,
calmly, "You can take your claws out now. I don't feel them. My skin's
tougher."

She licked her lips. They were puffed and brown. "You're tougher. You're
not the same Randy. I guess you're growing up."

He changed the subject. "Where did you get all this stuff?" He looked
around the room.

"Trading."

"I never see you in Marines Park."

"We don't go there. They come to us. They know we still hold food. Even
coffee."

He knew she wanted the bottle. He knew she would trade coffee, but he
would never again trade with her, for anything. He said:

"You said this was your investment. Do you think three television sets
is a good investment when there isn't any electricity?"

"I'm looking ahead, Randy. This war isn't going to last forever and when
it's over I'm going to have everything I never had before and plenty
besides, maybe to sell. I was only a kid after the last big war but I
remember how my dad had to pay through the nose for an old jalopy. Do
you know what that Jag cost me?" She laughed. "A case of beans, three
bottles of ketchup, and six cans of deviled ham. For a Jag! Say, as soon
as things get back to normal those three TV sets will be worth their
weight in gold."

"Do you really think things are going to get back to normal?"

"Sure! They always have, haven't they? It may be a year, even two. I can
wait. You look at those big new houses out on River Road. What built
half of them? Wars. Profits out of wars. This time I'm going to get
mine."

He saw that she believed it and it was pointless to argue with her.
Still, he was intrigued. "Don't you realize that this war is different?"

She held out her left hand so that the sunlight glinted on the ring on
her second finger. "It certainly is different! Look at this!"

He looked at the big stone, and into it, and a thousand blue and red
lights attested to its worth and purity.

It wasn't costume jewelry, as he had surmised. It wasn't glass
surrounded by green paste. It was a diamond set in emeralds. "Where did
you get it?" he asked, awed, and then he looked at her crescent ear
clips and saw that they too, beyond a doubt, were diamonds.

Rita held the ring out, turning her wrist. She did not answer at once.
She was enjoying their reaction. "Six carats," she said. "Perfect." She
slipped it from her finger and handed it to Randy.

He took it automatically but he wasn't looking at it. He was looking at
her finger. Her finger was marred by a dark, almost black circle, as if
the ring were tarnished brass, or its inside sooty. But the ring was
clean bright white gold.

Dan came into the room, pawing in his bag and frowning. "I don't know
exactly--" he began, looked at Randy's face, and failed to finish the
sentence.

Frowning, Rita inspected the dark band. "It itches," she said, and
scratched. A bit of blackened skin flaked away, leaving raw flesh
beneath.

"I asked where you got this, Rita," Randy said, a command.

Before she opened her mouth he guessed the answer.

She said, "Porky Logan."

The ring dropped to the floor, bounced, tinkled, and came to rest on the
corner of a blue silk Chinese rug.

"Say, what's the matter?" she said. "You act like it was hot!"

"I think it is hot," Randy said.

"Well, if you think Porky stole it, you're wrong. It was abandoned
property. Anybody would take it."

Dan took her hand and adjusted his bifocals so he could examine the
finger closely. He spoke, his voice deep, enforcing calm. "Hold still,
Rita, I just want to see that finger. I think what Randy meant was that
the ring has been exposed to radioactivity and is now radioactive
itself. I'm afraid he's right. This looks like a burn--a radium burn.
How long have you been wearing that ring?"

"Off and on, for a month I guess. I never wear it outside, only in the
house." She hesitated. "But this last week, I've had it on all the time.
I never noticed--"

They looked down at it, its facets blinking at them from the soft blue
silk as if it were in a display window. It looked beautiful.

"Where did Porky get it, Rita?" Dan asked.

"Well, I only know what he told me. He was fishing in the Keys on The
Day and of course he started right back. He's smart, Porky is. He made a
big detour around Miami. Well, he was passing through Hollywood or Boca
Raton or one of those Gold Coast places and it was empty and right off
the main drag he saw one of those swanky little jewelry shops, you know,
a branch of some Fifth Avenue store and its windows were blown out. He
said stuff was lying all over, rings and pins and watches and bracelets,
like popcorn out of a busted bag. So he gathered it up. Then he dumped
the hooks and plugs and junk out of his fishbox and went inside and
filled it up. Porky said right then he was thinking of the future. He
figured that money wouldn't be worth anything but diamonds and gold were
different. They never lost value no matter what happened."

"Impregnated with fallout," Dan murmured. "Suicide."

Rita's hands crept upward to her neck and Randy noticed an oval mark in
the hollow of her throat, as if the skin were painted darker there. Then
her hands flew to her ears. The diamond ear clips fell to the rug beside
the ring. She moaned, "Oh, God!"

"What did you have to give Porky for those diamonds?" Randy asked
softly.

"For the ring, hardly anything at all. For the rest of it we gave him
canned meat and cigarettes and coffee and chocolate bars and stuff like
that. You know how Porky ate. For Chrissakes, Doc, what are you going to
do about this?" She stared at her finger.

"What else did Porky give you besides the diamonds?" Dan asked.

"All sorts of stuff. He gave us a double handful of watches just for a
case of pork and beans. Pete has--" She looked down the hallway. She
said, "Pete!" and led them to his room.

Pete Hernandez didn't look as bad as Bill Cullen, but he looked bad
enough, his scalp scabby as with mange, face erupting, and hands
swollen. He pushed himself back on his pillows, startled, as they came
in.

Rita said, "Pete, take off those watches."

"Are you nuts?" Pete was wearing a gold watch pushed up absurdly on each
skinny arm. Pete looked at their faces and said, "Why should I take off
my watches?"

Dan leaned down and stripped them off and tossed them on a table. The
flexible gold straps left black insignia. "They're radioactive. That
gold is a hot isotope of gold. They've been poisoning you. Look."

Pete looked down. "It's just dirt. It's the heat. I've been sweating."

Randy asked the question, "Where's the rest of Porky's jewelry, Pete?"

Pete looked at Rita, his dulled black eyes uncertain and appealing. He
said, "They just want to get our gold and stones, Rita."

"Randy doesn't lie, Pete, and I don't think Doctor Gunn would steal
anything from anybody."

Pete curled his arm to reach under his pillow.

Dan said, "Oh, good Lord," pitying him.

From under the pillow Pete brought out a plastic toilet kit.

"Open it," Dan said.

Pete unzipped it. It was packed full, watch bands twisting and curling
like golden snakes.

"Is that all?" Dan asked.

"No, those are just the watches," Rita said. "Pete's been amusing
himself, admiring them and winding them every day. There's more stuff in
my room--a couple of necklaces and a ruby and diamond brooch and--well,
all sorts of junk."

"Pete," Dan said, "throw that kit in the corner, there. Rita, don't
touch anything you may have in your bed-room. There's no point in your
absorbing even another fraction of a roentgen. We've got to figure out a
way to get the stuff out of here and get rid of it without damaging
ourselves. We'll be back."

Rita followed them to the door, whimpering. She snatched at Dan's
sleeve. "What's going to happen? Am I going to die? Is my hair going to
fall out?"

"You haven't absorbed nearly as much radiation as your brother," Dan
said. "I don't know exactly what's going to happen because radiation
sickness is so tricky."

"What about Pete? What'll I do if Pete--"

"I'm afraid," Dan said, "that Pete is slipping into leukemia."

"Blood cancer?"

"Yes. I'm afraid you'd better prepare yourself."

Rita's hand fell from Dan's arm. Randy watched her diminish, all allure,
all bravado falling away, leaving her smaller and like a child. He said,
quietly, "Rita, you'd better keep this, here. You'll need it." He gave
her the bottle of Scotch.

As he pressed the starter Dan said, "Why did you give her the whiskey."

"I feel sorry for her." That wasn't the only reason. If he had owed her
anything before, he did no longer. They were quits. They were square.
"Is she going to be all right?" he asked.

"I think so, unless a malignancy develops from the burn on her finger.
Improbable but possible. Yes, she should be all right so far as
radiation goes. The dose, she absorbed was localized. But after her
brother dies she'll be alone. Then she won't be all right."

"She'll find a man," Randy said. "She always has."

****

Porky Logan's house stood at the end of Augustine Road, in a grove that
rose up a hillside at the back of the house. It was a two-story brick,
the largest house in Pistolville, so it was said. Porky's sister and
niece had been caring for him, but he lived alone. His wife and two
children had departed Pistolville ten years before.

They found Porky on the second floor. He was sitting up in bed, unshaven
chin resting upon blotched bare chest. Between his knees was a beer case
filled with jewelry. His hands were buried to the forearm in this
treasure. Dan said, "Porky!"

Porky didn't raise his head. Porky was dead.

Dan stepped to the bed, pushed Porky's body back against the pillows,
and pried an eyelid open. Dan said, "Let's get out of here. That's a
furnace he's got in his lap."

Randy tried not to breathe going down the steps. It was not only the
smell of Porky's room that hurried him.

Dan said, "We've got to keep people out of this house until we can get
Porky and that hot stuff underground. How do we do it?"

"What about a sign? We could paint a sign."

They found an unopened can of yellow paint and a brush in Porky's
garage. Dan used the brush on the front door. In block letters he wrote:

"DANGER! KEEP OUT! RADIATION!"

"You'd better put something else on there," Randy said. "There are a lot
of people around here who still don't know what radiation means."

"Do you really think so?"

"I'm positive of it. They've never seen it, or felt it. They hear about
it, but I don't think they believe it. They didn't believe it could kill
them before The Day--if they thought of it at all--and I don't think
they believe it now. You'd better add something they understand, like
Poison."

So under "RADIATION," Dan printed, "POISON." He said, "One other. Bill
Cullen."

****

Bigmouth Bill was as they had left him, except that he held a bottle of
cheap rum in his misshapen hands, and had been hitting it. Randy hovered
at the door, so he could listen but not be submerged in the odors.

Dan said, "Bill, we've found out what's making you sick. You're
absorbing radiation from the jewelry Porky traded for the whiskey.
Porky's jewelry is hot. It's radioactive. Where is it?"

Bill laughed wildly. He began to curse, methodically and without
imagination, as Randy had heard troops curse in the MLR in Korea. The
pace of his obscenities quickened, he choked, frothed, and pulled at the
rum bottle. "Jewelry!" he yelled, his yellow eyeballs rolling. "Jewelry!
Diamonds, emeralds, pearls, tinkly little bracelets, all hot, all
radioactive. That's rich!"

"Where is it, Bill?" Dan's voice was sharper.

"Ask her. Ask the dough-faced bitch! She has 'em, has the whole
bootful."

"What do you mean?"

"I've been hiding the stuff, figuring that if she got her hands on it
she'd swap it all for a bottle of vino. The jewels in one boot, the rum
in the other. Believe it or not, this is the last of my stock." He
sucked at the bottle.

"Go on," Dan said.

"I kept the boots, these boots here--" he gestured at a pair of hunting
boots--"hid under the bed. It was safe, okay. You see, my woman she
never cleaned anything, especially she never cleaned under the bed.
Well, when she went out for a while I thought I'd take a look at the
loot. You know, it was nice to hold it in your hands and dream about
what you were going to do with it when things got back to normal. But
she was watching through the window. She's been trying to catch me and
just a while ago she did. She walked in, grinning. I thought she was
going to tell me the war was over or something. She walked in and
reached under the bed and snatched the boot. All she said as she went
through the door was, 'I hope you croak, you sneaky bastard. I'm going
back to Apalachicola'."

Fascinated, Randy asked, "How does she expect to get to Apalachicola?"

"I keep--kept the Plymouth in the shed. It was nearly full with gas,
what was in the drum I had to service the outboards. I hope she wrecks."

Dan picked up his bag. His huge shoulders sagged. His face was unhappy
behind the red beard. "Do you still have that ointment I gave you?"

"Yes." Bill turned his head toward the table.

"Keep using it on your hands. It may give you relief."

"It may, but this will." Bill tilted the rum bottle and drank until he
gagged.

Riding back on River Road, Randy said, "Will Cullen live?"

"I doubt it. I don't have the drugs or antibiotics or blood transfusions
for him." He reached down and patted his bag. "Not much left in here,
Randy. I have to make decisions, now. I have drugs only for those worth
saving."

"What about the woman?"

"I don't think she'll die of radiation sickness. I don't think she'll
keep that hot gold and silver and platinum long enough. She'll either
swap for booze or, being stupid, try one of the main highways."

"I think the highwaymen will get her if she's headed for Apalachicola,"
Randy said.

It was strange that the term highwaymen, had revived in its true and
literal sense. These were not the romantic and reputedly chivalrous
highwaymen of Britain's post roads in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. These new highwaymen were ruthless and evil men who lately
had been choking the thin trickle of communications and trade between
towns and villages. Mostly, according to word that filtered into Fort
Repose, they operated on the main highways like the Turnpike and Routes
1, 441, 17, and 50. So they were called highwaymen.

They passed the empty McGovern place. It was already lushly overgrown.
"You know," Dan said, "in a few more months the jungle will take over."




CHAPTER NINE


They buried Porky Logan Friday morning. It was a ticklish and exhausting
procedure. Randy had to draw his gun to get it done.

First, it was necessary to obtain the cooperation of Bubba Offenhaus.
That was difficult enough. Bubba's funeral parlor was locked and empty
and he was no longer seen in town. Since he was Deputy Director of Civil
Defense as well as undertaker, a public appearance exposed him to all
sorts of requests and problems which frightened him and about which he
could do nothing. So Bubba and Kitty Offenhaus could only be found in
their big new house, a rare combination of modern and classic,
constructed largely of tinted glass between ante-bellum Greek columns.

When Randy found Bubba sitting on his terrace he looked like a balloon
out of which air had been let. His trousers sagged front and rear and
folds of skin drooped around his mouth. Dan explained about Porky. Bubba
was unimpressed. "Let them bury him in Pistolville," he said. "Plant him
in his own back-yard."

"It can't be done that way," Dan said. "Porky's a menace and the jewelry
is deadly. Bubba, what we've got to have is a lead-lined coffin. We'll
bury his loot with him."

"You know very well I've only got one in stock," Bubba said. "As a
matter of fact it's the only casket I've got left and probably the only
casket in Tumucuan County. It's the de luxe model with hammered bronze
handles and shield which can be suitably engraved, and reinforced bronze
corners. Guaranteed for eternity and I'm damned if I'm going to give it
up for Porky Logan."

"Who are you saving it for," Randy asked, "yourself?"

"I don't see any point in you becoming insulting, Randy. That casket
cost me eight hundred and forty-five dollars F.O.B. and it retails for
fifteen hundred plus tax. Who's going to pay for it? As a matter of
fact, who's going to reimburse me for all the other caskets, and
everything else, that I've contributed since The Day?"

"I'm sure the government will," Dan said, "one day."

"Do you think the government's going to restore Repose-in-Peace Park? Do
you think it'll pay for all those choice plots I've handed out, free?
Like fun. I suppose you want to bury Porky in Repose-in-Peace?"

"That's the general idea," Dan said.

"And you expect me to use my hearse to cart the cadaver?"

"Somebody has to do it, Bubba, and you're not only the man with the
hearse but you're in Civil Defense."

Bubba groaned. The most stupid thing he had ever done was accept the
Civil Defense job. At the time it had seemed quite an honor. His
appointment was mentioned in the Orlando and Tampa papers, and he rated
a whole page, with picture, in the _Southeast Mortician_. It was
undoubtedly a bigger thing than holding office in the Lions or Chamber
of Commerce. His status had increased, even with his wife. Kitty was Old
Southern Family, while he had been raised in South Chicago. She had
never wholly forgiven him for this, or for his profession. Secretly, he
had considered Civil Defense a boondoggle, like handouts to foreign
countries and spending millions on moon rockets and such. He had never
imagined there would be a war. It was true that after The Day he and
Kitty had been able to get supplies in San Marco that he wouldn't have
been able to get if he hadn't been in Civil Defense. For one thing, he
had been able to get gasoline out of the county garage. But the tanks
had long been dry, all other official supplies exhausted. He said, "I've
only got one hearse that will run and only a couple of gallons of gas in
it. I'm saving it for an emergency."

"This is an emergency," Dan said. "You'll have to use it now."

Bubba thought of another obstacle. "It'll take eight men to tote that
lead-lined casket with Porky in it even if he's lost weight like I
have."

Randy spoke. "We'll get them. Plenty of strong men hanging around
Marines Park."

****

In the park they mounted the bandstand. Randy shouted, "Hey, everybody!
Come over here!" The traders drifted over, wondering.

Bubba made a little speech. Bubba was accustomed to speaking at service
club luncheons and civic meetings, but this audience, although many of
the faces were familiar, was not the same. It was neither attentive nor
courteous. He spoke of community spirit and co-operation and
togetherness. He reminded them that they had sent Porky Logan to the
state legislature and he knew Porky must have been a friend to many
there. Now he asked for volunteers to help bury Porky. No hands went up.
A few of the traders snickered.

Bubba shrugged and looked at Dan Gunn. Dan said, "This is in your own
interest. If we leave the dead unburied we're inviting an epidemic. In
addition, in this case we must get rid of radioactive material that can
be dangerous to anyone who finds it."

Somebody yelled, "Bubba's the undertaker, ain't he? Well, let him
undertake it."

Some of the men laughed. Randy saw that they were bored and would soon
turn away. It was necessary that he act. He stepped in front of Dan,
lifted the flap of his holster, and drew out the .45. Holding it
casually, so that it was a menace to no one in particular, and yet to
each of them separately, he pulled back the hammer. His left forefinger
jabbed at the faces of five men, big men. "You, Rusty, and you, Tom, and
you there, you have just volunteered as pallbearers."

They looked at him amazed. For a long time, no one had ordered them to
do anything. For a long time, there had not even been a boss on a job.
Nobody moved. Some of the traders carried handguns in hip pockets or
holsters. Others had leaned shotguns or rifles against benches or the
bandstand railing. Randy watched for a movement. He was going to shoot
the first man who reached for a weapon. This was the decision he had
made. Regardless of the consequences he was going to do it. Having made
the decision, and being certain he would carry it out, he felt easy
about it. He realized they must know this. He stepped down from the
bandstand, his eyes holding his five volunteers. He said, "All right,
let's get going."

The five men followed him and he holstered his pistol.

****

So they buried Porky Logan. With him they buried the contaminated loot
in Porky's carton and out of the Hernandez house. Also into the coffin
went the fire tongs with which Dan Gunn had handled the jewelry. When
the grave was filled and mounded somebody said, "Hadn't there ought to
be a prayer for the poor bastard?"

They all looked at Randy. Randy said, "God rest his soul." He added,
knowing that it would be passed along, "And God help anybody who digs
him up to get the stuff. It'll kill them like it killed Porky."

He turned and walked slowly, head down, to the car, thinking. Authority
had disintegrated in Fort Repose. The Mayor, Alexander Getty, who was
also chairman of the town council, was barricaded in his house, besieged
by imaginary and irrational fears that the Russians had invaded and were
intent on his capture, torture, and the rape of his wife and daughter.
The Chief of Police was dead. The two other policemen had abandoned
unpaid public duty to scramble for their families. The fire and
sanitation departments, equipment immobilized, no longer existed. Bubba
Offenhaus was frightened, bewildered, and incapable of either decision
or action. So Randy had shoved his gun into this vacuum. He had assumed
leadership and he was not sure why. It was enough trouble keeping the
colony on River Road alive and well. He felt a loneliness not
unfamiliar. It was like leading a platoon out of the MLR to occupy some
isolated outpost. Command, whether of a platoon or a town, was a lonely
state.

****

When they returned to River Road at noon Randy's boat shoes were stiff
with caked clay of the graveyard. He was knocking them clear of clods,
on the front steps, when he was attracted by movement in the foliage
behind Florence Wechek's house. Alice Cooksey and Florence were standing
under a tall cabbage palm, steadying a ladder. At the top of the ladder,
head and shoulders hidden by fronds, was Lib. He wondered why she must
be up there. He wished she would stay on the ground. She took too many
chances. She could get hurt. With medical supplies dwindling--Dan had
already been forced to use most of their reserve--they all had to be
careful. Everyone had chores and if one was hurt it meant added burdens,
including nursing, on the others. A simple fracture could be compound
disaster.

Bill McGovern, Malachai, and Two-Tone Henry came around the corner of
the house. Bill was wearing gray flannels raggedly cut off above the
knees, tennis shoes, and nothing else. His right hand grasped a bouquet
of wrenches. Grease smeared his bald head and fine white beard. He no
longer looked like a Caesar, but like an unkempt Jove armed with
thunderbolts. Before he could speak Randy demanded: "Bill, what's your
daughter doing up that palm?"

"She won't say," Bill said. "She and Alice and Florence are cooking up
some sort of a surprise for us. Maybe she's found a bird's nest. I
wouldn't know."

Randy said, "What's the delegation?"

Bill said, "It's Two-Tone's idea. Two-Tone, you talk."

Two-Tone said, "Mister Randy, you know my sugar cane will be tall and
sweet and Pop's corn will be up in June."

"So?"

"Corn and sugar cane means corn whiskey. I mean we can make 'shine if
you says it's okay. Pop and Mister Bill here, they say it's up to you. I
suggests it only on one account. We can trade 'shine."

"Naturally you wouldn't drink any, would you, Two-Tone?"

"Oh, no sir!"

Randy understood that they required something from him beyond
permission. Yet if they could manufacture corn whiskey it would be like
finding coffee beans. Whiskey was a negotiable money crop. In this humid
climate both corn and sugar cane would deteriorate rapidly. Corn whiskey
was different. The longer you kept it the more valuable it became.
Furthermore, only a few bottles of bourbon and Scotch remained, and the
bourbon was strictly medicinal, Dan's anesthetic. Two-Tone, the no-good
genius! Cannily, all Randy said was, "If you have Preacher's permission,
it's all right with me. It's Preacher's corn."

Bill said, "I've already contributed my Imperial."

"You've what?"

"Contributed the guts of my Imperial. You see, to make the still we have
to have a lot of copper tubing. We have to bend condensing coils, and
you have to have tubing between the boiler and condenser and so forth."

"What you're getting at," Randy said slowly, "is that you want me to
contribute the gas lines out of my Bonneville."

"That's right. The lines out of my car won't give us enough length. And
we have to have your lawn roller. You see, first we've got to build a
mill to crush the cane. We have to get the juice and boil it down to
molasses before we can make whiskey, or for that matter use it as syrup.
Balaam, the mule, will walk a circle, a lever harnessed to his back to
turn the roller on concrete slabs. That's the mill. That's the way they
did it a couple of hundred years ago. I've seen pictures."

Randy knew it would work. He said, sadly, "Okay. Go into the garage. But
I don't want to watch." It had been a beautiful car. He remembered
Mark's casual prediction that it wouldn't be worth a damn to him. Mark
had been wrong. Some of it was useful.

Lunch was fish, with half a lime. Orange juice, all you could drink. A
square of honeycomb. Dan and Helen were at the table. The others had
already finished. Helen always waited for him, Randy noticed. She was so
solicitous it was sometimes embarrassing.

Dan looked at his plate and said, "A fine, thinning diet. If everybody
in the country had been on this diet before The Day the cardiac death
rate would have been cut in half."

"So what good would it have done them?" Randy said. He speared his honey
and munched it, rolling his eyes. "We've got to do more trading with Jim
Hickey. We've got to find something Jim needs." Randy remembered what
Jim had said about half his broods going foul since The Day and how Jim
suspected radiation was responsible. He told Dan and Helen what Hickey
had said.

Dan stared at his plate, troubled. He cut into his honeycomb and tasted
it. "Delicious," he said, but his mind was elsewhere. At last he looked
up and spoke gravely. "We shouldn't be surprised. Who can tell how much
cesium 137 showered down on The Day? How much was carried into the upper
atmosphere and has been filtering down since? The geneticists warned us
of damage to future generations. Well, Hickey's bees are in a future
generation."

Helen looked scared. Randy realized that this was a more serious matter
to women than to men, although frightening enough to anybody. She said,
"Does that mean--will it affect humans?"

"Certainly some human genetic damage can be expected," Dan said. "What
will happen to the birth rate is anybody's guess. And yet, this is only
nature's way of protecting the race. Nature is proving Darwin's law of
natural selection. The defective bee, unable to cope with its
environment, is rejected by nature before birth. I think this will be
true of man. It is said that nature is cruel. I don't think so. Nature
is just, and even merciful. By natural selection, nature will attempt to
undo what man has done."

"You make it sound comforting," Helen said.

"Only an opinion, based on almost no evidence. In six or seven months
I'll know more. But to evaluate everything may take a thousand years. So
let's not worry about it. Right now I've got other worries, like tires.
The tires on the Model-A are smooth, Randy, and I've got to make a
couple of calls out in the country. Got any suggestions?"

"I've been thinking of tires," Randy said. "The tires on Florence's old
Chevvy will fit the Model-A. Two of them are almost new. Let's go over
and make the change."

****

It was the custom of Randy and Dan to meet in the apartment at six each
evening, listen for the clear channel station which would be heard at
this hour if at all, and, if they were tired and the rigors of the day
warranted, share a drink. At six on that Friday evening, Dan had not
returned from his calls, so Randy sat at his bar alone with the little
transistor portable. Life was ebbing from its last set of batteries. He
feared the day when it would no longer pick up even the strongest
signal, or give any sound whatsoever, and the day could not be far
distant. So, what strength was left in the batteries he carefully
rationed. Sam Hazzard's all-wave receiver, operating on recharged
automobile batteries, was really their only reliable source of
information. He clicked on the radio, was relieved to hear static, and
tried the Conelrad frequencies.

Immediately he heard a familiar voice, thin and gravelly although he
turned the volume full. "...against smallpox."

Randy knew he had missed the first item of news. Then he heard:

    "There have been isolated reports of disorders and outlawry from
    several of the Contaminated Zones. As a result, Mrs.
    Vanbruuker-Brown, Acting President, in her capacity as Commander
    in Chief of the Armed Forces, has authorized all Reserve
    officers and National Guard officers, not in contact with their
    commanders or headquarters, to take independent action to
    preserve public safety in those areas where Civil Defense has
    broken down or where organized military units do not exist.
    These officers will act in accordance with their best judgment,
    under the proclamation of martial law. When possible, they will
    wear the uniform when exercising authority. I repeat this new..."

The signal hummed and faded. Randy clicked off the set. Even as he began
to assimiliate the significance of what he had heard he was aware that
Helen was standing on the other side of the counter. In her hands she
held a pair of scissors, comb, and a silver hand mirror. She was
smiling. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

"Yes. Today's your haircut day, Randy. Today's Friday." Helen trimmed
his hair and Bill McGovern's fringe each Friday, and barbered Dan and
Ben Franklin Saturdays.

"You know I'm in the Reserve," Randy said "I'm legal."

"What do you mean?"

"I had to pull my gun this morning to get Porky Logan buried. I had no
authority. Now I do have authority, legally." His thoughts on the
proclamation, at the moment, went no further.

"That's fine. Now get into a chair."

He walked into his office. Because of the swivel chair, it was also the
barbershop. Helen tied a towel around his neck and began snipping,
deftly and rapidly. She was some woman, he thought. Under any conditions
she could keep a household running smoothly. In ten minutes it was done.

Her hand ruffled and then smoothed his hair. He could feel her breasts,
round and warm, pressing against his shoulder blades. "You're getting
gray hairs, Randy," she said. The timbre of her voice was deeper than
usual.

"Who isn't?"

She rubbed and smoothed his temples. Her fingers kneaded the back of his
neck. "Do you like that?" she whispered. "Mark loved it. When he came
home, tense and worried, I always rubbed his temples and his neck like
this."

Randy said, "It feels fine." He wished she wouldn't talk like that. She
made him nervous. He put his hands on the arms of the chair and started
to rise.

She pulled him back and whirled the chair so that he faced her. Her eyes
were round. He could see beads of perspiration at the corners of her
nose, and on her forehead. "You are Mark," she said. "Don't you believe
me? Here, look!" She lifted the mirror from the desk and thrust it
before his face.

He looked, wondering how he could gracefully escape, wondering what was
wrong with her. It was true that his face, leaner and harder, looked
like Mark's face now. "I do look something like him," he admitted, "but
why shouldn't I? I'm his brother."

Her arms pinning him with unexpected strength, she kissed him wildly, as
if her mouth could subdue and mold and change him.

His hands found her wrists and he forced her back. The mirror fell and
smashed.

"Don't!" she cried. "Don't push me away! You're Mark! You can't deny it!
You're Mark!"

He struggled out of the chair, clamping her wrists, trying not to injure
her. He knew that she was mad and he fought to control the panic within
himself. "Stop it!" he heard himself shouting. "Stop it, Helen! Stop it!
I'm not Mark! I'm Randy!"

She screamed, "Mark!"

The door was ajar. Through it came Lib's voice, loud and welcome,
"Randy, are you shorn? If Helen's finished, come on out. I've got
something to show you."

He released Helen's wrists. She leaned against the desk, face averted,
shoulders quivering, one hand stifling the sounds erupting from her
mouth. He said, gently, "Please, Helen--" He touched her arm. She drew
away from him. He fled into the living room.

Lib stood at the porch door, her face somber, beckoning. She said
quietly, "Up to the roof, where we can talk."

Randy followed her, knowing that she must have heard and grateful for
her interference. It was something he would have had to tell Lib anyway.
He would have to tell Dan too. This emotional earthquake could bring
down their house. It was a problem for a physician.

Up on the captain's walk, Randy lowered himself carefully into a deck
chair. The canvas would rot before summer's end. His hands were shaking.
"Did you hear it all?" he asked.

"Yes. All. And saw some too. Don't ever let her know."

"What's wrong with her?" It was a protest rather than a question.

Lib sat on the edge of his chair and put her hands on his hands and
said, "Stop shaking, Randy. I know you're confused. It was inevitable. I
knew it was coming. I'll diagnose it for you as best I can. It's a form
of fantasy."

Randy was silent, wondering at her detachment and coolness.

"It is," she went on, "the sort of transference you find in dreams--the
substitution in dreams of one person for another. Helen allowed herself
to slip into a dream. I think she is a completely chaste person. She is,
isn't she?"

"I'm sure of it, or I was."

"Yet she is a person who requires love and is used to it. For many years
a man has been the greater part of her life. So she has this
conflict--intense loyalty to her husband and yet need of a man to
receive her abundance of love and affection. She tried to resolve the
conflict irrationally. You became Mark. It was an hallucination."

"You're talking like a professional, Lib."

"I'm not a professional. I just wanted to be one. I majored in
psychology. Remember?"

It was something she had told him but he had forgotten because it seemed
incongruous and not in the least important. Lib looked like a girl who
had majored in ballet and water-skiing at Miami rather than psychology
at Sarah Lawrence. He knew that she worked for a year in a Cleveland
clinic and had abandoned the job only because of her mother's illness.
When she spoke of this year, which was seldom, it was with nostalgia, as
some girls spoke of a year in Europe or on the stage. He suspected it
must have been the most rewarding year of her life, and certainly there
must have been a man, or men, in it. Randy said, "Lib, do you think
she's crazy?"

"Helen's not psychotic. She's under terrible strain. She let herself go,
but only for a moment. She indulged a temporary fantasy. Now it is over.
Now she will be ashamed of herself. The best thing you can do is pretend
it didn't happen. One day she'll mention it to you, perhaps obliquely,
and apologize. Eventually she'll understand why she did it and the sense
of guilt will leave her. One day, when we're better friends, I'll make
her understand it. You know there is a man in the house for Helen--a
perfectly fine man. I'm going to make that my special project."

Randy felt relieved. He looked out over the river, contemplating his
ignorance of women and the peace of evening. On the end of the dock Ben
Franklin and Peyton were fishing. It was understood that anyone, child
or adult, could go fishing before breakfast or after assigned chores
were done. Fishing was not only recreation but the necessary daily
harvest of a crop providentially swimming at their feet. Presently the
brass ship's bell on the porch sang its sharp, clean, sea note. The bell
was a relic of Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee Peyton's longboats. It was the
same bell that Randy's mother had used to summon Mark and him from the
river to wash for dinner. There was peace and continuity in the sound of
the bell. The bell announced that there was food on the table and a
woman in the kitchen. So it was not only a message to the children but
to Randy. Helen had pulled herself together. He watched Ben and Peyton,
trailed by Graf, thread their way up through the grove. Graf still
shared Randy's couch but all day he shadowed the boy. This was right. A
boy needed a dog. A boy also needed a father.

When the children were close to the house Randy yelled down, "What'd you
get?"

Ben held up a string of bream and speckled perch. "Sixteen," he shouted,
"on worms and crickets. I got fifteen, she only got one."

Peyton danced in indignation, a slim shrill-voiced sprite. "Who cares
about fish? If I grow up I'm not going to be a fisherman!"

Helen called from the kitchen window. The children disappeared.

Randy said, "Did you ever hear a little girl say '_If_ I grow up'
before?"

"No, I never did. It gives me the creeps."

"Not their fault," Randy said. "Ours."

"Would you want children, Randy?"

Randy considered the question. He thought of Jim Hickey's bees, and
Peyton's "if," and of cow's milk you would not dare feed a baby in a
contaminated zone, even if you had a cow, and of many other things.

Lib waited a long time for an answer and then she leaned across the
chair and kissed him and said, "Don't try to answer now. I've got to go
down and help with dinner. Don't come downstairs for a few minutes,
Randy. We've whipped up a surprise."

****

At seven, conscious that he had not heard Dan return, Randy went
downstairs. The table was set as if for a feast--a white cloth, two new
candles; a salad bowl as well as plate at each place. A laden salad-boat
of Haitian mahogany rode on the circular linen lagoon. Garnishing the
inevitable platter of broiled fish was a necklace of mushrooms. He
tasted the salad. It was delicate, varied, and wonderful. "Who invented
this?" he asked. He had not tasted greens in months.

Helen had not met his eyes since he entered the dining room. She said,
"Alice Cooksey. Alice found a book listing edible palms, grasses, and
herbs. Lib did most of the picking."

"What all's in it?"

"Fiddlehead ferns, hearts of palm, bamboo shoots, wild onions, some of
the Admiral's ornamental peppers, and the first tomatoes out of Hannah
Henry's garden."

Lib said, "Wait'll you try the mushrooms. That was Helen's idea. It's
funny, for the last week they've been growing all over, right in front
of our eyes, and only Helen recognized them as food."

"No toadstools I hope," Randy said.

Helen smiled and for the first time looked at him directly. "Oh, no.
Alice thought of that too. I've been wandering around the hammock with
an illustrated book in one hand and a basket in the other."

Now that she could see he was treating the incident in his office as
something that hadn't happened, she was regaining control of herself. He
said, "Helen, you be careful in that hammock. And Lib, you stay out of
palm trees. We don't want any snake bites or broken legs. Dan has
troubles enough." He put down his fork. "Where is Dan?"

Nobody knew. Dan was usually home before six. Occasionally, he was as
late as this or later when he encountered an emergency. Still, it was
impossible not to worry. It was at times like this that Randy truly
missed the telephone. Without communications, the simplest mechanical
failure could turn into a nightmare and disaster. He finished the fish,
mushrooms, and salad, but without appetite.

****

Randy fidgeted until eight and then said, "I'm going to see the Admiral.
Maybe Dan stopped there for dinner." He knew this was unlikely, but he
tried in any case to visit Sam Hazzard each evening and watch him comb
the frequencies. There were other reasons. He stopped at the Wechek and
Henry houses like a company commander checking his outposts. He slept
uneasily unless he knew all was well around his perimeter. More
compelling, Lib usually went with him. It was their opportunity to have
a little time alone. It was paradoxical that they lived in the same
house, ate almost every meal elbow to elbow or across the bar in his
apartment, slept within twenty feet of each other, and yet they could be
alone hardly at all.

Ben Franklin said, "Wait until I get the shotgun, Randy. I'll go with
you. It's my night to stand guard." He raced upstairs.

Helen said, "Do you really think you ought to let him do it, Randy?"

"It'd break his heart if I didn't. I think he'll be okay. Caleb is going
to stay up with him and Malachai will be right there. Malachai will
sleep with one eye open."

"Why are you letting him have your shotgun?"

"Because if something comes around the Henrys' yard I want him to hit
it, not just pop away at it in the dark with a twenty-two. I've taught
him how to handle the shotty. It'll be loaded with number two buck.
He'll do all right."

Ben came out on the porch carrying the gun. Lib said, "Am I invited?"

Randy said, "Certainly." He turned to Bill McGovern. "If Dan shows up,
give me three bells, will you?" Three strokes of the ship's bell meant
come home, but it was not an emergency signal. Five bells was the panic
button. The bell could be heard for a mile along the shore and across
water.

Pale yellow lamplight showed in the Henrys' windows. Randy knocked and
Missouri, looking almost svelte in a newly acquired waistline, opened
the door. "Mister Randy. I guessed 'twas you. I want to thank you for
the honey. Tasted mighty good. Will you come in and have some tea?"

"Tea!" Randy saw a kettle steaming on a brick oven in the fireplace.

"We calls it tea. I grow mints under the house and dry 'em until they
powders. So we has mint tea."

"We'll skip it tonight, Mizzoo. I just came to put Ben Franklin on his
stand. Caleb ready?"

Missouri's son stepped out of the shadows, teeth and eyes gleaming.
Incredibly, he carried a six-foot spear.

"Let me see that," Randy said. He hefted it. It had been fashioned, he
saw, from a broken garden edger, the blade ground to a narrow triangle.
It was heavy, well balanced, and lethal.

"Uncle Malachai made it for me," Caleb said proudly.

"It's a wicked weapon, all right," Randy said, and returned it to the
boy.

Malachai, carrying a lantern, joined them. Malachai said, "I figured
that if Ben Franklin missed with the shotgun Caleb best have it for
close-in defense, if it's truly a wolf, like Preacher says."

Randy was certain that whatever had stolen the Henrys' hens, and the
pig, it wasn't a wolf, but he wanted to impress Ben Franklin with the
seriousness of his watch. "Probably not a wolf," he said, "but it could
be a cougar--a panther. My father used to hunt 'em when he was young.
Plenty of panther in Timucuan County until the first boom brought so
many people down. Now there aren't so many people, so there will be more
panther."

They walked toward Balaam's tired barn. The mule snorted and rattled the
boards in his stall. "It's only me, Balaam," Malachai said. "Balaam,
quiet down!" Balaam quieted.

Randy pointed to the bench alongside the barn. "That's your stand, Ben."
Bill McGovern had sat on the bench the previous night and seen nothing.

"Stand?" Ben Frankin said.

"That's what you call it in a deer hunt. When I was your age my father
used to take me hunting and put me on a stand. There are a couple of
things I want you to remember, Ben. Everything depends on you--and you,
Caleb--keeping absolutely still. Whatever it is out there, is better
equipped than you are. It can see better and hear better and smell
better. All you've got on it is brains. Your only chance of getting it
is to hear it before it hears or sees you." Randy looked at the sky.
There were only stars. Later, there would be a quarter moon. "Chances
are you'll hear it before you see it. But if you talk, or make any
sound, you'll never see it at all because it'll hear you first and
leave. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Ben said.

"You'll get cramped and you'll get tired. So when you sit on the stand
you move around all you want at first and find out just how far you can
move without making any noise. You got shells in the chambers?"

"Yes, sir, and four extra in my pocket."

"You'll only need what's in the gun. If you don't get him with two
you'll never get him at all. And Ben--"

"Yes, sir."

"Hold steady on it and don't miss. We want to get rid of this thing or
somebody will have to sit up all night every night."

Ben said, "Randy, suppose it's a man?"

This possibility had been restless in Randy's mind from the first and he
had not wanted to mention it, but since it was mentioned he gave the
unavoidable answer. "Whatever it is, Ben, shoot it. And Caleb, if he
misses I depend on you to stick it." He turned to Malachai. "Thanks for
lighting us out. We're going on to Admiral Hazzard's house now. Good
night, Malachai."

"Good night," Malachai said. "I sleep light, Mister Randy."

Lib took his hand and they walked to the river bank and down the path
that led toward the single square of light announcing that Sam Hazzard
was in his den. Randy chuckled, thinking of Caleb's spear. "We have just
witnessed an historic event," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"North American civilization's return to the Neolithic Age."

"I don't think it's funny," Lib said. "I didn't like the way you spoke
to Ben Franklin. It was brutal."

"In the Neolithic," Randy said, "a boy either grows up fast or he
doesn't grow up at all."

Sam Hazzard's den was compact and crowded, like a shipmaster's cabin
stocked for a long and lonely voyage. It was filled with mementos of his
service, ceremonial and Samurai swords, nautical instruments, charts,
maps, books on shelves and stacked in corners, bound files of the
_Proceedings, The Foreign Affairs Quarterly_, and the _Annals_ of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science. The admiral's L-shaped
desk spread along two walls. One side was preempted by the
professional-looking short-wave receiver and his radio log. The radio
was turned on, but when Randy and Lib entered the room all they heard
was a low hum.

Sam Hazzard was not as tall as Lib and his weathered skin was drawn
tautly over fine bones. In slippers and dragon-blazoned shantung
robe--his implacable gray eyes shadowed and softened by the indistinct
lighting and horn-rimmed glasses, cottony hair like a halo--he appeared
fragile; a deception. He was tough as an antique ivory figurine which
has withstood the vicissitudes of centuries, and can accept more. He
said, "A place for the lady to sit." He sailed a plastic model of the
carrier _Wasp_--the old _Wasp_ cited by Churchill for stinging twice in
the Mediterranean and then herself stung to death by torpedoes--to the
far corner of the desk. "Up there," he ordered Lib, "where you can be
properly admired. And you, Randy, lift those books out of that chair.
Gently, if you please. Welcome aboard to both of you."

Randy said, "You haven't seen Dan Gunn, have you?"

"No. Not today. Why?"

"He hasn't come home."

"Missing, eh? That sounds ungood, Randy."

"If he comes home while we're out Helen or Bill will ring the bell. Can
we hear it in here?"

"Yes indeed, so long as the window's open. It always startles me."

Randy saw that the Admiral had been working. The Admiral was writing
something he called, without elaboration, "A Footnote to History." A
portable typewriter squatted in the center of a ring of books. Research,
Randy supposed. He recognized Durant's _Caesar and Christ_, Gibbon's
_Decline and Fall_, and _Vom Kriege_ by Clausewitz, indicating a
footnote to ancient history. Randy said, "Any poop this evening?"

"I suppose you heard the Civil Defense broadcast."

"I caught part of it. Then my batteries quietly expired."

The Admiral gave his attention to the radio. He turned the knob changing
frequencies. "I've been listening for a station in the thirty-one meter
band. Claims to be in Peru. I heard it for the first time last night. It
put out some pretty outlandish stuff. It doesn't seem to be on yet, so
we'll try for it again later. I've just switched to five point seven
megacycles. That's an Air Force frequency I can tap sometimes. You've
never heard it, Randy. Interesting, but cryptic."

The speaker squealed and whined. "Somebody's transmitter is open," the
Admiral interpreted. "Something's coming."

A voice boomed with shocking loudness in the small room:

"Sky Queen, Sky Queen. Do not answer. Do not answer. This is Big Rock.
This is Big Rock. Applejack. Repeat, Applejack. Authentication X-Ray."

Lib spoke, excitedly, "What is it? What does it mean?"

Hazzard smiled. "I don't know. I'm not up on Air Force codes and jargon.
I've heard that Sky Queen call two or three times in the past month. Sky
Queen could be a bomber, or a patrol plane, or a whole wing or air
division. Big Rock--whoever that is--could be telling Sky
Queen--whatever she may be--any number of things. Proceed to target,
orbit, continue patrol, come home all is forgiven. I can't even make an
informed guess. However, I do know this. That was a good American call
and so we're still in business." The smile departed. "On the other hand,
it indicates that the enemy is still in business too."

"How do you figure?" Randy asked.

"That 'Do not answer' phrase. Why does Big Rock order Sky Queen to be
silent? Because if Sky Queen acknowledges the call then somebody might
be able to take a radio fix on her, estimate speed and course, and
vector fighters--or launch ground-to-air rockets to shoot her down."

Randy considered this. "Then Sky Queen is probably stooging around over
enemy territory."

"That's good deduction but we can't be certain. For all we know, Sky
Queen may be hunting a sub off Daytona. It makes me wild, listening to
the damn Air Force--you will please pardon me, Lib--but if the enemy is
listening on this frequency it must make them wild too."

Lib asked, "What did that 'Authentication X-Ray' stand for?"

"X-Ray is simply international code for the letter X. My guess is that
before every mission they change the authentication letter so that the
enemy can't take over the frequency and give Sky Queen a false heading,
or phony instructions."

"You know, I enjoyed hearing that," Lib said. "It gave me a nice
feeling. Big Rock has a solid Midwest accent."

Sam Hazzard moved a candle so that better light fell on his dials. "Big
Rock won't be back again tonight," he said. "I've never heard him more
than once a night. He makes his call and that's it. I'll try the
thirty-one meter band again."

In the candlelight Hazzard's hands shone with the silky, translucent
patina of age and yet they were remarkably deft. They discovered a
fascinating squeal. His fingers worked the band-spreader delicately as a
master cracksman violating a safe and he pressed his face forward as if
he expected to hear tumblers click. Very gradually, a faint voice
replaced the squeal. He turned up the power. They heard, in English with
an indefinite accent:

    "Continuing the news to North America--

    "The representative of the Argentine has informed the South
    American Federation that two ships with wheat have sailed for
    Nice, in southern France, responding to radio appeals from that
    city. The appeals from Nice say that several hundred thousand
    refugees are camped in makeshift shelter on the Cte d'Azure.
    Many are starving. The casino at Monaco and the Prince's palace
    have been converted into hospitals.

    "In a Spanish-language broadcast heard here today, Radio Tokyo
    announced that the Big Three meeting in New Delhi has approved
    preliminary plans for flying desperately needed vaccines and
    antitoxins to uncontaminated cities in Europe, North America,
    and Australia."

"Big Three!" Randy said. "Who's the Big Three?"

"Sh-h!" said the Admiral. "Maybe we'll find out."

The announcer continued:

    "China, where 'Save Asia First' sentiment is strong, urged that
    first priority for vaccine aerial shipments go to the Soviet
    Union's maritime provinces, where typhus is reported. India and
    Japan felt that the smallpox epidemic on the West Coast of the
    United States, Canada, and in Mexico should receive equal
    priority. The universal shortage of aviation gasoline will make
    any quick aid difficult, however..."

The squeal insinuated itself into the voice and subdued it. Hazzard
caressed the band-spreader. "The atmospherics have been crazy ever since
The Day." Abruptly he asked Randy: "Do you believe it?"

"It's weird," Randy said. "Maybe it's a Soviet bloc propaganda station
pretending to be South American, set up to confuse us and start rumors.
I'll admit I'm confused. I thought the Chinese were in it, on the other
side."

"The Chinese never liked Russia's preoccupation with the Med," Hazzard
said. "Maybe they opted out, which would be smart of them. It could be
simpler. If they didn't have nuclear capability we wouldn't bother
hitting them on The Day, and without nuclear weapons they wouldn't dare
stick their noses into a real war. If that was it, they were lucky."

"I noticed that station quoted Tokyo? How is it you didn't hear Tokyo?"

"I've never been able to pick up any Asiatic stations. I used to get
Europe fine--London, Moscow, Bonn, Berne. Africa, too, especially the
Voice of America transmitter in the Tangier. Not any more. Not since The
Day."

The signal cleared. They heard:

    "...but as yet the Big Three have been unable to reopen
    communications with Dmitri Torgatz. According to Radio Tokyo,
    Torgatz headed the Soviet government while the Soviet Union's
    capital was in Ulan Bator in Outer Mongolia. The medium-wave
    station operating from Ulan Bator is no longer heard."

"That doesn't sound like Soviet propaganda to me," Randy said. "Who is
Dmitri Torgatz?"

The Admiral glanced up at a shelf of reference works. He selected a
slender book, _Directory of Communist Leaders_, found the name, and
read: "Torgatz, Dmitri; born Leningrad 1903? Married, wife's name
unlisted; children unlisted; Director Leningrad Agitprop 1946-49;
Candidate member Presidium 1950-53; Director waterworks, Naryan Mar,
Siberia, since fall of Malenkov."

"Looks like they had a shakeup," Randy said. "Looks like they had to
reach way down and find a minor league bureaucrat."

"Yes. It's surprising that Torgatz should be running Russia," the
Admiral said, "until you consider that a female, last on the list of
Cabinet members, is running the United States."

Randy could see that Lib wasn't listening. She was staring at the tassel
of a sword resting on pegs behind his head, her lips parted, eyes
unblinking. Her thoughts, he had discovered, frequently raced ahead of
his or sped down dark and fascinating byways. When she concentrated thus
she left the party. She murmured, "Smallpox."

Not understanding that Lib, mentally, was no longer in the room with
them, Sam Hazzard inquired, "What about smallpox?"

"Oh!" Lib shook her head. "I think of smallpox as something out of the
Middle Ages, like the Black Plague. It's true that every so often it
cropped up, but we always slapped it down again. What happens now
without vaccine? What about diphtheria and yellow fever? Will they start
up again? Without penicillin and DDT, where are we? All good things came
to us automatically. We were born with silver spoons in our mouths and
electric dishwashers to keep them sanitary and clean. We relaxed, didn't
we? What happened to us, Admiral?"

Sam Hazzard disconnected the radio's batteries and pulled his chair
around to face them. "I've been trying to find the answer." He nodded at
his typewriter and the books massed on his desk. "I've been trying to
put it down in black and white and pass it along. Up to now, no bottom.
All I've found out was where I myself--and my fellow
professionals--failed. I'll explain."

He opened a drawer and drew out a folder. "I called this 'A Footnote to
History.' You see, I was in the Pentagon when we were having the big
hassles on roles and missions and it occurred to me that I might be one
of the few still alive who knew the inside of what went on and how the
decisions were reached and I thought that future historians might be
interested. So I set it all down factually. I set down all the arguments
between the big carrier admirals and the atomic seaplane admirals and
the ICBM generals and pentomic division generals and heavy bomber
generals and manned missile generals. I told how we finally achieved
what we thought was a balanced establishment.

"When I finished I read it over and realized it was a farce."

He tossed the manuscript on the desk as if he were discarding unwanted
fourth class mail.

"You see, I confused the tactical with the strategic. I think we all
did. The truth is this. Once both sides had maximum capability in
hydrogen weapons and efficient means of delivering them there was no
sane alternative to peace.

"Every maxim of war was archaic. The rules of Clausewitz, Mahan, all of
them were obsolete as the Code Duello. War was no longer an instrument
of national policy, only an instrument for national suicide. War itself
was obsolete. So my 'Footnote' deals with tactical palavers of no real
importance. We might as well have been playing on the rug with lead
soldiers."

The Admiral rose and unkinked his back. "I think most of us sensed this
truth, but we could not accept it. You see, no matter how well we
understood the truth it was necessary that the Kremlin understand it
too. It takes two to make a peace but only one to make a war. So all we
could do, while vowing not to strike first, was line up our lead
soldiers."

"That was all you could do?" Lib asked.

"All. The answer was not in the Pentagon, or even in the White House.
I'm looking elsewhere. One place, here." He tapped Gibbon. "There are
odd similarities between the end of the Pax Romana and the end of the
Pax Americana which inherited Pax Britannica. For instance, the prices
paid for high office. When it became common to spend a million dollars
to elect senators from moderately populous states, I think that should
have been a warning to us. For instance, free pap for the masses. Bread
and circuses. Roman spectacles and our spectaculars. Largesse from the
conquering proconsuls and television giveways from the successful
lipstick king. To understand the present you must know the past, yet it
is only part of the answer and I will never discover it all. I have not
the years."

Randy saw that the Admiral was tired. "I guess we'd better get back," he
said. "Thanks for an entertaining evening."

"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 a part 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 not 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 bunking. 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 come 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.




CHAPTER TEN


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 air-line stewardess and they dined together in a little
French restaurant where he embarrassed her by eating six chocolate
clairs. 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 spink 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:

    _Dr. Gunn_--

    _This morning (Friday) two of my children became violently ill.
    Kathy has a temperature of 105 and is out of her head. Please
    come. I am sending this note by Joe Sanchez who has a horse._

    _Herbert Sunbury._

Sunbury, like Dan, was a native New Englander. He had sold a florist
shop in Boston, six years before, to migrate to Florida and operate a
nursery. He had acquired acreage, built a house, and planted cuttings
and seedlings on the Timucuan six miles upstream of the Bragg house.

Dan pushed the Model-A fast up River Road. Beyond the Bragg place the
road became a series of curves, following the serpentine course of the
river. Dan had delivered the last two of the Sunburys' four children. He
liked the Sunburys. They were cheerful, industrious, and thoughtful. He
knew that unless the emergency was real and pressing Herb would not have
dispatched the note.

It was real. It was typhoid. It was the typhoid that Dan had
half-expected and completely dreaded for weeks, months. Typhoid was the
unwelcome, evil sister of any disaster in which the water supply was
destroyed or polluted and normal disposal of human waste difficult or
impossible.

Betty Sunbury said the two older children had been headachy and feverish
for several days but not until Friday morning's early hours had they
become violently ill, a rosy rash developing on their torsos.
Fortunately, Dan could do something. Aspirin and cold compresses to
reduce the fever, terramycin, which came very close to being a specific
for typhoid, until the disease was licked; and he had the terramycin.

He reached into his bag and brought out the bottle, hoarded for this
moment. He could have used the antibiotic a score of times to cure other
patients of other diseases, but he had always made do with something
else, holding this single bottle as a charm against the evil sister. Now
it would probably save the Sunbury children. In addition, he had enough
vaccine to innoculate the elder Sunburys, the four-year-old, and the
babies, and just enough left for Peyton and Ben Franklin, when he
returned to the house. Correct procedure would be to innoculate the
whole town.

Dan questioned the Sunburys closely. They had been very careful. Their
drinking water came from a clear, clean spring bubbling from limestone
on high ground across the road. Even so, they boiled it. All their
foods, except citrus, they cooked.

Dan looked out at the river gliding smoothly by. He was sure the river
was the villain. "You haven't eaten any raw fish, or shrimp, or
shellfish, have you?"

"Oh, no," Herb said. "Of course not."

"What about swimming? Do you swim in the river?"

Herb looked at Betty. "We don't," Betty said. "But Kathy and Herbert,
junior, they've been swimming in the river since March."

"That's it, I guess," Dan said. "If the germs are in the river, it only
takes one gulp."

Somewhere near the headwaters of the Timucuan, or in the great,
mysterious swamps from which slender streams sluggishly moved toward the
St. Johns, a typhoid-carrier had lived, undetected. A hermit, perhaps,
or a respectable church woman in a small truckfarm community. When this
person's sanitary facilities failed, germ-laden feces had reach the
rivers. Thus Dan reconstructed it, driving back toward town on the
winding road.

Dan was so absorbed in his deductions and forebodings that he failed to
see the woman sitting on the edge of the road until he was almost
abreast of her.

He stepped on the brakes hard and the car jarred to a stop.

The woman wore jeans and a man's shirt. Her right knee was drawn almost
up to her chin and she held her ankle in both hands, her body rocking as
if in pain. A swatch of metallic blond hair curtained her features.
Dan's first thought was that she had turned her ankle; his second, that
she could be a decoy for an ambush. Yet highwaymen rarely operated on
unfrequented and therefore unprofitable roads, and had never been
reported this close to Fort Repose. The woman looked up, appealingly. He
could easily have switched gears and gone on, but he was a physician,
and he was Dan Gunn. He turned off the engine and got out of the car.

As soon as his feet touched the macadam he sensed, from her expression,
that he had stepped into a trap. Whatever her face showed, it was not
pain. When her eyes shifted, and she smiled, he knew her performance had
been completed.

Behind him a man spoke:

"All right, Mac, you don't have to go any further."

Dan swung around. The man who had spoken was one of three, all oddly
dressed and all armed. They had materialized from behind scrub palmettos
at the side of the road. The leader was squat, and wore a checked gold
cap and Bermuda shorts. His arms were abnormally long and hands huge. He
carried a submachine gun and handled it like a toy. His belly bulged
over his waistband. He ate well. Dan said, "Look, I'm a doctor. I'm the
doctor of Fort Repose. I don't have anything you want."

The second man advanced on Dan. He was hatless, dressed in a striped
sport shirt, and he gripped a baseball bat with both hands. "Get that,
Mick?" he said. "He don't have nothing we want! Ain't that rich?"

The third man was not a man at all but a boy with fuzz on his chin. The
boy wore levis, a wide-brimmed hat, high-heeled boots, and twin holster
belts slung low. He stood apart from the others, legs spread, hefting a
long-barreled revolver in each hand. He looked like an immature
imitation of a Western badman holding up the Wells Fargo stage, but he
seemed overly excited and Dan guessed him the most volatile and
dangerous of the three.

The woman, grinning, got in the car, wrestled the back seat to the
floor, and found the two bottles of bourbon Dan kept hidden there. "Just
like you heard, Buster," she said. "The Doc keeps a traveling bar."

"That's my anesthetic," Dan said.

Without looking at the woman, the leader said, "Just leave the liquor in
the car, Rumdum. We'll take everything as is. Start walking, Doc."

Dan said, "At least let me have my bag. All the instruments and
medicines I've got are in there."

The boy giggled. "How about lettin' me put him out of his misery, Mick?
He's too ignorant to live."

The man with the machine gun took two steps to the side. Dan knew why.
The car's gas tank was in his line of fire.

The machine gun moved. "Get goin', Doc."

Dan thought of everything that was in his bag, including the typhoid
shots for Peyton and Ben Franklin. He took a step toward the car. He saw
the baseball bat swinging and tried to close with the man, knowing he
was foolish, knowing that he was awkward and clumsy. The bat grazed his
face and he tripped and fell. As he tried to rise he saw the boy's
high-heeled boot coming at his eyes and the man with the bat danced to
the side, ready to swing again. His head seemed to explode. In a final
split-second of consciousness he thought, I am dead.

He awoke dazed, almost totally blind, and unable to determine whether he
had been shot as well as slugged and beaten. He waited to die and wanted
to die. When he didn't die he sat for a long time trying to decide which
way was home. It required great effort to concentrate on the simplest
matter. He would have preferred to stay where he was and complete his
dying. But the sight of ants wheeling excitedly around the drying blood
on the road made him uneasy. If he died there the ants would be all over
him and in him by the time he was found. It would be better to die at
home, cleanly. The sun was setting. The Sunbury house was east of Fort
Repose. Therefore, he must go west. With the orange sun as his beacon,
he began to crawl. When darkness came he rested, bathed his face in
ditch water and drank it, too, and tried walking. He could walk perhaps
a hundred yards before the road spun up to meet him. Then he would
crawl. Thus, walking and crawling, he had finally reached the Bragg
steps.

****

When Dan finished, Randy said, "It had to come, of course. The
highwaymen killed off travel on the main highways and so now they've
started on the little towns and the secondary roads. But in this case,
Dan, it sounds like they were laying for you personally. I think they
knew you were a doctor, and you'd be going way out River Road to the
Sunburys', and certainly the woman knew you kept a couple of bottles of
bourbon in the car."

"All they had to do," Dan said, "was hang around Marines Park, look at
the notices on the bandstand, and ask questions. I didn't know any of
them, but I think I've seen one before, the youngest. I used to see him
hanging around Hockstatler's drugstore before The Day."

"They didn't have a car?"

"No."

"I guess what they wanted most was transportation."

"They won't get much. We had only two or three gallons of gas left." He
added, apologetically, "I'm sorry, Randy. I was careless. I shouldn't
have stopped. I've lost our transport, our medicines, and my tools."

Leaning over the bed, Randy's fingers interlocked. He unconsciously
squeezed until the tendons on his forearm stood out like taut wires. He
said, "Don't worry about it."

"Worst of all," Dan said, "I've lost my glasses. I guess they smashed
when that goon slugged me with the bat. I won't be much good without
glasses."

Randy knew that Dan's vision was poor. Dan was forced to wear bifocals.
He was very nearsighted. "Don't you have another pair?" he asked.

"Yes--in the bag. I always kept my spare glasses in the bag because I
was afraid I might lose or break the pair I was wearing, on a call." He
sat up straight in bed, his face twisted. "Randy, I may never be able to
get another pair of glasses."

Randy stood up. "I've got to start working on this, Dan."

"What are you going to do?"

"Find them and kill them." He said this in a matter-of-fact manner, as
if announcing that he was going downtown to have his tires checked, in
the time before The Day.

Dan said, "I'm afraid you're going at this wrong, Randy. Killing
highwaymen is secondary. The important thing is the typhoid in the
river. If you think things are bad now, wait until we have typhoid in
Fort Repose. And it's not only Fort Repose. It goes from the Timucuan
into the St. Johns and downriver to Sanford, Palatka, and the other
towns. If they are still there."

"All I can do about typhoid is warn people, which you have done already
and which I will do again. I can't shoot a germ. I'm concerned with the
highwaymen right now, this minute. Next, they'll start raiding the
houses. It's as inevitable as the fact that they left the main highways
and ambushed you on River Road. Typhoid is bad. So is murder and robbery
and rape. I am an officer in the Reserve. I have been legally designated
to keep order when normal authority breaks down. Which it certainly has
here. And the first thing I must do to keep order is execute the
highwaymen. That's perfectly plain. See you later, Dan."

Randy turned to Helen. "Take care of him. Feed him up," he said, a
command.

Walking beside him toward the Admiral's house, Lib found it difficult to
keep pace. She had never seen Randy look and speak and act like this
before. She held his arm, and yet she felt he had moved away from her.
He did not seem anxious to talk, confide in her, or ask her opinion, as
he usually did. He had moved into man's august world of battle and
violence, from which she was barred. She held tighter to his arm. She
was afraid.

The admiral, freshly shaven and pink-faced, was in his den, touching
whale oil to the recoil mechanism of an automatic shotgun. "I was
wondering," he said to Randy, "whether you would be around here or I
should come to you. How's Dan?"

"He'll be all right. We lost the car and the medicines and the last of
the bourbon but we didn't lose our doctor. The most important thing we
lost were his glasses. He's very nearsighted."

"You forgot something," the Admiral said, hardly looking up from his
work. "We not only have lost transport but communications. We no longer
have a way to recharge batteries. This battery I have now--" he nodded
at the radio--"is good for perhaps another eight to ten hours. After
that--" he looked up--"nothing. Silence. What do you plan to do?"

"I plan to kill them. But I don't know how to find them. I came to talk
to you about it."

Lib said, "May I interrupt? Don't look at me that way, Randy. I'm not
trying to interfere in your business. I just wanted to say I brought the
Admiral's coffee. While you're talking, I thought I'd boil water and
make a cup for him."

The Admiral said, absently, "Kettle's in the fireplace."

She went into the living room. It was silly, but sometimes the Admiral
irritated her. The Admiral made her feel like a messboy.

Sam Hazzard laid the automatic sixteen gently on the desk. "Ever since I
heard about it, I've been thinking," he said. "You have to go get them.
They won't come to you. Not only that, they may be a hundred miles from
here by now."

"I think they're right around here," Randy said. "One of the gang was a
local drugstore cowboy, now toting two real guns. And they don't have
enough gas to get far. I think they'll try to score a few more times
before they move on. Even when they're gone, others will come. We have
the problem whether it's this particular gang or another gang. I'm going
to try to form a provisional company."

"Vigilantes?"

"No. A company under martial law. So far as I know I'm the only active
Army Reserve officer in town so I guess it's up to me."

"Then what do you do?"

Lib came in and set a cup beside each of them. She found a clear space
at the far end of the room-length desk, boosted herself up, and
attempted to appear inconspicuous.

"Suppose I organized a patrol on foot? Set up roadblocks?" Randy
suggested.

"The highwaymen are mobile, you're not," the Admiral said. "If they see
an armed patrol, or a roadblock, they'll simply keep out of your way."

Randy said, "Well, we can't just sit here and wait for them."

"All this I've been thinking," the Admiral said. "Also I was thinking of
the Q-ships we used in the first World War."

Lib started to speak but decided it would be unwise. It was Randy who
said, "I remember, vaguely, reading about Q-ships but I don't remember
much about it. Enlighten me, Sam."

"Q-ships were usually auxiliary schooners or wornout tramps, targets on
which a German submarine captain wouldn't be likely to waste a torpedo
but would prefer to sink with gunfire. Concealed a pretty hefty battery
behind screens that looked like deck loads. Drill was to prowl submarine
alley unescorted and helpless-looking. The sub sees her and surfaces.
Sometimes the Q-ship had a panic party that took to the boats. Best part
of the act. Soon as the sub opened fire with its deck gun the Q-ship ran
up the flag and unmasked the battery. Blammy! It was quite effective."

"Very ingenious. But what has it got to do with highwaymen?"

"Nothing at all, unless you can put a four-wheeled Q-ship on the roads
around Fort Repose."

Randy shrugged. "We're not mobile. Plenty of cars we could use--for
instance, yours, Sam--but gasoline is practically nonexistent. We might
have to cruise around for days before they tackled us. I might be able
to requisition a gallon or two here and there but then the word would
get around and they'd be watching for us."

Lib had to speak. "Could I make a suggestion? I think Rita Hernandez and
her brother must have gasoline. They're the big traders in town, aren't
they?"

Randy had tried to wipe Rita out of his mind. They were even, they were
quits. He wanted nothing from Rita any more. He said, "It's true that if
anybody's holding gas, it's Rita."

"Not only that," Lib said, "but they have that grocery truck. Can you
imagine anything more enticing to highwaymen than a grocery truck? They
won't really think it's filled with groceries, of course, but
psychologically it would be irresistible."

Sam Hazzard smiled with his eyes, as if light from within penetrated the
opaque gray. "There you have it, Randy! Nice staff work, my girl!"

"Also," she said, "I think it would be a good idea if I drove. They'd be
sure to think it was easy pickings with a woman driving."

"You will like the devil drive!" Randy said. "You will stay at home and
guard the house, you and Ben Franklin." And the two men went on talking
and planning, as if they already possessed the truck with full tank, and
she was left out of it again. At least, she thought, if it really
worked, she had contributed something.

The Admiral emphasized that whatever was done must be done quietly.
Randy decided he could not go to the Hernandez house until after dark.
It was not impossible that the highwaymen were holed up in Pistolville,
or had contacts there. If Pistolville saw him drive off in Rita's truck,
the news would be all over town within a few hours. Finally, the Admiral
asked the crucial question--would Rita cooperate? Was she discreet?

"Rita wants to hold what she has," Randy said. "Rita wants to live. She
is realistic."

There was one more thing he must do before he left the Admiral. He sat
at the typewriter and pecked out the orders.

                    ORDER NO. 1--TOWN OF FORT REPOSE

    1. In accordance with the proclamation of Mrs. Josephine
    Vanbruuker-Brown, Acting President of the United States, and the
    declaration of Martial Law, I am assuming command of the Town of
    Fort Repose and its environs.

    2. All Army, Navy, and Air Force reservists and all members of
    the National Guard, together with any others with military
    experience who will volunteer, will meet at the bandstand at
    1200 hours, Wednesday, 20 April. I propose to form a composite
    company to protect this town.

                              ORDER NO. 2

    1. Two cases of typhoid have been diagnosed in the Sunbury
    family, upper River Road. It must be assumed that both the
    Timucuan and St. Johns are polluted.

    2. All water will be boiled before drinking. Do not eat fruits
    or greens that have been washed in unboiled water.

                              ORDER NO. 3

    1. Dr. Daniel Gunn, our only physician, has been beaten and
    robbed by highwaymen.

    2. The penalty for robbery or pillage, or for harboring
    highwaymen, or for failure to make known information concerning
    their whereabouts or movements, is death by hanging.

All these orders he signed, "Randolph Rowzee Bragg, 1st. Lt. AUS
(Reserve) (02658988)."

Lib reading over his shoulder, said, "Why wait until Wednesday to form
your company?"

"I want the highwaymen to think that they have plenty of time," Randy
said. "I want them to laugh at us."

****

There were a number of ways by which Randy could have traveled the three
miles to Marines Park, and then the two additional miles to the
Hernandez house on the outer fringe of Pistolville. The Admiral had
offered to take him as far as the town dock in his outboard cruiser, now
converted to sail. But Sam Hazzard had not as yet added additional keel
to the boat, so it would sideslip badly on a tack. Sam could get him to
Marines Park all right, but on the return trip might be unable to make
headway against current and wind and be left stranded. Randy could have
borrowed Alice Cooksey's bicycle, but decided that this might make him
conspicuous in Pistolville. He could have ridden Balaam, the mule, but
if he succeeded in persuading Rita to let him have the truck and
gasoline, how would Balaam get home? Balaam didn't fit in a panel truck.
Besides, he was not sure that Balaam should ever be risked away from the
Henrys' fields and barn. The only mule in Timucuan County was beyond
price. In the end, he decided to walk.

He set out after dark. Lib escorted him as far as the bend in the road.
She had tacked his notices firmly to a square of plywood which he was to
nail to the bandstand pillar. Thus, she had explained, they would not be
lost or overlooked among the offers to trade fishhooks or lighter
flints, and the pleas for kerosene or kettles. Across the top of the
board she had printed, "OFFICIAL BULLETINS."

Randy wore stained dungarees, old brown fishing sneakers, and a floppy
black hat borrowed from Two-Tone. His pistol was concealed in a deep
pocket. When walking Pistolville at night, he wanted to look as if he
belonged there.

When he told Lib it was time to turn back, she kissed him. "How long
will it take you, darling?" she asked.

"Depends on whether I get the truck. Counting the stop at the park to
nail up the orders, I should get there in less than two hours. After
that, I don't know. Depends on Rita."

"If you're not home by midnight," she said, "I'll come after you. With a
shotgun." She sounded half-serious. In the past few weeks she had been
more tender to him, embarrassingly solicitous of his safety, more
jealous of his time. She was possessive, which was natural. They were
lovers, when there was time, and place and privacy, and respite from
fatigue and hunger and the dangers and responsibilities of the day.

He walked on alone under the oak arch excluding starlight, secure in
night's black velvet cloak yet walking silently, eyes, ears, and even
nose alert. So he had learned, in the dark hammocks as a boy hunting
game, in the dark mountains as a man hunting man. Before The Day, except
in hunting or in war, a five- or ten-mile walk would have been
unthinkable. Now it was routine for all of them except Dan and after Dan
got out of bed it would become routine for him too. But all their shoes
were wearing out. In another month or two Ben Franklin and Peyton would
be without shoes entirely. Not only were the children walking (or
running) everywhere but their feet inconsiderately continued to grow,
straining canvas and leather. Randy told himself that he must discover
whether Eli Blaustein still held shoes. He knew what Blaustein
wanted--meat.

Marines Park was empty. As he nailed up his order board an animal
scuttled out from under the bandstand. At first he thought it a possum
but when he caught its silhouette against the starlit river he saw it
was an armadillo.

Walking through the business section, he wondered whether armadillos
were good eating. Before The Day he had heard someone say that there
were several hundred thousand armadillos in Florida. This was strange,
because before the first boom there had been no armadillos at all.
Randy's father had related the story. Some real estate promoter on the
East Coast had imported two from Texas for a roadside zoo. Knowing
nothing of the habits of armadillos, the real estate man had penned them
behind chicken wire. When darkness fell, the armadillos instantly
burrowed out, and within a few years armadillos were undermining golf
greens and dumping over citrus trees from St. Augustine to Palm Beach.
They had spread everywhere, having no natural enemies in the state
except automobiles. Since the automobile had been all but exterminated
by the hydrogen bomb, the armadillo population was certain to multiply.
Soon there would be more armadillos than people in Florida.

It was Saturday night, but in the business blocks of Yulee and St. Johns
no light showed nor did he see a human being. In the residential area
perhaps half the houses showed a light, but rarely from more than one
room. He had not seen a moving vehicle since leaving home, and not until
he reached the pine shanties and patchwork bungalows of Pistolville did
he see a person. These people were shadows, swiftly fading behind a
half-opened door or bobbing from house to house. It was night, and Fort
Repose was in fear.

He was relieved when he saw lights in the Hernandez house. Anything
could have happened since he and Dan had stopped there. Pete could have
died and Rita could have decamped; or she could have been killed, the
house pillaged, and everything she was holding, including the truck and
gasoline, stolen.

He knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" Rita's voice said. He knew she would have the shotgun up
and ready.

"Randy."

She opened the door. She was holding a shotgun, as he guessed. She
stared at his costume. "Come in. Looking for a handout?"

"In a sense, yes."

"What happened? Your two women run you off?"

As she laid down the gun the burn still showed on her ring finger. He
said, "How's Pete?"

"Weaker. How's Doctor Gunn?"

"You heard about it, then?"

"Sure. I hear all the bad news in a hurry nowadays. We call it lip
radio."

The word had come to town, Randy guessed, via Alice Cooksey, earlier in
the day. Just as Alice brought the town news to River Road, so each day
she carried the news from River Road to town. Once spoken in the
library, the news would spread through Fort Repose, street to street and
house to house. He said, "You know Doctor Gunn lost his bag with all his
instruments and what drugs he had left, and his glasses. So, if we can,
we have to get those highwaymen and that's why I came to you, Rita."

"They're not Pistolville people," she said. "These Pistolville crackers
hardly have got gumption enough to rob each other. Now I heard them
described and one of them--the young one with two guns--was probably
Leroy Settle, a punk who lived on the other side of town. His mother
still lives there, I think. Maybe if you stake out his house you'll get
a shot at him."

"I don't want him in particular," Randy said. "I want them all. I want
them and everybody like them." And he told her what his plan was,
exactly, and why he must have the grocery truck and the gasoline, if she
had any. He knew he must trust her entirely or not at all.

She listened him out and said nothing.

"If you are left alone here, Rita," he said, "with all the canned food
and other stuff you've got, you're bound to become a target. When
they've cleaned out what's on the roads, they'll start on the houses."

"I'm way ahead of you." Her eyes met his steadily. She was evaluating
him, and all the chances, all the odds. She made her decision. "I think
you can get away with it, Randy."

"You're holding gas, then?"

"Certainly I'm holding gas. Fifteen gallons under the back steps. You
can have it, and the truck. Anything you don't use I expect back."

He rose. "What're you going to tell people when they see your truck is
gone?"

"I'm going to tell them it was stolen. I'm going to tell them it was
loaded with choice trade goods and that while I was in the bedroom,
attending to Pete, somebody jimmied the ignition and stole it. And to
make it sound good I'm going to let off a blast with this gun when you
whip out of the driveway. The news will get around fast, don't worry.
It'll get to the highwaymen and they'll be looking for the truck. That
should help, shouldn't it?"

"It should make it perfect."

"Go out the back way. Load the cans in the back of the truck, quietly.
There's enough gas in the tank to take you out River Road. I'll salute
you when you hit the street."

He said, "You're a smart girl, Rita."

"Am I?" She held out her left hand to show the black circle left by the
radioactive diamond ring. "I've got a wedding band. I was married to an
H-bomb. Will it ever go away, Randy?"

"Sure," he said, hoping it would. "Dan will look at it again when he's
better."

He walked through the hallway and kitchen and out into the darkness. He
found the three five-gallon cans under the back steps, opened the
truck's rear doors, and silently loaded the gasoline. He got in and
stepped on the starter. The engine turned over, protesting. Rita had
been careless, he guessed, and had forgotten to fill the battery with
distilled water, for it was close to dead. He tried again and the engine
caught. He nursed the choke until it ran smoothly, backed out of the
Hernandez carport, turned sharply in the yard, shifted gears, and roared
out on the street. He glimpsed Rita's silhouette in the doorway, the gun
rising to her shoulder, and for an awful instant thought she was aiming
at him. Red flame leaped out of the muzzle. At the first corner he cut
away from Augustine Road and followed rutted dirt streets until he was
clear of Pistolville. He saw no other cars, in motion, on the way home.

It was past eleven when he drove the truck into the garage and closed
the doors so no casual passerby or visitor would see it. The lights were
out in Florence's house and in his own house only a single light burned,
in his office window. That would be Lib, waiting up for him. He had
urged the women to get to bed at their usual hour or earlier, for they
planned to go to the Easter sunrise services in Marines Park.

This was good. It was good that they should all be there, so that no one
would guess of unusual activity out on River Road. From a less practical
standpoint he felt good about it too. He was, as a matter of fact,
surprised at their anticipation and enthusiasm. Many things had happened
in the past few days and yet their conversation always come back to the
Easter services. People hadn't been like that before The Day. He could
not imagine any of them voluntarily getting up before dawn and then
walking three miles on empty stomachs to watch the sun come up, sing
hymns, and listen to sermons however short. He wished he could walk with
them. He couldn't. It was necessary that he remain there to complete his
plans with Sam Hazzard and also to work on the truck. Walking toward the
house, he wondered at this change in people and concluded that man was a
naturally gregarious creature and they were all starved for
companionship and the sight of new faces. Marines Park would be their
church, their theater, their assembly hall. Man absorbed strength from
the touch of his neighbor's elbow. It was these reasons, perhaps, that
accounted for the success of the old-time Chautauquas. It could be that
and something more--the discovery that faith had not died under the
bombs and missiles.

She wasn't upstairs. She was waiting in the gloom of the porch. She
said, "I saw you drive it in. It's beautiful. Did you get the gas to go
with it?"

"Total of seventeen gallons including what's in the tank. We can cruise
for a day or two if we take it easy. Are you tired, darling?"

"Not too."

"If you're going to be up at five with the others you really ought to be
in bed."

"I've been waiting for you, Randy. I worry. I'm not tired, really."

They walked through the grove down to the dock.

The river whispered, the quarter-moon showed its profile, the stars
moved. She lay on her back, head resting on her locked fingers, looking
up at the stars.

His eyes measured her--long, slender, curved as if for flight, skin
coppery, hair silvered by the night. "You're a beautiful possession," he
said. "I wish we had a place of our own so I could keep you. I wish we
had just one room to ourselves. I wish we were married."

Instantly she said, "I accept."

"I'm not sure how we'd go about it. Last I heard the courthouse in San
Marco wasn't operating. For a while it was an emergency shelter like our
school. I don't know what they use it for now but certainly not for
issuing marriage licenses. And the county clerk has disappeared. I heard
in the park that he took his family and started for an uncontaminated
zone in Georgia where he used to live."

Without moving her head she said, "Randy, under martial law, can't you
make your own rules?"

"I hadn't thought about it. I suppose so."

"Well, make one."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"I certainly am. It may be an old-fashioned, Before-The-Day attitude but
if I'm going to have children I'd like to be married."

"Children! Are you going to have a baby?" Thought of the difficulties,
dangers, and complexities of having a baby, under their present
circumstances, appalled him.

"I don't know. I can't say that I am, but then again I can't say that
I'm not, can I? I would like to marry you tomorrow before you go off
chasing highwaymen." She turned on her side, to face him. "It isn't
really convention. It is only that I love you very much, and that if
anything happened--I don't have any bad premonitions, dear, but you and
I know that a bad thing could happen--well, if anything happened I would
want the child to have your name. You'd want that too, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," Randy said, "I would want that very much. I'm not going to put
the truck on the road until late in the afternoon--that's when the
highwaymen took Dan--so there'll be time."

"That's nice," she said. "It'll be nice to marry on Easter Sunday."

He took her hands and drew her up and held her. Over her shoulder he saw
a pair of green eyes and a dark snout sliding downstream past the edge
of the dock. It was spring and the gators were out of their holes. He
had heard somewhere that the Seminoles ate gator meat. Cut their tails
into steaks. It was a source of meat that should be investigated. He
knew he shouldn't be thinking about food at this time but he was hungry
again.




CHAPTER ELEVEN


Elizabeth McGovern and Randolph Bragg were married at noon that Easter
Sunday. The bride wore the same white silk dress she had worn to the
sunrise service in Marines Park. She was unsteady on high heels, for she
had not worn heels since The Day.

The groom wore his Class A uniform with the bold patch of the First
Cavalry Division on his arm and the ribbons of the Korean War and Bronze
Star on his chest, along with the blue badge of the combat infantryman.
He wore the uniform not because of the wedding but because it was
required in the radioed orders to reservists assuming active duty, such
as ambushing and killing highwaymen, which he presently intended to do.

The bride was given away by her father, W. Foxworth McGovern, the
retired Cleveland manufacturer. Bill McGovern, who had been helping
Malachai cut gun ports in the thin steel sides and rear doors of the
grocery truck, wore greasy dungarees. A chisel had slipped and one of
his hands was bleeding.

The best man was Doctor Daniel Gunn. He was clad in a tentsized, striped
bathrobe. Grinning through his red beard, his head bandaged, a square
gauze patch covering his right eye, he looked like a turbaned
Mediterranean pirate.

Among the guests was Rear Admiral Samuel P. Hazzard (USN, retired) who
wore khaki shorts, a khaki hunting vest bulging with buckshot shells,
and during the ceremony held his gold-braided cap across his stomach.

The matron-of-honor was Mrs. Helen Bragg, the presumed widow of Colonel
Mark Bragg. She furnished the wedding ring, stripping it from her own
finger.

The ceremony was held in the high-ceilinged parlor of the Bragg house.
The marriage was performed by the Reverend Clarence Henry, pastor
emeritus of the Afro-Repose Baptist Church.

Randy was certain it was perfectly legal. It was performed under his
Order No. 4, written that morning in Sam Hazzard's house.

Malachai and Bill McGovern had been working on the truck, and Randy was
breakfasting with Dan Gunn, when the women and children returned from
Marines Park. The services had been wonderful, they said, but the news
they brought was terrible. During the night highwaymen had raided the
isolated home of Jim Hickey, the beekeeper, on the Pasco Creek Road.
They had killed Jim and his wife. The two children had walked to Fort
Repose and found their aunt's home. Whether it was the same band that
had beaten Dan Gunn was uncertain. The Hickey children were inarticulate
and hysterical with fear and shock.

Randy, raging for immediate retaliation, had raced to the Admiral's
house with the news. The Admiral's experience in meeting the
unpredictable and brutish pranks of war had saved them from premature or
imprudent action. "Wasn't this sort of thing exactly what we expected?"
Sam Hazzard asked.

"I suppose so, but dammit--"

"I don't think we should change our plans by so much as a minute. If we
put out with the truck now we'll just burn fuel for nothing. These
people operate like beasts, Randy. Having gorged themselves in the night
they sleep through the mornings, perhaps through the whole day."

Randy, recognizing the sense of this, had calmed himself. They had
talked of the wedding, and the legal problems attending martial law, and
the Admiral had helped him in framing Order No. 4. It read:

    Until county offices resume operations and normal communications
    are reestablished between this town and the Timucuan County
    seat, the following regulations will govern marriages and births
    in Fort Repose.

    1. Marriages can be performed by any ordained minister. Marriage
    licenses and health certificates are waived.

    2. Marriage certificates will be issued by the presiding
    minister, and will be valid when signed by the contracting
    parties, the minister, and two witnesses.

    3. So that a permanent record may be preserved, a copy of the
    certificate will be left at the Fort Repose Library. I designate
    Librarian Alice Cooksey custodian of these records. I designate
    Miss Florence Wechek her deputy.

    4. Birth records, signed by the attending physician or midwife,
    or by the mother and any witnesses if medical attention is
    unavailable, will be deposited in the same manner.

    One copy of this order is to be kept with the records in the
    library. This order is retroactive to The Day, so that any
    births or marriages that have occurred since The Day may be
    properly recorded.

Randy signed Order No. 4 and said, "Well, when the rules are off you
make your own."

"This is a good one," Sam Hazzard said. "I wonder what they're doing
elsewhere?"

"Elsewhere?"

"There must be hundreds of towns in the same fix we're in--local
authority collapsed or inoperative, communications out. I fancy that
elsewhere they're not doing so good."

"How could they be worse?" Randy was thinking of what had happened to
Dan Gunn and the Hickeys.

"They could be," the Admiral said, positively.

Randy had gone to see Preacher next. "Preacher," he said, "you're an
ordained minister, aren't you?"

"I sure am," Preacher said. "I am not only ordained but in my church I
can ordain people."

"Would you mind marrying Miss McGovern and me? We don't have a regular
courthouse license, naturally, but I have fixed it up to make it legal
under martial law."

"Miss McGovern told me you was going to wed, Mister Randy. I will be
happy to marry you. I don't need papers. I've joined maybe a thousand
pairs in my life. Some had papers, some didn't. Some stuck, some didn't.
The papers didn't make the difference. It's the people, not the papers."

So they were married, in a room filled with flowers of the season and
furniture of less bitter centuries and people of all ages.

Randy produced the certificate and when Preacher signed it he signed
"Rev. Clarence Henry," and Randy realized that this was the first time
he had ever known Preacher's full name although Preacher had always been
there.

****

Randy had found a large-scale county map in his desk and they had
planned their movement as carefully as a Q-ship captain plotting his
course through submarine alley. There were four roads that led out from
Fort Repose. River Road stretched east along the Timucuan until it swung
into a main highway to the beaches. The Pasco Creek Road ran north, the
San Marco Road west, from the bridge across the St. Johns. A narrow,
substandard road followed the St. Johns toward its headwaters.

The map, with two crosses to mark where the highwaymen had stopped Dan
Gunn and killed the Hickeys, lay on the garage floor. They bent over it,
Randy tracing the route they would take. The highwaymen could be
anywhere. They could be one band, or two, or more. They could be gone
entirely. It was all guesswork, and yet it was necessary to plan the
route so as to cover the most territory using the least amount of gas,
for when the truck's tank was empty, that would be all. There was no
reserve, not anywhere. They would take River Road first because it was
closest. After twelve miles a little-used lateral led toward Pasco Creek
and they would go almost to Pasco Creek and then cut into the road for
Fort Repose. Thus, by using the clay or washboard laterals, they could
avoid retracing the same highway and save a few miles.

On his hands and knees, his seagoing cap pushed back on his pink head,
the Admiral murmured, "'Give me a fast ship for I intend to go in harm's
way'--Paul Jones. Remember, Randy, this should be a very slow ship. The
slower we go the less gas we use and the more chance they have of
spotting us."

Randy was going to drive. Malachai, Sam Hazzard, and Bill McGovern were
to be concealed in the body of the truck. Randy said, "I don't like to
drive slow but I can. I think about twenty miles an hour is right.
Anything slower would look suspicious."

He checked the weapons. They were taking everything that might be
handy--the automatic sixteen for the Admiral and the double twenty for
Bill McGovern. Malachai would have the carbine. The big Krag, long as a
Kentucky squirrel rifle and as unwieldy, would be in reserve. From Dan's
description of how the highwaymen had acted, Randy guessed that the fire
fight, when it came, would be close in, and the shotguns of greater
value than the rifles. He himself, alone behind the wheel, would have
only the .45 automatic on the seat beside him. That, and the hunting
knife which was almost, but not quite, razor sharp, in a sheath at his
belt.

Randy walked around the truck for a final look. He thought he was doing
something that was familiar and then he remembered that he had seen
aircraft commanders do this before takeoff. He examined the tires. They
were good. The battery water had been replenished and the battery run
up. Malachai and Bill had done a good job on the gun ports, fairing them
into the big, painted letters, "AJAX SUPER-MARKET." On each side, one
port in the "J" and one in the "M." Camouflage. The holes cut into the
rear doors, under the tiny glass windows, were more conspicuous. Randy
went outside and returned with a handful of mud. He spread it on the
edges of the ports, erasing the glint of freshly cut metal.

It was four o'clock, the time to sortie. "You know your positions," he
said. "Sam, you have the starboard side. Bill takes the port. Malachai,
the stern. If I see your fire can't be effective from inside I'll yell,
'Out!' and everybody gets out fast while I cover you."

Then, at the last second, there was a change.

Malachai suggested it. "Mister Randy, I want to say something. I don't
think you ought to drive. I think I ought to drive."

Randy was furious, but he held his voice down. "Let's not get everything
screwed up now. Get in, Malachai."

Malachai made no move. "Sir, that uniform. It don't go with the truck."

"They won't see it until they stop us," Randy said. "Then it'll be too
late. Anyway, all sorts of people are wearing all sorts of clothes. I'll
bet you'd see highwaymen in uniforms if they got their hands on them."

"That ain't all, sir," Malachai said. "It's your face. It's white.
They're more likely to tackle a black face than a white face. They see
my face they say, 'Huh, here's something soft and probably with no gun.'
So they relax. Maybe it gives us that extra second, Mister Randy."

Randy hesitated. He had confidence in Malachai's driving and in his
judgment and courage. But it was the driver who would have to do the
talking, if there was any talking, and who would have to keep his hands
off the pistol. That would be the hardest thing.

The Admiral spoke, very carefully. "Now Randy, I'm not trying to outrank
you. You're the Captain. You're in command and it's your decision. But I
think Malachai is right. Dungarees and a black face are better bait than
a uniform and a white face."

Randy said, "Okay. You're right. You drive, Malachai. You take the
pistol up front. Keep it out of sight. There is only one thing to
remember. When they stop us they'll all be watching you. They don't know
we're here. They'll be watching you and they'll kill you if you go for
your gun. So leave your gun alone until we start shooting."

Malachai grinned and said, "Yes, sir," and they got in and departed.
Looking through the glass in the rear door, Randy saw his wife and Helen
and Dan on the porch. They were waving. Peyton was there too but she was
not waving. She had her face buried in her mother's dress.

They drove east on River Road. After a few miles Randy told Malachai to
look for signs of the place where Dan Gunn had been decoyed and beaten.
They found a sign. Since there was no longer any care of the roads, the
grass had grown high on the shoulders and in one place it was trampled.
In a ditch, nearby, they discovered slivers of broken glass. Then they
found the twisted and empty frame of Dan's glasses. The frame was
useless and yet Randy picked it up and shoved it in a pocket. A lawyer's
gesture, he thought. Evidence.

They drove on, past the Sunbury home. Randy was tempted to order a stop
to inquire about the children's typhoid. Dan would want to know. He did
not stop. The Sunburys were good people and he trusted them, but the
truck was a secret, a military secret, and it was senseless to expose
it.

River Road was clear. Nothing moved on River Road. They took the lateral
north. Even though Malachai avoided the worst potholes and drove with
exasperating deliberation, it was rough riding. It shook up Bill
McGovern and Sam Hazzard. They were older and they would tire.

Near Pasco Creek they passed a group of inhabited shacks. Approaching
them, Malachai called back, "People!"

Randy turned and looked over Malachai's shoulder. He could see, from
behind the front seat, but not be seen. He saw two children scurry
indoors and at another place a bearded man crouched behind a woodpile,
training a gun on the truck. He made no hostile move, but the muzzle
tracked them. It was obvious that few people traveled this road and
those who did were not welcome.

Randy was relieved when they turned into the better road toward Fort
Repose. They were all stiff by then, for it was impossible to stand
upright in the panel truck. The Admiral and Bill could sit cross-legged
on the floor and view the landscape through their ports, but Randy had
to half-crouch to see through the rear windows. When the truck reached
higher ground, where the road was straight and they could see anything
approach for nearly a mile, he told Malachai to stop. "We'll take ten,"
he said.

He threw open the back doors and got out, groaning, feeling permanently
warped. He walked, waving his arms and flexing his knees. Bill McGovern
shuffled down the road, humpbacked. The Admiral tried to stretch, and a
joint or tendon cracked audibly. He cursed. Malachai grinned.

"Now I see why you wanted to drive!" Randy said. He looked both ways.
Nothing was coming. He went back to the truck and found the thermos Lib
had given him. He opened it, expecting water. It was sweetened black
coffee. "Look!" he said. "Look what Lib--my wife did for us!" He knew it
was the last of the jar.

There was a cup for each, but they decided to take only half a cup then,
saving the rest for the tag end of evening when they might need it more.

They got back into the truck and continued the patrol, past the Hickey
house, empty, door open, windows wantonly smashed. Randy noticed that
the beekeeper's car was gone. Jim Hickey, with such valuable trading
goods as honey and beeswax, must have been holding gasoline. In the past
month anyone who had it would have traded gas for honey. The objective
of the highwaymen was probably the car and the gas, Randy deduced,
rather than honey. This conclusion disheartened him. The highwaymen
might be hundreds of miles from Fort Repose now.

Nearing Fort Repose--they must avoid being seen in the town--they turned
off on a winding, high-crowned clay road that ran two miles to an
antique covered bridge across the St. Johns. Once across the river they
would turn south and shortly thereafter hit the road to San Marco.

Rattling over the clay washboard, it seemed hardly worth while to keep a
watch from the back, and yet Randy did. Suddenly he saw that they were
being followed. He had seen no car on the Pasco Creek Road before making
the turn. They had passed no car on the clay lateral, nor any houses
either. The car was simply there, following them at a respectable
distance, making no effort to catch them and yet not dropping back. He
recalled an abandoned citrus packing shed at the turn. It must have been
concealed there. Randy called so that Malachai could clearly hear,
"We've got company--about three hundred yards back."

He strained his eyes through the dirty little rear windows. It was
difficult to make them focus, like trying to train a gun from a bouncing
jeep, and it was almost dusk. It was a late model light gray hardtop or
sedan and Jim Hickey had owned such a car but all makes looked pretty
much alike and it seemed half of them were either light gray or
off-white. He called to Malachai, "Speed up a little. See what happens."

Malachai increased their speed to forty or forty-five. The car behind
maintained its distance, exactly, as if it were tied to them. This
proved nothing. This would be standard operating procedure for an honest
citizen following a strange truck on a lonely, unfrequented road. He
wouldn't want to get too close, but he was probably in a hurry to get
home before dark. So if the truck sped up, he would too. "Drop back to
twenty," Randy ordered.

The truck slowed. So did the car. Again, this proved nothing except
caution.

Randy turned to Sam Hazzard and Bill McGovern. "This fellow behind us is
either an innocent bystander or he's herding us."

"Herding us?" Bill said.

"Herding us into the gun of some pal up front." They hit a smoother
strip of road and Randy could see two men in the car. He thought the
back was empty but he couldn't be sure. "Two of them. Both men."

They rode on, silently. This was entirely different from a patrol in war
when you went out in fear and despite your fear, hoping you would find
no trouble. His only fear was that they might miss them, exhaust their
gas in futile cruising, and lose their one best chance to wipe them out.
This was a personal matter and a matter of survival. It was like having
a nest of coral snakes under the house. You had to go in after them and
kill them or certainly one day they would kill a child or your dog. In a
matter such as this, the importance of your own life diminished. So he
prayed that the men behind were highwaymen.

In a minute or two he knew that they were, because the opposite end of
the narrow, covered bridge was blocked. They were being herded into a
cul-de-sac and the tactical situation was changed and their plan
useless. There would be no field of fire from the side ports of the
truck. The fight would have to be made entirely from front and rear. He
said, "Keep going." They had to drive right into it. If they stopped
short of the bridge and jumped out to make their fight at a distance
then the highwaymen could shoot and run. They had to get in close.

Malachai kept going.

"Sam, you and Bill take the ones in back," Randy said. "I'll help
Malachai in front. Forget the sides."

The Admiral and Bill crawled to the rear. Randy crouched behind
Malachai's back. He checked the carbine. It was ready. He shifted an
extra clip to his shirt pocket where it would be handiest.

The block at the opposite end of the bridge was their Model-A, its boxy
profile unmistakable. A man waited at each bumper. You could ram the car
but you could not ram the men so this tactic would do no good. Randy
recognized them from Dan's description. The one with gorilla arms and
the submachine gun stood at the front. The gun was a Thompson. The man
with the bat was on the other side. He carried a holstered pistol too,
but from the way he hefted the bat, like a hitter eager to step to the
plate, the bat was his weapon. Four men, then, instead of three. And no
woman. Understandable. The personnel of these bands probably changed
from day to day. "Right up to them," he told Malachai.

"Close."

The wheels hit the first planks of the bridge and Malachai slowed.

Randy saw the muzzle of the Thompson rise. This was the one he had to
get. He pushed the butt of the carbine into Bill McGovern's ribs. He
said, "Let them come right up to you. Let 'em come right in with us if
they want. We've got troubles up front."

Bill nodded. The rhythmic timpani beat of tires on planks stopped. They
were twenty feet from the Model-A. The man with the bat advanced toward
the left side of the truck. The Tommy gunner stayed where he was. In his
light Randy doubted that they could see anything in the truck body but
he did not stir. He was immobile as a sack. He whispered, "Make the son
of a bitch with the gun come to us. Make him move, make him come."

The man with the bat was three feet from Malachai and five feet from the
carbine's muzzle. If he looked into the truck cab Randy would have to
shoot him and in that case the Tommy gunner might get them all. There
was nothing more Randy could say or do. He could not even whisper. It
was all up to Malachai now.

The man whacked his bat viciously against the door. "What you got in
there, boy?"

"I ain't got nuthin, boss," Malachai whined. From the set of his right
shoulder Randy knew Malachai had his right hand on the .45, but he was
acting dumb and talking dumb, which was the way to do.

The Tommy gunner moved a step closer and two steps right so he could
observe Malachai. He said, "Come on, Casey. Get that dinge outta there!"

The man with the bat said, "Step down, you black bastard!"

Randy knew that the man couldn't use the bat while Malachai stayed in
the truck and he prayed Malachai would wait him out. He watched the
gunner. _Please, God, make him take one more step so I won't have to try
through the windshield._ A shot through the windshield was almost
certain to miss because of light refraction or bullet deflection. It
would be foolhardy and desperate and he would not do it.

The gunner said, "Drag him out or blow him out. I don't care which."

Malachai cringed and cried, "Please, boss!" The fear in his voice was
real.

The man with the bat put his hand on the door handle. At the instant he
turned it, Malachai uncoiled, hurling himself through the door and on
him, pistol clubbed.

The gunner took two quick steps and the Thompson jerked and spoke. The
gunner's thick middle was in Randy's sights and he squeezed the trigger,
and again, and again before the Thompson's muzzle came down and the
gunner folded and began to fall. When he was on his face he still
twitched and held the gun and tried to swing it up and Randy shot him
again, carefully, through the head.

He had not even heard the shotguns but when Randy crawled over into the
front seat and got out, looking for another target, the battle was over.
Close behind the truck two figures lay, their arms and legs twisted in
death's awkward signature. The Admiral stood over the man who had held
the bat, his shotgun a foot from his head. Malachai was curled up as if
in sleep, his head against the left front tire. It had lasted not more
than seven seconds.

Malachai choked and groaned and Randy dropped to his knees beside him
and straightened him and lifted his head. Malachai choked again and
Randy turned Malachai's head so the blood could run out of his mouth and
not down his windpipe. He tore open Malachai's shirt. There was a hole
large as a dime just under the solar plexus. In this round well, dark
blood rose and ebbed rhythmically, a small, ominous tide.

The Admiral said, "Shall I get rid of this scum?"

Randy said, "Just a minute." He picked up the bat and forced himself to
think ahead. First, Malachai. Get Malachai home in a hurry so Dan could
do something if there was anything to be done. Dan didn't have his
tools, or much eyesight. He might make do with one eye if he had the
tools these men had stolen. Randy ran to the Model-A. It was empty. The
doctor's bag wasn't there.

He walked back to the truck where Sam Hazzard stood over their captive.
One side of the man's face was scraped raw. Malachai's plunge had
carried the long-jawed, twisted-mouth face along the bridge planking.
"Where's the doctor's bag?"

The man said nothing. Randy saw his right hand moving. He still had a
holstered weapon. Randy tapped him on the nose with the bat. "Keep your
hand still." The Admiral leaned over, unbuckled the holster, and took
the weapon. A .38 police special. "Talk," Randy said.

The man said, "I don't know nuthin'."

Randy tapped his face with the bat, harder. The man screamed. Randy
said, "Where's the black bag?"

The man said, "She took it. Rumdum took it."

"Where is she?"

"I don't know. She goofed off with somebody last night--maybe it was
this morning--I don't know--goofed off with some bastard with a bottle."

Randy called, "Bill! Where's Bill?"

Bill McGovern was on the other side of the truck. He said, "I'm here,
Randy."

"Bill, go look in that car and see if you can find Dan's bag. And be
sure those two back there are good and dead."

Malachai choked again. Randy tried to ease him over on his side but he
began to bleed more from the stomach wound so he had to let him be.

Sam Hazzard said, "I don't think this one's doing us any good. He's just
holding us up. I think we should convoke a military tribunal right now
and pass sentence. I vote he be executed."

"So do I," Randy said, "but I want him to hang. If he makes any trouble
let him have it, Sam, but I'd like to have him alive."

Bill came back with a cardboard carton. "Nothing in that car, except
this. A little food in here. A few cans of sardines and corned beef hash
and a box of matches. A couple of boxes of ammunition. That's all. Not a
sign of Dan's bag. And the sedan is finished. It was in our line of fire
and it looks like a sieve with all that buckshot through it. There's
gasoline all over the road."

Randy started the Model-A and looked at the fuel gauge. It showed almost
empty. He backed it away from the bridge entrance, put the key in his
pocket, and left it. He said, "We'll lift Malachai into the truck and
get going. First, I'll collect their weapons and ammo." He was thinking
ahead. There would be other highwaymen and this was armament for his
company.

"What about these?" Bill asked, pointing his shotgun at the bodies.

"Leave them." He looked up. The buzzards already attended. "I'll come
back tomorrow or we'll send somebody. Whatever they leave--" he watched
the black birds wheeling and swooping--"we'll give to the river."

One of the highwaymen trailing them had been Leroy Settle, the drugstore
cowboy. When Randy examined his two guns he was surprised to find that
they were only .22 caliber, lightweight replicas, except in bore, of the
big frontier .45's. His companion's pistol apparently had gone into the
river, for it wasn't on the bridge although he had a pocketful of
ammunition.

Then Randy leaned over the leader. He saw that his shots had all been
good, the three in the belly making a neat pattern, diagonal
ticktacktoe. When he picked up the Thompson the dead man's arm
astonishingly rose with it, clinging as if his fingers were glued to the
stock. Randy jerked it free and saw that it was glue, of a sort. The
man's hands were smeared with honey.

****

It was after dark when Randy wheeled up to the front steps of the house.
As he cut the engine he heard Graf barking. All the downstairs windows
showed light. Lib burst out of the door and ran down the steps, saw him
at the wheel, and was there with her arms and lips when he got out.

Preacher Henry appeared, and Two-Tone, Florence Wechek and Alice
Cooksey, Hannah and Missouri, the children. Dan Gunn came out, robe
flapping, carrying a lantern. They had all been waiting.

The Admiral and Bill were in back with the prisoner and Malachai. Bill
stepped out, holding a pistol, and then the man with the bat, called
Casey, prodded by Sam Hazzard's shotgun. Sam climbed down and that left
Malachai. Malachai had been unconscious after the first mile. Until they
reached Fort Repose, the road had been very bad.

Randy said, "Killed three, grabbed this one. They got Malachai through
the middle. Look at him, Dan. Is he still with us, Sam?"

The Admiral said, "He was a minute ago. Barely."

Randy said, "Ben Franklin, get some clothesline."

"We going to hang him right now?" Ben asked, not casually but still as
if he expected it.

"No. We'll tie him."

Dan crawled into the truck. He held up the lantern, shook his head in
exasperation, and then tore the patch away from his right eye. The eye
was still swollen but not entirely shut and any assistance to his left
eye was helpful. He crawled out and said, "He's in shock and shouldn't
be moved and ought to have a transfusion. But we have to move him if I'm
to do anything at all. On what?"

There was a discarded door in the toolhouse. They moved him on that.

They laid Malachai on the billiard table in the gameroom and then massed
lamps and candles so that Dan would have light.

Dan said, "I have to go into him. Massive internal hemorrhage. I've got
to tie it off or there's no chance at all. How? With what?" He leaped on
the edge of the table, swaying not in fatigue or weakness but in agony
of frustration. He cried, "Oh, God!"

Dan stopped swaying. "A knife, Randy?"

"My hunting knife, the one I shave with? It's sharp as a razor, almost."

"No, too big, too thick. How about steak knives?"

"Sure, steak knives."

The short-bladed steak knives even looked like lancets. The Judge and
Randy's mother had bought the set in Denmark on their summer in Europe
in 'fifty-four. They were the finest and sharpest steak knives Randy had
ever used. He found them in the silver chest and called, "How many?"

"Two will do."

From the dining room Helen called, "I've put on water to boil--a big
pot." The dinner fire had been going and Helen had piled on fat wood so
it roared and Dan would soon have the means of sterilizing his
instruments.

Randy put them into the pot to boil. After that, at Dan's direction he
put in his fine-nosed fishing pliers. Florence Wechek ran across the
road for darning needles. Lib found metal hair clips that would clamp an
artery. Randy's six-pound nylon line off the spinning reel would have to
do for sutures. There was enough soap to cleanse Dan's hands.

Dan went into the dining room, fretting, waiting for the pot and his
instruments to boil. It was hopeless, he knew. In spite of everything
they might do sepsis was almost inevitable, but now it was the shock and
the hemorrhage he couldn't lick. He wondered whether it would be
possible to rig up a saline solution transfusion. They had the
ingredients, salt and water and fire; and somewhere, certainly, rubber
tubing. He would not give up Malachai. He wanted to save Malachai,
capable, quiet, and strong, more than he had ever wanted to save anybody
in his years as a physician. So many people died for nothing. Malachai
was dying for something.

In the gameroom Helen was at work, quick and competent. She had found
their last bottle of Scotch, except what might remain in Randy's
decanter upstairs, and was cleansing the wound with it. Randy and Lib
stood beside her. The pool of blood in the round hole ebbed and did not
rise again.

The water was boiling in the big iron pot when Randy walked into the
dining room and touched Dan's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm
afraid it's all over."

In a dark corner of the room where she thought she would be out of the
way and not a bother, Hannah Henry had been sitting in an old scarred
maple rocker. The rocker began to move in slow cadence, and she moaned
in this cadence for the dead, arms folded over her empty breasts as if
holding a baby except that where the baby had been there was nothing.

Dan Gunn went into the gameroom and saw that Randy was correct, that
Malachai was gone. His shoulders felt heavy. He was aware that his head
throbbed and eyes burned. There was nothing more to do except empty the
makeshift sterilizer with its ridiculous makeshift tools. He did this in
the kitchen sink. Yet when he saw the knives and the pliers and the hair
clips steaming he realized they were not really so ridiculous. If he was
very careful and skillful, he could make do with such tools. They had
not and probably could not have saved Malachai. They might save someone
else. A century ago the tools had been no better and the knowledge
infinitely less. Out of death, life; an immutable truth. Helen was at
his side. He said, "Thanks, Helen, for the try. You're the best
unregistered nurse in the world."

"I'm sorry it was for nothing."

"Maybe it wasn't for nothing. I'll just keep these and try to add to
them. I wonder if we could find a small bag somewhere? Any little
traveling bag would do."

"I have one. A train case."

"We'll start here, then, and build another kit." His eyes hurt. Who in
Fort Repose could build him another pair of glasses, or give him new
eyes?

****

At nine o'clock that night Randy's knees began to quiver and his brain
refused further work and begged to quit, a reaction, he knew, to the
fight on the bridge and what had gone before and after, and lack of
sleep. It was his wedding night. He had been married at noon that same
day, which seemed incredible. Noon was a life ago.

But now that he was married, he thought it only right that he and Lib
have a room to themselves and the privacy accorded a married couple. All
the bedroom space was taken and he hated to evict anyone. After all,
they were all his guests. Yet since it was inevitable that beds and
rooms be shifted around, the victim would have to be Ben Franklin, since
Ben was the junior male. Ben would have to give up his room and take the
couch in Randy's apartment and Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Bragg would move
into Ben's room.

He was sitting on his couch, trying to still his quivering legs, face in
his hands, thinking of this. Lib sat behind the bar drinking a warm
limeade. She was thinking of the problem also but was reluctant to
mention it, feeling that it was the husband's duty and she should allow
him to bring it up.

Her father came in, a thin and wan Caesar in his sandals and white robe.
Bill McGovern had been standing guard over the trussed prisoner,
wondering the while that he had killed a man that day and felt no guilt
at the time or after. It was like stepping on a roach. He had just been
relieved by Two-Tone Henry, who had left his house of mourning to assume
the duty. Bill asked for Dan. Randy lifted his head and told him that
Dan, exhausted by being too long on his feet, slept. "Well, I'll tell
you, then, but I don't suppose it will do any good tonight."

He spoke directly to his daughter. "I didn't know what to give you for a
wedding present, Elizabeth. There's a good deal of real estate in
Cleveland but I don't suppose it'll ever be worth much now. There are
bonds and stock certificates in our safe deposit vault right here in
Fort Repose, and the cash--well, the Confederate money in Randy's chest
is just as good. You can have the house and property down the road, if
you want it, but I don't think anybody can ever live there unless
electricity comes back. So I thought, what can I give Lib and Randy? I
talked it over this morning with Dan. He made a suggestion and we
decided to give you a present jointly, from the best man and the father
of the bride."

Bill looked from one to the other and saw they were interested. "We are
jointly making you a present of this whole apartment. Dan is going to
move in with me."

Lib said, "That's perfectly wonderful, Father!"

Bill said, hesitantly, "Only, if Dan's asleep I don't think we ought to
disturb him, do you?"

"No, not tonight," Lib said. She kissed her father, and she kissed her
husband, and she went across the hall to her old room. Randy fell across
the couch and slept. Presently Graf jumped up beside him and snuggled
under his arm.

****

At noon Monday the man with the bat was hung from a girder supporting
the bandstand roof in Marines Park. All the regular traders and a number
of strangers were in the park. Randy ordered that the corpse not be cut
down until sunset. He wanted the strangers to be impressed and spread
the word beyond Fort Repose.

While he had not planned it, on this day he accepted the first
enlistments in what came to be known as Bragg's Troop, although in
orders he called it the Fort Repose Provisional Company. Seven men
volunteered that day, including Fletcher Kennedy, who had been an Air
Force fighter pilot, and Link Haslip, a West Point cadet who had been
home on Christmas leave on The Day. He created them provisional
lieutenants of infantry. The other five were even younger--boys who had
finished six months of Reserve training after high school or had been in
the National Guard.

After the execution, Randy posted the notices he had typed earlier and
brought to the park in his uniform pocket. The first read:

    On 17 April the following highwaymen were killed on the covered
    bridge: Mickey Cahane, of Las Vegas and Boca Raton, a gambler
    and racketeer; Arch Fleggert, Miami, occupation unknown; Leroy
    Settle, Fort Repose.

    On 18 April Thomas "Casey" Killinger, also of Las Vegas, and the
    fourth member of the band which murdered Mr. and Mrs. James
    Hickey and robbed and assaulted Dr. Daniel Gunn, was hung on
    this spot.

The second notice was shorter:

    On 17 April Technical Sergeant Malachai Henry (USAF, reserve)
    died of a wound received on the covered bridge while defending
    Fort Repose.




CHAPTER TWELVE


Early in May a tube in the Admiral's radio flared and died, cutting off
the voice of the world outside. While these communications had always
been sketchy, and the information meager and confusing, the fact that
they were gone entirely was a blow to everyone. The Admiral's short-wave
receiver had been their only reliable source of news. It was also a
fount of hope. Each night that reception was good some of them had
gathered in the Admiral's den and listened while he conned the wave
lengths, hoping for news of peace, victory, succor, reconstruction.
While they never heard such news, they could always wait for the next
night with hope.

After consulting with the Admiral and the Henrys, Randy posted a notice
on his official bulletin board in Marines Park. He asked a replacement
for the tube and offered handsome payment--a pig and two chickens or a
five-year file of old magazines. A proper tube never came in. Before The
Day the Admiral had been forced to order replacement tubes directly from
the factory in New Jersey, so he had not been optimistic.

Even had they been able to acquire a new tube, the radio could not have
operated long, for the automobile batteries were depleted and it was in
May that gasoline vanished entirely.

****

In June Preacher Henry's corn crop ripened, the sweet yams swelled in
the ground, and the first stalks of Two-Tone's sugar cane fell to the
machete. June was the month of plenty, the month in which they ate corn
pone and hoe cake with molasses. In June they all fleshed out.

It was in June, also, that they ran their first batch of mash through
the still built by Bill McGovern and Two-Tone. It was an event. After
pine knots blazed for three hours under a fifty-gallon drum, liquid
began to drip from the spout terminating an intricate arrangement of
copper tubing, coils, and condensers. Two-Tone caught these first drops
in a cup and handed it to Randy. Randy sniffed the colorless stuff. It
smelled horrible. When it had cooled a bit he tasted it. His eyes
watered and his stomach begged him not to swallow. He managed to get a
little down. It was horrid. "It's wonderful!" he gasped, and quickly
passed the cup on.

After all the men had taken a swallow, and properly praised Two-Tone's
inventive initiative and Bill's mechanical acumen, Randy said, "Of
course it's still a little raw. With aging, it'll be smoother."

"It ought to be aged in the wood," Bill said. "Where will we get a keg?"

"It'll be a cinch," Randy said. "Anybody who has a keg will trade it for
a couple of quarts after it's aged."

But for Dan Gunn, the corn whiskey was immediately useful. While he
would not dare use it for anesthesia, he estimated its alcohol content
as high. It would be an excellent bug repellent, liniment, and
pre-operative skin antiseptic.

****

One day in July, Alice Cooksey brought home four books on hypnotism, and
presented them to Dan Gunn. "If you can learn hypnotism," she suggested,
"you might use it as anesthesia."

Dan knew a number of doctors, and dentists too, who commonly practiced
hypnotism. It had always seemed to him an inefficient and time-consuming
substitute for ether and morphine but now he grasped at the idea as if
Alice had offered him a specific for cancer.

Every night Helen read to him. She insisted on doing his reading, thus
saving his eyes. They no longer had candles or kerosene but their lamps
and lanterns burned furnace oil extracted from the underground tanks
with a bilge pump. It was true that furnace oil smoked, and stank, and
produced yellow and inefficient light. But it was light.

Soon Dan hypnotized Helen. He then hypnotized or attempted hypnosis on
everyone in River Road. He couldn't hypnotize the Admiral at all. He
succeeded in partially hypnotizing Randy, with poor results, including
grogginess and a headache. Randy attempted to cooperate but he could not
erase everything else from his mind.

The children were excellent subjects. Dan hypnotized them again and
again until he had only to speak a few sentences, in the jargon of the
hypnotist, snap his fingers, and they would fall into malleable trance.
Randy worried about this until Dan explained.

"I've been training the children to be quick subjects, because in an
emergency, they have their own built-in supply of ether."

"And if you're not around?"

"Helen is studying hypnotism too." He was thoughtful. "She's becoming
quite expert. You know, Helen could have been a doctor. Helen isn't
happy unless she's caring for someone. She takes care of me."

A week later Ben Franklin developed a stomachache which forced him to
draw up his right knee when he tried to lie down. The ache was always
there and at intervals it became sharp pain enveloping him in waves. Dan
decided Ben's pain was not from eating too many bananas. It was
impossible to take a blood count but the boy had a slight fever and Dan
knew he had to go into him.

Dan operated on the billiard table in the gameroom, after putting Ben
into deep trance. Dan used the steak knives, darning needles, hair
curlers, and nylon line, all properly sterilized, and removed an
appendix distended and near to bursting.

In five days Ben was up and active. After that Randy, somewhat in awe,
referred to Dan as "our witch doctor."

****

In August they used the last of the corn, squeezed the last of the late
oranges, the Valencias, and plucked the last overripe but deliciously
sweet grapefruit from the trees. In August they ran out of salt,
armadillos destroyed the yam crop, and the fish stopped biting. That
terribly hot August was the month of disaster.

The end of the corn and exhaustion of the citrus crop had been
inevitable. Armadillos in the yams was bad luck, but bearable. But
without fish and salt their survival was in doubt.

****

Randy had carefully rationed salt since he was shocked, in July, to
discover how few pounds were left. Salt was a vital commodity, not just
white grains you shook on eggs. Dan used saline solutions for half a
dozen purposes. The children used salt to brush their teeth. Without
salt, the slaughter of the Henry pigs would have been a terrible waste.
They planned to tan one hide to cut badly needed moccasins, and without
salt this was impossible.

As soon as they were out of salt it seemed that almost everything
required salt, most of all the human body. Day after day the porch
thermometer stood at ninety-five or over and every day all of them had
manual labor to do, and miles to walk. They sweated rivers. They sweated
their salt away, and they grew weak, and they grew ill. And all of Fort
Repose grew weak and ill for there was no salt anywhere.

In July Randy had gone to Rita Hernandez and she had traded five pounds
of salt to him for three large bass, a bushel of Valencias, and four
buckshot shells. She had traded not so much for these things, Randy
believed, but because he had helped her arrange decent burial for Pete,
and provided the pallbearers to carry him to Repose-in-Peace Park. Since
July, he had been unable to trade for salt anywhere. In Marines Park, a
pound of salt would be worth five pounds of coffee, if anyone had
coffee. You could not even buy salt with corn liquor, potent if only
slightly aged.

In August the traders in Marines Park dragged themselves about like
zombies, for want of salt. And for the first time in his life Randy felt
a weird uneasiness and craving that became almost madness when he rubbed
the perspiration from his face and then tasted salt on his fingers. Now
he understood the craving of animals for salt, understood why a cougar
and a deer would share the same salt lick in the enforced truce of salt
starvation.

But even more important than salt was fish, for the fish of the river
was their staple, like seal to the Eskimo. It had been so simple, until
August. Their bamboo set poles, butts lodged in metal or wooden holders
on the ends and sides of their docks, each night usually provided enough
fish for the following day. In the morning someone would stroll down to
the dock and haul up whatever had hooked itself in the hours of
darkness. If the night's automatic catch was lean, or if extra fish were
needed for trading, someone was granted leave from regular chores to
fish in the morning, or at dusk when the feeding bass struck savagely.
Their poles grew in clumps, they had line aplenty, hooks enough to last
for years (fishing had been the pre-Day hobby of Bill McGovern and Sam
Hazzard as well as Randy) and every kind of bait--worms, crickets,
grasshoppers, tadpoles, minnows, shiners--for anyone capable of using a
shovel, throw net, or simply his hands.

Randy had more than a hundred plugs and spoons and perhaps half as many
flies and bass bugs. He had bought them knowing well that most lures are
designed to catch fishermen rather than fish. Still, on occasion the
bass would go wild for artificials and in the spring the specks and
bream would snap up small flies and tiny spoons. So fish had never been
a problem, until they stopped biting.

When they stopped they stopped all at once and all together. Even with
his circular shrimp net, wading barefoot in the shallows, Lib beside him
hopefully carrying a bucket, Randy could not net a shiner, bream, cat,
or even mudfish. Randy considered himself a good fisherman and yet he
admitted he didn't understand why fish bit or why they didn't. August
had never been a good month for black bass, true, but this August was
strange. Only during thunderstorms was there a ripple on the river. A
molten sun rose, grew white hot, and sank red and molten, and the river
was unearthly still and oily, agitated no more than Florence's aquarium.
Even at crack of dawn or final light, no fish jumped or swirled. It was
bad. And it was eerie and frightening.

In the third week of August when they were all weak and half-sick Randy
spoke his fears to Dan. It was evening. Randy and Lib had just come from
the hammock. For an hour they had crouched together under a great oak
waiting for the little gray squirrels to feed. They had been utterly
quiet and the squirrels had been noisy and Randy had blasted two of them
out of the tree with his double twenty, a shameful use of irreplaceable
ammunition for very little meat. Yet two squirrels was enough to give
meat flavor to a stew that night. What they would have for breakfast, if
anything, nobody knew. They found Dan in Randy's office, with Helen
trimming his hair. Randy told them about the two squirrels and then he
said, "Dan, I've been thinking about the fish. I've never seen fishing
this bad before. Could anything big and permanent have happened? Could
radiation have wiped them out, or anything?"

Dan scratched at his beard and Helen brushed his hand down and said,
"Sit still."

Dan said, "Fish. Let me think about fish. I doubt that anything happened
to the fish. If the river had been poisoned by fallout right after The
Day the dead fish would have come to the surface. The river would have
been blanketed with fish. That didn't happen then and it hasn't happened
since. No, I doubt that there has been a holocaust of fish."

"It worries me," Randy said.

"Salt worries me more. Salt doesn't grow or breed or spawn. You either
have it or you don't."

Helen swung the swivel chair. Dan was facing the teak chest. Suddenly he
lifted himself out of the chair, flung himself on his knees, opened the
chest and began to dig into it. "The diary!" he shouted. "Where's the
diary?"

"It's there. Why?"

"There's salt in the diary! Remember when Helen was reading it to me
after I was slagged by the highwaymen? There was something about salt in
it. Remember, Helen?"

Randy had not looked into the log of Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee Peyton
for years, but now it was coming back to him, and he did remember.
Lieutenant Peyton's Marines had also lacked and needed salt, and somehow
obtained it. He dropped on his knees beside Dan and quickly found the
log. He skimmed through the pages. Lieutenant Peyton, as he recalled it,
had run out of salt in the second year. He found an entry, dated August
19, 1839:

    "The supply boat from Cow's Ford being much overdue, and my
    command lacking salt and suffering greatly from the heat, on 6
    August I dispatched my loyal Creek guide, Billy Longnose, down
    the St. Johns (sometimes called River May) to discover the cause
    of delay. Today he returned with the information that our supply
    boat, beating its way upstream, had put into dock at Mandarin (a
    town named to honor the oriental nation from which it imported
    its orange trees). By ill luck, on that night the Seminoles
    raided Mandarin, putting to death a number of its inhabitants
    and burning the houses. The master of the supply boat, a
    civilian, and his crew, consisting of a white man and two
    Slaves, escaped to the woods and later reached St. Augustine.
    However, the boat was pillaged and then burned.

    "All other privations my men can endure except lack of water and
    lack of salt."

The next entry was dated August 21. Randy read it aloud:

    "Billy Longnose today brought to the Fort a Seminole, a very
    dirty and shifty-eyed buck calling himself Kyukan, who offered
    to guide me to a place where there is sufficient salt to fill
    this Fort ten times over. So he says. In payment he demanded one
    gallon of rum. While it is unlawful to sell spirits to the
    Seminoles, nothing is said about giving them drink. Accordingly,
    I offered the buck a half-gallon jug, and he agreed."

Randy turned the page and said, "Here it is. Twenty-three April":

    "This day I returned to Fort Repose in the second boat, bringing
    twelve large sacks of salt. It was true. I could have filled the
    Fort ten times over.

    "The place is near the headwaters of the Timucuan, some
    twenty-two nautical miles, I should judge, up that tributary. It
    is called by an Indian word meaning Blue Crab Pool. The pool
    itself is crystal clear, like the Silver Springs. I thought it
    surrounded by a white beach, but then discovered that what I
    thought sand was pure salt. It was quite unbelievable. In this
    pool there were blue crabs, such as are found only in the ocean,
    yet the pool is many miles inland, and two hundred miles from
    the mouth of the St. John, or May."

Randy closed the log, grinned, and said, "I've heard of Blue Crab Run
but I've never been there. My father used to go there when he was a boy,
for crab feasts. He never mentioned salt. I guess salt didn't impress my
father. It was always in the kitchen. He had plenty."

The next morning the Fort Repose fleet set sail, five boats commanded by
an admiral whose last sea command had also been five ships--a
super-carrier, two cruisers, and two destroyers.

By August most of the boats in Fort Repose had been fitted with sails
cut from awnings, draperies, or even nylon sheets for the lighter
outboards, and with keels or sideboards, and hand-carved rudders. For
the expedition up the Timucuan, Sam Hazzard chose boats of exceptional
capacity and stability. Randy's light Fiberglas boat wasn't suitable, so
Randy went along as the Admiral's crew. With the south wind blowing hot
and steady, they planned to reach Blue Crab Pool before night and be
back in Fort Repose by noon the next day, for their speed would double
on their return voyage downstream.

Their five boats crewed thirteen men, all well armed. It would be the
first night Randy had spent away from Lib since their marriage, and she
seemed somewhat distressed by this. But Randy had no fear for her
safety, or for the safety of Fort Repose. His company now numbered
thirty men. It controlled the rivers and the roads. Knowing this,
highwaymen shunned Fort Repose. The phrase "deterrent force" had been
popular before The Day and effective so long as that force had been
unmistakably superior. Randy's company was certainly the most efficient
force in Central Florida, and he intended to keep it so.

Sitting at the tiller, gold-encrusted cap pushed back on his head, the
wind singing through the stays, the Admiral seemed to have sloughed off
a decade. "You know," he said, "when I was at the Academy they still
insisted that we learn sail before steam. They used to stick us in
catboats and make us whip back and forth on the Severn and learn knots
and rigs and spars. I thought it was silly. I still do, but it is fun."

They reached a curve of the river and Randy watched the captain's walk
on his roof disappear behind the cypress and palms. It was fun, he
thought, and it was quiet. In a sailboat a man could think. He thought
about the fish, and what had happened to them, for his stomach was
empty.

****

Peyton Bragg was bored, disgusted, and angry. She had helped Ben
Franklin plan the hunt. She had even walked to town with Ben and helped
him locate the books in the library that told about armadillos. The
armadillo, they had learned, was a nocturnal beast that curled up deep
underground in daylight hours. In the night he burrowed like a mole just
under the surface, locating and eating tender roots and tubers, in this
case the Henrys' yams. The exciting thing they learned was that in his
native Central America the armadillo was considered a delicacy. The
armadillo was food.

Then, when it came time for the hunt, Ben had refused to take her along.
A girl couldn't stay out all night in the woods, Ben said. It was too
dangerous for a girl. She would have presented her case to Randy for
judgment, but Randy was gone with the Admiral, and her mother agreed
with Ben.

So Ben had gone off that evening with Caleb and Graf. It was Ben's
contention that Graf was the key to armadillo hunting, and so it had
proved. In Germany the dachshund was originally bred as a badger hound,
which meant that he could dig like mad and would fearlessly and
tenaciously pursue any animal underground.

Ben had been armed with a machete and his .22 rifle, but it was Caleb's
spear that had been the effective weapon against armadillos. They had
gone to the yam patch in the moonlight. The whole patch was plowed with
armadillo runs. Ben introduced Graf to an opening and Graf, sniffing and
understanding at once, had wormed his way into the earth. Presently
there came an awful snarling and growling from a corner of the patch.
Locating the armadillo from Graf's sounds, Caleb prodded it with his
spear, and the armadillo burst out. This eruption so surprised Ben that
he shot it. The others, he decapitated with the machete.

In the morning, five armadillos had been laid out in the Henrys' barn.
Two-Tone and Preacher cleaned them, and Peyton had eaten armadillo for
breakfast. She would have choked on it, except that it was tender and
delicious and she was starving. Ben Franklin was credited with
discovering a new source of food, and was a hero. Peyton was only a
girl, fit for sewing, pot washing, and making beds.

Peyton threw herself on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She wanted to
be noticed and praised. She wanted to be a hero. She recently had been
talking to Lib about psychology, a fascinating subject. She had even
read one of Lib's books. "I'm rejected," she told herself aloud.

If she wanted to be a hero the best way was to catch some fish. She set
her mind to the problem, why won't the fish bite? She had heard the
Admiral say that the best fisherman on the river was Preacher Henry and
yet she knew that Randy hadn't talked to Preacher about the no-fish. If
anybody could help, Preacher could. She got up, smoothed the bed, and
sneaked down the back stairs. This was her day to sweep upstairs. She
would finish when she got back.

Peyton found Preacher in the cool of his front porch, rocking. Preacher
was getting very old. He didn't do much of anything any more except
rock. Preacher was the oldest person Peyton had ever seen. Now that he
had grown a white beard, he looked like a dark prophet out of the Bible.
Peyton said, "Preacher, can you tell me something?"

Preacher was startled. He hadn't seen her slip up on him, and her voice
had broken his dream. He started to rise and then sank back into the
chair. "Sure, Peyton," he said. "What do you want to know?"

"Why don't the fish bite?"

Preacher chuckled. "They do bite. They bite whenever they eat."

"Come on, Preacher. Tell me how I can catch some fish."

"To catch fish, you got to think like a fish. Can you think like a fish,
little girl?"

Peyton felt injured, being called a little girl, but she was a child of
dignity, and it was with dignity that she answered. "No, I can't. But I
know that you can. You must, because you're a great fisherman."

Preacher nodded in agreement. "I was a great fisherman. Now I feel too
poorly to fish. Nobody thinks of me any more as a great fisherman. They
only think of me as an old man of no use to anyone. You are the first
one to ask, 'Why don't the fish bite?' So I'll tell you."

Peyton waited.

"If it was very hot, like now, the hottest I ever remember, and you was
a fish, what would you do?"

"I don't know," Peyton said. "I know what I do. I take showers, three or
four a day. Outside with nothing on."

Preacher nodded. "The fish, he wants to stay cool too. He don't hang
around the shore there--" his arm swept to indicate the river banks--"he
goes out into the middle. The water close to the shore, it's hot. You
put your hand in it, it feels like soup. But out in the middle of the
river, way down deep, it's nice and cool. Down there the fish feels
lively and hungry and he eats and when he eats he bites."

"Bass?"

"Yes. Big bass, 'way down deep."

"How would I get them? Nobody's been able to net any bass bait--no
shiners."

"That's the trouble," Preacher said. "The little fish he gets hot too
and so he's out there in the middle deep, being chased by the big fish
like always."

Peyton thought of something. "Would a bass bite a goldfish?"

Preacher looked at her suspiciously. "He sure would! He'd take a
goldfish in a second if one was offered! But it against the law to fish
with goldfish. But if I did have goldfish, and if it weren't against the
law, and if I did fish out in the deep channel, then I wouldn't use a
bobber. I'd just put a little weight next my hook so that goldfish would
sink right down where the big bass lie."

Peyton said, "Thank you, Preacher," and skipped away, not wishing to
incriminate him further, if it really was true that goldfish were
illegal. She went home, found a bucket on the back porch, and then
walked across River Road for a talk with Florence Wechek. She and
Florence were good friends and often had long talks, but about simple
subjects, such as mending.

Florence wasn't home--she was probably in town helping Alice at the
library--but the goldfish were. She watched them swimming dreamily,
ignoring her in their useless complacency. "In with you," she said, and
dumped fish and water into the pail. She borrowed Ben Franklin's rod and
reel and made for the dock. She was forbidden to go out in Randy's boat
alone, but since she was already involved in one criminal act, she might
as well risk another.

****

At noon Randy had not returned and Elizabeth McGovern Bragg climbed to
the captain's walk where she could be alone with her fears and anxiety.
Her father and Dan Gunn had walked to town that morning. With some
volunteers from Bragg's Troop, they had begun to clean up and repair the
clinic. So there was no man in the house and she was afraid for her
husband. He had told her there would be no danger but in this new life
the dangers were deadly and unpredictable. She kept her face turned
steadily to the east, where the Admiral's striped-awning sail should
appear at the first bend of the Timucuan.

She told herself that she was silly, that Randy and the others, if they
found the place at all, might tarry there for hours. They would
undoubtedly feast on crab, and she couldn't blame them. They might find
it difficult to load the salt. Anything could delay them.

From the grass behind the kitchen Helen called up, "Lib!"

She leaned over the rail. "Yes?"

"Is Peyton up there with you?"

"No. I haven't seen her."

"Is she out on the dock?"

Lib looked out at the dock and saw that Randy's boat was missing. Before
she told Helen this she scanned the river. It was nowhere in sight;
Randy had sailed in the Admiral's cruiser, and the boat should be there.

At five that evening the Fort Repose fleet sighted Randy's house. There
was no doubt that it had been a triumphant voyage. The five boats were
deep with salt, the thirteen men were filled with boiled crabs, lavishly
seasoned, so they were all stronger and felt better, and in every boat
there were buckets and washtubs filled with live crabs.

The Admiral ran his boat alongside Randy's dock and turned into the
wind. "You unload what salt you want here," Sam Hazzard said, "and that
washtubful of crabs, and I'll sail back with the Henrys' share, and
mine."

Randy unloaded. He had expected that Lib would be down at the dock to
greet him, or certainly watching from the captain's walk. Coming home
with such rich cargo, he was chagrined. He lifted the washtub to the
dock and then two fat sacks of salt. Fifty pounds, at least, he thought.
It would last for months and when it was gone there was an unlimited
supply waiting on the shores of Blue Crab Pool. He said, "So long, Sam.
See you tonight."

The Admiral pushed away from the dock and Randy picked up the washtub,
deliberately spilled some of the water that had kept the crabs alive,
and walked to the house.

The kitchen was empty except for four very large black bass in the sink.
He lifted the largest. An eleven-pounder, he judged. It was the biggest
bass he had seen in a year. It was unbelievable.

There was a plate on the kitchen table heaped with roasted meat. It
looked like lamb. He tasted it. It didn't taste like lamb. It didn't
taste like anything he had ever tasted before, but it tasted wonderful.
He thought of the crabs, and their value dwindled to hors d'ouevres.

It was then he heard the first sobs, from upstairs, he thought, and then
a different voice weeping hysterically somewhere else in the house. In
fear, he ran through the dining room.

Three women were in the living room. They were all crying, Lib silently,
Florence and Helen loudly. Lib saw him and ran into his arms and wiped
her tears on his shirt. "What's happened?" he demanded.

"I thought you'd never come home," Lib said. "I was afraid and there's
so much trouble."

"What? Who's hurt?"

"Nobody but Peyton. She's upstairs, crying. Helen spanked her and sent
her to bed."

"Why?"

"She went fishing."

"Did Peyton catch those big bass?"

"Yes."

"And Helen spanked her for it?"

"Not that. Helen spanked her because she took out your boat and drifted
downstream. We didn't know what had happened to her until she rowed home
an hour ago. She said she couldn't make it sail right."

Randy looked at Helen. "And what's wrong with you?"

"I'm upset. Anybody'd be upset if they had to spank their child."

Florence wailed and her head fell on her arms.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Somebody or something came in and ate her goldfish."

Florence raised her head. "I think it must have been Sir Percy. I'm sure
of it. I did love that cat and now look how he behaves." She wept again.

Randy said, "Isn't anybody going to ask me whether I got salt?"

"Did you get salt?" Lib asked.

"Yes. Fifty pounds of it. And if you women want it, you'll take the
wheelbarrow down to the dock and lug it up."

He went into the kitchen to clean the beautiful bass and put the crabs
in the big pot. It was all ridiculous and stupid. The more he learned
about women the more there was to learn except that he had learned this:
they needed a man around.

Then he found a tattered goldfish in the gullet of the eleven-pounder.
He examined it carefully, smiled, and dropped it into the sink. He would
not mention it. There was enough trouble and confusion among all these
women already.

So ended the hunger of August. In the fourth week the heat broke and the
fish began to bite again.

****

In September school began. It was impractical to reopen the Fort Repose
schoolhouse--it was unheated and there was no water. Randy decided that
the responsibility for teaching must rest temporarily with the parents.
The regular teachers were scattered or gone and there was no way of
paying them. The textbooks were still in the schoolhouse, for anyone who
needed them.

Judge Bragg's library became the schoolroom in the Bragg household, with
Lib and Helen dividing the teaching. When Caleb Henry arrived to attend
classes with Peyton and Ben Franklin, Randy was a little surprised. He
saw that Peyton and Ben expected it, and then he recalled that in
Omaha--and indeed in two thirds of America's cities--white and Negro
children had sat side by side for many years without fuss or trouble.

In October the new crop of early oranges began to ripen. The juice
tasted tart and refreshing after months without it.

In October, armadillos began to grow scarce in the Fort Repose area, but
the Henrys' flock of chickens had increased and the sow again farrowed.
Also, ducks arrived in enormous numbers from the North--more than Randy
ever before had seen. Wild turkeys, which before The Day had been hunted
almost to extermination in Timucuan County, suddenly were common. Randy
fashioned himself a turkey call, and shot one or two every week. Quail
roamed the groves, fields and yards in great coveys. He did not use his
shells on such trifling game. But Two-Tone knew how to fashion snares,
and taught the boys, so there was usually quail for breakfast along with
eggs.

One evening near the end of the month Dan Gunn returned from his clinic,
smiling and whistling. "Randy," he said, "I have just delivered my first
post-Day baby! A boy, about eight pounds, bright and healthy!"

"So what's so wonderful about delivering a baby?" Randy said. "Was the
mother under hypnosis?"

"Yes. But that's not what was wonderful." Dan's smile disappeared. "You
see, this was the first live baby, full term. I had two other
pregnancies that ended prematurely. Nature's way of protecting the race,
I think, although you can't reach any statistical conclusion on the
basis of three pregnancies. Anyway, now we know that there's going to be
a human race, don't we?"

"I'd never really thought there might not be."

"I had," Dan said quietly.

****

In November a tall pine, split by lightning during the summer, dropped
its brown needles and died and Randy and Bill felled it with a two-man
saw and ax. It was arduous work and neither of them knew the technique.
It was at times like this that Randy missed and thought of Malachai.
Nevertheless they got the job done and trimmed the thick branches. The
wood was valuable, for another winter was coming.

Randy went to bed early that night, exhausted. He woke suddenly with a
queer sound in his ears, like music, almost. He looked at his watch. It
was a bit after midnight. Lib slept quietly beside him. He was
frightened. He nudged her. She lifted her head and her eyes opened.
"Sweetheart," he said, "do you hear anything?"

"Go to sleep," she said, and her head fell back on the pillow. It
bounced up again. "Yes," she said, "I do hear something. It sounds like
music. Of course it can't be music but that's what it sounds like."

"I'm relieved," Randy said. "I thought it was in my head." He listened
intently. "I could swear that it sounds like 'In the Mood.' If I didn't
know better I could swear it was that great Glenn Miller recording."

She kicked him. "Get up! Get up!"

He flung himself out of bed and opened the door to the upstairs living
room, lit by a lamp on the bar, turned low. It was necessary to keep
fire in the house for they no longer had matches, flints, or lighter
fluid. Randy thought, it must be the transistor radio, started up again,
but at the same time he knew this was impossible because he long ago had
thrown away the dead batteries. Nevertheless he picked up the radio and
listened. It was silent yet the music persisted.

"It's coming from the hall," Lib said.

They opened the door into the hallway. The rhythm was louder but the
hall was empty. Randy saw a crack of light under Peyton's door.
"Peyton's room!" he said.

He put his hand on the door handle but decided it would be gentlemanly
to knock first. After all, Peyton was twelve now. He knocked.

The music stopped abruptly. Peyton said, in a small, frightened voice,
"Come in."

Peyton's room was illuminated by a lamp Randy had never seen before.
Peyton didn't have a lamp of her own. On Peyton's desk was an
old-fashioned, hand-crank phonograph with flaring horn. Stacked beside
it were albums of records.

Randy said, softly, "Put it on again, Peyton."

Peyton stopped plucking at the front of her pajamas, hand-me-downs from
Ben Franklin, just as Ben's pajams were hand-me-downs from Randy, so
fast did children grow. She started the record, from the beginning.
Hearing it, Randy realized how much he had missed music, how music
seasoned his civilization. In the Henry house Missouri often sang, but
in the Bragg house hardly anyone could carry a tune, or even hum.

Over the rhythm, Lib whispered, "Where did you get it, Peyton? Where did
it come from?"

"The attic. I went up the little ladder in the back hall. Mother will be
furious. She told me never to go up there because the rungs were cracked
and I might fall."

"Your mother was up in the attic a few months ago. She didn't see
anything."

"I know. I was crawling around behind the big trunk and there was a
door, a board door that looked like part of the wall. I opened it and
there was another room, smaller."

Randy said, "Why did you do it, Peyton?"

"I don't know. I was lonely and there wasn't anything else to do and I'd
never been up there. You know how it is. When you've never been some
place, you want to go."

Randy opened one of the albums. "Old seventy-eights," he said, his voice
almost reverent. "Classic jazz. Listen to this. By Tommy Dorsey--'Come
Rain or Shine,' 'Stardust,' 'Chicago.' Carmen Cavallaro's 'Stormy
Weather.' Also 'Body and Soul.' Artie Shaw's 'Back Bay Shuffle.' All the
best by the best. I guess--I'm certain this must have been Father's
collection. I've never seen this machine before, but I remember the
records."

"In the Mood" ended. Randy said, "Turn it over, Peyton. No. Put on this
one."

"You're not angry, Randy?" Peyton said.

"Angry! I should say not!"

"I found some other stuff in there too."

"Like what?"

"Well, there's an old-time sewing machine--the kind you work with your
feet. There are some big kerosene lamps, the kind that hang. This one on
the desk I found up there, too. All I had when I went up was a little
stub candle. Then there's an old pot-bellied stove and a lot of iron
pipe. Oh, and lots of other junk. I left it because I wanted to try the
record player. The only other thing I brought down I brought for you and
Dan, Randy. It's there on the bed."

Randy picked up the black leather case. It looked familiar. He had seen
it before. He opened it and saw the two matched straight-edge razors
that had belonged to his father.

He leaned over and kissed the top of Peyton's head. "Don't worry about
what your mother will say," he told her. "I'll handle everything for
you. If I had medals to give, I would pin one on you, Peyton, right
now."

In this manner, Peyton became a heroine.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


One morning in November, when Randy was breakfasting early and alone,
Dan Gunn came downstairs smooth-shaven, his jaw looking oddly pallid in
contrast to brown forehead, nose, cheekbones, and neck. "Good morning,"
Randy said. "You swore you'd never shave again! Why?"

"Well," Dan said lamely, "I had the razor and it seemed a shame not to
use it after Peyton gave it to me. Then there was the soap." Within the
past few weeks, bars of homemade soap had appeared in Marines Park,
produced by Mrs. Estes, who had been senior teller at the bank, and two
former co-workers. Everyone agreed that it would be a prosperous and
rewarding business.

"The truth, Dan!" Randy said.

"Helen asked me to do it. She said she was getting tired of trimming
it."

"Oh, that's different. You'd better be home in time for dinner tonight.
John Garcia just made another run up to Blue Crab Pool and he's dropping
off a washtub of crabs here. In exchange for one quart of lightning."

Dan said, "I'm very fond of Helen. I don't know what I'd do without
her."

"Why do anything without her?"

"Randy, I want to marry her."

Randy rose from the table, bowed, and said, "I give you my blessing!"

"It isn't funny."

"Marriage is rarely funny."

"She won't marry me."

"Then why did you shave off your beard?"

"Damn it, Randy, I love her. And she loves me. She admitted it. She
wants to marry me. But she won't. She thinks there's a chance Mark's
still alive. She's afraid that if we married then Mark would turn up
alive and there'd be one of those awful messes we've all heard about or
read about. Like when men were reported dead in the Philippines or Korea
and they turned up after the war in an enemy prison camp. They came home
and found their wives happily married to someone else. Sometimes there
were children. It's always a mess."

"It's happened," Randy said, "but in this case I don't think there's a
chance. Want me to talk to her?"

Dan rubbed his face where his beard had been. "I feel naked. No, Randy,
thanks. I don't think Helen would want it discussed. Not yet, anyway.
She just has this feeling, and I'm afraid she'll have to empty it
herself."

****

It was in this month that the first low-flying plane frightened and
exhilarated them.

At irregular times planes had been reported before, but always jets,
flying very high, usually no more than a silver splinter in the sky, or
contrail, in day, and only sound at night.

But in the second week in November a big four-engined transport roared
over Fort Repose at a thousand feet. It bore Air Force markings. In
Marines Park everyone screamed and waved. It did not even waggle its
wings, but went on, south. Dan Gunn, who was in town, saw it directly
overhead. Randy heard and saw it from River Road. The Admiral, who was
out on the river in his flagship, was able to observe it through
binoculars.

That night Randy and Lib and Dan and Helen went to Sam Hazzard's house
to hear his opinion. "I noticed two cylinders slung under the wing," he
said. "Not extra gas tanks. I think they might be air traps. I think
they might be taking radiation samples."

A week later the same plane, or one like it, came over again. This time
it circled Fort Repose, and a stream of what appeared to be confetti, at
the distance, fell from its belly and drifted down on the river banks
and in the town.

Randy was in Marines Park, at the time, discussing an alarm system with
officers of his company. Church bells had been used in England during
the second World War, and there were bells in the Catholic and Episcopal
churches. It was possible to evolve a code by which his troopers could
understand the type and location of the emergency. The plane came over
and everyone yelled, as before, as if they could hear up there. Then the
leaflets fluttered down. They read:

                           DO NOT BE ALARMED

    This leaflet comes from a United States Air Force plane
    conducting atmospheric surveys of the Contaminated Zones.

    At a future date a more precise survey will be undertaken by
    helicopters.

    Should a helicopter land in or near your community do not
    interfere with the activities of personnel aboard. Lend them
    your cooperation if requested.

    This activity is an essential preliminary to bringing relief to
    the Contaminated Zones.

In a sense, it was disappointing. But it was something. It was something
you could put your hands on, that you could feel, that had come from the
outside. It was proof that the government of the United States still
functioned. It was also useful as toilet paper. Next day, ten leaflets
would buy an egg, and fifty a chicken. It was paper, and it was money.

****

In December the helicopter came. It made a fearful racket, wind-milling
over Fort Repose. At various open spaces, including Marines Park, it
hovered low and dropped a long wire from its belly, a small cylinder on
the end of the wire actually touching the earth. It was like a gigantic
bug dipping for honey.

It came up the Timucuan and circled the Bragg house.

The children were down at the dock; Helen and Lib were in the house;
Randy was visiting with Sam Hazzard.

It circled four times. The two women ran up to the captain's walk. They
had the best view. They waved their arms and then Helen took off her
pink apron and waved that.

Inside the helicopter they saw faces and the pilot opened a window and
waved back. Then it went away, up the Timucuan.

In five minutes Randy, the Admiral, and the children, all out of breath,
were at the house.

Helen was weeping. "He waved!" she said. "He waved at us! Nobody else,
us! I'm sure he came just to see us!"

"Now let's not get too excited," Randy said. "It may be that he was just
looking for people--not anyone in particular--and saw the kids out on
the dock and then circled the house to encourage us and give us heart."

Helen wiped her face with her apron. She said, "Oh, I wish he'd come
back. Please, God, send him back!"

At that moment, they heard it coming back.

The children ran up to the roof. Randy went outside and sat on the porch
steps. He was still out of breath and he wasn't going to run upstairs.
If the damn helicopter wanted to see him it would have to come here. He
couldn't go to it. Sam Hazzard sat down beside him.

Randy watched for it. From the sound he knew it was circling again. It
came low over the trees and hovered over the lawn. Everything else was
overgrown and choked with weeds and sprouting saplings but this single
stretch between house and road Randy kept in lawn. It was one of Ben
Franklin's chores to mow once a week, and it was a link between the
house and the time before The Day, like shaving.

It hovered there and slowly lowered. Randy said, "It's coming in!" He
rose to receive it.

Its wheels touched the ground, its engines cut off, and its rotors
drooped and slowed. Peyton ran down the steps and Randy grabbed her.
"Don't go out there until the rotors stop!" he ordered. "Cut your head
off!"

Now that it was down, the helicopter looked ungainly and enormous. There
were five men in it.

The rotors stopped.

They waited in stillness so complete that they heard the creak of hinges
as the hatch opened. A metal ladder fell from its side and two men
climbed down. Plastic helmets covered their heads and they were encased
in silver, translucent plastic suits, oxygen tanks strapped to their
backs. Like divers, Randy thought, or maybe Spacemen. Peyton and Ben
Franklin had run out on the lawn. Now they shrank back. One of the men,
laughing silently inside his helmet, held up his hand in a gesture,
"Wait!"

The two men carried machines that looked like miniature vacuum cleaners,
a cylindrical nozzle in one hand, an oblong black box in the other. They
allowed these nozzles to sniff at grass and earth. "Geiger counters,"
Sam Hazzard said. "Maybe we're hot!"

One of the men approached them, hesitated, and selected Randy. He bent
over and allowed the nozzle to sniff Randy's last pair of boat shoes,
big toe protruding through the canvas, soles reinforced with possum
hide. The nozzle investigated the tattered shorts, the belt, and finally
Randy's hair. At each point, the head in the helmet glanced at a dial in
the box. It was very efficient.

The man swept off his helmet, slammed his hand on Randy's shoulder as if
in congratulations, and called back to the helicopter, "Okay, Colonel.
The terrain's clear and they're clears. You can come down."

His back toward them, a man climbed down. He wore a blue, zippered Air
Force flight suit with the eagles of a full colonel on his shoulders.

When he turned and stepped forward, Randy did not immediately recognize
him, he was so changed.

It was not until the man held out his hand, and spoke, that Randy saw it
was Paul Hart, who had been a light colonel, sandy-haired instead of
gray, his face cheery and freckled instead of lined and aged, when he
saw him last. Randy could think of nothing to say except, "Come on in,
Paul, and bring your people. We're just about to sit down for lunch."

Lib cried, "The quail!" and dashed into the house, letting the screen
door bang.

"My wife," Randy said. "It's her lunch day."

"Your wife? Congratulations. My wife--I'll save it for later."

Randy saw that the men with the Geiger counters had stripped off their
plastic suits. "You'll all have a drink before lunch?" he suggested,
thinking that this had been the proper thing to say, long ago, and would
still be proper and expected.

"Why, I'd be delighted!" Paul said. "I haven't had a drink since--" he
asked a question: "You people haven't saved your liquor all this time,
have you?"

"Oh, no. This stuff is new. Well, it's aged a bit. In a charcoal keg. We
think it's very good."

He led them up to his apartment and mixed sours with the corn whiskey
and fat, ripe limes. Then there were the introductions. There was a
Captain Bayliss, the pilot, a Lieutenant Smith, chief radiologist, and
the two sergeant technicians. They all considered the sour very good and
Paul said, "It's impossible to find anything to drink, even in Denver.
Not even beer. Shortage of grains, you know. Nobody would dare make his
own whiskey in the clear zones. He'd go to jail. The older people say
it's worse than prohibition."

There were a thousand questions Randy wanted to ask but at that moment
he only had time for one because Lib called from downstairs. Lunch was
ready. The men all wore brassards with the letters D.C. on the right
arms. "What's that?" Randy asked, touching Paul's brassard. "District of
Columbia?"

"Oh, no," Paul said. "There isn't any District of Columbia. Denver's the
capital. That stands for Decontamination Command. It's the biggest
command, nowadays, and really the only one that counts. I was seconded
to the D.C. last spring. I put in for a C.Z. right away and asked for
Florida and Florida was the C.Z. I got."

Paul Hart thought the soup was wonderful and said he had never tasted
anything exactly like it before and Randy replied that he wasn't
surprised. They always kept the big soup pot simmering on the fire and
everything went into it. "This particular soup," he explained, "is sort
of a combination. Armadillo, gopher, and turkey carcass."

Lib brought a dozen quail, and more were broiling, and placed pitchers
of orange juice in front of them and they all drank it greedily. Captain
Bayliss kept mumbling that he felt they were imposing, and that there
were K-rations in the helicopter and that he actually expected to find
C.Z. people all starving, because certainly most of them were in other
parts of the country. He also kept on eating.

"How does it happen," Randy asked Hart, "that you found us?"

Hart said, "You haven't heard anything from my wife, Martha, have you?"

Randy shook his head, no, apprehending Paul's tragedy.

"Of course that's why I asked for duty in this C.Z. I wanted to find out
what happened to Martha and the children." He looked up. "It was just a
year ago, wasn't it, that I met you at McCoy Operations? Wasn't it on
the day before H-Day?"

"H-Day? We just call it The Day."

"Hell Day or Hydrogen Day or The Day, it's the same thing."

"Yes. That was the last time I saw you."

"It was also the last day I saw Martha except to kiss her goodbye the
next morning. Post-strike we went on to Kenya, in Africa. When I got
back to this country I learned right away, of course, that McCoy
received one. But it wasn't until I flew over Orlando last week that I
gave up hope. I suppose you know what happened to Orlando."

Randy said, "Oh, no! Nobody's been that far off!"

"It's as if no man was ever there. Even the shapes of the lakes have
changed and there are a couple of lakes that weren't there before. Find
my wife? I couldn't even tell where my house stood. I think they must've
dropped a five-megaton missile on McCoy and another on Orlando
municipal. Nothing stands. Everything is burned and still hot. It's the
damn C-14 that does it."

"C-14?"

"Radioactive carbon. It's half-life is more than five thousand years.
That and U-238 and cobalt and strontium is what makes rebuilding
impractical in the T.D.--the totally destroyed--cities. You have to
start somewhere else, here for instance. Did you know that you are
living in the center of the largest clear area in the whole C.Z.?"

"No, I didn't, but I'm glad to find out."

Helen had been waiting, tensely, to ask the question that she must ask,
yet knowing the answer before she asked it; for had there been any other
answer Paul would have told her before now. She said, "Paul, nothing
about Mark, I suppose?"

"I'm sorry, Helen. Nothing. There were a few survivors from Omaha but
Mark wasn't one of them. After all, it was a primary target with SAC
Headquarters, Offutt Field--itself an important base--and the biggest
rail complex between Chicago and the Coast all grouped together. I don't
think we'll ever find out exactly what happened."

Helen nodded. "At least I know for sure. That's important--to know." No
tears, Randy thought. He glanced at the children. Ben Franklin stood
firm, chin outthrust, taut facial muscles containing his emotions. But
Peyton, eyes lowered, slipped away into the other room.

Then for a long time Hart and the lieutenant radiologist questioned
Randy and Sam Hazzard about the way things had gone in Fort Repose,
taking notes and showing remarkable interest in details of how the
emergencies were met. "Of course we need everything," Randy said, "but
the town could get along fine if only we had electricity because if they
had power then they'd have water. They wouldn't have to boil it or haul
it from springs, as they do now."

"It'll be a long time--a very long time," Hart said. "Even major cities
that weren't touched--cities in the clear zones lost their electricity a
month or so after H-Day and don't have it back yet. The only towns which
have had uninterrupted power were those served by hydroelectric plants,
provided the plants were undamaged and the aqueducts intact. There
aren't many."

"What about the other towns in the clear zones?" Randy asked. He noted
how quickly you picked up the jargon of the post-Day age. It was like
entering a totally new environment, like joining the Army.

"To have light," Paul said, "you either have to have water power or
fuel. Most cities had supplies for a month or so. After that, darkness.
Some of our big oil fields are still burning. The coal regions of
Pennsylvania and West Virginia were saturated with fallout. But the
transport problem is what really cripples us. Think what happened to the
pipe lines, the railroads, the ports. Our big hope is atomic power.
Thank goodness we still have a big stockpile of nuclear fuel."

The radiologist and the two technical sergeants excused themselves. They
were going to the river to bottle water samples.

Randy said that if the river was hot they'd all be hot because ever
since The Day they'd been living on the bounty of the river.

Hart said that apparently the river was going to be all right, and this
was hopeful. "If we're going to get this C.Z. on the road back, I think
I'd like to start in this area. Of course you understand, Randy, that
before we can be of much help to the C.Z.'s we have to get the clear
country in decent shape." He shook his head. "Some of our scientists
think it will take a thousand years to restore a saturated C.Z., like
Florida or New Jersey, to anything close to normal, even scratching the
T.D. cities."

He talked of the cities that remained, and of the shortages, and the
epidemics, and how fortunate they had been to live in Fort Repose. In
the following year the government was going to take a census, including
the contaminated zones if possible. "There's no use kidding ourselves,"
he went on. "We're a second class power now. Tertiary would be more
accurate. I doubt if we have the population of France--or rather, a
population as large as France used to have." He talked of farm areas out
of production for an indefinite period, and how the South American
nations had begun lend-lease shipments to the northern continent, and
how Thailand and Indonesia were contributing rice. Eventually, it was
hoped that Venezuelan oil would alleviate the transport fuel shortage,
although he doubted that in his lifetime he would again see gasoline for
sale to private citizens.

They listened, their eyes marbled as if in shock.

****

The technicians returned from the river. Paul Hart looked at his watch
and said they would have to take off. It was necessary that they drop
into a small field near Brunswick, Georgia, before dark. It was
presently his headquarters but in a few years he planned to rehabilitate
Patrick Air Force Base, on Cape Canaveral, and transfer there. The enemy
had overlooked Patrick, perhaps deliberately since it was a test not an
operational base, perhaps because the missile designed for it had gone
elsewhere. They would never know. Hart was thoughtful for a moment. Then
he spoke to Randy:

"You know, you and all your clear people can come out if you want. Of
course you'll have to have a physical and be officially cleared and
processed but I doubt that you'd have any trouble. I'll be back here in
a week. We're short on choppers but I could bring you out, two or three
at a time."

This was Randy's town and these were his people and he knew he would not
leave them. Yet it was not right that he make this decision alone. He
looked at Lib without finding it necessary to speak. She knowing what
was in his mind, simply smiled and winked. He said, "I guess I'll stay,
Paul."

"And the others?"

Randy wished Dan was with them and yet he was confident he could speak
for Dan. "We have our doctor here, Dan Gunn. If it wasn't for Dan I
don't think any of us could have made it. He saved this town and I'm
sure he wouldn't want to leave now." He turned to Helen. "Would he?"

Helen said quietly, "I wouldn't and he wouldn't."

"But there's one thing you have to do, Paul. Bring supplies for our
doctor."

"What's he need?"

"Everything. Everything that a hospital needs. But most of all he needs
a new pair of glasses."

"I could requisition those for him, I think, if I had his prescription."

Helen said, "I know where it is. Don't you leave, Paul! Don't you dare!"
She left the room and ran upstairs.

"What about you, Admiral Hazzard?" Paul asked. "What about the children?
What about the two women who live across the road--the librarian and the
telegraph gal?"

Sam Hazzard laughed. "Colonel, I have a fleet under my command. If the
Navy Department will give me a fleet, I'll go with you. Not otherwise."

"We don't have any fleets," Paul Hart said. "All we've got left, really,
are nuclear submarines. The subs saved us, I guess. The subs and the
solid fuel rockets and some of the airborne missiles."

Lib said, "Alice Cooksey and Florence Wechek are in town but they were
talking about the possibility of going out only a few nights ago.
They'll both want to stay. You see, they're terribly busy. They've never
worked so hard or accomplished so much in their whole lives. And I don't
know what Fort Repose would do without them. They're practically our
whole education system, and they keep all the records."

"Isn't anybody going?" Hart asked.

Ben Franklin said, "Not me!"

Peyton, who had quietly returned to the conference, said, "Me either."

Helen came downstairs with the prescription for Dan's glasses. They all
walked out to the porch and Randy went out with Paul to the helicopter.
They shook hands.

Randy said, "Paul, there's one thing more. Who won the war?"

Paul put his fists on his hips and his eyes narrowed. "You're kidding!
You mean you really don't know?"

"No. I don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody's told us."

"We won it. We really clobbered 'em!" Hart's eyes lowered and his arms
drooped. He said, "Not that it matters."

The engine started and Randy turned away to face the thousand-year
night.






[End of Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank]
