Alas, Babylon

Pat Frank

Description

"Alas, Babylon." Those fateful words heralded the end. When a nuclear holocaust ravages the United States, a thousand years of civilization are stripped away overnight, and tens of millions of people are killed instantly. But for one small town in Florida, miraculously spared, the struggle is just beginning, as men and women of all backgrounds join together to confront the darkness.

Sujets

• Science-Fiction
• Toute la Science-Fiction
• Post-Apocalyptic
• Apocalyptic
• Science Fiction
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 05 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456636722
• Langue: English

Extrait

Alas, Babylon
by Pat Frank
Subjects: Fiction -- Science Fiction; Dystopia; Nuclear Warfare

First published in 1959
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Alas, Babylon


Pat Frank

FOREWORD
I have an acquaintance, a retired manufacturer, apractical man, who has recently become worried aboutinternational tensions, intercontinental missiles, H-bombs,and such.
One day, knowing that I had done some writing onmilitary subjects, he asked: “What do you think wouldhappen if the Russkies hit us when we weren’t looking—youknow, like Pearl Harbor?”
The subject was on my mind. I had recently returnedfrom a magazine assignment at Offutt Field, Headquartersof the Strategic Air Command, several SAC operationalbases, and the Missile Test Center on Cape Canaveral.More to the point, I had been discussing just sucha possibility with several astute British staff officers.The British have lived under the shadow ofnuclear-armed rockets longer than we. Also, they havea vivid memory of cities devastated from the skies, ashave the Germans and Japanese.
A man who has been shaken by a two-ton blockbusterhas a frame of reference. He can equate the impactof an H-bomb with his own experience, even though theH-bomb blast is a million times more powerful than theshock he endured. To someone who has never felt abomb, bomb is only a word. An H-bomb’s fireball issomething you see on television. It is not something thatincinerates you to a cinder in the thousandth part of asecond. So the H-bomb is beyond the imagination of allbut a few Americans, while the British, Germans, andJapanese can comprehend it, if vaguely. And only theJapanese have personal understanding of atomic heatand radiation.
It was a big question. I gave him a horseback opinion,which proved conservative compared with some ofthe official forecasts published later. I said, “Oh, Ithink they’d kill fifty or sixty million Americans—but Ithink we’d win the war.”
He thought this over and said, “Wow! Fifty or sixtymillion dead! What a depression that would make!”
I doubt if he realized the exact nature and extent ofthe depression—which is why I am writing this book.
Pat Frank
[1]
In Fort Repose, a river town in Central Florida, itwas said that sending a message by Western Unionwas the same as broadcasting it over the combinednetworks. This was not entirely true. It wastrue that Florence Wechek, the manager, gossiped. Yet shejudiciously classified the personal intelligence that flowedunder her plump fingers, and maintained a prudent censorshipover her tongue. The scandalous and the embarrassingshe excised from her conversation. Sprightly, trivial,and harmless items she passed on to friends, thus enhancingher status and relieving the tedium of spinsterhood.If your sister was in trouble, and wired formoney, the secret was safe with Florence Wechek. Butif your sister bore a legitimate baby, its sex and weightwould soon be known all over town.
Florence awoke at six-thirty, as always, on a Fridayin early December. Heavy, stiff and graceless, shepushed herself out of bed and padded through the livingroom into the kitchen. She stumbled onto the backporch, opened the screen door a crack, and fumbled forthe milk carton on the stoop. Not until she straighteneddid her china-blue eyes begin to discern movement inthe hushed gray world around her. A jerky-tailed squirreldarted out on the longest limb of her grapefruit tree.Sir Percy, her enormous yellow cat, rose from his burlapcouch behind the hot water heater, arched his back,stretched, and rubbed his shoulders on her flannel robe.The African lovebirds rhythmically swayed, headspressed together, on the swing in their cage. She addressedthe lovebirds: “Good morning, Anthony. Goodmorning, Cleo.”
Their eyes, spectacularly ringed in white, as ifembedded in mint Life Savers, blinked at her. Anthonyshook his green and yellow plumage and rasped a greeting.Cleo said nothing. Anthony was adventurous, Cleotimid. On occasion Anthony grew raucous and irascibleand Florence released him into limitless freedom outside.But always, at dusk, Anthony waited in theTurk’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 thebirds in Miami a month before, and apparently it wastrue.
Florence carried their cage into the kitchen andshook fresh sunflower seed into their feeder. She filledSir Percy’s bowl with milk, and crumpled a bit of waferfor the goldfish in the bowl on the counter. She returnedto the living room and fed the angelfish, mollies,guppies, and vivid neons in the aquarium. She notedthat the two miniature catfish, useful scavengers, wereactive. She was checking the tank’s temperature, and itselectric filter and heater, when the percolator chuckledits call to breakfast. At seven, exactly, Florenceswitched on the television, turned the knob to Channel8, Tampa, and sat down to her orange juice and eggs.Her morning routine was unvaried and efficient. Theonly bad parts of it were cooking for one and eatingalone. Yet breakfast was not her loneliest meal, notwith Anthony ogling and gabbling, the six fat goldfishdancing a dreamy oriental ballet on diaphanous fins, SirPercy rubbing against her legs under the table, and hercheery friends on the morning show, hired, at great expense,to inform and entertain her.
As soon as she saw Dave’s face, Florence could sensewhether the news was going to be good or bad. On thismorning Dave looked troubled, and sure enough, whenhe began to give the news, it was bad. The Russians hadsent up another Sputnik, No. 23, and something sinisterwas going on in the Middle East. Sputnik No. 23 wasthe largest yet, according to the Smithsonian Institution,and was radioing continuous and elaborate coded signals.“There is reason to believe,” Frank said, “thatSputniks of this size are equipped to observe the terrainof the earth below.”
Florence gathered her pink flannel robe closer to herneck. She glanced up, apprehensively, through thekitchen window. All she saw were hibiscus leaves drippingin the pre-dawn ground fog, and blank gray skybeyond. They had no right to put those Sputniks upthere to spy on people. As if it were on his mind also,Frank continued:

“Senator Holler, of the Armed Services Committee, yesterdayjoined others of a Midwest bloc in demanding thatthe Air Force shoot down Sputniks capable of military espionageif they violate U.S. air space. The Kremlin has alreadyhad something to say about this. Any such action,the Kremlin says, will be regarded the same as an attack ona Soviet vessel or aircraft. The Kremlin pointed out thatthe United States has traditionally championed the doctrineof Freedom of the Seas. The same freedom, says the Sovietstatement, applies to outer space.”
The newsman paused, looked up, and half-smiled inwry amusement at this complexity. He turned a page onhis clipboard.

“There is a new crisis in the Middle East. A report fromBeirut, via Cairo, says that Syrian tanks of the most modernRussian design have crossed the Jordanian frontier.This is undoubtedly a threat to Israel. At the same timeDamascus charges that Turkish troops are mobilizing. . . .”
Florence flipped to Channel 6, Orlando, and countrymusic. She did not understand, and could not becomeinterested in, the politics of the Middle East. Sputniksseemed a closer and more personal menace. Her bestfriend Alice Cooksey, the librarian, claimed to haveseen a Sputnik one evening at twilight. If you could seeit, then it could see you. She stared up through thewindow again. No Sputnik. She rinsed the dishes andreturned to her bedroom.
As she wrestled with her girdle, Florence’s thoughtgravitated to the equally prying behavior of RandyBragg. She adjusted the venetian blinds until she couldpeer out. He was at it again. There he was, brazenlyimmodest in checked red and black pajamas, sitting onhis front steps, knees akimbo and binoculars pressed tohis eyes. Although he was perhaps seventy-five yardsdistant, she was certain he stared directly at her, andcould see through the tilted louvers. She ducked backagainst the bedroom wall, hands protecting her breasts.
Almost every evening for the past three weeks, andon a number of mornings, she had caught him at it.Sometimes he was on the piazza, as now, sometimes at asecond-floor window, and sometimes high up on thecaptain’s walk. Sometimes he swept the whole of RiverRoad with his glasses, pretending an interest elsewhere,but more often he focused on her bungalow. RandolphRowzee Bragg a Peeping Tom! It was shocking!
Long before Florence’s mother moved south andbuilt the brown-shingle bungalow, the Braggs had livedin the big house, ungainly and monolithic, with tall Victorianwindows and bellying bays and broad brickchimneys. Once it had been the show place of RiverRoad. Now, it appeared shabby and outmoded comparedwith the long, low, antiseptic citadels of glass,metal, and tinted block constructed by rich Northernerswho for the past fifteen years had been “discovering”the Timucuan River. Still, the Bragg house was plankedand paneled with native cypress, and encased in pineclapboard, hard as iron, that might last another hundredyears. Its grove, at this season like a full green cloakflecked with gold, trailed all the way from back yard toriver bank, a quarter mile. And she would say this forRandy, his grounds were well kept, bright with poinsettiasand bougainvillea, hibiscus, camellias, gardenias,and flame vine. Florence had known Randolph’smother,