Harry Frank - Alas, Babylon

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.”

Helen Bra’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 drafty 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 in the winter had been mild.