Alas, Babylon

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 weari—ness 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 hands 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: