Alas, Babylon

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.