Alas, Babylon

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?”