Alas, Babylon

Dan thought of everything that was in his bag, including the typhoid shots for Peyton and Ben Franklin. He took a step toward the car. He saw the baseball bat swinging and tried to close with the man, knowing he was foolish, knowing that he was awkward and clumsy. The bat grazed his face and he tripped and fell. As he tried to rise he saw the boy’s high-heeled boot coming at his eyes and the man with the bat danced to the side, ready to swing again. His head seemed to explode. In a final split-second of consciousness he thought, I am dead.

He awoke dazed, almost totally blind, and unable to determine whether he had been shot as well as slugged and beaten. He waited to die and wanted to die. When he didn’t die he sat for a long time trying to decide which way was home. It required great effort to concentrate on the simplest matter. He would have preferred to stay where he was and complete his dying. But the sight of ants wheeling excitedly around the drying blood on the road made him uneasy. If he died there the ants would be all over him and in him by the time he was found. It would be better to die at home, cleanly. The sun was setting. The Sunbury house was east of Fort Repose. Therefore, he must go west. With the orange sun as his beacon, he began to crawl. When darkness came he rested, bathed his face in ditch water and drank it, too, and tried walking. He could walk perhaps a hundred yards before the road spun up to meet him. Then he would crawl. Thus, walking and crawling, he had finally reached the Bragg steps.

When Dan finished, Randy said, “It had to come, of course. The highwaymen killed off travel on the main highways and so now they’ve started on the little towns and the secondary roads. But in this case, Dan, it sounds like they were laying for you personally. I think they knew you were a doctor, and you’d be going way out River Road to the Sunburys’, and certainly the woman knew you kept a couple of bottles of bourbon in the car.”

“All they had to do,” Dan said, “was hang around Marines Park, look at the notices on the bandstand, and ask questions. I didn’t know any of them, but I think I’ve seen one before, the youngest. I used to see him hanging around Hockstatler’s drugstore before The Day.”

“They didn’t have a car?”

“No.”

“I guess what they wanted most was transportation.”

“They won’t get much. We had only two or three gallons of gas left.” He added, apologetically, “I’m sorry, Randy. I was careless. I shouldn’t have stopped. I’ve lost our transport, our medicines, and my tools.”

Leaning over the bed, Randy’s fingers interlocked. He unconsciously squeezed until the tendons on his forearm stood out like taut wires. He said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Worst of all,” Dan said, “I’ve lost my glasses. I guess they smashed when that goon slugged me with the bat. I won’t be much good without glasses.”

Randy knew that Dan’s vision was poor. Dan was forced to wear bifocals. He was very nearsighted. “Don’t you have another pair?” he asked.

“Yes-in the bag. I always kept my spare glasses in the bag because I was afraid I might lose or break the pair I was wearing, on a call.” He sat up straight in bed, his face twisted. “Randy, I may never be able to get another pair of glasses.”

Randy stood up. “I’ve got to start working on this, Dan.” “What are you going to do?”

“Find them and kill them.” He said this in a matter-of-fact manner, as if announcing that he was going downtown to have his tires checked, in the time before The Day.

Dan said, “I’m afraid you’re going at this wrong, Randy. Killing highwaymen is secondary. The important thing is the typhoid in the river. If you think things are bad now, wait until we have typhoid in Fort Repose. And it’s not only Fort Repose. It goes from the Timucuan into the St. Johns and downriver to Sanford, Palatka, and the other towns. If they are still there.”

“All I can do about typhoid is warn people, which you have done already and which I will do again. I can’t shoot a germ. I’m concerned with the highwaymen right now, this minute. Next, they’ll start raiding the houses. It’s as inevitable as the fact that they left the main highways and ambushed you on River Road. Typhoid is bad. So is murder and robbery and rape. I am an officer in the Reserve. I have been legally designated to keep order when normal authority breaks down. Which it certainly has here.

And the first thing I must do to keep order is execute the highwaymen. That’s perfectly plain. See you later, Dan.”

Randy turned to Helen. “Take care of him. Feed him up,” he said, a command.

Walking beside him toward the Admiral’s house, Lib found it difficult to keep pace. She had never seen Randy look and speak and act like this before. She held his arm, and yet she felt he had moved away from her. He did not seem anxious to talk, confide in her, or ask her opinion, as he usually did. He had moved into man’s august world of battle and violence, from which she was barred. She held tighter to his arm. She was afraid.