Alas, Babylon Part 18

"You will like the devil drive!" Randy said. "You will stay at home and guard the house, you and Ben Franklin." And the two men went on talking and planning, as if they already possessed the truck with full tank, and she was left out of it again. At least, she thought, if it really worked, she had contributed something. The Admiral emphasized that whatever was done must be done quietly. Randy decided he could not go to the Hernandez house until after dark. It was not impossible that the highwaymen were holed up in Pistolville, or had contacts there. If Pistolville saw him drive off in Rita's truck, the news would be all over town within a few hours. Finally, the Admiral asked the crucial question-would Rita cooperate? Was she discreet?

"Rita wants to hold what she has," Randy said. "Rita wants to live. She is realistic."

There was one more thing he must do before he left the Admiral. He sat at the typewriter and pecked out the orders.

ORDER NO. l - TOWN OF FORT REPOSE 1. In accordance with the proclamation of Mrs. Josephine Vanbruuker-Brown, Acting President of the United States, and the declaration of Martial Law, I am a.s.suming command of the Town of Fort Repose and its environs.

2. All Army, Navy, and Air Force reservists and all members of the National Guard, together with any others with military experience who will volunteer, will meet at the bandstand at 1200 hours, Wednesday, 20 April. I propose to form a composite company to protect this town.

ORDER NO. 2 1. Two cases of typhoid have been diagnosed in the Sunbury family, upper River Road. It must be a.s.sumed that both the Timucuan and St. Johns are polluted.

2. All water will be boiled before drinking. Do not eat fruits or greens that have been washed in unboiled water.

ORDER NO. 3 1. Dr. Daniel Gunn, our only physician, has been beaten and robbed by highwaymen.

2. The penalty for robbery or pillage, or for harboring highwaymen, or for failure to make known information concerning their whereabouts or movements, is death by hanging.

All these orders he signed, "Randolph Rowzee Bragg, 1st. Lt. AUS (Reserve) (02658988)."

Lib reading over his shoulder, said, "Why wait until Wednesday to form your company?"

"I want the highwaymen to think that they have plenty of time," Randy said. "I want them to laugh at us."

There were a number of ways by which Randy could have traveled the three miles to Marines Park, and then the two additional miles to the Hernandez house on the outer fringe of Pistolville. The Admiral had offered to take him as far as the town dock in his outboard cruiser, now converted to sail. But Sam Hazzard had not as yet added additional keel to the boat, so it would sideslip badly on a tack. Sam could get him to Marines Park all right, but on the return trip might be unable to make headway against current and wind and be left stranded. Randy could have borrowed Alice Cooksey's bicycle, but decided that this might make him conspicuous in Pistolville. He could have ridden Balaam, the mule, but if he succeeded in persuading Rita to let him have the truck and gasoline, how would Balaam get home? Balaam didn't fit in a panel truck. Besides, he was not sure that Balaam should ever be risked away from the Henry's fields and barn. The only mule in Timucuan County was beyond price. In the end, he decided to walk.

He set out after dark. Lib escorted him as far as the bend in the road. She had tacked his notices firmly to a square of plywood which he was to nail to the bandstand pillar. Thus, she had explained, they would not be lost or overlooked among the offers to trade fishhooks or lighter flints, and the pleas for kerosene or kettles. Across the top of the board she had printed, "OFFICIAL BULLETINS."

Randy wore stained dungarees, old brown fishing sneakers, and a floppy black hat borrowed from Two-Tone. His pistol was concealed in a deep pocket. When walking Pistolville at night, he wanted to look as if he belonged there.

When he told Lib it was time to turn back, she kissed him. "How long will it take you, darling?" she asked.

"Depends on whether I get the truck. Counting the stop at the park to nail up the orders. I should get there in less than two hours. After that, I don't know. Depends on Rita."

"If you're not home by midnight," she said, "I'll come after you. With a shotgun." She sounded half-serious. In the past few weeks she had been more tender to him, embarra.s.singly solicitous of his safety, more jealous of his time. She was possessive, which was natural. They were lovers, when there was time, and place and privacy, and respite from fatigue and hunger and the dangers and responsibilities of the day.

He walked on alone under the oak arch excluding starlight, secure in night's black velvet cloak yet walking silently, eyes, ears, and even nose alert. So he had learned, in the dark hammocks as a boy hunting game, in the dark mountains as a man hunting man. Before The Day, except in hunting or in war, a five- or tenmile walk would have been unthinkable. Now it was routine for all of them except Dan and after Dan got out of bed it would become routine for him too. But all their shoes were wearing out. In another month or two Ben Franklin and Peyton would be without shoes entirely. Not only were the children walking (or running) everywhere but their feet inconsiderately continued to grow, straining canvas and leather. Randy told himself that he must discover whether Eli Blaustein still held shoes. He knew what Blaustein wanted-meat.

Marines Park was empty. As he nailed up his order board an animal scuttled out from under the bandstand. At first he thought it a possum but when he caught its silhouette against the starlit river he saw it was an armadillo.

Walking through the business section, he wondered whether armadillos were good eating. Before The Day he had heard someone say that there were several hundred thousand armadillos in Florida. This was strange, because before the first boom there had been no armadillos at all. Randy's father had related the story.

Some real estate promoter on the East Coast had imported two from Texas for a roadside zoo. Knowing nothing of the habits of armadillos, the real estate man had penned them behind chicken wire. When darkness fell, the armadillos instantly burrowed out, and within a few years armadillos were undermining golf greens and dumping over citrus trees from St. Augustine to Palm Beach. They had spread everywhere, having no natural enemies in the state except automobiles. Since the automobile had been all but exterminated by the hydrogen bomb, the armadillo population was certain to multiply. Soon there would be more armadillos than people in Florida.

It was Sat.u.r.day night, but in the business blocks of Yulee and St. Johns no light showed nor did he see a human being. In the residential area perhaps half the houses showed a light, but rarely from more than one room. He had not seen a moving vehicle since leaving home, and not until he reached the pine shanties and patchwork bungalows of Pistolville did he see a person. These people were shadows, swiftly fading behind a half opened door or bobbing from house to house. It was night, and Fort Repose was in fear.

He was relieved when he saw lights in the Hernandez house. Anything could have happened since he and Dan had stopped there. Pete could have died and Rita could have decamped; or she could have been killed, the house pillaged, and everything she was holding, including the truck and gasoline, stolen.

He knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" Rita's voice said. He knew she would have the shotgun up and ready.

"Rand " y."

She opened the door. She was holding a shotgun, as he guessed. She stared at his costume. "Come in. Looking for a handout?"

"In a sense, yes."

"What happened? Your two women run you off?"

As she laid down the gun the burn still showed on her ring finger. He said, "How's Pete?"

"Weaker. How's Doctor Gunn?" "You heard about it, then?"

"Sure. I hear all the bad news in a hurry nowadays. We call it lip radio."

The word had come to town, Randy guessed, via Alice Cooksey, earlier in the day. Just as Alice brought the town news to River Road, so each day she carried the news from River Road to town. Once spoken in the library, the news would spread through Fort Repose, street to street and house to house. He said, "You know Doctor Gunn lost his bag with all his instruments and what drugs he had left, and his gla.s.ses. So, if we can, we have to get those highwaymen and that's why I came to you, Rita."

"They're not Pistolville people," she said. "These Pistolville crackers hardly have got gumption enough to rob each other. Now I heard them described and one of them-the young one with two guns-was probably Leroy Settle, a punk who lived on the other side of town. His mother still lives there, I think. Maybe if you stake out his house you'll get a shot at him."

"I don't want him in particular," Randy said. "I want them all. I want them and everybody like them." And he told her what his plan was, exactly, and why he must have the grocery truck and the gasoline, if she had any. He knew he must trust her entirely or not at all.

She listened him out and said nothing.

"If you are left alone here, Rita," he said, "With all the canned food and other stuff you've got, you're bound to become a target. When they've cleaned out what's on the roads, they'll start on the houses."

"I'm way ahead of you." Her eyes met his steadily. She was evaluating him, and all the chances, all the odds. She made her decision. "I think you can get away with it, Randy."

"You're holding gas, then?"

"Certainly I'm holding gas. Fifteen gallons under the back steps. You can have it, and the truck. Anything you don't use I expect back."

He rose. "What're you going to tell people when they see your truck is gone?"

"I'm going to tell them it was stolen. I'm going to tell them it was loaded with choice trade goods and that while I was in the bedroom, attending to Pete, somebody jimmied the ignition and stole it. And to make it sound good I'm going to let off a blast with this gun when you whip out of the driveway. The news will get around fast, don't worry. It'll get to the highwaymen and they'll be looking for the truck. That should help, shouldn't it?"

"It should make it perfect."

"Go out the back way. Load the cans in the back of the truck, quietly. There's enough gas in the tank to take you out River Road. I'll salute you when you hit the street."

He said, "You're a smart girl, Rita."

"Am I?" She held out her left hand to show the black circle left by the radioactive diamond ring. "I've got a wedding band. I was married to an H-bomb. Will it ever go away, Randy?"

"Sure," he said, hoping it would. "Dan will look at it again when he's better."

He walked through the hallway and kitchen and out into the darkness. He found the three five-gallon cans under the back steps, opened the truck's rear doors, and silently loaded the gaso line. He got in and stepped on the starter. The engine turned over, protesting. Rita had been careless, he guessed, and had forgotten to fill the battery with distilled water, for it was close to dead. He tried again and the engine caught. He nursed the choke until it ran smoothly, backed out of the Hernandez carport, turned sharply in the yard, shifted gears, and roared out on the street. He glimpsed Rita's silhouette in the doorway, the gun rising to her shoulder, and for an awful instant thought she was aiming at him. Red flame leaped out of the muzzle. At the first corner he cut away from Augustine Road and followed rutted dirt streets until he was clear of Pistolville. He saw no other cars, in motion, on the way home.

It was past eleven when he drove the truck into the garage and closed the doors so no casual pa.s.serby or visitor would see it. The lights were out in Florence's house and in his own house only a single light burned, in his office window. That would be Lib, waiting up for him. He had urged the women to get to bed at their usual hour or earlier, for they planned to go to the Easter sunrise services in Marines Park.

This was good. It was good that they should all be there, so that no one would guess of unusual activity out on River Road. From a less practical standpoint he felt good about it too. He was, as a matter of fact, surprised at their antic.i.p.ation and enthusiasm. Many things had happened in the past few days and yet their conversation always come back to the Easter services. People hadn't been like that before The Day. He could not imagine any of them voluntarily getting up before dawn and then walking three miles on empty stomachs to watch the sun come up, sing hymns, and listen to sermons however short. He wished he could walk with them. He couldn't. It was necessary that he remain there to complete his plans with Sam Hazzard and also to work on the truck. Walking toward the house, he wondered at this change in people and concluded that man was a naturally gregarious creature and they were all starved for companionship and the sight of new faces. Marines Park would be their church, their theater, their a.s.sembly hall. Man absorbed strength from the touch of his neighbor's elbow. It was these reasons, perhaps, that accounted for the success of the old-time Chautauquas. It could be that and something more-the discovery that faith had not died under the bombs and missiles.

She wasn't upstairs. She was waiting in the gloom of the porch. She said, "I saw you drive it in. It's beautiful. Did you get the gas to go with it?"

"Total of seventeen gallons including what's in the tank. We can cruise for a day or two if we take it easy. Are you tired, darling?"

"Not too."

"If you're going to be up at five with the others you really ought to be in bed."

"I've been waiting for you, Randy. I worry. I'm not tired, really."

They walked through the grove down to the dock.

The river whispered, the quarter-moon showed its profile, the stars moved. She lay on her back, head resting on her locked fingers, looking up at the stars.

His eyes measured her-long, slender, curved as if for flight, skin coppery, hair silvered by the night. "You're a beautiful possession," he said. "I wish we had a place of our own so I could keep you. I wish we had just one room to ourselves. I wish we were married."

Instantly she said, "I accept."

"I'm not sure how we'd go about it. Last I heard the courthouse in San Marco wasn't operating. For a while it was an emergency shelter like our school. I don't know what they use it for now but certainly not for issuing marriage licenses. And the county clerk has disappeared. I heard in the park that he took his family and started for an uncontaminated zone in Georgia where he used to live."

Without moving her head she said, "Randy, under martial law, can't you make your own rules?"

"I hadn't thought about it. I suppose so." "Well, make one."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"I certainly am. It may be an old-fashioned, Before-The-Day att.i.tude but if I'm going to have children I'd like to be married." "Children! Are you going to have a baby?" Thought of the difficulties, dangers, and complexities of having a baby, under their present circ.u.mstances, appalled him.

"I don't know. I can't say that I am, but then again I can't say that I'm not, can I? I would like to marry you tomorrow before you go off chasing highwaymen." She turned on her side, to face him. "It isn't really convention. It is only that I love you very much, and that if anything happened-I don't have any bad premonitions, dear, but you and I know that a bad thing could happen-well, if anything happened I would want the child to have your name. You'd want that too, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," Randy said, "I would want that very much. I'm not going to put the truck on the road until late in the afternoon that's when the highwaymen took Dan-so there'll be time."

"That's nice," she said. "It'll be nice to marry on Easter Sunday."

He took her hands and drew her up and held her. Over her shoulder he saw a pair of green eyes and a dark snout sliding downstream past the edge of the dock. It was spring and the gators were out of their holes. He had heard somewhere that the Seminoles ate Bator meat. Cut their tails into steaks. It was a source of meat that should be investigated. He knew he shouldn't be thinking about food at this time but he was hungry again.

Chapter 11.

Elizabeth McGovern and Randolph Bragg were married at noon that Easter Sunday. The bride wore the same white silk dress she had worn to the sunrise service in Marines Park. She was unsteady on high heels, for she had not worn heels since The Day.

The groom wore his Cla.s.s A uniform with the bold patch of the First Cavalry Division on his arm and the ribbons of the Korean War and Bronze Star on his chest, along with the blue badge of the combat infantryman. He wore the uniform not because of the wedding but because it was required in the radioed orders to reservists a.s.suming active duty, such as ambushing and killing highwaymen, which he presently intended to do.

The bride was given away by her father, W. Foxworth McGovern, the retired Cleveland manufacturer. Bill McGovern, who had been helping Malachai cut gun ports in the thin steel sides and rear doors of the grocery truck, wore greasy dungarees. A chisel had slipped and one of his hands was bleeding.

The best man was Doctor Daniel Gunn. He was clad in a tent sized, striped bathrobe. Grinning through his red beard, his head bandaged, a square gauze patch covering his right eye, he looked like a turbaned Mediterranean pirate.

Among the guests was Rear Admiral Samuel P. Hazzard (USN, retired) who wore khaki shorts, a khaki hunting vest bulging with buckshot sh.e.l.ls, and during the ceremony held his gold braided cap across his stomach.

The matron-of-honor was Mrs. Helen Bragg, the presumed widow of Colonel Mark Bragg. She furnished the wedding ring, stripping it from her own finger.

The ceremony was held in the high-ceilinged parlor of the Bragg house. The marriage was performed by the Reverend Clarence Henry, pastor emeritus of the Afro-Repose Baptist Church.

Randy was certain it was perfectly legal. It was performed under his Order No. 4, written that morning in Sam Hazzard's house.

Malachai and Bill McGovern had been working on the truck, and Randy was breakfasting with Dan Gunn, when the women and children returned from Marines Park. The services had been wonderful, they said, but the news they brought was terrible. During the night highwaymen had raided the isolated home of Jim Hickey, the beekeeper, on the Pasco Creek Road. They had killed Jim and his wife. The two children had walked to Fort Repose and found their aunt's home. Whether it was the same band that had beaten Dan Gunn was uncertain. The Hickey children were inarticulate and hysterical with fear and shock.

Randy, raging for immediate retaliation, had raced to the Admiral's house with the news. The Admiral's experience in meeting the unpredictable and brutish pranks of war had saved them from premature or imprudent action. "Wasn't this sort of thing exactly what we expected?" Sam Hazzard asked.

"I suppose so, but dammit."

"I don't think we should change our plans by so much as a minute. If we put out with the truck now we'll just burn fuel for nothing. These people operate like beasts, Randy. Having gorged themselves in the night they sleep through the mornings, perhaps through the whole day."

Randy, recognizing the sense of this, had calmed himself. They had talked of the wedding, and the legal problems attending martial law, and the Admiral had helped him in framing Order No. 4. It read: Until county offices resume operations and normal communications are reestablished between this town and the Timucuan County seat, the following regulations will govern marriages and births in Fort Repose.

1. Marriages can be performed by any ordained minister. Marriage licenses and health certificates are waived.

2. Marriage certificates will be issued by the presiding minister, and will be valid when signed by the contracting parties, the minister, and two witnesses.

3. So that a permanent record may be preserved, a copy of the certificate will be left at the Fort Repose Library. I designate Librarian Alice Cooksey custodian of these records. I designate Miss Florence Wechek her deputy.

4. Birth records, signed by the attending physician or midwife, or by the mother and any witnesses if medical attention is unavailable, will be deposited in the same manner.

One copy of this order is to be kept with the records in the library. This order is retroactive to The Day, so that any births or marriages that have occurred since The Day may be properly recorded.

Randy signed Order No. 4 and said, "Well, when the rules are off you make your own."

"This is a good one," Sam Hazzard said. "I wonder what they're doing elsewhere?"

"Elsewhere?"

"There must be hundreds of towns in the same fix we're in local authority collapsed or inoperative, communications out. I fancy that elsewhere they're not doing so good."

"How could they be worse?" Randy was thinking of what had happened to Dan Gunn and the Hickeys.

"They could be," the Admiral said, positively.

Randy had gone to see Preacher next. "Preacher," he said, "you're an ordained minister, aren't you?"

"I sure am," Preacher said. "I am not only ordained but in my church I can ordain people."