Chapter 5

At first Randy thought someone was shaking the couch. Graf, nestled under his arm, whined and slipped to the floor. Randy opened his eyes and elevated himself on his elbow. He felt stiff and grimy from sleeping in his clothes. Except for the dachshund, tail and ears at attention, the room was empty. Again the couch shook. The world outside still slept, but he discerned movement in the room. His fishing rods, hanging by their tips from a length of pegboard, inexplicably swayed in rhythm. He had heard such phenomena accompanied earthquakes, but there had never been an earthquake in Florida. Graf lifted his nose and howled.

Then the sound came, a long, deep, powerful rumble increasing in crescendo until the windows rattled, cups danced in their saucers, and the bar glasses rubbed rims and tinkled in terror. The sound slowly ebbed, then boomed to a fiercer climax, closer.

Randy found himself on his feet, throat dry, heart pounding. This was not the season for thunder, nor were storms forecast. Nor was this thunder. He stepped out onto the upstairs porch. To his left, in the east, an orange glow heralded the sun. In the south, across the Timucuan and beyond the horizon, a similar glow slowly faded. His sense refused to accept a sun rising and a sun setting. For perhaps a minute the spectacle numbed reaction.

What had jolted Randy from sleep—he would not learn all the facts for a long, a very long time after—were two nuclear explosions, both in the megaton range, the warheads of missiles lobbed in by submarines. The first obliterated the SAC base at Homestead, and incidentally sank and returned to the sea a considerable area of Florida’s tip. Ground Zero of the second missile was Miami’s International Airport, not far from the heart of the city. Randy’s couch had been shaken by shock waves transmitted through the earth, which travel faster than through the air, so he had been awake when the blast and sound arrived a little later. Gazing at the glow to the south, Randy was witnessing, from a distance of almost two hundred miles, the incineration of a million people.

The screen door banged open. Ben Franklin and Peyton, barefoot and in flannel pajamas, burst out onto the porch. Helen followed. The sight of war’s roseate birthmark on the sky choked back their words. Helen grabbed Randy’s arm tightly in both hands, as if she had stumbled. Finally, she spoke. “So soon?” It was a moan, not a question.

“I’m afraid it’s here,” Randy said, his mind churning among all the possibilities, including their own dangers, seeking a clue as to what to do, what to do first.

Helen was wearing a flowered kimono and straw slippers, booty from one of Mark’s inspection trips to the Far East. Her chestnut hair was disheveled, her eyes, a deep and stirring blue, round in apprehension. She seemed very slight, in need of protection, and hardly older than her daughter. She was, at this moment, less composed than the children.

Ben Franklin, staring to the south, said, “I don’t see any mushroom cloud. Don’t they always have a mushroom cloud?”

“The explosions were very far off,” Randy said. “Probably a lot of haze, or other clouds, between us and the mushrooms. What we see is a reflection in the sky. It’s dying, now. It was much brighter when I first came out here.”

“I see,” Ben Franklin said, satisfied. “What do you think they clobbered? I’d guess Homestead and the Boca Chica Navy base at Key West.”

Randy shook his head. “I don’t see how we could get rocked from that distance. Maybe they hit Palm Beach and Miami. Maybe they missed and pitched two into the Glades.”

“Maybe,” Ben said, not as if he believed they had missed.

It was so quiet. It was wrongly quiet. They ought to hear sirens, or something. All Randy heard was a mockingbird tuning up for his morning aria.

Helen released her grip on his arm. Thoughts seemed to parallel his, she said, “I haven’t heard any planes. I don’t hear any now. Shouldn’t we hear fighters, or something?”

“I don’t know,” Randy said.

Ben Franklin said, “I heard ’em. That’s what first woke me. I heard jets—they sounded like B-Forty-sevens-climbing. Traveling that way.” He showed them with a sweep of his arm. “That’s southwest to northeast, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Randy said, and at that instant he heard another aircraft, whining under full power, following the same path. They all listened. “That one will be from MacDill,” Randy decided, “heading across.”

Before its sound faded they heard another, and then a third. They all pressed close to the porch screen, looking up.

High up there, where it was already sunlight, they saw silver arrows speeding and three white contrails boldly slashed across morning’s washed blue sky.

Ben Franklin whispered, “Go, baby, go!”

Terror departed Helen’s eyes. “Could we go up on the captain’s walk?” she said. “I want to watch them. They’re mine, you know.”

Ben and Peyton sprinted for the ladder. “No!” Randy said. “Wait!”

Ben stopped instantly. Peyton ran on. Her mother said, “Peyton! That was an order!”

Peyton, her hand on the ladder, went no further. She said, “Shucks.”

“You might as well start learning to obey your uncle Randy, just as you obey your father, right now!”

Peyton said, “Why can’t we go up on the roof?”

Randy had spoken instinctively. He found it difficult to put his objection into words. “I think it’s too exposed,” he said. “I think we all ought to be underground right now, but there isn’t any cellar and it’s too late to start digging.”

Ben Franklin said, “You’re right, Randy. If they laid an egg close, we could get flash burns. Then there’s radiation.” The boy looked at the weathercock on the garage steeple. “Wind’s from the east, so we won’t get any fallout, anyway not now. But suppose they hit Patrick? We’re almost exactly west of Patrick, aren’t we? Patrick could cook us.”

“Where did you learn all that stuff about fallout?” Randy asked.

“I thought everybody knew it.” Ben frowned. “I don’t think they’ll hit Patrick. It’s a test center, not an operational base. Patrick can’t hurt them, but MacDill and McCoy, they can hurt them. And, brother, they will!”

Randy, Helen, and Ben Franklin were facing the east, where the missile test pads on Cape Canaveral lay, and where the fat red sun now showed itself above the horizon. Peyton, nose pressed against the screen, was still trying to follow the contrails of the B-47’s. A stark white flash enveloped their world. Randy felt the heat on his neck. Peyton cried out and covered her face with her hands. In the southwest, in the direction of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota, another unnatural sun was born, much larger and infinitely fiercer than the sun in the east.

Automatically, as a good platoon leader should, Randy looked at his watch and marked the minute and second in his memory. This time he would know the point of impact exactly, using the flash-and-sound system learned in Korea.

A thick red pillar erected itself in the southwest, its base the unnatural sun.

The top of the pillar billowed outward. This time, the mushroom was there.

There was no sound at all except Peyton’s whimpering. Her fists were pressed into her eyes.

A bird plunged against the screen and dropped to earth, trailed by drifting feathers.

Within the pillar and the cloud, fantastic colors played. Red changed to orange, glowed white, became red again. Green and purple ropes twisted upward through the pillar and spread tentacles through the cloud.

The gaudy mushroom enlarged with incredible speed, angry, poisonous, malignant. It grew until the mushroom’s rim looked like the leading edge of an approaching weather front, black, purple, orange, green, a cancerous man-created line squall.

They shrank from it.

Peyton screamed, “I can’t see! I can’t see, Mommy. Mommy, where are you?” Her eyes were wide, her face tear-stained and mottled. Arms outstretched, she was moving across the porch with tiny, stiff, uncertain steps.

Randy scooped her into his arms. She seemed weightless. Helen opened the door and he rushed into the living room. Talking to her, saying, “Easy, Peyton, honey! Easy! Stop rubbing your eyes. Keep your eyes closed.” He stretched the child out on the couch.

Helen was at his side, a wet towel in her hands. She laid the towel over her daughter’s eyes. “This will make you feel better, baby.”

“Mommy?”

“Yes.” This was the first time, since she was six, that Peyton had used Mommy instead of Mother.

“All I can see is a big white ball. I can see it with my eyes closed. It hurts me, Mommy, right through my head.”

“Sure, just like a big flashlight bulb. Lie still, Peyton, you’re going to be all right.” Now, with fear for her child’s sight supplanting all other fears, Helen steadied. Again she was composed, able, efficient, and she knew the moment of panic would not return. She told Randy, calmly, “Hadn’t you better call Dan Gunn?”

“Of course.” Randy hurried into his office. Dan had two phones in his suite in the Riverside Inn. Randy dialed the private number. It was busy. He dialed Riverside Inn. Again, he heard the impersonal busy-beep. The inn had a switchboard. All its lines shouldn’t be busy. He tried the clinic building, although he knew it was most unlikely that Dan, or anybody, would be there at this hour. It was busy. He dialed operator. The same beep sounded in his ear. Once again, Randy tried Dan’s private number. The infuriating beep persisted. He gave up and announced, “I’ll have to drive into town and bring Dan out here.”

At that moment the ground-conducted shock wave rocked the house.

Peyton cried out, in her sightless terror. Helen pressed her down on the couch, murmuring reassuring mother words. Randy noticed that Ben Franklin was missing from the room.

The blast and sound wave covered them, submerging all other sound and feeling. Again the kitchenware and glasses and china danced. A delicate vase of Viennese crystal crumpled into powder and shards on the mantle. The glass protecting a meticulous and vivid still life, a water color by Lee Adams, shattered in its frame with a loud report.

Randy looked at his watch, marked the time, and did the flash-and-sound arithmetic in his head.

Helen, watching him while soothing Peyton’s tense body with her fingers, watching and understanding, said, “What was it?”

“What was MacDill,” Randy said. “Six minutes and fifteen seconds. That means seventy-five miles, just right for MacDill.”

“MacDill means Tampa,” Helen said.

“And St. Petersburg. You’ll be all right until I get back?”

“We’ll be all right.”

Randy banged into Ben Franklin on the stairs. “Where’ve you been?”

“Opening up the windows and doors downstairs. Just made it. Not a window broke.”

“Smart boy. Now you go on up and help your mother take care of Peyton. I’m going for the Doctor.”

“Randy—”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to fill up all the pails and sinks and tubs with water. That’s what you’re supposed to do, you know.”

“I didn’t know.” Randy put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “But if that’s what you’re supposed to do, go ahead and do it.”

Randy ran outside in time to see the Golden Dew Dairy truck careen past on River Road, headed for Fort Repose. The milkman was always a little late with his Saturday deliveries, since orders were heavier than on weekdays. He must have barely begun his route when the first blasts illuminated the sky in the south. Now he was racing home to his wife and children.

As Randy reached his car he heard the undulating tocsin of the siren atop Fort Repose’s firehouse. A little redundant, he thought. Still, there was no sound quite like a siren wailing its air-raid alarm to spur people to constructive action—or paralyze them in fear.

Randy caught and passed the milk truck before the turn in the road. A minute later he saw a big, new sedan overturned in the ditch, wheels still spinning. He slowed, and saw that the sedan’s front end was telescoped, its windshield shredded; that it bore New York plates. On the shoulder of the road lay a woman, arms outstretched, one bare leg grotesquely twisted under her back. Pallid flesh showed under blue and yellow checked shorts. Her upturned face was a red smear and he judged she was dead.

In this second Randy made an important decision. Yesterday, he would have stopped instantly. There would have been no question about it. When there was an accident, and someone was hurt, a man stopped. But yesterday was a past period in history, with laws and rules archaic as ancient Rome’s. Today the rules had changed, just as Roman law gave way to atavistic barbarism as the empire fell to Hun and Goth. Today a man saved himself and his family and to hell with everyone else. Already millions must be dead and other millions maimed, or doomed by radiation, for if the enemy was hitting Florida, they would hardly skip SAC bases and missile sites in more densely populated areas. Certainly they would not spare Washington and New York, the command posts and communication center of the whole nation. And the war was less than a half hour old. So one stranger on the roadside meant nothing, particularly with a blinded child, his blood kin, dependent on his mission. With the use of the hydrogen bomb, the Christian era was dead, and with it must die the tradition of the Good Samaritan.

And yet Randy stopped. He touched the power brakes and burned rubber, swearing, and thinking himself soft and stupid. He backed, got out of the car, and examined the wreck. The woman was dead, her neck broken. She had been traveling alone. Examining the marks and a shattered cabbage palm, he deduced she was driving at high speed when the explosion at MacDill—he could see an orange patch in the southwest, probably fire storms consuming Tampa and St. Petersburg—unnerved or blinded her. She had swerved, hit the tree, and catapulted through the windshield. In the car were several pigskin bags, locks burst by the impact, and a pocketbook. He touched nothing. He would report the wreck to a road patrolman or deputy sheriff, if he could find one and when there was time.

Randy drove on, although at reduced speed, for sight of a fatal accident always compels temporary caution. The incident was important only because it was self-revelatory. Randy knew he would have to play by the old riles. He could not shuck his code, or sneak out of his era.

With respite for anxiety about what went on beyond his own sight and hearing, he clicked on his radio, tuned to a Conelrad frequency, 640, and turned it up to maximum power.

All he heard was a distant and incoherent babble.

He tried the other frequency, 1240. He heard a steady hum, and then the familiar voice of Happy Hedrix, the disk jockey on WSMF, in San Marco. “This is a Civil Defense broadcast. Listen carefully, because we are only allowed to broadcast for thirty seconds, after which there will be two minutes of silence. An AP dispatch from Jacksonville says that a Red Alert was declared about thirty minutes ago. Another dispatch from Jacksonville says it is believed the country is under attack. Since that time, there has been disruption of communications between Jacksonville and the north.” Happy’s voice, usually so glib, was shaky and halting, and he seemed to have difficulty reading. “Obey the orders of your local Civil Defense Director. Do not use the telephone except for emergencies. You will receive further instructions later. This station will return to the air in two minutes.”

Randy tuned in 640 again. Again, he heard many voices, far away and indistinguishable. He knew that under the Conelrad system all stations were required to operate at low power. He surmised that he was hearing a broadcast from Orlando or Ocala, but with interference from stations in other nearby cities, perhaps Daytona, or Leesburg and Eustis, not far off in Lake County. With every station confined to two frequencies, and limited to low-power operation, the confusion was understandable.

A year before, Mark had warned him that the Conelrad system was tricky, and might not work at all. Mark had said, further, that the enemy was not dependent on radio homing devices to find the targets. “Conelrad,” Mark had said, “is as obsolete as the B-two-nine. Neither missiles nor jets equipped with modern radar and inertial guidance would think of homing on a radio beam. In the first phase, Conelrad is going to be next to useless, I’m afraid, except for local instructions. The news you get will be only as fresh and accurate as the news that comes in on the teletypes in your local stations. That news flows from the national news agencies. When their teletype circuits go out of business which will happen immediately when the big cities blow—everything will be screwed up. You’re not likely to find out anything until Phase Two—that’s the mopping-up stage when the first attack is over. In Phase Two the government will use clear channel stations to tell you what’s happening.”

Mark apparently had been right about the inadequacy of Conelrad, as about all else. He wondered whether Mark was also right in his prediction that Offutt and the Hole would be one of the primary targets. Randy wondered whether Mark still lived, and how long it would be before he found out.

On the edge of town he began to encounter traffic, heavier than usual and extraordinarily erratic. People were tensed over their wheels like racing drivers, even while moving at normal speeds, mouths set, eyes fixed, each intent on a personal crisis. Some obeyed the stop signs. Other cars progressed as if no hand were at the wheel.

A dozen cars were lined up at Jerry Kling’s service station, blocking the sidewalk. Jerry was standing beside one of his pumps, filling a tank, and at the same time listening to three men, all gesticulating, all obviously demanding priority service. One of the men had a billfold in his hand and was waving money before Jerry’s eyes.

Randy skirted Marines Park, a green triangular area, its walks lined with tall palms, its apex lapped by the waters of both Timucuan and St. Johns. Here, at the junction of the rivers, Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee Peyton had erected the original Fort Repose. The fort’s palm logs long ago had disintegrated, but relics remained, two small brass cannon. They were now mounted in concrete, and flanked the bandstand. Usually, on a bright Saturday morning, the tennis courts were occupied and the pre-breakfast lawn bowlers and shuffle boarders active. But today the park was deserted except for two youths slumped on a bench.

He turned north on Yulee Street, and, three blocks further, into the driveway of Riverside Inn, which with its grounds occupied a block facing the St. Johns. The Riverside Inn catered to a vanishing race of hotel dwellers—widows, widowers, and elderly couples, supported by trusts, annuities, and dividends, spending their summers in New England or the Poconos, and each November migrating to Florida with the coots and mallards.

Randy parked and went into the inn. Its ordered regimen had exploded with the first missile.

The guests were milling around in the lobby like first-class passengers on a liner that has struck an iceberg, and that they suspect may founder at any moment. Some swarmed around the bellboys and assistant manager, babbling questions and demands. “I’ve been waiting in the dining room for fifteen minutes and I can’t seem to find a single waitress…. Are you sure you can’t get me a reservation on the Champion that leaves Orlando for New York tomorrow?… I’d like to know what’s wrong with the phone service? If my daughter doesn’t hear from me, she’ll be frantic…. The television in my room isn’t working. All television is off the air? Gracious, this really must be serious!… I’ve been a guest at this hotel for twenty-two seasons and this is the first time I’ve ever asked for anything special…. Is there any reason the hotel station wagon can’t take us to Tampa?… Please don’t think me timid, but I would like to know the location of a shelter…. It was that damned Roosevelt, at Yalta…. Do you think plane schedules will be interrupted for long?… You mean to say that your cooks have all cravenly left for their homes? I never heard of such a thing! They ought to be arrested. How, then, are we going to eat?… My husband slipped in the shower. I can’t seem to get him up….”

A retired major general, in full-dress uniform and displaying all his ribbons, burst out of the elevator. “Attention!” he cried. “Attention, everybody! Let’s have order here. You will all please be quiet. There is no cause for alarm!”

Nobody heeded him.

A bowlegged man, in Bermuda shorts and a bright red cap, a golf bag slung over one shoulder, and carrying two suitcases, bulled his way toward the entrance. He was followed by a woman wearing a fur coat over pajamas. She also was weighted with a golf bag, and held a jewel box under one arm and a make-up kit under the other. These two had a sanctuary, and a means of getting there, or so they believed. For most of the others, there was no place to go. They were rootless people. If the Riverside Inn sank, they must go down with the ship.

Dan Gunn’s suite was on the second floor. Randy ignored the elevator and took the stairs two at a time.

Dan’s rooms were empty, and his doctor’s bag missing. He was probably out on an emergency call, or at the clinic in the Medical Arts Building. Randy tried Dan’s private phone. There was no dial tone, only sounds like static. He lifted the room telephone. The hotel switchboard failed to answer.

Randy heard voices in the hall, high-pitched and angry. He threw open the door.

Feet apart and braced a thin, sallow woman, very pregnant, leaned against the wall. Her bony arms supported her abdomen, and she was sniffling. In the center of the hallway two men argued. The taller man was Jennings, manager of the Riverside Inn. The other man was John Garcia, a Minorcan fishing guide. Randy recognized the woman as Garcia’s wife.

Jennings was saying, “She can’t have her baby here in the hotel. There’s too much confusion here already. You people will have to get out!”

Garcia, an undersized man with face browned and shrunken by wind and sun, stepped back. His hand went to his hip pocket and he brought out a short, curved pruning knife, suitable for cutting lines, or slitting the bellies of perch and bass.

Randy stepped between them. “Put that thing up, John,” he told Garcia. “I’ll get the Doctor.” He turned on Jennings. “Where’s Doctor Gunn?”

“He’s busy,” Jennings said. “He’s very busy with one of our guests. A heart case. Tell these people to go to his clinic and wait.”

“Where is he?”

“It doesn’t matter. These people are trespassing.”

Randy’s left hand grasped Jennings’ lapels. He slapped Jennings savagely across the face. He did this without any conscious thought except that it was necessary to slap the hysteria out of Jennings in order to locate Dan Gunn. He said, “Where is he?”

Jennings’ knees buckled and Randy pinned him against the wall. “Let go! You’re choking me! Gunn is in two forty-four.” Randy relaxed his grip. The left side of Jennings’ face was flaming red and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Randy was astonished. This was the first time in his adult years that he had struck anyone, so far as he recalled, except one snarling North Korean line—Grosser. Jennings backed away, mumbling that he would call the police, and disappeared down the stairs. Randy told Garcia, “Take your wife in there. She can lie down on the bed. I’ll get Doctor Gunn.”

Randy went down the hall and entered Room 244 without bothering to knock. It was a single room. On the bed lay a mound of gray flesh, a corpulent man past middle age, dead. Randy felt no sense of surprise or shock whatsoever. He had become a familiar of sudden death in Korea. This familiarity had left him, as a foreign language is quickly forgotten once you leave the country where it is spoken. Now it returned, as a foreign tongue is swiftly reacquired in its native land.

Dan Gunn came out of the bathroom, drying his hands. “You’ve got more trouble waiting in your room,” Randy said. “A woman’s having a baby, or about to. Garcia’s wife.” Dan dropped his towel across the foot of the bed and pulled the sheet over the corpse. “Everybody who was going to have a coronary just had one,” he said, “and I suppose that every woman who was due to have a baby in the next two months is having one now. What’s your trouble, Randy?”

“Peyton’s blind. You remember her from last year, don’t you? Helen’s little girl—not so little—eleven. I know you’re swamped, Dan, but—”

Dan raised his immensely long, hairy arms and cried out, “Oh, God! Why? Why to that child?”

He looked and sounded like a rebellious Old Testament prophet. He looked and sounded half-mad. The worst thing that Randy could imagine, at that moment, was that Dan Gunn should lose his mental equilibrium. Randy said, “God had nothing to do with it. This was strictly man-made. The one that dropped on MacDill, or somewhere in the Tampa area. Peyton was looking right at it when it blew.”

“Oh, the foul, life-destroying, child-destroying bastards! Those evil men, those evil and callous men! God damn them!” He used the expression as a true and awful curse, and then Dan’s arms drooped, his anger spent. He visibly shook off the madness. He said, “Sounds like a retina flash burn. To the human eye it’s what overexposure is to film. Her eyes can recover from that.”

He looked down at the form on the bed. “Not much I can do for cardiacs. This was the third, right here in the hotel. Maybe the other two will live, for a while. It’s fear that kills ’em, and the worst fear is that they’ll have a shock and not be able to reach the doctor. I pity all the other cardiacs around here, with the phones out. I pity them, but I can’t help them. You don’t have to worry so much with women having babies. They’ll have them whether I’m there or not, and chances are that both mother and baby will do all right.” He grasped Randy’s elbow. “Now let’s take a look at the Garcia woman, and then I’ll see about Peyton.” They left the room, and its lonely dead.

Marie Garcia said her pains were coming at four—or five minute intervals. Dan said, “It’ll be much better if you can have the baby at home. It’ll be easier for me, too. This hotel is no place to be having a baby. Do you think you can make it?”

Marie looked at her husband and nodded. Garcia said, “You’ll follow us, Doc?”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Dan promised. He helped Marie to her feet. Leaning on John Garcia, she left, her lips compressed, awaiting the next clamp of pain, but her fear gone.

Dan went into his bathroom and came out with a small bottle. “Eyedrops,” he said. “Once every three hours.” He dug into his bag and handed Randy a pillbox. “Sedative. One every four hours. And give her a couple of aspirins as soon as you get home. She stays in a dark room. Better yet, put a dark cloth over her eyes. As long as she knows she can’t see, she won’t strain her eyes trying. And it won’t frighten her so much. It’s frightening to open your eyes and not see.”

“You’re coming out, aren’t you?” Randy asked.

“Certainly. As soon as I can. I have to deliver this baby, and I have to check in at the clinic—God knows what’s waiting for me there—and I have to see Bloomfield. Somehow we have to coordinate what little we’ll be able to do. But soon as I can, I’ll be out to see Peyton. There really isn’t anything more I can do for her than you can do right now. And Randy—”

“Yes?”

“Did you get those prescriptions filled?”

“No. I never had time.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it for you. I’ll bring the stuff out when I come.”

They left the hotel together. A gibbering woman, red-dish wig astray on her head like an ill-fitting beret, clawed at Dan’s arm. He shook himself loose. She dove for his medicine bag. He snatched it away and ran.

Outside, they parted. Randy drove through town. Traffic was piling up. Those stores that opened early on Saturdays were crowded, and groups waited in front of others, and on the steps of the bank. There was as yet no disorder. It was a shopping rush, as on Christmas Eve. At the corner of Yulee and St. Johns he saw Cappy Foracre, the Fort Repose Chief of Police, directing traffic. He stopped and yelled, “Cappy, there’s a woman dead in a wreck out on River Road.”

“That’s outside the town limits,” Cappy shouted. “Nothing I can do about it. I’ve got plenty of trouble right here.”

Randy drove on, tuning his radio to the Conelrad frequencies, scouting for news. As before, the 640 channel brought only an incoherent jumble of distant voices, but Happy Hedrix was still broadcasting over WSMF, from San Marco, on 1240, although, obeying the Conelrad rules, he never mentioned the call sign. The AP ticker from Jacksonville told of a sea and air battle off the coast. The Governor had issued a pronouncement from Tallahassee—all target cities were to be evacuated at once. The cities named included Orlando and Jacksonville. There was no mention of Miami or Tampa.

Randy wondered why the evacuation order originated in Tallahassee, instead of from a Civil Defense headquarters. Of the national situation, there was no word at all. Up to now, it sounded as if Florida were fighting the war alone. More than anything, Randy wanted news—real news. What had happened? What had happened everywhere? Was the war lost? If it was still being fought who was winning?

On River Road he passed a dozen convicts, white men, clad in their blue denim with the white stripe down the trouser leg. They were straggling toward Fort Repose. Two of the convicts carried shotguns. Another had a pistol strapped to his waist. This was wrong. Road gang guards, not convicts, should be carrying the weapons. But the guards were missing. It wasn’t difficult to guess what had happened. The guards, some of them, were dour and sadistic men, skilled in unusual and degrading punishments. It was likely that any breakdown in government and authority would begin with a revolt of prisoners against road gang guards. There was a convict camp between Fort Repose and Pasco Creek. Randy guessed that these prisoners were being transported, by truck, to their work area, when the nuclear attack came. With realization, rebellion, and perhaps murder of the guards, had been almost instantaneous.

He passed the wrecked car. The woman’s body still lay on the roadside. The luggage had been looted. Dresses, shoes, and lingerie littered the grassy shoulder. A pink-silk pajama top fluttered from a palmetto, a forlorn flag to mark the end of a vacation.

As Randy reached his home, Florence Wechek’s Chevy bounced out of her driveway. He yelled, “Hey, Florence!” Florence stopped. Alice Cooksey was in the car with her. “Where are you going?” Randy asked.

“To work,” Florence said. “I’m late.”

“Don’t you know what’s happened?”

“Certainly I know. That’s why it’s very important I open up the office. People will have all sorts of messages. This is an emergency, Randy.”

“It sure is,” Randy said. “On the way to town you’ll see some convicts. They’re armed. Don’t stop.”

Florence said, “I’ll be careful.” Alice smiled and waved. They drove on.


On Friday night, Florence and Alice had split a bottle of sherry, an unaccustomed dissipation, and stayed up long past midnight, exchanging confidences, opinions, and gossip. As a result, Florence had neglected to set her alarm, and they had overslept. The explosions far to the south had shaken them awake, but it was not until some time later, when they had seen the glow in the sky, that Alice had thought to turn on the radio, and they first realized what was happening.

Immediately, Florence wanted to start for the office. Having no close relatives, and approaching an age beyond which she could not reasonably hope for a proposal of marriage, and when even speculative second looks from rakish or lonely widowers had grown rare, her whole life centered in the office. Western Union didn’t expect her to open the wire until eight, but she was usually a bit early. Afternoons, she dreaded the relentless downsweep of the hour hand, which at five guillotined her day. After five, nothing awaited her except lovebirds, tropical fish, and vicarious journeys back to more romantic centuries via historical novels. In the office she was part of a busy and exciting world, a necessary communicating link in affairs of great importance to others. On this day of crisis, she could be the most important person in Fort Repose.

Yet she allowed Alice to persuade her not to start at once. For such a wisp of a woman, Alice seemed remarkably brave and cool. Alice pointed out that Florence had better eat breakfast, because she’d need her strength and it might be many hours before she’d have an opportunity to eat again. And Alice had volunteered to go to town with her, although Florence had insisted it wasn’t necessary. “Who’s going to do any reading today?” she asked. “Why bother with the library?”

“Maybe a good many people will be reading,” Alice said, “once they find out that Civil Defense pamphlets are stocked in the library. Not that it’s likely to be much help to them now, but perhaps it’ll help some. Bubba Offenhaus claimed they were taking up too much space in his office. So I offered to store them.”

“You were farsighted.”

“Do you think so? When two ships are on a collision course, and the men at the wheel inflexibly hold to that course, there is going to be a collision. You don’t have to be farsighted to see that.”

And Alice had suggested that it would be wise for them to use their time and resources to buy provisions while they were in town. “Canned goods would be best, I think,” she said, “because if the lights go out, refrigeration goes too.”

“Why should the lights go out?” Florence asked.

“Because Fort Repose’s power comes from Orlando.”

Florence didn’t quite understand this reasoning.

Nevertheless, she followed Alice’s advice, listing certain essentials they would need and filling pails and bathtub with water before they left.

Florence and Alice passed the dead woman and pillaged wreck on the way to town. It frightened them. But, when far ahead Florence saw the procession of convicts, and two of them, one armed, stepped into the middle of the road to wave her down, she stamped on the accelerator. The car quivered at a speed she never in her life had dared before. At the last second the two men jumped to safety and the others shook their fists, their mouths working but their curses unheard. Florence didn’t slow until she reached Marines Park. She dropped Alice at the library. She parked behind Western Union, which occupied a twenty-foot frontage in a one-story block of stores on Yulee Street. Her fingers were trembling and her legs felt numb. It was several seconds before her heart stopped jumping, and she found sufficient courage to enter her office. Fourteen or fifteen men and women, some of them strangers, swarmed in behind her. “Just a minute! Just a minute!” Florence said, and barricaded herself behind the protection of the counter.

This was the first morning in years that she had been late, and so, on this of all mornings, waiting at the door would be more customers than she might customarily expect in a whole day. In addition, on Saturdays, Gaylord, her Negro messenger boy, was off. His bicycle stood in the back of the office. “Now you will all have to wait,” she said, “while I open the circuit.”

Fort Repose was one of a dozen small towns on a local circuit originating in Jacksonville and terminating in Tampa. Florence switched on her teleprinter and announced: “THIS IS FR RETURNING TO SERVICE.”

Instantly the machine chattered back at her from JX, which was Jacksonville: “YOU ARE LIMITED TO ACCEPTING AND TRANSMITTING OFFICIAL DEFENSE EMERGENCY MESSAGES ONLY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. NO MESSAGES ACCEPTED FOR POINTS NORTH OF JACKSONVILLE.”

Florence acknowledged and inquired of Jacksonville: “ANY INCOMERS?”

JX said curtly: “NO. FYI TAMPA IS OUT. JX EVACUATION ORDERED BUT WE STICKING UNTIL CIVIL DEFENSE FOLDS UP HERE.”

Florence turned to her customers behind the counter, started to speak, and was battered by demands: “I was expecting a money order from Chattanooga this morning. Where is it?… I want you to get this off for New York right away…. Can I send a cable from here? My husband is in London and thinks I’m in Miami and I’m not in Miami at all. What is the name of this place?… This is a very important message. I tried to phone my broker but all the lines are tied up. It’s a sell order and I want you to get it right out. I’ll make it worth your while…. I can’t even telephone Mount Dora. Can I send a telegram to Mount Dora from here?… If I wire Chicago for money, how soon do you think before I’ll get an answer?…”

Florence raised her hands. “Please be quiet—That’s better. I’m sorry, but I can’t take anything except official defense emergency messages. Anyway, nothing is going through north of Jacksonville.”

She watched the transformation in their faces. They had been grim, determined, irritated. Suddenly, they were only frightened. The woman whose husband was in London murmured, “Nothing north of Jacksonville? Why, that’s awful. Do you think…”

“I’ve just told you all I know,” Florence said. “I’m sorry. I can’t take any messages. And nothing has come in, nothing for anybody.” She pitied them. “Come back in a few hours. Maybe things will be better.”


At a quarter to nine Edgar Quisenberry, the president of the bank, stepped into the Western Union office. His face was pink and shaven, he was dressed in a new blue suit, white handkerchief peeping from the breast pocket, and he wore a correct dark blue tie. His manner was brisk, confident, and businesslike, which was the way a banker should behave in time of crisis. In his hand he carried a telegram, already typed up at the bank. “Good morning, Miss Wechek,” he said, and smiled.

Florence was surprised. The bank was her best customer, and yet she rarely saw Edgar Quisenberry, in person, and she never before had seen him smile. “Good morning, Mr. Quisenberry,” she said.

“Really can’t say there’s anything good about it,” Edgar said. “Reminds me of Pearl Harbor Day. That bunch in Washington have been caught napping again. I’d like you to send this message for me”—he slid it across the counter—“the telephone seems to be out of order, temporarily, or I would have called.”

She picked up the telegram. It was addressed to the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve Bank, and it read: “URGENTLY NEED DIRECTIVE ON HOW TO HANDLE CURRENT SITUATION.” Florence said, “I’ve just received orders not to accept anything but official defense emergency messages, Mr. Quisenberry.”

Edgar’s smile disappeared. “There isn’t anything more official than the Federal Reserve Bank, Miss Wechek.”

“Well, now I don’t know about that, Mr. Quisenberry.”

“You’d better know, Miss Wechek. Not only is this message official, but in a defense emergency there isn’t anything more important than maintaining the financial integrity of the community. You will get this message off right away, Miss Wechek.” He looked up at the clock. “It is now thirteen to nine. I’m going to ask for a report on exactly how quickly this is delivered.” Florence was flustered. She knew Edgar Quisenberry could make a great deal of trouble for her. However, Atlanta was far north of Jacksonville. She said, “We don’t have any communication with any points north of Jacksonville, Mr. Quisenberry.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Quisenberry.”

“Very well.” Edgar snatched the telegraph blank from the counter and revised the address. “There. Send it to the Jacksonville sub-branch.”

Hesitating, Florence took the message and said, “I’ll see if they’ll accept it, Mr. Quisenberry.”

“They’d better. I’ll wait.”

She sat down at the teleprinter, called in JX, and typed: “I HAVE MESSAGE FOR JX SUB-BRANCH OF FEDERAL RESERVE. SENDER IS EDGAR QUISENBERRY, PRESIDENT OF FIRST NATIONAL BANK. WILL YOU TAKE IT?”

JX replied: “IS IT AN OFFICIAL DEF…”

Florence blinked. For an instant it seemed that someone had flashed mirrored sunlight into her eyes. At the same instant, the message from JX stopped. “That’s funny,” she said. “Did you see anything, Mr. Quisenberry?”

“Nothing but a little flash of light. Where did it come from?”

The teleprinter chattered again. “PK TO CIRCUIT. BIG EXPLOSION IN DIRECTION JX. WE CAN SEE MUSHROOM CLOUD.” PK meant Palatka, a small town on the St. Johns south of Jacksonville.

Florence rose and walked to the counter with Edgar’s message. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Quisenberry,” she said, “but I can’t send this. Jacksonville doesn’t seem to be there any more.”


Fort Repose’s financial structure crumbled in a day.

During the winter season the First National was open on Saturday mornings from nine until noon, and Edgar saw no reason why a war should interfere with banking hours. Like almost everyone else, he was awakened by the rumble of the first distant explosions, and he felt a thrill of fear when the siren on the firehouse let loose. He urged his wife, Henrietta, to make breakfast at once while he tried to put through a long distance call to Atlanta. When his phone made strange noises, and the operator would not respond, he listened to the scanty, thirty-second local news broadcasts. Hearing nothing that sounded immediately alarming for Fort Repose, he reminded Henrietta that nothing drastic had occurred after Pearl Harbor. On the Monday after Pearl Harbor there had been no runs, and no panic. Nevertheless, he could not force himself to finish his bacon and eggs. He left for the bank fifteen minutes earlier than usual.

But at the bank nothing was right. The phones weren’t working there, either, and at eight-thirty, when his staff should have reported for work half his people hadn’t shown up. At about the same time he noticed a line of depositors forming at the front entrance, and it was this that made him decide to send a wire to Federal Reserve. He had never received any instructions on what to do in an emergency of this kind, and, as a matter of fact, had never even considered it.

Western Union’s failure to send his telegram worried Edgar somewhat, but he told himself that it was impossible that the enemy could have bombed all these big cities at once. It was probably some sort of mechanical trouble that would be cleared up before long, just as repairmen would soon have the Fort Repose phone system back in working order.

When the bank’s doors opened at nine the people seemed orderly enough. It was true that everyone was withdrawing cash, and nobody making deposits. Edgar wasn’t overly worried. There was almost a quarter million cash on hand, a far higher ratio of cash than regulations required, but consistent with his conservative principles.

In ten minutes Edgar’s optimism dwindled. Mrs. Estes, his senior teller, turned over her cage to the bookkeeper and entered his office. “Mr. Quisenberry,” she said, “these aren’t ordinary withdrawals. These people are taking out everything—savings accounts and all.”

“No reason for that,” Edgar snapped. “They ought to know the bank is sound.”

“May I suggest that we limit withdrawals? Let them take out enough so that each family can buy what’s necessary in the emergency. In that way we can stay open until noon, and there won’t be any panic. It’ll protect the merchants, too.”

Edgar was incensed by her effrontery, practically amounting to insubordination. “When you are president of this bank,” he said, “then it will be up to you to make such decisions. But let me tell you something, Mrs. Estes. The only way to stop a run on a bank is to shovel out the cash. As soon as you do that, people regain confidence and the run stops.”

“It’s entirely different today, Mr. Quisenberry. Don’t you see that? You have to assume some sort of leadership or there’s going to be a panic.”

“Mrs. Estes, will you please return to your cage. I’ll run the bank.”

This was Edgar’s first, and perhaps his vital error.

Corrigan, the mailman, came in and dropped a packet of letters on the secretarial desk. Edgar was heartened to see Corrigan. The good old U.S. government still functioned. “Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night,” Edgar said, smiling.

“This is my last delivery,” Corrigan said. “Planes and trains aren’t running, and the truck didn’t come in from Orlando this morning. This batch is from last night. We can accept outgoing mail but we don’t guarantee when it will go out, if ever.”

Corrigan left and wedged himself into a queue before one of the teller windows.

Paralysis of the United States mail was more of a shock to Edgar Quisenberry than anything that had occurred thus far. At last, he confessed to himself the impossible reality of the day. Realization did not come all at once. It could not, for his mind refused to assimilate it. He attempted to accept the probability that the Treasury in Washington, Wall Street, and Federal Reserve banks everywhere, all were now radioactive ash. No longer any clearinghouses or correspondent banks. He was sickened by the realization that a great part of his own assets—that is, the assets of his bank—were no longer assets at all. Of what use were Treasury bonds and notes when there was no Treasury? What good were the municipal bonds of Tampa, Jacksonville, and Miami when there were no municipalities? Who would straighten all this out, and how, and when? Who would tell him? Who would know? With all communications out, he could not even confer with fellow bankers in San Marco. He began to sweat. He took out his fountain pen and began jotting down figures on a scratch pad. If he could just get everything down in figures, they ought to balance. They always had.

Edgar’s cashier came into the office and said, “We’re not cashing out-of-town checks, are we, Mr. Quisenberry?”

“Certainly not! How can we cash out-of-town checks when we don’t know whether a town’s still there?” Edgar flinched, remembering that only yesterday he had cashed a big check for Randolph Bragg on an Omaha bank. Certainly Omaha, right in the center of the country, ought to be safe. Edgar had never given much thought to all the talk about rockets and missiles and such. He always prided himself on keeping his feet firmly on the ground, and examining the facts in a hardheaded, practical manner. And the facts, as he had publicly stated, were that Russia intended to defeat the United States by scaring us into an inflationary, socialistic depression, and not by tossing missiles at us. The country was basically sound and the Russians would never attack a basically sound country. And yet they had attacked, and if they could hit Florida they could hit Omaha—or anywhere.

His cashier, Mr. Pennyngton, a thin man with a veined nose and nervous stomach, a man given to fretting over detail, clasped his hands tightly together as if to prevent his fingers from flying off into space. He asked another question, haltingly: “Mr. Quisenberry, what about travelers checks? Do we cash those?”

“No sir! Travelers checks are usually redeemed in New York, and between me and you, I don’t think there’ll be much left of New York.”

“And what about government savings bonds, sir? There are some people in line who want to cash in their bonds.”

Edgar hesitated. To refuse to cash government savings bonds was fiduciary sacrilege so awful that the possibility never before had entered his head. Yet here he was, faced with it. “No,” he decided, “we don’t cash any bonds. Tell those individuals that we won’t cash any bonds until we find out where the government stands, or if.”

The news that First National was refusing to honor travelers checks and government bonds spread through Fort Repose’s tiny business section in a few minutes. The merchants, grocers, druggists, the proprietors of specialty shops and filling stations, deduced that if travelers checks and government bonds were worthless, then all checks would soon be worthless. Since opening their doors that morning, all sales records had been smashed. Everybody was buying everything, which to the shopkeepers was exhilarating as well as frightening. Most of them, from the first, had been cautious, refusing to accept out-of-town checks, except, of course, payroll and annuity and government pension checks, which everyone assumed were always as good as cash. When the bank acted, their first reaction was to regard all paper except currency as probably worthless.

Their next reaction was to race to the bank and attempt to convert their suddenly suspect paper assets into currency. Looking out through the office door, Edgar watched the queues in the lobby, hoping they would shorten. Instead, they lengthened. He called Mr. Pennyngton and together they checked the cash position. Incredibly, in a single hour it had been reduced to $145,000. If continued at this rate, the bank would be stripped of currency by eleven-thirty, and Edgar guessed that the rate of withdrawals would only increase. Edgar Quisenberry made his decision. He went into the four tellers’ cages and, one by one, removed the cash drawers and carried them into the vault. He then closed and locked the vault. He walked back to the lobby, stepped up on a chair, and raised his hands. “Quiet please,” he said.

At that moment, there were perhaps sixty people in the queues. They had been murmuring. They were silent.

“For the benefit of all depositors, I have been forced to order that the bank be temporarily closed,” Edgar said.

They were all looking up at him. He was relieved to see Cappy Foracre, the Chief of Police, and another officer, turning people away from the door. Apparently, they had sensed there might be trouble. Yet Edgar saw no menace in the faces below. They looked confused and uncomprehending, dumb and ineffectual as cattle barred from the barn at nightfall. He said, “This temporary closing has been ordered by the government as an emergency measure.” It was only a white lie. He was quite sure that had he been able to get in touch with Federal Reserve, this is the course that would have been advised.

His depositors continued to stare at him, as if expecting something more. He said, “I can assure you that your savings are safe. Remember, all deposits up to ten thousand dollars are insured by the government. The bank is sound and will be reopened as soon as the emergency is over. Thank you.”

He stepped down and returned to his office, careful to maintain a businesslike and dignified attitude. The people trickled out. He kept his staff busy until past noon balancing books and accounts. When all was in order, he advanced each employee a week’s salary, in cash, and informed them that he would get in touch with them when they were needed. When all had left, and he was entirely alone, he felt relieved. He had saved the bank. His position was still liquid. Dollars were good, and the bank still had dollars. Since he was the bank, and the bank was his, this meant that he possessed the ready cash to survive personally any foreseeable period of economic chaos.

Edgar’s calculations were not correct. He had forgotten the implacable law of scarcity.

Like most small towns, Fort Repose’s food and drug supply was dependent upon daily or thrice weekly deliveries from warehouses in the larger cities. Each day tank trucks replenished its filling stations. For all other merchandise, it was dependent upon shipments by mail, express, and highway freight, from jobbers and manufacturers elsewhere. With the Red Alert, all these services halted entirely and at once. Like thousands of other towns and villages not directly seared by war, Fort Repose became an island. From that moment, its inhabitants would have to subsist on whatever was already within its boundaries, plus what they might scrounge from the countryside.

Provisions and supplies melted from the shelves. Gasoline drained steadily from the pumps. Closing of the First National failed to inhibit the buying rush. Before closing, the bank had injected an extra $100,000 in cash into the economy, unevenly distributed. And strangers appeared, eager to trade what was in their wallets for necessities of the moment and the future.

The people of Fort Repose had no way of knowing it, but establishments on the arterial highways leading down both coasts, and crisscrossing between the large cities, had swiftly been stripped of everything. From the time of the Red Alert, the highways had been jammed with carloads of refugees, seeking asylum they knew not where. The mushroom cloud over Miami emptied Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. The tourists instinctively headed north on Route 1 and AlA, as frightened birds seek the nest. By nightfall, they would be stopped outside the radioactive shambles of Jacksonville. Some fled westward toward Tampa, to discover that Tampa had exploded in their face. The evacuation of Jacksonville, partially accomplished before missiles sought out the Navy Air complex, sent some of its people toward Savannah and Atlanta. Neither city existed. Others sped south, toward Orlando, to meet the evacuees from Orlando rushing toward the holocaust in Jacksonville. When the authorities in Tallahassee suspected that the fallout from Jacksonville, carried by the east wind, would blanket the state capital, they ordered evacuation. Some from Tallahassee drove south on Route 27, toward Tampa, unaware that Tampa was no longer there.

This chaos did not result from a breakdown in Civil Defense. It was simply that Civil Defense, as a realistic buffer against thermonuclear war, did not exist. Evacuation zones for entire cities had never been publicly announced, out of fear of “spreading alarm.” Only the families of military personnel knew what to do, and where to go and assemble. Military secrecy forbade radio identification of those cities already destroyed, since this might be information for the enemy.

In Florida alone several hundred thousand families were on the move, few with provisions for more than one day and some with nothing at all except a car and money. So of necessity they were voracious and all-consuming as army ants. The roadside shops, restaurants, filling stations, bars, and juice stands along the four-lane highways were denuded of stocks, or put out a sign claiming so. Only the souvenir shacks, with their useless pink flamingos and tinted shells, were not picked clean. This is why strangers, swinging off these barren highways, invaded Fort Repose and other little towns off the main traffic streams.

Those people in Fort Repose who remembered rationing from the second World War also remembered what goods had been in short supply, back in ’forty-two and ’forty-three, and bought accordingly. There were runs on tires, coffee, sugar, cigarettes, butter, the choicer cuts of beef, and nylon stockings. Some proprietors, realizing that these items were vanishing, instituted their own rationing systems.

The more thoughtful wives bought portable radios and extra batteries, candles, kerosene lanterns, matches, lighter fluid and flints, first-aid kits, and quantities of soap and toilet paper.

When news spread that armed convicts, escaped from road gangs, had been seen near the town; Beck’s Hardware sold out of rifles, shotguns, pistols, and very nearly out of ammunition.

By afternoon the cash registers of Fort Repose were choked with currency, but many shelves and counters were bare and others nearly so. By afternoon the law of scarcity had condemned the dollar to degradation and contempt. Within a few more days the dollar, in Fort Repose, would be banished entirely as a medium of exchange, at least for the duration.

Sitting alone in his office, Edgar Quisenberry was aware of none of these facts, nor could his imagination anticipate the dollar’s fall, any more than he could have imagined the dissolution of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve System in the space of a single hour. Methodically, he read through the last batch of mail. There was nothing of any great importance, except heartening items in the Kiplinger Letter, predicting another increase in FHA mortgage rates, and better retail business in the South during the Christmas season. Also, from Detroit there was notice of a ten percent stock dividend in automobile shares in his personal portfolio. He’d certainly got in on the ground floor of that one, he thought. He hoped nothing happened to Detroit, but he had a disquieting feeling that something would, or had.

At two o’clock, as always on Saturdays, he left the bank, first setting the time lock on the vault for eight-thirty Monday morning. His car was a black Cadillac, three years old. He recalled that during the last big war automobile production had halted. He decided that on Monday, or perhaps this very afternoon, he would drive to San Marco and see what sort of a trade he could make on a new Caddy. Henrietta would be pleased, and it would be a hedge against long disruption of the economy.

When he started the engine he saw that his gas was low, and on the way home stopped at Jerry Kling’s service station. He was surprised that there was no line of cars waiting, as there had been early that morning. Then he saw the big cardboard sign with its emphatic red lettering: SORRY. NO MORE GAS.

Edgar honked and Jerry came out of the station, looking worn and limp. “Yes, Mr. Quisenberry?” Jerry said.

“That’s just to keep away tourists and floaters and such, isn’t it?” Edgar said.

“No, sir, I’m not only out of gas, I’m out of tires, spark plugs, batteries, thirty-weight oil, vulcanizing kits, drinks and candy, and low on everything else.”

“I’ve got to have gas. I’m just about out.”

“I should’ve put up that sign an hour after I opened. You know what, Mr. Quisenberry? I sold plumb out of tires before I got to thinking I needed new tires myself. I just let myself be charmed by that bell on the cash register. What a damn fool! I’ve got nothing but money.”

“I don’t know that I can get home,” Edgar said.

“I think we’ll all be walking pretty soon, Mr. Quisenberry.” Jerry sighed. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You’re an old customer. I’ve got a drum stashed away in the stockroom. I’ll let you have three gallons. Back that thing up by the ramp, so nobody’ll see.” When he had his three gallons, Edgar brought out his wallet and said, “How much?”

Jerry laughed and raised his hands in a gesture of repugnance. “Keep it! I don’t want money. What the hell’s money good for? You can’t drive it and you can’t eat it and it won’t even fix a flat.”

Edgar drove on slowly, hunched over the wheel. He knew, vaguely, that in the Second World War the Greek drachma and Hungarian pengo had become utterly worthless. And in the War of the Revolution the shilling of the Continental Congress hadn’t been worth, in the British phrase, a Continental damn. But nothing like this had ever happened to the dollar. If the dollar was worthless, everything was worthless. There was a phrase he had heard a number of times, “the end of civilization as we know it.” Now he knew what the phrase meant. It meant the end of money.

When Edgar reached home Henrietta’s car was gone. He found a note in the salver on the hall table. It read:

1:30.

Edgar—tried to get you all morning but the phone is still out of order. The radio doesn’t say much but I am frightened. Nevertheless, I am off to do the grocery shopping. I hope the stores aren’t crowded. I do think that henceforth I will shop on Tuesdays or Wednesdays instead of Saturdays. Hadn’t we better have both cars filled with gas? There may be a shortage. You remember how it was last time, with those silly A and B ration cards.

You didn’t leave any money when you rushed off this morning, but I can always cash checks. It may be hard for a while, but life goes on.

HENRIETTA

Edgar went up to the master bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. What a fool she was. Life goes on, she said. How could life go on with no Federal Reserve, no Treasury, no Wall Street, no bonds, no banks?

Henrietta didn’t understand it at all. How could life go on if dollars were worthless? How could anybody live without dollars, or credit, or both? She didn’t understand that the Bank had become only a heap of stone filled with worthless paper, so his credit would be no better than anybody’s credit. If dollars were worthless then there was nothing they could buy. You couldn’t even buy a ticket, say, to South America, and even if you could how would you get to an airport? Grocery shopping, indeed! How would they shop a week, or a month from now?

Henrietta was a fool. This was the end. Civilization was ended. Of one thing, Edgar was certain. He would not be crushed with the mob. He had been a banker all his life and that was the way he was going to die, a banker. He would not allow himself to be humiliated. He would not be reduced to begging gasoline or food, and be dragged down to the level of a probationary teller. He thought of all the notes outstanding that now would never be paid, and how his debtors must be chuckling. He scorned the improvident, and now the improvident would be just as good as the careful, the sound, the thrifty. Well, let them try to go on without dollars. He would not accept such a world.

He found the old, nickel-plated revolver, purchased by his father many years before, in the top drawer of his bureau. Edgar had never fired it. The bullets were green with mold and the hammer rusted. He put it to his temple, wondering whether it would work. It did.

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