Warday

6. WATER

Standing water, such as that in pools or tanks, should not be used and little can be done to purify the water, short of using complex ion-exchange equipment. Water from streams or rivers may have surface contamination as a result of having passed through radioactive areas. Water for personal consumption should be purified using available equipment or homemade devices, such as natural filtration through buckets filled with stones, clay, and other filtrating materials. Filtered water should then be treated with iodine tablets to remove any trace of radioactive iodine. Water from deep ground wells should be usable without treatment.

WARNING: IF YOU ARE UNCERTAIN ABOUT THE LEVEL OF RADIOACTIVITY OF ANY OBJECT OR SURFACE, USE CARE AND DECONTAMINATED DO NOT HESITATE TO CONSULT YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT OR MILITARY AUTHORITIES FOR ASSISTANCE.

RUMORS Mutants and Super-Beasts

Jim and I heard our first rumor on the trolley into L.A. Since then, we’ve found that rumors run in the blood of this city.

RUMOR: There is a gigantic beast with bat wings and red, burning eyes that has attacked adults and carried off children. The creature stands seven feet tall and makes a soft whistling noise. It is often seen on roofs in populated areas, but only at night.

FACT: Of all the rumors we heard, this was the most persistent.

Claiming that we were L.A. Times reporters, we called Dr. Edward Wagner of UCLA, a biologist, and asked him to comment on the possibility that some sort of radiation-induced mutation could have produced a new species of giant bat. Dr. Wagner stated that giantism is a fairly well understood evolutionary phenomenon that is caused by space-competition among species. He doubted that something as fully developed as this could have come about in the thirty-odd bat generations that have elapsed since the war.

A Glendale resident, who was attacked in August of ’91, recorded his experience in the weekly Glendale Courier:

I had just gotten off the Glendale trolley when I heard this soft sort of cooing noise coming from the roof of a house. The sound was repeated and I turned to look toward the house. Standing on the roof was what looked like a man wrapped in a cloak. Then it spread its wings and whoosh! it was right on top of me! I remember it smelted awful, like something dead. It was working at my face with these long, probing fingers. It got them around my neck and it started snapping its teeth and hissing. Its wings were wrapped around me. I was smothering in there, in the stink of the thing.

When I saw its eyes, red and glaring, hideous, I thought it was the devil come for me and I gave out a scream. Just like that, it spread its wings and started flying, its fingers still around my head. I was dragged halfway down the block, then it let me go and took off into the sky, cooing and hissing. I saw the moonlight glint off its wings, then it was gone.

The individual who told this story to the paper was also reported to have extensive scars on his neck and head, of the type that long fingernails or talons might make.

We have no further information about this story.

RUMOR: Radiation has caused many terrible mutations, such as babies who claw their way out of the mother’s womb just as the first contractions of labor start. Also, babies who are born with the genitals of adults, or women having animal children, usually monkeys or pigs.

FACT: We have great difficulty getting used to the high level of mutation that is an inevitable side-effect of high ambient radiation.

Naturally, mutations occur with greatest frequency in areas most seriously radiated. A mother in California, for example, has little more chance of bearing a mutant child than before the war, but a mother in Dallas is many times more likely to bear a mutant.

Mutations take two basic forms, degenerative and progressive.

Ninety-nine out of a hundred degenerative mutations involve some sort of destruction or malformation of the fetus. They never involve atavism, such as a woman giving birth to an animal child.

Such a mutation is probably not possible. Nor are they likely to involve such farfetched nonsense as babies with claws or babies with fully developed genitals. The truth is much more prosaic, and much sadder. Common mutations are malformed limbs, bones, or eyes, brain disorders, and malfunctioning organs, such as improperly formed hearts. In cases where the mutant is declared non-viable on the Hexler Function Scale, the parents may elect euthanasia.

Progressive mutations are much more rare, but they are not unknown. The most usual progressive mutation we are aware of is so-called hyperintelligence syndrome (HIS). Babies displaying this syndrome exhibit certain common characteristics: they are extremely aware even at birth and are generally capable of lifting their heads, smiling, and making organized sounds within a few hours of being born. This initial precociousness is not followed up, however, at least not evenly. There are HIS children three years old who can read Shakespeare but are still mastering the art of walking. A common problem in HIS children is difficulty acclimatizing to extreme stimuli such as loud sounds or bright colors. HIS children generally learn reading and mathematics by passive assimilation by the age of two or three. The oldest known HIS child, Charlie B., is now four. He was born in Philadelphia eleven months after Warday, six months before that city was temporarily evacuated due to high radiation levels caused by the Washington and New York strikes. Charlie B. is physically developed to the size of a normal four-year-old. He is the clear intellectual superior of all adults who work with him. He has no formal education; indeed, there is no educational system yet devised that can help him. He reads four languages, is conversant in the most abstruse mathematics and physics, and has what his parents describe as a “vast” memory. He is often despondent. His family has plans to move from its present home in Los Angeles to England if Charlie is accepted, at the age of seven, by Oxford.

There are eighteen identified HIS children in the United States.

Twenty-four are known to have been born, but one was killed in a home fire and five have died for other reasons. Poor reporting and record-keeping may mean that there are undiagnosed HIS children.

These two are the basic “mutant/super-beast” rumors that are current in California. Variations are many, including the Hopping Devil rumor that seems to be a variant of the Giant Bat story, and the story of the secret think-tank at Cal Tech where Japanese scientists exploit HIS children in the development of ever more extraordinary technologies, which they do not share with the Americans.

Since there cannot be any HIS children older than four, this last rumor appears to be without real substance, though the exploitation of HIS children is something that the Relief or some responsible U.S. agencies should certainly examine very closely.

The Immigrant Quickstep

Father Dougherty explained to us that the only way to evade the California authorities was to keep moving from city to city or, even better, to leave the state at once. He warned us that we were taking great risks staying in L.A. even long enough to go downtown so Jim could gather documents from the remains of the old federal government, which has its offices in the L.A. Federal Complex.

When it became clear to him that we weren’t going to change our minds, he insisted on driving us. He felt that, without help, we had no chance of staying out of the hands of the police.

On the way into the center of the city, Father Dougherty told us that, like it or not, he was leaving us at Union Station after Jim got his documents. He briefed us about how to contend with the various travel zones.