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!”
