Those who were not out of gas hoarded what remained in their tanks against graver emergencies to come.

The pedestrians he saw seemed apprehensive, hurrying along on missions private and vital, shoulders hunched, eyes directed dead ahead. There were no women on the streets, and the men did not walk in pairs, but alone and warily. Randy saw several acquaintances who must have recognized his car. Not one smiled or waved.

Four young men, strangers, idled in front of the drugstore. The store’s windows were broken, but Randy saw the grim, unhappy face of Old Man Hockstatler, the druggist, at the door. He was staring at the young men, and they were elaborately ignoring him. They were waiting for something, Randy felt. They were waiting like vultures. They were outwaiting Old Man Hockstatler.

Randy pulled into the parking lot alongside Ajax Super Market. It appeared to be empty. The front door was closed and locked but Randy stepped through a smashed window. The interior looked as if it had been stripped and looted. All that remained of the stock, he noticed immediately, were fixtures, dishes, and plastics on the home-hardware shelves. Significantly nobody had bothered to buy or take electric cords, fuses, or light bulbs. As for food, there seemed to be none left.

Randy tried to remember where the salt counter had been, but salt was something one bought without thought, like razor blades or toothpaste, not bothering about it until it was needed. He thought of razor blades. He was low on them. Finally he examined the guidance signs hanging over the empty shelves. He saw, “Salt, Flour, Grits, Sugar,” over a wall to his left. The space where these commodities should have been was bare. Not a single bag of salt remained.

As Randy turned to leave he heard a noise, wood scraping on concrete, in the stockroom in the rear of the store. He opened the stockroom door and found himself looking into the muzzle of a small, shiny revolver. Behind the gun was the skinny, olive colored face of Pete Hernandez. Pete lowered the gun and jammed it into a hip pocket. “Gees, Randy,” he said, “I thought it was some goddam goon come back to clean out the rest of the joint.”

“All I wanted was some salt.” “Salt? You out of salt already?”

“No. We want to salt down some meat. We thought we could save part of the meat in the freezer.” Randy saw a grocery truck drawn up to the loading platform behind the store. It was half-filled with cases, and Pete had been pushing other cases down the ramp. So Pete had saved something. “What happened here?” Randy asked.

“We’d sold out of just about everything by closing time yesterday. When I tried to close up they wouldn’t leave. They wouldn’t pay, neither. They started hollerin’ and laughin’ and grabbin’. I locked myself in back here and that’s how come I’ve got a little something left.” Pete winked. “Bet I can get some price for these canned beans in a couple of weeks.”

Randy sensed that Pete, perhaps because he had never had much of it, still coveted money. He said, “I’ll give you a price for salt right now.”

Pete’s eyes flicked sideways. There was a cart in the corner. It was filled with sacks-sugar and salt. Pete said, “I’ve hardly got enough salt to keep things goin’ at home. We’re in the same boat you are, you know. Freezer full of meat. Maybe Rita will be salon’ meat down too.”

Randy brought out his wallet. Pete looked at it. Pete looked greedy. Randy said, “What’ll you take for two ten- pound sacks of salt?”

“I ain’t got much salt left.”

“I’ll give you ten dollars a pound for salt.”

“That’s two hundred dollars. Bein’ it’s you, okay.” Randy gave him four fifties.

Pete felt the bills. “Ten bucks a pound for salt!” he said. “Ain’t that something!”

Randy cradled the sacks under each arm. “Better go out the back way,” Pete said. “Don’t tell nobody where you got it. And Randy-”

“Yes?”

“Rita wonders when you’re coming to see her. She’s all the time talking about you. When Rita latches on to a guy she don’t let go in a hurry. You know Rita.”

Randy rejected the easy evasion of excuses. One of the things he hadn’t liked about Rita was her possessiveness, and another was her brother. He was irritated because he had placed himself in the position of being forced to discuss personal matters with Pete. He said, “Rita and I are through.”

“That’s not what Rita says. Rita says that other girl-that Yankee blonde-won’t look so good to you now. Rita says this war’s going to level people as well as cities.”

Randy knew it was purposeless to talk about Rita, or anything, with Pete Hernandez. He said, “So long, Pete,” and left the market.

Beck’s Hardware was still open, and Mr. Beck, looking tired and bewildered, presided over rows of empty shelves. On The Day itself everything that could be immediately useful, from flashlights and batteries to candles and kerosene lanterns, had vanished. In the continuing buying panic, almost everything else had disappeared. “Only reason I’m still here,” Mr. Beck explained, “is because I’ve been coming here every weekday for twenty-two years and I don’t know what else to do.”

In the warehouse Beck found a dusty carton of Mason jars. “People don’t go in much for home canning nowadays,” Beck said. “I’d just about forgotten these.”

“How much?” Randy asked.

Beck shook his head. “Nothing. That safe is full up to the top with money. That’s all I’ve got left-money. Ain’t that funny-nothing but money?” Mr. Beck laughed. “Know what, I could retire.”

Randy drove on to the Medical Arts Building. Here, he had expected to find activity. He found none, but he did see Dan Gunn’s car in the parking lot.

There were reddish brown stains on the sidewalk and the green concrete steps. The glass in the front door was shattered and the door itself swung open. The waiting room was ominously empty. There was no one at the reception desk. Randy possessed a country dweller’s keen sense of smell. Now he smelled many alarming odors- disinfectant, ether, spilled drugs, spilled blood, stale urine. He called, “Dan! Hey, Dan!”

“I’m back here. Who’s that?” Dan’s voice emerged muffled after echoing through a corridor.

“It’s me-Randy.”

“Come on back. I’m in my office.”

In the corridor’s gloom Randy stumbled over a pair of feet, and he stepped back, shivering. A body lay athwart the doorway of the examination room, legs in the corridor, torso in the room, face up, arms outstretched. The face was half blown away, but when put together with the uniform, it was recognizable as Cappy Foracre, Fort Repose’s Chief of Police.

Randy hurried on. A fireproof door hung crazily from one hinge. It had been axed open. Behind the door was the laboratory and drug storage. The smell of chemicals that came from the laboratory was choking and overpowering. Within, Randy glimpsed a hillock of smashed jars and bottles. The clinic had been wrecked, insanely and deliberately.

He was relieved to find Dan Gunn standing in his office. Dan’s face was more deeply shadowed with fatigue and a two-day growth of beard, his shirt was torn, and he looked dirty, but he apparently was unhurt. Two medical bags were open on his desk. He was examining and sorting vials and bottles. Randy said, “What happened?”

“A carload of addicts-hopheads-came through last night. About three this morning, rather. Jim Bloomfield was here, sleeping on the couch in his office. We’d split up the duty. He took one night, I took the next. You see, with no phones people don’t know what else to do except rush to the clinic in an emergency. Anyway, the addicts-there were six of them, all armed—came in and woke Jim up. They wanted a fix. Poor old Jim was something of a puritan. If he’d given them a fix he might’ve got rid of them.” Dan picked up a hypodermic syringe and slowly squeezed the plunger with his tremendous fingers. “I’d have given ‘em a fix all right-three grains of morphine and that would’ve finished them.” Dan dropped the syringe into one of the bags and shook his head. “That probably wouldn’t have been smart either. Three grains would kill a normal man but it wouldn’t faze an addict. Anyway, Jim told them to go to hell. They beat him up. They emptied these bags and found what they were after. That wasn’t enough. They took the fire ax and broke into the lab and drug storage. They cleaned us out of narcotics- everything, not only morphine but all the barbiturates and sodium amytal and pentothal and stimulants like benzedrine and dexedrine. What they didn’t take they smashed.”

“What about Cappy Foracre?” Randy asked.

Вы читаете Alas, Babylon
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