The Murder of the USA by Murray Leinster & Will F. Jenkins

Author:Murray Leinster & Will F. Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: MURDERUSA
Published: 1946-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

8

THE WORLD WAS A VAST GLOBE ROLLING through space. One side was dark, and on that side it was night. The other side was bright, and white clouds floated here and there; waves danced in the sunlight; flowers stood with their pretty vapid faces turned sunward; winds blew and birds dug worms and caroled erotic melodies; fish swam and sheep grazed placidly. On this side all of nature appeared normal.

All but the human race.

In remote small hamlets, to be sure, there was no agitation. The rural villages of Greece and the Balkans were undisturbed. The fellahin of Egypt labored as usual. The blessedly ignorant savages of the Congo were unconcerned and in the Ukraine men contemplated their crops. But in the cities of the world there was panic, now that atomic war was begun.

Naples and Rome and Genoa were indescribable shambles. Whole quarters of Budapest were ashes. Paris was still a fighting, shrieking madhouse. London police were desperately dynamiting buildings to open new avenues of escape for the hordes of humans trapped by the flames that raged unchecked. All of Holland was in turmoil: its population struggled not only to escape the cities, but the lowlands which would be flooded if the dykes were shattered. Brussels was one monstrous tumult of crazy departure. Moscow was in flight. Atomic war had begun!

The panic was not confined to Europe. From Alexandria and Tunis and Aleppo, streams of fugitives lined the roads, and in the emptying cities behind the refugees skulking figures moved feverishly. The sound of shots and screams was almost commonplace. Rio de Janeiro had become crazed with fear. Buenos Aires—with greater reason, perhaps—was a boiling mass of screaming humanity, fighting to get clear. Singapore was on fire. There the police were hampered by the mass exodus, and the firefighters were helpless against the looters who had set the flames. Capetown was in process of evacuation. Adelaide and Sydney streamed with fleeing folk. All over the world, on every continent, humanity fled the cities.

Railroad trains steamed slowly through France, so incredibly crowded that the toppling of figures from the roofs of cars was no longer heeded by anyone. In Germany the city folk were less numerous, because their ruined cities were not yet rebuilt, but they were most terrified of all—perhaps because they suspected themselves. They fled, their faces pinched not only with terror but despair. Everywhere there were murders and robberies and rapings. There were looting and arson and revolt. Creatures of the slums proved again that slums are the most deadly of national vices, and there were chaos and the certainty of the coming of plague.

In eighteen hours after the falling of bombs upon America, there were eight hundred thousand dead in western Europe alone, and the end was not yet. But not one bomb had fallen anywhere but in America. They—and those who died elsewhere—had died of the bare knowledge that there was atomic war.

Nobody knew who was responsible. Death was loose upon the earth. Seventy millions of human beings had been murdered by assailants yet unknown.

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