Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank;David Brin

Author:Pat Frank;David Brin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Classics, Florida, Nuclear Warfare, General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Military, Survival skills, History
ISBN: 9780060741877
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2005-06-23T05:00:00+00:00

[8]

On a morning in April, four months after The Day, Randy Bragg awoke and watched a shaft of sunlight creep down the wall. At the foot of the couch, Graf squirmed and then wormed his way upward under the blanket. During the January cold spell Randy had dis-covered a new use for Graf. The dachshund made a most satisfactory footwarmer, mobile, automatic, and operat-ing on a minimum of fuel which he would consume any-way. Randy flung off the blanket and swung his feet to the floor. He was hungry. He was always hungry. No matter how much he ate the night before, he was always starving in the morning. He never had enough fats, or sweets, or starches, and the greater part of each day was usually spent in physical effort of one kind or an-other. Downstairs, Helen and Lib would be preparing breakfast. Before Randy ate he would shower and shave. These were painful luxuries, almost his only remnant of routine from before The Day.

Randy walked to the bar-counter and began to sharpen his razor. The razor was a six-inch hunting knife. He honed its edges vigorously on a whetstone and then stropped it on a belt nailed to the wall. A clean, smooth, painless shave was one of the things he missed, but not what he missed most.

He missed music. It had been a long time since he had heard music. The record player and his collection of LP's of course were useless without electricity. Music was no longer broadcast, anywhere. Anyway, his second and last set of batteries for the transistor radio was los-ing strength. Very soon, they would have neither flash-lights nor any means of receiving radio except through the Admiral's short wave. WSMF in San Marco was no longer operating. Something had happened to the diesel supplying the hospital and the radio station and it was impossible to find spare parts. This was the word that had come from San Marco, eighteen miles away. It had required two days for the word to reach Fort Repose.

He missed cigarettes, but not so much. Dan Gunn still had a few pounds of tobacco, and had lent him a pipe. Randy found more pleasure in a pipe after each meal, and one before bedtime, than he had ever found in a whole carton of cigarettes. With tobacco so limited, each pipe was a luxury, relaxing and wonderful.

He missed whiskey not at all. Since The Day, he had drunk hardly anything, nor found need for it. He no longer regarded whiskey as a drink. Whiskey was Dan Gunn's emergency anesthetic. Whiskey, what was left of his supply, was for medical use, and for trading.

He missed his morning coffee most. It had been, he calculated, six or seven weeks since he had tasted cof-fee. Coffee was more precious than gasoline, or even whiskey. Tobacco could be grown, and doubtless was being grown in a strip all the way from northwest Flor-ida to Kentucky, Maryland and Virginia in the rural areas still habitable.

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