Alas, Babylon Excerpt

Pg 90-91
By Pat Frank
Chapter 5
At first Randy thought someone was shaking the couch. Graf, nestled under his arm, whined
and slipped to the floor. Randy opened his eyes and elevated himself on his elbow. He felt stiff
and grimy from sleeping in his clothes. Except for the daschund, tail and ears at attention, the
room was empty. Again the couch shook. The world outside still slept, but he discerned
movement in the room. His fishing rods, hanging by their tips from a length of pegboard,
inexplicably swayed in rhythm. He had heard such phenomena accompanied earthquakes, but
there had never been an earthquake in Florida. Graf lifted his nose and howled. Then the sound
came, a long, deep, powerful rumble increasing in crescendo until the windows rattled, cups
danced in their saucers, and the bar glasses rubbed rims and tinkled in terror. The sound slowly
ebbed, then boomed to a fiercer climax, closer. Randy found himself on his feet, throat dry, heart
pounding. This was not the season for thunder, nor were storms forecast. Nor was this thunder.
He stepped out onto the upstairs porch. To his left, in the east, an orange glow heralded the sun.
In the south, across the Timucuan and beyond the horizon, a similar glow slowly faded. His
sense refused to accept a sun rising and a sun setting. For perhaps a minute the spectacle numbed
reaction. What had jolted Randy from sleep-he would not learn all the facts for a long, a very
long time after-were two nuclear explosions, both in the megaton range, the warheads of missiles
lobbed in by submarines. The first obliterated the SAC base at Homestead, and incidentally sank
and returned to the sea a considerable area of Florida's tip. Ground Zero of the second missile
was Miami's International Airport, not far from the heart of the city. Randy's couch had been
shaken by shock waves transmitted through the earth, which travel faster than through the air, so
he had been awake when the blast and sound arrived a little later. Gazing at the glow to the
south, Randy was witnessing, from a distance of almost two hundred miles, the incineration of a
million people.