Alas, Babylon

Randy dreams of a woman serving him coffee. He wakes and Lib hands him coffee, from the hidden rations. Randy questions Dan about the previous night’s events. Dan had responded to a notice posted on a bulletin board in Marines Park. It asked for help for two ill Sunbury children. He treated them for typhoid, probably contracted while swimming in the river. On the way home, he stopped when he saw a woman sitting on the side of the road as if she were hurt. She was a decoy. Three men were hiding nearby. One hit him with a baseball bat. When Dan woke, he walked and crawled back to the Bragg house.

Dan is almost blind without his glasses. Randy says he will find the men and kill them. They visit Hazzard. Randy says he is forming a small patrol to keep the highwaymen from escaping. He may set up roadblocks. Randy comes up with a plan to drive a grocery truck around as bait. He hopes the highwaymen will attack him. They get the grocery truck from the Hernandezes.

Randy types up orders for Reservists and veterans to meet at the bandstand on Wednesday. He announces the threat of typhoid and Dan’s robbery, and sentences anyone who steals, or who harbors highwaymen, to death by hanging. He thinks that the highwaymen will think they are safe temporarily, so he wants to move fast. He nails the orders up at Marines Park.

Randy tells Lib he wishes they were married. She accepts his proposal and says he can make his own rules under martial law. She wants to marry him on Easter.

Randy and Lib marry at noon on Easter Sunday. Randy wears his military uniform. Dan is the best man. Helen is the matron of honor and donates her ring. After the wedding, hey learn that highwaymen have killed Jim Hickey, the generous beekeeper, and his wife. Hazzard says they can’t change their plans. They must calmly lure the highwaymen out with the grocery truck.

Malachai wants to drive. He says a white man will look out of place driving the grocery truck and Randy agrees. A car starts following them on the way to San Marco. Randy realizes that the car is herding them towards a cul-de-sac at the other side of a covered bridge. Malachai jumps out shooting and the rest follow. The fight with the highwaymen lasts less than seven seconds. One of them shoots Malachai. After the fight, one of the highwaymen, Casey, is still alive. He says the woman his band worked with, named Rumdum, took Dan’s bag. Randy and his crew take Casey and Malachai home.

At the Bragg house, Dan asks for two sharp steak knives to operate with, but Malachai dies before Dan can operate on him. That night, Bill McGovern tells Randy that he and Dan are giving Randy and Lib the apartment they’ve been sleeping in (which used to be Randy’s) as their wedding present.

Randy and his men hang Casey, the last of the highwayman. Randy accepts enlistments in what will eventually be called Bragg’s Troop. There are seven men.

Hazzard’s radio receiver dies, and Randy posts a bulletin asking for a tube replacement so that they can continue to monitor the news. In May the gas runs out. In June they harvest the corn and sugar that Two-Tone uses to make the whiskey. Dan will be able to use the whiskey as an anesthetic.

Helen reads books on hypnotism to Dan, hoping that hypnosis could also work as anesthesia. Dan tries to hypnotize them all. Randy is a mixed bag; Hazzard can’t be hypnotized. The children are good subjects and highly suggestible. When Ben needs an appendectomy, Dan hypnotizes him and performs the surgery without any challenges.

The corn crops are exhausted in August. The household runs out of salt and the fish in the river stop biting. Soon everyone craves salt. Randy worries that radiation has wiped out the fish, but Dan remembers that an entry in an old diary that mentioned salt. The diary mentions a place called Blue Crab Run that is filled with salt. Five boats sail to Blue Crab run the next day.

Ben begins hunting the armadillos that pop up everywhere. They are a good food source and Ben becomes a local hero. Peyton is frustrated that she only has so-called women’s work to do, like dishes and mending. She decides to solve the fish problem and visits Preacher Henry, who is the best fisherman in town. The preacher tells her that the fish are no longer by the edge of the shore; they are deep in the middle of it, staying cool. Peyton catches several fish by weighing down her bait and casting into the middle of the river. When the men return from Blue Crab Run with salt and crabs, there are four huge bass in Randy’s sink that Peyton caught. She too is a hero.

School begins in September, with parents teaching their children. In October, oranges begin to grow. Ducks and turkeys arrive for the fall migration and Dan delivers a healthy baby in town. Peyton finds a secret room in the attic. It contains a phonograph, records, razors, and more.

­One day, near the end of summer, jets pass overhead. The Bragg household believes they are marked with the United States Air Force insignia. Dan wants to marry Helen, but she can’t say yes yet. She believes Mark might still be alive and wants to be faithful to him.

The jets return, dropping pamphlets explaining that they are conducting flyovers of contaminated zones. Helicopters arrive shortly after. Several men get out at the Bragg house and test everyone for radiation with Geiger counters. One man—Hart—tells them that Mark is dead. Hart tells them that America won the war decisively, and invites them all to leave Fort Repose after explaining that some cities have been completely destroyed. Scientists say it might take a thousand years to restore some contaminated zones to a safe status. Randy, Lib, and the others decide to stay in Fort Repose and to continue rebuilding their community.