Civil Defense headquarters for Green Prairie had been originally located in the midtown area, near City Hall. Its transference to an old high school building, on the east side of town, had followed the gradual realization that, if Civil Defense were taken earnestly, it followed that the midtown area was no place for headquarters: it would constitute the target area of any enemy attack. The present headquarters, unused by pupils after the construction of East High School, was a yellow brick structure set back from the intersection of Willowgrove and Adams.
Henry drove around the corner and into the parking yard on chattering tires. Other cars were ahead, others behind, and cars were waiting in line for space.
“Why don’t I drive on home and get my set going?” Ted asked.
“You’re too young to…” Henry grunted and turned from the line. “Take it home, son,” he said gently. “And go easy, because if the cops pick you up, we won’t have any communications at all. I’ll hitch a ride from here to the South School to assemble my section. If you can, lemme know when the folks get home.”
Henry said that over his shoulder. Men were running, like himself, into the school building. A few spoke his name. One or two called, “Know anything?”
Then they were in the lobby, at the place where they’d learned in the many drills that sector wardens were to report, if possible in person, otherwise by proxy, in emergency.
Douglas McVeigh was standing at the top of the steps on something—a table, maybe. Men and women ran in, saw him and either ran on to their posts because they belonged in H.Q., or stopped for orders.
That plan was working, Henry observed. Thirty or forty volunteers had gathered where McVeigh stood above them in as many, or as few, seconds.
“All personnel to their posts,” McVeigh was saying as Henry rushed in and was recognized. “Hi, there, Hank.”
“How”—Hank struggled to phrase the burning question in every mind—“how authentic is it, Doug?” He realized, as he spoke, he needn’t have doubted any longer. Doug McVeigh was stone grim, for all the ease with which he spoke, waved, nodded. He was using every ounce of his Scotch steel to hold himself that way: easy-seeming.
McVeigh glanced around, waited for a half-dozen new arrivals. “This is it, folks. A very large flight of long-range bombers is somewhere over Canada, right now.”
A woman began to cry audibly.
“No time for that!” McVeigh said shortly. “Get going, everybody!”
“Thank God we’re only a Class-Two Target Area,” a man beside Henry said. Henry raised his voice. “Who’s for South School? Henry Conner here. Need fast transportation!”
“Come on, Hank.” Luke Walters ran through the growing crowd in the lobby. “Mollie and I were notified at the store.”
Hank was driven from the school yard toward Willowgrove at breakneck speed, in spite of Mrs. Walters’s angry protests, by the excited owner of Green Prairie’s largest stationery store.
“What about your clerks?” Henry asked.
“Eh?” Luke was somewhat deaf.
“In your store? The clerks? They okay?”
“Man—I left ’em! Didn’t say a word. Condition Yellow means we gotta streak. But not a general alert. Right?”
“Yeah. You fix up the store cellar, the way we recommended?”
Luke hated to have his driving interfered with by talk. And it was difficult driving: Willowgrove seemed to be filled, suddenly, with people who were trying to lose their lives—people going too fast, in both directions.
They made it safely, somewhat to Hank’s surprise, to his sector H.Q. Cars were assembling there, too, and people, moving quickly, were streaming into the building like ants, taking the places they had learned to take through the years.
Hank went to the principal’s office, shucked off his coat as he began giving orders, skimmed his hat at the rack and sat down. He rang a special number and reported himself at his post, his checkers at work, his people arriving in good numbers.
At the Walnut Street house, Ted drew up, his heart hammering and his ears crimson from the cold. It had been some drive, the way everyone was traveling. Looked as if quite a few were already making for the country. So it was evident that “security” about Condition Yellow was being partly violated.
He parked the car face out, in the drive, as it should be in a time of emergency. He was panting a little as he bounded up the porch steps: he’d never driven a car that far before, or anywhere near that fast—sixty, on one stretch.
Then he remembered that nobody had thought to give him a key. He couldn’t get in without breaking something.
He chose a front window because it was handiest. The glass shattered; he reached in… the lock turned.
He ran up both Bights of stairs, threw himself into the broken swivel chair at his work table, clapped phones on his head and started to pull switches, turn dials.
Presently a hysterical and varied chatter began to pour into his astounded ears.
“It’s real,” he whispered to himself. “It’s— it.”
Anyone looking at the teen-ager in that transfixed moment would have thought that “it”
was the most wonderful thing that the young man could have hoped for. It wasn’t, exactly; but nobody could top it for pure, raging excitement.
In Ferndale, Chuck got through at last to Hink Field. Dinner was spoiled. His mother and his aunt were indignant; Ruth was, in fact, weeping with disappointment and rage. He could hear her say, over and over, “The fools! Oh, the fools! They’re little boys, really. It’s all a big game and they love it.”
Grimly, Chuck hoped that she would go on forever thinking it was just a “big game.” The baby started to cry, as if she, too, realized the party was over, spoiled, done for.
That was when he dialed for the twentieth time and got through.
“Captain Parker here,” a voice said.
“Jeff? This is Chuck Conner—”
“Chuck? Report out here as soon as possible, hunh?”
“Know anything?”
There was a minute pause—as if the captain had looked over his shoulder. Then his voice came, tense, low and fast. “ Yeah! Only a Yellow alert, so far. First wave sneaked in low, somewhere above Great Slave Lake. Spread out and cruised slowly. They’re split in pieces now and under attack. Thing is—thing that gets everybody! —a wave is coming from the south!” The voice became Hat again: “Okay, Conner. Report, Hink, instanter.”
At that moment, Charles Conner had perhaps the most accurate information of any person within the main confines of the Sister Cities.
He walked back into the distraught living room and said, casually almost, “Mother, I’ve got to report to Hink, myself. Guess I should take you home now; we’ll have to use the buses.”
“Take my car,” Jim said. Chuck looked at him. “Wouldn’t you rather keep it, under the circumstances?”
Jim was sitting in his easy chair now, his face puckered with indignation and a glass of beer in his hand. “Hell. This phoney-baloney? Take the car, boy.”
“It may not be—phoney….” Chuck didn’t want to frighten his uncle, merely to warn him. And he didn’t want to violate his own trust. He was cleared to know the thing he now knew.
Unauthorized civilians in this region, so far, were not supposed to know anything at all.
Jim Williams stood up, his expression sardonic. “You complete your call?”
Chuck nodded.
“The Hink Field soldiers take it straight?”
Chuck nodded.
“Bunch of idiots! I tell you—even if this spreads all over the country—it’s fake. Some lousy Government idea of a test run. Making the civilian population knuckle to the military.
Damned fraud, I say. Watch my vote next time! Brother!”
“Just the same,” Chuck said, bringing his own and his mother’s coats, aware of his mother’s eyes, “if you hear the air-raid siren, get down in your cellar with all the kids—and stay there.”
Jim was grinning. “That’s a hot one! Notice what the man said, Ruth? ‘ If we hear the sirens!’ Son, there aren’t six sirens in all River City and the nearest one to Ferndale is audible in a strong wind only about to the reservoir.”
Chuck had forgotten the great difference between the defense preparations of the two cities. He said, “Promise this. Keep the radio on.”
“Believe me, I will. Should be a circus—everybody running like headless chickens!”
“Keep the radio on. If you hear a Condition Red, get in the cellar and get there fast and stay there!”
“Sure. If we hear a Condition Red. Fat chance!”
Chuck gave a worried glance at the Williams kids, saw that Ruth was still merely scornful, and opened the door. “Promise?”
“Sure,” Jim said negligently. “ Gosh! I never realized I had such spooky, damned fool relatives.”
In the Williams car, Beth said, “It’s real, isn’t it, Charles?”
“Damned real.”
“You were told—more than you can tell us?”
He turned into Willowgrove, avoided a speeding truck, and started south. “This is for you, Mother—and only you. Dad will get it shortly beyond doubt. The whole area, I guess. There are two… three waves of bombers on the way and one’s corning from the south—God knows why or how.”
She didn’t answer. He looked around. His mother had bowed her head and shut her eyes and he realized, at first with a sense of shock and then with a sense of its fitness, that she was crying.