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a R T E S S C I E N T I A V E R i T as














also by MARTIN CAIDIN
WORLDS IN SPACE
ROCKETS BEYOND THE EARTH
ROCKETS AND MISSILES: PAST AND FUTURE
(with D. C. Cooke)
JETS, ROCKETS, AND GUIDED MISSILES
(with M. Okumiya and J. Horikoshi)
ZEROl
THE ZERO FIGHTER
(with S. Sakai and F. Saito)
SAMURAI!


3.23
C / 35.5 A.J.
© 1956 by Martin Caidin
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 56-6287
Printed in the United States of America
by Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, N. Y.


73-7422,
FOR OTTO v. ST. WHITELOCK


The characters, places, incidents and situations
in this book are imaginary and have no relation
to any person, place or actual happening.





the long night





the long night - 2
telephone numbers.
Black telephone wire swayed precariously from the
shack to poles which disappeared into the distance in a
serried row. It was never silent here at night; the wind
sighing or howling through the spruce mingled with
the power lines' tuneless moan in the cold. Occasionally
the hoarse bellow of a jet or the muted drone of engines
drifted down from the clouds.
It was ten minutes to nine on Wednesday evening,
November 28th. Tim Ketcham, farmhand and infantry
veteran, and sixty-three-year-old Harry Smith, dry-
goods store proprietor, had been on air defense duty
since eight. They would remain until midnight, stand-
ing a four-hour watch, since not enough volunteers were
available to allow the usual two-hour ground observer
duty tour. Tim was inside the shack heating coffee and
soaking up the precious warmth. Outside on the little
railed balcony, dry snow crackling beneath his boots,
Harry blew fog into the air and rubbed his mittened
hands.
He heard it first. An elusive, half-real sound, no more
than a deep-throated whisper, a distant bass which ap-
peared and fled with the vagaries of the shifting night
wind. It might have been the power lines strumming
in the cold, or a distant freight train rumbling through
the hills. He turned his head to hear better. He was
sure now; this was no wire or rumbling freight. This
came from the sky, but its sound wasn't that of a regular


the long night 3
transport or one of the B-36s which occasionally passed
over on secret training flights.
Harry rapped on the window, beckoning Tim to come
out. The sound was louder, ascending into a beating
roar. Soon it bellowed deeply, sonorously, from out of
the night. The two men searched the skies for the
source of the thunder, their breath blowing in fog as
the cold pinched their noses.
“Maybe a couple of fifties out practicing. Might even
be some jets. What you think, Tim?”
“Uh-uh. Sounds different. Listen to that beat. Never
heard anything like it before.”
The moon hung low over the nearby hills and for a
moment a shadow flashed before the swollen disc. No
mistaking the source of the sound now as it exploded
from above. Riding a thousand booming kettle drums,
three dark-winged shapes burst out of the blackness.
Instinctively throwing arms before their faces, the
men ducked, grasping the handrail as the tower shook
before the onslaught of thunderous vibration. Three
sweptwing giants rushed overhead and dissolved into
the night.
“Good God! Did you see that!”
Tim Ketcham flung open the shack door, left it ajar,
oblivious of cold. In a single motion he grabbed the
telephone receiver from its wall rack and furiously
spun the crank handle.
“Operator? Aircraft flash . . .”


the long night - 4
At 8:52 that evening, Henry J. Thompson, owner of
the largest hardware and auto supply store in Harring-
ton, was in the Strand Theater with his wife, Janet.
Henry Thompson was an upstanding citizen of his com-
munity. He was well-known and respected for his ac-
tive work with the Community Chest. He helped to
make successful the annual picnic outings for orphaned
children, contributed generously to the local veterans
hospital, told shady jokes in his club, and gave blood
to the Red Cross and dollars to the March of Dimes.
Fifty-four years old, slightly bald, and with the average
middle-age figure, he also played a prominent part in
Harrington's civil defense organization. It was not be-
cause he really believed in the possibility of war, or
that Harrington and other cities would be atom bombed.
(They didn't use gas the last time, did they?) He had
joined only because the Governor had crusaded so
vigorously for civil defense that he feared criticism if
he failed to lend his support to the movement.
Because of his standing in the community, he was
not satisfied merely to join the civil defense volunteer
“ranks”; instead, he offered his services directly to Colo-
nel Alfred Buyers, Harrington's civil defense director.
Hank Thompson, Colonel Buyers was told, would make
an excellent top-level civil defense executive, and
would be both an asset to the organization and a tire-
less example of public spirit. The weary and overworked
Colonel Buyers was fully informed of Hank Thompson's


the long night - 5
“inside” knowledge of world affairs, of his recognition
of the dire international situation, and of his willingness
to serve. The new volunteer was accepted as a matter
of course. Colonel Buyers needed map plotters in his
main city control center, from which he would try to
save the life of a city should atomic hell descend upon
it.
Thompson was satisfied; he was now a member of
the control center staff. He would be “in” on every-
thing worth knowing. He took his loyalty oath, was
finger-printed, photographed, and given his identifica-
tion card, an armband and an emergency vehicle in-
signia which would take him through police road-
blocks after a bombing. He put up a good show, at-
tended training regularly, and often served as a speaker
on civil defense before ladies' meetings and other
groups.
Since he was one of the top-level civil defense per-
sonnel, Thompson was placed high on the list to receive
the confidential “Yellow Alert” warning signal should
attack threaten Harrington. This was the warning
fanned out through the state by the Air Force when the
situation seemed threatening. This awareness that he
would know about the possible eruption of World
War III before his fellow citizens could find out gave
Thompson a sense of power. He reveled in it, confid-
ing to his friends and better customers in hush-hush
conversation some of the “secret” information entrusted


the long night 6
to his care, and referred casually to the important rôle
he would play in the defense of Harrington when the
day of reckoning came.
Sometimes Thompson wondered whether Russia
really would attack. Actually he had few honest con-
victions on the subject, but he admitted this only to
himself. However, with all the hullaboo in the past few
months about super atom bombs and Russian hydro-
gen bombs . . . what was it? Oh, yes, the cobalt or
something-or-other bomb . . . his customers furtively
asked his opinion if “war was really close.” Thompson's
self-esteem rose to ever greater heights as he imparted
to this private circle his wisdom on the matter.
Colonel Buyers, however, was so damned serious
about the whole thing. From the way he talked, you
would think he expected the Russians to come roaring
over any minute and drop dozens, maybe even hun-
dreds, of atom and hydrogen bombs. Even if the man
had lost a leg in Italy, that didn't mean he was infallibly
right about everything. Thompson had sufficient sense
of reality to appreciate the fact that three factories in
Harrington had put the city on the map as a prime tar-
get; the Olympus Jet Corporation, one of the country's
largest manufacturers of jet engines; the Eastern Elec-
tric Company, which even now was secretly converting
to the production of guided-missile control mechanisms;
and the Northeastern Nut and Bolt Factory. The latter,
seemingly unimportant, produced more than eighty


the long night .. 7
percent of the nuts and bolts used by Detroit's larg-
est auto manufacturer. In wartime, it supplied those
same nuts and bolts for tanks and armored vehicles.
There were nearly half a million people in Harring-
ton. Although the city was much like other centers in
the northeast of similar size, the three major factories
made it a most lucrative target for the Enemy should
they decide to launch an attack. Were these three crit-
ical industries destroyed, Thompson admitted, they
could affect drastically the production of hundreds of
other industries around the country. Harrington was
the fulcrum for continued production of at least a
dozen major industrial combines throughout the land.
Even now Thompson could hear Buyers expounding
his favorite theme, “The Importance of Harrington to
the War Effort.”
“One well-placed atomic bomb,” Buyers would re-
peat endlessly, “can knock the hell out of our ability
to wage war. Don't think that because we are a city of
less than five hundred thousand population we don't
figure highly on the Reds' choice of targets. They knock
out Olympus, and they've cut our jet-engine produc-
tion in half. Destroy Northeastern Nut and Bolt and
our tank manufacturers will go begging in scrap piles
for stuff to hold their tanks together. Tens of thousands
of guided missiles will be no damned good at all if those
electronic parts from Eastern Electric don't keep com-
ing off the production lines.”


the long night - 8
Buyers, thought Thompson, was such a fanatic on
this civil defense business that he insisted that all mem-
bers of his Control Center staff and the other command
headquarters in the city, when not in their offices or
homes, leave the numbers at which they could be reached
with the Sheriffs office. Thompson rarely followed what
he considered an unnecessary rule; only when he left
town on business or for a vacation did he bother to call
in. The one time a practice test was sprung without
warning he was visiting the Carltons with Jane; his
older son John had phoned the information to him.
The evening of November 28th was no different to
Henry Thompson. With his wife he had driven the
twelve blocks from their home to the Strand. Even
this short drive showed the preparations of Harring-
ton's citizens for the forthcoming Christmas holiday. A
few homes were decorated with colored bulbs, and the
first electric candles shone through windows.
The store was doing a brisk business, Thompson
thought. He had ordered a new line of Christmas deco-
rations, and already they were beginning to move
quickly. Especially those new illuminated stars for the
top of the trees; that was a clever gadget, all right, the
way the colors changed all the time.
As he drove across Atlanta Avenue, Thompson
pointed out to his wife the decorations strung across
the main thoroughfare. Large signs proclaiming “Only
19 More Shopping Days to Christmas were displayed


the long night - 9
prominently in store windows. The men dressed in
Santa Claus costumes stood on the corners, ringing their
bells, waiting patiently for contributions.
It would be a good Christmas, all right. Thompson
had contributed, along with most of the other business-
men in town, to the annual fund which enabled them
to string across Iriquois Avenue, the major traffic artery
which bisected the city, the giant banners proclaiming
Harrington as “The Most Beautiful City In America—
The Place For Your Future.”
Thompson never missed an opportunity to raise his
own personal stature which, he knew, eventually added
to his own business. Each Christmas season he con-
tributed generously to an organization supported by
the Elks, the Lions, the Rotary Club and similar groups,
to provide some festivity and the annual Christmas
dinner for the derelicts along Skid Row, the vermin-
infested area back of the rail yards. For years the city
had struggled to rid itself of this eyesore, but without
success. At least the annual dinner helped those poor
unfortunates.
To Thompson, Harrington was a wonderful place to
be during the Christmas holidays. Tomorrow night,
Thursday, the stores for the first time would remain
open until nine, every night until Christmas, to accom-
modate the large crowds. He would keep his own
store open until ten, at least. Tomorrow he would start
his special sale on snow tires; he was getting a new line


the long night : 10
from that salesman, Duryk; that was his name. He
must remember to call him in the morning at the Iri-
quois Hotel to tell him to come over; and, of course,
there would be that Salesmen's Convention next Tues-
day at the hotel, where he expected to pick up some
good ideas on new lines to sell.
Thompson never even thought of calling in his
whereabouts to the Sheriff's office. Hell, nothing was
going to happen. All you had to do was to look around,
see how everyone was so busy working on things for
the holidays. Why be stupid enough to get all upset
about something which was never going to happen?
All this talk about getting a confidential Yellow in the
dead of night was all right for his customers, but for
him . . .
His twenty-two year old son John was out bowling
tonight with his college friends. Johnny was the one
person in Thompson's immediate circle whom he could
not control. The boy had a mind of his own and dis-
dained his father's hope that he eventually would take
over the hardware store. He was headed for big busi-
ness, and was studying administrative engineering at
Harrington College.
Thompson was surprised that John would spend the
evening bowling. Invariably he was to be found with
his fiancée, Sue Wilson. They planned on a wedding in
another six months, and appeared inseparable. To-
night, Thompson knew, his future daughter-in-law


the long night - 11
would be shopping for a wedding gown, anxious to
take advantage of the special Christmas sales. .
His daughter, Terry, pretty as a picture and explor-
ing the wonderful new world of a girl just turned six-
teen, was attending a school meeting preparing for a
Christmas play. Thirteen-year-old Don was busy doing
homework—or more likely watching television—with
a schoolmate next door.
At 8:54 on the evening of November 28th, as Tim
Ketcham in his lonely spotter's tower spoke his urgent
Aircraft Flash into the telephone, Henry and Janet
Thompson relaxed in their theater seats to enjoy the
musical being flashed on the screen before them.
At exactly forty seconds past 8:53 that evening, the
local telephone operator in the snow-covered village
of Cold Creek, near the Canadian border, plugged in
a jack to take an incoming call.
“Operator? Aircraft Flash. This is 2731, Cold Creek
exchange.”
“One moment, please.” The operator deftly flipped
a switch, crossing the line with the aircraft-flash call
with another connection. The call automatically passed
through to the nearest United States Air Force Filter
Center.
In the Filter Center, the early evening shift awaited
such calls as this. An Air Defense operator heard a buzz
in her head phones, locked a switch in position for the


the long night - 12
new call, and spoke into the metal-plastic mike before
her lips.
“Air Defense. Go ahead, please.”
Tim Ketcham repeated once more, “Aircraft flash.”
Then, slowly, distinctly: “Three. Multimotor. Low. One
minute. Alpha Quebec Two Four Green. Overhead.
Southeast. Sweptwing.”
The Filter Center acted immediately on the call;
wheels were already turning to digest this new informa-
tion from distant Cold Creek. As the Air Defense op-
erator received the call, she fingered a multi-colored
plastic object of four sections shaped like a small arrow-
head. Standing before a large, flat table map divided
into grids, each representing several hundred square
miles, she turned the various sections of the arrowhead
pip to conform with the information coming over the
telephone wires. When the identifying symbols and
colors of the marker were adjusted to indicate that
three multi-motored aircraft had flown low over the
spotter's tower known as Alpha Quebec Two Four
Green (one minute before), heading in a southeast
direction, the pip was placed on the grid table near the
mark identifying the spotter's post.
With all the vital data of the terse call from a shaken
Tim Ketcham transmitted to the Filter Center, with
the innocuous pip with its ominous implications on the
grid table, the operator-plotter droned, “Check. Thank
you,” and broke the connection.


the long night : 13
Simultaneously with this procedure, carried out with
the fluidity of uncounted thousands of preceding spot-
ter reports, a Filter Center “teller” with earphones
clamped to his head jotted down the pertinent data of
Ketcham's call. An experienced Air Force sergeant, the
“teller” rang in on a direct line to the Air Defense Di-
rection Center, the “brain” of the air defense opera-
tions in this part of the country.
“This is Sergeant Mulraney. I have an aircraft
flash . . .” The sergeant repeated the spotter's report.
“Give me an action check against a flight plan, please.”
In the Air Defense Direction Center, where dozens
of men and women were receiving reports from a num-
ber of filter centers and radar stations, a giant vertical
transparent “map,” a seeming maze of white lines,
colored arrows and numbers, indicated the known posi-
tions of all aircraft anywhere within its territory. On
one side of that transparent, marked wall, several of.
ficers scrutinized the multi-colored symbols. Uniformed
young men and women stood and squatted at various
levels before the map, headphones to their ears, writ-
ing in reverse the information imparted to them, so that
the officers facing them could read the military hiero-
glyphics.
The aircraft flash was quickly checked against all
known flight plans recorded in the Air Defense Direc-
tion Center. The report from Alpha Quebec Two Four
Green was not identifiable with anything on file.


the long night : 14
In the Filter Center, just four minutes after the in-
formation from Tim Ketcham was recorded, a second
aircraft flash was received. The report gave sudden life
to the original flash. Three, multimotor, very low, fast,
and heading in a southeast direction. There was no
doubt about the “track” being made now. A “raid
stand,” resembling a miniature highway crossing sign
with many posts jutting from it at right angles, re-
placed the pip on the grid table. The protruding posts
were not merely decorative; each small cardboard arm
told a story of death on the wing.
Overlooking the plotting table with its grids, seated
in a small balcony, the filter center tellers reported the
new information on lines held open to the Air Defense
Direction Center, and passed the responsibility to
higher authority. But all eyes turned in the direction
of that awkward raid stand casting its shadow on the
plotting board: something is in the wind tonight.
The Air Defense Direction Center officer in charge
of this new information suddenly disliked his job as he
licked his dry lips. Multimotor aircraft (sweptwing at
that, if that spotter saw right) do not fly on the deck
at high speed, in formation, and especially at night.
Unless there's a damned good reason for it. There isn't,
at least not any that the officer can think of. Strategic
Air Command has no training flights in the area.
Sweptwing? The officer leans forward, barks one word
into the mike before him.


the long night : 15
“Scramble!”
In every Air Defense Control Center, the next high-
est command echelon over the Direction Center, there
is always a very important civilian on duty for an eight-
hour shift. To the rest of the Control Center personnel
he may be known as Fred or Mr. Kenney, but on the
official table of organization he is listed officially as the
“Federal Civil Defense Administration Controller.” It
is this man's task to listen constantly to all the aircraft
flashes, the flight plan checks, and the always cold-air-
down-your-neck orders to scramble jet interceptors. On
this particular November evening Fred Kenney wished
he were somewhere else. In the last few weeks there
had been an unusually heavy number of unidentified
vapor trails in the transpolar regions. Every new and
unrecorded aircraft sighted put him on edge; this might
be It!
Listening to the radio conversation between the
Direction Center, radar control, and the two powerful
interceptors hurtling into the night sky, F. C. D. A.
Controller Kenney discerned two vital facts immedi-
ately. Ground radar was unable to get a “fix” on the
three reported aircraft; this meant they were too low
to be picked up. When the second spotter's flash came
in Kenney decided it was time to play a combination
of hard fact and hard hunch.
He leaned across his desk to turn a switch which
activated a “hot line” squawk box system to eight cities


the long night - 16
throughout the state. These cities, of which Harrington
was one, were listed as “target cities”; they also served
as Key Point Air Raid Warning Centers. In each of the
cities a buzzer atop a speaker on the wall or desk of a
police station, fire house or sheriff's office coughed
raucously when Fred Kenney turned the switch before
him. It was exactly 9:06 P.M. when Kenney spoke care-
fully into his microphone:
“Warning Yellow. Air Defense Warning Yellow. Roll
call, please.”
In each of the eight target cities, the evening routine
skidded abruptly to a halt at those few words. At the
request for a roll call, the individual at the box activated
his message line, and in predetermined order acknowl-
edged the Yellow Alert. In the Air Defense Control
Center, Kenney heard the voices reporting: “Johnson
City, Yellow; Middleburg, Yellow; Albany, Yellow;
Syracuse, Yellow; Harrington, Yellow . . .”
In Harrington police headquarters the duty sergeant
acknowledged the alert call as he yanked a telephone
receiver from its cradle. No need to juggle the handle;
this was a long-distance operator in the local exchange.
The sergeant intoned, “Emergency Air Raid Warning
Yellow. Sequence One. Emergency Air Raid Warning
Yellow. Sequence One.”
This set in motion an immediate telephone chain re-
action. The long-distance operator checked down her
Sequence One list of names and numbers. She ignored


the long night - 17
all other calls at the moment and called the seven Sub
Air Raid Warning Centers serviced by Harrington, re-
peating the sergeant's warning call. In each of the seven
counties which received the Yellow Alert, telephones
started ringing in firehouses, hospitals, police stations
and homes.
Meanwhile, in Harrington's police headquarters a
second officer checked off a priority list of telephone
numbers, making calls in quick succession.
At eight minutes after nine, Colonel Alfred Buyers
slammed his telephone receiver down on the cradle.
Less than a minute later, after limping hurriedly to his
garage, he was driving to the Control Center just out-
side the Harrington city limits.
At eleven minutes after nine, the telephone in Henry
J. Thompson's home rang and rang and rang . . .
By fourteen minutes past nine, the city of Harrington
had exploded into action which was little noticed by
its citizens. In forty-three firehouses, thirty-two engine
companies and fifteen hook-and-ladder companies left
their coffee and card games and slumber to race through
the city streets. No fire awaited them at the end of their
drive; instead, they raced for pre-assigned locations out-
side the city, where they—waited. These dozen fire
trucks and hundreds of men, separated by darkness and
many miles, remained in contact with their chief al-
ready seated at his desk in the city's Control Center.
Amateur radio “hams” stopped tinkering with their


the long night - 18
sets or playing poker games or watching television and
raced in their cars for obscure and darkened highway
shoulders, to empty garages and diners on all the major
roads leading in and out of Harrington. When they
arrived at their assigned Aid Check Points, each car re-
ported by radio to the Control Center, and waited . . .
Civil defense staff personnel drove to various loca-
tions throughout the city. Not all of them; some, like
Henry Thompson, were unaware of their telephones at
home ringing shrilly and repeatedly.
Hospitals moved patients from wards and rooms into
hallways and interior rooms; ambulatory patients
helped nurses, doctors, internes and janitors. Police cars
rolled up to highway crossings to set up roadblocks;
giant dump trucks from the State Department of Public
Works trundled up to crossroads leading into major
highways, wheeled, and blocked the roads to all traffic.
Throughout the city, in the Control Center and its
alternate, at Zone Headquarters, Aid Check Points,
Hospitals, Secondary Aid Stations, roadblocks, every-
where, hundreds of men hurried to man their stations.
Some violated their responsibilities, calling families
with the hushed warning to get out of town imme-
diately; there's an alert on.” While these people, choos-
ing to offer the protection of the Yellow Alert warning
to their families while denying it to their neighbors,
acted in selfish though understandable interest, their
number was inconsequential


the long night : 19
Throughout an eight-county area, assigned to assist
Harrington should it ever be stricken with atomic dis-
aster, hundreds of other men and women moved from
homes to places of assignment.
The city of Harrington was preparing to fight for its
life.
“Red Leader Two from Ice Cream Charlie. Your
heading is three hundred thirty degrees. Hard port
twenty degrees—now. On course. Maintain air speed
five hundred knots. Your interception ETA with bogies
in two minutes. Over.”
In the lead fighter of the two-interceptor flight, the
pilot eased his stick back to center as the speeding
F-94B jet rolled out of its turn. Tied to an invisible
string, the second airplane with its shark nose, swollen
belly, and incredibly small wings slid in from the turn
simultaneously. In the rear seat of each fighter beneath
the long plexiglas blister a radar operator huddled be-
fore his dully glowing screen. It was his task to pick up
as a blob of light the unidentified aircraft toward which
even now they were heading on an angular collision
course at a combined speed of more than eight hundred
miles per hour. In two more minutes, as the miles dis-
appeared under the tremendous push of the powerful
jet engine below him, they would be able to sight (so
the man on the ground said) the “bogies.”
Many miles away, in a darkened room aglow with the


the long night - 20
sweep of illuminated hands about radar screens, the
“man on the ground,” the fighter ground controller,
guided the two jets in the sky.
He mumbled to a companion, also searching the
glowing screen, “Can't pick up a goddamned thing on
here. Anybody flying out there is just too low.”
The two minutes ground on. Abruptly the speaker
flung out the sound of the jet pilot's voice:
“Ice Cream Charlie. This is Red Leader Two.”
“Red Leader Two from Ice Cream Charlie. Go
ahead.”
“Have intercepted bogies. Can make out three air-
craft. Sweptwing. Bogies do not respond to code of
the day recogni . . .”
The pilot's voice broke off. Hammers pounding on
metal skin screeched explosively from the loudspeaker.
“. . . nofabitch. Bogies have opened fire. We are
going in.”
Henry Thompson fidgeted uneasily in his theater
seat. An indefinable sense of foreboding distracted his
attention from the picture.
A lull in the music brought Thompson upright in his
seat. Listen! Those were air raid sirens! Rising and fall-
ing, wailing, crying their plaintive message of destruc-
tion riding the sky. Panic welled up in Henry Thomp-
son's throat. He was standing; without realizing it, he
had risen from his seat. Face contorted, he listened with


the long night - 21
his conscious mind while the long-familiar inner voice
of “It-can't-be-anything-it-will-never-happen-here” scur-
ried before the sirens' reality.
His wife clutched his cloat sleeve. “Henry! What's
the matter, dear? What's wro . . .”
The house lights came on even as the screen flickered
and faded away, as the sound track groaned to a stop.
A confusion of voices bubbled into a torrent of fright-
ened questioning as the moviegoers rose to their feet,
looking about them at their neighbors for reassurance.
They found none, as the sirens seemed to wail louder
and louder.
“Your attention, please! Give me your attention,
please!” The manager's voice boomed from the loud-
speakers, quelling for the moment the growing urge to
race for the exits, the ballooning panic which might
suddenly explode with the violence of dynamite.
“There is no immediate danger,” the loudspeaker
cried. (The sirens screamed.) “If you will all move
quietly and calmly, there is plently of room to shelter
everybody. We have just received an air raid warning.
I repeat. There is no immediate danger.”
Henry Thompson usually sat in the rear of a theater,
along the aisle. It was when the manager realized that
he had the crowd under control, when panic seemed
averted, that Henry Thompson gasped, “The control
center! I've got to get there right away!”
Pulling his wife by the arm, Thompson dashed out


the long night - 22
of the theater. Behind him six hundred ordinary, ex-
citable human beings, their thin thread of control snap-
ping like a taut wire in the face of well-publicized
atomic doom, erupted into a frenzied urge also to escape
from the suddenly confining walls. The loudspeaker's
pleas for order were drowned amid the screams of the
crazed, the shrieks of those underfoot, the pitiful pleas
of the crushed . . .
Outside the theater, half dragging his wife, Thomp-
son ran along the block to his parked car. Gasping for
breath, Janet Thompson leaned against the auto as her
husband fumbled for his keys. It was quiet now. The
sirens were still. A few people left on the streets were
quickly disappearing into buildings,
*Listen to me, Janet,” the words tumbled from Henry
Thompson's lips, "There's still plenty of time. I have to
get to the control center. You'll never get a cab now.
Run home, You'll be able to make it.” He sucked in air.
“There's plenty of time to get home if there's really go-
ing to be any trouble, Get home, Make sure Donald is
all right, Don't worry about Terry, she'll be well taken
care of in school.”
The car door swung open and he slid behind the
wheel. As the motor came to life, he continued, "Get
Donald and go down into the basement. Stay there
until you hear the sirens again or untill callyou. What-
ever you do, don't go out. Now, hurry!"
His last words were lost in the clash of gears and the


the long night 23
motor's roar as the car pulled away from the curb,
racing in the direction opposite that of the Thompson
home.
“My God,” thought Janet Thompson, “the boy may
be home by himself now. He'll be scared to death.”
Concern for her child overcame the panic and fear
generated in the theater escape. The streets were al-
most deserted as she ran toward her home. Gasping for
breath, her coat flapping in the evening wind, the si-
lence of the moment fell upon her. She could no longer
hear any sirens. Cars were parked askew along the
curbs, doors left open by their passengers who had fled
into the nearest shelter.
Only five more blocks to go. A cat scampered across
the sidewalk in front of her, raced up a tree. Branches
cast mottled shadows beneath the street lights. Her
heart pounded like a hammer against her ribs. It was
hard to breathe; the blood roared through her head.
Sucking in air was torture. “My boy,” she thought. “My
boy. Oh, I hope he's all right. He must be frightened.
I must get home to him quickly.”
Janet Thompson ran, more concerned for her son's
safety than for any personal danger. She did not ac-
tually worry about an enemy attack; a fear assailed her,
but the substance of that fear escaped her. The sounds
of panic in the theater, her husband's blanched face
and obvious fright, the ungodly shriek of the sirens,
and a mother's concern for her child blanketed her in


the long night - 24
a smothering coat of horror.
“Almost home! There's the corner where I turn.” Her
heels, stumbling a little now, beat a staccato chatter on
the concrete walk. The sound echoed hollowly through
the streets, but she did not hear it. Janet Thompson
turned the corner, half a block from her home, sweat-
ing, her clothes disarrayed, frightened and gasping for
air. She ran . . .
At exactly thirty-three minutes past nine o'clock, a
sun burst into blinding, searing, silent existence over
the city of Harrington. There was no sound as within
a millionth of a second the tiniest brilliance of pure
light gave birth to a raging ball of fire expanding more
than a thousand feet across, half a mile above the city.
At that instant time stood still. No person ever saw
that newborn star flare into its microsecond of exist-
ence, No sound was heard as light, pure, unbearable,
all-enveloping, unbelievable light washed over and
poured into the city, Harrington swam in light, lay
blinded before this thing no man could ever see with-
out having his eyes fail him completely.
Less than a mile away, Janet Thompson, running that
last half-block home to her thirteen-year-old son
Donald, appeared to stop, to solidify in her steps. In
that brief instant Henry Thompson's wife was cloaked
with invisibility by the searing brilliance from the fire-
ball half a mile above. It took less than a second. Her
hair, her clothes, her flesh seemed to explode into fire


the long night - 25
as the fierce radiation embraced her. In that moment
life left this woman; even as her body was further en-
veloped by flame, still searching for the ground toward
which it fell, a thousand-mile-an-hour hurricane hurled
the fiery corpse through the air.
Janet Thompson was the first of 189,868 citizens of
the city of Harrington to die as World War III began.


2
;
THOMPsoN's CAR raced down the street at better than
sixty miles an hour. The best way, he thought, to reach
the control center was to head south on Central Court,
then take Harrow Street the rest of the way through
town to Pine Road, where a left turn would put him
within half a mile of Route 79. A few minutes on the
highway would bring him to the control center.
As he drove down Central Court Thompson turned
down the right sunvisor, exposing the red-and-white
civil defense emergency-car placard. Horn blaring, he
raced through two red traffic lights and swung into
Harrow Street. His was the only car moving on an
otherwise deserted thoroughfare. Ahead of him he saw
the glow from Main Street's advertising and theater
marquee signs.
Three blocks beyond Main Street Thompson sighted
a crowd gathered on the street. Horn jammed down,
he hit the brakes to slow before a roadblock of several
26


the long night - 27
smashed cars and milling onlookers. A policeman was
shouting and cursing at the curious crowd, trying vainly
to get them off the streets. Thompson watched the dis-
gusted officer finally leave the scene at a run, probably
headed for shelter himself.
He swung the wheel hard, cut across the curb on the
far side of the street and drove down the sidewalk un-
til he could again return to the road. Soon he was up
to seventy miles an hour with the heel of his palm
pressed hard against the horn ring. Instinct alone lifted
his foot from the accelerator onto the brake pedal when
he flashed through intersecting streets.
He raced across a deserted Lincoln Boulevard, a
broad eight-lane concrete ribbon slicing through the
city slums. The car slewed dangerously on the cobble-
stones leading upward to the Chenango Bridge,
bounced hard over the rutholes as he left the span.
Thompson slowed the car for a sharp turn he knew lay
ahead, where the crossing tracks of the Midcentral Rail-
road jutted from the street.
He swung into the turn at forty miles an hour, tires
screeching, the car heeling over hard and bucking on
the steel rails. Pulling out of the turn, fingers unclench-
ing to let the wheel spin back with the straightening
tires, Thompson was struck blind.
Four miles behind him a small, raging star heralded
its birth in insane brilliance. Sight was snatched mo-
mentarily from his stricken eyes. As of from an un-


the long night - 28
earthly distance he sensed that his arms and fingers
were unmoving, rigid, frozen below the wheel.
Whipping back from the force of the turn, the
screeching tires met no restraining hand upon the
wheel. Thompson was flung against the door, his head
cracking the window, as the Buick reeled, skidded
against the curb, and bounced off the ground like a
wounded animal.
A helpless rag doll within two tons of runaway steel,
glass, and rubber, Thompson felt pain knife through
his chest and ribs, returning him to awareness. The un-
real cacophony of tearing metal shattered the air as
the auto flipped over and over. It came to rest on its
side against a light pole, the driver's door facing up-
ward. Dimly Thompson tasted salt in his mouth,
warmth trickling down his face. He spat out a tooth,
while spittle and blood dribbled down his chin.
The smell of gasoline galvanized him into move-
ment. Through the windshield he saw flame lick around
the crumpled hood and curl upward as he recovered his
sight. He struggled desperately, fully aware that if he
did not escape quickly, he might be trapped within a
flaming coffin. Miraculously the door was not jammed;
as Thompson heaved against it, the torn metal com-
plained and gave way. Smoke poured from the motor
as he lifted himself through the door, wincing from the
pain of cuts and bruises.
It was dark. The street lights no longer shone, and


the long night : 29
through a haze of numbness Thompson observed with
surprise the deserted streets. Suddenly, he remem-
bered the sirens, the blaring horn, the race for the con-
trol center. That light! An atom bomb must have ex-
ploded!
He had barely touched ground with both feet and
started to move away from the car when a giant, in-
visible hand hurled him to the ground. The car rocked
sharply as the sky suddenly split in two with the sound
of a thousand blockbusters exploding simultaneously,
of artillery legions stretched from horizon to horizon
hurling their thunder down from the heavens. Many
seconds after the cosmic light had flared and fled, the
shock and blast wave engulfed Thompson. A dust storm
followed almost instantly on the heels of the howling
wind.
Staggering to his feet Thompson moved away from
the now flaming Buick. He leaned against a concrete
wall, regaining strength and shaking off the dizziness
which had clouded his brain. For the first time he really
heard the distant rumble of the celestial drums beating
over the city miles away.
He turned toward the center of Harrington and
stopped. A soundless “My God!” hung suspended from
his speechless lips. Four miles away a monstrous, shape-
less genie rose from the bowels of the earth, twisting,
fuming and writhing, belching forth deep red flame,
curling within itself, growing horribly, reaching for


the long night - 30
the sky. Colors shredded and split the boiling smoke as
the monster struggled into newborn life, leaped within
itself as it raced to leave the growing circle of newly
kindled flame in Harrington.
The baleful eye of the fireball waned and withdrew
into the bloody darkness of the twisting, surging cloud.
It shot upward with incredible speed, changing from
red and orange to a blackened blue, then to purple and
brown and gray. Fingers of fire spit from the darkening
and swelling giant which lunged to invade the strat-
osphere.
Thompson's heart was impaled with an almost ele-
mental panic. The sirens, the fear of the attack, the
wild race through the streets, the blinding light, the
crash of the wrecked and flaming car, the impact and
roar of the shock wave and . . . now this . . . this
terrifying thing that had sundered its timeless elemental
chains and trod ponderously upon a helpless city . . .
Thompson shook. It was too much for his senses to
absorb; yet, through the shock which protected him
from his world gone mad, he maintained control over
his reeling brain. One thought persisted through the
mental storm as he stumbled away from the wall—“I
must get to the control center!” He half-ran, half-
staggered another two blocks, coughing and choking
in the swirling dust and dirt. He was forced at times to
guide himself through the murky gloom by the feel of
the curb.


the long night - 31
He bumped into the fender of a car; the red taillights
glowed dully through the haze. He ran around the side
of the car, evidently abandoned by someone who had
sought shelter when the sirens howled. The keys were
in the ignition! Thompson swept shattered glass from
the seat and slid in behind the wheel. Soon he was
cautiously driving through the murk.
A few minutes later, the air clearing, he was picking
up speed on Pine Road. Another half mile and he swung
right on Route 79; he was too shaken to drive faster
than fifty miles an hour. Five minutes later he turned
into the dirt road leading to the old airplane hangar
which had been converted into the city control center.
Thompson pulled up by a long line of cars. Lights
shone through the center's screened windows, and men
were clustered around several cars near the building
entrance. Those must be the amateur radio cars or-
dered to report directly to the control center on the
Yellow.
He swung open the door, gagging suddenly as a
wave of nausea swept over him. He would have fallen
but for the helping hands of two auxiliary policemen
who had run to the car when it stopped. Half-carrying
Thompson, they brought him to the control-center en-
trance. A deputy sheriff armed with a shotgun waved
them in.
“Take him to the first aid room,” the sheriff spoke.
“He looks pretty well done in, but they'll need him


the long night - 32
downstairs. We're still short a couple of the boys.”
In the first aid room, Thompson sank gratefully on a
canvas cot. A medical technician came in immediately
afterward. Thompson winced and gasped as his shirt
was pulled free from the sticky masses of dried blood
and dust.
The medical technician worked quickly. “Not so bad,
after all,” he told Thompson. “You’ve been banged up
somewhat and you have enough cuts and knocks to
last you for a couple of months, but you'll do.”
Ten minutes later he was finished. Smelling of iodine
and covered with bandages, wearing pilot's coveralls
borrowed from the Civil Air Patrol lockers, Thompson
walked down the cellar corridor into the operations
room.
The large, brightly lit room was subdued bedlam.
Fluorescent light cascaded down onto the long rows of
wide desks, all facing toward floor-to-wall maps in the
front of the room. Floodlights reflected off the heavy
transparent acetate covering the maps of Harrington,
the surrounding suburbs, the seven counties making up
the support area, and other maps of the state and na-
tion.
At the top left of the Harrington City map were fig-
ures giving wind direction and velocity, and the time
of the reading. In heavy, bright-red grease pencil di-
rectly beneath the wind reading was the scrawled state-
ment:


the long night : 33
2133 HOURs. ONE, ATOM BOMB. HEIGHT, POWER, ZERO
UNDETERMINED.
The bomb had exploded at 9:33, then. Thompson
glanced toward the wall where an electric clock read
two minutes past ten. He saw Dick Kraines and Vic
Chittenden, headphones and speakers clamped to their
heads with the trailing wires plugged into the wall, im-
patiently waiting for the first information which would
give an inkling of where the bomb had exploded.
Messengers moved quickly between the rows of
desks, handling pink, yellow, and white message forms,
dropping them into wire baskets, picking up other mes-
sages, carrying throughout the control center the first
trickle of the message flood which would soon be gush-
ing from the Communications Room with its many tele-
phones, its radios and teletypes.
On a raised platform behind the row of desks, flanked
on the left by the Harrington fire chief and on the right
by his operations chief, Morris Goldblum, Colonel
Buyers scanned the entire room. Goldblum saw Thomp-
son standing in the doorway, turned to say something
to Buyers, and motioned Thompson to come over.
Goldblum was off the platform and on the floor as
Thompson approached. “Christ! What the hell happened
to you, Hank?” he asked.
Thompson told him of the car wreck, and of the sub-
sequent drive to the control center. He took care to
omit any reference to the fact that it was in the theater


the long night 35
fore it happened? If she was outside she didn't stand a
chancel
And the kids! What about DonaldP Did he have
enough sense to go into the cellar if he was at home, or
at his friend's house next door? Terry—yes, she was in
school for the meeting . . . did she . . . was she .
Johnny would be all right, he was old enough and big
enough to take care of himself . . . but the kids .
He had completely forgotten about his family! In the
mad turmoil of all that had happened he had forgotten
his family! Thompson's jaw hung slack, his brain
whirled.
“Hank! Damnit, snap out of it, Henry!” Goldblum
shook him roughly, shouted at him, shook him again
until his teeth rattled.
“Oh my God,” Thompson mumbled. “My wife, the
children. . . .”
“Goddamnit, Hank!” Goldblum spat. He grabbed
Thompson's arm, roughly swung him around so that he
faced the multitude of heads along the long rows of
desks.
“See those people? Every manjack in this room is
scared as hell, too, of what may have happened to his
family. I don't know if Rose and my three kids are alive,
Buyers doesn't know if his wife is alive or buried under
their house. None of us knows yet, and we may not
know for a long time, whether or not we'll find our


the long night : 36
family and home when we get out of here.
“I’m scared, you're scared, and they're scared. There
isn't a soul in this goddamned room who isn't sick wor-
rying about his family.”
He looked into Thompson's eyes. “I know how you
feel, Hank, but there isn't anything you or I can do now.
You've got a job to do now, just like the rest of us. Have
you got that straight?”
Thompson nodded.
“Good, then.” Goldblum slapped Thompson's shoul-
der. “Go on in and have that coffee. Hurry it up,
though. The old man will be holding a staff briefing any
minute.”
As Thompson left, Goldblum called after him. “Hank!
Some prayer might not hurt, either.”


3
;
HE SLIPPED his two middle fingers and his thumb into
the holes, curved his index and little finger over the
rounded black surface, and held the ball waist-high.
Keeping his eyes on the gap between the number one
and three pins, he shuffled his feet until they were in
exactly the right position. The ball went back and up
in a sweeping arc as he stepped forward, then slid
smoothly from his outstretched hand and went curving
down the alley.
John Thompson held his breath as the ball hit exactly
in the slot to scatter the ten pins into the pit. “Whooee!”
he shouted happily, “that makes four!” He turned to
face the other bowlers seated at the bench. “Hey,” he
called cheerily to the scorer, “put 'em down, nice and
clean. I'm out to take this kitty. Just six more pins gives
me the game.”
He picked up the ball as it returned to the rack, re-
sumed his stance, and again shot the ball down the
37


the long night - 38
alley. The hook didn't take, and the ball sloughed off to
the right, spilling only three pins into the pit. A storm
of catcalls and derision assailed his ears as he turned.
John grinned back. “Okay, okay,” he said, “laugh
while you can. But I got another ball, and three pins is
all I need to wrap it up.” He stepped to the rack to re-
trieve his ball. “Just count out the money, men, just
count out the money as soon as I clear the alley this
time.”
He resumed position, measuring the alley for his final
throw. He took his time; the entire game now depended
upon this one throw, and he didn't want to miss. The
other bowlers kept silent for the moment, waiting for
him.
He held the ball forward, started his steps, began
to arc the ball back and up. The black sphere went up
gracefully, and John began his swing. His fingers began
to unclench to allow the ball to slip free.
The siren was bolted just above the entrance to the
bowling alleys. As John began his downward swing,
balancing himself exactly to achieve accuracy, the siren
groaned into life. Vanes spun and sound gushed out. A
momentary bass, a high climbing shrill, then shrieking.
The siren supports were loose and, even as John began
to release the ball, the support tower of the siren shook
and vibrated. The entire building responded, blending
the metallic scream with the jarring vibration.
In a moment the comparative emptiness of the bowl-


the long night - 39
ing alleys resounded with the still climbing shriek. The
noise startled the young man; instinctively his body
tightened and his hand jerked. The ball went clattering
into the gutter, bounced over and into the adjoining
alley.
John Thompson paid little attention as the ball
bumped its way into the pit. Even as he turned to face
his friends with a question on his lips the siren rose to a
thundering scream. Someone was shouting, but his voice
went unheard as the scream reached its peak, descended
mournfully and began once again to rise. It was too
close and too loud to permit conversation.
Chris Konstanty, the proprietor, moved out from be-
hind the bar. He spoke to a customer but the other man
only pointed to his ears and shook his head. During a
brief lull in the volume one voice was heard shouting
“What the hell is this? What goes on . . . P’
Three minutes the noise rose and fell. Finally the elec-
tric current to the siren was cut off. The vanes spun
slower and slower, and the sound fell to a lowing bass
as the machine ground to a halt.
Everyone was on his feet. There was a babble of
voices as the bowlers and onlookers alike clustered
about the bar. “Hey Chris!” someone queried, “what the
hell is this? You know what's going on?”
“Yeah, what gives . . . .”
“Hey, wait a minute! Thompson's old man, he's some
sort of wheel in this civil defense . . . cºmon, Johnny,


the long night - 40
what gives?”
John shrugged his shoulders. “Hell, I don't know,”
he answered, “The old man is always running around
with his tin hat and his armband. Don't ask me. I don't
know any more about it than you do.”
“You mean your old man never even told you about
this here drill?”
“Nope. Not a word.”
“Hey, Johnny.” It was Chris Konstanty. “Your pop,
he's pretty much of a big man in this civilian defense
thing, ain't he? I remember you telling me something
about him being in the control house . . .”
“The control center . . .”
“Same difference. But your pop, he would know if
there was a air-raid test, no?”
“Sure,” John answered, “he always gets the word on
these. Once they pulled a surprise test, but the mayor
blew his top about getting pulled out of the bathtub, so
they knocked those off. Sure, he'd know. He's part of
the top staff.”
“Well, your old man, he don't say nothing about this
to you tonight?” Chris queried.
“I just told ya', Chris,” John insisted, “Pop never said
a word to me. That's funny,” he mused, “he's always
told me about them before, too.”
Konstanty placed a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“Just a minute, Johnny. You, too,” he said, gesturing to
Thompson's friends, “the alleys will still be here in a


the long night : 43
through the window as the star mushroomed into a
richer fireball, his scream of pain and terror one long
drawn-out tormented cry. Every man in the bowling
alley was struck dumb where he stood. The light less-
ened. Pale shadows returned, then stark white and black
as the brilliance subsided so that the optic nerves could
function.
Konstanty stood transfixed behind the bar. Someone
shouted “DOWN!” There was no need. Those able to
move already were diving instinctively behind benches,
behind pillars, or simply dropping prone to the floor.
The shock wave and the blast arrived. The steel fist
pounced savagely on the small recreation hall. Charley
Bowers, still transfixed, blind, before the window, re-
ceived full force the impact of the shattering glass. The
jagged shards erupted into the room, preceding the
blast which for a fraction of a second hesitated against
the outside walls. The glass erupted toward Charley
Bowers with bullet-like speed. There was not even
sufficient time for the blood to begin to flow before his
body was lacerated into pulpy slivers. The shock killed
him almost instantly.
The invisible fist of the blast wave squeezed, con-
tracted, peeled the roof off the building, blew the walls
in, at once killed half the men and students in the flimsy
structure, and hurled the others about. The rows of
whiskey bottles behind Chris Konstanty were flung
against each other, in the same instant shattering into


the long night 44
lethal jagged glass shrapnel. Konstanty lived a little
longer than did Bowers: exactly one minute longer.
John Thompson was miraculously fortunate. Further
from the bar than the others, he lunged for the floor in
that second when the lances of light burned out Charley
Bowers' eyes. The blast wave required several seconds
to reach out from its stellar birth. In those few seconds
John dove for the floor, rolled over rapidly and, as the
first glass panes converted Bowers to slashed gore,
squeezed beneath a thick wooden bench. There he lay
for what seemed to him an eternity of roaring noise,
splintering wood, breaking glass, horrible screams, and
cries of pain. His face buried in his arms, his teeth
gripped together and his eyes fiercely shut, the world
a terrifying maelstrom of wreckage, of noise, of death
visiting his closest friends, he lay beneath the bench in
the grip of the same terror which even at that moment
was visiting most of the men and women in the city of
Harrington.
The lights went out as the walls collapsed. Timbers
crashed all about him, and John cried aloud in fright
as one heavy beam smashed against the bench. But the
wood was stout, and the bench did not yield. The next
moment he was coughing and choking as the dust
swirled about in the darkness.
He lay like that for perhaps another minute. Opening
his eyes he saw a dim flickering red through the thick
dust. He hardly knew when he crawled out from be-


the long night 45
neath the bench and, indeed, failed to notice at all the
deep gash along his right leg, trailing crimson behind
him as he stumbled and groped his way through the
room.
He tripped over something soft, falling to his knees.
In the dim half-light which had returned he bent down
and peered. It was Jack Kronig, his eyes staring up
vacantly.
He grasped Kronig by the shoulders and shook him.
Gasping, John gripped his shirt and attempted to raise
Kronig to a sitting position. Kronig felt ridiculously
light in his hands, coming off the floor with hardly any
effort.
Wide-eyed, he glanced down from Kronig's slack
face. Kronig was no longer a body. The slack-jawed
Thompson held the shoulders and lifeless head of his
dismembered friend.
Involuntary spasms wracked John's body as he
retched. Sobbing and gasping, he flung the terrible
thing from his grasp and stumbled out into the street,
where he collapsed against a tree as his stomach tight-
ened and jerked.
Then he ran. Just . . . ran. He ran, blindly, without
reason, gasping for breath, the blood pounding in his
head. He tripped and fell, collided with and knocked
people from their feet, climbed over fallen trees, skirted
burning cars and flaming buildings.
Spitting out dust, cut and scratched, sobbing, bleed-


the long night - 46
ing, half-crazed, he ran. He failed to hear the screams
and cries, the shouting and the orders, the pleas, the
curses from those who had elected to dig in rubble for
the trapped, from those who had begun to tend the
wounded. He saw the fires, the blood, the tortured casu-
alties, the burned, the wreckage, the angry, thundering
mushroom stalk towering many miles into the sky. He
saw, but it failed to register.
In his stumbling, erratic flight, going nowhere, he
worked out some of the blind terror. He fled from him-
self until his body demanded succor, until his weary
limbs protested shriekingly, until his veins pulsated,
until his head swam in dizzy circles. He ran until he
could run no longer, until finally he fell sobbing to the
ground, lying face down amid the debris.
And because he was young and healthy, he regained
his breath and his strength. Sanity returned. He ac-
cepted reality for what it was.
He rolled over and sat up. For the first time he looked
about him objectively, actually saw what had happened.
He remembered the ribbing he and the crowd were
giving Chris Konstanty, that God-awful shriek from
Charley, the light, the confusion and the noise. He re-
membered and was ashamed for his unreasoning fright.
He forced himself to realize that, after all, Jack Kronig
was only one, he now knew, of thousands of men and
women who must have been torn to pieces by the ex-
plosion.


the long night - 47
The impact of the bombing came home to John
Thompson, but no longer stunned him. The surprise
was over, the shock had come and gone. He did not re-
flect objectively on the events leading up to the bomb-
ing. The city had been hit; that was all there was to it.
There was little to be gained by wondering about the
past.
“I’ll have to be getting home,” he thought, “got to
see what happened to the folks. Then I'll call Sue
and . . .”
Suel His fiancée! He shouted aloud, “What's happened
to Sue?”
He was on his feet, again stumbling over the wreck-
age, running until . . . “Wait a minute,” he said aloud
to himself, “wait a minute. Where am I? Where the hell
am IP”
He failed to recognize the street on which he stood.
But he had known it all so well, he had known this
neighborhood like the back of his hand! Has everything
gone crazy? What's wrong? Why does everything look
so different? Why is everything so changed?
He saw nothing but wreckage. Smashed homes, some
standing with roofs and walls ripped away, others col-
lapsed. Burning cars and buildings, light poles down,
telephone poles trailing wires. Everything is so differ-
ent!
He climbed over the wreckage until he reached a
street corner. Hands cut and bleeding, he scrabbled in


the long night : 48
the debris like a starving dog hunting frantically for a
scrap of meat. Then he found it, bent and twisted.
The street sign. He had his bearings. He was on the
corner of 63rd Drive and Elm Street. He forced himself
to think before he once again began to run. Now he
remembered. Sue wasn't at home. She had gone shop-
ping with her sister, looking for the gown for their wed-
ding!
He told himself, “Let’s think this one out. Sue and
Rhoda went to the Modernage Department Store. But
the store closes at nine . . . Sue said she was going to
stay with Rhoda and her husband for the evening. So
she was at their house when the bomb went off . . .
That's it. She was at their house when it happened
... she has to be at their house . . .”
Knowing now where he stood, regaining his bearings,
the young man sought out the direction of his future
sister-in-law's home where Sue was . . . where Sue had
to be . . . waiting. He refused to think otherwise, he
refused to admit the possibility that she could be dead,
that the house might be in ruins. He fixed his mind on a
single purpose . . . to get to his fiancée. Nothing else
mattered. Nothing else was important. Only Sue.
And so he began moving over the jungle of wreckage,
through and about and in the horror and the pain,
among the dead. Around the flames, holding his arms
before his scratched and bruised face to ward off the
heat. John Thompson knew nothing of mass fires, he


the long night : 49
cared even less. Fire was fire . . . nothing more.
He could not avoid the revulsion caused by the
wounded and the dead, of course, nor could his emo-
tions remain deaf to the entreaties for assistance which
the wounded begged of him. To these pleas John paid
little outward heed; he seemed to reject without com-
passion the calls for succor. For such rejection he was
bitterly cursed and damned.
The young man, however, did not lack compassion.
He felt strongly the desire to assist, to help, to ease the
suffering, to do whatever he could. But he was caught
in the grip of emotions far stronger than the desire to
stop, to halt in his pursuit so that he could help.
Every wounded and dead person he saw filled John
with terror; each similar sight brought to him the horror
that Sue might herself be in dire need of help. She, too,
might even then be dying. He felt only the all-compel-
ling desire to find her so that he could effect her rescue.
Perhaps she needed a transfusion which he could give;
maybe she was trapped beneath shattered wreckage
which was ignored by others, which, if he arrived there
quickly, he could remove. He was not deaf to the needs
of others; his concern for Sue, however, was that much
the greater.
Each bloody form was a catalyst which spurred John
on to faster movement. Each corpse was the stabbing
realization that only he, somehow, in some manner,
could help his fiancée.
Sue . . . he had to get to her. Nothing else mattered.


4
;
At 9:33 P.M. darkness fled from the sky over Harring-
ton; hundreds of miles away, the great greenish light
invading the night announced in unmistakable terms
that the bomb had fallen.
Ten minutes after the garish brilliance flashed and
waned over the stricken city, the battle had been joined.
Colonel Buyers and his staff in the control center
knew at first only that at least one atomic bomb—per-
haps two—had struck. A few minutes later, with reports
filtering in from across the city, they were satisfied that
only one had been detonated, apparently in a burst high
over the city. The control center itself suffered a sharp
but fleeting shock which failed to damage the building.
Five minutes after the attack, the eight Aid Check
Points on Routes 79, 211, 22 and 10 reported by car
radio that they were operational. Zone Headquarters in
Zones One, Two, and Three reported; Zone Four was
silent.
50


the long night 51
Minutes passed quickly as the control center sought
the vital information without which it could not func-
tion effectively. Buyers knew that fire units were already
fighting their way back into the city from dispersal
points to which they had fled when the Yellow Alert
was received. It would be some time, however, before
detailed information would reach the control center via
the fire department's radio. Fire equipment reported
directly to the various zone headquarters rather than to
the control center and their information would not be
available for at least another thirty to forty minutes.
Buyers fumed and cursed silently. The first incoming
messages told him little he did not know from pre-
attack planning and by simple deduction. It was not
enough to know that fire battalions were already en-
gaged in fighting the rapidly spreading flames; that
bulldozers were shearing a tortuous path through
debris-clogged streets and roads; that radiation-moni-
toring teams were using their electronic noses to sniff
for invisible gamma rays and neutrons; and that, on the
major highways leading into Harrington, fire engines,
doctors, nurses, rescue teams, trucks, and other mechan-
ical aids were rushing toward the city.
Buyers knew all this. What he needed to know was
the approximate location of the explosion. Once he had
established this general area of zero, he could formu-
late a concrete pattern for defending the city.
He turned impatiently to Goldblum at his side. “Get


the long night 52
a message off to State. Tell them we have been hit with
at least one atomic bomb, and that it appears to be a
high burst. That's all; we'll send them more when we
have it.”
Buyers left his seat and moved down to Russel Win-
chester, his Reconnaissance Service Chief. Winchester
stood before a large map of Harrington, marked with
compass readings circling the city. Six red flags jutting
from the map denoted the position of the reconnais-
sance teams he hoped had moved out on the Yellow
Alert. Winchester had little faith in fancy gadgets which
reputedly might tell him where the bomb exploded. In-
stead, he had assigned six radio-equipped jeep crews to
report on the Yellow Alert to pre-designated locations
two miles beyond the city limits. When these teams saw
the brilliant flash of the bomb they were to wait approx-
imately thirty seconds, then emerge from their shelters
to take compass readings of the boiling mushroom cloud
which would rise from the fireball.
Two red lines were already drawn from the flags
marked Team Two and Team Five; the lines crossed
each other in the tenement area of Harrington. Even as
Buyers watched, a radioman handed Winchester a mes-
sage from Team Three . . . the red line cut across the
map, slicing through the other two red lines almost at
the point where they joined. Team Six and Team Four
reported almost simultaneously. The red lines traced
their path across the map. Each line intersected all the


the long night 53
others within a true distance not exceeding 250 yards.
Winchester grunted to himself, then pointed to the
map. “There she is, Al. Give or take 600 feet or so, the
bomb went off just about . . . umm, just about here.”
He stabbed a black grease pencil at the map, drew a
circle encompassing the five intersecting lines. “There's
your zero,” he said.
“Give me a fix,” Buyers said.
Winchester turned again to the map, looked closely,
and answered: “Use the intersection of Main Street and
McGuire Avenue for map-plot zero. Accuracy, like I
said, is give or take about 200 yards.”
“Get a message out to each of the zones,” Buyers
ordered. He walked back to his raised stand and re-
sumed his seat next to Goldblum. Buyers picked up his
desk microphone and turned the switch to “On.” The
loudspeaker system led to amplifiers in the operations
room and to speakers in each room in the control cen-
ter.
“Give me your attention,” Buyers spoke. “Here is your
map plot for ground zero. You will mark the intersec-
tion of Main Street and McGuire Avenue as zero. This
is accurate within 200 yards or so. Main Street and
McGuire Avenue.
“It looks as if we have a high burst. We should have
little or no radiation problems to contend with. If any-
thing does show up, Radiological will pass the word on.
“I want fire, water, medical, rescue, public works,


the long night 54
welfare, and police immediately for a conference at the
large plotting map in the Operations Room. That's all.”
He snapped the speaker button down, glanced at the
steadily growing pile of messages Goldblum had
screened for him, and climbed down from the stand.
Already waiting at the large illuminated map were the
map plotters, Dick Kraines, Vic Chittenden, and Henry
Thompson; the latter had returned to the Operations
Room at the sound of Buyers' voice over the loud-
speakers and taken his place before the map.
His service chiefs were already assembling. Buyers
shouldered his way through the group, picked up a long
pointer and turned to his men.
“We are going to try and anticipate just what is hap-
pening inside the city and what may happen in the next
few hours. You all know the bomb went off as a high
burst, and that it hit over the slum and business sections
of town.”
He paused, then continued. “I don't like it. I'm afraid
of a firestorm.”
Buyers turned, pointed to the weather and wind read-
ings on the map and went on: “There's almost no wind
in the city, less than five miles an hour from the south-
west. The fires that must be breaking out in this area,”
he pointed to the map, “can't be stopped. There isn't a
chance that our fire equipment can get in there
quickly.”
He snapped at Rick Morrison, Harrington fire chief.


the long night 55
“What do you think, Rick? You have a building density
of more than forty percent in this area, and most of it is
kindling wood. I think we'll get a firestorm. I want your
opinion.”
Morrison rubbed a weathered hand over his chin.
“We can't tell yet, Al. Not enough information. We
haven't gotten a peep from Zone Four so far, and I'm
afraid it's been knocked out. The only messages I've
gotten from the area by fire radio is that they can't get
any further into the city because of blocked roads
than . . .” he moved to the map, squinted, and placed
a finger on the acetate covering, “than, here.”
Goldblum interrupted. “Colonel, we have a report
from the Eastern Electric plant. Somebody deep in a
cellar with radio has been screaming for help. He says
the whole place has been ripped apart and that they're
completely on fire.”
Buyers turned back to Morrison. “We have to decide
here and now—each of us—what we are going to do. I
think we'll be faced with a firestorm in the slum and
business area. If the storm develops, we will lose every
last man and piece of equipment in the area. We must
decide now whether or not we're going to order an
evacuation.”
He glanced at his watch and addressed his service
chiefs, “It’s already 10:20. Let's make up our minds—do
we pull out or not? Morrison?”
The fire chief looked uncomfortable, then nodded.


the long night : 56
“We can't afford not to. I say go ahead.”
Buyers rapped, “What about you, McCann?” The
burly rescue chief started, “Hell, we've got thousands
of people trapped in there. You order evacuation now
and we'll lose every damned one of them. I don't
think . . .”
Jim Walker of Medical interrupted. “Is it absolutely
necessary, Colonel, to evacuate now? You know what
that will do to the injured. If we start moving those
people, if our stations have to stop what they're doing
and move—”
Buyers cut in. “Damnit, Jim, don't you understand
what I’m getting at? If there's a storm in there we'll lose
not only the injured and the trapped, but all of our own
people and equipment as well. We can't afford to do
that.”
Frank Young of Public Works spoke up. “I know this
area. It's all matchboxes. Al, if you're afraid of a fire-
storm, then you'd better make up your mind and be
damned quick about it. My answer is to evacuate.”
Buyers called off the services, meeting only with
further agreement. Picking up a black grease pencil
from the tray, he turned to the map and began to trace
a line extending approximately one mile out in all direc-
tions from the cross marking zero.
“We will evacuate every person and piece of equip-
ment in this area. There will be no further attempts to
salvage anything from the Eastern Electric plant, and I


the long night : 57
want every usable piece of fire equipment in there
pulled out. Morrison, try and set up your major line in
the south at Lincoln Boulevard. The Chenango River
will give you plenty of water. The city will be evacuated
as far as the city line to the west; to Washington Avenue
in the north, and Scarsdale Avenue to the east.”
He called to his operations chief. “Get this informa-
tion out to the zones immediately, top priority. Get
everybody in the control center up here.”
Goldblum returned to the elevated stand and an-
nounced the evacuation order over the loudspeaker sys-
tem. He added: “Everybody in the control center except
message room personnel move up to the operations
room maps immediately.”
With the staff assembled before the maps, Buyers
began to speak. “A firestorm appears inevitable in the
city. I have ordered immediate evacuation,” he outlined
with a map pointer the evacuation area, “in this part of
the city.
“Evacuation has priority over all other operations
until either I or Goldblum changes this order. It is prob-
able that we will not have more than an hour to move
all of our people and equipment out of the area before
the firestorm develops completely.
“Fire service will withdraw from their present posi-
tions within the evacuation area until they reach the
boundaries I have outlined. Once they have established
their new positions they will attempt slight penetration


the long night 58
only into the evacuation area along major routes and
streets.” -
He addressed the fire chief directly. “Morrison, you
will follow out your standard orders for this situation.
Set up water curtains running along the main escape
routes for the people coming out, and give maximum
possible help to all medical installations evacuating the
area.”
He turned to Martin Smith, Chief of the Water Serv-
ice. “Martin, your primary job from now on is to give
Fire everything they need for this evacuation. You know
your job—you and Morrison leave now.”
As the two men left the group, Buyers continued,
speaking to Jim Walker of the Medical Service. “Jim,
you are going to have to leave some of the injured be-
hind. Pull out all of your own people and whatever in-
jured you can immediately. They will have to move by
foot or by whatever transportation they already have.”
He noticed the despairing look on Walker's face and
said, “I know, Jim, but it can't be helped. I'm sorry.”
He pointed to his Transportation Officer. “Thoreau,
cancel immediately the movement of all vehicles into
this area. There will be no further dispatching of ve-
hicles or supplies beyond the boundaries I outlined.”
Buyers then singled out his Rescue Chief. “John, all
rescue crews and equipment will abandon the area at
once. Reassign your teams and crews from here to the
other parts of the city, along the evacuation boundaries.


the long night 59
Your men are not to penetrate any further into the area
than the fire equipment moves. I want . . .”
“Goddamnit, Buyers!” McCann exploded. “We just
can't pull up stakes and leave the people in shelters
and their homes to roast. You're not God! There must
be twenty thousand people trapped in there. They'll
burn unless we get them out!”
Colonel Buyers' eyes narrowed. He spoke harshly.
“McCann, I'll say this only once. This is no test. I don't
want any people to burn any more than you do. But you
will carry out your orders and you will do so this minute,
or I'll damned well pull you the hell out of this control
center. Have you got that clear?”
McCann's lips were drawn and tight. He turned
abruptly and stalked off to his desk.
“Let’s get on with this,” Buyers said to the group,
then, to Milton Baldwin of Public Information: “Have
every means of communications to the people in the
evacuation area tell them to get out at once. Radio is
to carry this message constantly, and have the mes-
sage state that the all clear is on. Air Force hasn't said
anything and they probably won't for another two days.
This is one time you will tell the public to run, not walk.
Don't leave any room for misunderstanding the evacu-
ation order. They are to pull out at once.”
To Jack O'Connor of State Police: “Jack, get every
available policeman you have on the escape routes from
the evacuation area. I want you to give Welfare all pos-


the long night - 60
sible help in herding the evacuees to the welfare cen-
ters.”
Buyers spoke to Alden Byrn, Welfare Services chief.
“Your people are to give maximum assistance to Medi-
cal. The medical people are not going to be able to catch
all the burned as they come out of the area. You're
going to have a big medical problem on your own hands
very soon; you and Walker will have to operate as a
team. Take off.
“The rest of you,” he told the remainder of the group,
“know what to do. Get on with it.”
Buyers walked back to his stand, climbed the stairs
and took his seat again as Goldblum slid in beside him.
“Morris,” he addressed his operations chief, “make sure
that Aid Check Point number eight re-routes the equip-
ment coming in on Route 22, You had better see what
help Morris will need in reassigning fire equipment
coming in through the other ACPs. Check with Byrn
and alert the support counties to start receiving the
refugees in uncontrolled flow within the next few hours.
It's about thirty-five degrees now and I'm afraid the
temperature will keep dropping tonight. Unless those
people who get away from the fire find shelter in a
hurry, a lot of them are going to freeze.
“Tell Zones One, Two, and Three to expect a heavy
load of evacuees on foot. Oh, yes, as soon as you get
some dope, I want to know when the emergency zone
crew for Zone Four is operational. That's all for now.


the long night 62
shortly from us for more fire equipment and people,
medical supplies, and aides. That's all, Morris, until
State asks for a situation report.”
Buyers called to a messenger standing at the foot of
the raised stand. “Son, go down to the map boards and
tell the plotters I’m setting up a phone conference with
all Zone Headquarters. I want them to listen in and
plot what they hear.”
The youngster, a sixteen-year-old in the Civil Air
Patrol, said “Yes sir,” and left.
Colonel Buyers picked up his desk telephone and
signalled the main switchboard. “Mary? Set up an open-
wire conference with each of the zones immediately.
Make sure Goldblum and Morrison are in on the wire,
and have all three map plotters cut in. Call me back as
soon as it's set up.”
He replaced the receiver and informed Goldblum of
the conference. Another group of messages was placed
in front of him and he scanned through the “informa-
tion only” pile, read and initialed the “action” messages.
He had just handed the latter to a waiting messenger
when the telephone rang.
“Buyers,” he snapped. The operator answered. “Colo-
nel, I have the zone headquarters, Morrison, and the
map plotters on the wire. There is no contact with Zone
Four. Go ahead, please.”
“This is Buyers. Sound off as I call through. Zone
One? Zone Two? Zone Three?”


the long night 64
Right now our fire people are trying to draw water from
Crandall Park lake. Regular pressure is shot to hell.”
“Preiss?”
“The sector crew didn't get much further in than
Lincoln Boulevard. Streets were all blocked, fires bad
and spreading fast. They say the people trying to get
out have all gone crazy, don't know which way to run.
A big fire started in the rail yards . . . about forty
tankers blew. We were going to let it burn itself out
but the wind is picking up pretty hard, and the sheds
are going. Wind must be doing at least thirty-forty miles
in the yards by now. Picking up fast, too.”
“All right,” Buyers said, “that's all for now.”
He replaced the telephone in its cradle and leaned
back in his seat. The control center was hot and muggy
with the warmth of all the bodies in the room, and
smoke was forming in a thick pall. Buyers took several
deep breaths, pinched the bridge of his nose between
his thumb and forefinger.
His body trembled slightly with reaction from the
events of the last hour. Outwardly Buyers was calm,
seemingly confident in his manipulations of the lives of
nearly five hundred thousand people. But Buyers was
nowhere as confident and sure of himself as his staff
would believe. He gritted his teeth and forced himself
to stop trembling. He breathed deeply, quickly, sucking
in the smoky air and regaining control. -
He had been compelled to make a terrible decision


the long night 65
tonight. When he gave the evacuation order earlier he
knew he had doomed forty to fifty thousand people to
horrible death; left helpless in the five-square-mile area
he ordered abandoned, they would be faced with rap-
idly growing fires, increasing heat, and no escape. They
would not have even a ghost of a chance to escape the
inferno developing at this very moment all about them.
The reports of his zone commanders confirmed his
decision to pull out of the threatened area at once. From
the spreading fires and increasing wind velocity it
seemed almost certain that a dreaded firestorm was
building up in the heart of Harrington; a fire of such
vast and incredible proportions that no labor of man
could slow its growth or lessen the subsequent fiery
carnage. Not even nature with all its power could halt
or affect the growth of the flaming giant which reared
itself over Harrington. The firestorm transcended the
works of man and nature alike.
No human being would escape from within the con-
fines of the storm once it was born and rushing toward
maturity. Buyers realized this only too well; it was this
sickening knowledge which prompted him to take the
terrible gamble of ordering evacuation before it was
definitely established that the firestorm was developing.
Had he waited, it would have been too late.
If he had guessed wrong, Buyers could never have
faced his friends and fellow men again. If there had
been no firestorm he would later stand accused of mur-


the long night 66
der. Murder by virtue of a mistaken and stupid decision.
Regardless of the intent of his order, regardless of the
knowledge that, if the firestorm developed, he would
lose the crucial civil defense forces and equipment
which must be preserved to save the remainder of the
city, he would have been charged with the wanton and
callous slaughter of fifty thousand men, women, and
children.
Pictures formed in Buyers' mind of what must at this
very moment be taking place within the area which was
by now almost fully evacuated by such civil defense
units as had received the orders to pull out. Pictures of
families trapped in the wreckage of their homes, hear-
ing the avalanche-like roar of the growing flames, cow-
ering from the blast-furnace heat of the fires, screaming
and shrieking for the help that would never come.
Sprawling Monroe Hospital, with its two thousand pa-
tients and thousands of additional injured who must
have stormed there for succor soon after the bomb
smashed the city, cursing and damning the white-faced
civil defense workers who were abandoning them to
flaming death. Buyers could almost hear in his mind the
sick, the injured, and the bedridden screaming in ter-
ror, begging not to be left behind, sobbing and gibber-
ing in their fear.
Buyers remembered also the doctors and nurses who
would not leave their charges. They could not compre-
hend the necessity of an evacuation from flames which


the long night 67
had not yet enveloped them, which did not yet exist as
a material threat! He imagined their shocked and in-
credulous faces, he could hear in his soul the soundless
accusations of Butcher! as the civil defense forces pulled
out in search of safety, deserting them—deserting the
sick and injured as so much excess baggage.
And Buyers was overwhelmed by the tragedy he was
forced to reap by his own hand; he was shaken, not so
much by the damnation of those who were abandoned,
for their deaths could not be avoided and the evacuation
could not be delayed, as by the realization that no more
than a scant few who could flee with the retreating dis-
aster forces would ever live.
Colonel Alfred Buyers also knew, at that moment,
that never again would he know a night's sound slum-
ber.
He sat up in his chair suddenly as Goldblum's voice
reached across his thoughts. “Colonel, this message just
came in from State Headquarters,” Goldblum said,
handing him a white message form with an attached
typewritten sheet. Buyers read:
ATOMIC BOMBING ATTACKS HAVE BEEN MADE ON NIAGARA
FALLs, BUFFALO, SCHENECTADY, NEW YORK, NEwARK,
PHILADELPHIA, PITTSBURG, BALTIMORE, WASHINGTON,
D.C., CHICAGO, DETROIT, NORFOLK, MARIETTA, OAK RIDGE,
SAN FRANCISCO, HAWTHORNE, DAYTON, AKRON, TOLEDO,
SEATTLE, FARMINGDALE, BOSTON, BRIDGEPORT, DALLAS,


5
;
THE MEN AND woMEN in the Harrington control center
were assailed with an unspoken fear shared equally by
all in the underground rooms far from the city's heart.
The fear of anxiety for families within the city. Who had
survived? Who would show up again, perhaps as a
corpse, a patient, an identification bracelet on the
stump of an arm or, perhaps, God willing, as an evacuee
in a welfare center? Maybe my wife, sure, maybe even
my kids, weren't hurt at all! Sure! They're all right—
nothing could happen to them!
Restive beneath the busy fingers, the calm and the
grating voices on the phones, the metallic chatter on the
radio sets, the hurrying messengers' feet, the nervous
tatoo of heels against scarred mahogany, worry went
unchecked. For thirty-odd minutes after that searing
brilliance, tension hung like a dark shroud over the busy
group. Nobody knew where the atom had struck. And
so long as nobody was certain, all shared equally the
69


the long night : 70
spectre of a family shattered, of children maimed, of
corpses charred.
Little showed on the surface; people were too busy.
But the biting of lips, the nervous chain smoking, a
startled return to awareness from a mental pursuit of
endlessly horrifying possibilities were proof that the
gnawing worry persisted.
Not until Russel Winchester traced the red lines
across the acetate-covered map of Harrington was there
any division in the black fear. Anxious eyes waited for
the lines to intersect, for the tracing of the black circle
which would tell whence the shock wave had erupted
outward as a massive steel ram of racing, incandescent
air which engulfed and punched untold thousands of
buildings into a flying spray of shattered bricks, mortar,
wood, glass, furniture, and bodies; which twisted steel
girders as a child crumples a straw; which swept street
after street into a still-tumbling, still-hurtling cemetery
of the extinct and the dying,
But the ram of steel lost its potency rapidly. Within
only one mile it had diminished to a fraction, albeit a
powerful fraction, of its initial self. After two miles it
was no more than the equal of a hurricane, a wind puny
by comparison with that spawned by the atom. Beyond
two miles the hurricane became a gale, then a gust, and
finally a breeze. Where the land descended into valleys
the wind rebounded and raced on, the fingers of blast
gathering a last burst of dying strength from the slop-


the long night : 73
and its glaring black cross denoting zero.
His home was no longer clean. It was—it had been—
approximately nine hundred yards from zero. Never
again would he spring up the stairs to burst into his
father's room with a cheery greeting, and perhaps a new
pipe to surprise the old man.
And so it went throughout the control center. Service
chiefs and assistants, typists, messengers, telephonists,
radio operators, ditto machine operators, guards, and
the others in the control center: all worried. What else
could one do? Some sighed audibly with relief as they
searched the maps and found their homes miles distant
from the center of the explosion. Others paid silent
homage, ashamed that they should know relief while
those seated nearby unknowingly registered awareness
of death on stunned faces as they read the maps. Many
hung grimly to hope of survival for their families; even
where the map indicated disaster, it was impossible in
most instances to know with any certainty the possibili-
ties of individual survival.
Henry Thompson had known more stress this night
than through all the previous emotional and physical
disturbances of his entire life. Slowly the effect of shock
cast its numbness over him. Ever since the moment
when Goldblum had inquired about Janet and the chil-
dren, Thompson's conscience-stricken mind screamed
murderer at him. The thought that his own stupidity
had sent his wife running along the streets, naked to the


the long night - 74
searing heat that would engulf her body in flame,
plagued and pursued him relentlessly.
His mind rebelled against the full acceptance of guilt
for his idiotic behavior in the theatre and the self-
accusation that he had caused his wife's death. “You
don't know she's dead,” he argued with himself, “You’re
not sure, you don't know!”
And then Thompson would look at the bright map as
sweat trickled down his forehead, welled up across his
eyebrows, and spilled over with salt stinging in his eyes.
He stared at the map, heedless of the worried glances
which Chittenden and Kraines exchanged. He stared,
unblinking, at the x marking zero and the street where
his home was—or, perhaps, wasn't. Not any more. And
he would picture Janet still running in the streets when
the sundered atoms vaporized their steel shell and the
heat of stars spilled out with the speed of light.
Thompson moved like an automaton as Buyers held
the staff meeting and issued orders for the evacuation
of the anticipated firestorm area. The numbness gripped
him after the conference. For long minutes he stared at
the map, unseeing and preoccupied.
A worried Kraines beckoned Winchester to the side
as the latter returned to the control center. “Russ, I'm
worried about Henry,” Kraines said. “He just stares at
the maps. Keeps muttering about killing his wife be-
cause he told her to run, or something like that. He's
not much good to us here.”


the long night 75
Winchester looked at the pasty-faced Thompson, mut-
tering disconnected phrases. Goldblum had already told
him of his conversation with Thompson and cautioned
Winchester to keep an eye on his upset associate. Win-
chester fully understood the unhappy man's ordeal.
“All right, Dick,” he said to his plotter, “I’ll take care
of him. Cover on the maps.”
Winchester walked to Thompson and took his arm
gently. “Hank, will you come with me for a moment?”
he asked. Thompson looked dully at his service chief,
nodded slowly, removed the earphone set from his head,
and hung it on the wall rack. He followed as Winches-
ter moved out of the operations room.
Once in the hallway Winchester stopped. “Got a
cigarette, Hank?” he queried. Thompson pulled a pack
from his coverall pocket, handed it to Winchester. The
reconnaissance chief lit two cigarettes. He handed one
to Thompson, who sucked gratefully on the smoke.
Winchester waited a few moments, then softly spoke
to the brooding man. “Is it Janet and the kids that's got
you, Henry?” -
Thompson nodded without speaking. “Look,” Win-
chester said, “I could stand here with you for the next
three hours telling you how sorry I am, how sorry we
all are about anybody maybe losing some of their fam-
ily. But that don't do no good, Hank, no good at all.”
He paused, then continued. “Hell, you don't even
know if Janet got hurt. You don't know, do you?”


the long night 76
Thompson licked his lips, misery written plainly on
his white face. He slowly turned to face Winchester.
“You don't understand, Russ, you don't understand. I
told her to run for home when we heard the sirens in
the movies. You didn't know that, did you?” he cried.
“That it was in the movies when we first heard the
sirens. I didn't tell her to go into a shelter. Like a damn
fool I told her to run home, that it was nothing, prob-
ably only a test. She couldn't have gotten home before
the bomb went off. She must have been right in the
open. I'm afraid to think of what happened to her then.”
“Can't you get it through your head,” Winchester
urged, “that you can't be sure about any of this? Damn
it, man, you're torturing yourself, maybe for nothing at
all. Hell, Hank, sure, maybe she got hurt. It's possible
she even got killed, just like the wives of a lot of other
people here maybe got killed.
“Look, Henry, I happen to know just what you're
going through.” He paused for a moment. “Gail was on
duty tonight at the hospital.
“She's dead. And if she isn't I'll never see her again.
I saw the evacuation area marked on the maps. Gail has
a lot of patients to take care of. She won't leave them.”
Winchester's pained voice, faltering for a moment
when he spoke of his wife, brought a light awakening
to Thompson. “At the hospital?” he asked. Winchester
nodded.


the long night : 77
“Jesus, I'm sorry. Honestly, Russ, I didn't know.
I . . .”
Winchester interrupted, suddenly angry with Thomp-
son's whining. “Get outside and get some air, Henry.
Staying in here and staring at the damned maps isn't
doing you or anybody else any good. When you feel
you're up to it, come back down and give one of the
boys a break at the maps.”
He moved off toward the operations room before
Thompson could reply. Thompson slowly climbed the
stairs leading outside the control center. He stopped
alongside the sheriff, who leaned wearily on his shotgun.
“Evenin', Mr. Thompson,” the sheriff spoke. “Say, you
all right? You don't look so good. Can I help you, or
sumpin’?”
“No, Bill, it's all right,” Thompson answered. “It’s all
right.”
He stopped outside the door, breathing in deeply of
the clean, cold air. Gravel scuffed beneath his shoes as
he walked around the building, nodding in return to
the hand waves from the amateur radio crews assem-
bled about their cars and station wagons. Thompson
didn't want to talk to anybody right now; he kept walk-
ing past the lines of parked cars until he was several
hundred feet from the building. He sank to the ground,
exhausted.
In the distance the stars over Harrington were ob-


the long night - 78
scured by black smoke pouring from the city. Red light
danced eerily across the curtain of swirling blackness
belching from the great fires. The undulating glow
swept the horizon, often spilling crimson luminescence
for miles around as flames leaped upward. Even from
this distance Thompson could see the fiery fingers slash
high above the burning city, clear and sharp through
the dust and smoke.
Roaring truck motors and sirens could be heard across
the fields as convoys and equipment continued pouring
into the city. Thompson felt a clear, clean breeze blow-
ing steadily against his back and neck; blowing toward
the city. The firestorm, of course, already setting up the
incredible sucking draft which would draw in oceans
of oxygen from miles around Harrington. Closer to the
city, Thompson knew, the wind must already be a howl-
ing gale.
Muted voices suddenly reached his ear. Thompson
sat up straight, listening. It sounded like a large crowd,
the jumble of groans and profane utterings which be-
longed to a crowd that was hurt, frightened, and run-
ning. Thompson rose to his feet, straining to see better.
There! across the airfield runways, a surging terror-
stricken mob poured over the concrete and grass, run-
ning like an insect swarm from the smashed buildings,
the fires, the blood and shattered glass, the pain and the
panic and the chaos that stalked through Harrington.
Thompson felt neither pity nor compassion; he eyed the


the long night .. 79
tattered mob without feeling as it crossed the field and
disappeared into the darkness, trailing a single wailing
figure.
He slumped down again, shivering from the cold
night air and the wind. The flames seemed to be leaping
higher over Harrington, seemed constantly to grow be-
fore his eyes. He thought of the trampled, mangled city;
he thought of Janet (Oh God, let her be alivel) and his
children in that holocaust.
He wasn't too worried about Johnny. His eldest son
could take care of himself. Besides, the alleys where he
was bowling tonight were almost three miles from where
the bomb went off. Johnny had cared little for his father's
participation in civil defense, but he'd heard so much
about it that some of it must have soaked in. Anyway,
he'd be all right.
But Donald and Terry—mere children. To Donald,
civil defense had been a game. But he knew enough
about it to act properly if an alert was sounded, or if
the bomb did fall. Because of Thompson's position with
the control center staff, his son was generally called
upon in school to report to his class the latest events in
civil defense as they occurred in the city. Whether he
took it seriously or not, Donald at least knew what he
should do, and what to expect.
Thompson hoped fervently that his daughter's Christ-
mas play rehearsal tonight in her high school had lasted
longer than Terry expected. If so, then the girl would


the long night - 80
have been more than a mile and a half from the site of
the explosion. The Harrington schools had excellent
shelter areas. If Terry was still in school when the bomb
struck, she would probably be all right.
Terry, he reflected, was a serious young lady. Amidst
the whirl of school and social activities his daughter had
somehow found time to study nursing. The idea of be-
coming a nurse had fascinated her ever since she was a
youngster, when she was perpetually in search of injured
cats and dogs to heal. For the last year she had partici-
pated in the medical courses of the local Red Cross
chapter, preparing herself for her nursing career. Even
now she might be putting that meager training to good
use; each school in Harrington was designated as a
medical aid station in the event of an attack, and civil
defense medical teams would have rushed to her high
e school right after the bomb fell. There's a good chance,
he thought, that Terry would be all right.
Thompson ground out his cigarette, lit another. He
let the smoke curl lazily around his nostrils before the
strengthening breeze carried it away. He looked at the
proud, thriving city of five hundred thousand souls.
Trampled beneath the colossal tread of the atom, it
glowed and heaved and spit forth into the sky geysers
of flame and embers. It was strange to sit here distant
and removed and helpless as the city in which he had
been born and raised and met success writhed in its
flaming agony.


the long night .. 81
“My children,” he thought, “my children.” The an-
guish, the misery, and the guilt welled up in Thomp-
son's chest and throat and threatened to burst. He hung
his head in his hands.
And then Thompson wept.
While his grief-stricken father suffered his misery,
John Thompson slowly fought his way through the
wreckage-piled streets. Every block was a struggle. It
was impossible to continue in a straight path toward the
house where he hoped he would find Sue. While many
buildings in the neighborhood, nearly three miles from
the center of the incredible explosion, had withstood
the brief fury of the passing shock wave, they were bat-
tered and torn. Roofs had been ripped off like paper and
crashed to the streets. Lighter frame buildings yielded
entirely before the fist of air which carried them bodily
from their foundations into the streets.
No longer did John stare open-mouthed at the bloody
bodies or grimace at the screams of pain. He paid scant
attention to the flaming buildings except to curse be-
cause the fires forced detours which extended the dis-
tance he tried to cover.
It took him nearly two hours to complete the first
mile. By then he was unrecognizable as the same young
man who less than three short hours previously had
been bowling with college friends. Soot, dirt, and caked
blood matted his face. His clothes were ripped and


the long night 82
torn from tripping and falling on the jagged debris. The
gash in his leg finally forced a halt to his labored flight,
and John stopped long enough to tie his handkerchief
around the wound as an impromptu bandage.
Several times he became lost, confused by the totally
altered appearance of the streets and buildings he for-
merly knew so well. He was frightened more by this
alien surrounding, this garish scenery, than by the inti-
macies of the torn bodies he was forced to bypass. His
own hands bore the marks of the searching amidst the
wreckage for two more street signs he required to assure
that he was moving closer to where Sue awaited him
. where she must be.
He reached Iriquois Avenue and turned right. More
than halfway to the house! Fourteen more blocks on the
avenue, and he would be within three blocks of the
home he was seeking. Luck stayed with him. Divided
by three rows of stout trees, the eight-lane avenue was
comparatively free of the wreckage which choked the
other streets and roads from their closely adjoining
structures. But the fourteen long blocks meant more
than another mile to go, and John's own fatigue forced
him to a walk, rather than the struggling run he fought
to maintain.
Iriquois Avenue was a scene out of hell. The street
lights were out, yet there was light, the orange-red of
flame diffusing through the thick clouds of smoke and
dust boiling along over the ground. With a compara-


the long night 85
glee which bordered on the hysterical. He was almost
there! Nothing else mattered, not the cuts and the
bruises, the sore and aching body, the burns. He forgot
completely the bloody carnage in the bowling alley.
Suel I'll be right there!
“Look out!”
“That crazy sonofabitch, watch it . . .”
“Hey! Watch where you're goin . . .”
He saw the flashing, bright red lights at the last sec-
ond. The large trucks with their hoses and grimy men
loomed suddenly out of the swirling murk. Not until
his foot leaped from the accelerator to the brake did he
hear the husky engine roar of the assembled fire trucks,
the shouts of the startled firemen as they leaped to avoid
his car plunging at them . . . and these voices he heard
only for a second as the steel rims screeched protest-
ingly, unable to grip the asphalt without rubber treads,
screeched . . . The crash threw him forward against
the wheel. His startled face snapped forward, neck
protesting, as the car slammed to a sudden stop against
the heavy fire truck.
The windshield, already smashed and gone, was not
there to meet his face as it whipped forward. His eyes
bulged out. The next moment he was leaning back
again, staring at the steering wheel which had bent over
beneath the weight of his body.
He had little time to stare. A burly fireman, face con-
torted with rage, pulled open the car door to reach in


the long night - 88
and other equipment scattered on the street, the trucks
roared into life and one after the other thundered down
Iriquois Avenue. A few hesitated long enough to pickup
people on the street who eagerly clambered aboard the
big vehicles.
John wasted no more time in speculation as to the
reasons behind such unprecedented action. The inten-
sity of the wind, its sudden increase to gale proportions,
startled and frightened him. He was too near Sue now
to concern himself with the vague warning of the fire-
man. Clearing out! What did that meanſ Sure, there
were people moving on the avenue opposite to his own
direction, but probably they were just scared and didn't
even know where they were going.
He took off at a fast run. It was necessary to keep his
arm before his face almost constantly. The shrieking
wind was hurling about a constant shower of sparks
and firebrands, and he wanted no taste of one of these
somewhere on his face. He reached 131st Street. The
house was just around the corner.
Flames.
A solid sheet of fire leaping before the wind from
the collapsed house to the adjoining structure. Both
homes were almost entirely consumed, and only the
fierce wind prevented what was left from sinking to
glowing embers and dirty ash.
“SUE!” Her name came screaming from his throat.
He turned sickly white, heart hammering against his


the long night 90
with civil defense armbands. He didn't know what the
marks represented; he didn't care.
The woman looked at him. “Okay?”
“Yes,” he gasped. “Is—is it out?”
“All out.”
“Thanks.”
“Let’s go. No time to waste.” The big man talked in
clipped sentences, added action to his words. He
clamped a hand around John's arm, and jerked him in
their direction . . . away from the house.
“Wait . . . wait a minute. Please! That house,” he
pointed, “my girl, Sue Wilson, she may be in there! I've
got to know!” he pleaded.
The big man kept his grip, kept pulling him along.
“Can't go back. We'll talk as we move.” They were at
the corner, on Iriquois Avenue, and the man and woman
started to run. The street was filled with running, stag-
gering people, terror marking their faces. For the first
time John noticed it no longer was dark. It was red. An
incredible red and orange light, which cast weaving,
flickering shadows all about their moving figures.
“You say her name . . .” gasp “. . . is Wilson?”
“Y-yes.”
“Her sister; Amy . . .” he swatted viciously at a fire-
brand on his jacket . . . “Whitehead?”
“Yes.”
“They got out. Medical moved them out about a half
hour ago. Last group to make it.”


6
;
EARLIER THIS EVENING Henry Thompson's youngest son,
Donald, had climbed over the white picket fence sep-
arating his home from that of his best friend, fourteen-
year-old Mike Philips. Classroom buddies, he and Mike
usually did their homework together, managing to
sprawl on the Philips' battered sofa for an hour of
television viewing before Donald had to return home.
This particular evening, at exactly ten minutes past
nine, the television set went blank. There was no warn-
ing sputter or special announcement, or any indication
that something had gone wrong with picture tube or
another part of the set. Mike scampered around the
back of the set, then stuck his head out, puzzled.
“Hey, Don!” he called, “the plug's still in. All the
lights are working. I can't figure what's wrong with
this crazy thing. Heck, and the Space Rangers go on in
five minutes.
“Pop! Hey, Pop!” he yelled shrilly for his father.
92


the long night : 94
Donald turned the program dial, but the television
screen remained blank. A steady hum continued to
come from the machine, indicating that power still fed
into the tubes.
“Huh!” the elder Philips grunted. “This never hap-
pened before.” He pulled a screwdriver from his trou-
sers pocket, and poked cautiously among the wires. “I
don't get it. Maybe something went wrong at the sta-
tions. Mike, you call the Jacksons and see if their set is
working okay or if it went dead like ours.”
“Right away, Pop,” his son answered. Mike and Don-
ald disappeared into the hallway to call Tommy Jack-
son, one of their classmates.
Jim Philips continued poking around in the television
set, but failed to provoke even a raucous sputter from
the enigmatic machine. Suddenly his son and Donald
raced back into the room.
“Mr. Philips,” Donald began with a rush, “Tommy
says that their TV set just went blank, too. They can't
figure it out, either. Tommy's Dad is a radio repairman,
but he can't fix it.”
“Well,” Jim Philips replied, shrugging his shoulders,
“there's just one way to find out. Let's call the television
station and ask them if something happened over
there.” He turned to his son. “Mike, get the number
from information.”
A few minutes later Philips replaced the telephone to
its cradle, a puzzled expression in his face. “The line's


the long night 95
busy,” he said to the two boys. “All the lines are busy.
I can't even get the operator.”
“Hey, Pop,” his boy said, “maybe it's the . . .”
His voice dropped to a whisper, then died out com-
pletely, startled into silence by a new and strange cry.
From the end of the block where it was bolted to the
street-light pole, a large cylindrical container vibrated
sharply as dozens of sharp metal vanes within its
aluminum shell began to whirl. A deep bass roar gushed
outward from the cylinder orifice, climbing rapidly in
pitch as the vanes rotated faster and faster. In ten sec-
onds it was screaming with an ear-splitting cry, shatter-
ing the stillness of the residential neighborhood, waken-
ing babies, bringing startled men and women to their
windows and doors, searching the streets. Even as the
scream of the siren dipped abruptly to a rumbling bass,
its power momentarily cut off by automatic timers,
other sirens in the distance cried suddenly. The nearby
siren rose again in pitch; the noise swooped upwards,
howling and rattling the window panes. Across the city
the call was answered by numberless wailing cries;
people halted, questioning, worried, and wondering as
the sirens screamed and thundered and shrilled.
Jim Philips' wife came running into the living room
from the kitchen, surprise registered on her face. “What
is it, Jim?” she asked. “Is it an air raid?”
It was difficult to talk in the house; the metallic
screaming rose and fell, wavered, poised, and plunged.


the long night 96
“Donald,” Philips asked the Thompson boy, “did your
father say anything about a surprise air raid drill to-
night?”
“No, Mr. Philips,” the boy replied, his own surprise
equalling that of the Philips family. “Dad and Mom are
at the movies right now. He would have told me about
this.”
Jim Philips turned to his wife. “Helen, maybe it's the
real thing. Henry would have told me about a drill;
certainly he wouldn't have gone to the movies with
Jan. I think we had better go down to the basement.
Just in case,” he said, trying to assure his wife that per-
haps it was only a drill.
He spoke to Donald. “Is there anybody in your house
now, Don?”
“No, sir,” the youngster answered. “Mom and Dad,
like I said, are at the movies. Johnny's bowling tonight,
and Terry is at the school practicing for her Christmas
play.”
“All right, son,” Philips said. “You stick right here
with us. C'mon, everybody, down to the basement we
go.”
Donald spoke up. “Mr. Philips, I think you ought to
check your gas range first. If you have any of the
burners going, it would be a good idea to turn them off.
Then in case the house is wrecked, the open flames
won't start any fires. Dad says that in case of a red
alert—”


the long night 97
“A what?” asked Mrs. Philips.
“A red alert, Mrs. Philips,” Donald answered earn-
estly. “That's now; when the sirens go off. Dad says
that you should also turn off the oil burner and open
the main electric switch. That way there's less chance
of the house starting to burn in case somethin really
bad happens. He also said that when you go into a
shelter you should take some heavy clothes, blankets, a
flashlight, and a battery radio. You need the radio to
hear civil defense instructions.”
Jim and Helen Philips looked at the boy with sur-
prise and sudden respect. “I’ll be damned,” the man
exclaimed, “four years in the Army and now the kids
have to tell me what to do. Okay, let's get going.
“Helen, take the blankets off the bed and bring them
into the basement. Mike, you grab yours and Don's
jackets. Now scoot, and make it snappy. I'll take care
of everything else.”
The two boys ran upstairs to Mike's room, picking up
their jackets and a handful of comic books. “Gotta have
sumpin' to do,” Mike yelled, “maybe we'll be down-
stairs all night. Think so, Don?”
“Don’t know,” his chum replied. “Pop says maybe a
warning won't give us more than five minutes time.
Maybe even less. I think we'd better hurry.” They
dashed out of the room and ran noisily down the stairs.
After turning off the gas burner his wife had been
using, Jim Philips returned to the living room and


the long night 98
switched the oil burner control to “off.” He hesitated
in the living room only long enough to pick up a pipe
and his tobacco pouch, went to the hall closet and
picked out his wife's coat and his own jacket, then
joined Helen and the two boys in the basement.
Helen was fussing with their old portable radio,
vainly turning the dials in an attempt to get some re-
sponse. “The batteries are dead,” she complained help-
lessly to her husband.
“Well,” he replied, “we can't do nothing about that
now. Hey, you kids, under the workbench. Better put
your jackets on, the heat's off and it's going to be pretty
cold down here.”
He noticed the comic books beneath his son's arm.
“Those ain't gonna do you no good, son; I'm turning
off the electric power switch.” He made sure his wife
and the youths were comfortable beneath the sturdy
metal table where he kept his power tools, turned on
his flashlight, and switched off the main electric power
switch. In a moment he was sliding beneath the table.
The sirens were still. On the street outside, Bill
Kramer, who lived six houses down the block, was
blowing a whistle and furiously waving a flashlight at
a car attempting to drive through the street.
“Get off the street, you fool!” he shouted. The driver
slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting the gestulating
air raid warden who stood doggedly in the center of
the street, determined not to let the car pass.


the long night 99
The angry driver pushed open his door, shouting
loudly: “Are you nuts?” he roared. “I almost ran you
down!”
Kramer walked around to the side of the car. “Lissen,
Mac,” he said heatedly, “I ain't got no time to argue
with you. You got any sense you'll get into one of these
houses. Didn't you hear those sirens?”
“So what?” the stranger sneered.
Kramer looked at him in disgust, turned and ran
across the street into his own home. The stranger
stared with disbelief as the warden disappeared into
his doorway, spat “Nuts!” to himself, and re-entered his
car. “Why the hell don't they . . .”
Those were the last words he ever spoke.
The great light flashed. Even as it fled, the incandes-
cent air of the shock wave descended upon the street
at six hundred miles an hour. The racing juggernaut of
glowing air swept against, over, into, and embraced
completely each brick and frame structure. Homes
wrenched, bulged, and seemed to swell violently from
within, as though every molecule and atom had burst
its bounds and was striving madly to escape. In an in-
stant, wreckage and parts of human beings spewed
forth like discarded bile.
Great trees bent sharply over, straining against the
massive push. The blast hesitated for the third of a
second, and the great trees did not even shudder before
the trunks snapped.


the long night : 101
refrigerator onto the basement floor. The heavy metal
table over their heads shifted suddenly, groaned, and
sagged. But it held.
For interminable moments the swirling, choking dust
grew heavier. Suddenly they were coughing, crying,
and spitting out dust and plaster.
The silence which descended after the roaring thun-
der slowly gave way to strange sounds filtering in
through the splintered wreckage about them. People
cried out, some weak and moaning, others strong and
clear, shouting for help. Debris trickled and dropped
through the sagging ceiling.
Jim Philips regained his senses with a start. Past
combat experience quickly controlled his thinking. He
turned the flashlight beam through the dusty gloom at
his wife and the two youngsters, made them all move
their arms and legs, shift their bodies, and turn their
heads.
“Everybody O. K.?” he asked. Weak assent reached
his ears. “All right, then,” he said, “we gotta get out of
here. All of you stay put until I see what it's like. Maybe
we can make it outside without any trouble.”
Sweeping the flashlight before him, Philips crawled
cautiously from beneath the table. He shoved aside a
shattered beam and gained his feet. Slowly he swept
the light around the basement. Desolation and dust met
his eyes. A flicker of light caught his attention through
the shattered ceiling.


the long night : 103
Philips stood on the side of the refrigerator, reached
up and caught the hooked end of the crowbar around
the largest beam which lay almost directly across the
hole. Cautiously he began to tug with the bar; the beam
creaked, groaned, and moved a little. He steadied him-
self, then pulled with all his strength; the beam crashed
downward. Through the cleared opening Philips saw the
light of fires outside. The flames directly above their
heads were spreading rapidly. The crackling and spitting
of the fire sounded clear and sharp and very near.
“Okay, kids, we're on the way out,” Philips gasped in
short breaths as he pushed the refrigerator. “Gimme a
hand with this thing.”
The two boys moved to help the elder Philips and
soon the battered refrigerator stood upright directly
beneath the shorn ceiling. Jim Philips dragged a bench
from beneath the metal table to the center of the room
and clambered atop the refrigerator.
“Okay,” he said. “You first, Mike. C'mon now, step
up on the bench and grab my hands.”
His son climbed onto the bench, reached up and
grasped his father's outstretched arms. His father was
a powerful man who had worked the last eight years in
a foundry. His heavily muscled arms grasped those of
his son, hesitated for a moment, as he tested the boy's
weight, and then swung Mike to the refrigerator top.
“Hang on, Mike,” he said. “I’m going to boost you
through that hole.” He linked the fingers of his hands


the long night : 104
together. “Now, hang on to my shoulder and put your
right foot in my hands. Watch it when you land. Okay
—here we go!”
Philips heaved, and the boy scrambled past the edge
of the torn ceiling and gained his feet. “Okay, Pop!” he
called.
“All right, Don, your turn now,” Philips said to the
Thompson boy. He pulled Donald to his side on the
refrigerator top and sent him after his own son. Donald
swung upwards, but failed to keep his balance on the
shattered kitchen floor. He lurched, flailing his hands
for support, tripped, and fell across the tumbled beams.
The boy screamed in pain as a saw-toothed splinter
drove through his jacket and pierced his side. His face
contorted with agony, he clasped his hands to the
splinter and with frenzied, jerking movements at-
tempted to pull it out.
The pain was too much. Donald fainted, blood well-
ing through his jacket.
“What happened, Mike?” Philips yelled. “I don't
know, Pop,” answered Mike, his voice tinged with fear,
“a big splinter got stuck in Don's side. He's bleeding
somethin terrible.”
“Damnit!" Philips swore. “All right, Helen, let's go.
You'd better get up there quickly and take care of the
boy.”
It was more of a struggle with his wife than with the
two, lighter youngsters, but he managed to get Helen


the long night : 105
into the kitchen. Seconds after he scrambled up him-
self, slipped, and was pulled to safety from the sagging
wood at the edge of the hole by the helping hands of
his family.
Helen Thompson started to move Donald's jacket to
inspect the boy's wound but a billowing smoke cloud
from the fire stung her eyes and filled her lungs.
Through the coughing and tears she grasped her son's
arm and climbed over the wreckage onto the lawn. Jim
Philips tenderly picked up Donald and carried him to
the side of a shattered tree.
The boy was still unconscious. Blood was oozing
through his shirt and he had turned deathly pale. Helen
Philips kneeled alongside the injured youngster. She
pulled the jacket to one side and firmly grasped the
splinter. Biting her lips she yanked sharply, drawing
splintered wood and torn, bloody flesh from Donald's
side.
Crimson flowed from the wound. She pulled a hand-
kerchief from her dress pocket and held it tightly
against the wound to stem the blood. In a moment it
was soaked with red. Jim Philips was already tearing
his shirt into strips. “Use these, Helen,” he said quietly,
handing the makeshift bandages to his wife.
She took the torn strips and placed them over the
soaked handkerchief. “Jim, move quickly and see if you
can find a doctor. Donald's badly hurt,” she finished.
Philips stood up, really noticing for the first time the


the long night : 107
we can hear them crying.”
Philips reached out and grasped Kramer's arm. “Just
a minute, Bill,” he called. “Henry Thompson's boy is
hurt bad. A hunk of wood drove in his side. Helen's
trying to stop the bleeding. You got a doctor here?”
“No doctor, I'm afraid,” Kramer answered, shaking
his head. “Old man Endicott wouldn't believe me when
I told him to get into his basement. Just laughed at me.
He's dead now. Maybe we can help, though; my wife's
a nurse.”
He turned and moved into the noisy crowd, dragging
wood about the lawn in wasted energy rather than dig-
ging their way through the wreckage to the terrified
children. Philips saw Kramer talk to his wife; the two
of them emerged from the milling people quickly.
“Where is the boy, Jim?” Kramer's wife asked. She
also wore a helmet and armband, and carried a large
white metal box with a bright red cross painted on the
side. Dirt and sweat streaked her horn-rimmed glasses
and she appeared to be nearly exhausted. He answered,
“Right by the tree in front of my house, Sarah. Please
hurry. He's hurt pretty bad.”
Mrs. Kramer rushed through the street piled with
tangled wreckage, her short, stout form moving with
alacrity. “Give us a hand, Jim!” Kramer reminded
Philips. “There's precious little time to waste before this
whole area is swept with fire. We've got to get these
children out of here!”


the long night : 108
Philips shouldered his way through the crowd and
called to two men he recognized as neighbors living on
his street. One had had a terrible wound covered with
a blood-soaked towel running down the side of his face;
nevertheless, he worked harder than the others, his
features stolid and frozen. Philips looked at the wreck-
age and began to give instructions to the group work-
ing haphazardly; soon he was leading them in a sys-
tematic attempt to fight a way into the basement.
Meanwhile Kramer had moved down the block. Most
of the few survivors were dazed and shaken, wandering
about the street aimlessly, cut, bruised, and often bleed-
ing. The noise of the fires grew increasingly louder;
flaming embers shot out of burning homes and fell like
weird, glowing snow, starting new fires all about.
To attempt to subdue the flames was hopeless. Water
pipes in the smashed homes had broken and the vital
liquid drained through uselessly. Already, Kramer
knew, the flow was reduced to a trickle by the disaster-
unit valve teams fighting their way into the devastated
area. Trees and light and telephone poles were strewn
across the street, making all vehicular traffic impossible.
Several blocks away a great sheet of flame suddenly
exploded upwards; “. . . gas mains must have blown,”
thought Kramer, as he and the other survivors on the
block turned for a moment to watch the fiery spectacle.
The chaos increased as the gasoline tanks of many
cars exploded and flamed, ignited by the fires burning


the long night : 109
in the wreckage of homes and garages. Kramer didn't
even bother to go to his Warden Report Post; he could
see the telephone and power lines stretched across the
sidewalks and the street like slender black snakes. No
call would ever get through from here, he knew.
He was worried about fires. He had no way of know-
ing about fire spread, if this particular area was en-
dangered, and he couldn't get any news. The people
streaming through the area were dazed and frightened,
running aimlessly. His own battery radio had been
smashed in the explosion, and he was unable to find
another. “Damn fools,” he thought bitterly of the peo-
ple living on the block. He picked his way carefully
over the shattered glass and live wires strewn across
the rubble, his thoughts rambling on.
He saw his wife, Helen Philips, and her son, Michael,
bending over Donald Thompson on the lawn of the
smashed Philips home. Sarah had cut away Donald's
shirt and undershirt, and was taping long rolls of white
gauze bandage about the boy's slender body.
Donald's eyes were wide with pain. “How you doing,
son?” Kramer asked with a smile, bending over the
youngster. “Okay, I guess, Mr. Kramer,” he answered
weakly. “My side hurts an awful lot, though.”
Kramer started to ask his wife about the youngster's
condition when excited shouts and screams reached his
ears. A man and woman, clothes in tatters, were
stumbling over the wreckage of the street, their faces


the long night - 110
blanched with fear. “Run!” they shrieked, “everybody
run for your lives! The whole city's on fire! The radio
says to run out of here as fast as you can!”
Kramer dashed into the street and grabbed the hys-
terical man by the arm, spinning him half about. “Get
away from me, you crazy bastard!” the man shrieked,
“We'll all be killed! We're all going to burn! Oh God,
save us! we're all going to burn!”
His terror-stricken eyes rolled wildly as he struggled
with the air raid warden. Suddenly he pulled free from
Kramer's grasp, swinging wildly with a small portable
radio in his hand. Kramer hastily flung up an arm to
ward off the blow as the radio crashed solidly against
his shoulder, flinging him to the ground. The panicky
stranger dropped the radio, gasped for breath, and
shouted hoarsely, “We’re all goin' to burn! You hear
me? Burn to death, I said!”
He stumbled away, crazed and sobbing. Kramer got
to his feet, staring after the man, his shoulder aching.
Startled eyes along the block followed the reeling man,
who continued shouting hysterically. The men and
women working in the wreckage of the Blackstone
home heard only a few scattered words; it was all
they needed. Already demoralized and badly fright-
ened, they abandoned their rescue efforts and ran after
the fast-disappearing man and woman. All along the
block the sparse number of survivors dwindled as peo-
ple were caught by the contagion of panic and fled as


the long night : 111
wildly as their injuries would allow.
Kramer and the small group by Donald Thompson
stared after their fleeing neighbors. They watched Jim
Philips drop the heavy beam he had been dragging
away from the Blackstone home wreckage to race after
one man and spin him about by the shoulder. The man
yelled incoherently, pushed him away, and dashed off.
Philips stared after his deserting friends and neigh-
bors. There was no use shouting for them to come back.
Jim Philips walked back to where his wife, the chil-
dren, and the Kramers stood. Helen stooped down to
pick up the battered portable radio. Its plastic case
was shattered, but static squawked from the machine.
Kramer took the radio from the woman, and turned the
dials to pick up the local station. It was difficult to hear
over the crackling static and the ever-increasing roar of
the fires, but they could make out an announcer's voice:
“. . . has been ordered immediately. I repeat, evac-
uation from the northwest part of the city of Harring-
ton has been ordered immediately. If you are within
the area I will describe to you, leave at once. Go to the
streets nearest you which I shall name. Do not hesitate.
Here is the area which must be evacuated at once.
North of Lincoln Boulevard as far as Washington
Avenue; and west of Scarsdale Avenue to the city line
along Genesee Street. I'll repeat that again. From
Lincoln Boulevard north as far as Washington Avenue,
and west of Scarsdale Avenue to the city line along


the long night : 113
Jim Philips spoke to Kramer: “I didn't notice it before,
Bill, but it is getting damned hot around here.” They
all looked around them, at the startling number of fire-
brands whipping by in the air.
“And notice the wind,” he continued, “all the fires are
blowing strongly in the same direction now. Wind's a
lot stronger than before. What the hell can it be?”
“I’m afraid to say,” Kramer answered. “If they're
evacuating the whole area, it may be a firestorm.” He
wiped the black dirt and sweat from his face with his
sleeve. “That means we can’t wait a moment. If we do,
we'll burn to death ourselves. We'll have to leave right
now, without wasting any time.”
He looked down the block. Not a living soul could
be seen; they had all fled madly after the shrieking,
hysterical stranger who had appeared suddenly in their
midst.
“Oh, my God,” Kramer said suddenly, quietly. “What
is it, Bill?” his wife pressed anxiously. “Everybody who
ran,” the startled man answered, “they all ran toward
the biggest fires.”
No one answered. Jim Philips reached down and
helped Donald to his feet. “Look, son,” he said, “you
can't be doing much walking over these streets. It's a
good half mile we have to go before we get to Wash-
ington Avenue. I’m going to carry you piggyback.
Think the pain will be too bad?”
The youngster looked bravely up at him. “I guess I


the long night : 114
can stand it, Mr. Philips.”
“All right, son, let's go.”
The little group of four adults and two children
turned to walk into the wind, away from the pressing
heat and the mangled homes. Sarah Kramer and Helen
Philips forced themselves not to look back.
Beneath the wreckage of what had been Thomas and
Mary Blackstone's home the children cried feebly for
help.


the long night : 116
By ten-thirty, although the surviving population was
unaware of the fact, the death sentences had been
pronounced for almost half of the city.
A thing, of pure and living flame, of incredible
violence and depth, of a destructive capacity greater
than that of the atomic bomb itself, reared itself high
above the thousands of scattered fires in the wrecked
city.
Firestormſ
The bomb had exploded at exactly 9:38 P.M. The
blast rushed from the miniature sun to tear into wreck-
age the flimsy homes and structures in the city's tene-
ment area. Electrical connections short-circuited, coal
stoves overturned, gas-range burners and the pipes
which fed them, all flamed. The unleashed fire licked
hungrily at the débris strewn across the blasted ruins.
Into thousands of buildings, throughout an area en-
compassing more than five thousand acres, the fires
were borne and began to spread. The stunned, injured
and panic-stricken survivors made only futile attempts
to quell the flames.
The fire equipment dispersed about the city raced
with all possible haste toward the helpless areas lying
beneath the boiling mushroom which climbed with
thundering peals of sound into the sky. From the towns
and villages surrounding the city other fire-fighting
forces drove to assist in the disaster operations. This
effort, however, was frustrated by streets clogged with


the long night : 117
trees, bricks, burning cars, mortar, human bodies, light
poles, splintered glass, telephone poles and wire, and
other débris. Firemen raged futilely as their trucks ran
into this atomic-born roadblock, and stopped. They
could proceed no further, and bent their efforts toward
controlling and extinguishing those flames within reach
of their water streams.
Only the lightest of breezes drifted through the city
before the heavens were split apart by the insane bril-
liance of the explosion. The thousand-mile-per-hour
hurricane which enveloped Harrington disappeared
quickly, leaving only smoke and dust to swirl upward
in the ascending maelstrom of the awesome mushroom
pillar.
The absence of this wind, and the almost instanta-
neous creation and spread of fire throughout the vast
area which could not be reached by the desperate but
hopeless firemen, spelled doom. Within forty-five min-
utes at least two out of every three buildings within a
five-square-mile area were blazing fiercely.
Not all the homes and tenements in this region were
completely blown down. In the wreckage of those
which remained standing, however, the blast's steel
fingers had poked out windows, shattered walls, hurled
doors and screens from their hinges, pounded rooftops
and hallways into open passages. The embryonic fires
leaped quickly across the rooms.
Unopposed, the flames jumped from room to room,


the long night : 118
curled upward through shattered ceilings to ignite the
débris of adjoining tenement apartments, racing along
curtains, rugs, clothes, paper and the most inflammable
substances in the ghetto-like structures. Great areas be-
gan to burn simultaneously, and the flames dashed
along the wreckage-strewn hallways, were flung
through skylights and shattered rooftops. Unhindered
the fires raced and curled and . . . joined.
Tens of thousands of individual fires met in fiery em-
brace across courtyards and narrow alleys, through
spaces left by walls which had been blown down. The
collapsing buildings spilled flaming wreckage into the
crowded streets, sending stray sparks and tumbling fire-
brands into pools of gasoline from the ruptured fuel
tanks of cars and trucks, creating small fire explosions
which also embraced the flames cascading from the
buildings.
In this area of turmoil water pressure was virtually
non-existent; even had it been available it would have
been useless. Only a scant few hoses were available,
and there existed an even lesser number of survivors
who might have attempted the impossible task of quell-
ing the racing and fast-spreading flames.
The great heat soon whipped the aggregate blazes
into a single raging inferno, into a roaring, turbulent
ocean of flame more than a mile and a half in diameter.
As the flames joined, even those buildings which had
been spared the torch suddenly ignited with explosive


the long night - 120
about the city trees leaned over more and more to-
ward the central pillar of rising gases.
Within four hours of the bombing, trees at the edge
of Harrington were stripped of their leaves and small
branches by a wind bordering on the hurricane. Dust
swirled and filled the air, kicked up by the ever-increas-
ing force of the wind as it raced in to feed the flames in
response to the pitiless pull of the fiery column.
The fires increased in ferocity, lighting the country-
side for miles about in unreal, dazzling crimson bril-
liance. The flaming pillar roared from its womb of fire
and climbed higher and higher. Before the appalled
eyes of the thousands outside the city, the writhing,
boiling column leaped for space, sending sheets and
rivers of flame three miles into the sky.
The pillar increased in violence, rumbled, shrieked,
spun, and leaped ever upwards. The sound of some
gigantic bass fiddle sundered the tortured, heated air,
grating the ears, adding to the terror of the fortunate
survivors beyond the confining, all-destroying fire-
storm. Firebrands, sparks, great flaming timbers spewed
forth from the pillar as from the belching orifice of a
volcano.
Ninety thousand human souls were borne to eternity
in this inferno.
Within the five-square-mile area of the firestorm,
only those civil-defense disaster units able to evacuate
soon after receiving Colonel Buyers' orders survived


the long night 121
the holocaust. Fire trucks hurriedly disengaged their
hose couplings, cast free of the hydrants and pipelines,
and began the toilsome retreat to safety. Some fought
their way clear, collapsing into the welcoming hands
of anxious crews who threw a water curtain over the
streets to offset the climbing temperature.
Other trucks turned and struggled over the débris-
clogged roads until further progress became impossible.
Firemen abandoned their useless equipment and either
attempted to escape on foot, or sought futile refuge in
basements.
There were dangers other than that of fire in the
evacuation area. As some trucks started to evacuate,
they were set upon by screaming, panicky mobs which
saw in the moving vehicles a means of salvation. Mad-
dened by the blistering heat, the thunder of flames and
collapsing buildings, the terrorized citizens clambered
aboard the fire trucks. At first the firemen assisted the
refugees, instinctively aiding in the work of survival.
Only for a few minutes, however, until the first waves
became shrieking mobs whose only thought was of their
own survival.
Men and women gibbering insanely, many with
flaming clothes and bodies, fell upon the trucks, be-
seeching help. Most died even as they ran the gantlet
of flames; others reached the trucks in waves which
overwhelmed the firemen who were soon forced to beat
off people whom only minutes before they had at-


the long night : 122
tempted to save. The maddened beings clubbed, bit,
pulled, punched and clawed at the fleeing firemen,
dragged them from their seats, hurled them from the
trucks, and then fought savagely among each other for
handholds. The trucks wheeled erratically under the
inexperienced hands of their panicky drivers and soon
crashed. Flames rolled along the streets, licked hungrily
at the oil beneath the trucks, burst the gas tanks, and
transformed the vehicles into orange balls of fire.
There was no escape.
The people in the firestorm area fled headlong for
any harbor of safety. Terror mounted as the heat in-
creased to unbearable limits. The sound of the burning
and collapsing buildings rose to an unceasing crescendo,
accompanied by the banshee shriek of the increasing
wind.
Terraces, courtyards, alleys and streets became flam-
ing cauldrons and filled from ground level to the upper
roofs with solid sheets of flame. Unnumbered houses
and tenements collapsed in showers of sparks and fire-
brands. The streets became impassable, but still the
people ran and staggered.
Even the air-raid wardens finally succumbed to the
satanic terror of the moment, and were forced to rely
upon instinct. Their attempts to subdue panic in the
face of the firestorm's fury were lost in instants as their
wards charged wildly from the shelters. Many reeled in
the streets, arms before their faces as a shield from the


the long night - 123
intense heat, and returned to basements and cellars.
The obvious impossibility of moving through the sea of
flame made many regard the shelter as a safe refuge to
the last.
Those unfortunates who fled for safety soon became
completely unaware of their surroundings. Due to the
all-enveloping firestorm and the thundering collapse of
buildings all around, the totally altered appearance of
a neighborhood normally known to the smallest detail
made it impossible to find direction.
Confronted with the terrible sight of entire streets
totally filled with flame, many people turned and ran
into courtyards, hoping to find a way through the back
alleys to safety. Within seconds, torrents of flame cas-
caded across the alleys and courtyards, instantly re-
ducing those fleeing to charred corpses.
Steadily the wind increased, reaching sixty, eighty,
ninety, and then exceeding one hundred miles an hour.
Miles beyond Harrington the gentle pre-attack breeze
rose to a minor gale. At the city's edge the onrushing
air was a hurricane; within the firestorm area it lashed
the flames with tornado fury. In consequence, the fires
in the smaller fire zones were whipped as if by a gigan-
tic bellows. Even across acres of empty lots where peo-
ple huddled in sobbing terror at the maelstrom about
them, the flames bent low before the wind and con-
sumed the cowering humans.
There was no escape.


the long night - 124
A hurricane of pure fire arose to cleanse fully half the
city of everything which could burn.
People remaining in shelters until they thought the
brunt of the fire had passed soon felt the heat pressing
into their cellars and underground areas. In desperation
they emerged from their warrens to flee, only to be met
with a sea of flame. Everything around them was on
fire. In every direction the flames roared and whirled,
racing before the demon-like wind.
The majority were shocked to frenzied action by the
sights and sounds about them. Shrieking insanely, they
raced down streets over which the tar and asphalt ran
in lava-like rivulets. Most of them covered no more
than one or two hundred feet, before their shoes and
feet burst into flames. Grasping their burning legs in
maddened pain, they toppled and writhed in agony in
the bubbling, flaming tar.
Even on the streets yet spared from such volcanic-
like action, the people had no chance of survival. They
ran in panic, seemingly safe, until the radiated heat of
the fires exploded the clothes on their bodies, wrapping
their stumbling forms in curling fire.
Those who retained some semblance of self-control
faced the ceaseless explosions and the streets choked
with flames, firebrands, and smoke, and scurried back
to their shelters. They barricaded the doors as shrieking
fellow human beings—their neighbors and families—
attempted to race into the shelters with their bodies


the long night - 126
legs askew, into the waiting furnace.
Advancing into the firestorm as far as possible, the
firemen placed row upon row of engines. Their com-
bined hoses were brought to bear upon the major
avenues and streets, in an effort to create a solid curtain
of water beneath which the panic-stricken people could
flee to safety.
These persons believed themselves delivered of a fiery
death, and drank gratefully of the cooler air carried to
the streets by the unending water streams. Their clothes
became soaked in life-protecting liquid, and they
paused momentarily to suck in air before continuing
their flight to the safety of medical treatment awaiting
them. Even here, however, survival often eluded them.
Sudden gusts of wind hurtled toward the beckoning
central pillar of flame, hurling the protecting water into
a fine spray which disappeared instantly into steam.
The fierce radiation of the flames descended upon the
momentarily unprotected refugees, sucked the moisture
from their clothes and bodies, and brought instant death
as the heat burned hair, clothes, and skin.
The greatest number of survivors were those who
fled through the open expanse of Crandall Park, the
lake of which lay only a few blocks from the Scarsdale
Avenue evacuation line. Yet even here those people who
reached safety represented only a fraction of the num-
ber which originally poured into the park, moving to-


the long night - 127
ward the lake which promised survival in its expanse
of water.
The crowds pressed in ever-greater numbers against
those people at the water's edge, and soon the ex-
hausted, burned refugees were forced into the water.
Many of these attempted to swim across the lake and
drowned. Others unable to swim were borne along by
the struggling mobs and sank beneath the surface. As
the heat increased, surviving refugees along the edge
of the lake began to topple in exhaustion.
Rowboats were fought over in desperation until many
overturned and foundered. Others carried their pas-
sengers to the lake's eastern shores where a solid cur-
tain of water from the engines awaited them on the
road to safety.
Even as the people fought, pulled, and struck one
another down to reach the water's edge, the wind in-
creased. Along the shore the flaming storm began to
engulf the hysterical mobs; then suddenly the velocity
of the wind burst from a gale into a hurricane. Sobbing
children were torn from their parents' hands and
whirled into the fire. Bowled over by the wind, adults
were dragged into the flames struggling desperately,
bloody fingers raking furrows in the blackened soil,
dying before they were consumed in the fiery carnage.
More hardy souls clambered over hundreds of smoking
corpses and struggled to the apparent safety of the


the long night : 128
water's edge. The sick, the infirm, the aged, and
wounded begged for assistance as would-be rescuers
abandoned them to a fiery fate.
By four o'clock on the morning of November 29th,
six and one-half hours after the attack, the last human
being to escape the firestorm lurched into the waiting
arms of firemen on Scarsdale Avenue. The storm would
rage in undiminished fury for many more hours. Noth-
ing else could be done except to wait . . . and to fight
against the effects of the bomb throughout the re-
mainder of the city.
Every available piece of fire apparatus was set up
in an irregular, giant ring beyond the edge of the fire-
storm. Although the wind blew constantly toward a
common center and eliminated the danger of fire spread
in this manner, the heat was so intense that structures
blocks away from the actual flames were ignited. The
fire trucks at the periphery of the storm directed their
water streams at the buildings which had not yet been
set aflame, hoping to keep them sufficiently cooled to
prevent fire spread by heat radiation. Any attempt to
fight the actual flames was useless, since the lashing
wind and blistering heat dissipated the water streams.
At five-thirty, eight hours after the bombing, terror
descended from the sky. The heat rising from the fire
pillar struck a stratum of cold air many thousands of
feet above the city, condensing moisture on the count-
less motes of soot and débris. These fell back to the


the long night 129
earth in the form of large, black greasy raindrops.
The sudden bursting from the red-lit sky of oily
black rain sent wild panic exploding through the work-
ing men and women, many of whom lost all self-control
and fled. Cries of “radiation” swept the mobs, which re-
membered only too vividly the stories of radioactive ash
floating from the sky after bomb tests in the Pacific.
Most of these people did not run far or for long.
Some were stopped by the restraining arms of more
level-headed workers. Radiological monitors assigned to
the fire crews soon allayed the fears of the remainder.
The night sky over Harrington was convulsed by
crimson, with flames rising alternately from eight thou-
sand feet to more than fifteen thousand feet above the
ground. Firebrands, sparks, ashes, soot, débris, and
putrid gases were swept up the pillar, rising forty-five
thousand feet into the glowing heavens, spreading out
and falling over the countryside in a greasy, ashy pall
for many miles beyond the flame-wracked city. The
firemen were exhausted, grimy and scorched from the
heat of the raging firestorm even behind their protect-
ing water curtains. Equipment was wearing out, hoses
leaking, motors grinding from constant operations. The
endurance of the first disaster shift was nearing its
limits.


the long night 132
heads bowed, limp, resting, refusing even to think.
He was cold. Cold? How could he be cold? The wind.
Strong. Steady. Cold. The flames were gone, behind
him. The heart of the city belched flame and garish
light into the sky, but the heat was well behind. The
wind, racing in from the countryside to answer the
storm's call, was frigid and biting. So abrupt was the
change that it acted as a stimulant, forcing a return to
awareness. He began to feel his body, the stings from
the cuts and scratches, the throbbing in his leg from
the gash, now clotted and ugly, the sharp pain of the
burned skin seared by firebrands and sparks. He
shivered.
And walked, through blinding lights and floodlights
splashing their cold illumination on the crowd. He
blinked against the glare. “Move along. This way.
Please keep moving.” White-clothed figures taking him
by the arm, examining him, prodding, looking at the
marks on his body.
“He can walk. Send him on.”
On? Where? What's it all about?
The big red cross whipping from the tent pole in the
wind. Moans, cries. Groaning and screaming. Sobbing.
People lying on the ground. Doctors and nurses bent
over them. Attending only to critical cases. “If they can
walk, send them on.”
Twenty-five minutes more. Again the milling crowd.
Another line. Then the metal cup offered to him. Water.


the long night : 133
Wonderful water.
He returned the cup to the woman who began to fill
it for the next person in line. He could think more
clearly now. There were more lights around him, gas-
oline engines chugging and coughing as they drove
generators. Harsh lights revealing the sign “Welfare
Center 27.” The line kept moving.
“Name?
“Your name, please.”
“Oh. Thompson. John Thompson.”
“Address?”
He gave his address, parents' names. “Say, what's all .
this for?”
“Welfare registration. List of survivors from the evac-
uation area. So your family will know you're okay in
case you're all separated. Survivor's lists will be sent
out later. Okay. Move along.”
“Hey, wait a minute. Do you have a Sue Wilson on
that list?”
“Fella, I couldn't tell you. Not now, anyway. We
won't have any assembled lists for a couple hours at
the earliest.”
“B-but . . .”
“Look. I just don't know. You're holding up the peo-
ple behind you. Now, how about it?”
“Sure, sure.” He moved with the line. His mind
worked furiously. Didn't that guy, the big one who
pulled him away from the house, didn't he say that


the long night : 134
Sue and the other people in the house got out, that
they were evacuated by Medical? Sure . . . maybe
she was brought right here . . . maybe she's here now!
“Hey! Just a minute! Where are you going?”
“I—uh—I gotta get some information. I'm trying to
find someone.”
“Well, you can't find out anything by running
around.” The woman took his arm, gently pulled him
back into the line. “Just take it easy for a little while,
son. First let us take care of you. Then, you can ask
your questions. Besides, nobody can tell you anything
right now, anyway.” -
He stood before a large, loose tent, billowing in the
wind. “Just a moment, boy. You'll freeze in just that
torn shirt.” She reached behind her, pulled a mackinaw
jacket from a large pile of clothing. “Here. Put this on.
Maybe it won't fit too well, but it will keep you warm.”
Gratefully he accepted the heavy garment. It was
small, but he felt better with it on. At least it stopped
the wind. “Can you tell me where I can get some in-
formation? Please. It's awfully important; I’ve got to
find out about someone.”
“A lot of people want to . . . oh well; look, see that
tent down there?” She pointed to a large tent within
which he saw people behind typewriters. “See what
you can find out in there.”
“Thanks, lady.”
There were perhaps a dozen women in the tent, copy-


the long night - 135
ing names from the handwritten lists of the inter-
viewers, rearranging them to alphabetically-indexed
mimeographed sheets. A man at the mimeo machine was
inserting another master for a printing run.
John approached the woman seated at the first desk.
“Excuse me,” he began, “I’m trying to get some in-
formation about a girl named Sue Wilson. I was told I
might find out something here about her.”
She looked up wearily. “We haven't made up any
lists to go out. I'm sorry, but we can't help you until
later.”
“But you don't understand,” he protested, “I think
she came right through here. Wouldn't you have her
name if she came through here?”
“How do you know we processed her?”
“I’m not sure. But when I got to her house, it was
burned down. The civil defense guy I saw told me that
everybody in the house had gotten out, and that they
were evacuated. I think he said some medical people
evacuated them.”
She interrupted. “But why here? Why this particular
station?”
“I came out on Iriquois Avenue. That was the only
way out of the fires. Look. I'm not asking for much.
Won't you even look? Can't you ask anybody in here
to check the lists? Lady,” he pleaded, “I’ve got to find
out!” -
His obvious distress brought a response. The woman


the long night - 136
turned. “Helen. Give me the W listings.”
John moved around the desk to check the list with
her. “Umm, W. Wilkins . . . here it is, Wilson. Jane
Wilson. That it?”
“N-no. Her name is Sue. Sue Wilson.”
She returned the sheets to the woman behind her.
“I’m sorry. That's the only Wilson we have a record on
so far.”
“But . . . where can I find out? How can I find out
where she is?”
“My God, mister, a lot of people want to know where
their families are. It takes time to get all the names.
Maybe she was hurt.” She noticed his startled face.
“I’m sorry, but it's very possible she was hurt. If her
injuries were bad, then they'd stop her at the advanced
first aid station between here and the evacuation line.
You must have passed through the aid station on your
way here.”
“Yes, but I didn't know that she might be there. Is
there any way I can find out?”
“There's no way I can help you. Now, will you excuse
me? I've a great deal to do.” She dismissed him with the
remark.
Was it possible, John wondered? Was Sue hurt? Hurt
so badly they would have kept her at the aid station?
He had to find out, that was certain. And there was
only one way to do that. Go back to the medical tents


the long night : 138
John approached a police officer. “Where can I get
some information on somebody who came through
here?”
“How the hell would I know, MacP I been outside
here since they set this place up.” He blew clouds of
fog through his lips. “Don’t ask me. Check around in
the back somewhere.”
He walked around the tents. Nobody seemed to know
anything! But Sue had to come through here. He saw
men carrying stretchers into waiting ambulances and
trucks. One man kneeled on the ground, writing names
on white tags which he affixed to the wounded waiting
for transportation to permanent medical buildings.
“Can you help me, please?” he asked. The man
glanced up, went back to his writing with a snapped,
“What is it?”
“My girl was evacuated through here a couple hours
ago. At least I think she was . . . she was hurt pretty
bad, and came out through Iriquois Avenue. Where
can I check on it?”
“Can’t. Got no permanent records here.”
The curt reply took John by surprise. “But wouldn't
somebody . . . at least know about her? Wouldn't any-
one know?”
“Like I told you. No records. We just get ’em in here,
sew 'em up and ship ’em out.”
“You mean nobody knows?”
“That's right. Look,” he turned to John, “all we do


the long night : 139
here is keep ’em from dying. Or try to. Y'know, stop 'em
from bleeding to death, throw emergency splints on,
and that sort of thing. We ain't got time to keep records.
They'll do all that later.”
He finished tying the tag to the unconscious patient
at his feet, stood up and waved to two men to take the
stretcher away. “Put this one in the big truck, Phil. Two
more and you can pull out.”
He walked away, bent down over another stretcher.
John ran after him. “Where do you send them from
here? Which hospital can I go to so I can find out about
her?”
His question was ignored. The other man bent down
over the stretcher case, pushed back an eyelid, felt for
an absent heartbeat. “Christ,” he muttered, “another
one.” He looked around for assistance, but every person
was occupied.
“Hey you,” he turned to John, “give me a hand. Pick
up this stretcher from that end.”
John hesitated, then did as the man said. He grasped
the wooden handles, lifted in concert with the stranger.
“This way,” he told John, “I’ll lead.”
John grunted with the sudden weight. “Is he dead?”
he inquired.
“Dead as he'll ever be.”
“Oh.”
This was the first time he had ever had the oppor-
tunity to study a dead man. The corpse looked . . .


the long night - 141
to cover 'em up so the ones which are still living won't
see 'em like this. Has a nasty effect sometimes.”
John shuddered.
“You okay now?” he asked John.
He nodded, unable to speak.
“All right. Grab this guy's legs, and throw 'em up on
the pile. Don't worry, you can't hurt him no more.”
Sick, John did as he was instructed. Together they
lifted the cadaver from the stretcher and heaved it onto
the mound. John turned away. He had seen enough.
The medical worker came around and pulled the canvas
down. He walked up to John and placed his hand on
his shoulder.
“I know, kid,” he said softly, “but we can't do noth-
ing about that now. C'mon, let's move out of here.”
As they walked, he asked, “What's your girl look
like?”
“About five three. Nineteen years old. She's blonde,
wears her hair short. Quite pretty. Her name's Wilson,
Sue Wilson.”
The man stopped. “Wait a minute—wait a minute,”
he said, “that name, it rings a bell.”
Hope flared within John. Maybe, maybe, after all
. . . “What about her?” He grasped the worker by the
arm, almost shouting, “Tell me! Tell me, for Christ's
sake!”
“Easy; easy! Take it easy, kid.”
John relaxed his grip.


the long night : 142
The man rubbed his chin. “I think I remember a kid
come through here maybe three hours ago,” he said. “I
ain't sure, but . . . you say she was blonde, about
nineteen?”
John nodded rapidly, breathlessly anxious for any in-
formation.
“She have any identification on her, y'know, like a
bracelet or something, with her name on it?”
“Yes! Yes, she wears a bracelet on her left hand, I
gave it to her for her birthday last month, it has two
hearts in the middle with our names engraved . . .”
The words spilled out with a rush; he sucked in air,
continued, “. . . Sue Wilson on top, and my name,
John Thompson, on the bottom . . . did you see it. Is
it her?”
He snapped his fingers. “I remember the bracelet
now, had a gold chain with it. Yeah, a young kid.”
“Where did she go?” he fairly screamed the question.
“Take it easy, fella, getting excited ain't gonna' do
you no good. They moved her out after the doc worked
on her. Lessee' now, they ain't nothing much left of
Monroe Hospital . . . she probably was sent either to
Roosevelt or to Medical Center; they're both over on
the east side. You know where?”
“Sure, I know where they are. Wait a minute .
how bad . . . is she . . . how bad is she hurt?”
“I don't remember too much about it, kid. All I know


the long night 143
is that if they worked on her here . . . look, no use
beating around the bush. If they worked on her in this
butcher shop, you know it's something which can be
pretty bad. But that could mean a broken leg or some-
thing like that which’ll get better. Anyway, I don't re-
member any of the details.”
“I’ve got to get to her!”
The man hesitated. “I ain't supposed to do this, but I
suppose nobody'll be the worse for it.” He pointed to a
truck where two men were fastening the backboard into
place. “C’mon, let's see if we can get you a lift. That
truck's going to Roosevelt, and there's just as much
chance for her to be there as at the city medical center.”
They walked to the truck, John fidgeting and uneasy
with the final confirmation that Sue definitely was hurt.
How bad he didn't know and couldn't know until he
actually saw her.
“Hey Phill” The driver turned around. “This kid has
to get over to Roosevelt. How about a lift for him? It's
okay, it's on my say-so.”
The driver nodded assent. John ran around to the
front of the truck and climbed into the cab. The driver
started his motor, shifted, and the truck with its cargo
of bloody forms and the medical attendant in the back
began its torturous journey to the hospital.
Torment assailed John as the vehicle pulled out of
the aid station. He sat mutely, eyes staring ahead,


the long night - 144
hoping, praying that Sue would be all right. Praying?
John laughed bitterly at himself. He had never really
prayed before in his entire life.
But, if now, if God would listen . . .


;
THREE MAJOR Hospitals, Monroe Hospital, City Hos-
pital, and Roosevelt Medical Center, as well as lesser
institutions, swung into action the moment they re-
ceived the confidential warning earlier that evening.
The bedridden were wheeled into the long, white
corridors so that they might receive the protection of
multiple walls between their bodies and the force of
the anticipated blast. Nurses and patients drew blinds
and curtains in the hope that even their flimsy thick-
ness would reduce to some extent the expected shower
of glass splinters. Escorted by hospital wardens and
nurses, ambulatory patients moved by elevator and
stairwell into the lower floors, and as many as could be
accommodated crowded into the basement for the
luxury of subterranean shelter. Emergency generators
whined outside the operating rooms (just in case), for
no doctor could halt his own personal conflict with
death even in the face of the impending atomic attack.
145


the long night - 146
Men unreeled hose lines from their wall brackets,
lifted fire extinguishers from racks, and placed buckets
of water and sand in the corridors. Battery radios tolled
the somber voices of unidentified radio announcers,
speaking from “canned” civil-defense messages.
The sirens screamed, seventeen minutes after the
Yellow. Then the soundless explosion of light.
Less than a half mile from the blinding fireball,
Monroe Hospital was simultaneously bathed in light
and flooded with invisible torrents of gamma rays and
neutrons. In another instant—a timeless moment?—the
blast tore with incredible violence into the many-
windowed, white building. The upper floors bulged,
then disappeared in a shower of glass, wood, plaster,
blood, beds, fixtures, curtains, patients, blankets and
sheets, doctors, medicine, flowers, paper, nurses, equip-
ment, brick and steel. The shower dissolved into a spray
which blew into and erupted through the collapsing
walls for hundreds of feet beyond the hospital. Not a
soul above the second floor of Monroe Hospital lived;
only a few dazed, broken, and dying individuals on the
ground floor survived the passage of the blast.
Beneath the surface of the earth, shielded within their
subterranean chamber by walls of concrete and steel,
the men, women and children cowered before the thun-
der, vibration, and collapse of the building about them.
They lived, unharmed.
Within scant seconds the steel, mortar, bricks, and


the long night : 147
stone of the collapsing upper floors descended upon
the basement level in a veritable avalanche of débris.
Fires broke out in the tangled wreckage. The hospital
was a mass of ruins, its steel frames and girders bared
to the swirling dust like a great, grisly skeleton.
The basement provided life against the monstrous
force of the atom. It had also become a trap.
Steel beams and great stone blocks barricaded the
stairways and exists. Even as men struggled to clear the
doors, the superintendent frantically juggled the tele-
phone, but encountered only silence. The wires were
cut, the phones dead. No help from outside, unless
. “of course . . . the rescue teams will get us out!
. no need to worry, folks, help is on the way!”
It would never arrive.
Roosevelt Medical Center and City Hospital observed
the same precautions which were followed at Monroe
Hospital. Then the light; interminable seconds later,
the onrushing fist of the blast. These hospitals, how-
ever, were in the extreme eastern part of the city, and
the fireball raged nearly two miles away. The blast
enveloped the buildings, punched in windows, shredded
drapes and bedding, shattered medical cases, kicked up
a storm of dust, petrified the patients (and most of the
doctors and nurses), and returned for its second-long
suction phase. The noise was incredible, damage to
windows and materials extensive, the dust choking, but
that was all. The attack was over.


|O
;
THE GRIMY AND TIRED policeman in a torn uniform
stood in the middle of the road. He raised an arm to
shield his eyes from the blinding headlights of the ap-
proaching flatbed trailer truck.
“Hold up!” he shouted, waving a bright red lantern.
“The road's blocked beyond the turn!”
Air hissed sharply as the big vehicle squealed protest-
ingly to a halt. The driver braked the truck, and leaned
from his window as the officer ran up.
“Dump your cat here,” he called. “Around the bend
there's a slew of vehicles trying to get into a big housing
development. Really banged up. We ain't got much
time; fires are spreading real fast. A lot of people in
there can't get out.”
His eyes were questioning as he looked at the great
machine lashed to the trailer bed. “Can you get the cat
off here and move on up?” he asked.
“Can do,” the driver replied. Then, turning to the
150


the long night - 151
man seated at his side. “Okay, Harry, she's all yours.”
Harry Tremont, hulking construction worker for the
Atlas Excavation Company, eased his 240 pounds from
the truck and trotted back to the trailer rear. The truck
driver moved around the other side and both men be-
gan to loosen the steel cables which held the bulldozer
captive to the vehicle's flat surface.
As he worked, Tremont called to the policeman:
“There's a coupla' dump trucks and traxcavators maybe
ten minutes behind us. About 200 men coming in with
the group.” His practiced eye ran over the bulldozer.
“Okay, Mac,” he called to his friend, “now's as good a
time as any.”
The steel cables were cast off; the bulldozer stood
free. Tremont slid his bulk into the machine's curved
metal seat and began to feed life into the fourteen tons
of steel under his hands.
Every motion of Tremont's hands, arms, and legs
was followed by the staring eyes of men and women
who had clustered about the trailer-truck soon after its
arrival. They were worn-out, haggard men and women
who for hours had toiled by hand, with disappointingly
little success, to clear the road of its choking débris.
The bulldozer, perhaps, meant salvation for the injured
and the trapped in the shattered housing development.
Their hopeful eyes watched as Tremont manipulated
the controls of the bulldozer.
It takes seventeen separate motions to bring a big


the long night 153
red-and-white rescue trucks were jammed together in
the road. The group's further progress was thwarted by
the rubble of buildings, crushed automobiles, splintered
trees and telephone poles, all of which had been hurled
onto the street and sidewalks in an impenetrable mass.
Men and women alike were digging in the rubble with
picks, shovels, and bare hands, doing their tedious and
ineffective best to clear a pathway. About seven blocks
beyond the assembled workers and vehicles Tremont
saw the mangled remains of the housing project. Garish
illumination from floodlights and leaping flames silhou-
etted the workers who struggled to dig free of the
building wreckage the many hundreds of survivors and
injured.
Shouts and glad cries greeted the approaching bull-
dozer. Harry Tremont lowered the massive steel prow,
kicked the cat into first, and eased up to the heavy rub-
ble. The curving steel blade nudged the wreckage,
tumbled the debris forward and sideways, rolling it off
the blade edges. More power. The Diesel strained and
thundered. The treads gripped, slipped, ground for-
ward.
Dust flew. Rubble piled up behind the dozer which
ground out a twelve foot-wide swath through the debris.
The cat roared. It shook and vibrated. The exhaust
cracked the smoke-filled air with its staccato machine-
gun sound. Fourteen tons of steel behind the curving
blade clanked, groaned, and pushed inexorably forward.


the long night - 154
Sometimes the treads slipped, and Tremont hurriedly
slapped out the master clutch, idling the Diesel. He re-
versed the cat's controls, backed it up, lowered the
blade, and again sent his fourteen tons of power charg-
ing into the choking morass.
Behind Tremont's manipulations with his D-7 came
dozens of men. Concrete blocks and bricks which tum-
bled back into the road were picked up and hurled
aside.
A narrow, rough path, as roads go, but immediately
into the cleared space behind the bulldozer came the
fire engines, the rescue vehicles, and the ambulances
with an assurance of evacuation for the injured. The
cat snarled, chugged, and thundered forward.
Eighty yards to go, and the dozer would be up to the
housing development.
Sixty-five yards.
Twenty yards.
Tremont sent the bulldozer roaring forward, swing-
ing sharply to the right just before the first of the once-
great, shattered buildings. Even as the men and ma-
chinery poured into the roadway he had cleared, he was
gouging from the debris other pathways, into, through,
and among the wreckage of the structures.
A man ran up to the bulldozer, signalling with his
hands for Tremont to still the thunder of the Diesel.
“Good work!” he shouted. “Keep on clearing a path on
this side! Another dozer just came in, and is starting to


the long night 155
work on the other side of the development!”
One road clear. There were, however, thousands of
blocked streets and roads similar to the 22nd Street
down which Tremont's bulldozer had ground its way.
Almost always, adjoining and at the end of such roads,
lay smashed houses with people buried inside, with
injured men, women, and children, who stared fearfully
and screamed insanely at the encroaching flames.
The rescue squads rushed with all possible haste into
these areas, fighting time and fire, struggling to pry
open the hulks of buildings, to reach within and emerge
with their human burdens. Rescue operations were diffi-
cult and time-consuming. It was no simple matter to
cut through heavy beams, through piles of brick and
stone, through tangled plumbing. A single misstep, a
single, ineffective bracing and the precarious ruins of a
house would tumble down, burying both the trapped
and the would-be rescue team.
Power saws whined and screeched, cutting their way
through wooden beams. Hand extinguishers sprayed
foam on flames as other men struggled desperately to
brace steel and wood beams with powerful jacks. Live
wires were cautiously approached, disposed of with the
distaste accorded a writhing viper. The rescue teams
cut their hands and knees and faces and feet, swallowed
and choked on dust, disregarded bruises and scrapes.
They dug frantically, searching, probing, dragging out
the wounded and the unhurt.


the long night - 156
High buildings consumed even more time. The in-
jured, with their slashed and bleeding bodies, with
broken limbs, broken necks, in shock, had to be removed
from two, five, and even more stories above ground.
The rescue teams knotted their ropes, fastened their
slings and booms, swung their stretchers high, and
gently—or their patient would die—lowered their bur-
dens to the ground, where there waited the welcoming
arms of medical corpsmen.
There were, unfortunately, not enough rescue teams.
There was also a lack of bulldozers to clear all roads, to
plow through all blocked streets. Where this lack ex-
isted the result was invariably the same.
The trapped and injured died.
It required more than muscle, shovels, and pickaxes
to hew a path through roads heavily encumbered with
the débris cast about by the fury of atomic explosion.
It took brute power, skilled hands at the controls of
hundreds of small and large machines.
It took a flowing torrent, a river of gasoline and oil,
with its tributaries minutely directed to each fuel-
gulping machine within the city. It took the communi-
cations, precision, and endurance of an army.
Into Harrington on its night of tribulation rolled such
an army, from near and far, from city, town, village,
and hamlet, from farm and garage, from factory and
store. An army equally as bewildering in variety as the
mechanical weapons of the military army which shoots


the long night - 157
to destroy, not to heal.
Control the fires! Cut off the flames till we get the
trapped and the injured clear of the wreckagel Stop the
flow of gas from the pipes' Cut off the water pressure
from the mains! Hurry, hurry . . . HURRYI
Through the long evening punctuated with the blood-
red of the towering firestorm and its ten thousand lesser
brethren, a pattern of defense, a pattern of forward
movement, evolved. A forming picture which, on the
zone headquarters and the control center maps, indi-
cated the snail-like progress of the rescue, engineering,
gas, valving, and other teams into the blocked areas.
Gradually, insistently, the floodgates of débris were
breached, and the men and the machines poured
through to bring a new flow of life to the city.
Like the medical teams, the equipment, supplies and
manpower of the greater bulk of the engineering, utili-
ties, and other emergency services which surged into
Harrington came not from the shattered city itself, or
from its immediate environs, but from the surrounding
communities and counties.
Each sector headquarters, far into the area of actual \
“combat,” received the unceasing requests from the men
in the field. Each sector commander relayed the re-
quests back to his individual zone headquarters, which
in turn passed the multitude of requests on to the city
control center. The center's supply officer began to
scrape the bottom of the barrel throughout the support


the long night - 158
area, and renewed his urgent requests to State head-
quarters for additional aid.
The statewide situation had changed.
Two more cities were hit.
That made six in our state alonel
No help is available from other state support areas.
You will have to do the best you can with what you
have.
Federal aid? No.
One hundred and thirty-seven cities have been
bombed.
Eleven with hydrogen bombs.
No additional aid.
Sorry.
In the control center, Colonel Alfred Buyers called a
hurried meeting with his support-area director.
“You’ll have to get more aid from the support coun-
ties. I don't care how you get it, or where you get it
from! We need more material and working people. Take
it at gunpoint if you must, but get me the stuff I need
to save this city!”
Generally the response was excellent. From every
walk of life, the neighbors of Harrington answered the
call for assistance.
Not all, however. There were ugly scenes, and there
were moments better forgotten.
In the small village of Winston, in Monroe County,
a large farm was run by Eliah Masterson. Gnarled from


the long night - 159
years of toil in his wide fields, Masterson was close-
lipped, not given to idle conversation or unnecessary
contact with his neighbors. He had been in Winston for
some fifty-two years.
At the time of the bombing, November 28, Masterson
owned four tractors, of which two could be fitted
quickly with small curving blades, helpful in clearing
roads of light debris. Also on the farm were two heavy
trucks and one pickup truck.
Masterson, his wife, and two husky sons had scorned
the pleas of civil-defense recruiters to enlist in any civil-
defense activity. He did not want any trouble, Master-
son said; all he wanted was to tend his fields and mind
his own business.
The civil defense surveyor informed Masterson that
he would be needed only in the event of an actual
bombing. Masterson tired of the conversation, and
ordered the civil defense representative off his property.
Heated words followed. Masterson was told that in
an attack his equipment would be taken, by force if
necessary. Masterson's answer was to spit at the feet of
the volunteer.
Then the attack.
The firestorm.
The “scraping of the supply barrel.”
Two men from Winston, checking their lists of equip-
ment in the township, drove out to Eliah Masterson's
farm to enjoin him and his sons to drive their badly-


the long night - 161
“Ain’t nobody takin' my stuff.” Masterson spat. “This
here two barrels of buckshot says so. Get the hell offa'
my land!”
“Goddamn you, Masterson!” the sheriff roared, “I’ve
bent over backwards trying to be nice to you. Now I
ain't got no more time to fuddle around and argue any
longer! You're forcing my hand, and by God, I'm going
to do what's necessary.”
The sheriff spun around, calling to the men who had
accompanied him. “Get out to those barns, and pick up
the two large trucks and the two tractors. Bring 'em
down here to the drive.”
The four men hesitated, looking at Masterson's glow-
ering face and the now-raised shotgun.
“Don’t worry about that,” the sheriff said. In one
sweeping motion he pulled his service revolver from his
hip, moved forward suddenly and knocked the muzzle
of the shotgun to the ground. The sheriff's revolver
pointed at the farmer, and he grasped the shotgun,
pulling it by force from Masterson's hands.
“You’re a damned fool, Eliah. You knew well and
good what you were forcing me to do. Now just stand
there, and we'll wait until the trucks roll down here.”
In another minute the trucks and the tractors were
lined up at the driveway leading to the highway. “Jim!
Come over here,” the sheriff called to one man. “Make
out a complete voucher for this equipment. I'll sign it.”
With the voucher form completed, the sheriff scrib-


the long night - 162
bled his name at the bottom, and threw it at Master-
son's feet.
The ugly scene was not yet over. Masterson's sons
were in their twenties, husky young men. Muscles and
hands were required in Harrington to clear roads, to lift
emergency pipelines, to dig for trapped people, to carry
stretchers, to load and unload supply trucks, to do a mil-
lion things which can be done only by human muscle.
“Into the truck,” ordered the sheriff. “You two boys
are as strong as bulls, and the people in Harrington
need husky people. C'mon, get into the truck.”
“Go to hell, you bastard,” one son cried. “Who the
hell do you think you are . . . .”
“Jeezus, but I've had all the guff I intend to take from
you people!” shouted the sheriff. “Maybe you'll under-
stand this language!”
The muzzle of the Colt .38 Police Special was un-
wavering. There was the unmistakable click of a ham-
mer drawn back.
The sheriff was in a white fury. “Get into that truck.
If I hear one more damned word from either of you
two, I'll put a bullet right in your belly. Now get mov-
ing!”
Dust swirled around Masterson as the trucks and
tractors drove off, followed by the sheriff's white-
starred car.
In town again, the names of the farmer's sons were


the long night 163
added to a special list; a list, fortunately for the con-
science of the town, bearing few other names. The
trucks pulled up on Main Street, were quickly filled
with dozens of farmers, their families and hired hands,
and volunteers from the village.
Ten, then a few dozen, then hundreds of the trucks,
tractors, station wagons, jeeps, and cars, from all points
of the compass, from the entire support area, centered
upon the burning city. The truckloads of men followed
other convoys laden with blood and medical supplies,
and passed the outbound convoys with their white-faced
wounded.
Then the trucks arrived at the aid check points, were
waved through to the assembly areas, and the men
broken down into labor gangs. Labor gangs, with will-
ing, strong hands. Many soon to be blistered painfully.
There are some tasks which only strong bodies and
hands can perform. The willing hands grasped stretch-
ers, hurled rocks and rubble from the streets, assisted
the rescue teams, pulled tight on ropes and cables, car-
ried emergency water pipeline, pulled and pushed
stalled vehicles, carted off heavy supply boxes, reached
into shattered homes and withdrew the stricken bodies.
They held and comforted screaming children, forcibly
restrained adults who had succumbed to writhing pain.
The hands grasped fire hoses, swung axes, wielded
crowbars, passed steaming food and coffee to the weary.


the long night - 180
their fiery napalm bombs, their machine guns and can-
non, the rockets and the bombs, as they hurled destruc-
tion into endless waves of attacking Chinese. Remem-
ber? How does a young-old man of twenty-five forget
Korea?
Ed Burke wondered, of course, about his family,
whether his mother (poor Mom!—she must be terribly
frightened) was safe; how the kids were making out.
The young man, however, was stoical about these mat-
ters. He was not oblivious to the threat of possible
death to his family, but two years of watching close
friends die in combat had cast its shell about him. He
knew, from long intimacy with death, the futility of
unbridled worry.
People were approaching slowly from out of the dark-
ness, from the direction of Harrington. Their faces were
white, frightened masks. About sixty in all, Burke esti-
mated, trailed by small groups of stragglers. They were
carrying small bundles, pushing baby carriages, lugging
hastily thrown together valises and trunks, complaining
mutely of the cold, the horror, the disruption of all san-
ity.
Some walked on the highway, and to these he called,
shouting at them to walk on the side of the road, to be
careful of the racing trucks. His flashlight flickered
across the concrete, swept light by their startled faces.
They failed to respond verbally to his shouted orders,
but, like sheep, wandered to the roadside to continue


the long night - 181
their plodding movement. They stared, walked on,
sometimes stumbling, to be swallowed up in the black-
ness and the cold.
Burke was aware of the futility of attempting to halt
the movement of these groups as they drifted, in in-
creasing numbers, outward from the city to the cold and
the comparable safety of open country. What could he
possibly do? Stop them? So that they would stand
around and suffer more quickly the increasing cold?
What did he have to offer in the way of solace or aid
or comfort? As long as their movement, off the highway
itself, continued, he was more than satisfied.
He had witnessed this same scene too many times
beforel Infinitely worse, with the frozen limbs of suffer-
ing Koreans bearing their incredible bundles, all their
worldly possessions, carrying on their backs the very
young or the feeble and elderly who had fled the devas-
tated villages. Time seemed to swirl from the present
and blend with the past as Burke stared at these refu-
gees of a new war.
It was an old story to the young-old Burke. Instinc-
tively, watching his own townsfolk troop by in their
fright and their misery, he was a soldier again. The uni-
form now was blue, the boots polished, the weapon a
38 Police Special, but it was, nonetheless, a war.
He noticed gradually that the refugees were increas-
ing in number. There were more and larger groups, and
the road no longer was empty for long minutes before


the long night - 182
another fleeing group appeared in view. Thoughts of the
cold fell from his mind as he became occupied with the
increasingly difficult task of keeping the road clear. Two
heavy semi-trailer trucks raced past the police car, and
Burke was now shouting at the people to keep clear of
the highway.
He called Buydos. The police car door opened and
Burke shouted, “Turn the spotlight on! Keep it trained
down the road so we can pick these people up. There's
too many of them wandering onto the highway, and
some of them are going to be hurt when these trucks
come redballing down!”
The next hour saw Burke and Buydos working stead-
ily to clear the highway of the ever-swelling flood of
fleeing refugees. The police siren wailed almost con-
stantly as the two officers attempted to carry their road-
clearing warnings far down the highway. On at least
two occasions trucks moving toward Harrington were
forced to jam on their brakes; an elderly man was
struck the second time. The driver could hardly be
blamed; the old man had wandered from the roadside
directly into the path of the heavy vehicle.
Burke ran up to the police car. “Ward, call in to zone
headquarters and tell them the situation is getting out
of hand, that we're having trouble keeping the highway
clear of people on foot. We need some help, at least one
more car right away and, let me see, about ten or twenty
auxiliary cops. Better tell zone that the stuff moving


the long night - 183
into Harrington is having difficulty getting through. If it
keeps on getting worse like it has been for the last hour,
we're going to be in trouble.”
He paused, shouting at some people to get off the
highway. “Hurry up. Let me know what zone has to
say.”
Burke opened the trunk of the car, and picked up a
powerful emergency hand light. He grabbed a half-
dozen long-burning road flares, and ran down the high-
way, setting the flares on the ground every hundred
yards to illuminate the road.
As he went along he was continually berating the in-
creasing mobs to stay clear of the highway. The task
was becoming impossible as people wandered across the
concrete, emerging from the fields, streaming onto the
road.
Burke ran back to the police car. “Zone hasn't got very
much that's good, Ed,” Buydos said. “They've notified
ACP Four to try and give police escort to each major
convoy as it passes through, but there aren't that many
cars to go around. They also say they're trying to get
some auxiliaries out here to give us a hand, but that
they're awfully short. And support from the outer coun-
ties won't be here for two hours or so.”
“Well,” Burke grunted, “let’s go out and do what we
can. Keep the receiver on high volume, so we can hear
the set if any special calls come through.”
Unknown to the two policemen, a large welfare as-


the long night - 184
sembly camp several miles down the road, within Har-
rington, had just exploded in a fury of wild panic. Im-
provised tents had pulled their stakes before the fire-
storm-fed wind; shock and terror refused to succumb to
the inadequate efforts of too-few welfare workers and
air raid wardens.
The frightened and demoralized mother of two
youngsters became the detonating cap of the explosion.
Her husband was missing, one child was dead, and she
and her two surviving children had escaped the spread-
ing flames only by scant minutes. With glazed eyes, she
had been led along with hundreds of other survivors to
the welfare camp, there to be registered, fed, and re-
moved to housing areas.
All plans for welfare evacuation, of course, could not
possibly have been properly executed in the chaotic
aftermath and confusion of the attack. The food trucks
did not arrive. The temporary welfare headquarters,
within poorly staked out tents, blew away. Emergency
generators failed and the artificial light fled, to be re-
placed by the dancing, flickering red reflection of the
towering firestorm, miles distant.
Explosive panic lingered in the massed group, hud-
dled together in their fear.
The children, as could be expected, cold, hungry,
terror-stricken, threw up. Their mother, already at the
breaking point, remembered dimly something she had


the long night - 185
read many months before. The words flashed to her
mind: -
“. . . and, while such radiation from an atomic ex-
plosion cannot be detected by the usual senses, the
exposed individual will show signs of listlessness, be-
come afflicted with nausea, and frequently vomit. . . .”
“My children!” she shrieked. “My children! Oh God,
they've got radiation sickness! They're going to die from
radiation poisoning! My children!” Sobbing, hysterical,
she grasped the youngsters to her body. Nauseated,
cold, frightened, they stared unbelievingly at their
mother. They cried, in wailing, piercing screams.
Their neighbors looked on, wondering. “Radiation!”
The word flitted through the group with lightning
speed. “Radiation!”
A man stood up, uncontrollable, shouting, “Radiation!
These people will poison all of us! We'll die if we stay
here!” Still shouting, now incoherently, he staggered to
his feet and ran from the welfare area, running into the
safety of the open country and its cold.
One woman screaming. One man shouting and run-
ning. Then two. Then twenty. Within less than a min-
ute, every occupant of the welfare area capable of
moving on his own two feet was running.
Into the country! Flee for your lives! The whole place
is radioactive! You'll all die if you stay here! Run, run,
run!


the long night - 186
The collected crowd dispersed into a ragged, fleeing
mob. They erupted from the welfare area, brushed
aside the startled welfare workers and wardens, disre-
garded the few auxiliary police, ignored the pleas to
remain, to stop running. They ran, past the collapsed
tents, about and past the wrecked homes, over the lit-
tered streets, their shadows flickering eerily before
them. They fled, fear adding haste to their heels.
They ran through the streets and side roads, cursing
the debris underfoot, searching for clear footing. They
plunged across lots. They ran until they came to a clear
stretch through the jungle of smoke and wreckage, until
they reached the concrete ribbon of Route 22. Now
stumbling, gasping for air, eyes popping, they swung
onto the highway, running away from the fire, from the
non-existent radiation. They dropped their bundles,
abandoned friends and children, pushed aside the slow
and the elderly. With less haste, now, sobbing with tor-
tured lungs, they fled down Route 22.
“Hey, Ed!” Ward Buydos called to Burke, “over here.
There's a priority call for us from zone!” Burke ran to
the police car, listened with Buydos to the message
crackling over the speaker.
“. . . come in, Car 36, Come in, Car 36.”
Burke picked up the microphone. “Car 36. Burke
speaking. Go ahead.”
“Burke, this is Antonelli. We've just received a re-
port from Welfare that an entire assembly area in Zone


the long night - 188
Five minutes passed. The fleeing refugees along the
highway continued to pass by, yet the crowd had not
increased appreciably in number. Buydos glanced into
his rear-view mirror, saw a flickering of headlights. That
would be the medical convoy. He turned around, watch-
ing Burke swinging the red blinker. The lights grew
brighter, and then Buydos made out the shapes of the
trucks. They were slowing down.
The lead truck squealed to a halt as Burke ran up to
the cab. He climbed to the running board. “We’ve been
ordered to lead you people to Roosevelt Hospital,” he
told the driver. “A crowd of people panicked at a wel-
fare center and are supposed to be coming out of the
city on this road. Stick close behind us, and be alert for
any sudden stops.”
Burke returned to the police car and climbed in along-
side Buydos. The officer waved his arm for the signal to
move and started down the highway, red lights flashing
and siren screaming.
The crowd thickened as they approached the city.
They crossed the city line, slowing intermittently as
people scattered before their approaching car and the
following trucks. “Still okay,” Burke said to Buydos. “If
it doesn't get any worse than this, we'll make it all
right.” He glanced at the people crowding the roadside.
“They're going to be pretty sorry that they took off like
this. Couple hours out in that wind and cold, with only
the clothes on their backs, and they'll all be pouring


the long night 189
back into the city. Can't really blame them, though,
they're all scared as hell.”
Another mile. The headlights stabbed through the
darkness, illuminating the highway for hundreds of feet.
“Jeezus!” Buydos swore suddenly. His foot slammed
down on the brake pedal, then released again as he
remembered the trucks rolling behind him. He thrust
his hand outside the car, signalling the convoy to stop.
“Look at that, will you?” he muttered. The highway
ahead of the car was black with people, half-running,
walking, stumbling. His foot hit the floor button and
with the siren screaming, he eased the car slowly for-
ward, rolling through the mob which moved aside with
reluctance. The people stared at them, uncomprehend-
ing, mindful only of their escape from dreaded radia-
tion. The police car and its convoy moved forward an-
other hundred feet, then was forced to another halt.
Burke flung open the car door, shouting to the crowd
to move aside. It was useless. They stared at him as they
flowed past, surrounding the car and the trucks with a
moving sea of terrorized humanity. Buydos blasted on
the horn and siren, but with little effect. He started for-
ward with the car, actually pushing people aside with
the bumper and the fenders. Those immediately forward
of the car were pushed, lurching off balance, screaming
and shouting at the two officers.
Cursing, Burke reentered the car, and called zone
headquarters. “. . . go ahead, Burke, this is Antonelli.”


the long night - 190
“We’re just inside the city line, Tony,” Burke told
him. “The goddamn crowd is pouring onto the highway
from the fields. Can't move unless we just bull our way
through. Is there any chance of help coming along?”
Antonelli's voice crackled metallically. “They won't
be able to get to your area for a while. Medical has been
asking about their convoy. Look, Ed, a lot of people are
going to die unless that blood gets here. Bring the con-
voy through. Do whatever you have to. That's all.”
Buydos and Burke looked at each other. “Well, Ed,”
Buydos said, “you heard the man. They need this stuff.”
Once again Burke tried shouting at the crowd to
move aside. No use. Still they struggled onto the high-
way, blocking completely the passage of the vehicles.
Siren howling, Buydos started forward with the police
car, brushing aside the protesting people on the road.
Burke had his door half open, warning the crowd to
move aside. They inched forward another few feet and
were forced to halt.
“There's only one thing left to do,” Burke cursed. He
left the car, and clambered onto the fender. The crowd
stared at him, slowing, milling about the car, but never
quite stopping.
Burke drew his revolver, and fired two shots into the
air. The sharp cracks of the gun cut into the senses of
the mob; abruptly they stopped their flight, muttering,
staring at the police officer.
“Get off the road!” Burke shouted. “Let these trucks


the long night - 192
more threatening source of danger. It seemed to be the
only way. To shoot one or more, to frighten the mob, to
send them scattering in fearful flight from the highway
so the trucks could get through. How many people lay
moaning on their stretchers waiting, desperately need-
ing the blood in the trucks behind the police car? How
many, even now, were being denied life because the
trucks stood on the cold concrete, unmoving, while
these frightened, selfish sheep blocked their passage?
“Shoot!” Burke thought, “It’s the only thing I can do
to clear the road! I'll have to shoot!”
The muzzle of the gun in his hand dropped lower,
pointing at the milling, pushing sea of faces. Sweat
broke out on Burke's face.
“Can you shoot your own people?” His conscience
cried at him. “These are your neighbors, your friends.
How can you shoot them? They know no better!”
“But I’ll have to shoot,” Burke muttered to himself.
“It's the only thing I can do. I'll have to!”
His finger clenched, squeezed gently around the
trigger. Then relaxed. Tightened. Held, taut, hesitant.
Burke sweated, in a hell of indecision. It was all so
familiar, this scene! Hadn't it happened once before?
Hadn't this exact same thing happened before? Do you
remember, Burke? Do you remember when it happened
before, when you shot down in cold blood men and
women and children?
Remember, Burke, that day you lay in your foxhole,


|3
;
THE COLD, windblown night was punctuated ceaselessly
with a numbing cacaphony of tortured sound; of
screaming sirens, shouting, thundering engines, lashing
flame, shrieks of the injured . . . by all the agony of a
city tormented. In the midst of this seething confusion
there began a vast moving operation, a long-planned
evacuation of the homeless who already overflowed the
limited facilities of the welfare camps and the emer-
gency billets.
Survivors of the bombing stumbled over debris and
choked their way through billowing waves of smoke. As
the night wore on, the welfare teams achieved a sem-
blance of orderly separation of these people into groups
of injured, homeless, and able-bodied. It was imperative
that they be provided with shelter. At once; for the cold
bit deeply and the wind blew with increasing force.
Separated from their parents or unknowingly orphaned,
scores of children desperately needed assistance.
195


the long night 197
care for the appalling number of orphaned children.
Rural schools instituted new shifts for the children
evacuated from the city. The strong were sent to con-
struction work. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, me-
chanics, and others with particular skills were appor-
tioned to those areas where those skills were in demand.
Wherever possible evacuees moved to the homes of
relatives and close friends. Every attempt was made to
provide as normal a way of life as could be salvaged
from the chaos wrought both physically and emotionally
by the bomb.
The supply centers were rushed for food, shoes, cloth-
ing, sheets, blankets, cards, tags, toilet articles, and the
hundreds of other items peculiar to the needs of a dis-
rupted citizenry. When supplies were exhausted, wel-
fare groups canvassed from home to home, apartment
to apartment, collecting, sorting, and distributing. Fac-
tories and warehouses opened their doors to large trucks
which rushed the supplies within to their places of
need.
Life would not be denied this long night. Twenty-
two babies were born.
Nineteen lived.
Not all welfare operations in the vast jungle of chaos
and confusion went off smoothly; there was inconven-
ience, and harassment, and bitterness and inefficiency.
Not all the homeless managed to find their way to
warm, emergency quarters. Many strayed through the


the long night - 198
night, cold, weary, haggard; before dawn, large num-
bers of these unfortunates succumbed to the lash of
wind and freezing temperature.
On the edge of Harrington stood an old frame build-
ing, an ancient elementary school which had seen its
best days many decades before. The aged boards sagged
in a tired warp, yielding before the relentless wind
which raced to the beckoning firestorm. Dilapidated
shutters banged noisily, and tendrils of icy air slipped
by the boarded window frames.
Tonight the relic was a haven, a sheltering oasis in a
desert of biting cold and wind. The musty structure
had been discovered by a band of desperate survivors,
numb with shock, cold, and terror. They tore open the
door and stumbled in a weary surge into the building.
For even this tired conglomeration of twisted wood
was protection against the outside.
The stunned people discovered two dusty iron stoves
in the center of the room. A few, clinging to their
senses, collected wood and started fires within each
stove. The updraft was badly clogged, and much of the
smoke failed to rise from the building, but instead fil-
tered in a thickening haze into the single large room.
It was cold, and it was uncomfortable. It also was
endurable. The building rustled with the people
sprawled on the floor in haphazard groupings. More
and more people fleeing the city sighted the weary
structure and the flickering light within, and also sought


the long night : 199
reprieve from the cold.
Tossing fitfully on the floor, resting, or fortunately
asleep were two hundred and eighty persons, of all
ages. There was no toilet. The plumbing had long since
been ripped from the abandoned school. And there were
two hundred and eighty people whose bodies must
function notwithstanding atomic warfare, wind, or cold.
Someone, searching the dusty storage room, discov-
ered twelve rusty coal scuttles.
Nearly three hundred people. Twelve coal scuttles!
All through the night they huddled together. Two
hundred and eighty people, reduced by their fright and
terror almost to animal state, clustered in pitiful groups
for meager warmth, barely whimpering aloud, crying,
choking on smoke.
All through this longest of nights they cowered on
the floor. They were lost. They had given up.


|4
;
HEAvy TRAFFIC forced him from the road to the littered
sidewalk. Previously John had moved without inter-
ference on the streets; now, a steady stream of vehicles
ground their way back and forth along the avenue he
traveled to reach the center.
Only a few more blocks. John moved quickly over
the rubble, confident that his search soon would be
successfully concluded. He knew that Sue would be
there; it was the only remaining place to which she
could have been evacuated.
He glanced at his watch. Ten after five! It was al-
most daylight; he hadn't realized that he had spent
nearly eight hours in his search.
Things on the avenue were-well, different. No
longer did he encounter the terror-stricken refugees
fleeing as a mob from encroaching fires. The majority of
vehicles passing him moved into, not away, from the
city. There seemed to be organization instead of the
200


the long night - 201
former chaos. Men shouted orders, appeared to be work-
ing in organized groups.
The hospital! The big white dome rose sharply above
the wreckage of surrounding buildings. Floodlights il-
luminated the structure so that it stood out clearly
through the shifting smoke, a beacon for the injured, a
shaft of light tinted red by the distant firestorm. Still
the latter thundered into the air, crimson, looming high
above the city. But it was several miles distant, and
John felt only the strong wind still racing in to answer
the vacuum's call of the storm's center.
He crossed the avenue. Several hundred men and
dozens of vehicles in a mass road-clearing project
blocked one side of the avenue, hacking away at heavy
debris. Shovels and picks clanged against brick and
asphalt; the ground shook from the clanking treads of
bulldozers and power shovels.
He worked his way through the edge of the crowd,
moving toward the hospital entrance. In just another
few minutes he . . .
“Hey! Hey you, over there!”
John turned; a policeman waved his arm, beckoning
at somebody near him. He kept walking.
“Hey! Can't you hear? You, in the green jacket!”
It was he. What could the cop want from him? He
stopped, turned around. The officer walked up, stopped
before John.
“Where you going?”


the long night 203
and now no message. Lissen mister, what are you trying
to give me? Now let's have the truth, what are you
doing here, and where are you going?”
“I told you,” John insisted stubbornly, “I was going
to the City Center Hospital. That is,” he added sourly,
“until you came along with all your questions.”
Another officer joined them. “What's going on, Bob?”
he queried.
“This guy is giving me a cock-and-bull story about
being a CD messenger,” replied the first policeman.
“First, he ain't got any armband or ID card; then he
can't produce the message. Says he lost it. It's a line.
He's no CD messenger, just a goof-off.”
The two policemen stared belligerently at him. “All
right,” one said, “you were asked what you were doing
out here. You ain't no CD messenger. You know it and
we know it. You're a liar. I don't know why and I don't
care why. But we got use for bodies. And mister, you're
going to work. Right now,” he added for emphasis.
“What do you mean, I’m going to work?” John asked,
apprehensive of his tone.
“Just what I said. There's a lot of road-clearing to do,
and they need people to carry fire hoses. Lots of other
things, too.” He looked at John in disgust. “While every-
body else is breaking their backs, people like you run
around, not doing a damned thing. Well, mister, you're
coming with us. You're going into a labor battalion.”
They couldn't do this to him! Not now, not after all


the long night - 204
his trouble tonight! Oh no, he couldn't let them! He
had to get to Sue! He was so closel
He wasn't going into any labor battalion, not if he
could help it, he wasn't! Abruptly he turned and
ducked, started to run. Hardly had he spun about when
an arm whirled him around and something struck him
with terrific force in the face. One of the policemen
had grabbed him with lightning speed, slammed his
open palm across John's face. The stinging blow
brought tears to his eyes.
The cop jerked him roughly to his feet. “That really
wraps it up, mister,” he snarled, “you been lying all the
time, and this proves it.” He shook John like a limp rag.
“You try and take off like that again, you bastard, and
I'll stitch your back with a couple of slugs!”
Holding John's arm, he led him to a truck which
served as impromptu headquarters for the gang of men
laboring in the street-clearing operation. “Hey, Mike,”
the officer called, this one's yours. Put 'em in the special
detail.” He shoved John roughly toward the foreman.
“And keep an eye on him; he likes to run.”
The foreman looked at him coldly as John rubbed
his hand across the face where he had been struck. The
blow and the rapid events dazed him. He was rudely
brought back to attention. “Okay, you,” the foreman
rasped, “take this shovel. You work with that crew right
over there.” He jerked his thumb toward a group of
men loading trucks with rubble from the street. “That's


the long night - 206
Dig it in.
Heave.
Push.
Look at the hospital; it's so closel
Digin.
Sue is in there.
Lift.
Digin.
Those two cops; goddamn them, they're still there,
watching.
Lift.
“C’mon, sonny boy, a little work won't hurt you; get
the lead out.”
“Go to hell!”
“Aw, Jim, you hurt the poor darling's feelings.”
To hell with him; to hell with them all.
Heave.
How; how can I get out of here; how can I get to the
hospital?
Push.
Dig.
“Okay! Hold it up! You men, hold it for a minutel
Let these trucks through!”
John straightened up, his back and arms aching from
the heavy shoveling. With the rest of the men he moved
out of the street. A big truck convoy approached them.
He watched a long line of ambulances and trucks
with large red crosses on their sides move past slowly,


the long night 207
easing their bulk carefully over the street. Inside the
trucks the injured braced themselves as they began
their long evacuation journey to hospitals in the sup-
port area, creating space for the other injured which
still poured into the hospitals.
In the ninth truck of the convoy, a truck which passed
within four feet of John Thompson, Sue Wilson lay
white-faced on a stretcher, bound for Harding Hos-
pital in Putnam County.
Four feet.
“Okay, okay, break it up! C'mon, get at it. Get those
shovels going!”
Push.
Digin.
Heave.
The two policemen watched.


the long night . 209
orange pall shrouded Harrington, deathlike in its
strangeness. The silence itself was stark. The men and
women still bending to their tasks after their ordeal by
fire through the city's nocturnal paroxysm were ex-
hausted, too spent in energy to engage in useless shout-
ing of words to one another. The voices of the humans
were mostly stilled. The silence was pierced only by the
staccato blasts of the bulldozers and heavy machinery.
Voices drifted occasionally from small groups in the
smoking ruins, but they were muted sounds, and the
words dealt only with the labor at hand.
The sun this morning rose clear and sharp over the
horizon, but was unseen within Harrington and could
not warm the city. The sphere of warm and radiant light
struggled against the swirling dust and fine ash which
had been torn from the earth. By the afternoon the
orange pall lightened to a yellow-grey murk, and the
trucks and machines toiled with bright headlights in a
shadowy world.
In the control center, removed from the city but also
covered with the drifting swarms of ash and dust,
Henry Thompson sat in a chair, exhausted, mentally
weary, still undergoing pangs of worry for the safety of
his family. In this concern he was not alone, for more
than half the control center staff either were unaware of
the fate which had befallen their families, or had dis-
covered to their sorrow that their loved ones had been
added to the casualty lists.


the long night - 210
A hand shook Thompson out of his half-sleep, half-
stupor. The distraught man looked up, saw the face of
Morris Goldblum, Colonel Buyers' operations chief.
Goldblum was smiling. “Hank, I've got some good news
for you.”
Thompson sat up abruptly, hope gleaming in his
eyes. “What . . . what is it, Morris?” he stammered,
“what is it?”
Goldblum's grin broadened. “Another welfare list
just came in by messenger. One of the girls told me
that she saw your young boy's name on the list. He's
being evacuated with a large group of children sep-
arated from their parents; we'll know exactly where by
tomorrow.”
“Donald's all right!” Thompson exclaimed, “he's all
right!” He shook his head, happily, slightly dazed over
this wonderful bit of news. Goldblum began to leave,
but Thompson jumped from his seat, grasping him by
the shoulder. “Morris, wait a moment,” he said. “I’ve
been pretty thoughtless. You've made me very happy
with the news about Donald, but . . . well, have you
. . . hell, Morris, is there any news on Rose and your
children?”
Goldblum was fairly bursting with joy; he struggled
to keep this joy hidden, knowing the grief held by so
many others in the control center who knew that their
families had been lost, or still waited anxiously to re-
ceive some news. “They're all right, Henry, they're all


the long night - 217
right,” he half-spoke, half whispered. A tear squeezed
past his eyelash and hung on his cheek. “I got word
about an hour ago; they were pulled from the house by
a rescue team.” He stopped for a moment, then, as an
afterthought, added, “Thank God for that cellar!”
“See you later, Henry,” he called as he left.
Thompson did not know yet, and he would not know
for at least another two days, that his daughter Terry
not only had survived the bombing in her school shel-
ter, but in her own right had become this past night an
adult. In the long hours and the horror of tending the
shattered bodies of the injured, young Terry had as-
sumed a mantle of responsibility most women never
know through their lives. She would still show the same
attractive face, the same laughing smile, but her eyes
would carry in their depths an awareness which comes
only with the experience of what she had done as a
doctor's aide.
Terry helped to treat hundreds of burns, gashes, frac-
tures, cuts, abrasions, and the other horrifying scars of
the bomb. She held dying children in her arms, sooth-
ing them as their life ebbed away. She forced down
the arms of screaming men and women, gibbering and
shrieking in their pain. And much too often, she waved
to the husky laborers to come and remove to the canvas-
covered mound behind the emergency hospital which
was her school the bodies of those who had succumbed.
Henry Thompson did not know what had befallen his


the long night - 212
older son as John pursued his girl who seemed to re-
main always just beyond his grasp. Newly shorn of the
veneer of hypocrisy which had marred his own par-
ticipation in Harrington's disaster organization, it was
better for the elder Thompson to remain unaware of
his son's selfish, single-minded quest.
Henry Thompson did not know of the fate which had
befallen his wife, who had become a corpse, mercifully
in an instant and without awareness of pain, that first
second of the bomb's searing life. He would not know
for many weeks, for her body, as a body, no longer
existed. Gradually, as the days went by, and her name
did not appear except on the list of the missing, Thomp-
son's hopes would dim. One day, as with many other
once-hopefuls, he would face the fact of her passing.
At that, Henry Thompson was extremely fortunate.
His children, the very purpose of his being, had sur-
vived.
Colonel Alfred Buyers, civil defense director of Har-
rington, upon whose shoulders had rested the awesome
responsibility of final decisions affecting tens of thou-
sands of lives, wiped the sweat from his forehead. He
thought of his wife, of her chances of survival, and
angrily forced the thoughts from his mind. He would
know soon enough, and he could not afford to clutter
his mind with these thoughts. Too many people still
depended upon his decisions.
It was time, he realized, to leave the control center


the long night - 214
peripheral road first. We'll work our way in from there.”
As an afterthought, “and don't be surprised at what you
see in the city. It's not the same Harrington any longer.
In fact,” he snorted, half to himself, “it never will be
the same Harrington!”
Several hours later the jeep came to a halt near West
Bleecker Street. Two heavy bulldozers and three large
bucket cranes snorted and thundered, gouging from the
ash-covered earth a great, long scar. Hundreds of men
labored among and around the machines. The sounds of
racing engines, creaking cables, of picks and shovels
were to be heard, but not the sounds of speech.
The silence of the humans was in itself almost un-
earthly. At one end of the long trench which steadily
deepened stood several men of God. Three chaplains—
a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew. Through the night
their words had comforted, soothed and, too frequently,
had witnessed in last rites the flight of human life. Each
had administered, en masse, to one and all, for the need
for spiritual consolation was so great that differences of
creed were necessarily ignored.
The chaplains now stood together, a small and iso-
lated group. None spoke a word. They waited.
In his several hours of inspecting civil defense opera-
tions in the city, Buyers often had stopped and talked
with the men and women under his command. Com-
forting words, encouragement, even, though it required


the long night - 215
effort, some humor where and when he thought it neces-
sary.
Now, before this sight which every minute became
more incredible, more unbelievable, Buyers stood apart,
not inclined to engage in conversation. The long eve-
ning, the sights he had witnessed in the city, had sub-
dued the tired old veteran. He leaned against the jeep,
the corporal at his side, and watched the scene before
him.
The scar within the earth assumed a more definite
form. Its dimensions became apparent as the cranes
scooped and the bulldozers gouged. The hundreds of
picks and shovels rose and fell, in a discordant, clanging
rhythm, plied by blistered and weary hands.
Beyond the trench waited a long line of trucks,
vehicles of a wide assortment, from small pickups to
great thirty-ton trailers. There was, however, one iden-
tifying, one common characteristic about these waiting
vehicles.
Within each truck rested the dead of Harrington,
with eyes open and eyes closed, with indecent mouth
caverns exposed to the dust, with limbs grotesque and
twisted, with faces in repose and frozen in agony, with
tattered clothes, with unmarked bodies, and with torn
flesh. Corpses all, waiting here for their final resting
place in the ever-lengthening scar being torn in the
earth.


the long night 216
The machines fought the yielding soil; the men la-
bored; the trucks and their cargoes waited.
The cranes stopped. The buckets were lashed into
place. Rocking and rolling, the ungainly monsters
ground their treads into the loosened soil and retreated
from the trench. The bulldozers followed, backing a
respectful distance from the long, deep hole. The opera-
tors stilled their grumbling Diesels, lit cigarettes or
drank scalding coffee and waited.
Into the trench went the men. The shovels dug,
lifted, and hurled their spadefuls of soil into the air,
over the trench lip, and onto the climbing mounds.
The trench was six feet deep along its edges. From
here the freshly uncovered soil descended gradually to
the center, seven and a half feet from the edge. Six
feet deep at the edge, fifteen feet wide.
Six hundred feet in length.
Beyond the waiting scar, another trench. And an
equal distance beyond that trench, another scar in the
earth, also six feet deep, fifteen feet wide, and six hun-
dred feet in length.
The men were finished. Clutching their shovels and
picks, they left the depths of the trench and walked
wearily to the immobile cranes and bulldozers.
There was a conference. The three chaplains were
joined by several doctors, and by other men and women
marked with armbands and helmets. The group talked,
looked as one at the trench, then to the waiting trucks.


the long night - 218
shuddering man away.
Someone whispers to a chaplain. The chaplain hur-
ries to the side of the man who has just discovered that
the bloated, disfigured body he was carrying to the
trench is his wife. . . .
“Under no conditions will burials be effected with-
out benefit of clergy.” That's what it says in the book.
Page 223 of the manual. It's in the regulations. In-
dividual services, however, are beyond the capacity of
the disaster organization. The bodies must be removed
from sight, at once, without delay.
Carry out the burial details as soon as identification
has been made. Bodies beyond identification will also
be disposed of without delay.
The first trench was filled. The bodies stretched, side
by side, in two rows, six feet within the earth, for six
hundred feet. The chaplains walked alongside the
trench, heads bowed, praying, doing what they, too,
must execute as duty.
The first bulldozer returned, the face of its driver
grim and determined. The steel blade crunched into
dirt, pushed soil and rocks forward, tumbling it into the
trench.
The funeral dirge was the blatting staccato of a
Diesel.
Then the men returned to the trench, filling com-
pletely its fawning emptiness.
The white-faced men began unloading the trucks at


I6
i
THE whistLE BLEw long and shrilly. John stretched his
arms back, soreness binding his muscles into tight knots
of pain. Five hours. Five hours of shoveling the heavy
debris into the trucks. For some time now nobody had
the energy left to pass wisecracks. The labor battalion
moved through their motions as if the men were in a
fog, a walking sleep. Their backs, arms, legs, their necks
throbbed with the dull burning ache of muscles long
unused and suddenly brought to demanding attention.
Several of the men had fallen out, too exhausted to
continue the difficult work. There were several, too,
who collapsed to the ground in sham fatigue. Sucking
in air, they ignored the protestations and exhortations
of the foreman to return to work. John paid little at-
tention to these scenes. His seething resentment and
his labors had lulled him into a stupor in which he
cared not at all for the pain or the tribulations of any
other person.
220


the long night - 221
He cursed the two law officers and the foreman with
equal vehemence. He had long accepted the futility of
attempting to slip away from the road gang while those
two damned policemen kept watch. He raged inwardly
at his treatment at their hands. They had taken ad-
vantage of him; supported by the supreme authority of
their revolvers they had forced him into this damned
labor group. He had been insulted, humiliated by their
obvious disgust. They didn't believe him, wouldn't be-
lieve that he was trying to get to the hospital. That it
was the most important thing in the world to him.
Damn them, passing themselves off as judge and jury.
Never did John Thompson accept their point of view;
not for a moment would he concede that he was a
shirker, that he had evaded his responsibility as an able-
bodied person whose strength the city required. All this
meant nothing to John. His obsession was Sue Wilson,
his determination to find his fiancée.
He did not consider that a restoration of communica-
tions lay in the speed with which labor gangs, such as
this one he had been forcibly impressed into, eliminated
from the streets the vehicle-choking bricks, mortar,
trees, and other rubble. Or that, unless these vital
traffic arteries were cleared, the city could not regain
its food distribution, medical evacuation, supply move-
ment, municipal power services . . . the ten thousand
and one vital needs prerequisite to maintaining the
health of the survivors, to re-establishing industry, to


the long night 222
returning to some semblance of a normal way of life.
He did not know; he did not understand; he did not
Care.
John Thompson was selfish. In this respect he hardly
stood alone. His preoccupation with his own direct
problem, his determined quest for his fiancée in the face
of the horror and suffering through which he waded,
was little different from the conduct of thousands of
others. There were men and women by the thousands
who attended to their own private hells, who scrabbled
in the wreckage of their homes not for loved ones, but
for trinkets imbued with sentimental, or perhaps, finan-
cial value. They dug and panted and cut their hands
for a . . . what shall it be, a brooch? a picture? a mink
stole? . . . while adults and children writhed in agony
as flames exploded their hair and skin because there
simply were not enough rescuers struggling to remove
tons of collapsed brick and timber.
The majority of these people were not deliberately
disdainful of the life-and-death struggle which sur-
rounded them. Their selfishness was in no respect a
repudiation of the agony or the need of others. They
simply did not feel the terrible responsibility which
was which should have been—theirs. They were as
insensitive to their ability to ease suffering, to save lives,
to achieve a far greater moral stature than their in-
trinsic self-preoccupation allowed, as the blind are to a
glorious sunset, as the deaf are to the crashing chords


the long night 223
of a symphony.
They were simply . ; : little people.
During his five hours of forced labor, five hours of
self-effected degradation, John awaited his opportunity
for successful flight. Finding Sue had become more
than an earnest desire; it had burst normal proportions
into an irrepressible mania.
The whistle blew again. John rested on the shovel,
waiting, “Okay, you men!” came the shouted orders,
“Time for a coffee break! Knock off and line up here at
this truck for coffee and sandwiches!”
He was hungry, but not so famished that he failed
to grasp the sudden opportunity. The two policemen
and the foreman received their own rations from the
Salvation Army truck with the other men. For the mo-
ment they ignored the malcontents recruited into the
labor battalion. Neither of the officers nor the foreman
paid any attention to John Thompson as an individual.
But with their attention diverted, their backs turned,
John slipped to the outside of the group of men as they
shuffled toward the truck for their food and a welcome
respite from their work. Dawn long had come, but the
daylight was a diffused and sickly illumination, choked
with drifting smoke and dust. John himself was barely
recognizable from the other men. The thick dust and
smoke lay heavily on his clothes and skin, his hair was
tousled and unkempt. He was filthy. Like the rest. He
was—to the policemen—no longer an individual, but


the long night - 225
would find the list of patients treated at the hospital.
Here, at least, he knew there would be such a list. The
problem was to get someone to allow him to study it
for Sue's name.
He looked around the room. Wait a moment . . .
over there, in the corner. Wasn't that—yes! “Alice!”
John called, “Alice!” He shouldered his way rudely past
the people in the room as the girl whose name he called
turned around. John stopped as she looked up in sur-
prise. He grasped her arm. “It’s me. Johnny.”
“John!” she gasped as recognition came. “Why,
y-your’re all cut up and bruised. Wha . . .”
“No, never mind me, Alice, I'm all right. Listen,” he
told her fervently, “you've got to help me. I’m trying to
find Sue. I'm pretty sure they evacuated her to this
hospital from one of the aid stations. I've been looking
for hours; can you help me?”
“Of course! I even saw Sue last night whe . . .”
“You saw her! H-how is she; tell me!”
“She was hurt pretty badly when they brought her
in here . . .”
“Now; how is she now?”
“Well, she was conscious when I saw her last. That
was just before they evacuated her with several hun-
dred other patients.”
“Where did they send her, is—is she going to be all
right? How bad is it?” he asked frantically.
“Take it easy, Johnny,” she told him. “Come out here.


the long night - 225
In the hallway, where we can talk."
Away from the milling crowd in the office, she began.
“They brought Sue in here a little after midnight; she
came in with a group from one of the forward aid sta-
tions. I found out about her being here when I was
making the rounds of the hospital, collecting the list
of patients' names. We collate them in the office.
"Anyway, I noticed her name on one of the lists. She
was in the second floor ward. I ran upstairs as quickly
as I could. When I found her she was still uncon-
scious."
She placed her hand on his arm. “You should know
the truth, John," she said softly. “The nurse told me that
she had a compound fracture of her left leg; he said it
had been broken in three places. Also that several ribs
were broken. Apparently a falling beam struck her
when her sister's house collapsed. It-it hurt her quite
badly.”
The shock appeared plainly on John's face. Alice
hastened to tell him the rest.
"It's not all bad, Johnny,” she added. “I asked one
of the nurses I know to tell me when Sue came out of
it. So I had the chance to talk to her. She was still
dazed, of course, but she recognized me right away.
She was able to talk, despite the fact that she felt a
great deal of pain,
"They had put her leg in a cast, and bandaged her
ribs. At least she could be moved. That means that she


the long night - 233
the countryside, no law, no order, no warmth, no
friendliness.
“Oh, they'll come back! Tired, cold, frightened,
ashamed that they ran like whipped dogs with their
tails tucked between their legs. They'll come back, to
grub in the wreckage of their homes, to hunt for a use-
less trinket, or an old picture of a loved one. They'll
come back, only we won't let them grub and dig in the
ground.”
He jabbed his finger in the direction of the quonsets.
“Take a good look, son,” he told the corporal. “Give 'em
a place to rest, to call home, and they'll stay when they
come back. Give them work to do . . . make them
work . . . feed them, send their kids to school.
“Because if we don’t, they'll grub like animals, live in
the wreckage of their homes like rats.
“This way, boy,” he was almost fervent now, “we’ll
keep this city from going all to pieces. No matter how
bad this city has been hurt, we'll give it the means to
live again.”
Even as the colonel and his singular audience
watched the machines and the men labor, utilities
crews carved their way into the earth and rock of Har-
rington. Water mains were checked, valves reopened,
pressure restored. Housewives showed pleased expres-
sions as the faucet taps gurgled, hissed with clearing
air, and poured sparkling liquid into the sinks.


the long night - 236
Fifty-six hours after the bombing the firestorm ebbed
out its fantastic life. The great flaming vortex, the
twisting, writhing pillar of flame was no more.
The area could not yet be approached. The disaster
teams were denied entrance to the five square miles
encompassed by the storm because of the searing heat
which radiated from the once-flaming furnace.
Forty-eight hours more passed. While the city re-
gained its strength and swung into frenzied reconstruc-
tion, the firestorm area cooled slowly and steadily. And
only then could the men return.
They returned to an incredible ash-covered stony
desert, still smouldering with heat and imprisoned
flame, horrifying and soul-searing with the naked walls
of gutted buildings jutting from the deep soot.
Dust and fine ash permeated everything, tossed by
gusts of wind into miniature storms, choking and blind-
ing the first exploratory crews.
This was a land not of earth! This savage five-square-
mile brand in the heart of Harrington was a sector of
Hell!
Above all, thick in the air, rose the nauseating, pesti-
lential stench of decaying corpses, borne on the heat
waves and smoke of still glowing structures. A stench
too incredible to describe, too sickening to remember.
Smoke and soot and heat and ash . . . the repellent,
gagging smell of the charred and rotting bodies.
This area, imprisoned more than four days by the


the long night 237
firestorm and its aftermath, was a gaunt skeleton, de-
cayed and corrupt, utterly devoid of any semblance of
life. Everything which could burn had disappeared.
There remained nothing to salvage.
The streets were strewn with corpses which in most
instances were burned and charred beyond all recogni-
tion; some were unclothed and, amazingly, appeared
unscathed. Others lay naked, strewn amid the ash, with
a waxen pallor like that of dummies in a shop window.
Other bodies were cramped and horribly bloated, the
skin curling and split, the faces bearing the ancient
skeletal grimaces. Others were peaceful as though
death had come during sleep.
They lay in every posture, in every corner, but all
were dead.
Tens of thousands of bodies finally were recovered,
but the exact number of deaths could not be deter-
mined. The destruction of the slum area of Harrington
was so thorough and so immense that of many people
literally nothing remained. From a soft stratum of ash
in the basement of one large building marked as an air
raid shelter, doctors could only estimate the dead at
three hundred and fifty to four hundred.
Some of these basements and shelters, upon being
opened, broke into cyclones of flame when the influx
of fresh oxygen met the heat captured within the shel-
ter. In these sealed tombs many bodies sat quietly,
peacefully, and untouched, killed without realization


the long night - 238
or pain by carbon monoxide poisoning. They were the
fortunate.
In other shelters, blackened skulls and gruesome
skeletons, body liquids and fats melted from the corpses
into the floors, shocked and nauseated the salvage
CIEWS.
Yet, despite the incredible expanse of the ash-covered
desert, the fire terror was done. The storm was now as
the bomb; relinquished to the past. Even here, where
men's stomachs turned and the smell of death hung
heavy in the air, the task was of clearance, burial, and
the initial steps of reconstruction.
Many of the survivors in hospitals would fail to over-
come the cumulative effects of multiple wounds, ir-
radiation, and loss of blood, and would add to the list
of dead which already had soared beyond the 180,000
mark. The list of names would each succeeding day
grow smaller, until the bomb would no longer claim
further victims.
Throughout the United States, however, the casualty
list ascended to the staggering, monstrous total of more
than fourteen million dead. Unprecedented devastation
stalked a land which had never, in all its blood-spat-
tered history of wars, suffered so gravely.
And still the death toll would gain. Many of the
charred wastelands which once had been proud cities
could no longer support the dazed survivors who stum-
bled in the smoking ruins or froze quietly in the open


the long night : 239
countryside, whither they had fled for “safety!" Hungry,
insane, hurt mobs of people turned into savages and
beset entire towns like an avalanche of the maddened.
The toll from the humans-turned-beasts added heavily
to America's wounds.
It was too late to rush into effective practice post-
attack emergency plans; too late to establish reliable
communications or cohesion of effort; too late to pluck
from non-existent storage depots the desperately
needed medicines, manpower, equipment, vehicles,
food, and other necessities of survival in an atomic
bomb-shattered metropolis.
In the five days succeeding the all-out aerial on-
slaught against these United States, more than half of
all those cities which had sustained the giant blow of
the atom were—as cities—no more. They simply ceased
to exist.
This was not so because the unleashing of atomic
violence obliterated from sight what had once been
great centers of population. As locations on a map, as
geographical realities, they were still there. Buildings
were in ruins, but the ruins were to be seen. Buildings
only slightly damaged remained where they had stood
for years before the bombs; the roads and highways
still led into, through, and from the cities.
Such centers, however, are not merely great con-
glomerations of wood, mortar, glass, brick, tar, and
steel; they are not merely traffic snarls and rushing


the long night - 240
trains. A city's life or its death, is not measured in the
height of its buildings or the miles of its paved streets.
The reality of a city is not to be found in the number
of its telephones or buses or department stores.
A city is its people. Untouched by the bomb, de-
prived of its throbbing life in the form of its citizenry
who have fled panic-stricken from its streets, it is no
longer a city. It is simply a magnificent junk pile; a
mountain of useless, jumbled concrete; a wilderness of
tar in alignment; a wasteland of glass.
A city alive is a city whose people remain within
their metropolis, who work and produce. It matters not
whether that city has been shattered by the atom. It is
immaterial if every last stone has been upended; if its
inhabitants are determined to pluck from the ashes of
their wreckage new means of sustaining community life,
then that city will live.
Because of the atomic bomb's incredible capacity for
destruction, no city can hope to sustain itself after an
attack without assistance. Plans must be made; the
means must be available to supply that assistance when
and where it is most needed, in the shortest possible
time.
This Harrington had done, through its civil defense
organization. The organization was faulty, often in-
efficient and at times inadequate to meet the task at
hand. Political corruption nibbled at its fringes. If noth-
ing else, however, it was an organization in being, pre-