Dean Owen - End of the World [Panic in Year Zero]

[dem bones]

Panic in Year Zero!

Dean Owen - End of the World (Ace, 1962)

Blurb:
When the H-bombs struck America, they wiped out not only the cities but law and order and inhibitions. The few who survived were faced with a fierce fight for SURVIVAL.
For Harry Baldwin, survival meant responsibility he had never known.
For his wife Ann, it meant a new kind of fear.
For his son Rick, it meant strange prey for his new rifle.
For his daughter Karen, it meant shock, terror – and rape.
And for too many others, survival meant the beginning of an open season on plunder, murder, and assault – as civilization had ceased to exist!

END OF THE WORLD could be the story of you and your family - if disaster strikes.

First the bad news. Dean Owen, the man who outrageously sexed up Reptilicus, has been on his best behaviour throughout these opening chapters. Maybe the solemnity of the occasion got to him.

Good news. Dean hits the ground running, get's his job done inside a quick fire 120+ pages.

Harry Baldwin, 43, head of purchasing at Tillman Machine Tools, where he's worked this past fifteen years, on a weeks camping trip in Southern California with wife Ann, kids Rick, eighteen, and Karen, "at sixteen her life somehow seemed pointless" (and that's before much of North America is wiped off the map). As they head for home, the sky whites out three times in quick succession. "That wasn't lightening." The radio cuts out.

"In the distance the yellow sun clearly outlined the umbrella of mushroom clouds with the unmistakable atomic columns rising in the sky."

So this is it. A nuclear strike.

Ann is insistent they press on to the city regardless to check on her mother. Harry bites his lip. He pulls in at Al's services for gas where he learns from a fellow motorist that LA has been obliterated. Al is delighted. Time for a price hike and if some folk can't pay, that ain't his problem. It's the same at Herb's Hideaway (Truckers Welcome) and every other damn place. They've all been bitten by the Free Enterprise bug. "If you don't like it, report me to the Better Business Bureau." Leaving the highway, Harry has better luck at a mountain village, stocking up on supplies, guns and ammo, enough to keep the family going for the immediate future, though he resorts to intimidation to procure a rifle from Ed Johnson's hardware store. It's every man for himself. When the proprietor of Craven's Super Service demands $3 a gallon for gas, Harry punches him out, fills up the Sedan and the spare cans.

The Baldwins are now better prepared than most. They've their trailer, petrol, food and weaponry.

The trick is holding onto them.

To be continued ....

[kooshmeister]

Apr 3, 2020 17:14:09 GMT dem bones said:

I see Harry (I assume that's Harry Baldwin) took the same firearm training class as Bill Carey:



"How do I use this gun again...?"

I kid, I kid. There's many reasons to use the rifle as a blunt object.

[dem bones]

"When civilization gets civilized again, I'll rejoin."

Harry is resolved to reach the Shibes Meadow camp-site and ain't nothing going to stand in his way, certainly not a ten-strong posse of armed mountain men barricading the road. "We don't figure to let any of you L.A. people into our town" explains their spokesman, and who can blame them after city folk smashed up the drug store and half killed its owner? Harry drives the caravan straight through the improvised barrier in a hail of rocks and bullets.

No sooner have they cleared the town than more trouble arrives driving a beat up Chevy. Carl, Mickey and Andy, three young punks, the former high on narcotics, the two brothers drunk, all of them intent on rape and violence. Harry, taken off guard, is relieved of rifle and empty wallet. "Somebody dropped a bomb, Dad. Crazy kick, hey?" They want to know if there are any women in the trailer and "if he does have a dame in there, we'll make him watch." Rick, firing from the back window, blasts Mickey, the dumbest of the three, in the shoulder; had it not been for Mom deliberately jogging his arm, he'd have shot the bastard dead. Harry retrieves his firearm and fixes it on Carl. Against his better judgement, he lets the hoodlums live. Round one to the Baldwins, but will Dad's leniency come back to haunt them?

They reach Shibes Meadow. Harry doesn't like that other folk are camped here. Rick remembers a cave up in the mountain ...

[dem bones]

"Hell, this ain't the end of the world like some claim" Andy said with a vicious smile, "This is just the beginning of the kind of world I like. I ain't never had so much fun."

Harry, who is really getting into this "every man for himself" kick, destroys a bridge to prevent others from reaching the cave via the highway. Imagine his fury on learning that another party has set up home in a neighbouring farmhouse. Of all the selfish bastards! How dare they attempt to survive the catastrophe and ruin his family's chances? To make matters worse, Ed Johnson from the hardware store shows up with his wife, seeking revenge. Rick again pulls a rifle on the mountain man who is mightily fed up with Harry taking his guns for free. They agree to a truce when Harry hands back Johnson's pistol and lets him keep the camper van. Ed, for his part, alerts Harry that the squatters at the farmhouse spend their every hour getting high, playing god-damn degenerate rock 'n roll music, and shooting guns. They could be trouble.

When Harry next pays his new pal a visit, Ed he is lying dead on the trailer floor with a bullet in his head. His wife's corpse is sprawled on the bed. "She had been raped, that much was evident. Either while she lived or after she was dead."

While Harry and Rick bury the Johnsons, Andy and the cretinous Mickey surprise Karen as she's sat by the river, reading a film magazine, attempting to land trout. They take it in turns ....

Harry and son storm the farmhouse, open fire on the brothers as they guffaw over the women they've recently worked over. Harry blasts the pair all over the room. A scraping from upstairs. Mindful that the junkie Carl is unaccounted for, they creep up into a bedroom. A teenage girl cringes in her slip. Her name is Marilyn. Carl and the brothers murdered her family. They've been using her as their sex slave ever since.

A radio announcement. America have agreed a truce with the enemy on her own terms. Soon it will be safe for the Baldwins to return home.

If Carl doesn't kill them first.

Mr. Owen makes a decent job of this one. The mood throughout is appropriately grim and the nastiest bits - the rapes - while underplayed (the Laymon-size breast fixation of Reptilicus is nowhere in evidence), are nasty indeed.

Last word to Dr. Powell Strong (a man of "grisly glibness" according to Harry, who is not wrong): "Keep your gun handy. Country's still full of murdering, thieving patriots."