company: Ace Books, Inc.
number: D-530
year: 1961
length: 128 p.
writer: Robert Moore Williams
cover art: Uncredited
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After last week’s venture with Roger Moore Williams’ science fiction disasterpiece The Second Atlantis, as fine an example of lazy pay-the-bills fiction as can be had, I’m not ashamed to say that I was craving more and, being the type who picks up well-worn genre offerings by virtue of their titles alone, I found myself lucky enough to already have another of the author’s works sitting as yet unread on my overstuffed bookshelf.  Contrary to recent experience and much to my surprise Williams’ 1961 novella The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles proved to be a competent piece of work, offering up more than enough thrills and chills to keep the reader invested for the swift 128 page haul.

BROOOOMMMMM!  BOOOOONG!  BROOOOOMMMM!  (p. 7)

Starting off with a literal bang, The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles begins with salesman and ex-marine Tom Watkins rushing to a Civil Defense shelter just in time to avoid the unseemly effects of the event foretold in the title – a multiple hydrogen-bombing of the Los Angeles basin.  In the shelter he joins forces with a movie star, a doctor’s secretary and an F.B.I. agent, among others.  Questions quickly arise as to just who bombed the city . . . the Russians? . . . the Chinese?  The revelations of agent Kissel, previously engaged in a mass operation to locate an undisclosed menace to the nation’s security, soon shift the blame to none other than the American government, an accusation that is only bolstered when Tom and the other survivors are stopped in their attempted flight by soldiers ordered to shoot to kill.

Secretary Cissie soon leads the group to more appetizing quarters in the officeplex of her employer, Doctor Homer Smith.  Though an M.D., Smith’s real interest lies in biochemistry, and it is quickly revealed that he, too, was working to find the mysterious menace alluded to by agent Kissel, a menace that seems to have something to do with the sea and strange gray foam that had recently washed ashore.  Meanwhile, strange things are happening in the ruins of Los Angeles.  Screams and unearthly howls are heard in the night while brutally cannibalized corpses are discovered at daybreak, bloody evidence of the unseen horror taking place.  It isn’t long before the source of the troubles is revealed…

The men who had been using the telephone pole as a battering ram caught sight of the three men … They began to run.  Stooped, their gait was a lumbering trot … “Stand back!” Tom yelled, waving his rifle.  The zombies howled at him and kept coming.  (p. 57)

That’s right, folks: zombies!  While not the undead variation Romero would popularize a few years down the road, these afflicted un-humans present with much the same crude behavior, attacking people with whatever is handy and even eating some of their victims.  Here the similarities end, however.  Through his diligent scientific labors Dr. Smith is able to locate the cause of the zombie affliction – a mutated protein molecule, possibly the bi-product of atomic testing in the Pacific, with the ability to infect and control a human host.  The stooped, animal-phase of zombism is just a start, with the protein eventually gaining access to the entirety of its host’s mental faculties, memories and all!

Urania #282 featuring the story, with exceptional cover art by Ferenc Pinter.

It isn’t long before Tom and company realize that the howling beasts outside are organizing into an army, its leader a sultry ‘tiger-woman’ with strategic smarts and a knack for gunplay.  The human survivors are soon faced with wave after wave of zombie attack, each more brazen than the last, with the sound of far-away gunfire hinting at an awful truth: the zombies are armed!  But the increased opposition beyond Dr. Smith’s office walls is not the only threat to our heroes’ survival, and suspicions are soon swirling that some of the survivors may themselves be infected…

While hampered by a bit by its contrived narrative, Williams’ The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles is a marked improvement over the convoluted silliness of The Second Atlantis.  The biggest problem of that story, it’s multitude of characters and their unimportance to the story, is remedied here.  Characterizations are simple, even stereotypical (a batty old scientist, a grizzled sailor, even a pair of old Tennessee mountain-people), but an individual’s importance to the overall progression of things is never in question.  A romantic arc between secretary Cissie and ex-marine Tom is nicely composed if as predictable as they come, leaving little doubt as to how things will turn out after the dastardly molecule puts Cissie in its sights.

The horror, too, is handled with some authority.  Moments in which the survivors are gathered on the darkened roof of the office building while night-time howls echo about them have genuine chill factor, while the mystery around the zombies and their capabilities generates twinges of suspense.  There are even attempts at Invasion of the Body Snatchers-type loss-of-humanity paranoia.  Dulling the effect is Williams’ tendency to telegraph plot developments well in advance, as in the identities of the undercover zombies in our survivors’ ranks.  While I’ll not spoil that surprise here, just who the bad guys are is obvious almost from the beginning.

Pushed to the background of proceedings are the opening H-bomb attacks, which act as a catalyst for the monster narrative but little else.  In the tradition of Aldiss’ ‘cosy catastrophe’, our survivors are never bothered by lingering radiation (conveniently washed away by the bomb-induced rain) or contaminated food stuffs, and they take to toting guns and foraging for the necessities like it were second nature.  Nor is the source of the attacks ever explored more fully, and government’s complicity in the deaths of millions is neatly forgotten by the time the feel-good conclusion arrives.

Back cover to the Ace Books paperback, D-530.

Another potentially interesting element is likewise avoided.  Dr. Smith’s speculations indicate that the zombie protein may well be an after effect of the testing of atomic weapons in the Pacific, from whence it came.  It doesn’t take much to imagine the complications that might arise should those same weapons be utilized in an effort to destroy the molecule (nevermind that the H-bomb attacks were ordered before the nature of the menace was actually discovered!).  Even a The Giant Behemoth-style ending, perhaps with a report of zombie activity coming from further up the Pacific Coast, would have been appreciated, but I digress.

While reading The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles I was struck by the idea that, with a bit of re-writing, it could have been adapted into a fine genre film.  Alas, it was not to be.  By the time Williams’ story premiered the ship had more or less sailed on such films in the United States.  The story itself is still a fun read, and short enough that its literary deficiencies (like Williams’ criminal overuse of metaphor) don’t detract from the experience.  Translated and reprinted in the Italian science fiction periodical Urania in 1962, the book has yet to see a reprint in the United States.  That said, the half-century old Ace Books paperback (number D-530) is still easy enough to come by in used book shops and online, and I don’t think I paid more than $4 for my copy (cover price, $0.35 – those were the days…).  The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles makes for a nice companion piece to the atomic monster craze of the latter ’50s and reads as a preface to modern survival horrors like The Crazies.  Recommended.