Footfall

Sarge Harris pulled out a big bandana and wiped his face. “Thai the last of it.”

“Good,” Ken Dutton said. He went over to the pool edge inspect. Sarge and his crew had shoveled the last of the mud out “Let’s hope the new wall holds.”

Sarge laughed. “It will.”

“But—”

“Come on! It’s a good wall. So was the old one. It just wasn’t designed to live through a giant meteoroid impact.”

Patsy Clevenger looked up from the pool bottom where she been scooping the last of the mud into a bucket. “The dinosaur weren’t either. Ken, we’re lucky the house didn’t slide down the hill.”

“You’re right there.”

Footfall had triggered earthquakes. Houses fell, freeway over passes collapsed. Power lines went down. Ken Dutton had heard it was much worse in San Francisco and through Northern California. In Los Angeles the quakes had merely been a

The encampment across the street was growing. Part of the golf course was covered with aluminum-framed plastic greet houses filled with young tomatoes and beans. Chickens clucked in the pens he’d built in what had been his neighbor’s cabana.

Patsy climbed out of the pool where she’d been working. “Lot of all you survey,” she said.

“Something like that,” Ken admitted.

“You love it,” she accused.

“That’s not fair—”

“I don’t mind,” Patsy said. “I didn’t used to like you very much. You tried everything and weren’t very good at anything Now-now it’s like you found what you do best. I’m glad some body can cope.”

“Thanks, but I’m hardly the only one. I hear about people all over the valley. Greenhouses, cornfields-one chap came by the other day hoping to borrow an olive press. I never thought of that one. There are lots of olive trees in Los Angeles.” Ken looked up at the sky. It was partly overcast, but there were patches of blue

Los Angeles was supposed to be a desert. One day it might be again. Nobody really knew. “Anyway, we have another place to store water. Come on in, I’ll spring for coffee.”

“Real coffee?” Sarge asked. “Why not?”

“Damn, I’m for that!”

The sink worked fine, now that Sarge had rigged up pipes. They’d have ru

Ken watched Cora carefully measure out water into the kettle.

“Coffee,” Sarge Harris said wistfully. “I think I miss not having morning coffee more’n anything. Sure wish we could have another Stove Soup Party—”

“I already put out the invitations,” Ken said. “The next time there’s enough sunshine. Or if the gas comes back on.”

Cora carefully lit the bottled gas stove. “Which it won’t. I keep hoping we can save up, get a bottle or two ahead, but we can’t, not with all those kids to cook for.”

“It works out,” Sarge said. “Or has so far.”

“Just barely,” Ken said. Cora was watching the kettle, ready to turn it off the second it was hot enough. She didn’t look up. Ken felt relieved. Cora was the only one who knew how well he’d done by taking in city orphans. It hadn’t been as much trouble as he’d thought, with Sarge and his wife to help. They put the kids into two empty neighboring houses, and Sarge got them organized like a military outfit with their own leaders and everything. Ken hardly saw them.

And it had paid off nicely. Not only were there enough ration coupons and gas bottles to trade for a few luxuries, but everybody knew about the kids and his increased ration tickets, so the local ration wardens didn’t come searching his place. Hoarders weren’t highly regarded…

Ken had known food would be scarce. But who’d have thought that heat to cook it with would be the hardest thing to come by? No sun!

Cora was just begi

They took the coffee into the front room. Anthony Graves was in his usual place by the big front windows. They faced southeast and got just enough sun to grow tomatoes in pots if somebody would spend enough time taking care of them. Graves was glad to do it. There wasn’t a lot else for somebody his age.

Randy Conant was there, too.

Sarge gave Anthony Graves a quarter cup of his coffee. Ht liked Graves. He carefully ignored Randy Conant. “Get much written, sir?”

“Some,” Graves said. He gri

“I think it’s great,” Sarge said.

Randy Conant mumbled something.

“What?” Cora asked.

“I said it was shit.”

“Enough, Sarge,” Ken said. Sarge Harris hadn’t moved, but his face told it all. “Randy, why don’t you go turn over the compost heap?”

“Fuck all, let somebody else do some of the work!”

“Sarge, I said that’ll do! Randy, we all work. Now get going before I forget you’re my sister’s kid—”

“Don’t do me any favors, Uncle Ken.”

“Maybe I’ll take that advice.”

“Whew,” Patsy said. “It gets thick—”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Randy said. “I get upset, that’s all. All this work, and what for?”

“What for?” Sarge demanded.

“Yeah, what for? We’re go

“Peace in our time.’ Thank you, Neville Chamberlain,” Graves chuckled.

“You’re go

“Sure. Have another. ‘Some folks win by wi

“There’s a lot of people think like I do!”

“Bullshit!”

“Sarge, you won’t hear it,” Patsy said. “But he’s right. I hear them down at the market. Nice people. They just want things the way they were before the war started.”

“That’s what they won’t get,” Graves said. “Whatever else, they won’t have that. Look what happened after World War II. Everything changes after a war. Win or lose.”

“It’ll be worse if we lose,” Sarge insisted.

“Sure. People don’t tame very well.”

“I don’t want us to surrender,” Cora said. “But-well, would it be so awful? That congressman, Dawson, he said they’ll let us live under our own laws, live the way we always said we want to—”

Monogamously. You’d like that. Ken thought.

“That’s what the commies always said!” Sarge shouted.

“True enough,” Graves said.

“I’d rather have them than snouts,” Patsy said.

“What difference does it make, what you’d rather have?” Randy demanded. “Nothing we do makes any difference! They’re up there and we can’t hurt them!”

“The Army’s doing something.” Sarge was positive.

“What? Just what can they do?”

“I don’t know, but they’re doing something. You heard the President! He sounded good, confident—”

“And you really believe in politicians. I mean, you really trust them! Hell, you hate President Coffey!”

“A lot of people hated Roosevelt,” Graves said. “A lot more than you’d think. But he won the war.”

“It’s different now,” Randy said. “Don’t you see, it’s different. If there was something we could do, some way we could fight, but there’s nothing, we just sit here and let them drop rocks on us, nothing we can do, and they’ll get bigger and bigger. They’ll kill us all and we can’t do anything about it.” He laughed. “Shit, we sure can’t do anything. We can’t even surrender.”

“We can hang on,” Graves said. “Stay alive and be ready to