Lucifer's Hammer

Through the drizzle there was a blur of light. It had to be a campfire, somebody’s campfire, glowing beside the shoreline to the north.

“I see better than you,” Jackie said, “so maybe you don’t see that it’s two fires. Two. How many people does it take before it’s worth making two fires?”

“A lot. Think they saw ours?”

“New. Nobody’s come up this way. And they don’t give a shit whether somebody sees them or not. Think about that.”

Power. That group didn’t have to hide. It had power. “A posse? After us? Naw, we haven’t gone north of here, nobody up that way has any reason to be after us.”

“Maybe this’ll take Chick’s mind off killin’ me,” Jackie said.

“How you go

“I had to keep watch. And nobody’s come up here. I watched.”

He’d been scared of Chick. “All right You stay here. You watch. I’ll send Gay back with the binoculars.”

In gray morning light Jackie came down the south side of the hill. Alim already had his people up and their gear stowed, and the brothers stood around waiting with guns uncomfortable in their hands.

Jackie went first to Chick and Cassie. Alim didn’t hear what they said, but Chick had a shotgun in his hand, and he didn’t use it. Then Jackie turned aside and came to report.

“They’re up. And they’re organized. Fifty, sixty, maybe more. Maybe a lot more, they don’t all get to one place at once. There’s women, and a honky that’s half rabbit and he’s wearing what’s left of a business suit and a tie. The rest is Army.”

Jackie waited for that to sink in.

“Army? Aw, shit,” Alim Nassor said.

“Fu

Alim frowned. Jackie went on: “They got more than the rifles, Alim. They got machine guns, and things like stovepipes—”

“Bazookas,” Alim said.

“Yeah. And a thing about as big as a ca

Alim digested that. It meant this group had to have come from the east, since they’d never seen them before. They certainly hadn’t come from the west, out of the lake that covered the San Joaquin.

“Maybe we better follow them,” Swan said. He’d been listening. “They sound like tough mothers.”

“And everything’s picked clean before we get to it,” Alim said. He didn’t want to say much. He didn’t know what to do; it would be better to hear what the others thought before he said anything at all. “I best go up there and have a look.”

He left Swan in charge, with instructions on where to run if the Army outfit moved toward them, and let Jackie lead him up the hill. Shit, he thought he’d had troubles before! Just what he always wanted, to go up against Army guns with a dozen Saturday-night specials and some shotguns. “Now we know,” he said. Jackie looked at him. “Why everybody been hidin’,” Alim said.

No food anywhere. Two days ago they’d taken a raft out to a half-sunken supermarket, and it was already looted. All they could find was weird stuff like ca

It was getting lighter when he reached the top of the hill. Jackie motioned and Alim went to his belly and crawled forward through the bushes until he found Gay. Alim’s fur coat was covered with mud from crawling, but those Army guys had to have binoculars too, and they had to be keeping watch or they wouldn’t have lived this long.

The stranger camp was more than a mile away, right down by the shore. There were foxholes and low fortifications around it. Organized. It looked organized. And there were a lot of people, and they sat around fires they didn’t bother to hide, and they had food. Alim counted seven women.

“The women do most of the work,” Gay said. “Them and the rabbit stud in the blue suit. And a lot of them are white, but I counted ten blood, and one’s the sergeant.”

“The sergeant.” Alim digested this, too. “And they do what he tells ’em?”

“They jump when he waves his arms,” Gay said.

“Officers?”

“None I saw. I think the sergeant’s in charge.”

“They done it. Alim, they made it,” Jackie said. “Shit. They really did.”

Alim didn’t say anything. Jackie would explain. After a moment he did. “What we were talking about last night,” Jackie said. His voice was full of excitement. “Not black power, just power. And there’s a lot of ’em, Alim.”

“Not all that many.”

“Maybe they want recruits,” Jackie said.

“You crazy?” Gay snorted. “Join the fuckin’ Army?”

“Shut up.” Alim continued to study the camp through the binoculars. There was orderly activity down there. Garbage carried outside the camp and dumped into holes. Sentries and outposts. Tubs of water over the fire, and everybody washed out their mess kits in hot water. That camp was run like an army, but there was something wrong. It wasn’t all the same, something just wasn’t the way it ought to be.

“Alim, they got what we want,” Jackie said. “Power. Enough guns to do whatever they want. We could join up with them, we could hold anyplace we wanted. Shit, we could do better. That many people, we could take over this whole goddam valley, shit, keep growing, keep recruitin’, we could own the whole fucking state.”

“You been sniffing?” Gay asked.

“Shut up,” Alim said again, and he said it so they knew he meant it. The quick silence was gratifying. Power. And that was the problem: How could Alim Nassor have power if they joined up with that army? “They don’t have no wheels at all?”

“A bike. Big Honda. It went scouting north with two on it. One blood, one honky.”

“In uniform?”

“The honky had on overalls,” Gay said. His tone made it clear he didn’t know what was going on, and didn’t know why Alim wanted to know, either.

“No wheels. We got a truck, and we know where there’s some wheels,” Alim muttered. A farmhouse back down the road. Three trucks, guarded by ten to fifteen men with rifles. Alim had no chance to take it, but this outfit — he shushed the others as the sergeant came into view. Blood all right, a big mother, not all black. Light brown, with a beard. Beard? In the Army? The sergeant wore chevrons, though, and a big pistol on his belt, and he was pointing to people and when he did they got up and did things, brought wood for the fires, washed cooking pots. He wasn’t shouting and he didn’t have to wave his arms and scream. Power. That man had power, and he knew how to use it. Alim studied him closely. Then he looked up and gri

“That’s the Hook.”

Gay said, “Huh?” Jackie began to grin.

“It’s the Hook.” Alim treated himself to a whistling sigh of relief. “I know him. We can deal.”

It would take setting up. Alim had to talk to the Hook as an equal, as a commander of men. They had to talk as two men with power. He couldn’t let Hooker know just how bad things were. Alim left Jackie on the hill and went back down to camp. Time to do some shouting and screaming. Time to get those bastards to work.

By noon his camp was organized. It looked good, and it looked like there were more of them than they were. He took Jackie and his brother Harold and went toward the Army camp.

“Shit, I’m scared,” Harold said as they walked toward the shoreline.

“Scared of the Hook?”

“He beat the shit out of me once,” Harold said. “Back in ninth grade.”

“Yeah, and you had it comin’,” Alim said. “Okay, they’ve seen us. Harold, you go in. Leave the rifle here. Go in, hands up, and tell Sergeant Hooker I want to talk to him. And be nice to him, you know? Respectful.”

“You can bet your ass on that,” Harold said. He straightened and walked tall, hands out where they could see they were empty. He tried to whistle.