Lucifer's Hammer

In the supermarket there were half-empty shelves, and the water floated with corncobs and empty bottles and orange rinds and half-used loaves of bagged bread. They had not died hungry… but they had died, for their corpses floated everywhere in the supermarket and in the flooded parking lot. Scores of bodies. Most were women, but there were men and children, too, bobbing gently among the submerged cars.

“Are you…” Rick whispered. He bowed his head and cleared his throat and shrieked, “Are you all crazy?” They turned, shocked and angry. “If you want to see corpses, look around you! Here,” his hand brushed a stained and rotting flowered dress, “and there,” pointing to a child close enough for Deke to touch, “and there,” to a slack face behind the windshield of the yolks bus itself. “Can you look anywhere without seeing somebody dead? Why are you crowding like jackals around a dead kangaroo?”

“You shut up! Shut up!” Kevin Murray’s fists were balled at his sides, the knuckles white; but he didn’t move, and presently he looked away, and so did the others.

All but Jacob Vinge. His voice held a tremor. “We got used to it. We just got used to it. We had to, goddamm it!”

The current shifted slightly. The kangaroo, if that was what it was, washed around the edge of the bus and began to move away.

The Jeep Wagoneer had once been bright orange with white trim, a luxury station wagon that only incidentally had fourwheel drive and off-road tires. Now it was splashed with brown and green paint in a camouflage pattern. Two men in Army uniform sat in the front seat, rifles held erect between their knees.

Alim Nassor and Sergeant Hooker sat in back. There was little conversation as the car wound through muddy fields and ruined almond groves. When it reached the encampment, sentries saluted, and as the Wagoneer came to a stop the driver and guards jumped out to open the rear doors. Alim nodded thanks to the driver. Hooker did not seem to notice the men. Nassor and Hooker went to a tent at one side of the camp. It was a new tent from a sporting-goods store, green nylon stretched over aluminum poles, and it did not leak. A charcoal hibachi inside kept it warm and dry. A kettle bubbled over the charcoal, and a white girl waited inside to pour hot tea as the two men sat on folding chairs. Hooker nodded dismissal when the tea was poured. The girl left, and the guards took up posts outside well out of earshot.

When the girl was gone, Sergeant Hooker gri

Nassor’s grin faded at the name. “For God’s sake don’t call me that, man!”

Hooker gri

“Yeah, but you might forget.” Alim shuddered. He hadn’t been called “Peanut” since eighth grade, when they studied the life of George Washington Carver, and inevitably the name was settled on George Washington Carver Davis until he obliterated it with fists and a razor blade embedded in a cake of soap…

“Not much out there,” Hooker said. He sipped tea, grateful for the warmth.

“No.” Their scouting expedition had told them nothing they hadn’t expected, except that once there was a break in the rain and they saw snow on the tops of the High Sierra. Snow in August! It had frightened Nassor, although Hooker said it had sometimes snowed in the Sierra before That Day.

They sat uncomfortably despite the hot tea and the warmth of the tent, despite the luxury of being dry, because they had too much to talk about, and neither wanted to begin. They both knew they would have to make choices soon enough. Their camp was too close to the ruins that had been Bakersfield. In the ashes and wreckage of the city there were a lot of people who might get it together, more than enough to come out and finish Nassor and Hooker. They hadn’t got their shit together yet. The survivors lived in small groups, distrustful of each other, fighting over the scraps of food left in supermarkets and warehouses — the scraps that Hooker and Nassor had left.

It came down to this: In combination, Alim and Hooker had enough men and ammunition to fight one good battle. If they won it, they’d have enough for another. If they lost, they were finished. And they’d stripped the country around them. They had to move. But where?

“Goddam rain,” Hooker muttered.

Alim sipped tea and nodded. If only the rain would stop. If Bakersfield dried out there’d be no problem. Wait for a good day with strong winds — there were always strong winds — and burn out the whole goddam city. A hundred fires started a block apart would do it. Fire storm. It would sweep across and leave nothing behind. Bakersfield would no longer be a threat.

And the rains were wearing down. There had been an hour of sunshine the day before. Today the sun was almost breaking through and it wasn’t noon yet, and there was only misty rain.

“We got six days,” Hooker said. “Then we start gettin’ hungry. We get hungry enough, we’ll find somethin’ to eat, but…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. Alim shuddered. Sergeant Hooker saw Alim’s expression, and his mouth twisted into a curl of evil contempt. “You’ll join in,” Hooker said.

“I know.” He shuddered again at the memory. Of the farmer Hooker had shot, and the smells of the stew, and the sharing out of portions of the man, everyone in the camp taking a bowl and Hooker damned well seeing that they ate it. The ghastly ritual was what held the group together. Alim had to shoot one of the brothers who wouldn’t eat. And Mabel At least it did that. Their ritual feast let him shoot Mabe and get rid of that troublemakin’ cunt. She wouldn’t eat.

“Fu

Nassor said nothing, his expression not changing. The truth was they’d never even thought of eating people. Not one of them. It was a source of secret pride for Alim. His people weren’t ca

“Lucky you had that beef jerky.” Hooker couldn’t let it alone, not now, not ever. “You never got hungry enough. Lucky.”

“Lucky? Lucky?” Alim’s explosion startled Hooker. “Lucky my ass!” Alim shouted. “There was a ton of the stuff in that van, and we got maybe two pounds because of that motherfucker!” He looked out through the open doorway of the tent, toward a slim black who stood guard near the fire. “That one. That motherfuckin’ Ha

Hooker frowned. “That why you make him do all the work? He lose you some food?”

Alim was wild with remembered rage and pain. “Food. And liquor. Listen, we could smell it, it just about drove us crazy. You see the burns on Gay? We thought he was go

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

“Yeah, you don’t know.” Alim reached behind him to a footlocker and took out a bottle. Cheap whiskey from a drugstore. Thank God California had everything in drugstores. “We got together,” Alim said. “Me and my people and some others. Back then, back when we didn’t think…” He couldn’t finish that sentence. “Before. All the honkies—”

Sergeant Hooker calmly leaned across the table and slapped Alim’s face. Hard. Alim’s hand went to his holster, but stopped. “Thanks,” he said.

Hooker nodded. “Tell the story.”

“The white people, the rich ones in Bel Air, about half of ’em took off. Left their places. Left ’em empty. We took in trucks, and we went through those houses…” He paused, a delighted smile playing on his lips as he thought of it. “And we were rich. That watch I gave you. And this ring.” He held the cat’s-eye to catch the light. “TVs, hi-fi, Persian rugs, real Persian, the kind the fences pay twenty big ones for. All kinds of fuckin’ shit, Hook. We were rich.”

Hooker nodded. Okay, he’d done worse. It still made him uncomfortable. Hooker had been a soldier. He could have been sent to Bel Air to shoot motherfucking looters. Crazy world.