Lucifer's Hammer

“It’s all right,” Harvey said. “Okay, everybody get in.” He went back up onto the porch. “Jesus, Al, they’re just kids.”

Hardy looked at him, mildly disappointed, mildly disgusted. You’re messing u p my patterns. Or, Don’t make waves. “They’re what we’ve got. Look, they’re farm kids. They know how to shoot, and most of them have worked with dynamite before. They know these hills pretty well, too. Don’t put them down.”

Harvey shook his head.

“And,” said Hardy, “they’ll die just as dead if the New Brotherhood breaks through. Marie too. You too. Me too. Hell, you’re not going out to fight!”

“Not with just four guns, we’re not.”

“These are the guns we can spare. These are the people we can spare. Just get out there and work. You’re wasting time.”

Harvey nodded and turned away. Maybe farm kids were different. It would he nice to believe… because he had seen too many city boys, older than these, in Vietnam; kids just out of training camp, who didn’t know how to fight, and they were scared all the time. Harvey had done a series on them, but it had never been cleared by the Army.

He told himself: We aren’t going out to fight. Maybe it will be all right. Maybe.

They stopped in town and loaded supplies into the truck, and onto the carrier on top of the TravelAIl. Dynamite. Chain saws. Gasoline. Picks and shovels. Fifty gallons of used crankcase oil, a bitch to move. When it was all loaded, Harvey let Marie drive. He sat in the second seat to let one of the local boys sit up front with the map. They drove down the highway, out of the valley.

Harvey tried to get the boys talking, to get to know them, but they didn’t volunteer much. They’d answer questions, politely, but they sat wrapped in their own thoughts. After a time Harvey leaned back in his seat and tried to rest. But that reminded him gruesomely of the last time Marie had driven the TravelAII, and he jerked upright.

They were leaving the valley. It made Harvey feel naked, vulnerable. He and Mark and Joa

Marie drove up the ridge that led out of the valley. Harvey had never been here before. Up on top of the ridge were moving lights: Chief Hartman’s people digging in, still working at midnight despite the cold blowing wind. The roadblock below the ridge had only one guard huddled in the small shelter. They passed it and were out of the valley.

He saw it and felt it: They had entered the universal chaos left by Hammerfall. It was scary out here. Harvey held himself very still, so that he wouldn’t shout at Marie to turn the TravelAII and break for safety. He wondered if the others felt the same way. Better not to ask. Let us all feel that nobody else is scared. and that way nobody will run. They drove on in u

The road was washed out in places, but vehicles had made paths around the broken pavement. Harvey noted places where the road could easily be blocked; he pointed them out to the others in the car. He couldn’t see much through the intermittent sleet and the thick dark out there. The map showed they were in another valley, with a series of ridges to the south much lower than those surrounding the Stronghold.

This would be the battleground. Below lay a branch of the Tule River, the main line of defense for the Stronghold. Beyond was territory Hardy wouldn’t even attempt to hold. In a few days, perhaps only hours, the valley they were now driving through would be a killing ground, a place of battle.

Harvey tried to imagine it. Noise, incessant noise: the stutter of machine guns, a crackle of rifle fire, dynamite bombs, mortars; and through it all the screams of the wounded and dying. There wouldn’t be any helicopters and field hospitals here. In Vietnam the wounded were often in hospitals faster than they’d have been if they’d been civilians at home in an auto accident. Here they’d have to take their chances.

They? Not they. Me, Harvey thought. Who was it that said “A rational army would run away”? Somebody. But run to where?

The Sierra. Run to Gordie and Andy. Go find your son. A man’s duty is to his children… Stop it! Act like a man, he told himself.

Does acting like a man mean to sit calmly while they drive you where you’ll be killed?

Yes. Sometimes. This time. Think about something else. Maureen. Have I got a chance? That wasn’t a satisfying line of thought either. He wondered why he was so concerned about Maureen. He hardly knew her. They’d spent an afternoon together here, a lifetime ago, and then they’d made love; and three times since, furtively. Not much to build a life around. Was he interested in her because she was a promise of safety, power, influence? He didn’t think so, he was certain there was more, but objectively he couldn’t find reasons. Fidelity? Fidelity to the woman he’d had an adulterous relationship with; in a way a kind of fidelity to Loretta. That wasn’t getting him anywhere.

There were a few lights visible through the gloom; farmhouses in the battleground, places not abandoned yet. They weren’t Harvey’s concern. Their occupants were supposed to know already. They drove on in silence until they came to the south fork of the Tule River. They crossed it, and now there was no turning back. They were beyond the Stronghold’s defenses, beyond any help. Harvey felt the tension in the car, and felt strangely comforted by it. Everyone was afraid, but they weren’t saying it.

They turned south and went over a ridge to the valley beyond. The ground seemed even and smooth on both sides of the road. Harvey stopped and planted homemade mines: jars of nails and broken glass over dynamite and percussion caps; shotgun shells pointed upward and buried just above a board pierced by a nail.

Marie watched, puzzled. “How will you get them to walk out here?” she asked.

“That’s what the oil is for.” They wrestled the drum of crankcase oil to the side of the road. “We shoot holes in that when we get past. When the oil’s on the road, nobody can walk on it, drive on it, anything.”

The route beyond was ridge, valley, ridge, valley, with the road curving to cross low spots in the ridges. It was rippling landscape, a land with waves in it. Ten miles beyond the Stronghold they passed the first of Deke Wilson’s trucks. It was filled with women and children and wounded men, household possessions and supplies. There were baskets tied to the top and sides of the truck bed, filled with goods — pots and pans, useless furniture, precious food and fertilizer, priceless ammunition. The truck bed was covered by a tarpaulin, and more people were huddled under it, along with more goods. Bedding and blankets. A birdcage but no bird. Pathetic possessions, but everything these people had.

A few miles on there were more trucks, then two cars. The driver of the last didn’t know whether any others would get out. They crossed a broad stream and Harvey stopped and planted dynamite, leaving the fuses marked with rocks so that any of his party could find them to blow the bridge.

There was a faint tinge of gray-red in the east when they reached the top of the last ridge before the low rolling hills where Deke Wilson’s farm band lived. They approached it carefully, concerned that the New Brotherhood might have got past Deke’s people and come to secure the road, but no one challenged them. They stopped the TravelAII to listen. The infrequent popping of gunshots came from far away. “All right,” Harvey said. “Let’s get to work.”