Lucifer's Hammer

They cut trees and built a maze on the road: a system of fallen trees that a truck could get through, but only slowly, by stopping to back up and turn carefully. They made dynamite bombs and put them at convenient places to throw down onto the road, then Harvey sent half his troops out to the sides, the others down the hill. They cut trees partway through so that they would fall easily. The others ranged out to both sides, and Harvey could hear the growl of the chain saws, and sometimes the sharp whump of half a stick of dynamite.

The gray became a red smear behind the High Sierra when the work parties returned. “A couple more trees cut and one charge set off, and that road’s blocked for hours,” Bill reported. “This won’t be so hard.”

“I think we should do it now,” someone said.

Bill looked around, then back at Randall. “Shouldn’t we wait for Mr. Wilson’s truck?”

“Yes, wait,” Marie said. “It would be awful if we stopped our own people from getting through.”

“Sure,” Harvey said. “The maze will stop the Brotherhood if they get here first. Let’s take a break.”

“The shooting is getting closer,” one of the boys said.

Harvey nodded. “I think so. Hard to tell.”

“It’s officially dawn,” Marie said. “Muslim definition. When you can tell a white thread from a black one. It’s in the Koran.” She listened for a moment. “There’s something coming. I hear a truck.”

Harvey took out a whistle and sounded it. He shouted to the boys nearest him to spread out and get off the road. They waited while the truck noises got louder and louder. It came around the bend and there was a screech of brakes as it stopped just short of the first tree. It was a large truck, still only an indistinct object in the gray light. “Who’s there?” Harvey shouted.

“Who are you?”

“Get out of the truck. Show yourself.”

Someone leaped out of the truck bed and stood on the road. “We’re Deke Wilson’s people,” he shouted. “Who’s there?”

“We’re from the Stronghold.” Harvey started toward the truck. One of the boys was much closer. He stepped up to the cab and looked in. Then he backed up fast.

“It’s not—”

He never finished. There were pistol shots, and the boy was down. Something smashed Harvey in the left shoulder, a hard blow that knocked him backward. There was more shooting. People were jumping out of the truck.

Marie Vance fired first. Then there was more shooting from the sides of the road and the rocks above it. Harvey struggled to find his rifle. He’d dropped it, and he scrabbled around for it.

“Stay down!” someone yelled. A sputtering object landed just in front of the truck and rolled underneath. Nothing happened for an eternity, and there were more gunshots; then the dynamite exploded. The truck lifted slightly, and there was a gasoline smell; then it blew up in a column of fire. Fire danced in the air near Harvey’s face as the gasoline was flung around. He could see human shapes in the fire: Men and women screamed and moved in dancing flame. There were more shots.

“Stop. Stop shooting. You’re wasting ammunition.” Marie Vance ran down toward the burning truck. “Stop it!” The gunfire died and there were no sounds but the burning fire.

Harvey found his rifle at last. His left shoulder was throbbing and he was afraid to look, but he forced himself, expecting to see a bloody hole. There was nothing at all. He felt it, and it was sore, and when he opened his coat he found a large bruise. Ricochet, he thought. I must have been hit by a ricochet. The heavy coat stopped it. He got up and went down to the road.

The girl, Marylou, was trying to get closer to the fire, and two boys held her back. She wasn’t saying anything, just struggling with them, staring at the burning truck and the bodies near it.

“He was dead when he hit the ground,” one of the boys shouted. “Dead, dammit, you can’t do anything.” They seemed dazed now as they stared at the bodies and the fire.

“Who?” Harvey asked. He pointed at the dead boy near the truck cab. The boy lay on his face. His back was on fire.

“Bill Dummery,” Tommy Tallifsen said. “Shouldn’t we… what do we do, Mr. Randall?”

“Do you know where Bill planted the charges downhill?”

“Yes.”

“Show me. Let’s go light them.” They moved down the hill. Visibility was increasing fast. A hundred yards, two hundred. They found a rock that overhung the road. Tommy pointed. As Harvey bent down to light the fuse, Tommy grabbed his shoulder. “Another truck coming,” he said.

“Aw, shit.” Harvey reached for the fuse again. Tommy said nothing. Finally Harvey stood. “It’ll be light before they get up here. You go on back up the hill and alert the troops. They can’t get past that burning truck anyway. Don’t get close to it until you know who it is.”

“All right.”

Harvey waited, cursing himself, Deke Wilson, the New Brotherhood. Bill Dummery, with a scholarship to Santa Cruz and a girl named Marylou. My fault.

The truck came on up the hill. It was loaded with people. No household goods at all. In a cartop carrier on top of the cab, two children in bulky raincoats hunkered down against the wind. As the truck got closer Harvey recognized the man standing in the bed next to the cab. He was one of the farmers who had come with Wilson to the Stronghold. Something Vinge?

The people in the truck were all women and children and men patched with bloody bandages. Some lay in the truck bed, not moving as the overloaded vehicle ground its gears and crawled uphill. Harvey let it pass him, then lit the fuse. He followed behind it. He could walk almost as fast as it could go. The dynamite went off behind him, but the boulder didn’t roll onto the road.

The truck stopped at the log maze. There was no question about who was in this truck. The boys came out of cover. Vinge jumped down. He looked exhausted, but showed no obvious wounds or bandages. “You weren’t supposed to block the goddam road until we got through!” he shouted.

“Fuck yourself!” Harvey screamed in rage. He fought for self-control. The truck was filled with wounded and with women and children, and all of them looked half dead from exhaustion. Harvey shook his head in pity and resentment, then called to Marie Vance. “Get the TravelAII! We’ll have to use the winch to clear a way for them.”

It took half an hour to saw through two logs and snake them out of the way so the truck could get through. While they worked, Harvey sent Tommy Tallifsen down to try again with the boulder. At the rate they were using the stuff, they’d run out of dynamite right here, with miles of road still to block. This time the boulder rolled. It formed a formidable obstacle, with no easy way around it. Others with chain saws dropped more trees on the road.

“All clear,” one of the boys called. “You can roll.”

Vinge went up to the truck cab. There were four people crammed into it. The driver was a teen-age boy, fourteen or so, barely big enough to reach the controls. “Take care of your mother,” the farmer shouted.

“Yes, sir,” the boy answered.

“Get moving,” the farmer said. “And…” He shook his head. “Get moving.”

“Goodbye, Dad.” The truck crawled away.

The farmer came back to Harvey Randall. “Name’s Jacob Vinge,” he said. “Let’s get to work. There won’t be any more coming out of our area.”

The fighting sounded much closer. Harvey could see across the hills and out to the San Joaquin Sea. There were columns of smoke to mark the burning farmhouses, and a continuous popcorn crackle of small-arms fire. It was strange to know that men and women were fighting and dying not a mile away, and yet see nothing. Then one of the boys called, “There’s somebody ru

They spilled over the top of the hill half a mile off. They ran haltingly, not in any order, and few carried weapons or anything else. Ru