Lucifer's Hammer

Work and run; and ru

“It’s like nothing can stop them,” Tommy Tallifsen screamed. They had halted at another ridgeline. The maps said the valley below — where the New Brotherhood was busily removing trees, filling in holes, repairing the road quicker than Harvey had been able to destroy it — was called “Hungry Hollow.” The name seemed appropriate.

“We’ve got to try,” said Harvey.

Tallifsen looked doubtful. Harvey knew what he was thinking. They were all exhausted, they’d lost five of Task Force Randall: one shot dead as he worked with a chain saw, the other four vanished — run away, captured, wounded and Iying back in the hills, they didn’t know. They hadn’t got aboard when it was time to bug out, and the New Brotherhood had been too close to let them look for them; and ru

“It will be dark in a couple of hours,” Harvey said. “Then we can rest.”

“Can we?” Tallifsen asked. But he went back to work, digging out under another boulder above the road. Others stretched the cable from the TravelAll’s winch around the rock. There wasn’t enough dynamite to use on every rock they found.

An hour before dark they were forced out of Hungry Hollow and over the ridge beyond. They fled across Deer Creek, pausing only long enough to light the fuse on the dynamite they’d placed there. When they climbed onto the next ridge, they found men already there.

It took Harvey a moment to realize they were friends. Steve Cox and almost a hundred troops had been sent from the ranch to hold the ridge. The Stronghold forces were through ru

“We’re all dead on our feet,” Harvey told Steve Cox. “We won’t be much help.”

Cox shrugged. “That’s all right. Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll hold them.”

You’re a fool, Harvey wanted to say. There are a thousand of them and a hundred of you, and they come like death, like army ants, and nothing can stop them. “Have you brought… how is Forrester’s work? Have you got any of his superweapons?”

“Thermit grenades.” Cox showed Harvey a box of what looked like lumps of baked clay with fuses stuck out of the top. Each was about six inches in diameter, and each had two feet of parachute cord attached to it. “You light the fuse and whirl it around,” Cox said. “Then throw it.”

“Do they work?”

“They sure do.” Cox was enthusiastic. “Some explode like bombs. Others just break open, but even then they throw fire ten or twelve feet. They’ll scare the hell out of those ca

“But what about the other weapons? Mustard gas?”

Cox shrugged. “They’re working on it. Hardy says it will take time. That’s why we’re out here.”

In the valley below, the lead elements of the New Brotherhood force had reached the ruined bridge. Deer Creek was high and swift, and the bridge was entirely gone; the few men who tried to wade it gave up quickly. The Brotherhood army stopped, then began to spread along the banks. Elements went upstream until they vanished. Others turned downstream toward the sea a few miles to the west.

“They’ll get around us,” Harvey said nervously.

“Nope.” Cox gri

“I think Cox is crazy,” Harvey told Marie. “I’ve… we’ve seen the New Brotherhood fight. He hasn’t.”

“They have our radio reports,” Marie said. She stretched in the back seat of the TravelAII. “Feels good to relax. I could sleep for a week.”

“So could I,” Harvey said; but he didn’t. The TravelAII was parked on the far side of the ridge from Deer Creek. He had sent the others back further, to a farmhouse where they could get proper rest, and he knew he should join them, but he was worried. Harvey had learned to respect whoever was in charge of the New Brotherhood. The enemy general hadn’t wasted a man, had never exposed his people recklessly, yet he had swept through eighteen miles and more in less than a day.

And he was using gasoline and ammunition recklessly. This was an all-out war; the New Brotherhood must have stripped their territory, must be gambling on taking the Stronghold for new supplies.

Dusk brought a chill wind, but no more sleet. A few stars showed through the overcast, blinking points of light too far apart to recognize as constellations. Harvey remembered a hot sauna followed by a cold swimming pool in hot sunlight; he remembered driving the TravelAII south through the blazing desert beauty of Baja California, finally to swim in an ocean warm as a bathtub; bellysurfing the bigger, more exciting waves of Hermosa Beach, and spreading a towel over sand too hot to walk on.

Down in the valley they could hear the sounds of Brotherhood trucks and men moving heavy objects. There was no way to know what the enemy was doing. Cox had patrols alert for infiltrators, but instead the enemy commander had his men fire weapons at irregular intervals, raise shouts, throw grenades and rocks across the creek, and often the ranchers responded, shooting wildly into the night, wasting ammunition, losing sleep.

Harvey knew that was what the Brotherhood wanted, but the knowledge didn’t help. He slept fitfully, awakened too often. Marie stirred in the seat behind him. “You awake?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Who was it? In the truck, with the binoculars. Do you know?”

“Probably the sergeant. Hooker. Why?”

“Put a name on him and he’s less frightening. Do you think we can win? Is Hardy smart enough?”

“Sure,” Harvey said.

“They keep coming. Like a machine, a huge grinding machine.”

Harvey sat up. Somewhere a grenade went off, and Cox shouted not to waste ammunition.

“That’s a frightening image. Fortunately it’s not the right one,” Harvey said. “It’s not a meat grinder. It’s one of those kinetic structures where the artist invites a horde of newsmen to stand around and drink and watch while the machine tears itself to pieces.”

Her laugh sounded forced. “Nice imagery, Harv.”

“Hell, I made a living off imagery, before I took up breaking rocks. And ruining roads. I used to think of battles as a chess game, but they’re not. It’s like those sculptures. The commander puts together this huge sculpture, knowing that the pieces will grind each other up, and he doesn’t control them all. Half of them are controlled by an art critic who hates him. And each one tries to see that he has pieces left when it’s over, but there won’t be enough, so it has to be done over and over.”

“And we’re some of the pieces,” Marie said. “I hope Hardy knows what he’s doing.”

In the morning there was new excitement in the Stronghold camp. During the night Stephen Tallman, Vice-President of the Tule Council, had come in to tell how his warriors were dug in to the east, and more were coming. The rumors grew. George Christopher was coming back, and he had a hundred, two hundred, a thousand armed ranchers he’d recruited from the hill country. Anyone who doubted it was shouted down.

But certainly there were fifty Indians to the east, and all the ranchers talked about how tough the Indians were, and what great allies they’d be. There were other stories, of an attempt in the night by the New Brotherhood to force passage of Deer Creek five miles upstream, and how Tallman’s Indians had beaten them back and killed dozens; how the New Brotherhood had run away. When Harvey talked to the others, he could find nobody who had seen the battle. He found a few who claimed to have spoken to someone who was in it. Everyone had a friend who’d talked to Tallman himself, or to Stretch Tallifsen, who was with the ranch force sent upstream to hold the western end of the line.