Lucifer's Hammer

It was always like this. The new guys were demons incarnate; they would go through the enemy like so many mincing machines. The new guys always thought so too. But it could be true… sometimes it was true… maybe they would win this after all. The New Brotherhood could be stopped, and it wouldn’t even take the full strength of the Stronghold to do it.

Clouds parted in the east; the sun shone shockingly bright. Full daylight, and still nothing happened. The ranchers and the forward skirmish line of the Brotherhood exchanged sniping shots, with little effect. Then—

Over the opposite ridge trucks appeared. They didn’t look like trucks. They looked strange, for they had large wooden structures attached in front of them. They came down the hill, not too fast, because with all that weight in front they were hard to drive and unstable, but they came on toward the swollen creek.

At the same time, hundreds of the enemy came out from behind rocks and folds of ground where they’d been hidden. They began firing at anything that moved. The trucks with their strange towers advanced to the stream edge, and some drove across meadows that should have been too swampy, except that during the night the Brotherhood had laid down tracks of fencing wire and planks to get them across the mud.

They went to the stream edge and the towers fell, making bridges across the stream. Brotherhood troops rushed toward the bridges, began swarming across. Other Brotherhood units concentrated fire on any Stronghold defenders who dared show themselves. Harvey heard the sharp whump! which he recognized from Vietnam: mortars. The mortar bombs fell among the rocks where Cox’s ranchers hid, and each time they fell more accurately. Someone across the river was directing them, and he had good control: Wherever Cox’s men tried to oppose the crossing, the mortars soon found them.

And more of the Brotherhood troops poured across the river. They fa

“Ants!” Harvey screamed. “Army ants!” Now he knew. The ca

A dozen men clung to the TravelAII, piled into it, hung on top or lay on fenders as Harvey drove away. Deer Creek, which Cox had expected to hold all day, perhaps even to break the Brotherhood and stop them permanently, had fallen in less than an hour and a half.

The rest of the morning was nightmare. Harvey could not find his truck; the only equipment he had left was in the TravelAII and only a few of Cox’s ranchers were willing to help. Reinforcements from the Stronghold came finally, twenty men and women with more dynamite and gasoline and the chain saws from the truck, but they could never get far enough away from the advancing Brotherhood forces to do any useful work.

The Brotherhood tactics had changed: Now instead of fa

If Marie had not been with him Harvey would have run with the rest; but she wouldn’t let him. She insisted they keep on with their mission, at least that they stop and light the fuses of the charges they’d set two nights before when they went forward. Once they delayed too long, and there was a crash; shattered glass from the rear window sprayed over them and the front windshield was smashed out as well. A .50 slug had passed all the way through the TravelAII, passed between them, missing them by inches. The next time they stopped, the ranchers who’d stayed with them abandoned the car.

Harvey yelled to Marie, “Why the hell are you so — ” He didn’t finish the sentence. He’d wanted to say “brave,” but if he did, it meant he wasn’t, that he was a coward. ” — determined?” he finally said.

She looked up from where she was digging. They had one last stick of dynamite and she wanted to plant it. She pointed up toward the Sierra. “My boy is up there,” she said. “If we don’t stop them, who will? This is good enough. Give me the dynamite.”

Harvey had already crimped fuse onto the cap. He handed her the stick and she thrust it into the hole, then shoveled dirt and rock onto it.

“That’s enough!” Harvey screamed. “Let’s get out of here!” They were on the far side of a low hill and couldn’t see the advancing enemy, but Harvey didn’t think they would be far behind.

“Not yet,” Marie said. “Something I have to do first.” She walked toward the hilltop.

“Come back here! I swear, I’ll leave you! Hey!”

She didn’t look back. After a moment he cursed, then followed her uphill. She was adjusting her rifle, setting the strap on her left arm. She braced herself against a rock. “Down there is where you put the oil. And the mines,” she said. “We drove right past it.”

“We had to! They were right behind us!” And it’s all so damned futile anyway. Motorcycles were coming up the road. They’d reach the ridge in a minute or two.

Marie took careful aim. Fired. “Good,” she muttered to herself. She fired again. “I’d be done quicker if you’d do some shooting too,” she said.

Harvey knew he wasn’t about to hit the oil drum set three hundred yards away. He braced his rifle on a rock and aimed at the first of the oncoming motorcycles. He fired again and again, and missed each time. But the cyclists slowed, then stopped and took cover in the ditch to wait for the infantry. Marie continued to fire, slowly, carefully. Finally she said, “That ought to do it. Let’s go… Actually, what’s the hurry? They’re stopped.” She took up her position again and waited.

Harvey clenched his fists and took a deep breath. She was right. There was no immediate danger. The oil was spilling across the road now, and the two motorcycles were going nowhere.

Another motorcycle reached the oil slick. It skidded into the ditch and the biker screamed. Marie smiled faintly. “Good idea, those pungie sticks of yours.”

Harvey looked at her in horror. Marie Vance: on the board of governors of half a dozen charities; banker’s wife, socialite, country club member; and she was gri

A truck came to the oil slick and stopped; then it started forward, slowly. Marie put a bullet through its windshield. It slid forward and skidded, turning slightly sideways. The motor gu

Another truck came up behind it and started around; one of the dynamite mines went off, loudly, and the truck went up in flames. Harvey felt it now: the urgent impulse to shout in triumph. Something had worked. Those weren’t people down there, scrambling to get away from the burning truck, some themselves burning; they were army ants, and the trick had worked—