Lucifer's Hammer

“Sure.” Eric Larsen stood at the window watching the Wardens. Idly he whistled “Onward Christian Soldiers” through his teeth.

Eileen giggled. “What are you thinking about, Eric?”

“Huh?” He looked sheepish.

“The Professor’s writing a movie script,” Harris said.

Eric shrugged. “TV. Imagine James Garner marooned out there. He’s looking for a killer. One of the drivers is out to commit murder. He does it, pulls out a sheet and a chain, and we come take him away before Garner can find him…”

“Jesus,” Harris said.

“I thought it was pretty good,” Eileen said. “Who does he kill?”

“Uh, actually, you.”

“Oh.”

“I saw enough pretty girls killed last night to last me twenty years,” Harris muttered. For a moment Eric looked like he’d been rabbit-punched.

Joe Corrigan came back with four pairs of long-handled bolt cutters. The policemen thanked him. Harris scribbled his name and badge number on a receipt, and handed two pairs to Eric Larsen. They carried them out to distribute to the other policemen, and blue uniforms moved along the chain, cutting the white robes free, then chaining them again with handcuffs. They jostled the Wardens toward the sidewalk. Few of the robed ones fought, but a good many went limp.

Corrigan looked up in surprise. “What was… ?”

“Huh?” Eileen looked vaguely around the office.

“I don’t know.” He frowned, trying to remember, but it had been too vague. As if clouds had parted to reveal the sun for a few moments, then closed again. But there were no clouds. It was a bright, cloudless summer day.

It was a nice house, well laid out, with bedrooms sprawling out like an arm, away from the huge central living room. Alim Nassor had always wanted a fireplace. He could imagine parties here, brothers and sisters splashing in the swimming pool, roar of conversation, smell of pot thick enough to get you high all by itself, a van delivering a great cartwheel of a pizza… Someday he would own such a house. He was robbing this one.

Harold and Ha

Alim did it. Even he followed orders when the need came. “If we don’t find nothing this time, no more safes,” he ordered.

Gay nodded. They’d opened four safes in four houses and found nothing. It looked like everyone in Bel Air had stashed their jewels in banks or taken them along.

Alim returned to the living room to look through the gauze curtains. It was a bright, cloudless summer day, and dead quiet, with nobody in sight. Half the families had fled to the hills, and the rest of the men were doing whatever they did to have houses like this, and anyone who stayed home must be inside watching TV to see if they’d made a mistake. It was people like this who were afraid of the comet. People like Alim, or Alim’s mother with her job scrubbing floors and her ruined knees, or even the storekeeper he’d shot — people with something real to be afraid of didn’t worry about no damn light in the sky.

So: The street was empty. No sweat, and the pickings were good. Fuck the jewels. There was silver, paintings, TV sets from tiny to tremendous, two or three or four to a house. Under the tarps in the truck bed they had a home computer and a big telescope — strange things, hard to fence — and a dozen typewriters. Generally they’d pick up some guns, too, but not this trip. The guns had gone with the ru

“Shit! Hey, brothers—”

Alim went, fast. He and Ha

“Fuck that!” Alim slapped at Gay’s hands, scattering paper and weed. “You crazy? In the middle of a job and four houses to go? Give me that! All of it! You want a party, fine, we’ll have a fine party when we’re home free!”

They didn’t like it, but they passed the bags to Alim and he stashed them in the pockets of his baggy combat jacket. He slapped their butts and they went, carrying heavy bedsheet sacks.

He hadn’t gotten it all. It didn’t matter. At least they wouldn’t be blowing the tops of their heads off till this was over.

Alim picked up a radio and a Toast-it-Oven and followed them out. He blinked in the daylight. Gay was in the back, adjusting tarpaulins. Harold started the motor. Good. Alim stopped with the truck door open to look down the driveway.

He saw a tall tree on the lawn casting two sharp shadows.

And that smaller tree: two shadows. He looked down and saw his own two shadows, one moving. Alim looked up and saw it, a second sun dropping down the sky, dropping below the hill. He blinked; he squeezed his eyes shut, hard. The violet afterimage blocked everything.

He climbed in. “Get going,” he said. While the truck rolled down the drive he started the CB. “Come in, Jackie. Come in, Jackie. Jackie, you motherfucker, answer me!”

“Who’s that? Alim Nassor?”

“Yeah. Did you see it?”

“See what?”

“The comet, the Hammer of God! I saw it fall! I watched it burn its way down the sky till it hit! Jackie, listen good, ’cause these CB things ain’t go

“slim, you must’ve found something real special. Coke, maybe?”

“Jackie, it’s real, the whole world been hit. There’s go

We got to stick together. We won’t drown because we’re too high, but we got to meet.”

“slim, this is crazy. I got two houses to go, we got lots of stuff, and you come on like the end of the world?”

“Just call someone, Jackie! Someone’s got to have seen it! Look, I got to call the others while we still got the CB.” Alim switched off.

They were still in the driveway. Harold was the color of wet ashes. He said, “I saw it too. George… Alim, do you think we’re too high to drown? I don’t want to drown.”

“We’re about as high as we can get. We got to go down before we get to Grapevine. Get movie’, Harold. We want to be across the low spots before it rains too much.”

Harold took off, fast. Alim reached for the CB. Were they really too high to drown? Was anybody, anywhere?