Lucifer's Hammer

Tramp. Like all of them. A tramp. No, she couldn’t have been, she really loved him, he knew she did, but why had she laughed, and then screamed and told him to get out when—

NO!

Fred always stopped remembering then. He looked up at the sky. The comet was there. Its tail blazed across the sky just as he’d seen in the paintings in the astronomy magazines, and when the sky was blue with hidden dawn, brightening in that tiny patch of western sky that Fred could see, there were still the wisps of comet among the clouds, and people moved on the streets below, the fools, didn’t they know?

They brought him breakfast in his cell. The jailers didn’t want to talk to him. Even the trustees looked at him that way…

They knew. They knew. The police doctors must have examined her, and they knew she hadn’t been, that he couldn’t, that he’d tried but he couldn’t and she laughed and he knew how he could do it, but he didn’t want to, and she laughed again, and he bit her until she screamed and then he’d be able to only she kept on screaming!

He had to stop thinking. He had to, before he remembered the shape on the bed. The cops had made him look at her. One had held his hand in a certain way and bent his fingers until he opened his eyes and looked and he didn’t want to, didn’t they understand that he loved her and he didn’t want…?

The sky glowed strangely through the cracks of the buildings across the street. Somewhere to the left, far south and west. The glow died before he’d seen anything at all, but Fred smiled. It had happened. It wouldn’t be long now.

“Hey, Charlie,” the drunk across the block called. “Charlie!”

“Yeah?” the trustee answered.

“What the fuck was that? They making movies out there?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Ask the sex maniac, he’s got western exposure.”

“Hey, Sex Maniac—”

The walls and floor jerked suddenly, savagely. He was flying… He threw out his arms to ward the wall from his head. The stone wave broke against his arms, and Fred howled. Agony screamed in his left elbow.

The floor seemed to stabilize. The jail was solidly built. There’d been nothing damaged. Fred moved his left arm and moaned. Other prisoners were shouting now. One screamed in agony. He must have fallen from an upper bunk. Fred ignored them all and moved again to the window. He felt real fear. Was that all?

One ordinary day, with… clouds. Jesus, they were moving fast! Churning, forming and vanishing, streaming north and west. A lower cloud bank, calmer and more stable, began moving south and west. This wasn’t what Fred had expected. One wave of fire, that was what he had prepared for. Doomsday was taking its own sweet time.

The sky darkened. Now it was all black clouds, swirling, churning, flashing with continuous lightning. The wind and the thunder howled louder than the prisoners.

The end of the world came in blinding light and simultaneous thunderclap.

Fred’s mind recondensed to find him on the floor. His elbow was shrieking agony. Lightning… lightning must have struck the jail itself. There were no lights in the corridor, and outside was dark, so that he could see only in surrealistic flashes like a strobe-lit go-go bar.

Charlie was moving along the cellblock. He carried keys. He was letting the prisoners out. One by one. He opened the cells and they came out and moved down the corridor — and he had already passed Fred’s cell. The cells on either side were open. His was locked.

Fred screamed. Charlie didn’t turn. He went on until he reached the end of the cellblock, then he went out and down the stairs.

Fred was alone.

Eric Larsen looked to neither the right nor the left. He walked in long strides. He stepped around the dead and the injured, and ignored pleas for help. He could have helped them, but he was driven by a terrible urgency. His cold eyes and the carelessly carried shotgun discouraged anyone from getting in his way.

He saw no other policemen. He barely noticed the people around him, that some were helping the injured, some were disconsolately staring at the ruins of their homes and shops and stores, some were ru

He might have taken a car and driven away into the hills. He saw cars race past him. He saw Eileen Hancock in an old Chrysler. If she’d stopped he might have gone with her, but she didn’t, and Eric was glad, because it was tough enough to keep his resolve.

But suppose he wasn’t needed? Suppose it was a fool’s errand? There was no way to know.

But I should have taken a car, he thought. I could have finished it and had a chance. Too late now. There was the station house, City Hall, and the jail. They seemed deserted. He went into the jail. There was a dead policewoman under the wreckage of a huge cabinet that had stood against the wall. He saw no one else, living or dead. He went through, behind the booking cage and up the stairs. The cellblocks were quiet.

It was a fool’s errand. He was not needed. He was about to go back down the stairs, but he stopped himself. No point in coming this far without being sure.

There’d been talk of a tidal wave following Hammerfall. There were people in the Burbank Jail, people that Eric Larsen had put there. Drunks, petty thieves, young vagrants who said they were eighteen but looked much younger. They couldn’t be left to drown like rats in forgotten jail cells. They didn’t deserve that. And Eric had put them there — it was his responsibility.

The barred door at the top of the stairs stood open. Eric went through and used his big flash in the near darkness. The cell doors stood open. All but one.

All but one. Eric went to the cell. Fred Lauren stood with his back to the corridor. His left arm was cradled in his right. Lauren stared out the window, and he didn’t turn when Eric flashed the light on him. Eric stood watching him for a moment. No one deserved to drown like a rat in a cage. No human did. The thieves and drunks and runaways and…

“Turn around,” Eric said. Lauren didn’t move. “Turn around or I’ll shoot your kneecaps out. That hurts a lot.”

Fred whimpered and turned. He saw the shotgun leveled at him. The policeman was holding the light off to one side, almost behind himself, so that Fred could see.

“Do you know who I am?” the policeman asked.

“Yes. You kept the other policeman from beating me last night.” Fred moved closer. He stared at the shotgun. “Is that for me?”

“I brought it for you,” Eric said. “I came to turn the others loose. I couldn’t let you loose. So I brought the shotgun.”

“It’s the end of the world,” Fred Lauren said. “All of it. Nothing will be left. But…” Fred whimpered deep in his throat. “But when? Would… please, you’ve got to tell me. Wouldn’t she be dead now? Already? She couldn’t live through the end of the world. She’d have died and I’d never have talked to her—”

“Talked to her!” Eric brought the shotgun up in rage. He saw Fred Lauren standing calmly, waiting, and he saw the bed and the ruins of a young girl, and the closet with the pathetically small wardrobe. There was a smell of copper blood in his nostrils. His finger tightened on the trigger, then relaxed. He lowered the shotgun.

“Please,” Fred Lauren said. “Please—”

The shotgun came up quickly. Eric hadn’t known it would kick so hard.