Lucifer's Hammer

She shook her head and laughed in a fu

“This is silly,” Eileen said.

“Damn betcha”

“I can walk.”

“Good.” He let her legs drop. She stood, but she clung to him, her head against his shoulder.

Finally she let go. “I’m glad I found you. Let’s get moving.”

“Count off,” Gordie called.

“One,” Andy Randall answered. The others sang out in turn: “Two.” “Three.” “Four.” “Five,” Bert Vance said. He was a little late, and glanced up nervously, but his father didn’t seem to have noticed. “Six.”

“And me,” Gordie said. “Okay, Andy, lead off. I’ll play tail-end Charlie.”

They started down the trail. The cliff was less than a mile away. Twenty minutes, no more. They rounded a bend and had a magnificent view stretching eastward across the tops of the pine trees. The morning air was crystal clear; the light was… fu

Gordie glanced at his watch. They’d been hiking ten minutes. He was tempted to skip his compulsory halt for bootlace adjustments. What difference would it make? Nobody would have blisters, not in another half-mile, and walking along, trying to be natural, was harder than the decision had been.

There was a bright flash to the east. Brilliant, but small. Much too bright to be lightning, and out of a clear sky? It left an afterimage that blinking couldn’t get rid of.

“What was that, Dad?” Bert asked.

“Don’t know. Meteor? Hold up, up in front. Time for boot adjustments.”

They dropped their packs and found rocks to sit on. The bright afterimage was still there, although it was fading. Gordie couldn’t look directly at his bootlaces. Then he noticed that the wind had died. The forest was deathly still.

Bright flash. Sudden stillness. Like—

The shock wave rumbled across them with a thunder of sound. A dead tree crashed somewhere above them, thrashing in final agony among its brothers. The rumbling went on a long time, with rising wind.

Atom bomb at Frenchman’s Flats? Gordie wondered. Couldn’t be. They’d never test anything that big. So what was it?

The boys were chattering. Then the ground rumbled and heaved beneath them. More trees fell.

Gordie fell onto his pack. The other boys had been shaken off their rocks. One, Herbie Robinett, seemed to be hurt. Gordie crawled toward him. The boy wasn’t bleeding, and nothing was broken. Just shaken up. “Stay down!” Gordie shouted. “And watch for falling limbs and trees!”

The wind continued to rise, but it was shifting, moving around to the south, no longer coming from the east, where they’d seen the bright flash. The earth shook again.

And out there, far beyond the horizon, rising high into the stratosphere, was an ugly cloud, mushroom-shaped. It climbed on and on, roiling horribly. It was just where the bright flash had been.

One of the boys had a radio. He had it to his ear. “Nothing but static, Mr. Vance. I keep thinking I hear something else, but I can’t make out what.”

“Not surprising. We almost never get anything in the mountains in daytime,” Gordie said.

But I don’t like that wind. And what was that thing? A piece of the comet? Probably. Gordie laughed bitterly. All that fuss about the end of the world, and it was nothing. A bright flash out there in Death Valley — or maybe it wasn’t the comet at all. Frenchman’s Flat was that way, a hundred and fifty miles or so…

The ground had stopped shaking. “Let’s move on,” Gordie said. “On your feet.”

He pulled on his pack. Now what? he asked himself. Can I… will the boys be all right without me? What’s happening out there?

Nothing. Nothing but a goddam meteor. Maybe a big one. Maybe as big as that thing in Arizona, the one that made a half-mile crater. An impressive thing, and the boys saw it fall. They’ll talk about it for years.

But it doesn’t solve my problem. The bank examiners will still be around next Friday, and—

“Fu

“Yeah, sure,” Gordie said absently. Then he noticed where Andy was pointing.

Southwest. Almost due south. It was as if a pool of black ink had been poured across the sky. Huge, towering black clouds, rising higher and higher, blotting out everything…

And the wind was howling through the trees. More clouds, and more, seeming to form from nothing, and racing toward them at terrific velocity, faster than jet planes…

Gordie looked frantically along the trail. No good place to hide. “Ponchos,” he shouted.

They scrabbled their rain gear out. As Gordie flipped his poncho open, the rain came like a torrent of warm bathwater. Gordie tasted salt.

Salt!

“Hammerfall,” he whispered.

And the end of civilization. The paper shortages at the bank: gone, washed away. They weren’t important now.

Marie? The clouds were building above Los Angeles — and it was a long way to the nearest car. Nothing he could do for her. No way to help Marie. Maybe Harvey Randall would look out for her. Right now, Gordie’s problem was the boys.

“Back to Soda Springs,” he shouted. It was the best place, until they found out just what was going to happen. It was sheltered, and there was a clearing and a flat.

“I want to go home!” Herbie Robinett screamed.

“Get ’em moving, Andy,” Gordie called. He waved them ahead of him, ready to shove them if he had to, but he didn’t. They followed Andy. Bert went past. Gordie thought he saw tears in his son’s eyes. Tears through the dirty rainwater that hammered at them.

The trails will all be flooded in no time. Washed out, Gordie thought. And this warm crap will melt all the snow. The Kern’s going to be up over its banks, and all the roads will be gone.

Gordie Vance suddenly threw back his head and yelled in triumph. He was going to live.

Hot Fudge Tuesdae: Three

Harvey Randall had been fifteen minutes from home… until Hammerfall.

It was day turned night, and the night was alive with pyrotechnics. If daylight still leaked through the black cloud cover, the lightning was far brighter. Hills flashed in bluewhite light and vanished, now a white sky over jagged black skyline, now a look into the canyon on his left, now blackness lit only by the headlamps of cars, now a nearby blast that clenched Randall’s eyelids in pain. The wipers were going like crazy, but the rain fell faster; it all came through in a blur. Randall had rolled down both side windows. Wet was better than blind.

To drive in such conditions was madness, yet the traffic was still heavy. Perhaps they were all mad. Through the thunder and the drum of rain on metal came the bleat of myriad horns. Cars shifted lanes without warning; they drove in the oncoming lanes, and butted their way back into line when oncoming lights faced them down.

Randall’s TravelAII was too big to challenge. Where a landslide had blocked half the road and a coward had stopped to let oncoming traffic through, Randall drove the TravelAII over the slide — it tilted badly, but held — and in front of the coward and straight at the traffic, and butted the lead car until it backed up.

He didn’t see the people who blocked his way. He saw only barriers: mudslides, breaks in the road, cars. He kept wondering if the house had collapsed, with Loretta inside. Or if Loretta, in blind panic, was about to come looking for him in the car. She’d never survive alone, and they’d never link up. Hell, it was almost an hour since Hammerfall!