Lucifer's Hammer

“Eileen. Thank you.”

“Yeah. Tim, you go with Fred there and help dig while I get lunch together.”

As they climbed up the steep trail, Fred said, “Glad you came along. Not sure we could have got all the cars over. With that rig you can pull ’em over for sure. Then we’ll go look for the Army people.”

The road heaved and shifted and moved out from under the lead truck.

Corporal Gillings, dozing in his seat, was jarred nastily awake. Swearing, he looked out through the canvas. The convoy was trapped. The earth heaved like a sea—

“Hammerfall,” he said.

The troops were muttering. Johnson asked, “What’s that?”

“The end of the fucking world, you dumb motherfucker. Don’t you read anything?” Gillings had read it all: the National Enquirer, articles in Time, the interviews with Sharps and others. He had pla

Johnson was staring, bewildered and lost, waiting to hear more. Gillings felt light-headed, disoriented. He was not used to seeing his daydreams turn real.

Captain Hora called, “Out of the trucks. Everybody out!”

Gillings’s head cleared. Right, it was all falling into place, and that was the first problem: Fucking officers! Hora wasn’t bad, as officers went, and the men liked him. Something had to be done about that, and quick. Otherwise the RA son of a bitch would have them out working like slaves, trying to save the civilians’ arses until fire and tidal waves took them all.

“We’re trapped good, Captain,” Sergeant Hooker shouted. “Landslides in front and behind. Don’t think we can get the trucks out of here.”

“Saddle ’em up, Sarge,” Captain Hora called. “We’ll hike it. Plenty of people up in these hills. We’ll go see what we can do.”

“Sir,” Hooker said. His voice lacked enthusiasm. “What do we eat, Captain?”

“Time enough to worry about that when we get hungry,” Hora said. “Go have a look up ahead. Maybe we can get through the mud.”

“Sir.”

“Rest of you, out of the trucks,” Hora called.

Gillings gri

Would the men follow him? Maybe not. Not at first. Maybe it would be better to let Hooker live. The troops would follow Hooker, and Hooker wasn’t smart, but he was smart enough to know there wasn’t any point in arresting Gillings after the Captain bought it. No more courts-martial. No more courts. Sure, Hooker was that smart.

Gillings slipped three rounds into his rifle.

It took most of the day. Tim had never worked so hard in his life. He’d paid for his lunch. They dug out the steep parts, then used the Blazer to break trail, used it again to pull the other cars up the muddy road they’d built. The rain continued, although it was now not much more than a heavy drizzle.

Every muscle in Tim’s body ached before they were over the ridge. The temporary road didn’t have to climb more than a hundred feet, but the road they built switchbacked five times that in length.

When they reached the pavement on the other side of the ruined tu

The rangers had set up a temporary camp. When Tim’s party drove up, they were directed off to one side. Tim wanted to go on, but a green Forest Service truck blocked the way. Eileen stopped and they got out. A uniformed ranger had been talking with Fred Haskins. Now he came over to Tim and Eileen.

The ranger was in his middle twenties, a lanky well-muscled man. His uniform gave him a look of authority, but he didn’t seem very confident. “They say you came up the Big Tujunga Road,” he said. He stared at Tim. “You’re Hamner.”

“I’m not advertising it,” Tim said.

“No. I don’t suppose you are,” the ranger said. “Can we get down the Big Tujunga Road?”

“Don’t you know?” Tim asked.

“Look, mister, there are four of us here, and no more. We’re trying to take care of these kids, we’ve got parties out getting people in from dangerous campsites, there are mudslides all over, and most of the bridges are out. We didn’t try to get beyond the tu

“And there’s nothing on the radio?” Eileen asked.

“Nothing from the Big Tujunga station,” the ranger admitted. “Don’t know why. We did get something on CB from some people over at Trail Canyon. They say the big bridge is out and some people are trapped in the canyon.”

“The bridge is out,” Eileen said. “We got across on the old road. There were some people behind us trying to do the same thing when we left.”

“You didn’t stay to help?” the ranger demanded.

“There were more of them than us,” Tim said. “And what good could we do? You can’t pull cars on that road. Too many turns. It’s not really a road anyway.”

“Yeah, I know. We keep it as a foot trail,” the ranger said absently. “Look, you’re an expert on comets. Just what has happened? What should we do with these people?”

Tim was ready to laugh at the question, but the ranger’s face stopped him. The young man looked too strained, too close to panic, and much too glad to see Tim Hamner. He wanted an expert to give him instructions.

Some expert.

“You can’t go back to Los Angeles,” Tim said. “There’s nothing there. Tidal waves took out most of the city—”

“Jesus, we got something from Mount Wilson on that, but I didn’t believe it—”

“And a lot of the rest of it was on fire. Tujunga’s got some kind of vigilante group organized. I don’t know if they’d be glad to see you or not. The road back to Tujunga’s not too bad, but I don’t think ordinary cars can get over parts of it even if you get past the gorge.”

“Yeah, but where’s the Army?” the ranger demanded. “The National Guard. Somebody! You say we shouldn’t go back to Tujunga, but what do we do with these kids? We’ll run out of food in another day, and we’ve got a couple of hundred kids to take care of!”

Hell, Tim thought, I am the expert. The knowledge produced elation and depression, oddly mixed. “Okay. I didn’t get out to JPL, so I don’t know, but… I know the comet calved a number of times. It—”

“Calved?”

“Broke up. Came on like a swarm of flying mountains, you understand? It must have hit us in pieces. No telling how many, but… it was morning in California, and the comet came out of the sun, so the main target area was the Atlantic.

Probably. If the East Coast got tidal waves as big as the one we got, they wiped out everything east of the Catskills, and most of the Mississippi Valley. No more national government. Maybe no more Army.”

“Jesus Christ! You mean the whole country’s gone?”

“Maybe the whole world,” Tim said.

It was too much. The ranger sat down on the ground next to Tim’s car. He stared into space. “My girl lives in Long Beach. …”

Tim didn’t say anything.

“And my mother. She was in Brooklyn. Visiting my sister. You say that’s all gone.”

“Probably,” Tim said. “I wish I knew more. But probably.”