Lucifer's Hammer

“I’m half melted already. Here’s your mail.” Harry handed it over. “Your mailbox is wrecked.”

“It won’t matter.” Tony seemed to be gri

Harry skipped it. “Can you spare someone to run me into town? I wrecked my truck.”

“Sorry. We want to save the gas for emergencies.”

What did he think this was? Harry held his temper. “Such is life. Can you spare me a sandwich?”

“Nope. Famine coming. We got to think of ourselves.”

“I don’t get you.” Harry was begi

“The Hammer has fallen,” said Tony. “The Establishment is dead. No more draft. No more taxes. No more wars. No more going to jail for smoking pot. No more having to pick between a crook and an idiot for President.” Tony gri

Tony really had flipped, Harry realized. He tried to sidestep the issue. “Can you get Hugo Beck down here?”

“Maybe.’’

Harry watched Tony reenter the farmhouse. Was there anyone alive in there? Tony had never struck him as dangerous, but… if he stepped out with anything remotely like a rifle, Harry was going to run like a deer.

Half a dozen of them came out. One girl was in rain gear; the rest seemed to be dressed for swimming. Maybe that made a kind of sense. You couldn’t hope to stay dry in this weather. Harry recognized Tony, and Hugo Beck, and the broad-shouldered, broad-hipped girl who called herself Galadriel, and a silent giant whose name he’d never learned. They clustered at the gate, hugely amused.

Harry asked, “What’s it all about?”

Much of Hugo Beck’s fat had turned to muscle in the past three years, but he still didn’t look like a farmer. Maybe it was the expensive sandals and worn swim trunks; or maybe it was the way he lounged against the gate, exactly as Jason Gillcuddy the writer would lounge against his bar, leaving one hand free to gesture.

“Hammerfall,” said Hugo. “You could be the last mailman we ever see. Consider the implications. No more ads to buy things you can’t afford. No more friendly reminders from the collection agency. You should throw away that uniform, Harry. The Establishment’s dead.”

“The comet hit us?”

“Right.”

“Huh.” Harry didn’t know whether to believe it or not. There had been talk… but a comet was nothing. Dirty vacuum, lit by unfiltered sunlight, very pretty when seen from a hilltop with the right girl beside you. This rain, though What about the rain?

“Huh. So I’m a member of the Establishment?”

“That’s a uniform, isn’t it?” said Beck, and the others laughed.

Harry looked down. “Somebody should have told me. All right, you can’t feed me and you can’t transport me—”

“No more gas, maybe forever. The rain is going to wipe out most of the crops. You can see that, Harry.”

“Yeah. Can you loan me a hatchet for fifteen minutes?”

“Tony, get the hatchet.”

Tony jogged up to the farmhouse. Hugo asked, “What are you going to do with it?”

“Trim the roots off my walking stick.”

“What then?”

He didn’t have to answer, because Tony was back with the hatchet. Harry went to work. The Shire people watched. Presently Hugo asked again. “What do you do now?”

“Deliver the mail,” said Harry.

“Why?” A frail and pretty blonde girl cried, “It’s all over, man. No more letters to your congressman. No more PLAYBOY, No more tax forms or… or voting instructions. You’re free! Take off the uniform and dance!”

“I’m already cold. My feet hurt.”

“Have a hit.” The silent giant was handing a generously fat homemade cigarette through the gate, shielding it with Tony’s digger hat. Harry saw the others’ disapproval, but they said nothing, so he took the toke. He held his own hat over it while he lit it and drew.

Were they growing the weed here? Harry didn’t ask. But… “You’ll have trouble getting papers.”

They looked at each other. That hadn’t occurred to them.

“Better save that last batch of letters. No more Trash Day.” Harry passed the hatchet back through the bars. “Thanks. Thanks for the toke, too.” He picked up the trimmed sapling. It felt lighter, better balanced. He got his arm through the mailbag strap.

“Anyway, it’s the mail. ‘Neither rain, nor sleet, nor heat of day, nor gloom of night,’ et cetera.”

“What does it say,” Hugo Beck asked, “about the end of the world?”

“I think it’s optional. I’m going to deliver the mail.”

The Mailman: Two

Among the deficiencies common to the Italian and the U.S. postal systems are:

• inefficiency, and delays in deliveries,

• old-fashioned organization

• low efficiency and low salaries of perso

• high frequency of strikes

• very high operational deficit

Carrie Roman was a middle-aged widow with two big sons who were Harry’s age and twice Harry’s size. Carrie was almost as big as they were. Three jovial giants, they formed one of Harry’s coffee stops. Once before, they had given Harry a lift to town to report a breakdown of the mail truck.

Harry reached their gate in a mood of bright optimism.

The gate was padlocked, of course, but Jack Roman had rigged a buzzer to the house. Harry pushed it and waited.

The rain poured over him, gentle, inexorable. If it had started raining up from the ground, Harry doubted he would notice. It was all of his environment, the rain.

Where were the Romans? Hell, of course they had no electricity. Harry pushed the buzzer again, experimentally.

From the corner of his eye he saw someone crouched low, sprinting from behind a tree. The figure was only visible for an instant; then bushes hid it. But it carried something the shape of a shovel, or a rifle, and it was too small to be one of the Romans.

“Mail call!” Harry cried cheerily. What the hell was going on here?

The sound of a gunshot matched the gentle tugging at the edge of his mailbag. Harry threw himself flat. The bag was higher than he was as he crawled for cover, and it jerked once, coinciding with another gunshot. A .22, he thought. Not much rifle. Certainly not much for the valley. He pulled himself behind a tree, his breath raspy and very loud in his own ears.

He wriggled the bag off his shoulder and set it down. He squatted and selected four envelopes tied with a rubber band. Crouched. Then, all in an instant, he sprinted for the Roman mailbox, slid the packet into it, and was ru

Harry wasn’t a policeman, he wasn’t armed, and there wasn’t anything he could do to help the Romans. No way!

And he couldn’t use the road. No cover.

The gully on the other side? It would be full of water, but it was the best he could do. Sprint across the road, then crawl on hands and knees…

But he’d have to leave the mailbag.

Why not? Who am I kidding? Hammerfall has come, and there’s no need for mail carriers. None. What does that make me?

He didn’t care much for the question.

“It makes me,” he said aloud, “a turkey who got good grades in high school by working his arse off, flunked out of college, got fired from every job he ever had…”

It makes me a mailman, goddammit! He lifted the heavy bag and crouched again. Things were quiet up there. Maybe they’d been shooting to keep him away? But what for?

He took in a deep breath. Do it now, he told himself. Before you’re too scared to do it at all. He dashed into the road, across, and dived toward the gulley. There was another shot, but he didn’t think the bullet had come anywhere close. Harry scuttled down the gulley, half crawling, half swimming mailbag shoved around onto his back to keep it out of the water.