Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [112]
The spokesman for the men was still shouting. "Those motherfuckers kept us from getting up into the hills! What use are they?" He looked down at his empty shotgun. It lay open in his hand. His other hand held two shells, and kept straying toward the breech of the gun, not quite inserting them.
"I don't know," Eric said. "Are you going to be the first man to start shooting policemen?" He let his eyes go to the bumper sticker. The burly man's followed, then looked down at the street. "Are you?" Eric repeated.
"No."
"Good. Now give me the shotgun."
"I need it—"
"So do I," Eric said. "Your friends have others."
"Am I under arrest?"
"Where would I take you? I need your shotgun. That's all."
The man nodded. "Okay."
"The shells, too," Eric said. His voice took on a note of urgency.
"All right."
"Now get out of here," Eric said. He held the shotgun without loading it. The Wardens, the few that survived, watched in silent horror. "Thank you," Eric said. He turned away, not caring where the burly men went.
I've just watched Murder One and done nothing about it, he told himself. He walked briskly away from the traffic jam. It was as if his mind were no longer connected to his body, and his body knew where it was going.
The sky to the southwest was strange. Clouds flew overhead, formed and vanished as in a speeded-up film. It was all familiar to Eric Larsen, as familiar as the way the air felt in his sinuses. Anyone from Topeka would know. Tornado weather. When the air feels like this, and the sky looks that way, you head for the nearest basement, taking a radio and a canteen of water.
It's a good mile to the Burbank City Jail, Eric thought. He studied the sky judiciously. I can make it. He walked briskly toward the jail. Eric Larsen was still a civilized man.
Eileen watched the incident in horror. She hadn't heard the conversation, but what happened was plain enough. The police … weren't police any longer.
Two of the Wardens were messily dead, five more writhed in the agony of mortal wounds, and the rest were writhing to free themselves from the chains. One of the Wardens had a pair of bolt cutters. Eileen recognized them. Joe Corrigan had given them to the police only minutes, or lifetimes, before.
The scene outside was incomprehensible. People lay in heaps, or dragged themselves from ruined shops. One man had climbed on top of a wrecked truck. He sat on the cab, feet dangling over the windshield, and drank deeply from a bottle of whiskey. Every now and again he looked up and laughed.
Anyone wearing a white robe was in danger. For the Wardens in chains it was a nightmare. Hundreds of enraged drivers, more hundreds of passengers, many fleeing the city, not really expecting Hammerfall but heading out just in case—and the Wardens had stopped them. Most of the people in the street were still lying flat on their backs, or wandering aimlessly, but there were enough men and women converging on the robed and chained Wardens, and each carrying something heavy—tire irons, tire chains, jack handles, a baseball bat …
Eileen stood in the doorway. She glanced back at Corrigan's body. Two vertical lines deepened between her eyes as she watched Patrolman Larsen's retreating back. A riot was starting out there, and the only cop was walking away, fast, after calmly watching murder. It wasn't a world Eileen understood.
World. What had happened to the world? Gingerly she picked her way back through the broken glass toward her office. Thank God for medium heels, she thought. Glass crunched underfoot. She moved as quickly as she could, without a glance at the smashed goods and broken shelves and sagging walls.
A length of pipe, torn loose from the ceiling, had half crushed her desk, smashing the glass top. The pipe was heavier than anything she had ever lifted before, and she grunted with the effort,