Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [118]
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 running aimlessly. None of it mattered now. They were all doomed, as Eric Larsen was doomed.
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