Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [122]
Tim looked around, startled, but the car wasn't moving. He couldn't see Eileen's face through the driving rain and wet glass. Would she leave him here?
Experimentally he put the jack handle between the wire and a fence post and twisted. Nothing happened. He strained, throwing his weight onto the handle, and something gave. He slipped and fell against the fence, and felt his wet clothing tear as a jagged point snagged him. It cut him, and the salt on his clothes was in the wound. He hunched his shoulders against the pain and hopelessness, and stood, helpless again.
"Tim! How are you doing?"
He wanted to turn and call to her. He wanted to tell her it was no use, and that he was miserable, and he'd torn his clothes, and …
Instead, he crouched and inserted the jack handle again, twisting and prying at the wire, until it broke free of the post. Then again, and again, and suddenly the whole length of fence was loose there. He went to the next post and began his work.
Eileen gunned the car. The horn sounded, and she called, "Stand aside!" The car left the road and came at the fence rammed it, tore it loose from another post and flattened it onto the grass, and the car drove over it. The car motor raced. "Get in," she called.
Tim ran for it. She hadn't stopped completely, and now it seemed she wasn't going to stop at all. He ran to catch up and tugged open the door, threw himself onto the seat. She gunned the car across the fairway, leaving deep ruts, then came to a green. She drove across it. The car tore at the carefully manicured surface.
Tim laughed. There was a note of hysteria in it.
"What?" Eileen asked. She didn't take her eyes off the grassy fairway ahead.
"I remember when some lady stepped on the Los Angeles Country Club green with spiked heels," Tim said. "The steward nearly died! I thought I understood Hammerfall, and what it meant, but I didn't, not until you drove across the greens … "
She didn't say anything, and Tim stared moodily ahead again. How many man-hours had gone to produce that perfect grassy surface? Would anyone ever again bother? Tim had another wild impulse to laughter. If there were golf clubs in the car, he could get out and tee off on a green …
Eileen went completely across the golf course and back to the blacktop road up into the hills. Now they were in wilderness, high hills on either side of them. They passed a picnic ground. There were Boy Scouts there. They had a tent set up, and they seemed to be arguing with the scoutmaster. Tim opened the car window. "Stay on high ground," he shouted.
"What's happened below?" the scoutmaster asked.
Eileen slowed to a stop.
"Fires. Floods. Traffic jams," Tim said. "Nothing you'll want to go into. Not for awhile." He motioned the adult closer. "Stay up here, at least for the night."
"Our families … " the man said.
"Where?"
"Studio City."
"You can't get there now," Tim said. "Traffic's not moving in the valley. Roads closed, freeways down, lot of fires. The best thing you can do for your families is to stay up here where you're safe."
The man nodded. He had big brown eyes in a square, honest face. There was a stubble of red beard on his chin. "I've been telling the kids that. Julie-Ann, you hear that? Your mother knows where we are. If things were really bad down there, they'd send the cops after us. Best we stay here." He lowered his voice. "Lot of rebuilding to do after that quake, I guess. Many hurt?"
"Yeah," Tim said. He turned away. He couldn't look into the scoutmaster's eyes.
"We'll stay another day, then," the scoutmaster said. "They ought to have things moving again by tomorrow. Kids aren't really prepared for this rain, though. Nobody expects rain in June. Maybe we ought to go down into Burbank and stay in a house. Or a church. They'd put us up—"
"Don't," Tim said. His voice was urgent. "Not yet. Does this road go on over the top?"
"Yes." The man brought his face close to Tim's. "Why do you want to go up into that?" He waved toward the lightning that flashed on the peaks above. "Why?"