Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [128]
Gordie looked frantically along the trail. No good place to hide. "Ponchos," he shouted.
They scrabbled their rain gear out. As Gordie flipped his poncho open, the rain came like a torrent of warm bathwater. Gordie tasted salt.
Salt!
"Hammerfall," he whispered.
And the end of civilization. The paper shortages at the bank: gone, washed away. They weren't important now.
Marie? The clouds were building above Los Angeles—and it was a long way to the nearest car. Nothing he could do for her. No way to help Marie. Maybe Harvey Randall would look out for her. Right now, Gordie's problem was the boys.
"Back to Soda Springs," he shouted. It was the best place, until they found out just what was going to happen. It was sheltered, and there was a clearing and a flat.
"I want to go home!" Herbie Robinett screamed.
"Get 'em moving, Andy," Gordie called. He waved them ahead of him, ready to shove them if he had to, but he didn't. They followed Andy. Bert went past. Gordie thought he saw tears in his son's eyes. Tears through the dirty rainwater that hammered at them.
The trails will all be flooded in no time. Washed out, Gordie thought. And this warm crap will melt all the snow. The Kern's going to be up over its banks, and all the roads will be gone.
Gordie Vance suddenly threw back his head and yelled in triumph. He was going to live.
Hot Fudge Tuesdae: Three
When Adam farmed and Eve spun,
Kyrie Eleison,
Who was then the gentleman?
Kyrie Eleison.
Marching song of the Black Company
during the Peasant Revolt, Germany, 1525
Harvey Randall had been fifteen minutes from home … until Hammerfall.
It was day turned night, and the night was alive with pyrotechnics. If daylight still leaked through the black cloud cover, the lightning was far brighter. Hills flashed in bluewhite light and vanished, now a white sky over jagged black skyline, now a look into the canyon on his left, now blackness lit only by the headlamps of cars, now a nearby blast that clenched Randall's eyelids in pain. The wipers were going like crazy, but the rain fell faster; it all came through in a blur. Randall had rolled down both side windows. Wet was better than blind.
To drive in such conditions was madness, yet the traffic was still heavy. Perhaps they were all mad. Through the thunder and the drum of rain on metal came the bleat of myriad horns. Cars shifted lanes without warning; they drove in the oncoming lanes, and butted their way back into line when oncoming lights faced them down
Randall's TravelAll was too big to challenge. Where a landslide had blocked half the road and a coward had stopped to let oncoming traffic through, Randall drove the TravelAll over the slide—it tilted badly, but held—and in front of the coward and straight at the traffic, and butted the lead car until it backed up.
He didn't see the people who blocked his way. He saw only barriers: mudslides, breaks in the road, cars. He kept wondering if the house had collapsed, with Loretta inside. Or if Loretta, in blind panic, was about to come looking for him in the car. She'd never survive alone, and they'd never link up. Hell, it was almost an hour since Hammerfall!
The looters would come sooner or later. Loretta knew where to find his gun, but would she use it? Randall turned onto Fox Lane in floodwater that was hubcap-deep, drove to the end, used the remote. All the houses were dark.
The garage door didn't open.
But the front door was wide open.
The looting couldn't have started this soon, Randall thought, and he made himself believe it. Just for drill, then, he took the flashlight and handgun with him, and he left the TravelAll in a roll and immediately rolled back under the car, and studied the situation from there.
The house looked dead. And rain was blowing in the door.
He rolled out and sprinted and pulled up alongside the door. He still hadn't used the flash. First person he saw, he'd flick the beam in her face. It would be Loretta, coming to close the door,