Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [147]
"What time is it?" Eileen asked.
Tim pushed the button on his watch. "One-fifty." He shifted uncomfortably. "The stuff we read in Lit classes made it sound romantic, this business of sleeping in each other's arms, but it's damned uncomfortable."
She laughed in the dark. Lovely, Tim thought. It was Eileen again, her laugh, and he could imagine her sunburst smile although he couldn't see it. "Do these seats do anything?" she asked.
"Dunno."
The car had a divided bench seat. Tim reached down, feeling for controls. He found a lever and pulled. The seat back collapsed against the seat behind, not quite horizontal but a great deal more comfortable than it had been. He told her what he'd done and she flopped hers back as well. Now they were not quite lying side by side. She moved against him. "I'm freezing."
"Me too."
They huddled together, seeking each other's warmth. They were not very comfortable. Arms got in the way. She put her arm over him, and they lay still for a moment. Then she drew him tightly against her body, pushing her legs against his. She felt warm along her whole length. Suddenly her mouth found his and she kissed him. That went on for a moment and she drew away, and laughed, very softly. "Still in the mood?" she asked.
"Back in the mood," Tim said, and he gave up on speaking.
They kept most of their clothes on, peeling back shirt and blouse and skirt and pants, giggling, reaching under cloth that was needed for warmth; and they coupled suddenly, with a fervor that left no room for laughter. It felt right, now. Even the flavor of insanity matched what was happening to the world around them. Afterward they rested in each other's arms, and Eileen said, "Shoes."
So they curled around each other, maintaining contact, to wrestle their shoes off; they caressed each other with their toes; they coupled again. Tim felt the wiry strength of Eileen's legs and arms, caging him. She relaxed slowly, and sighed, and was out like a light.
He pulled her skirt down as far as it would go. She slept soundly, stirring only slightly when he moved. Tim lay awake in the dark, wishing for dawn, wishing for sleep.
Why did we do that? he wondered. The night the world ended, and we screw like mad minks, here at the end of nowhere on the Big Tujunga Canyon Road, with a dead bridge in front of us and ten million dead behind … In a car seat, yet, like a couple of teen-agers.
She moved slightly, and he put his arm across her, protectively, without volition. He realized he had done that. Reflex. Protective reflex, he thought.
Suddenly Tim Hamner grinned in the dark. "Why the hell not?" he said aloud, and went to sleep.
There was a gray tinge to the sky when they both woke. They sat up together, wrapped in thoughts and memories, wondering what had wakened them. Then they heard it over the drumming of rain on metal a motor, a car or truck coming very fast up the highway. Presently there were lights behind them.
Tim felt a terrible sense of urgency. He ought to be doing something. Warning. He ought to warn that car. He shook his head violently, trying to shake himself awake. It must have worked. He reached past Eileen for the steering wheel. The horn shrieked in mechanical terror.
The car went past them like a bat out of hell, followed by the terror-sound. Tim released the horn and heard real mechanical terror: a long scream of brakes, and then nothing, no sound at all for crawling eons. Then metal smashed rock, and light flared ahead of them.
They got out and ran toward half of a bridge. Below the bridge's twisted end was fire. Fire crawled away from the greater blaze, stopped, convulsed, then fell still. The car burned, casting its bonfire light on the canyon and the stream at its bottom.
Tim felt Eileen's hand seeking his. He took her hand and held it tightly.
"Poor bastards," she muttered. She shivered in the dawn cold. The rain had eased, but the wind was cold. It blew the fire. They could feel warmth from the blazing car fighting the wind's chill.
Eileen let go of Tim's hand and moved out onto