Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [166]
He found a supply of Baggies in the kitchen and carefully enclosed each packet of mail in one. Last Baggies on Earth, a small voice told him. "Right," he said, and went on stuffing. "Have to keep the Baggies. You can have your mail, but the Baggies belong to the Service."
After that was done he thought about his next move. This house might be useful. It was a good house, stone and concrete, not wood. The barn was concrete too. The land wasn't much good—at least Amos had said it wasn't—but somebody might make use of the buildings. "Even me," Harry said to himself. He had to have some place to stay between rounds.
Which meant something had to be done about the bodies. Harry wasn't up to digging two graves. He sure as hell wasn't going to drag them out for the coyotes and buzzards. There wasn't enough dry wood to cremate a mouse.
Finally he went out again. He found an old pickup truck. The keys were in the ignition, and it started instantly. It sounded smooth, in good tune. There was a drum of gasoline in the shed, and Harry thoughtfully filled the tank of the truck, filled two gas cans, then stacked junk against the drum to hide it.
He went back into the house and got old bedclothes to wrap the bodies, then drove the truck around to the front of the house. The chickens swarmed around his feet, demanding attention, while he wrestled the corpses onto the truck bed. Finished, Harry stooped and quickly wrung six chickens' necks before the rest of the chickens got the idea. He tossed the birds into the truck with the Sinanians.
He went around carefully locking doors and windows, put Amos's keys in his pockets and drove away.
He still had his route to finish. But there were things he must do first, not the least of which was burying the Sinanians.
The Stronghold: One
It is certain that free societies would have no easy time in a future dark age. The rapid return to universal penury will be accomplished by violence and cruelties of a kind now forgotten. The force of law will be scant or nil, either because of the collapse or disappearance of the machinery of state, or because of difficulties of communication and transport. It will be possible only to delegate authority to local powers who will maintain it by force alone …
Roberto Vacca, The Coming Dark Age
Senator Arthur Jellison was in a foul mood on Hammerfall Morning. The only people he could get at JPL were PR flacks who didn't know anything that wasn't being reported on radio and TV. There was no way to reach Charlie Sharps. It made sense, but Senator Jellison wasn't used to having people too busy to talk to him. Finally he settled for a phone patch into the space communications network, so he could hear what the astronauts were saying.
That didn't help much because of the static. The live TV shots were bad, too. Was the damned thing going to hit or not?
If it did hit, there were a lot of moves Jellison should have made but hadn't, because he couldn't afford to look like a fool to his constituents, not even here in the valley, where he routinely got eighty percent of the vote. He'd brought his family and a couple of assistants and as much gear as he could buy without attracting a lot of attention, and that was about all he could do. Now they were all gathered in the house, most of them sitting with him in the big living room.
The phone speaker squawked. Johnny Baker's voice, and Maureen came unnaturally alert. Jellison had known about that for a long time, but he didn't think Maureen knew he was aware. Now Baker had his divorce, and his Hammerlab mission. Maybe, when he got down … That would be a good thing. Maureen needed somebody.
So did Charlotte, but she thought she had him. Jellison didn't care for Jack Turner. His son-in-law was too handsome, too quick to talk about his tennis medals, and not quick at all to pay back the sizable "loans" he asked for when his investments didn't turn out so well—as they almost never did.