Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [183]
Eileen bounced and rolled hard against the seat belt. She shook herself, sat partly upright and looked out. The wet countryside flowed past. She blinked, and then, satisfied, went back to sleep.
Slept right through the best driving I'll ever do, Tim thought. He grinned at the rain and mud, then switched off the engine to coast downhill.
An hour later she was still asleep. He envied her. He'd heard of people who slept most of the time: shell-shocked, or bitterly disappointed in their waking lives. He could understand the temptation. But of course that wasn't Eileen. She needed sleep. She'd be all the more alert when she was needed.
Here the road had shattered to discrete plates. Tim switched on the engine and kept the speed up, moving as if from island to concrete island. He remembered a TV program about the Baja race. One driver said the way to take a bad road was fast—that way you didn't touch the bumps but flew over them. It hadn't seemed like a very good idea when he heard it, but now there didn't seem to be much else to do. The plates lurched under the car's weight and impact. Tim's knuckles were white on the wheel, but Eileen smiled in her sleep, as if rocked in a cradle.
Tim felt very lonely.
She had not deserted him. At the risk of her life she had stayed with him. But she was sleeping and he was driving, and the rain pounded constantly on metal an inch over his head, and the road kept doing strange things. Here it lifted in a graceful arc, like a futuristic bridge, and a new stream ran beneath it. The concrete ribbon hadn't shattered under its own weight, not yet, but it for damn sure wouldn't hold a car. Tim drove around it, through the flood. The wheels kept moving and the motor didn't die, and he pulled back onto the road where he could.
He had been deserted by everything and everyone but Eileen. He could understand that money and credit cards were worthless; sure. A bullet through the windshield was something else. Driving across the green of a country club felt like vandalism! The observatory … but Tim didn't want to think about that. He'd been thrown off his own land, and his ears burned with the memory. Cowardice. It felt like cowardice.
The road curled out of the mountains, widened and became a smooth straight line leading away. Where? No compass. Nothing to do but drive on. And the rain became a furious lashing attack. Tim started the motor and dared to increase speed to twenty mph.
Eileen asked, "How are we doing?"
"Out of the mountains. It's a straightaway, no breaks visible. Go back to sleep."
"Good."
When he looked she was asleep again.
He saw a freeway ahead. A sign told him HIGHWAY 99, NORTH, He went up the ramp. Now he could go forty. He passed cars stalled in the rain, both on and off the highway. People, too. Tim hunched low whenever he saw anything that could be a gun. Once it was real: Two men stepped out from either side of the highway and raised a pair of shotguns. They gestured: Stop. Tim hunched low, stamped on the accelerator, aimed for one of the men. The man leaped unhesitatingly into the muddy darkness. Tim listened for the guns with every nerve, but they did not speak. Presently he straightened up.
Now, what was that about? Were they afraid to waste ammunition? Or were the guns too wet to fire? He said to himself, softly, "If you can't stand not knowing … " Harv Randall's words.
They still had gas, they were still moving. The highway was awash with water; it must have stopped lesser cars than this one. Tim grinned in the dark. Two hundred and fifty thou for a car? Well, it pays to buy the best.
The rain hurled a sea of water across the land in one ferocious blast, then stopped just as suddenly.
For a long moment Tim had an unbroken view ahead. He hit the brakes as the rain slashed down again. The car achieved a marvelous floating sensation before it coasted to a stop.
They had come to the end.
Eileen sat up. She pulled the seat back up behind her and smoothed her skirt with automatic gestures.