“Jesus Christ! You mean the whole country’s gone?”
“Maybe the whole world,” Tim said.
It was too much. The ranger sat down on the ground next to Tim’s car. He stared into space. “My girl lives in Long Beach…”
Tim didn’t say anything.
“And my mother. She was in Brooklyn. Visiting my sister. You say that’s all gone.”
“Probably,” Tim said. “I wish I knew more. But probably.”
“So what do I do with all the kids, and all the campers? With all these people? How do I feed them?”
You don’t, Tim thought, but he didn’t say that. “Food warehouses. Cattle ranches. Anyplace there’s food, until you can plant more crops. It’s June. Some of the crops should have survived.”
“North,” the ranger said to himself. “There are ranches in the hills above Grapevine. North.” He looked up at Tim. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. North, I guess.”
“Can you take some of the kids?”
“I suppose so, but we don’t have anything to eat—”
“Who does?” the ranger demanded. “Maybe you ought to stay with us. We can all move out together.”
“There’s probably a better chance for small groups than large ones. And we don’t want to stay with you,” Tim said. He didn’t want to be bothered with kids, either, but there was no way to refuse.
Besides, it was the right thing to do. He’d read it somewhere: In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action. Or something like that.
The ranger went off and came back a few minutes later with four young children, ages six and under. They were clean and well dressed, and very frightened. Eileen packed them into the back of the Blazer, then got in the back seat, where she’d be close to them.
The ranger gave Tim a page torn from his notebook. There were names and addresses on it. “This is who the kids are.” His voice fell. “If you can find their parents…”
“Yeah,” Tim said. He started the Blazer. It was the first time he’d ever driven it. The clutch was very stiff.
“My name’s Eileen,” she was saying in the back. “And that’s Tim.”
“Where are we going?” the girl asked. She seemed very small and helpless, but she wasn’t crying. The boys were. “Are you taking us to my mommy?”
Tim glanced at the paper. Laurie Malcolm, sent to a church camp by her mother. No father mentioned. Mother’s address: Long Beach. Lord, what could they tell her?
“Can we go home?” one of the boys asked before Eileen could say anything.
How do you tell a six-year-old that his home has been washed away? Or a little girl that her mommy is—
“We’re going up that hill,” Eileen said. She pointed toward the mountain nearby. “When we get there, we’ll wait for your mommy—”
“But what happened?” the boy asked. “Everybody was so scared. Reverend Tilly didn’t want us to know it, but he was.”
“It was the comet,” Laurie told him solemnly. “Did it hit Long Beach, Eileen? Can I call you Eileen? Reverend Tilly says you aren’t supposed to call grown people by their first names. Ever.”
Tim turned off onto the side road leading up to the observatory. Long ago he’d had the old dirt road improved with logs and gravel and concrete in the worst places. The mud was thick, but the Blazer had no trouble. It wouldn’t be long now. Then they’d have food, and they could stop running. For a while, anyway. The food wouldn’t last forever, but it would be time enough to worry about that when they got there. Just now the observatory was home, a haven, a familiar place, with heat and dry clothes and a shower. A safe place to hide while the world ended.
The Blazer was no longer new and shiny. It was scratched along the sides from rockslides, and there was mud everywhere. It took the muddy road like a freeway, climbing over fallen rock, wading through deep pools. Tim had never had a car like this. It made him feel he could go anywhere.
And it had taken them home. Around one more bend. One more bend and they’d be safe.
The concrete building stood unharmed. So did the wooden garage outside it. The shed roof of the garage sagged, leaning at an angle, but not so much that anyone but Tim would notice. The telescope dome was closed, and the shutters were in place on all the windows of the main building.
“We’re here!” Tim shouted. He had to shout. Eileen had the children singing in the back seat. “There’s a hair on the wart on the…”
“There it is! Safe! At least for a while.”
The song cut off raggedly. “It looks all right,” Eileen said. There was wonder in her voice. She hadn’t expected to see the place intact. Somewhere after Tujunga she’d given up hoping for anything at all.
“Sure, Marty’s competent,” Tim said. “He’s got the shutters up, and the…” His voice trailed off.
Eileen followed Tim’s look. There were two men coming out of the observatory. Older men, about fifty. They carried rifles. They watched as Tim brought the Blazer to a halt in front of the big concrete porch. The rifles were held cradled in their arms, not quite pointing at the Blazer, not pointed away either.
“Sorry, chum, no room,” one of the men called. “Best move on. Sorry.”
Tim stared at the strangers, letting his rage gather strength. He let them have it between the eyes. “I’m Tim Hamner. I own this place. Now who’re you?”
They didn’t react at all.
A younger man came out onto the porch.
“Marty!” Tim screamed. “Marty, tell them who I am!” And when I learn what these strangers are doing here (he didn’t say) I’ll have words with you, Marty.
Marty smiled broadly. “Larry, Fritz, this is Mr. Timothy Gardner Allington Hamner, playboy, millionaire—oh, yes, and amateur astronomer. He owns this place.”
“Think of that,” Fritz said. The rifle didn’t waver.
One of the boys began to cry. Eileen pulled him toward herself and hugged him. The other children watched with big eyes.
Tim opened the door of the Blazer. The rifles moved fractionally. Tim ignored them and got out. He stood in the dusky twilight. Rain soaked his clothing and ran down the back of his neck. He walked toward the porch.
“Better not,” one of the riflemen, the one called Larry, said.
“The hell with you,” Tim said. He climbed the steps onto the porch. “I am not going to shout at you and scare the children.”
The men did nothing, and for a moment Tim felt courage.
Maybe…was it all a joke? He looked at Marty Robbins. “What’s happening here?”
“Not here,” Marty said. “Everywhere.”
“I know about Hammerfall. What are these people doing at my place?” A mistake, Tim realized instantly. Too late.
“It’s not your place,” Marty Robbins said.
“You can’t get away with this! There are rangers down there. They’ll be here as soon as they can get—”
“No they won’t,” Robbins said. “No rangers, no Army, no National Guard, no police. You’ve got good radio equipment here, Mr. Hamner.” He said the “Mister” contemptuously. “I heard the last Apollo messages, and the rest of it, too. I heard what the rangers told each other. You don’t own this place, because nobody owns anything anymore. And we don’t need you.”
“But…” Tim examined the other two men. They didn’t look like criminals. How the hell do you know what a criminal looks like? Tim wondered. But they didn’t. Their hands were clean, rough, like workmen’s hands, not like Marty Robbins’ hands. Or Tim’s. One of the men had broken a nail off close and it was just growing back.
They wore gray trousers, work clothes. There was a label on Fritz’s pants. “Big Smith.”
“Why are you doing this?” Tim asked them. He ignored Robbins now.
“What else can we do?” Larry asked. There was pleading in his voice, but the rifle was held steady, pointing somewhere between Tim and the Blazer. “There’s not a lot of food
here, but some. Enough for a while. We have families here, Mr. Hamner. What can we do?”
“You can stay. Just let us—”
“But don’t you see, we can’t let you stay,” Larry said. “What can you do here, Mr. Hamner? What are you good for now?”
“How the hell do you know what I can—”
“We discussed this before,” Fritz growled. “Didn’t think you’d get here, but we talked about what to do if you did. And this is it. Get out. You’re not needed.”
Marty Robbins couldn’t meet Tim’s eye. Tim nodded bleakly. He understood. There wasn’t a lot more to say, either. Any equipment—radios, even astronomical and meteorological gear—Robbins knew how to work as well as Tim did. Better. And Robbins had lived here for over a year. If there was anything special to know about these mountains, he’d know more of it than Tim.
“Who’s the chick?” Robbins demanded. He took a large flashlight from his pocket and shined it toward the Blazer. It didn’t help the visibility much. It showed raindrops falling, and the muddy car, and a glint of Eileen’s hair. “One of your relatives? Rich bitch?”
You little bastard. Tim tried to remember his assistant as he’d known him. They’d quarreled when Marty lived in Bel Air with Tim, but it hadn’t been serious, and Robbins was excellent at the observatory. Not a month ago, three weeks ago, Tim had written a letter recommending Robbins to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. I guess I really never knew…
“She can stay,” Robbins was saying. “We’re a woman short. She can stay. Not you. I’ll go tell her—”
“You’ll ask her,” Larry said. “Ask. She can stay if she wants to.”
“And me?”
“We’re going to watch you drive away,” Larry said. “Don’t come back.”
“There are some rangers out there,” Marty Robbins said. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea. Maybe we shouldn’t let him have the car. That’s a good car. Better than anything we have here—”
“Don’t talk like that.” Larry’s voice dropped and he glanced behind at the door into the observatory.
Tim frowned. Something was happening here, and he didn’t understand it.
Eileen got out of the Blazer and came up onto the porch. Her voice was wooden, exhausted. “What’s wrong, Tim?”
“They say this isn’t my place anymore. They’re sending us away.”
“You can stay,” Marty said.
“You can’t do this!” Eileen screamed.
“Shut up!” Larry shouted.
An ample woman came out of the observatory. She looked at Larry with a frown. “What is this?”
“Keep out of this,” Larry said.
“Larry Kelly, what are you doing?” the woman demanded. “Who are these people? I know him! He was on the ‘Tonight Show.’ Timothy Hamner. This was your place, wasn’t it?”
“It is my place.”
“No,” Fritz said. “We agreed. No.”
“Thieves. Thieves and murderers,” Eileen said. “Why don’t you just shoot us and be done with it?”
Tim wanted to shout to her, to tell her to shut up. Suppose they did it? Robbins would.
“There’s no call to say things like that,” the woman said. “It’s simple. There’s not enough here for all of us. Not for long. More people there are, the less there is, and we don’t need Mr. Hamner giving orders, and I don’t reckon he’s good for a lot else. Not anymore. You go find another place, Mr. Hamner. There’s other places to go.” She looked to Larry for confirmation. “We’ll have to move on pretty soon ourselves. You’ll just have a head start.”
She sounded thoroughly sane and reasonable. It was a nightmare for Tim: She sounded calm and reasonable, and her tone indicated that she was sure Tim would agree.
“But the girl can stay,” Robbins said again.
“Do you want to?” Tim asked.
Eileen laughed. It was a bitter laugh, full of contempt. She looked at Marty Robbins and laughed again.
“There are children in that car,” the woman said.
“Mary Sue, they’re no business of ours,” Fritz said.
She ignored him. She looked to Larry. “Who are those children?”
“From the camp,” Eileen said. “They lived in Los Angeles. The rangers didn’t have anything to feed them. We brought them. We thought—”
The woman left the porch and went down to the Blazer.
“You tell her no,” Fritz said. “You make her—”
“I haven’t been able to make her do anything for fifteen years,” Larry said. “You know that.”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t need kids here!” Marty Robbins shouted.
“Don’t reckon they’ll eat as much between them as this lady would,” Larry said. He turned to Tim and Eileen. “Look, Mr. Hamner, you see how it is? We got nothing against you, but—”
“But you’re leaving,” Marty Robbins said. There was satisfaction in his voice. He let it drop so that the woman couldn’t hear. She had gotten into the car and was sitting in the back seat talking with the children. “I still say there are rangers out there. Hamner might find one. Tell you what, I’ll go along with him when he leaves—”
“No.” Larry was clearly disgusted.
“Maybe he should,” Fritz said. “Way he thinks, I’m not sure we ever want to have him behind us. Maybe he should go and not come back. We could tough it out without him.”
“We made a deal!” Marty cried. “When you came here! I let you in! We made a deal—”
“Sure we did,” Fritz said. “But you better shut up about murder or we may forget that deal. I see Mary Sue’s bringing the kids. You want us to keep ’em, Mr. Hamner?”
So damned calm, Tim thought. Fritz and Larry. Two…two what? Carpenters? Landscape gardeners? Survivors now, convincing themselves they were still civilized people. “Since there’s no gas left in the car, and Eileen and I aren’t likely to get out of the mountains alive, it would be a good idea. Eileen, staying here might be your—”
“Not with that.” She was looking at Robbins.
Fritz looked at Larry. They stared at each other for a moment. “I guess we’ve got a little gas,” Fritz said. “Ten-gallon can, anyway. You can have that. Ten gallons of gas and a couple cans of soup. Now get back in that car before we change our minds about the gas.”
Tim got back in the car, pulling Eileen along before she could make any more suggestions. The children were clustered around Mary Sue, but they were looking toward the car, and that scared look was going to be on their faces a lot from now on. Tim dredged up a reassuring smile and a wave. His fingers twitched with the need to get going, get away from those guns! But he waited.
Larry filled their tank.
Tim backed out of the drive and drove off into the rain.
The Mailman: One
Everything that is called duty, the prerequisite for all genuine law and the substance of every noble custom, can be traced back to honor. If one has to think about it, one is already without honor,
Oswald Spengler, Thoughts
Harry Newcombe saw nothing of Hammerfall, and it was Jason Gillcuddy’s fault. Gillcuddy had imprisoned himself in the wilderness (he said) to diet and to write a novel. He had dropped twelve pounds in six months, but he could afford more. As for his isolation, it was certain that he would rather talk to a passing postman than write.
As the best coffee cup was to be found at the Silver Valley Ranch, so Gillcuddy, on the other side of the valley, made the best coffee. “But,” Harry told him, smiling, “I’d slosh if I let everyone feed me two cups. I’m popular, I am.”
“Kid, you’d better take it. My lease is up come Thursday, and Ballad’s finished. Next Trash Day I’ll be gone.”
“Finished. Hey, beautiful! Am I in it?”
“No, I’m sorry, Harry, but the damn thing was getting too big. You know how it is; what you like best is usually what has to go. But the coffee’s Jamaica Blue Mountain. When I celebrate—”
“Yeah. Pour.”
“Shot of brandy?”
“Have some respect for the uniform, if you…Well, hell, I can’t pour it out, can I.”
“To my publisher.” Gillcuddy raised his cup, carefully. “He said if I didn’t fulfill his contract he’d put out a contract on me.”
“Tough business.”
“Well, but the money’s good.”
A distant thunderclap registered at the back of Harry’s mind. Summer storm coming? He sipped at his coffee. It really was something special.
But there were no thunderclouds when he walked outside. Harry had been up before dawn; the valley farmers kept strange hours, and so did postmen. He had seen the pearly glow of the comet’s tail wrapping the Earth. Some of that glory still clung, softening the direct sunlight and whiting the blue of the sky. Like smog, but clean. There was a strange stillness, as if the day were waiting for something.
So it was back to Chicago for Jason Gillcuddy, until the next time he had to imprison himself to diet and write a novel. Harry would miss him. Jason was the most literate man in the valley, possibly excepting the Senator—who was real. Harry had seen him from a distance yesterday, arriving in a vehicle the size of a bus. Maybe they’d meet today.
He was driving briskly along toward the Adams place when the truck began to shake. He braked. Flat tire? Damage to a wheel? The road shuddered and seemed to twist; the truck was trying to shake his brains out. He got it stopped. It was still shaking! He turned off the ignition. Still shaking?
“I should have looked at that brandy bottle. Huh. Earthquake?” The tremors died away. “There aren’t any fault lines around here. I thought.”
He drove on, more slowly. The Adams farm was a long jog on the new route he’d planned to get him there early. He didn’t dare go up to the house…and that would save him a couple of minutes. There had been no new complaints from Mrs. Adams. But he hadn’t seen Donna in weeks.
Harry took off his sunglasses. The day had darkened without his noticing. It was still darkening: clouds streaming across the sky like a speeded-up movie, lightning flashing in their dark bellies. Harry had never seen anything like it. Summer storm, right; it was going to rain.
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