by Larry Niven
Fred didn’t want to remember the rest of it. How she’d had one drink too many, and told him that even though they’d just met she felt she’d known him a long time and of course he really had known her even if she didn’t know it, and she’d asked if he wanted to stay…
Tramp. Like all of them. A tramp. No, she couldn’t have been, she really loved him, he knew she did, but why had she laughed, and then screamed and told him to get out when—
NO!
Fred always stopped remembering then. He looked up at the sky. The comet was there. Its tail blazed across the sky just as he’d seen in the paintings in the astronomy magazines, and when the sky was blue with hidden dawn, brightening in that tiny patch of western sky that Fred could see, there were still the wisps of comet among the clouds, and people moved on the streets below, the fools, didn’t they know?
They brought him breakfast in his cell. The jailers didn’t want to talk to him. Even the trustees looked at him that way…
They knew. They knew. The police doctors must have examined her, and they knew she hadn’t been, that he couldn’t, that he’d tried but he couldn’t and she laughed and he knew how he could do it, but he didn’t want to, and she laughed again, and he bit her until she screamed and then he’d be able to only she kept on screaming!
He had to stop thinking. He had to, before he remembered the shape on the bed. The cops had made him look at her. One had held his hand in a certain way and bent his fingers until he opened his eyes and looked and he didn’t want to, didn’t they understand that he loved her and he didn’t want…?
The sky glowed strangely through the cracks of the buildings across the street. Somewhere to the left, far south and west. The glow died before he’d seen anything at all, but Fred smiled. It had happened. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Hey, Charlie,” the drunk across the block called. “Charlie!”
“Yeah?” the trustee answered.
“What the fuck was that? They making movies out there?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Ask the sex maniac, he’s got western exposure.”
“Hey, Sex Maniac—”
The walls and floor jerked suddenly, savagely. He was flying… He threw out his arms to ward the wall from his head. The stone wave broke against his arms, and Fred howled. Agony screamed in his left elbow.
The floor seemed to stabilize. The jail was solidly built. There’d been nothing damaged. Fred moved his left arm and moaned. Other prisoners were shouting now. One screamed in agony. He must have fallen from an upper bunk. Fred ignored them all and moved again to the window. He felt real fear. Was that all?
One ordinary day, with… clouds. Jesus, they were moving fast! Churning, forming and vanishing, streaming north and west. A lower cloud bank, calmer and more stable, began moving south and west. This wasn’t what Fred had expected. One wave of fire, that was what he had prepared for. Doomsday was taking its own sweet time.
The sky darkened. Now it was all black clouds, swirling, churning, flashing with continuous lightning. The wind and the thunder howled louder than the prisoners.
The end of the world came in blinding light and simultaneous thunderclap.
Fred’s mind recondensed to find him on the floor. His elbow was shrieking agony. Lightning… lightning must have struck the jail itself. There were no lights in the corridor, and outside was dark, so that he could see only in surrealistic flashes like a strobe-lit go-go bar.
Charlie was moving along the cellblock. He carried keys. He was letting the prisoners out. One by one. He opened the cells and they came out and moved down the corridor — and he had already passed Fred’s cell. The cells on either side were open. His was locked.
Fred screamed. Charlie didn’t turn. He went on until he reached the end of the cellblock, then he went out and down the stairs.
Fred was alone.
Eric Larsen looked to neither the right nor the left. He walked in long strides. He stepped around the dead and the injured, and ignored pleas for help. He could have helped them, but he was driven by a terrible urgency. His cold eyes and the carelessly carried shotgun discouraged anyone from getting in his way.
He saw no other policemen. He barely noticed the people around him, that some were helping the injured, some were disconsolately staring at the ruins of their homes and shops and stores, some were running aimlessly. None of it mattered now. They were all doomed, as Eric Larsen was doomed.
He might have taken a car and driven away into the hills. He saw cars race past him. He saw Eileen Hancock in an old Chrysler. If she’d stopped he might have gone with her, but she didn’t, and Eric was glad, because it was tough enough to keep his resolve.
But suppose he wasn’t needed? Suppose it was a fool’s errand? There was no way to know.
But I should have taken a car, he thought. I could have finished it and had a chance. Too late now. There was the station house, City Hall, and the jail. They seemed deserted. He went into the jail. There was a dead policewoman under the wreckage of a huge cabinet that had stood against the wall. He saw no one else, living or dead. He went through, behind the booking cage and up the stairs. The cellblocks were quiet.
It was a fool’s errand. He was not needed. He was about to go back down the stairs, but he stopped himself. No point in coming this far without being sure.
There’d been talk of a tidal wave following Hammerfall. There were people in the Burbank Jail, people that Eric Larsen had put there. Drunks, petty thieves, young vagrants who said they were eighteen but looked much younger. They couldn’t be left to drown like rats in forgotten jail cells. They didn’t deserve that. And Eric had put them there — it was his responsibility.
The barred door at the top of the stairs stood open. Eric went through and used his big flash in the near darkness. The cell doors stood open. All but one.
All but one. Eric went to the cell. Fred Lauren stood with his back to the corridor. His left arm was cradled in his right. Lauren stared out the window, and he didn’t turn when Eric flashed the light on him. Eric stood watching him for a moment. No one deserved to drown like a rat in a cage. No human did. The thieves and drunks and runaways and…
“Turn around,” Eric said. Lauren didn’t move. “Turn around or I’ll shoot your kneecaps out. That hurts a lot.”
Fred whimpered and turned. He saw the shotgun leveled at him. The policeman was holding the light off to one side, almost behind himself, so that Fred could see.
“Do you know who I am?” the policeman asked.
“Yes. You kept the other policeman from beating me last night.” Fred moved closer. He stared at the shotgun. “Is that for me?”
“I brought it for you,” Eric said. “I came to turn the others loose. I couldn’t let you loose. So I brought the shotgun.”
“It’s the end of the world,” Fred Lauren said. “All of it. Nothing will be left. But…” Fred whimpered deep in his throat. “But when? Would… please, you’ve got to tell me. Wouldn’t she be dead now? Already? She couldn’t live through the end of the world. She’d have died and I’d never have talked to her—”
“Talked to her!” Eric brought the shotgun up in rage. He saw Fred Lauren standing calmly, waiting, and he saw the bed and the ruins of a young girl, and the closet with the pathetically small wardrobe. There was a smell of copper blood in his nostrils. His finger tightened on the trigger, then relaxed. He lowered the shotgun.
“Please,” Fred Lauren said. “Please—”
The shotgun came up quickly. Eric hadn’t known it would kick so hard.
Hot Fudge Tuesdae: Two
Oh, I run to the hills and the hills were a-fallin
Run to the sea and the sea was a-boilin’,
Run to the sky and the sky was a-burnin’
ALL ON THAT DAY.
Static roared in the crowded room. Random blobs and colors filled the large TV, but twenty men and women stared at the screen where they had watched lights blaze and die above the Atlantic, abov
e Europe, Northwest Africa, the Gulf of Mexico. Only Dan Forrester continued to work. The screen above his console held a computer-drawn world map, and Forrester laboriously called up all the data received at JPL, plotting the strikes and using their locations as input for more calculations.
Charles Sharps felt that he ought to be interested in Forrester’s calculations, but he wasn’t. Instead he watched the others. Open mouths, bulging eyes, feet thrusting them back into their chairs. They cringed back from their blinded consoles and screens, as if these were the danger. And still Forrester typed instructions, made precise movements, studied results and typed again…
“Hammerfall,” Sharps said to himself. And what the hell do we do about it? He couldn’t think of anything, and the room depressed him. He left his station and went to the long table against one wall. There were coffee and Danish there, and Sharps poured himself a cup. He stared into it, then lifted it in a mock salute. “Doom,” he said. He kept his voice low. The others began to rise from their stations.
“Doom,” Sharps repeated. Ragnarok. And what use now was man’s proud civilization? Ice Age, Fire Age, Ax Age, Wolf Age… he turned to see that Forrester had left his station and was moving toward the door. “What now?” Sharps asked.
“Earthquake.” Forrester continued to walk rapidly toward the exit. “Earthquake.” He said it loudly, so that everyone could hear, and there was a rush toward the door.
Dr. Charles Sharps poured his cup almost full. He took it to the tap and ran a splash of cold water into it. It was Mocha-Java made less than an hour ago with a Melitta filter and kept in a clean Thermos. A pity to water it; but now it was just cool enough to drink. How long would it be before ships crossed major oceans again? Years, decades, forever? He might never taste coffee again. Sharps drained the cup in four swallows and dropped it onto the floor. The heavy china bounced and rolled against a console. Sharps went outside at a run.
The others had passed Forrester in the hall; the glass doors at the entrance were just closing behind him. That urgent waddle: Dan Forrester had never been athletic, but surely he could move faster than that? Did they have time to spare, then? Sharps jogged to catch up.
“Parking lot,” Dan puffed. “Watch it—”
Sharps stumbled, recovered. Dan was dancing on one leg. The ground had jerked, emphatically, once. Sharps thought: Why, that wasn’t bad. The buildings aren’t even harmed—
“Now,” Forrester said. He continued toward the parking lot. It was at the top of a long flight of concrete stairs. Dan stopped near the top, blowing hard, and Sharps got a shoulder under his armpit and managed to half-carry him the rest of the way to the top. There Dan lay down and rolled over. Sharps watched him with concern.
Forrester puffed, tried to say something and failed. He was too winded. He lifted one arm and gestured with palm down. Sit.
Too late. The ground danced under his feet, and Sharps sat down too hard, then found himself rolling toward the stairs. This time there was the sound of breaking glass, but when Sharps looked over the JPL complex he didn’t see any obvious damage. Down below, the reporters were beginning to stream out of the Von Karman Center, but many paused after the mild quake, and some went back inside.
“Tell them…” puff puff. “Tell them to get out,” Forrester said. “The worst one is coming—”
Charles Sharps called to the reporters. “Big shock coming! Get everyone outside!” He recognized the New York Times man. “Get them out!” Sharps called.
He turned to see that Forrester was on his feet and moving rapidly toward the back of the parking lot, away from the cars. He was walking as fast as Sharps had ever seen him move. “Hurry!” Sharps called to the others.
Men and women were spilling out of all the JPL buildings. Some came toward Sharps and the parking lot. Others milled about in areas between buildings, wondering where to go. Sharps gestured viciously, then looked at Forrester. Dan had reached a clear area, and was sitting down…
Sharps turned and ran toward Forrester. He reached him and sprawled onto the asphalt. Nothing happened for a moment.
“First shock… was the ground wave… from the Death Valley strike,” Forrester huffed. “Then… the Pacific strike. Don’t know how long until it triggers—”
The earth groaned. Birds flew into the air, and there was an electric feeling of impending doom. Down at the end of the parking lot a group had just come to the top of the stairs and were moving toward Forrester and Sharps.
The earth groaned again. Then it roared.
“San Andreas,” Forrester said. “It will let go completely. Way overdue. Hundred megatons of energy. Maybe more.”
Half a dozen people had cleared the stairwell. Two came toward Sharps and Forrester. The rest sought their own cars. “Get them out of there,” Forrester huffed.
“Get into the clear!” Sharps screamed. “And clear off that stairwell! Get off!”
A TV camera appeared at the top of the stairs. A man was carrying it, followed by a woman. There was a knot of people behind them. The TV crew started across the parking lot—
And the earth moved. There was time for them to curl up hugging their knees in the two or three seconds it took the quake to build strength. The earth roared again, and again, and there were other sounds, of people screaming, of falling glass and crashing concrete, and then the sound lost all form and became the shapeless chaos of nightmare. Sharps tried to sit erect and look back toward JPL, but nothing was solid. The asphalt rippled and ripped. The hot pavement slid gratingly away, throwing Sharps into a double somersault, then heaved and bucked once more, and the world was filled with sound and roaring and screams.
Finally it was over. Sharps sat and tried to focus his eyes. The world had changed. He looked up toward the towering Angeles mountains, and their skyline was different, subtly, but different. He had no time to see more. There was sound behind him, and he turned to see that part of the parking lot was gone, the rest tilted at strange angles. Many of the cars were gone, tumbled over the precipice that had developed between him and the stairs — only there weren’t any stairs. They, too, had tumbled onto the lower parking lot. The remaining cars butted each other like battling beasts. Everywhere was sound: cars, buildings, rocks, all grinding together.
A Volkswagen rolled ponderously toward Sharps, like a steel tumbleweed, growing huge. Sharps screamed and tried to run. His legs wouldn’t hold him. He fell, crawled, and saw the VW tumble past his heels, a mountain of painted metal. It smashed itself half flat against a Lincoln… and now it was only Volkswagen-sized again.
Another small car was on its back, and someone was under it, thrashing. Oh, God, it was Charlene, and there wasn’t a hope of anyone getting to her. Abruptly she stopped moving. The ground continued to tremble and groan, then thrashed. More of the parking lot separated, dipped, slid slowly downhill, carrying Charlene and her killer car. Now Sharps no longer heard the roar. He was deaf. He lay flat on the shuddering ground, waiting for it to end.
The tower, the large central building of JPL, was gone. In its place there was a crumpled mass of glass, concrete, twisted metal, broken computers. The Von Karman Center was similarly in ruins. One wall had fallen, and through it Sharps saw the first unmanned lunar, the metal spider that had gone to the Moon to scoop up its surface. The spacecraft was helpless under the falling roof. Then the walls collapsed as well, burying the spacecraft, and burying the science press corps.
“End! When will it end?” someone was screaming. Sharps could barely hear the words.
Finally the quake began to die. Sharps stayed down. He would not tempt the fates. What remained of the parking lot was tilted downslope and bulged in the middle. Now Sharps had time to wonder who had been on the stairway behind the cameramen. Not that it mattered; they were gone, the camera people were gone; everyone who had been within fifty feet of the stairwell had vanished into the mass below, covered by the hillside and the mangled remains of cars.
The day was darkening. Visibly darkening.
Sharps looked up to see why.
A black curtain was rolling across the sky. Within churning black clouds the lightning flared as dozens, scores, hundreds of flashbulbs.
Lightning flared and split a tree to their right. The instantaneous thunder was deafening, and the air smelled of ozone. More lightning crashed in the hills ahead.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Tim Hamner demanded.
“No.” Eileen drove on, speeding through empty, rainwashed streets. “There’s a road up into the hills here somewhere. I’ve been up it a couple of times.”
To their left and behind them were more houses, mostly intact. To the right were the Verdugo Hills, with small side streets penetrating a couple of blocks into them, each street with its “Dead End” sign. Except for the rain and lightning, everything seemed normal here. The rain hid everything not close to them, and the houses, mostly older, stucco, Spanishstyle, stood without visible damage.
“Aha!” Eileen cried. She turned hard right, onto a blacktop road that twisted its way along the base of a high bluff, a protruding spur of the lightning-washed mountains ahead. The road twisted ahead, and soon they saw nothing but the hill to the right, the brooding mountains looming above and a golf course to their left. There were neither cars nor people.
They turned, turned again, and Eileen jammed on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt. It stood face-to-face with a landslide. Ten feet and more of flint and mud blocked their way.
“Walk,” Tim said. He looked out at the lightning ahead and shuddered.
“The road goes a lot further,” Eileen said. “Over the top of the hills, I think.” She pointed to her left, at the golf course protected by its chain link fence. “Tear a hole in the fence.”
“With what?” Tim demanded, but he got out. Rain soaked him almost instantly. He stood helplessly. Eileen got out on the other side and brought the trunk keys.
