“Not much out there,” Hooker said. He sipped tea, grateful for the warmth.
“No.” Their scouting expedition had told them nothing they hadn’t expected, except that once there was a break in the rain and they saw snow on the tops of the High Sierra. Snow in August! It had frightened Nassor, although Hooker said it had sometimes snowed in the Sierra before That Day.
They sat uncomfortably despite the hot tea and the warmth of the tent, despite the luxury of being dry, because they had too much to talk about, and neither wanted to begin. They both knew they would have to make choices soon enough. Their camp was too close to the ruins that had been Bakersfield. In the ashes and wreckage of the city there were a lot of people who might get it together, more than enough to come out and finish Nassor and Hooker. They hadn’t got their shit together yet. The survivors lived in small groups, distrustful of each other, fighting over the scraps of food left in supermarkets and warehouses—the scraps that Hooker and Nassor had left.
It came down to this: In combination, Alim and Hooker had enough men and ammunition to fight one good battle. If they won it, they’d have enough for another. If they lost, they were finished. And they’d stripped the country around them. They had to move. But where?
“Goddam rain,” Hooker muttered.
Alim sipped tea and nodded. If only the rain would stop. If Bakersfield dried out there’d be no problem. Wait for a good day with strong winds—there were always strong winds—and burn out the whole goddam city. A hundred fires started a block apart would do it. Fire storm. It would sweep across and leave nothing behind. Bakersfield would no longer be a threat.
And the rains were wearing down. There had been an hour of sunshine the day before. Today the sun was almost breaking through and it wasn’t noon yet, and there was only misty rain.
“We got six days,” Hooker said. “Then we start gettin’ hungry. We get hungry enough, we’ll find somethin’ to eat, but…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. Alim shuddered. Sergeant Hooker saw Alim’s expression, and his mouth twisted into a curl of evil contempt. “You’ll join in,” Hooker said.
“I know.” He shuddered again at the memory. Of the farmer Hooker had shot, and the smells of the stew, and the sharing out of portions of the man, everyone in the camp taking a bowl and Hooker damned well seeing that they ate it. The ghastly ritual was what held the group together. Alim had to shoot one of the brothers who wouldn’t eat. And Mabe. At least it did that. Their ritual feast let him shoot Mabe and get rid of that troublemakin’ cunt. She wouldn’t eat.
“Funny you never did before,” Hooker said.
Nassor said nothing, his expression not changing. The truth was they’d never even thought of eating people. Not one of them. It was a source of secret pride for Alim. His people weren’t cannibals. Only, of course, they were, because that was the only way Hooker would let them join up…
“Lucky you had that beef jerky.” Hooker couldn’t let it alone, not now, not ever. “You never got hungry enough. Lucky.”
“Lucky? Lucky?” Alim’s explosion startled Hooker. “Lucky my ass!” Alim shouted. “There was a ton of the stuff in that van, and we got maybe two pounds because of that motherfucker!” He looked out through the open doorway of the tent, toward a slim black who stood guard near the fire. “That one. That mother-fuckin’ Hannibal.”
Hooker frowned. “That why you make him do all the work? He lose you some food?”
Alim was wild with remembered rage and pain. “Food. And liquor. Listen, we could smell it, it just about drove us crazy. You see the burns on Gay? We thought he was gonna die, and all of us got burned trying to—”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“Yeah, you don’t know.” Alim reached behind him to a foot-locker and took out a bottle. Cheap whiskey from a drugstore. Thank God California had everything in drugstores. “We got together,” Alim said. “Me and my people and some others. Back then, back when we didn’t think…” He couldn’t finish that sentence. “Before. All the honkies—”
Sergeant Hooker calmly leaned across the table and slapped Alim’s face. Hard. Alim’s hand went to his holster, but stopped. “Thanks,” he said.
Hooker nodded. “Tell the story.”
“The white people, the rich ones in Bel Air, about half of ’em took off. Left their places. Left ’em empty. We took in trucks, and we went through those houses.” He paused, a delighted smile playing on his lips as he thought of it. “And we were rich. That watch I gave you. And this ring.” He held the cat’s-eye to catch the light. “TVs, hi-fi, Persian rugs, real Persian, the kind the fences pay twenty big ones for. All kinds of fuckin’ shit, Hook. We were rich.”
Hooker nodded. Okay, he’d done worse. It still made him uncomfortable. Hooker had been a soldier. He could have been sent to Bel Air to shoot motherfucking looters. Crazy world.
“And we found a stash,” Alim said. “Coke, hash oil, weed, nothing but the best. I took it away before my dudes could start lighting up right there.”
Hooker drank whiskey. “Get it all?”
“Don’t be so fuckin’ smart. No, I did not get it all. I wasn’t even tryin’, Hook, I just wanted to make the point, if they used on the spot I’d take it off them. Hell, that was then, you know, there were cops on patrol all over—”
“Yeah.”
“So it happened. The goddam Hammer. We got out, fire trails, roads, anything, we got out, headin’ for Grapevine, and the truck starts wheezin’. We were out on one of the trails, tryin’ to stay off the freeways, you know? So we come up on top of a rise and see this van coming behind us. Bright blue van, with four bikes, everybody with shotguns and rifles, like a stagecoach in the movies with the army ridin’ escort—”
“Sure,” Hooker said. He poured more whiskey. In a few minutes they’d have to talk for real, but it was nice to be dry, have a drink, not think about where they’d have to go now.
“We set it up real good,” Alim said. “Got ahead of the van far enough, used a chain saw to drop a tree just as the van comes through a narrow place, and man, you should have seen it! Those bikes stopped and my studs wasn’t more than five feet from ’em. Come out from the trees shootin’. Used a lot of bullets, but shit, with those pistols we had…Anyway, it was perfect. Knocked the bikes over, never touched one of the bikes at all. There’s the van stopped, and the driver’s got his hands on the wheel where we can see, nice and easy, and the van’s not even touched, Hook, not even a scratch on that pretty blue paint.
“And did I get all that coke we found in Bel Air? No I did not. That motherfuckin’ Hannibal was sniffing all along, and it was good stuff, you know, real, not the shit he used to get, but he sniffs two, three lines at a time. And those dudes are just openin’ up that van, comin’ out nice and easy, and Hannibal decides he’s the last of the Mau Mau. He comes whooping up to the van with a Molotov cocktail! Shit, he threw that gasoline bomb right in the van, right inside.”
“Aw, shit.” Hooker shook his head, thinking about it. “Good stuff in the van?”
“Good? Good? Hook, you won’t believe what was in that fuckin’ van! That motherfucker went up like…like…”
“Gasoline.”
“Yeah, a lot like that.” Alim tried to laugh, but he couldn’t. “The guys inside the van caught on fire and come out screamin’, and a couple of the bastards have guns. I got to give ’em credit, clothes all burnin’ up they’re still shootin’ at us, and we shoot back, and by the time that was over the whole van’s on fire, can’t get near it.
“Bottles start exploding in the truck. Oh, man, Hook, the smells were enough to drive you out of your gourd! Here we’re starvin’, nothin’ to eat, and out comes cookin’ meat smells. And more. Scotch, brandy, fruity smells like those lick-kewers that nobody ever has the bread for, chocolate, raisins, apples—shit, Hook, that van was just stuffed with food and liquor! Food. Meat, not somebody in the truck, beef—”
Alim stop
ped suddenly. He looked sideways at Hooker. Hooker didn’t have to say anything.
“Yeah. Anyway, something blew then, and out comes this package of beef jerky, still wrapped up in tinfoil and plastic bags, not burned, no gasoline on it, couple of pounds of beef jerky. Gay runs into the truck and comes out with two bottles, only we had to let him drink one of ’em to kill the pain, and when he really started feelin’ it we’d drunk the other. Shit.
“But a couple of the studs on the bikes were still alive, and they told us what they had in that truck. Everything. Guns, food, every kind of liquor ever made, European stuff, can you imagine what it must be worth now? Europe can be on the fuckin’ Moon for all we’ll ever see from there again. There was a ton of beef jerky, and fatty stuff that tasted even worse only who cares when you’re starving? And soup, and potatoes, and freeze-dried mountain food—shit, those dudes had waited until the Hammer came and looted all the places where they’d seen people gettin’ ready.”
“Smarter than you were,” Hooker said.
Alim shrugged. “Maybe. I didn’t think that fuckin’ comet would hit. Did you?”
“No.” If I had, Hooker thought. If I had, I’d never have been out in that truck, we’d have had a lot more ammo…shit, why did I go off and leave the captain alone back there? Shit.
“…and bottles of gasoline,” Alim was saying. “Big help, right? We could smell it, all of it, food burning, gasoline exploding, clothes burning, those motherfuckers must have really thought the glaciers were coming, and if they were right,” Nassor screamed, “then that motherfuckin’ Hannibal is going across them bare-ass, because I’ll be wearing his clothes over mine!”
“What happened to the bikes?” Hooker asked. He didn’t bother asking about their riders.
“Got burned up. Fuckin’ truck kept blowing, more gasoline in there. Spread all over. Shit, Hooker, that fire was so fuckin’ hot that it got the trees burning! In the middle of that rain, water comin’ down like a bathtub of warm shit, and even the trees get to burning! We saved their shotguns, though.”
“That’s good. Too bad about the other stuff.”
“Yeah.”
They were safe, for a while, and just about everybody, even the slaves, was dry and warm and had almost enough to eat. They didn’t want to think about leaving, or where they’d go, and they’d put off talking about it before, and they put it off now, but they wouldn’t be able to put it off much longer.
“Alim! Sergeant!”
It was Jackie. There were others yelling too. Alim and Hooker ran out of the tent. “What is it?”
“Corporal of the guard, post number four!” someone yelled.
“Let’s go!” Hooker waved troops to their perimeter positions, then went off toward the yelling sentry.
“Be not afraid, my brothers!” someone called from out in the misty rain. “I bring you peace and blessing.”
“Shit fire,” Sergeant Hooker said. He peered out into the mist.
An apparition materialized. A man with long white hair and long white beard, and a raincoat that looked something like a gown or a ghost’s winding sheet. There were other figures in the gloom behind the man.
“Hold it right there or we shoot!” Hooker yelled.
“Peace be with you, brothers,” the man called. He turned back toward those who were following him. “Be not afraid. Stay here, and I will talk with these angels of the Lord.”
“A crazy,” Hooker said. “Lot of crazies.” He’d seen plenty of them before. He cocked the submachine gun. No point in letting the old goon get too close.
But the man walked in steadily, not afraid at all, facing Hooker’s gun and not afraid of it, and certainly there wasn’t any threat in his eyes. “You need not fear me,” the man said.
“What do you want?” Hooker demanded.
“To talk with you. To bring you the message of the Lord God of Hosts.”
“Aw, fuck that shit,” Hooker said. His finger tightened on the trigger, but now the old man was too close. Two of Hooker’s own people were near enough to the line of fire that Hooker didn’t want to risk it. And the man looked harmless enough. Maybe there’d be some fun in this. And what could it hurt to let him come in? “The rest of you stay out there,” Hooker yelled. “Gillings, get a squad and check them out.”
“Right,” Gillings called.
The white-haired man strode to the campfire as if he owned it. He looked into the stewpot and at the others around the fire. “Rejoice,” he said. “Your sins are forgiven.”
“Now just what do you want?” Hooker demanded. “And don’t give me crap about angels and the Lord. Angels.” Hooker snorted.
“But you can be angels,” the man said. “You were saved from the holocaust. The Hammer of God has fallen upon this wicked world, and you have been spared. Don’t you want to know why?”
“Who are you?” Alim Nassor demanded.
“I am the Reverend Henry Armitage,” the man said. “A prophet. I know, I know. At the moment I do not look much like a prophet of God. But I am, just the same.”
Alim thought Armitage looked very much like a prophet, with his beard and white hair, and that long flowing raincoat, and glittering eyes.
“I know who you are, my brothers,” Armitage said. “I know what you have done, and I know it is not easy in your hearts. You have done all manner of sins. You have eaten forbidden foods. But the Lord of Hosts will forgive you, for He has spared you to work His will. You are to be His angels, and to you nothing shall be forbidden!”
“You’re crazy,” Hooker said.
“Am I?” Armitage chuckled. “Am I? Then you can listen for amusement. Surely a madman cannot harm you, and perhaps I will say something funny.”
Alim felt Jackie come up alongside him. “He’s good, that one,” Jackie said. “Notice how he’s got the sisters listening? And us, too.”
Alim shrugged. There was a compelling quality about the man’s voice, and the way he kept shifting, from that preachy jive to just talk, that was good. Just when you thought he was nuts, he’d talk like anybody else.
“What is this mission God has for us?” Jackie called.
“The Hammer of God has fallen to destroy an evil world,” Armitage said. “An evil world. God gave us this Earth, and the fruits thereof, and we filled it with corruption. We divided mankind into nations, and within nations we divided men into rich and poor, black and white, and created ghettos for our brothers. ‘And if any man has this world’s goods and sees his brother in want, and shares not with his brother, that man hath no life.’ The Lord gave this world’s goods and those who had them knew Him not. They piled bricks upon bricks, they built their fancy houses and palaces, they covered the Earth with the belch and stink of their factories, until the Earth itself was a stench in the nostrils of God!”
“Amen,” someone shouted.
“And so His Hammer came to punish the wicked,” Armitage said. “It fell, and the wicked died.”
“We’re not dead,” Alim Nassor said.
“And yet you were wicked,” Armitage answered. “But we were all wicked, all of us! The Lord God Jehovah held us in the hollow of His hand. He judged us and found us wanting. And yet we live. Why? Why has He spared us?”
Alim was silent now. He wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t. This crazy old bastard! Nuts, truly cracked, but yet—
“He has spared us to do His work,” Armitage said. “To complete His work. I did not understand! In my pride I believed that I knew. In my pride I believed that I saw the Day of Judgment coming in the morning of the Hammer. And so it was, but not as I believed. The scripture says no man knoweth the day and the hour of Judgment! And yet we have been judged. I thought upon this, after the Hammer fell. I had thought to see the angels of the Lord come to this Earth, to see the King himself come in glory. Vain! Vain pride! But now I know the truth. He has spared me, He has spared you, to work His will, to complete His work, and only when that work is done shall He come in glory.
“Join
me! Become angels of the Lord and do His work! For the pride of man knoweth no end. Even now, my brothers, even now there are those who would bring back the evils the Lord God has destroyed. There are those who will build those stinking factories again, yea, who will restore Babylon. But it shall not be, for the Lord has His angels, and you shall be among them! Join me.”
■
Alim poured whiskey into Hooker’s cup. “You believe any of that jive?” he asked. Outside the tent Henry Armitage was still preaching.
“He sure do have a voice,” Hooker said. “Two hours, and he ain’t slowin’ yet.”
“You believe?” Alim asked again.
Hooker shrugged. “Look, if I was a religious man—which I ain’t—I’d say he talkin’ sense. He do know his Bible.”
“Yeah.” Alim sipped whiskey. Angels of the Lord! He was no goddam angel, and he knew it. But the old son of a bitch kept twitching memories. Of storefront churches and prayer meetings, phrases that Alim heard when he was a kid. And it bothered him. Why the hell were they still alive? He leaned out the tent flap. “Jackie,” he called.
“Right.” Jackie came in and took a seat.
Jackie was all right. Jackie hadn’t had any problems with Chick for a long time. He’d found a white girl, and she seemed to like Jackie a lot, and Jackie was pretty sharp now.
“What about that preacher man?” Alim asked.
Jackie waved both hands. “He makin’ more sense than you think.”
“How’s that?” Hooker asked.
“Well, some ways he’s right,” Jackie said. “Cities. Rich people. Way they treated us. He’s not sayin’ anything the Panthers didn’t say. And dammit, that Hammer did end all that shit. We got the revolution, handed right to us, and what are we doin’? We sittin’ around doin’ nothin’, goin’ nowhere.”
“Shee-it, Jackie,” Alim said. “You lettin’ that hon—” He bit the word off before Sergeant Hooker could react, “—that white preacher get to you?”
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