“Shit! Hey, brothers—”
Alim went, fast. He and Hannibal almost jammed in the doorway. Gay had the safe open and was hauling out plastic sandwich bags. It was stuff that couldn’t be stashed in no bank vault. Three bags of good golden weed; oh, Mr. White, do your neighbors know about this? Smaller amounts of heavier stuff: coke, and dark hashish, and a small bottle of what might be hash oil, but you’d be crazy to try it without seeing a label. Gay and Harold and Hannibal whooped and hollered. Gay fished around and found papers; he started to roll a joint.
“Fuck that!” Alim slapped at Gay’s hands, scattering paper and weed. “You crazy? In the middle of a job and four houses to go? Give me that! All of it! You want a party, fine, we’ll have a fine party when we’re home free!”
They didn’t like it, but they passed the bags to Alim and he stashed them in the pockets of his baggy combat jacket. He slapped their butts and they went, carrying heavy bedsheet sacks.
He hadn’t gotten it all. It didn’t matter. At least they wouldn’t be blowing the tops of their heads off till this was over.
Alim picked up a radio and a Toast-it-Oven and followed them out. He blinked in the daylight. Gay was in the back, adjusting tarpaulins. Harold started the motor. Good. Alim stopped with the truck door open to look down the driveway.
He saw a tall tree on the lawn casting two sharp shadows.
And that smaller tree: two shadows. He looked down and saw his own two shadows, one moving. Alim looked up and saw it, a second sun dropping down the sky, dropping below the hill. He blinked; he squeezed his eyes shut, hard. The violet afterimage blocked everything.
He climbed in. “Get going,” he said. While the truck rolled down the drive he started the CB. “Come in, Jackie. Come in, Jackie. Jackie, you motherfucker, answer me!”
“Who’s that? Alim Nassor?”
“Yeah. Did you see it?”
“See what?”
“The comet, the Hammer of God! I saw it fall! I watched it burn its way down the sky till it hit! Jackie, listen good, ’cause these CB things ain’t gonna be any good in a minute. We’ve been hit. It’s all gonna come true, and we got to link up.”
“slim, you must’ve found something real special. Coke, maybe?”
“Jackie, it’s real, the whole world been hit. There’s gonna be earthquakes and tidal waves. You call everyone you can and tell them we meet at… the cabin up near Grapevine.
We got to stick together. We won’t drown because we’re too high, but we got to meet.”
“slim, this is crazy. I got two houses to go, we got lots of stuff, and you come on like the end of the world?”
“Just call someone, Jackie! Someone’s got to have seen it! Look, I got to call the others while we still got the CB.” Alim switched off.
They were still in the driveway. Harold was the color of wet ashes. He said, “I saw it too. George… Alim, do you think we’re too high to drown? I don’t want to drown.”
“We’re about as high as we can get. We got to go down before we get to Grapevine. Get movie’, Harold. We want to be across the low spots before it rains too much.”
Harold took off, fast. Alim reached for the CB. Were they really too high to drown? Was anybody, anywhere?
Hot Fudge Tuesdae: One
The crest of the Santa Monica Mountains was a thoroughly inconvenient place to live. Shopping centers were far away. Roads were an adventure. Driveways tended to be nearly vertical in spots. Yet there were many houses up here, and it was only indirectly due to population pressure.
Population pressure produced the cities.
The view from the crest on Monday night was incredible; unique. Downslope on one side was Los Angeles; downslope on the other, the San Fernando Valley. At night the cities became carpets of multicolored light stretching away forever. Freeways were rivers of light moving through seas of light. It looked like the whole world had turned to city, and loved it!
Yet there were vacant patches on the crest. Mark and Frank and Joanna left Mulholland Drive at sunset, took their motorcycles up the side of a hill. They camped in a rocky area out of sight of wandering fuzzmobiles, a couple of blocks distant from the houses on both sides.
Frank Stoner walked around the crest of the hill, looked at the slopes on both sides, then nodded to himself. Undevelopable. Too much danger of mudslides. Not that it mattered a damn why no one had built a house here, but Frank Stoner didn’t like unanswered questions. He came back to where Joanna and Mark were setting up the Svea backpacker stove.
“We may have nervous neighbors,” Frank said. “Let’s get dinner over while there’s light. After dark, no flashlights and no fires.”
“I don’t see — ” Mark began.
Joanna broke in impatiently. “Look, these houses are a long way from the nearest police station. People wandering up here would tend to make them nervous. We do not need to spend the night before Hot Fudge Sundae at Malibu Sheriff Station.” She went back to reading the directions on the freeze-dried dinner they’d brought. She was not a good cook; but if she left it to Mark, he’d do it however he felt, which might turn onto well and might not. Following the directions was sure to produce something edible, and she was hungry.
She looked at the two men. Frank Stoner towered over Mark. A big man, strong, physically attractive. Joanna had felt that before. He’d be damned good in bed.
She’d felt that before, but she hadn’t found herself thinking she was teamed up with the wrong man before. The thought puzzled her. Living with Mark was a lot of fun. She didn’t know if she was in love with Mark, because she wasn’t sure what love was, but they were compatible in bed, and they didn’t often get on each other’s nerves. So why this sudden pash for Frank Stoner?
She emptied the beef Stroganoff into a cooking pot and grinned down at it so the others couldn’t see. They’d want to know why she was grinning, and it wasn’t something she wanted to explain. If she wondered why she was getting the hots for Frank Stoner…
But it bothered her. Joanna had a very good education, courtesy of her upper-middle-class parents. She didn’t make much use of it, but it had left her with considerable curiosity, particularly about people — which included herself.
“This is just about perfect,” Mark said.
Frank grunted disapproval.
“No? Why not? Where else?” Mark demanded. He’d picked this spot and was proud of it.
“Mojave is better,” Frank said absently. He laid out his sleeping bag and sat on it. “But that’s a long way to go for nothing. Still… we’re on the wrong plate.”
“Plate?” Joanna said.
“It’s plate tectonics,” Mark said. “You know, the continents float around on top of the melted rock inside the Earth.”
Frank listened absently. No point in correcting Mark. But the Mojave was certainly a better place. It was on the North American plate. Los Angeles and Baja California were on another. The plates joined at the San Andreas Fault, and if the Hammer fell the San Andreas would sure as hell let go. It would shake both plates, but the North American would get it less.
It was just an exercise anyway. Frank had checked with JPL; the odds of the Hammer hitting Earth were low. You were in more danger on the freeway. This business of camping out was for drill, but it was Stoner’s nature that if he did anything, he did it right. He’d made Joanna bring her own bike, although she preferred riding behind Mark on his. Take all three; we might lose one.