The house looked dead. And rain was blowing in the door.
He rolled out and sprinted and pulled up alongside the door. He still hadn’t used the flash. First person he saw, he’d flick the beam in her face. It would be Loretta, coming to close the door, and if she had his gun he was going to do a swan dive off the steps, because the way he was behaving she’d be scared enough to shoot.
He poked head and flash around the doorjamb. Lightning only made confusing shadows. Thunder drowned out other sounds.
He flicked on the flashlight.
It jumped at him; it hit him straight in the face. Loretta was lying on the floor, face-up. Her face and chest were a shapeless wet ruin, the kind left by a shotgun blast. Kipling, headless, was a mess of blood and fur beside her.
He walked inside, and he couldn’t feel his legs. Walking on pillows, they call it, the last stage of exhaustion before collapse. He knelt, set the gun down — it never occurred to him that someone might be here — and reached for Loretta’s throat. He drew his hand back, with a rippling shudder, and reached for her wrist instead. There was no pulse. Thank God. What would he have done?
They hadn’t raped her. As if it mattered now. But they hadn’t taken the jewelry off her wrists either. And though the drawers from the buffet had been pulled out and dumped, the good silver was still lying there.
Why? What could they have wanted?
Randall’s thoughts were slow and confused; they took strange paths. A part of him believed none of this: not the body of his wife, flickering in lightning, in and out of existence; not the weird weather, nor the earthquakes, nor the translation of a great light show into the end of the world. When he got up and went into the bedroom for something to cover Loretta, it was because he had been staring at her until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
The dresser drawers were all pulled out. Randall saw cuff links and a gold ring and Loretta’s amethyst brooch and matching earrings in the wreckage. The closets had been rifled too. Where were… ? Yes, they’d taken both of his overcoats. He waded through the wreckage.
The bed was piled high with senseless things: panty hose, bottles of cosmetics, lipsticks. He swept it to the floor, pulled the bedclothes off the bed and dragged them behind him into the hall. Something echoed in his mind… but he shied from it. He covered Loretta. He sat down again.
At no time had he wondered if “they” were still here. But he tried to picture the people who had done this. He? She? All men, all women, a mixed group? What could they have wanted? They’d left silver and jewelry, but taken . … overcoats.
Randall shambled into the kitchen.
They’d found and taken the beef jerky, and his stock of vitamins, and all of his canned soup. Now he saw it, and he kept looking. They’d taken his canned gasoline from the garage. They’d taken his guns. They’d been ready, they’d planned this! At the moment of Hammerfall they had already known what they would do. Had they picked his house at random? Or his street? They could have raided every house on the block.
He was back in the entrance hall, with Loretta. “You wanted me to stay,” he told her. More words clogged in his throat; he shook his head and went into the bedroom.
He was tired to death. He stood beside the bed, staring at what had been on the bed. This was what didn’t make sense. Panty hose still in the packages. Shampoo, hair conditioner, skin conditioner, nail polish, a couple of dozen large bottles. Lipsticks, eyebrow pencils, Chap Sticks, emery boards, new boxes of curlers… scores of items. If he could figure this out, maybe he’d know who. He could go after them. He still had the handgun.
Even in his stupor he didn’t really believe it. They were gone, and he was here with Loretta. He sat down on the bed and stared at Loretta’s hairbrush and dark glasses.
… Oh.
Of course. The Hammer had fallen, and Loretta had started packing her survival kit. The things she couldn’t live without. Then the killers had come. And killed her. And left behind as garbage the lipsticks and eyebrow pencils and panty hose Loretta couldn’t face life without. But they’d taken the suitcase.
Harvey rolled over on his belly and hid his face in his arms. Thunder and rain roared in his ears, drowning thoughts he wanted drowned.
He was aware that there was someone looking at him. The thunder went on and on; he couldn’t have heard a noise. But there were eyes on him, and he remembered not to move, and then he remembered why. When he moved, it would have to be suddenly, and — he’d left the gun sitting beside Loretta. Oh, the hell with it. He rolled over.
“Harv?”
He didn’t answer.
“Harv, it’s Mark. My God, man, what happened!”
“Don’t know. Raiders.”
He had almost dozed off when Mark spoke again. “You all right, Harv?”
“I wasn’t here. I was interviewing a goddam professor at UCLA and I was in a traffic jam and I was… I wasn’t here. Leave me alone.”
Mark shifted from one foot to the other. He wandered around the bedroom, looking into closets. “Harv, we’ve got to get out of here. You and your damn hot fudge sundae. The whole L.A. basin is under the ocean, you know that?”
“She wanted me to stay. She was scared,” said Harvey. He tried to think of some way to make Mark go away. “Get out and leave me alone.”
“Can’t, Harv. We have to bury your old lady. Got a shovel?”
“Oh.” Harvey opened his eyes. The room was still lit by surrealistic strobe lighting. Funny he didn’t notice the thunder anymore. He got up. “There’s one out in the garage, I think. Thanks.”
They dug in the backyard. Harvey wanted to do it all, but he ran out of energy quickly, and Mark took over. The shovel made squishing sounds; the hard adobe was soaking faster than Mark could dig. Squish. Plop. Squish. Plop. And rolling thunder.
“Time?” Mark called. He was standing in a waist-deep hole, his boots nearly underwater.
“Noon.”
Harvey looked around, startled at the voice from behind him. Joanna was perched above them on the slope, rain running down her face. She held a shotgun, and she looked very alert.
“Deep enough,” Mark said. “Stay here, Harv. Jo, let’s go inside. Give Harv the shotgun.”
“Right.” She came down from the slope, a tiny figure with a big shotgun. She handed it to Harvey without a word.
He stood in the rain, standing guard by looking down into an empty grave. If someone had come up behind him, he wouldn’t have noticed. Or cared. Except that he did notice Mark and Joanna.
Big Mark and tiny Joanna, carrying a blanketed bundle. Harvey went over to help her carry, but he was too late. They lowered her into the grave. Water flowed up and around the blanket. It was an electric blanket, Harvey saw. Loretta’s electric blanket. She could never stay warm enough at night.
Mark took the shovel. Joanna took the shotgun. Mark shoveled steadily. Squish. Plop. Harvey tried to think of something to say, but there weren’t any words. Finally, “Thanks.”
“Yeah. You want to read any words?”
“I ought to,” Harvey said. He started toward the house, but he couldn’t go in.
“Here. This was in the bedroom,” Joanna said. She took a small book out of her pocket.
It was Andy’s confirmation prayer book; Loretta must have included that in her survival kit. She would have. Harvey opened it to the prayers for the dead. Rain soaked the page before he could read it, but he found a line, half read and half remembered. “Eternal rest grant her, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon her.” He couldn’t see any more. After a long time Mark and Joanna led Harvey into the house.
They sat at the kitchen table. “We don’t have long,” Mark said. “I think we saw your raiders.”