“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 motherfuckin’ 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 footlocker 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… Iike…”
“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 stopped 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?
“…and bottles of gasoline,” Alim was saying. “Big help, right? We could smell it, all of it, food burnin~, 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 goin’ 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 blowin’, more gasoline in there. Spread all over. Shit, Hooker, that fire was so fuckin’ hot that it got the trees burnin’! 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.
“AIim! 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.