Summer of the Apocalypse

by James Van Pelt

  Most of the trucks were military, flat green diesels hiding their cargo behind green canvas that snapped in their own wind as they passed Eric and his dad. They walked west toward Idaho Springs, Keeping their thumbs out. Dad had put the gun and holster in Eric’s puck. The weight felt scary. He could feel its presence like a black heart.

  An eighteen-wheeler blasted by, driving wind past his ears. Eric Waved his fist at it. Mom needs us to hurry. She could be huddled under a blanket now, unable to reach water, wondering if her son deserted her.

  After ten minutes, a silver and red U-Haul truck slowed as it passed and stopped a hundred yards up the road, its emergency lights flashing. They ran to it.

  The passenger door opened before they reached the cab. Dad stepped onto the running board. “Thanks. We just need to get to Idaho Springs.” Eric couldn’t see the driver. Dad sat, then stuck down his hand to pull Eric up.

  “You folks aren’t sick, are ya?” The driver, a young man in army fatigues, lay across both of their laps and yanked the door shut. He checked the rear view mirrors and drove onto the highway. “We got lots of sick’uns in Denver that are trying to get out. You wouldn’t be one of those, would ya?” Dad said, “No, we…”

  “Crazy in Denver, you know. People just up and driving and they don’t have half a mind to Tuesday where they’re goin’. Government’s right to shut the roads. If it were up to people, ever’body would be contaminated afore they can get this thing licked.” He moved through the gears smoothly. “I heard there was shooting at some of the blockades. Can’t take a man’s car away in America.” He laughed. “My name’s Beau. How do you do? Haven’t seen many hitchhikers. Fact, you’re the first.” He spoke with a Southern accent, but rushed from word to word so fast that Eric wondered when he took a breath. Eric’s dad smiled. “I’m Sam and this is my son Eric.” Eric couldn’t believe he could be so friendly, so unhurried. The road unwound before him like a slow-motion film. He half thought he could get out and run faster than the truck was moving. The speedometer needle inched past forty miles an hour. The soldier shifted again.

  “Like I said, name’s Beau. Got to make this haul to Salt Lake City, but they didn’t say I got to do it alone. You only going to the Springs? Well, it’s a short trip to heaven, too, they say.” Dad said, “What’s this about blockades? We haven’t heard the news for a week.”

  “Cut off, are ya? Marshall law. Civilians can’t drive, and they can’t leave the city. Utah shut its borders, and so I heard have the rest of the states, but that kind of news is hard to come by. I ain’t telling you no secrets neither. Army isn’t saying anything to us. We just drive the trucks. Got to keep supplies moving. Commandeered anything that can roll and the Army and Reserves are doing the delivering. Some second assistant to the Surgeon General, guy named Washburn, handles all the medical releases now. Says they got a cure in the works and to ‘Be brave in the face of adversity.’ I like that kind of talk.”

  “So, is there a lot of sickness?”

  “I ain’t sayin’ there is and I ain’t sayin’ there isn’t. I got half a mind to believe I got medical supplies in the back of this rig, though. It’s a sinful world. That’s all I got to say. My minister says you reap what you sow. You watch the T.V. guys on the religious channel. They’ll set you straight. A hard wind’s a gonna blow. Bible says that.”

  “Do you think we can buy medicine in Idaho Springs?” They passed a sign warning they were one mile from the Idaho Springs exit.

  “You got cash money, sure. Don’t expect they’ll be takin’ checks, and your plastic won’t be worth anythin’ either if they’re behavin’ like they are in Denver. Seller’s market. Depends what you want to buy, too.” He downshifted as they approached the exit. “Can’t take you into town. Got a schedule to make.” The heavy truck slid to a stop. Dust billowed past the window and, when Eric opened the door, into the cab. He jumped onto the gravel shoulder. Dad climbed down more carefully. The young soldier grinned at them, a little sadly Eric thought. “I got a son just two years old in Texas. Haven’t talked to my wife for three days. Can’t get through. Hope they’re all right. A man ought to be with his children. Good luck, guys.” He slammed the door.

  Eric had never been to Idaho Springs, and the town looked tacky to him, from the mining scarred mountains above, to the weathered, cracked-mortar Victorian houses with high-pitched roofs, dirty garages behind them, their doors hanging crookedly. Sand piled against the curbs, remnants from an icy winter. Dad told him there wasn’t a mall. No mall! They passed an ugly ski and tee-shirt shop Where a

  “Closed for the Season” sign hung in the window. A woman walking toward them on the sidewalk crossed the street to avoid a meeting.

  Dad bought Cokes from a machine in front of a closed Conoco. Eric rubbed the cold can against his forehead before opening it. They stood in the shade of the gas pump island and finished the pops. Eric hopped from foot to foot, ready to go minutes before Dad, who leisurely, it seemed, shook the last drops into his mouth.

  The Safeway in the middle of town was open—a checkout clerk wearing a surgical mask eyed them as they came through the doors— but most of the merchandise looked picked over. A few lone cans dotted the shelves in the soup section. Much of the toilet paper was gone. The produce bins were empty. Dad headed for the pharmacy in back. Eric picked up a red plastic shopping basket with wire handles, wandered through the cereal section and looked longingly at the Cocoa Puffs. He’d already noticed the empty refrigerators. No milk. A man, shivering under the bulk of three or four sweaters, rolled a cart filled to the top with dried pasta: spaghetti, macaroni, fettuccini, lasagne and green spinach noodles. “Buy stuff that stores well,” he said. Eric nodded at him.

  He found batteries by the film display and took all the triple-A’s, eight packs of four, enough to replenish his cassette player sixteen times. Then, thinking about how he wanted the player just for cassettes, he picked up a transistor radio shaped like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle in the toy section, one of the few items the store had in abundance. The turtle in his hand left a gap in the ranks of identical turtles like a missing tooth. He went back to the film display for the right size batteries. Eric’s stomach hurt. What was keeping Dad? No one stood at the Pharmacy desk and the light in the Pharmacist’s station was off. The man with the sweaters, he thought, has the disease. He’s in a supermarket buying noodles and he’s maybe dying. Mom’s maybe dying. Where’s Dad?

  He remembered a Metallica lyric. Nobody ever listened to Metallica lyrics except some of his head-banger friends, and they didn’t care what the band said. They just liked the image and the sound. They liked skulls on tee-shirts. The lyric was, “I’m inside. I’m you. Sad but true.” A door beside the pharmacy clicked open and Dad stepped out. He shut it quietly, then stuck a white sack, the kind that held medicine, in Eric’s backpack “Come on.”

  “What’d you get?”

  “Shhh.” He took two bottle of rubbing alcohol from a shelf and put them in Eric’s basket with the batteries. “I found out there isn’t a clinic, and the doctor commutes from Denver.” At the checkout counter, the surgical-masked clerk leaned back from them. Eric could almost see him holding his breath, and Eric wondered what the man would do if he or Dad sneezed or coughed. Eric emptied the basket. To the alcohol, batteries and the Ninja Turtle radio, Dad added a handful of M&M packages.

  The clerk didn’t reach for the products. His eyes glittered blackly above the mask. He said, “You people from out of town?” Dad nodded. “That’ll be two-hundred dollars.” Dad said, “That’s ridiculous. If you think…”

  A sawed off baseball bat, a foot and a half long, appeared in the clerk’s hand. He tapped it on the counter. “It’s our going out of business price.”

  Dad stiffened, his knuckles going white as they gripped the edge of the check stand. Then he said, “Fine,” and opened Eric’s backpack. The gun in its holster still pressed Eric’s back. He wanted to yell, “Don’t, Dad! Don’t do it!” Dad pulled his w
allet out of the pack instead, took two bills from it and laid them by the cash register.

  Outside the store, Eric said, “Hundred dollar bills?”

  Dad shrugged his shoulders. “I thought things might be pricey.”

  Dad walked briskly, almost trotted, farther into town, looking at store signs as he passed them. He stopped at a bike shop and rattled the door, which was locked. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the window into the darkened building, then shook the door again. A second story window slapped open. Eric stepped into the street and looked up. An elderly woman, gray hair wrapped in a yellow scarf, looked back.

  “We’re closed. Can’t you see, dear?” Her voice squeaked pleasantly. “The radio just said we’re in quarantine now. You boys should be home.”

  To Eric’s relief, she agreed to open for them and sold them a pair of mountain bikes and helmets. Dad paid cash. She gave them a circular about a recreational bike rally from Idaho Springs to Georgetown in July. “This little fuss should be over by then, don’t you think?” Dad smiled and agreed. “Glad I could be of help,” she said. “Biking’s very healthful, you know. Don’t know why we ever bothered with cars.” A few minutes later, after she adjusted the seats and handles for them, they pedaled away. Eric turned and she waved. He waved back.

  The trip to the cave went quickly once they left I-70 and its roaring trucks that kept them on the shoulder. The route was mostly downhill. Eric pedaled as fast as he could, then glided for minutes, the new knobby tires buzzing on the asphalt, before pedaling again. Dad kept close. Their shadows raced ahead as the sun dropped behind them.

  When Eric reached the path to the cave, he hopped off the bike. Mother was not at the lookout, as far as he could tell. Dad skidded to a stop beside him. “Wait,” he said. “I need to show you something first. Turn around.”

  Eric fidgeted as Dad dug in the pack. He heard the crackle of paper. “Here,” Dad said. Eric took the pharmacy bag from him, opened the top and shook out a bottle of pills. There was no label on the bottle. Cyanide, Eric thought. Dad’s flipped like that Jim Jones fellow in Jonestown. He shook the bottle. “What are they?”

  “Pain killers. Tylenol four. Tylenol with codeine in them. I want you to know about them in case you have to be on your own.” Dad took the bottle from him. “I made a deal with the pharmacist. I paid fifteen bucks a pill, and he didn’t ask to see my prescription. People were lined up out the back.” Mom was sleeping behind the lookout rock. She’d made a bed with their blankets and set up a beach umbrella they’d taken to Florida the summer before to shade herself. Eric yelled when he saw her. She jerked awake and grabbed for the shotgun before she realized who he was. He hugged her for a long time, letting go only when he heard Dad struggling on the steep path with the two bikes. Mom and Dad sat up late, talking by the light of the Coleman lantern. Their voices rose and fell in a gentle mumble. Twenty feet away, Eric lay on his sleeping bag, looking at the shadows deep in the cracks of the cave’s ceiling high above. He’d washed in the river as the sun set, the water so cold that the shampoo wouldn’t lather, and when he finished, his jaws ached from shivering. Now he was warm and clean. The cassette player rested on his chest. He’d put the batteries in an hour ago, but he wanted to delay listening until his parents went to bed. Their talk, probably stupid stuff about mortgages or car payments he figured, sounded comforting.

  I wonder where Amanda Grieves is right now, he thought. I wonder if she ever thinks about that day in the doorway. I wonder what she thought as she walked down the hall with her friends. Mom coughed once, and the conversation stopped. She coughed quietly again. Eric rolled to his side and propped himself on his elbow. The Coleman lantern glowed brightly on a rock shelf behind his parents who faced each other. They were very close, their foreheads almost touching, not saying anything. Eric watched them for a long time before he realized, there in the darkness of the cave, surrounded by boxes of canned goods, shotguns close by, miles from home, Dad held Mom’s hands.

  Chapter Five

  PHIL’S PLACE

  Eric woke slowly and saw a slim shaft of dust-filled light slanting across the stone room. He thought for a moment he was back in the cave high above the river and that the soft bubble of breathing by his cheek was his father. “Dad?” he whispered in the dark room. How could light come into the cave? A crack in a wall we’ve never seen before? A place from where bats come and go, the seam invisible every day of the year except this one when the long hole in the wall lined up exactly with the sun? He puzzled over this question until slowly he remembered he was in a hut a few hundred yards from the intersection of Bowles Avenue and C-470. He closed his eyes and savored the feeling of being fifteen, of sleeping beside his father and mother. But the image slipped away until he barely felt it, until all that remained was the breathing, the gurgle that reminded him of Dad, but wasn’t. It was Dodge, head covered in his sleeping bag. Today they’d start north.

  Eric rolled and the stiffness in his back woke him further. Rabbit slept beside Dodge, the scar side of his face down. In the shadows of the room, Rabbit looked angelic, like a baby and unlike the silent, brooding boy he was.

  Outside the hut Eric grunted through his morning exercises, his breath fogging the cold morning air. Seven miles east, the Platte River glimmered like a golden ribbon in the rising sun. From this vantage point he saw all south-west Littleton. Most of the buildings along Bowles Avenue were burned down, and even huge structures like South-West Plaza Mall sprawled, a pile of broken bricks and rusted girders on its own weed-covered parking lot, but many buildings miles away seemed untouched by the years. Glass still glinted in their windows. They stood solid and geometric, and Eric could envision them as they had been. People would be going to work about now; cars would stream purposefully along the road. Eric guessed by the sun it was past six o’clock. Helicopters would be buzzing above the main roads, reporting on the traffic. People would be buying donuts to take to the office. Eric had a sudden, solid memory of Winchell’s donuts. Cinnamon Crumb. He used to stop on the way to school for two Cinnamon Crumb donuts, still warm. Even late in the morning after sitting through three or four classes, he might find a grain of brown sugar clinging to his shirt, and his fingers smelled of Cinnamon.

  “What’s that?” Dodge asked. He pointed down the long stretch of four-lane highway. Ahead of them the top of a sign peeked over a hill. As they walked closer, more and more of it showed until Eric recognized the familiar logo.

  “It’s a gas station. A Phillip’s 66.”

  “What was their slogan, Grandpa?” The slogan game was one they played often. Dodge skipped ahead. Eric guessed that Dodge didn’t feel the weight of his backpack the way he did.

  “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star.” Eric tightened his waist belt to take some stress off his shoulders.

  Dodge laughed. “No way. That’s Texaco. Was it the ‘Hottest brand going’?” Eric said, “Conoco.” He thought as they walked closer. “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t have a slogan.”

  “We can find out in the books at Boulder, can’t we?” asked Dodge. They climbed into a gully that had washed away fifty feet of the road. Eric said, “I suppose, but there’s much more important information in books.”

  Dodge nodded agreeably as he scrambled up the loose bank and back onto the blacktop. “Books will tell us everything.”

  Eric watched where he put his feet, making sure there were no wobbly stones, planting his step firmly before putting his weight on it. More old folks die of broken bones, he thought, than anything else. They’re doing fine right up to the time they break a hip; then they’re doomed. “Well, maybe not everything. Books don’t know everything.”

  Dodge grabbed his arm and pulled him the last step. His strength surprised Eric. Good grip for a ten-year-old. Dodge said, “You told us books got stuff about the Gone Times, like cars and computers. What else we need?”

  Rabbit had found another spot to get out of the gulch and squatt
ed on the road waiting for them. He had stripped his shirt and tied it around his waist. Sweat glistened on his chest. Eric thought, they’re like horses. He realized that the pace he set must seem terribly slow to them. They were only twenty-two or twenty-three miles from Boulder now. If the boys were on their own, they’d make it by sunset. He figured he might make it by tomorrow evening, but that would be pushing it. A ten-mile day was a lot of walking.

  He took a long drink from his canteen. “I’ve been reading books for sixty-five years, and I’ve read amazing passages. Poetry, mostly, and fiction. Beautiful stories about wonderful people living adventures. And there were books on science, and picture books.”

  Dodge grinned, “Tell us about how you see pictures in your head.”

  “Not really pictures. I mean, reading is like being there sometimes. I’ll be reading along, and I’ll forget that I’m holding a book. Suddenly I’ll be Joan of Arc, or Moses rolling back the Red Sea.” He hadn’t had much luck teaching Dodge to read. Unlike most children his age, Dodge could work his way through a page of a book, but it was painful and slow as he sounded out each word. Troy had been partly successful at limiting Eric’s influence on the boy. Eric could only teach Dodge and Rabbit two or three times a week. He suspected that Rabbit had picked up on the lessons better, but he seldom read out loud.

  Dodge said, “I never see pictures.”

  “It takes practice. You’ve got to keep doing it. Then one day you’ll be reading along, and the words will vanish off the page and you’ll be in the story.”

  “Like that television stuff, right? And all the magic from the Gone Times are in the books, right? Like ’lectricity?”

  Rabbit cleared his throat. “You said books can’t tell us everything. What’s wrong with books?” He wondered where to start. He’d spent days and days reading books after his parents had died. There was no place to go, and in the books he could get lost. Later, he’d read for information, for medicine, for mid-wifing. He’d delivered Troy on his own. He remembered the sun streaming through the rips in the rotted curtains in the living room where Troy was born, how the sun heated his back as he supported Troy’s tiny, slippery head, but the books hadn’t told him enough and Leda died an hour later. She was small hipped and thirty-nine years old, and they’d assumed that one or both of them were sterile. The pregnancy surprised them. They’d been together for fourteen years. He marked her grave with a stone he took from a mortuary storehouse and an epitaph that had taken him a week to carve: LEDA