Summer of the Apocalypse

by James Van Pelt

  From the first day he’d left the cave, sixty years ago, he’d felt their presence in the empty streets of Denver, the broken windows, the parked cars. Ghosts and ghosts and ghosts. He remembered a sheet of newspaper blowing in front of him as he walked up Littleton Boulevard toward his home. It touched the pavement, then shot twenty feet up, then spiraled down again. It was if some invisible being were playing. And ever since, he’d felt ghosts like the pressure in the air before a storm. Did he believe? There was no way he could be who he was, he thought, if he didn’t.

  Rabbit said, “I’ve talked to one.”

  Eric shook his head. “Who? I mean, what do you mean?”

  “Last month I talked to one. I was in the basement of a Big-O Tire store, scavenging, and when I came out, a girl was going through my backpack. She looked like she might be seven or eight years old. At least I think she was a girl. She looked like a girl, red hair tied back in a ponytail, leather skirt, no shirt. Anyway, she saw me and said one word, then ran. I yelled at her not to be afraid. Then I chased her, but she was fast. Squeezed through a crack in a brick wall and was gone.” She must have been fast, Eric thought, to get away from Rabbit, who was the quickest boy Eric had ever known. “What did she say? What makes you think she was a ghost?”

  “I was south of town, east of the river.” Eric thought about the map of Denver in the Town Hall. Every community Littleton traded with was marked with red pins. All of them were north along I-25, what most people called the Valley Highway now. As far as they knew, no one lived to the south. If people lived in Colorado Springs, seventy miles away, the people of Littleton didn’t know about them. For all they knew, and all the fear they had of travel, the area south could be marked with “Here there be Dragons.” Rabbit continued, “I didn’t recognize her either, but that’s not what makes me think she was a ghost. I ran around the wall she jumped through, and she wasn’t there. There was no place to hide or anything. She just vanished.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  Rabbit lay back. In the darkness, Eric couldn’t read his expression.

  “She called me a name.” Rabbit put his hands under his head. He stared into the sky like Eric had earlier.

  “Maybe ‘called’ isn’t the right word. It’s more like she identified me, like if I looked into a box and there was a squirrel in it and I said, ‘squirrel.’”

  “I understand,” said Eric.

  “I startled her, I think. She looked at me and said ‘Jackal.’ Then she disappeared through the crack.” Far away, a long, lonely howl rose in the night. Another joined it. It’s the wolves, Eric thought. Rabbit shuddered at the sound.

  “What’s a jackal, Grandpa?”

  Eric listened to the wolves for a few seconds. Their voices mingled in eerie harmonics. “A jackal… it’s an animal that lives in Africa… a kind of dog.” He thought about it. The air suddenly cooled, like the breeze had pushed a patch of arctic atmosphere over them. He wrapped the sleeping bag tighter around his shoulders, then he chuckled. “Of course,” he said. “It makes sense. A jackal…” He pulled the bag around his ears. “…is a scavenger.”

  Chapter Eight

  BODY BAGS

  The smoke on the streets in town didn’t look that bad. When Eric looked up, the swirls of ash turned the sky gray, and the stench of burning rubber and insulation seared his throat. He covered his nose and mouth with a bandanna. None of the houses or stores he passed on this side street were damaged, but boards covered many windows, and locks secured the gates. The buildings had a closed, protected look to them, as if they cowered in the face of the destruction. He couldn’t hear any birds. Since he’d entered town, he hadn’t heard a bird, a dog, a car horn or a siren. Nothing. He heard only his own sounds. Eric pushed his bike, approached an intersection slowly, peered both ways, then hurried across. He had no idea where the hospital or police station might be, the logical places to look for Dad. The light “ping” of a loose spoke every revolution of the wheel made him nervous. What if somebody heard him? What could he say? If people were shooting at each other on the highway the night before, maybe he would be mistaken for a thief or arrested for violating a “stay inside” order. His eyes watered, and half in frustration and half in fear he angrily wiped them with the heel of his hand. A glass-partitioned public phone kiosk on the next corner was vandalized, the glass shattered, and all that remained of the receiver was a nub of protruding wires. In the phone book he found an address for both the hospital and the police station, but there was no map, and the street names didn’t mean anything to him.

  A white van roared down the street. Eric pushed himself against the remains of the phone, trying to disappear. A man in the passenger’s seat looked right at him. His eyes were small and cold, like a beetle’s. His mouth was straight and hard. Eric was glad they didn’t stop. He wouldn’t want to meet a man who looked like that.

  Pieces of paper swirled in the wake of the van; its tail-lights flashed when it turned the corner a couple of blocks away. Eric rested his cheek against the phone booth’s cool metal. A minute later, a police cruiser with darkly tinted windows turned onto the street. He started to step out, to wave, then fear welled up, making him weak. Across the sidewalk, he saw a deep doorway to duck into, but there was no way to get there without being seen. He stayed in the kiosk and tried to act like he was busy, which felt ridiculous since the phone was broken. He opened the directory to the yellow pages and studied them. The car stopped at the curb, and the window rolled down.

  A tired voice from inside said, “Sir, would you mind stepping next to the car?” Eric looked behind him. Nobody had ever called him “Sir” before.

  “Me?” he said.

  The voice deepened, became threatening. “Don’t make me get out.” Eric moved by the cruiser and bent so he could see in the window. What he noticed first was in the back seat, a stack of what he took to be heavy, black plastic tarps. Eric didn’t understand why tarps would have zippers on them though. Then he saw the officer’s revolver. His stomach gripped into a tight ball. The revolver rested on the seat, and the officer’s hand was on it. His mirrored sunglasses reflected a distorted picture. “Give me the stereo,” he said.

  For a second Eric didn’t move. He didn’t know what the officer meant, then he unclipped the cassette player from his belt, disconnected the headphones and offered the player to the policeman. When he didn’t stir, Eric dropped it on the seat. It bounced once. Without moving his head, the officer’s hand floated from the gun and picked up the cassette player. He held it in front of his glasses, then floated it back to the seat. His movements were smooth and careful. Eric didn’t want to make him angry. The man made Eric think of a snake, a meticulous, cautious predator, ready to burst into motion any second.

  “Now, the backpack,” he said.

  Eric shucked the strap off his shoulder and placed it next to the cassette. The hand drifted from the gun, undid the straps and explored the contents. He lifted each item out and placed it carefully on the seat until the empty bag sagged beside him.

  During the process, Eric thought about fidgeting, but he held himself still. He knew he should be frightened, but now he felt detached, almost meditative about what was happening, as if he were hovering above the sidewalk watching the scene unroll. Maybe the event was too surreal, like one of those weird paintings he’d seen in art books where mountains levitated in living rooms and watches melted over tree branches.

  He couldn’t see the man’s eyes, but it suddenly occurred to him that they wouldn’t be malicious eyes, not the eyes of a killer; they would be crazed eyes. Below the officer’s sunglasses, even in the tinted window shadows in the car, Eric saw deep, purple circles like twin bruises. The man’s face sagged from his cheekbones. His hair, brown streaked with gray, stuck out in uncombed angles from under his hat. Crumpled fast food sacks and crushed Styrofoam cups covered the floor of the cruiser. The car smelled strongly of old coffee and sweaty clothes. Eric knew—he didn’t know how— that the
rigidity of the man’s posture, the unnaturally precise hand movements, masked exhaustion and madness. For the first time in his life, Eric felt like he understood something about someone else. He felt a connection to him, an empathy, as if for this instant they were sharing the same thoughts. The policeman must have been patrolling for days, maybe never getting out of the car, just driving and looking and upholding the law because he didn’t know what else to do. Eric felt very sorry for the policeman, though Eric knew he was a hair’s width away from being shot.

  He wanted to say some kind thing to him, but he didn’t know how to start.

  The officer said, his voice gravelly and no less threatening than before, “Looters don’t last in this town.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m just looking for my dad,” said Eric.

  The man started to replace Eric’s goods to his backpack. His hand shook slightly as he lifted a can of peaches.

  “Let me help,” said Eric as he leaned into the car and reached for the can. The peaches dropped from the policeman’s hand, and in it he held the gun. He was very fast. Eric tried to swallow, couldn’t. The end of the barrel, only a foot from his face, looked a mile wide and infinitely deep. Trapped, his head in the car and off balance, Eric heard the policeman’s hard and heavy breath. The man said, “Do you know Gloria?” The gun didn’t waver.

  Eric tried to answer, but he couldn’t force a word through his throat. He shook his head no. The gun sank to the backpack, and the officer gazed out the front window, turning away from Eric. His voice became distant and soft. “She’s about your age. At the hospital with her mom now. They got a touch of something,” the policeman said. He focused suddenly on Eric, and his voice became business-like. “I thought maybe you went to school with her.”

  Cupped loosely around the pistol grip, the man’s hand fascinated Eric. He tried to speak again and squeaked out, “I go to Littleton High.”

  “A Littleton Lion.” The policeman slid the gun onto his lap and stuck it between his legs so the barrel pointed down and the grip was still visible. “I was a Golden High Knight. Played football.” He licked his lips.

  Eric let out a long breath silently and realized he hadn’t been breathing. “Uh huh,” he said.

  “Thousand people buried in that football field now.” The policeman gripped the steering wheel. He was wearing a black glove on his left hand. “Don’t think the Knights will have a good season this year,” he said.

  He plucked the radio microphone from the dash and held it to his lips. “Tanner, this is Buck. I’m on 12th and Jackson talking to a Littleton Lion. What you got?”

  The radio crackled feebly.

  He rested the microphone on his lap and continued to stare out the front window. “Gloria thinks she might be a cheerleader. She’s a little bony, but she can do the gymnastics. Eight years of lessons.” His chest expanded as he took a deep breath, and when he finally let it out, it shook. “Her mother’s real proud. Bought us shirts that say Gloria’s Mom and Gloria’s Dad.” He tried the radio again. In the quiet of the car, the steady hiss sounded baleful and lonely. “Nobody home,” said the policeman. “Burnt to the ground…” He paused and took another deep breath. “…just like the hospital. Forgot for a second.”

  His chin dropped to his chest as if he were too tired to hold it up any longer. “I’m a ghost cop,” he said.

  “Except I’m alive and the city died.” Then he waved his hand vaguely in Eric’s direction. “You can go.”

  Quickly, Eric filled his backpack and grabbed his headphones and cassette player. The policeman didn’t move. When Eric backed his head out of the window, he started to thank the man—he felt like he should—but then Eric realized the policeman had fallen asleep. His face looked peaceful, and Eric made a sudden connection, an’ understanding of the policeman in a different role. Eric shook with it, the empathy was so strong. The policeman looked like a man at halftime at a football game, tired from his day’s work, but at the game because his daughter was going to cheer. Eric wished that he could tell him the day was okay, that his bony daughter dazzled the crowd, jumping high, clapping her hands, throwing back flips for the team as it entered the field.

  Instead, Eric stepped back quietly. Brightness of the sun through the smoke, after the darkness of the car, made him blink back tears.

  Smoldering ruins dominated the north end of Golden, and the closer he pedaled to the Coors plant, the fewer intact buildings he found. Two jewelry stores side by side, A Touch of Gold and a Zales, had been cleaned out. A spray of velvet display pads littered the sidewalk. After a few blocks, he turned and headed south, but he had no idea where to go now. Should he return to the cave and wait for Dad? How long should he wait before searching again? The image of his mother’s body lying still under the plastic chilled him. Thinking about crawling into the cave again to face that lump under the black visqueen made him shake his head. He would ride the bike to Littleton. Dad might have gone there, though he couldn’t think of a reason that he would. What really decided him, was the idea of being home. He imagined his bedroom, the posters on the walls, the books lined neatly on the shelves, and his bed, a place of safety and normality. If he could just get home, things would be all right. All of this would go away. He wouldn’t have to think about policemen who lost their daughters or cars filled with frightened, angry people being shot at a road block.

  At the bottom of Jackson Street, he reached the high school. “Have a good summer!” read the marquee in front of the school. A pair of unattended backhoes squatted on the torn up remains of the football field. One goal post lay on its side. The other stood, a solitary sentinel. He turned onto 24th Street, hoping that it would take him back to U.S. 6 and out of town.

  24th ended at Illinois Ave and he could see the highway at the crest of the hill to his right. In the distance, a long way up the hill with several smaller hills between, the two roads intersected. Breaths came hard in the smoky air as he struggled to pedal up the slope. Because he kept his eyes closed part of the time, or stared at the goose neck of the bike so he wouldn’t have to look at the hill in front of him, he missed the first black shapes lying on the road’s shoulder to his left. When his legs were too tired to push the pedals any farther, he leaned the bike and rested. Then he saw the body bags, hundreds of them like black seed pods lined side by side along the road, stretching to the top of the hill. At first, he thought they were trash bags, as if the Highway Department had been running grass cutting crews along the roads and were storing the clippings. But when he put the bike down and stood over the closest bag, he knew the truth.

  He blinked slowly. His eyes ached from the smoke, and he took a long time to realize what he was looking at. Sun glinted dully off the slick plastic, and the bag was unzipped. Inside, he saw a glimpse of pink flannel. The woman—though the bag covered her face, he guessed it must be a woman—had died in her pajamas. Her hands lay on top each other on her stomach. The top hand was disfigured; it was missing the ring finger.

  Eric looked down the long row of bags to his left, toward town. All the bags were unzipped. Hands dangled over the sides of many, and even from here he could see others without ring fingers. He stepped to the next bag. A man’s well-tanned arm sprawled across the plastic as if he had tried to extricate himself and then died in mid-effort. A pale band of skin circled his wrist where he must have worn a watch.

  Eric knew he should feel something about all these bodies, some sadness or revulsion, but he couldn’t. He walked up the hill, pushing his bike. In some bags he saw faces, eyes open or closed, mouths gaping or neatly shut. Some bodies were naked; one man wore a three piece suit. A few bags had more than one body in them, mostly children. All the bags were open, and all Eric felt was a mild curiosity about why.

  Near the crest of the hill he heard an engine idling and then a voice. He put the bike down and, bending low, scurried to the top. In the little valley below, thirty yards away, the white van was parked in the middle of the road. A man, the beetle-eyed one h
e’d seen earlier, unzipped a bag, reached in, pulled out the body’s hands, inspected them, then moved to the next one. A gun in a shoulder holster swung from his chest when he bent over. He held a three foot long pair of bolt cutters. He unzipped again—the harsh rasp reached Eric—and grabbed a hand.

  “Got one,” he said to the hidden driver in the van. Beetle-Eyes pinned the hand to the body with his foot, maneuvered the bolt cutters into position, then, without pause, snipped off a finger. Eric heard the click of the bolt cutters closing.

  The man stripped the ring from the finger, then tossed the finger beyond the body bags into the long weeds beside the road. He put the ring into a heavy sack that hung from his belt and moved to the next bag.

  Eric pressed the side of his face to the pavement and closed his eyes. Sun-warmed asphalt burned him, but he didn’t move. The enormity of what he was seeing boggled his imagination and sickened him. Surely nothing can top this, he thought. Nothing could be as gross.

  He wondered how he was going to get past the van. He couldn’t see just riding by, and he thought about going back and finding another way to the highway, but he also wanted to stop them, to turn them in maybe—whatever it would take to get them to leave the bodies alone.

  He heard another loud snip. The van rolled a few feet forward to keep up with Beetle-Eyes, who moved from bag to bag with ghoulish efficiency. He unzipped another one and looked the body over speculatively. “Nice tits,” he said, then threw the ringless hands back in the bag in disgust. “Why don’t I drive for a while?” he said. A voice from the van murmured back. Beetle-Eyes shrugged his shoulders. As the van move farther away and higher on the hill, Eric crept backwards to stay out of sight. He could no longer hear them, but he saw the pantomime as Beetle-Eyes crouched, opened, inspected, stood and cut, taking rings and watches as he found them, bag after bag.