Summer of the Apocalypse

by James Van Pelt

  Odd, I don’t hurt, he thought.

  Finally, even his eyeballs. In agony, he prayed for strength to resist the itching, his fingers pressed together. “Oh, God, come to me now and stand between me and the Devil.” He concentrated, strained to hear the voice of God, waited for some sign to show that God appreciated his efforts. A sweat bead dribbled down his forehead and into his right eye. He resisted the urge to wipe the stinging away. He imagined himself like a nun, down on his knees in some bare cell, a plank and a plain blanket for a bed, a severe Christ bleeding from deep wounds hanging from the wall, the only decoration. The Devil comes for the righteous. The Devil wrestles in the privacy of the mind, in the hollow spaces between faith and fear. Speak to me, God, he thought.

  Dad leaned over and whispered in Eric’s ear, “It’s not the prayer part of the service, son,” and then Eric knew his Dad and the Devil worked together.

  Eric felt his spin slowing, or maybe it was a trick of the inner ear. He remembered a short story title, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”

  He thought, I should pray. Now I lay me down to sleep… Yea, though I walk through the valley… I pledge allegiance to the flag…

  Eric thought, it’s the prayer part now, Dad. He could feel himself losing consciousness. His legs numbed. Even if he could touch the stool, he wouldn’t be able to control his limbs. He couldn’t save himself. But I don’t hurt. The rope gripped his neck like a strong hand, and he realized, strangely, that he was happy. I hope the dark-haired woman is okay. Maybe she isn’t, but I tried. I’m not a kid. I did something. He began to rise, pressure dropped from the rope, and he thought, I’m ascending! and he wished he’d prayed more in the last few years. His pastor used to preach about being “ill prepared to meet your maker.” Since he was ten, he had thought of himself as an atheist, or at least an agnostic.

  “Breathe, damn it,” said the dark-haired woman, her voice coming from the black below. Her hands gripped his thighs, and he felt her head between his legs pushing him toward the ceiling piggyback. He sucked in air down his burning throat, then began coughing.

  “That’s it,” she said. “Open that airway.”

  His head knocked against a rafter, and spider web covered his face, but he was breathing. He filled his lungs and coughed again, then inhaled deeply.

  “Thank you,” he tried to say, but it came out a croak. He swallowed and said it again, a bit more clearly, though still rough.

  “I haven’t got you down yet,” she said. “I can’t hold you forever.” Eric felt her quiver.

  In another part of the house, voices shouted. Inarticulate. All rage. Loud thuds. A gunshot. Silence. Eric strained to hear more.

  The woman spoke urgent and low, “I’m going to move to the wall and untie your rope.” Eric ducked his head out of the rafters. She turned and stepped to the wall. His head bumped the concrete.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Now stay balanced.” She let go of his legs. He gripped her ribs with his feet, and he felt her respiration, quick and even. As she fumbled with the rope, she said, “We got to ambush them when they come down. It’s our best chance. You stand on one side of the stairwell, and I’ll stand on the other.”

  His pulley rattled and he knew the rope was free.

  “There,” she said. She bent and Eric slid down the wall until his feet touched the floor. Her hands steadied him for a second, then untied his neck. “You’re lucky the knot didn’t slip. The noose should have tightened, and I might not have been able to get it off.” She bent to his wrists. “When your hands are loose, grab a stool. We’ll nail the first one down.”

  “What was the shot?” Eric whispered.

  He sensed her shrug. The darkness in the basement was complete. “Lover’s quarrel, maybe. But it was only one and whoever is left won’t be pleasant, assuming either one of them is shot.” Eric said, “That would be a blessing.” His hands wouldn’t work. They were wood. And it was all he could do not to fall over. He felt blindly for the stool, and when he found it, he had to hook his wrists under the seat to lift it. Fiery tingles rushed into his fingertips. He grimaced but said nothing, then slid along the wall until he reached the stairwell.

  He said, “How’d you get free?”

  She whispered huskily across the space between them, “Small wrists and hands. I almost hoped he’d try something like that. All I needed was to be let down.” Her stool scraped the cement, loud in the dark room. “Of course, it was a stupid plan.”

  Eric set his stool down and rubbed his palms together. “Why?”

  “Jared’s big. Girls my size who think they can do anything physical to stop a determined guy his size are just fooling themselves. You need a gun.”

  He remembered the almost out of body feeling he had when she was being attacked, like he had been in her mind. Jared pressed down, an inexorable force, hot gusts of breath in her ear, on her neck. He offered weakly, “Maybe if you threw your knee, you know.”

  She snickered, not unkindly. “Yeah, sure.”

  Black silence stretched between them. He set the stool down, rubbed his hands together. They almost felt normal. “They might both be dead.”

  “Doubt it.” Cloth scraped against cement. Eric guessed she was sidling along the wall. “I’m going to get that bat,” she said. “We’ll see how he likes his toy when somebody else is playing with it.”

  “Are we going upstairs?”

  She whispered back, “Only thing we got is surprise. They don’t know we’re free. Jared let me down, but he’s got to figure my wrists are tied and that I’m leashed to the wall. I couldn’t have undone the rope with my teeth, so he won’t necessarily be in a hurry to come back. If Meg shot him, then she probably has no idea at all. Ha! Got it.”

  Now that they had the bat, Eric relaxed. Not that it means much, he thought. They’ve got at least one gun, and they could come in blazing. I’ll look pretty dumb holding this stool above me when I get shot.

  “Don’t try for the head,” she said, returning to the stairwell. “Hit low. A sharp thwack on a knee or shin will hurt enough so we can get a second swing in. You miss the head and you’re dead.” Eric snickered.

  “’Scuse me?” she said.

  “You rhymed.” He thought, I’m not going to die on that rope. I’m still alive. A breath that seemed long and pent up whooshed out of him and he giggled again. “Dead head.” She said nothing for a second, then giggled too. “I saw them once, the Grateful Dead. Used to be my favorite t-shirt.”

  “I’m more into AC/DC,” said Eric.

  “So you go both ways?” They laughed. Eric covered his mouth to muffle it.

  “Led Zepplin too. When the levee breaks…”

  “You got no place to go.” She said, “My name’s Leda.”

  “Eric,” he said.

  “Nice meeting you, Eric.”

  They whispered secrets about rock-n-roll for a long time until, despite his best efforts, he drifted off. Eric shook himself awake. Soft, gray light filled the basement. Leda sat with her back to the wall, her legs flat in a “V” on the floor, the bat resting on her thigh. She snored softly. He rolled onto his side, moving the stool.

  “What… what?” she said, frantically grabbing the bat and rising to her knees.

  “Shhh… sorry. I made a noise.”

  Dropping onto her hands, her hair covered her face. “God, I thought I was dreaming.” She looked around. “We’ll have to go up after all.”

  Tension gripped him, tightening his stomach. They were upstairs: bloated Jared and hard-hitting Meg. And a gun. Eric sucked air between his teeth. “I’ll lead.”

  Mercifully, the stairs didn’t creak. Eric, holding the bat now, slowly tested each step before putting his weight on it. They climbed higher. Looking back, he saw her smile grimly, and beyond her, just visible, the feet of the still dangling dead man.

  On the kitchen counter, foul dishes were piled precariously. Eric crept past them, quietly opened a door next to the counter to reveal a washer and
dryer, and a back door.

  “We can get away,” he hissed.

  She shook her head. “No, I have to know what happened. I won’t ever feel safe.” Her eyes were round and deep and intense. “Okay.”

  He peeked around the corner into the small living room where maroon curtains cut most of the morning light. Dust motes swirled lazily in a narrow shaft that slipped through a gap between them. A shadow of a couch crouched under the window, and a pair of recliners faced a television. He couldn’t imagine Jared and Meg sitting in them, watching a show. But the room seemed so suburban. The light beam ended on a pleasant landscape on the opposite wall.

  “The bedroom,” she said. “Could be they’re sleeping.” Her voice quavered. She’s scared too, he thought, but she’s going on. It made him feel braver.

  “Smells bad,” he said. Holding the bat in front of him like a probe, he moved into a hallway, past a bathroom, then past a bedroom with boxes of canned goods piled to the ceiling. Blotches spotted the carpet. He bent down, touched one. It was wet. The door to the last room was partly closed. He pushed it with the end of the bat and it creaked as it opened. Bad air wafted around him, menthol, alcohol and the distinctive smell of vomit. Eric wrinkled his nose.

  Micro-inch by micro-inch, he edged his eyes by the doorway. A dresser covered with empty blood bags spilled from a carton, then the end of a bed, someone under the covers, someone with bare feet on top. Then, jeans. A red flannel shirt. Meg lay motionless on her side on top the covers, back to the door, her arm across Jared’s chest who faced the ceiling, the blanket pulled up neatly under his chin. An almost black stain soaked the blanket above Jared’s midsection. Clearly, he was dead, his face rigid and held in a grimace that wasn’t quite human. Eric couldn’t see a gun.

  Leda crowded behind him, pushing him into the room. She held his arm against her. A sheer curtain covered the window, but through. it Eric saw a tree, and a car parked on the street. Everything felt surreal. How could he be here? How could he be in danger? The sun is rising. Wind is blowing in the leaves.

  Taking the bat from him, Leda eased herself to the edge of the bed and reached out to touch Meg. Without moving, Meg said, “He was a bad, man.”

  Leda gasped and jumped back, banging into the closet door, Eric almost ran out of the room. He gripped the doorsill, panting like he’d run a race.

  Meg pulled Jared close and pressed her forehead to his cheek. “He was a bad, bad man.” Gently, she kissed him. “And he died too soon.” The bed shook and Eric thought, she’s crying, but the shaking went on and Meg convulsed into a fetal position, never releasing Jared, and Eric realized she was silently coughing. He watched for a minute, then the coughing stopped and she relaxed, painfully straightening her legs until once again she lay full length beside him.

  Leda mouthed, “Let’s go,” and they started to back out of the room. Meg hugged Jared tight, partially pulling herself onto him and said into his ear, “You’ll never get to be a father.”

  They walked south through disturbingly quiet neighborhoods. Four houses in a row were burned to the ground, only pipes and chimneys poking from the smoking beams and rubble. An old couple sat on a porch in rockers, faces shrouded in flies, their hands hanging between them like the last thing they did was to lot go of each other. Toys littered the yard of a house with a Wee Care Day Center sign over the door, the windows closed tight and draped inside.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  Ahead rose a house-covered hill. Eric leaned into the climb. Sun bleached the street. Flattened grass on unmowed lawns lay brown and beat. Last night’s storm had done little to revive it. We, Eric thought. We are a we? Most of the buttons were gone from her blouse, and one sleeve was almost torn off. Her slim shoulder glistened with sweat. “Following my dad,” he said. “I think he’s gone home.”

  She opened her mouth as if to say something, then shut it. She shook hair out of her eyes and looked up at the sun. “Hot, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” The road flattened and they were at the hill’s top. Before them, the city fell away, houses on houses, streets pleasingly parallel and neat. Here and there, plumes of smoke leaned with the breeze. To their left miles away, the Denver downtown pushed its buildings high into the skyline.

  “Are you religious?” she said. “I’m not. Seems to me that the end of the world would be more dramatic if there were a god. There’d be some sign.”

  He thought about it. More of the city was visible now. He slopped. “What is that?”

  “What?”

  He pointed. Directly in front of them at the bottom of the hill, a narrow streak of houses two blocks long and a block wide was completely flattened.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  Eric thought, it looks like somebody stepped on that spot, and he remembered the dream about King Kong, about how Dad talked for hours about King Kong while Mom died in the cave. She said, “There’s another one.” A half-mile farther on, another block of houses were down. “And another.” She pointed. He saw three other spots of flattened houses leading away from him to the south. A trail! he thought. We’re following his footsteps. And for a second he thought he had a sign. God does exist, and he walked right here.

  “What could have done that?” he asked, and he half expected her to answer, “It must be supernatural,” but she shook her head in puzzlement.

  When they reached the first spot, Eric as if he crossed a boundary. Untouched, the last house he passed looked like all the houses on the street, but the next one was gone, the foundation stood out of the lawn, and lumber littered the yard. Wood shards stuck out of a tree trunk broken off like a match stick at hip height.

  “This wasn’t a fire,” he said, levering up one end of a ceiling joist. “No charring.” She stepped carefully over a nail-studded section of roof, the shingles covering one side. “The destruction is so complete.” Bending over, she picked up a round object and held it to him. “Dinner plate,” she said.

  “It’s not cracked.”

  Next door, the story was the same, but the next lot, one wall remained, family photos hanging from it. The roof and all the other walls were gone. Just the roof was missing from the next house, but all its windows were broken out, the glass fanned across the lawn from each.

  “Explosion came from the inside,” Eric said. “Somebody planted a bomb in these houses?”

  “No sign of fire, remember?” She put the plate down she had been carrying and winced when she stood up.

  “Are you hurt?” Eric asked.

  “Just a bruise,” she said and gingerly massaged her shoulder, the one under the untorn sleeve.

  “Let me see.” He walked around a pile of brick between them.

  “It’s nothing,” she said, but she stopped and faced him. Suddenly, he felt awkward. The only way to check the bruise would be to move the blouse off her shoulder, and he wasn’t sure how to do it. Taking a deep breath he pinched the lapel of her blouse and pulled the cloth aside. She pressed her hand against her chest so her bra wouldn’t be uncovered, and turned her head away from him. She was shaking. She said, “Don’t touch it.”

  “Oh, god.” Beginning at her collar bone, a deep purple mark ran to the top of her shoulder, part way down her back and all the way to where her hand rested on her chest. “Are you sure nothing’s broken?”

  “Just stiff,” she said, rearranging her blouse.

  “Was it Jared?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It looks awful.”

  She smiled. “You say the sweetest things, but you shouldn’t be talking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you could see your neck, you’d think I was fine.”

  Eric touched where the rope had dug in. Pain flared and he snatched his hand away. “Pretty ugly?”

  “The worst.”

  They’d reached the end of the destroyed houses and walked through another undisturbed neighborhood. Most of the homes now were old, brick duplexes with twin sidewalks leading to
twin doors.

  “My father died last year,” she said. “Liver cancer. I didn’t know him too well. He and Mom separated when I was little and I mostly got to see him in the summers. He lived in St. Louis.” They crossed a street. On this block, three or four yellowed, folded and rubber-banded newspapers were piled before the doors. Eric shivered at the thought of the dedication of some newspaper boy delivering papers to homes where the subscribers had died. Leda followed his gaze.

  “They kept the paper going until ten days ago or so. Guess they thought a newspaper would keep people believing things would get better.”

  Eric asked, “Did you love your dad?”

  “I didn’t know him, I said.”

  “That isn’t what I asked. Did you love him?” “Well, sure. I had to.” He thought that over. A new area of destroyed houses began, much the same as the last one. “This is weird. What do you make of it?” He stood beside a telephone pole. The cross arms at the top were snapped off and the wires were wrapped tightly around the shaft, like giant children had used it as a maypole,

  “Don’t know. Maybe there is a god. While the people are away. the gods will play.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Dad might have come down just this street, he thought, and glanced at the lawn, thinking he might see a mark, a sign that had passed this way. How would Dad have seen this?

  “When my father died,” she said, “I didn’t accept it at first. I told my best friend that he was sick, but not that he died. It took me a while to believe it myself.”

  Eric thought, why does she keep talking about this? “My dad’s not dead.”

  “Of course not,” she said quickly.

  “He didn’t come back to the cave, so he must have gone home. He wouldn’t have just left me there.” Eric clenched his hands into stone. We could be standing in his footsteps! “He would write a message and tell me where he went.” His face screwed up. He could feel the muscles by his eyes pulling in, his jaw tightening. He breathed in hitches.

  “Of course. That’s what happened.”