Summer of the Apocalypse

by James Van Pelt

  “Knowledge too, pure knowledge. We were close, so close to knowing everything. I’ve seen the books. I know. Scientists could study particles so small that an atom was their universe.” He knew most of the people around the fire would have no idea what he was talking about, but he continued. “We studied the galaxies. We looked out with telescopes and electronic measuring devices and saw the face of god. Mankind reached up and in. Backwards and forwards. Our science traveled everywhere, and that’s what we’re losing now. Our children, my own son, are forgetting the heights we reached. My dad…” he said, “…my dad’s world, my world, was about making people live. We lived longer and healthier. We took care of our teeth. We helped the nearsighted. We reached out, the Americans, we reached out and helped people thousands of miles away in other parts of the world. Technology and science made us more compassionate, more human.”

  Ripple looked at him sadly. “The beauty you’re talking about is denial. It was terminal, the false color of fever before death.”

  Taken aback, Eric said, “Where do you get words like that? Those are Gone Time terms. How old are you?”

  She blushed. “Books. I’ve read and talked. I’ve thought. I’m sixteen.” Teach said, “She has, too. Ferocious memory.” He turned to Ripple. “A little overpowering at times, too.”

  Ripple said, “He’s been there, Teach. He knows that it’s true.” A voice from behind Eric said, “What do you think about the Jackals with M-16s?” He pronounced the name of the gun carefully, making it three words. “They seem more Gone Time than now.”

  Eric said, “Teach, you said the roads were closed. Your parents dynamited them.”

  “They did, but foot traffic has no problem going over the blockade. This is the first they’ve come this far in force, though.”

  Eric thought for a minute. “The only reason I can think of that they are coming this way must be the same one why we are going their way. They want to get around the Flats.”

  “What about the guns, the uniforms?”

  “A military base somewhere north, perhaps. I can’t imagine they’re manufacturing the ammo. There must have been a well protected cache of it. Maybe if it stays cool, it lasts longer.” He considered some more. The fire crackled softly. “If M-16s still work, I wonder if they have other munitions, grenades, napalm.” Teach sighed. “I guess we’ll have to find out. If they’re going to tramp through Highwater.” Silently, Eric stared into the fire. Twists of flame danced along the edge of a log, the heat baking his face and shins. The trip to Boulder seemed almost impossible now. First, the wolves, then Phil and his odd museum, then the Flats, now an army between him and the library. He thought about turning around. Troy would be glad to see Dodge again, of course, and Eric could imagine explaining why he’d left. Maybe the illnesses will pass, thought Eric. There are seasons of bad times. The crops grow rich one year and they grow thin another. People might be that way too. What could make facing men with M-16s worthwhile?

  A small voice asked, “Could you tell us about the Gone Time monsters?” Eric looked for the questioner. A girl, maybe ten years old, lifted her hand shyly. She said, “My grandma used to scare me—I remember—about the Sudden Death Playoff and the Twilight Double Header. Were they terrible? Did they really come for little kids?”

  Eric laughed. For two hours he answered questions, and the people listened. They hung on his words, and all the time Ripple sat quietly, her head cocked to one side, intent. Eric was convinced she’d not forget a word that he said. And while he was speaking, while the fire burned low until it was just embers and the cool breeze swept gently past his face, he thought over and over again, maybe she is right. These are the natives. I am an alien in my own land.

  “What are they doing, Grandpa?” Eric slid over on the stone ridge so that Dodge would have a better view into the canyon at the camp below. Eric looked for Rabbit again, but the boy had taken a different path once they started climbing, and Eric knew that saying anything to him would do no good.

  “Keep your heads still,” said Teach. “They might notice us poked up like this, but only if you move. Motion’s the key.” He lay on Eric’s other side. Beside him, Ripple slowly moved into a position where she could see too. Now that it was light, Eric got a better look at her. Her short, cut red hair framed a serious, pale expression. Freckles sprinkled across her cheeks only made her seem more frail. Her eyes were green, and intense. Her movements, deliberate. She might be sixteen, he thought, but I wouldn’t have put her at twelve. He looked back at the camp.

  Sixty yards away and fifty feet down, a handful of drab, green tents stood in a small clearing beside the highway. Thin, gray streamers of smoke stretched straight up from a pair of campfires. Beyond the tents, farther down the valley, the rocky sides of the canyon covered the road and choked access. A shallow lake at the rock wall’s base reflected clouds and sky.

  Three soldiers were unpacking bulky metal pieces from green chests and assembling them on the other side of the road from the tents.

  “Looks like a gun emplacement,” said Eric. “That’s some kind of heavy machine gun they’re putting together.”

  “It’s the Gone Time sickness coming back,” said Ripple. “The head has died, but the body still twitches.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Eric.

  “The guns and technology are irreplaceable. They can’t be remanufactured. Their ammo fires now, but even stored in perfect conditions, it will become inert.”

  “Why can’t they make new shells? All the equipment exists.” Annoyed, Eric rolled to his side so he could face her. “The Gone Time is not gone, just forgotten. If the children will learn, then the machines will run again. Our great-grandchildren could live in cities under the lights. We aren’t starting from scratch you know.”

  Below, the men had nearly finished their work. A black, swiss-cheese-looking sleeve covered the barrel, and twin, heavy kegs rested at the butt end. One of the soldiers reached into a keg and pulled out a bullet-lined strap. The leading end he clamped into the gun.

  Ripple said, “The delivery system is gone. No more mining. It’s high tech and there are too many missing pieces. We’ll never be able to do what the Gone Timers did. Their ancestors had it easy. Metal ore was easy to find. It was on the surface. As they made better tools from the easy metals they mined, they could dig deeper, work less productive ore, extract using more complicated processes…” Eric could hardly believe that a person as young as Ripple could talk the way she did. She’s not just a prodigy, he thought, she’s a genius.

  “…but now the knowledge and tools are gone. We can’t start from scratch again.”

  “What about the metals that are already out, cars, buildings, all the stuff that won’t work but are already processed? Wouldn’t it be easy to use them as our raw material, even easier than the easiest mines for primitive man?”

  Ripple glanced at him. “They’re not raw. Even if you could melt them, they’re blends. I’ll bet we couldn’t find pure iron anywhere, and the more time passes, the more difficult it will be. But even if we could do it, we shouldn’t. We’d start the sickness all over again. What would be the point?” The soldiers at the gun flurried into motion. One picked up an M-16 and strode across the road into a tent. The others swung the gun around so it pointed at a large boulder thirty feet from them. Then, from the tent, the soldier backed out. A older man followed him, not in uniform, his light hair catching the sunlight. Then a second man came out, a younger one with the exact shade of hair. They could have been father and son. The soldier gestured with his gun and the two men walked across the road. As they approached the machine gun, Eric realized their hands were tied.

  “They’re prisoners!” said Eric. “Do you know them?”

  Teach said, “No, but Federal has all the roads into Boulder blocked. They could be from the city.” The soldier said something to the men. From this distance, Eric couldn’t tell what it was, but the tone was angry, commanding. The older man held his head high a
nd said something back. The young one looked frightened and defiant.

  “Does he take a lot of prisoners?”

  “I don’t know,” said Teach. “This is the first I’ve seen them on this side of the blockade. They’re moving up canyon, that’s for sure. Maybe they’re trying to get into south Denver.”

  “I could go down and talk to them,” Eric said, “and find out what they want.” But even as he said it, he knew he wouldn’t. Something felt bad about the men. His urge was to run.

  The soldier pointed to the boulder. The older man sagged. His head dropped, as if all the life had been taken from him. He turned and walked toward the rock. The younger man hung back until the soldier prodded him with his M-16.

  “What are they doing?” repeated Dodge.

  A swell of sickness rose in Eric. He could feel it pushing against his ribs. “Oh, god,” he said. Teach said, “They wouldn’t.”

  Keeping his M-16 trained on the two men, the soldier directed them to stand with their faces to the boulder, their backs to the machine gun. One of the soldiers manning the gun put his shoulders into a yoke on the gun and aimed the barrel at the men.

  Eric’s jaw dropped. Even as he watched, horror filling him up like ice water, he thought, I’m not going to see this. I can’t, and he reached out to cover Dodge’s eyes. In the distance, crows cawed loudly. Someone yelled, “No!” The soldier beside the gun buckled to the ground, his limbs loose. “No!” yelled the voice again. In the bushes at the base of the cliff, Rabbit stepped forward and threw a baseball-sized rock. It zinged off the barrel of the gun. The other soldier swung around his gun and let fly an angry rip of sound. A line of dirt jumped up in front of Rabbit, and he ducked into the bushes. Firing stopped. The soldier pounded on the clip of his gun, cursing. Rabbit burst from the bushes, running low away from the men. Eric could see the cleft he must have climbed down to get into the valley. Ponderously, the muzzle of the big gun swung around toward Rabbit.

  “Run!” shouted Eric. He was standing. He didn’t remember getting up. A hand grabbed him and yanked him back.

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Teach.

  The big gun opened up, slamming explosions. Eric scrambled to the ridge and looked over. Dust hid the base of the cliff. He couldn’t see Rabbit.

  The gun quit firing. Smoke obscured it for an instant, then cleared. The soldier Rabbit had hit still lay on the ground. Gesturing angrily, the soldier with the M-16 directed the two civilians back to the boulder. A minute later, the big gun fired again, briefly, a short burst. Eric watched the execution, dry-eyed. Then Rabbit joined him, a long scratch across the non-scarred side of his face, but otherwise unharmed. Ripple lay next to him. Long after the smoke had cleared and the blood had quit running off the deeply pocked boulder she said, “The Gone Time is gone, but it’s not forgiven.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  LOOTING

  The four lanes of Hampden Avenue stretched before them, empty and still. To their left, a tall chain link fence separated them from a deserted cross-street lined by long rows of brick tract houses. A waft of smoke burned Eric’s eyes as he strained to see through the haze. He had this vision that at any moment a lone figure would resolve itself out of the distance. His father. Eric almost whistled with the relief of it. He wiped wetness from his cheeks with the back of his wrist. Like a pall of wispy ghosts, smoke drifted between the houses. On all sides, up and down Hampden, at each side road, gray swirls floated over the lawns, among the houses and above them.

  We’re finding Dad, he thought. Leda’s wrong about him. I can feel it. He’s out there, just ahead, looking for me. I know I’ll find my dad.

  Leda said, “Whoops. We’re in trouble.”

  Before Eric could answer, he glimpsed a shadow rushing through the air above the street, then it slammed over them and was gone. He was sprawled on the pavement. “What was that!”

  “Maybe he didn’t see us,” she said, voice steely calm, her face a foot from him. “It’s a gunship.” Eric could see it now, maybe a half-mile down the road and a hundred feet up, a beige and brown camouflage-painted helicopter. It turned nimbly and headed back.

  “What does he want?” Roaring past, the copter’s prop wash kicked up dust. Eric tried to melt into the asphalt.

  “I’d heard that some of the pilots went crazy in the last days— this was a couple of weeks ago—and that they were strafing people on the streets.” The copter turned again. Eric watched, amazed. It was so fast!

  Leda continued, “A rumor said a copter pilot shot up St. Joseph hospital. Went back and forth pumping bullets into the building. Lots of people dead.”

  This time the craft came slower, its blade a blur, a cloud of dust beneath it. Eric said, “He knows we’re here.”

  They stood. The copter hovered just off the road, twenty yards away. Bits of sand stung Eric’s cheeks. The mirrored cockpit glass revealed nothing. He didn’t feel scared, really, but he stepped in front of Leda, putting himself between her and the ship. She moved beside him.

  “What’s he going to do?” asked Eric.

  “He’s doing it.” She pointed to a multi-barreled device that hung on a mechanized swivel arrangement below the cockpit. The barrels were whirling around and around. She said, “He’s shooting us.” After a minute, the copter howling on the road, the ineffectual guns spinning, Eric said, “Let’s keep going,” and he walked toward the copter. Leda stayed beside him. As they approached, the craft moved aside, and the guns swiveled so they were pointing at them the whole way. When they’d walked for a couple of minutes without looking back, the tenor of the engine changed and the copter rose and flew away.

  “That was odd,” Eric said. He felt like he imagined an athlete would who had just done some amazing feat—a half-court shot that touched only net, or a grand slam homer that wins the game at the bottom of the ninth—then walks away like nothing had happened, the epitome of cool and calm. Just another day. It was too bizarre to comprehend.

  She said, “Glad he didn’t have ammo.”

  He said, “Yep.”

  Later, as they passed a station wagon parked on the shoulder, Leda bent at the driver’s window, cupped her hand on the glass and peered in. It was the third car she’d checked.

  His heart still racing from the close call, he noticed her torn shirt drop away from her side, flashing a long stretch of white skin from her belt to just below her bra. This time Eric didn’t glance away. She’s pretty fit, he thought. Good looking for a twenty-five-year-old. He remembered his ex-girl friend at the high school, a sallow-faced blonde plagued with a band of pimples at her hairline that she could never clear up despite her most dedicated efforts. Last winter she’d decided to attack them with heat and cold and Eric had watched her wash her face with snow, then rush into the house to steaming hot hand cloths that she’d drape across her forehead like an Indian head dress. Twice they’d made out on her living room couch. The second time, Eric had experimentally tried to French kiss, and she’d said, “Don’t. That’s gross.” They’d broken up a couple of weeks later. “I can’t get into this pimple thing,” Eric had said. It all seemed so childish now.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “Keys.” She straightened and smiled, her face smudged and tired (but clear-skinned, he noticed). “We don’t need to walk to Littleton.”

  Eric hooked his thumbs into his backpack straps and pulled them together in front of his chest. Despite the mid-day heat, he shivered. “I saw a cop shoot two looters yesterday. They were robbing bodies.”

  “Really?” She banged the door shut; the echo came back off a distant surface. “The National Guard took over police duties a couple of weeks ago, and my guess is most of the Guard are dead or home with their families. You sure he was legit?”

  Eric thought of the ghost cop methodically pulling zippers closed on body bags, the liquid speed he’d demonstrated gunning down Beetle-Eyes and his girlfriend. “I don’t know.” He imagined the cop sitting on the edge of the
Golden High School Knight’s football field that was now a mass grave, his wife and daughter somewhere under the torn-up sod. “He believed he was. I haven’t seen a car yet today. We’d attract attention.”

  “All right, we walk.” She started down the road again, sniffed, then waved her hand in the direction they were headed. “Kind of creepy, don’t you think? Like dry fog.”

  A reddish nimbus circled the sun above. He felt adrenalized by the brush with the copter, as if it had awakened him from a deep sleep. “Maybe. It’s more somber than anything.” He caught up to her and matched her pace. Her hands swung easily to her stride.

  She turned and walked down an off-ramp to Wadsworth Boulevard. “Look, a Wal-Mart. We can get some stuff.”

  Resting on four cinder blocks, a rusty Pinto sat on the street side of the otherwise empty parking lot. Didn’t she hear what I said about looting? he thought as they passed the abandoned vehicle. The broad reach of blacktop made him feel like a bug on a slide, like God was looking down on him so in the open. He walked backwards for a few steps, scanning the street for traffic, but there was] nothing. No trucks. No cars. No copter. He cocked his head and listened. Not even a bird. His left shoe squeaked. Her footsteps padded on the asphalt; her jeans swished lightly.

  As if catching his thoughts, she said, “I’ll leave money. We can find food. Clothes.” She plucked at her shirttail. “Not much left of this one,” she said, then rubbed the side of her index finger across her teeth. “I have to brush too.”

  Crunching over broken glass, Eric stepped through the shattered front door. Produce littered the floor, as if there had been a riot. He kicked aside an Oreo box, skittering black cookies across the tile. A whiff of old popcorn, the scent of butter soft as plush, lingered. Leda called into the dark store, smiled back, the flash of white startling in the gloom, and said, “Come on. They’re having a sale.” Last summer, he’d gone with Dad to a Wal-Mart to buy a lawn-mower. For hours, it seemed, Dad agonized over the merits of Briggs and Stratton versus Jacobson. Finally, Eric said, “They cut grass just the same,” and Dad met his eyes in answer, leaving Eric speechless as always. After a frightening second, where something mute and dark bubbled between them, Eric dropped his gaze to the mower. “Grass is grass,” he mumbled. Then he wandered over to the music department, and spent the rest of their time in the store deciding between a classical music collection or the latest group he liked. Leda stepped through a mess of Saltines boxes and other crushed cookies and chips packages, heading to the back of the store. He grabbed a plastic bag of Zingers and tore it open as he followed her. It had that flavorless, pure sugar taste he liked. The farther they moved from the windows, the darker it became, and the cavernous echoes of their footsteps made him jump. “Flashlights?” he said, and she cut down an aisle toward hardware.