The Long Summer

by Rod Rayborne

  The parking lot was wrapped halfway around the structure and was full of cars. Two story tall ferns, still partially green, swept upward from tiny planters. A ground cover of Vinca accented hedges of Hawthorn, trimmed in the inevitable ball style malls typically boasted. Looking at it, Gordon could almost imagine that business was still going on inside as usual. Except for the numerous bodies and over-turned vehicles dotted about.

  Gordon looked at Sofia and she looked back, grinning.

  "You know what that place is going to smell like in this heat?" he asked. The look on her face told him to save his breath. They walked to within a hundred yards of the entrance and then stopped to watch for movement. Sofia didn't argue about this practice, seeing the wisdom of not walking in on armed strangers. They'd seen only a dozen people in the last few hours, but they were the first people she'd seen since the blast. Gordon's story about the man he had witnessed being shot in the parking lot gave her pause.

  They leaned against a Camry, opened their packs and set out two cans of Spaghetti O's and two bottles of water between them on the hood. Sofia pulled herself onto the warm car to eat while Gordon remained standing. They talked as they ate, but kept their eyes on the empty doors at the front of the building.

  "Why are we here?" he asked, shoving a package of animal crackers into his mouth one at a time. "We just passed any number of stores where we could have stopped without trapping ourselves in a big hot cemetery."

  "It's a girl thing," Sofia said, looking disgusted. "You wouldn't understand."

  "Try me."

  Sofia shook her head. When she finished her meal, she threw the empty can some feet away. It bounced off an SUV, leaving a scratch on its still strangely glossy blue finish.

  "Op, my mistake," she quipped.

  Gordon grabbed his pack and started walking towards the mall.

  "Where's your sense of humor? God, you're a stick in the mud." She slid from the hood of the car and pulled her pack on. Then she ran to meet him walking, already twenty feet away.

  They approached the doors leading to the side entrance. Crunching across the glass pellets, Gordon saw that some of the tiny squares had embedded themselves in the few mall patrons who had been walking out at the time, peppering their faces and bodies like buckshot.

  Their were recumbent bodies everywhere. Even parts of bodies hanging from the remains of two of the chandeliers suspended from the ceiling.

  The concussion from the blast must have been terrific, Gordon thought. It had entered through the separate ground and second floor entrances with enough force to tear through the mall unhindered but enough outlets through which to exit the mall that the building had remained essentially intact. Only those things not nailed down had been tossed about, slamming into walls and hung out to dry on the malls hanging lights. The smell was worse than Gordon had expected.

  "This is as far as I go," he said flatly as they passed the Blown entrance.

  "ok," Sophie answered without hesitation, stepping around him.

  "Wait a minute," Gordon called out low and angry. "There could be people in here. People with guns. Let's fine someplace else to go."

  Sophie didn't answer him, rounding a corner, moving out of sight. Gordon stomped after her, his teeth gritted.

  Looking past the remains, he noted inside a number of broken skylights running down the high center ceiling. They let in enough light to cast the long wide corridor in a moderate glow but the individuals stores on ground level, recessed beneath the second floor walkway, were dark inside. The second floor was brighter. They climbed the stilled escalator.

  As they pushed forward, their footsteps echoed back at them in an eerie way that sounded like they were being followed. It caused Gordon's hair to stand on end. They'd seen no one since entering the mall. Living, that is. Considering the general horror of the place as well as the thick as mustard aroma, Gordon wasn't surprised.

  Sofia didn't seem to notice though. She walked ahead, reading off the names of the stores they passed. This time when she saw a jewelers, she ignored it without thought. The kiosks spread around the floor also held little interest for her. Instead, she peered into the clothing stores.

  Spotting an Old Navy, Sofia walked past purses, jackets and shoes to the shorts, looking hurriedly through the selection for the more popular brand names. Gordon waited at each store entrance, watching to make sure no one was coming. He wasn't taking any chances.

  Not finding what she wanted at the Old Navy, they moved on. At the Anchor Bay outlet, Sofia tried on several pair of colorful shorts of varying cuts and lengths. Some had been deliberately frayed, ripped or faded. Gordon thought it stupid for people to replace old and worn clothing with expensive new clothing that was made to look old and worn from the get go. But knowing Sofia's capacity to argue, he kept his opinions to himself.

  She threw the shorts on the floor that she didn't like rather than waste her time hanging them back up. In that sense, Sofia was a practical person, taking only what she needed and discarding everything else without thought. She didn't doddle for a second trying to make up her mind on some subtle nuances of style. She knew what she liked. The rest was in the way. It was a determinism that Gordon secretly admired. Her no nonsense approach quietly pleased him.

  Finding what she wanted, she walked to the undergarment section. Immediately before Gordon could react, she dropped her shorts to the floor and stepped out of them. Gordon slipped backwards, knocking over a cardboard display, twisting to the side and crashing into more shelving. One of the shelves tipped off a bracket, a row of pumps sliding to the floor taking Gordon with them. In the quiet, it made a tremendous racket.

  Sofia jumped and looked at him sourly. Standing in her thick gray socks and gold armlet, she tutted and shook her head matter of factly, scrutinizing him as he lay among the shelves and shoes. Then she continued to walk around the underwear section until she settled on a pair of briefs with a tiny rose motif.

  "What do you think?" she asked, holding them up for his opinion.

  "Uh huh," Gordon said, rubbing his head. He picked himself up from the floor amongst a general clatter, then turned around to gaze out into the mall.

  Sofia regarded him with an odd look on her face, holding the briefs uncertainly. She turned then and walked around looking for mirror. Not finding one, she pulled the garment on and settled for just turning this way and that before a shiny square of chrome on the end of a bench. Then she put on the shorts and looked again. Gordon coughed and walked out of the store, staring hard down the breezeway into the gloom. If anyone had been within a mile of the mall, he was sure they would have heard the crash.

  "ok, I'm done." Sofia said, walking up behind him. She was wearing blue shorts now with short socks and a new pair of tennis shoes.

  Reclaiming his composure, he looked at her and smiled.

  "Looks like you forgot half your outfit," he said, walking back into the store.

  "I did?" She looked down at herself innocently. "What did I forget?"

  Gordon came back carrying a fistful of t-shirts. He passed them to her.

  "Why do I want these? I'm already hot."

  "Yes, you are," he said, looking her full in the face.

  "Then why..." She looked genuinely confused.

  "They're for me."

  Sofia stared at him a moment longer and then narrowed her eyes.

  "I see." She held the shirts up one by one. Gordon had grabbed all of the small T's, giving her a sizable selection to choose from. Finally she settled on one and pulling off her pack, dropped it over her head. Immediately Gordon relaxed.

  " I like it," he said. "It's you."

  Sofia looked at him seriously for a moment and then looked down at the shirt again. As usual with t-shirts, it sported a snarky quip, "I'm all that." Gordon frowned when he saw it and then half shrugged when he saw her smile. She nodded slowly and looked back at Gordon.

  "Great." Gordon lifted her pack and held it while she wound her arms through the straps
again. Then they walked out of the mall. They were crossing the parking lot when Sofia said, "Just tell me one thing."

  "Sure, anything."

  "Are you gay?"

  Gordon looked at her and laughed.

  Chapter Fifty Two

  L eaving Pops sitting with Blue on the wooden porch, Derek followed Suzy across the side field to the ravine. The canyon had been torn from the earth behind it in the distant past, rending a jagged gash in the hillside that descended from there all the way to the sea a quarter mile away. The river that ran through it carved it deeper with every passing century, emptying its life into the ocean where it merged with the Pacific in an eternal watery union. There fish congregated to squirm and dance in swirling, colorful eddies.

  The creek was warm when Derek stepped into it. He knew it shouldn't be, coming from a frigid underground source, but it felt so good he couldn't bring himself to complain. Suzy, twenty steps ahead of him, had already stepped into the water fully clothed. She smiled at him as he approached, splashing the filth of the refuse pile from her clothes. Then without another word, she pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it into a small pool that had formed in the rocks near the shore. Her shorts were next. She scrubbed them as best she could, wringing them out again and again and beating them against a boulder. Finally, squeezing all the water she could from them, she spread them over a large rock to dry. Derek did the same with his clothes, wringing them out a few times until the filth had drifted away in separate black tributaries that merged downriver.

  As he placed his clothes near Suzy's, he felt water being splashed against his back and he turned to give her a look of warning. Suzy laughed at that. Cupping her hands then, she tossed more water at him, splashing his face. He looked at her hard and then unable to maintain his stern demeanor any longer in the face of so beautiful a woman, laughed out loud, rivulets running down his cheeks, dripping from his nose. She waded over to him then, her arms encircling his neck. They stood like that, half submerged, for some minutes, kissing.

  They had been together for almost a year and a half. In those few months they had moved a dozen times, following Suzy's career across the country. She was a travel vlogger with over a hundred thousand subscribers, a number that had increased tenfold in the last three months since Derek had stepped around the camera to star with her. It was a pittance as far as the money was concerned, Derek's savings getting them over the rough patches.

  Even combined, it still wasn't much, but they didn't need much. They lived out of Suzy's van which Derek had customized for her with a small bed, camp stove, half fridge, shelving and even a small composting toilet that came in handy on those cold, dark nights when neither of them wanted to brave the subzero temperatures outside.

  They were rarely apart, something they'd yet to grow tired of. She was the honey, she was fond of saying. Derek was the bee.

  Now Derek looked down at Suzy, still surprised that he had managed to find a woman who could put up with his idiosyncrasies, his cloying habits he had been told a dozen times were annoying as hell and had been blamed for his unrelentingly short relationships with women. He would have been surprised had he known her thoughts just then. She was a perfect mirror of his own insecurities, something she never admitted even to herself. It was enough that he loved her.

  Suzy's cropped blond hair was soaked, clinging to her shoulders in gentle waves that encircled her face. She smiled up at him shyly and they kissed once more. Then she laid her face against his chest and began to cry.

  He had been asleep for some hours when he was awakened by a small swell of nausea. It wasn't much at first and he tried to ignore it enough to get back to sleep. But it was persistent. Suzy slept soundlessly next to him. He rose up on one elbow. That's when the headache began. He frowned wondering if he had picked up a bug somewhere.

  This is no time to be getting sick, he thought reproachfully. A flu maybe. He couldn't imagine where he would have gotten it from. He and Suzy had seen no one other than Pops in the last several days. Perhaps the man from the army transport had something and Pops had gotten it and passed it to him. Or maybe something from the black goo they had hidden themselves in.

  Derek stood up and walked towards the landing. A wave of dizziness overcame him and he stopped to catch his balance. His mouth tasted of bile. He wanted to spit but simply gathered it in his mouth as he walked to the door of the bedroom. He grabbed the door frame to steady himself as the room danced about him, watching the light from the downstairs candle swim across his vision. Then he pushed on with renewed determination, not wanting to make a mess on Pops rolled carpet.

  He had almost made it to the bathroom when his body opened up and he lost the contents of his stomach in one long gag. When he had finished, he was relieved that no one had come to see what the disturbance was. He felt better too now that he had thrown up. Wiping his mouth on his arms, he moved towards the bathroom again. There was a bucket of water near the toilet that Suzy had pumped from the well when the generator had stopped working for them to use during the night to flush the toilet.

  He walked toward it, seeing it in the dim light from the window. Then he took a towel from the shelf over the toilet and carried both back to the hall. Another wave of nausea overtook him then and he ran back towards the toilet. There was nothing left in his stomach to lose but that didn't stop his stomach from retching violently. When it finally ceased, he felt weaker than he could remember ever having felt before. His abs ached and he had a strong taste of metal in his mouth.

  Something was wrong, he knew. Something more serious than just a bug. A thought occurred to him, a twinge of fear rippling along his spine. He walked back to the bedroom and listened for Suzy's breathing. It sounded like usual, slow, smooth and regular. He walked to the window and pushed aside the curtain an inch. It was dark outside, no more than a faint glow lighting the sky several miles to the north. He turned back and locating his pants, still lightly damp, pulled them on. He stepped into his shoes and quietly exited the room. He felt bad about leaving the mess in the hall but would clean it up when he got back. He crept down the stairs and stopped at the bottom to see if he had disturbed Pops with his ruckus. His snoring told him all was well on that front, so he tip toed to the front door, pulled it slowly open and stepped out onto the porch. Leaving the door slightly ajar, he tramped dizzily across the side field, making for the ravine and the river.

  He got about halfway there when he stopped, a nervous shiver sending a pulse of panic down his spine. Then he started forward once again. When he reached the edge, he stared down at the river. It bubbled peacefully over the rocks just as it had been doing for ages past. Only now, even in the black of the night, Derek could see its movement. A beautiful blue luminescence shimmered from it, a glow bright enough to cast it's ethereal light halfway up the embankment.

  Derek staggered back, turned and ran towards the house. As he pushed the door open, his stomach began to heave once again. Forgetting Pops, he took the steps two at a time. Then more quietly, he walked into the room where Suzy was sleeping. Holding his stomach with one arm, his grimace of pain unseen in the dark, he knelt near the bed and listened. Suzy began to moan.

  Chapter Fifty Three

  I t was just after they'd passed the I10 that Hershel stopped and lifted Rabbit from his shoulders. Unlike the day before, she had been sitting quietly all morning long, clinging to his neck. No laughter, no humming. Even her fidgeting had ceased. Her hat was gone, fallen somewhere along the way. Her whistle was gone as well.

  He held her in his arms, pushing the hair out of her eyes. When his fingers brushed her forehead, he realized that she was burning up. As if to confirm his suspicions, she quietly emptied her morning meal over his shirt.

  "Hey, little bunny, you not feeling well?" He wondered if the pancakes he had mixed up for her at Denny's had been bad. She gagged again and another thin layer of half digested flapjacks splashed over him. The smell made him gag as well. He gently patted her back. A dark wash
of fear seeped over him along with the bile.

  "Does your tummy hurt?" She looked at him dizzily, eyes unfocused. He tried to hold her away from him so that he could see her but she struggled to wrap her arms around his neck again. He thought hard, unsure what he should do. He cursed himself for being so careless with her health. He hoped the fever was just some childhood sickness.

  "Don't you worry, bunny. I'll get you better real soon. You just lay your head down now and get some sleep."

  He held her close, looking around for some place to go. He could try a pharmacy but what should he look for? He didn't have any idea what was wrong with her. If she could tell him where it hurt, he might be able to figure out what to do. But that wasn't happening. He couldn't even guess what the problem might be. What if he were wrong?

  If he knew where there was a hospital, they'd know for sure what to do. Was it possible that any were still in operation, at least within walking distance of Santa Monica? More, he had no money. Just what was in his wallet. Would there be any unpaid staff selflessly volunteering their time away from home when their own families were in need as well?

  Hershel stood in the middle of the avenue, turning around in a slow circle. If there were still phone booths, he could look up the nearest hospital. He had no choice but to pick a direction and walk.

  As the sun lowered and the last of the days light slid up the faces of the buildings around him, colors washed out below, details in corners fading into a dusky brown. A cooler wind began to blow, reminding Hershel of a late Fall afternoon. He hoped that it was helping with Rabbit's fever. He decided to jog, trying not to jounce her too much. Night was closing in quickly. If he didn't spot a hospital while it was still light out, Rabbit would have to make it through the night without medicine. The thought quickened his pace.