The Summer the World Ended

by Matthew S. Cox

  Dad looked at the ceiling as the sound of jets going overhead seeped out of the sky.

  “Again?” she asked.

  “Hmm. Eight B1s.” He leaned over the sink to the window, staring up at a sharp angle. “What do you mean again?”

  “They were flying around this morning too. Big green suckers with adjustable wings?”

  He got nervous and quiet.

  “What? This is the middle of the country, they’re probably training.”

  “Not with eight planes. Things are getting tense. I bet they’re getting ready to send them to Europe. Probably drilling a specific mission.”

  “It’s that bad?” She lifted the lid to check on the stew. Thick, brown liquid bubbled like something out of Yosemite Park.

  “Not yet, but it’s getting close. It could tip either way.”

  “You think it will?”

  Dad leaned over and kissed the side of her head. “I don’t think even the Koreans are that foolish. They know what they’re doing.”

  “Oh.” She pointed a wooden spoon at one of the cabinets. “Grab the bread, this is almost ready.”

  Ten minutes later, they sat at the kitchen table having dinner like a family―at least, two thirds of one. Riley glanced at the empty seat to her right, daydreaming Mom sitting in it. Memories of having a meal with two parents at the table lurked too far back in her mind to grasp.

  “This is really good, Squirrel.”

  She tensed.

  He hurried to swallow. “Sorry. I keep forgetting you’re not a little girl anymore.”

  Riley lifted a piece of carrot out of her bowl on a spoon, and smirked at it. “That’s not really why I get mad when you call me that.”

  “Oh?” Dad put his spoon down. “Do enlighten me.”

  She glanced at him and back at the carrot. “That was your nickname for me before you left. When I was eight, Mom called me Squirrel and it was like reminding me I wasn’t ever going to see you again. That was your name for me, and hearing it hit some kinda nerve or something. I yelled at Mom, went all super-micro-bitch on her. Threw a screaming tantrum. I might’ve even blamed her for you leaving.” The spoon (and carrot) plopped into the bowl. “I went downstairs later and found her crying. I never saw Mom cry before, and it was my fault. Now, when you call me that name, it reminds me of making Mom cry. How could I know how much it would hurt her? I was only a little kid.”

  “What did she say when you walked in on her?”

  “I didn’t. I was a chicken. I ran upstairs. I was so mad at you. I went through this phase where I was jealous of anyone who had a father. Mom actually took me to a shrink because they thought I had emotional problems. Apparently I was ‘too friendly’ to grown men. I don’t really remember it.”

  Dad reached across the table and put a hand on hers.

  “I think I was eleven when I finally apologized to Mom for making her cry. She was shocked I remembered. We got real close after that. It was just us against the world.” Riley felt the tears coming, but held them back with a deep breath.

  Her father remained quiet for a few minutes before heaving a weak sigh. “I’d give anything to send a message back in time and tell myself not to run.”

  She grasped his hand, holding it for a moment. “Or at least call us on birthdays and holidays.”

  He looked guilty until she ventured a weak smile. “Sorry. I didn’t want to run the risk someone would trace my calls and find you.”

  They ate in quiet for a few minutes.

  “So you really hate SpaghettiOs?” asked Dad.

  “If I had them three times a day for a month, I’d throw up at the sight of the can. They’re okay… just not all the time.”

  “I never got sick of them. Sometimes I’d cut up hot dogs or jackrabbit and drop them in. You know, for a little variety.”

  She laughed. “Did you really eat nothing but canned pasta and ramen for six years?”

  “Perhaps more than I should have, but not entirely.” He winked and tilted the stew bowl to his lips to drink the last of it. “Time for seconds.”

  Riley fished the ‘carrot of staring’ out of her bowl and ate it while he ambled around past her to the stove. “Can I go to town again tomorrow?”

  “Hah. I didn’t think you’d be so ready to risk driving again after today.”

  She squirmed in her seat. “I don’t wanna drive again till I have a permit. Would you take me?”

  “There’s no way you used up all those groceries already.” He ladled out another helping of stew, replaced the lid, and returned to the table. “Did you?”

  “No. Kieran asked me to hang out.”

  “You’re fourteen. You don’t need a boyfriend yet. You’re better off avoiding him.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. You barely know me anymore. You live like a hermit in a mountain of SpaghettiOs, and you hate a boy you never met? If I’m gonna live here, I might as well try to make some friends.” Kieran hasn’t teased me about being skinny once.

  He fished a slice of bread from the plastic sleeve and folded it in half. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea. The people in that town aren’t quite right.”

  “They said the same thing about us.”

  “Hmm.” He dipped his bread in the stew and took a bite. “I’ll need to think about it.”

  You took me away from my friend. She pouted at her stew. I shouldn’t say that. He didn’t do it to be mean.

  Dad swabbed the last of his second bowl away with another piece of bread. The house hung in eerie silence for three minutes, broken only by the scratching of Riley’s spoon. His head popped up. He dropped the bowl and bread with a clatter and ran to the radio in his room.

  “Yes, sir. Copy. Go ahead.”

  She sat for a moment swirling her spoon through the empty bowl. Dad should load the dishwasher since I cooked. That’s how it was with Mom. She thought about Amber, Kieran, and Mom. When it became clear Dad was engrossed, she got up and loaded the dishwasher with a lump in her throat and water in her eyes. He still muttered at his radio unit when she finished packing the extra stew into plastic bins and fridging them. Riley plodded along in a slouch to her room and fell face-first on the bed, hugging the pillow.

  This sucks. Why do we have to live so far away from everything?

  A little while later, a thought struck her, and she slid off the bed to sit on the floor. She grabbed one of the Xbox controllers and turned it on. The screen lit up, bearing a “No Connection” message. Riley fought with it for a moment, running the Wi-Fi scan three times, but the system detected no active networks. The controller almost went flying across the room, but she figured she’d have to drive at least two states away to buy another one in the ‘land that technology forgot.’ Grumbling, she set it back in the cradle before flopping face down on her bed again to sulk.

  Unbelievable… he doesn’t have Wi-Fi. How am I going to hang with Amber?

  She sniffled on and off for a while, until a light knock came from her open door.

  “Hon?”

  “Yeah?” She answered without moving.

  “I suppose you won’t believe me about the town unless you see for yourself. If you still want to go tomorrow, I’ll take you.”

  She rolled over onto her back and sat up. “Really?”

  “Sorry if I am being overprotective. You’re all I got left.”

  “Dad…” She scrambled off the bed and ran into a hug.

  “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  She looked up at him, almost smiling. “I’ll be okay.”

  iley’s eyes opened a little after 9:30 a.m. the next morning. It mystified her how the desert could get so damn cold at night, even in the middle of summer. She lay still after a long stretch, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Kieran. Sixteen wasn’t too bad. He was only two years older, and plenty of Mom’s friends had husbands farther away in age than that. Not that she was waiting for him to propose. Or even interested in him that way. Or… well, whatever.

&nb
sp; She got out of bed and dragged herself to the dresser, grabbing clean undies, a beige, pleated babydoll top, and a pair of black cargo shorts. A scrap of camouflage on the rug caught her eye when she closed the drawer, and she traced it to a large backpack tucked against the wall between the dresser and the bed.

  “Where the heck did that come from?”

  While that could wait, a shower couldn’t. When she emerged from the steamy, soapy bathroom, a cloud of coffee smell greeted her in the hallway.

  “Morning, Dad.”

  He moaned. Metal clanked.

  She walked barefoot to the kitchen, finding her father in a pair of ill-fitting tightey whities, wrestling with an aluminum can. As thin as he was, if he bounced too hard, they’d be on the floor.

  “Dad!” She whirled about, looking anywhere but at him. “Go put something on. You are also not making SpaghettiOs for breakfast. I’ll deal with it for lunch, but ack… not for breakfast.”

  He murmured something and gestured at the coffee pot, rumbling and burbling. She kept her eyes averted and went to gather a frying pan, bread, and eggs.

  “Dad. Clothes. Now.”

  “Okay, okay.” He took his time covering the ten feet from the kitchen to his bedroom.

  The static-laced crackle of his AM radio warbled on about something news-y sounding, dueling with some talking head on his TV. Riley tuned it out, searching back and forth along the counter, in hopes of finding a toaster. She had no luck in the cabinets either. “Dad, where’s the toaster… and the Internet?”

  “I don’t have one.” His voice drifted in from the other room. “I haven’t had toast in years, and there’s no Internet here. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re a bit far out for a cable run.”

  “They have these things called satellites, you know.” She shook her head, hands on her hips. “How the hell do you work out here? What kind of programmer doesn’t have the damn Internet?”

  “Security risk. I take contract jobs and bring the code to T or C on a USB stick. Besides, if I had ‘net, I’d never finish a project… I’d spend all day on Facebook.” He paused. “Maybe I should have… to keep in touch with you.”

  Yeah, you shoulda. S’pose you didn’t want to. “God… you’re living primitive.” She smirked at the frying pan. How hard could it be to make toast? They had to do something before electronics. “Facebook’s for old people. Did they eat toast before they had toasters?”

  “I have no idea.” Dad emerged in yesterday’s jeans and unbuttoned, flannel shirt.

  She rolled her eyes. “I guess I’m doing laundry too.”

  “Hey… I wash my clothes.” He collected a mug and stood by the coffee maker like a dog waiting for the food bowl to go down. “Once a month.”

  “Eww,” she droned. “That is changing.”

  Dad poured himself coffee and took a heavy gulp. “Ahh. Nectaris deorum.”

  She furrowed her eyebrows at him. “Whatever. So, about this Internet thing…”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You haven’t left the house since I’ve been here.” She dropped a piece of bread in a dry frying pan. “You write software, right?”

  “The SINCGARS handles data transmission as well as radio. I do everything I need for the military on a secure channel.”

  “Oh.” She frowned. Her first attempt to flip the toast threw it on the floor. “Dammit. Hey what about that… uh, Ted guy?”

  “Three second rule.” Dad scooped it up and ate it. “Things have been slow there lately. Plus, I don’t really have time for that now.”

  “Dad!” She cringed. “That was on the floor! It’s not even toast yet.”

  “You were going to throw it out though.” He wandered to the table and sat, munching.

  “Toast experiment take two.” She dropped another piece of bread in the pan. “Well, can we maybe get ‘net so I can talk to Amber?”

  “Depends on what it costs out here. I’ll think about it.”

  She started on scrambled eggs. “You say that a lot.”

  “I’m a careful person as a general rule. Two times in my life, I’ve rushed into things with no planning. I regretted one of them, more than anything. The other time was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

  Her whisk stopped beating. First one’s obvious. “What’s the other time? When you married Mom?”

  “When I came back to get you.” He slurped coffee. “You still want to go to town today?”

  “Yeah…” She stirred the eggs more than beat them. “So, um… how’d you go from writing bank software to going all double-oh-seven?”

  “The NSA and the CIA monitor just about everything that passes through electronic media. I’m not sure what made me light up on their radar. Couple years after I got out here, I get this recruitment email and―”

  “You don’t have Internet.” Riley stared at him.

  Dad chuckled. “I had an office job in T or C right after I mov―”

  “Left us.” Riley slammed a pan on the stove.

  Neither spoke while she finished making breakfast. She set plates of food down and joined him at the table. Her attempt at home fries horrified her, but Dad seemed to enjoy them. At least he had pepper that tasted like pepper. An odd audio synchronicity developed between the crackly voice on the little radio in his room and the news commentator on the TV. Whenever the Fox guy shut up, the radio started. Both rambled about ‘Chechens’ and the impact of some border standoff on global markets. They don’t care people are getting hurt, it’s all about the money.

  “I’d rather you didn’t spend time among those people.”

  Why did you leave? Why won’t he tell me? Riley sulked. “It’s still kinda messed up you get picked to be a spy. Sounds like I’m in a shitty movie.”

  “I didn’t believe it either. I guess it was the way I went about commenting and structuring my code. You can’t recruit someone with experience for this job. They train that. What they wanted was someone with a certain meticulousness.”

  “You mean OCD?” Riley pushed eggs around her plate.

  Dad shrugged. “Not the worst condition for someone in my line of work.”

  She dropped her fork with a clank. “Dad, I can’t do what you do. I can’t just sit here alone in the middle of nowhere, cut off from everyone. Why can’t I go make some friends? Mom always yelled about me only having one friend, and spending more time with her online than in person… and now I can’t even do that.”

  After a moment of him contemplating his toast without answering, Riley jammed her fork into her eggs and packed her mouth.

  “I wasn’t expecting it to happen this fast, but I suppose the world works by learning. I expect you will at least make him use a condom.”

  Eggs exploded out of her mouth, all over the table. When she stopped coughing, she gaped at him, unable to decide between screaming or crawling under her bed and not coming out for a week.

  “I suppose living in New Jersey has eroded your sense of humor.” He picked a bit of her egg from his cheek.

  “That wasn’t funny.” She glared. “You think I’m like, easy or something?”

  “No… no… Just trying to make a joke.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t offer to take you to town if I didn’t trust you. You’re a lot like your Mom.”

  “It’s not a ‘date,’ it’s just hanging out with the only other kids within like, a hundred miles.”

  “T or C is a big city, there’s kids there. Albuquerque is less than a hundred miles away.”

  “It might as well be a thousand when I can’t drive.”

  Dad got up and put his plate in the dishwasher. “Go on, get ready then.”

  The tan ‘98 Silverado pulled over at the corner closest to the Hernandez Grocery. A few people wandering by gave Dad suspicious looks. Riley smirked at them. When they spotted her, wariness became worry. What’s their problem? She thought about the waitresses mistaking her for an abductee. No wonder Dad doesn’t like the people here. Dicks.

 
; “Meet me be back here at 6 p.m., unless you want me here earlier.”

  “Oh, dammit, I left my phone at the house.” She sighed. “Probably don’t have reception out here anyway.”

  “You sure you want to do this?” Dad gripped the wheel as if preparing for a breakneck car chase away from a flock of foreign assassins. He turned his head toward her, squinting. “We can still go back.”

  “Dad… you’re a drama queen. It’s not like you’re about to send me behind German lines or something. I’m just gonna hang out.”

  He fumbled his wallet out and handed her a ten-dollar bill. “For lunch.”

  “Why are you freaking out?” She stuffed the cash into a pocket on the side of her right leg.

  “I guess I am a little paranoid. It feels like having you back in my life is some kind of second chance to make up for the biggest mistake I ever made, and I’m so worried something is going to happen.”

  “Love you too, Dad.” She hugged him for a moment, and opened the door. “Oh, what’s with the backpack in my room?”

  “It’s a ‘go’ bag. In case they find us and we have to bug out in a hurry. It’s got clothes, couple MREs, and some survival stuff.”

  She looked left and right at the all but deserted street, imagining a black car full of spies screeching out from behind a scrub-covered hill. How easy would it be to grab her from behind and drag her into the back seat?

  Get a grip. The Russians aren’t coming for you or Dad.

  “Six p.m. Got it. I’ll be okay, Dad.” She leaned in, kissed him on the cheek, and jumped out.

  He hesitated for a few minutes before pulling away, driving slow enough to give her a chance to wave him back. Riley looked around at a town that could’ve been an abandoned film set. The people had vanished. Nothing moved except for her and Dad’s truck.

  Unless I get bored to death.

  iley wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to do. Even if she hadn’t forgotten her iPhone at the house, it’s not like she even knew Kieran’s number. Her toenails had less polish than the last time she’d thought to look, a visual reminder of Mom slipping farther away. She wiggled her foot, tapping the flip-flop against her heel. Another few days, and she could no longer say, ‘Mom was alive this month.’ Eventually, she wouldn’t be able to think, ‘Mom had been alive this year.’