Summer of the Apocalypse

by James Van Pelt

  “We don’t need last names no more.”

  Eric said, “Reading about life isn’t the same as living life.”

  The Phillip’s 66 sign, maybe a quarter mile away he guessed, looked odd. He studied it. At first he thought part of the sign was broken out, but as they got closer, he saw that a piece of plywood covered some letters, so now it read Phil’s. No signs of the gas station remained other than the low concrete benches where the pumps would have been.

  Dodge said, “Do you hear that?”

  Eric stopped and turned his head from one side to the other. “What?”

  “That.” Dodge pointed up the slope to their left. A huge brick building, its windows boarded, sat at the end of a footpath that started at the Phil’s sign. Eric heard it now, a soft, quick thumping. He listened intently.

  “An engine,” he said. “I’ll be darned! A diesel engine.” He started up the path. Dodge dashed ahead. Rabbit ran to Eric and grabbed his arm, then looked at the building and shook his head. The boy said,

  “Check it out first.” He frowned at the building at the end of the path. “What is this place?” The three-story brick building stood at one end of a long stretch of grandstand. Weeds covered the remains of a chain link fence that started at the building and reached for a half mile north. Eric said,

  “Bandimere Raceway, I think. There use to be drag races here.”

  Rabbit raised his eyebrows.

  Eric explained, “Two specially built cars—very fast—raced from one end of the track to the other. Lots of people came to watch. Probably five-thousand or so depending on who was racing.”

  “It smells.”

  Eric sniffed deeply, “Diesel exhaust. Probably a generator. You boys are in for a real treat.” A broad, cracked but neatly swept sidewalk bordered the building and led Eric and Rabbit to a pair of glass double doors. A hand painted sign hung above the doors proclaimed, Phil’s Place. Eric looked around for Dodge. A long series of stairs tumbled down the hill to what must have been the pit area for the racers. A huge, heavily rusted though mostly intact, girder and sheet metal canopy protected the stands on the west side of the track that stretched for three-quarters of a mile and ended at the base of another hill. Eric thought the knife edged abruptness of the road’s end was odd-looking and somehow disturbing, like a door that opened into a wall or a book with blank pages. He imagined Friday nights, the parking lot full, high-octane dragsters roaring fire from their exhausts, the spectators murmuring expectantly, and he smelled beer slopped out of plastic cups, rubber burnt from smooth-treaded funny cars, and the close, humid warmth of the crowd pressed shoulder to shoulder.

  “We loved our cars,” he said.

  “’Scuse me?” Rabbit stood by the doors.

  “Sorry. Just reminiscing. Where’s Dodge off to do you think?”

  Rabbit shrugged, opened the door, then disappeared inside. Eric followed.

  The artificial lighting caught Eric’s eye first. Ceiling-mounted panels of translucent plastic glowed brightly. He hadn’t seen electric light for two decades. It took a few seconds for him to look away at the rest of the room. He stepped to a green metal railing and saw on the floor below a dozen highly polished, factory-fresh show cars. Dodge was peering into the side window of a lemon-yellow Ferrari. Rabbit jumped down the stairs and joined him.

  “’Lectricity!” yelled Dodge.

  The showroom floor glistened under the lights. The darkly tinted windows opposite Eric reflected the scene. Somebody must be watching us, he thought. We’re in a museum. He dropped his backpack to the floor. “Don’t touch anything, boys.”

  A door in the middle of the tinted window wall swung open. “Why not?” a voice boomed. A tall man in stained mechanic’s overalls shut the door behind him. “Touch ’em. Bang on ’em. Hell, you can even make love to ’em if you can get ’em on their backs.” His bald head gleamed as he walked toward the boys. He ran his hand over the polished metal of each car he passed. Eric guessed he was in his mid-thirties.

  “Heaven knows you aren’t going to drive ’em.”

  “Why not?” Dodge asked. Rabbit backed away, putting the Ferrari between him and the stranger. The man patted Dodge on the back. “The gods are dead, son. This is a hollow church. Gas is no good, and their batteries are shot. I’ve got a couple of diesel cars in the garage that’ll run if I start ’em from the generator, but I don’t use ’em much. Roads are awful, you know.” He smiled at Eric, a big smile that bared his upper gums and folded his eyes into a confusion of wrinkles.

  Eric said, “You must be Phil.”

  “Mom named me after a service station. Hard to believe. Why don’t you come down, old-timer? There’s enough stew in the pot for the three of you, and I can use the company.” He tousled Dodge’s hair.

  “Sure,” said Eric. “Nice of you to offer.” But as he was saying it, Rabbit caught his eyes and shook his head, almost imperceptibly, no. Eric hesitated, then continued down the stairs. First chance he got, he’d take Rabbit aside and find out what bothered him.

  Electrical appliances packed the room behind the car museum. Pinball machines lined one wall. Above them, shelves held blenders, food processors, mixers, espresso machines, electric carving knives and hot air popcorn poppers. An expanse of televisions, their screens dust free and blank, covered another wall, a VCR tucked beneath each. Video tapes filled cabinets from floor to ceiling. Dodge stopped, obviously awed. The screens tossed back fish-eyed reflections of him.

  Phil said, “You ever see one of these working, boy?”

  Dodge’s face lit up. “Oh, no.” He spun around. “Grandpa, can we? You can see pictures?” He clapped his hands to his mouth. “Gosh.”

  Phil punched a button on the VCR in the middle. The numbers, 12:00, blinked on and off in the clock display. The machine buzzed and ejected a tape. “Don’t think you want to watch this one,” he said. The way he slid it behind the other tapes in the cabinet made Eric wonder what was on it. “How about this?” he said as he selected a title. “Star Wars. Third copy I’ve used. Wore the others right out. Of course I’ve got a whole case of ’em. Long as I keep the generators running and the juice hooked up the force will be with me.” He laughed at his joke.

  The screen flickered. Then Phil fast forwarded through the FBI warning. “Long ago…” read Rabbit, “in a galaxy far, far away….”

  “We’ll bring you boys some stew,” said Phil. He motioned to Eric, and they left the room. “Figure that’ll keep ’em for an hour or two. Got some things I want to ask you.”

  They walked through a long hallway, doors on both sides. “My mom’s cathedral,” said Phil. He opened the first door and turned on a light. “Have to watch how many lights I have on. Generator poops out with too much of a load.” Eric glimpsed cases of light bulbs piled to the ceiling. Mirrors packed the next room. Long ones, the kind people used to put on the backs of bathroom doors or at the ends of hallways leaned against the wall. Hand mirrors, their handles pointing in all directions, filled boxes on shelves. “You know how hard it is to manufacture a mirror?” asked Phil. “Mom says you have to store the goods people can’t make.”

  “What do you mean when you say this is your mom’s cathedral?”

  Phil closed the mirror room door. He wiped the handle clean with a rag he pulled from a back pocket.

  “Cathedral, man, a church. She says, ‘Keep the flame of technology burning.’” He cleared his throat, then spit into the rag.

  Boxes of electric tools filled the next room: drills, saws, screwdrivers, air-hammers, power painters, sanders and others Eric didn’t recognize. “‘America was great,’ she used to say. ‘We ruled the Earth.’” They walked past two doors that Phil didn’t open. “‘Gods,’ she said. ‘We were gods.’ We used to go into Denver. U.S. 6 out of Golden is still passable. She knew where stuff was stored, or she had a nose for it. We collected goods. Mom called it ‘harvesting the fields.’ When I could drive a truck, I helped. Of course, even then we had to push start every
thing.”

  “Batteries,” said Eric. “We can’t make a battery.”

  “Don’t you know it. It’s a problem of shelf life. Things just don’t last. If Mom had any sense, she’d have frozen a hundred car batteries while they were still good. We had a huge fight about it. She whacked me, she always whacks me, and said, ‘Hindsight is twenty-twenty. I’d like to see you do better.’ Well, I know now. You keep something perishable like that cold, then take it out later and it’ll be good as new. That’s where most of my electricity goes now, keeping the freezers and refrigerators going.” The hallway’s end door opened into a cavernous garage. The building was much larger than Eric had suspected. He guessed there might be over a hundred vehicles parked there: cars (all on blocks), trucks, tractors, boats, motorcycles and earth moving machines. Back in the shadows, far from the string of lights that ran through the middle of the garage, Eric saw the unmistakable outline of a tank, its gun pointing phallically up. The air smelled vaguely of oil and tires.

  “For years,” said Phil, “Mom worked on converting gas engines to propane or natural gas, but she couldn’t get them to run reliably, and other people hoarded the fuel too.” Phil led him down a long flight of stairs. The air cooled perceptibly as they went deeper underground. Every twenty feet, a wire-encased light provided illumination.

  “Your mother sounds like an extraordinary woman.” Phil laughed derisively. “She’s a fool.” He looked over his shoulder, suddenly fearful. “I didn’t mean that. I mean, it’s a joke. I love her, really.” Phil’s eyes rolled, and he clenched his jaw so tight Eric heard his teeth grind. Eric let Phil get farther ahead of him, and he decided the narrow stairwell felt too small and confining.

  The stairs ended at a heavy metal door, like a bank door. Phil pulled on the wheel in its center.

  “Welcome to the inner sanctum. The highest of the holies. I control the whole building from this room: light, heat, water and security. It’s Mom’s, really, but she lets me use it.” An old couch dominated the center of the room. Behind it, a long chest freezer buzzed loudly. A pile of clothes filled a hamper by the door, and a couple of dirty plates and empty glasses crowded a small TV table. Eric decided Phil spent a lot of time here. Like the television room where they had left Rabbit and Dodge, screens lined one wall. These screens were lit. One showed the path that connected the highway to Phil’s Place. Another showed the gully that cut across the highway. On two other screens were outdoor views Eric didn’t recognize. The rest seemed to be rooms or hallways in the building. On one, Rabbit and Dodge sat on the floor watching Star Wars. Phil touched a knob on a control panel and the image of Dodge swelled until his head in profile nearly filled the screen. Phil said, “Beautiful boy. A real heartbreaker.”

  Eric warily said, “Thanks. He’s my grandson.”

  Some video cameras were mounted on motorized swivels; the view on their screens scrolled from side to side. “I’ve got the entire building covered. Nothing goes on inside or out that I don’t know about.” He flicked a switch and all the screens changed to new views, most of them exteriors now. “I saw you folks coming an hour before you got here.”

  Phil took a video tape out of a drawer and held it self-consciously. He said, “You mind me asking where you come from?”

  Eric sat on an overstuffed couch with badly sprung springs. An unpleasant sweat odor puffed from the cushions. Phil must sleep here, he thought. “Not at all. Littleton.”

  “Ah, I didn’t think of Littleton. You live by yourselves or in a community?” Eric thought Phil looked uncomfortable, like the questions meant more to him than they ought to, as if he was asking something personal or distasteful, but he didn’t seem as intense, as manic, as he did on the stairs. “About a thousand live there now. We farm the land west of the river.” Phil’s eyes glanced around the room. Eric felt that he was consciously avoiding looking at him. Eric said,

  “Is there something special about Littleton?”

  “No, no. It’s just… well… I didn’t think about trying south.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mom always says go north or east. I’ve been trading in Commerce City and Northglenn my whole life. I’d drive a jeep into town and swap tools for food and stuff. I didn’t know about a community to the south.” Phil wrapped his hands tightly around the video tape.

  Eric could see Phil was disturbed. “You don’t trade there anymore? What’s the problem?” Phil stared into the video screens. His eyes glistened damply. “You and your boys are the first people I’ve seen in three years. Must have been four or five-hundred folks between the two towns. Last time I went, they were all gone.” He looked intently at Eric. “I haven’t seen a soul on that road for three years before I saw you today. I said to Mom, ‘Company’s coming,’ and I turned on the lights.” He paused to clear his throat. For a second, Eric thought

  Phil might be on the verge of tears. “I’ve been afraid to go anywhere. I haven’t been fifty feet from home since the summer be-; fore last. People don’t just disappear, and, of course, there’s this.” He held out the video tape.

  Phil pushed it into a VCR. “I run a continuous record on the outside cameras. Mom told me it’s better to be safe than sorry.” All the screens flickered, then showed the same scene, a patch of aspen and scrubby pine in the background, a stretch of dirt reaching to them. “This is the field behind the place here. It’s the back approach to the generator. Filmed this two days ago, but I’ve seen it before.” A breeze swayed the aspen branches. White letters at the bottom right corner of the screen read,

  “6-04-56 4:14 p.m.”

  “Watch close,” said Phil. He moved his face a foot from one of the TVs, giving his skin a spooky pallor.

  “There…” He pointed. “See it?”

  Back in the shadows, a white form drifted from left to right behind the aspen. Eric guessed it might be five or six feet tall, but darkness and the fuzzy picture prevented him from discovering anything more. The white form itself wasn’t particularly disturbing, but the situation felt so creepy: the tall, bald man frozen in front of the television like a gargoyle; the cool, close room deep underground. Eric said, “Is it a man?” Phil stroked the screen as if trying to feel the image. He said quietly, to himself, “No tracks. I ran out when I saw it. Mom said to stay inside, but I ran after it. Three years, you know, is a long time. I ran out but it was gone.”

  A figure dashed into the middle of the picture. The time read, “4:16 p.m.” It was Phil. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The camera showed a roll of fat and a soft mid-section. He glanced quickly left and right, as if hunting for a scent, then ran into the trees. The white form had moved off screen. Phil turned off the VCR. Now all the screens showed the closeup of Dodge watching the movie. Phil stared at him. “A man needs companionship. We weren’t meant to be alone. But I don’t think what I’ve recorded is human anymore.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I saw ’em first the summer Northglenn and Commerce City were deserted. I thought they left because of me—you know—like I did something to upset them. There was some trouble.” Looking down, he sat on the edge of the freezer. “They thought I’d kidnapped a kid, but I didn’t. The boy wanted to be here.” Phil stretched and leaned back until his head rested on the wall. Eric had to turn to see him. Phil said, “I lost him too. He left the same summer.”

  Confused, Eric said, “I don’t get it. What’s the shape in the video? Why does it frighten you?” Phil slid off the freezer, put his hands on the back of the couch and whispered, “Millions of people died. Mom told me about it. I remember we went into a storehouse once—she thought it might have car parts in it. I didn’t want to go. Old building, windows boarded, filled with crates. But she whacked me and told me to go in, so I did. Took a crowbar to this crate, must have been eight feet tall, and I popped the side off.” Phil breathed deeply, shakily. “Filled to the top with clothes and bones. For a second they stayed packed in the crate; then they slid out around me. Bones up
to my knees. I tried to run, but…” He wiped his lips. “…something grabbed my ankle. Something in that pile of corpses wasn’t dead.” Eric thought about all the bones he’d seen in the last fifty-five years, bones in cars, in broken down and rotted beds, in dumpsters, under overpasses. In the end, no one was around to pick them up. “People died. Their bones don’t mean anything. You must have panicked.”

  “That’s what Mom said. She laughed, called me a scaredy-cat, but, I tell you, something is out there now. It’s ghosts. They’ve been searching and searching and now they’ve found me. This place, my mother’s temple, is all stolen stuff, stolen from those people.”

  “Why don’t you leave?”

  Phil shook his head and laughed. He took a couple of deep breaths, composing himself. “It’s Mom. I can’t leave Mom.” He patted the freezer.

  “She’s in the freezer? She’s dead?” Eric stood and backed away.

  “Oh, you can’t tell. I roll her every couple of weeks so she won’t freezer burn, but you can see why I have to stay. Sometimes I think that it’s her they’re after, not me; then I remember that pile of bones. I can feel that grip on my ankle. They know about me.”

  Phil toured Eric through the rest of the building. The generator, he explained, was originally a part of Bandimere Raceway. So far from Denver, Bandimere had decided to rely on its own electrical generating capabilities rather than tie into the city’s system. His mom, after just about everyone died, had the foresight to scavenge Denver’s five main hospitals, each with its own generator. He used the parts to keep Bandimere’s generator operational. She also found enough Diesel to fuel the system. “I figure I can keep the lights on until I die,” Phil said when he slapped the side of a tanker truck parked in the garage. Littleton didn’t have a working diesel generator. Eric remembered the tedious, fractious town meetings years ago when the last one provided enough power to light a handful of houses. The town decided then to give up on generating power. He’d argued for expanded scavenging. “There are other ways to keep the electricity,” he’d said, but he was outvoted. Troy, in his first long speech to the council countered,