Summer of the Apocalypse

by James Van Pelt

  He folded the sleeping bag mechanically, trying to think about what he should do next. His brain seemed full of fog, though, and thinking was like walking in knee-deep mud. Maybe Dad passed him while he slept, and was in the cave right now. Eric crawled through the cave’s entrance, pushing the flashlight ahead of him, but Dad was not there. He avoided looking at the mattress where his mother’s blanketed body lay. The idea of waiting for Dad held no appeal, but he didn’t want to leave her either. Last night’s explosion finally decided the issue for him; he needed to search for Dad. He needed to do something, though, about Mom before he left. The blankets didn’t seem enough protection, somehow. He envisioned mice nibbling on the corpse, shuddered, and quickly spread the sheet of black plastic that Dad had used to protect the mattresses originally over the body. He tucked the edges under and checked carefully for any spaces a mouse might try. When he finished, his hands felt soiled, as if the plastic were slimy. He rubbed them hard against his jeans, but that didn’t help, so he washed them with drinking water.

  Squatting next to the body, he watched the play of light reflect off the plastic. Finally, he placed his palm where his mother’s shoulder would be. The plastic crackled and gave off no warmth; it was the exact temperature of the rocks around him. He spoke into the silence, “Goodbye, Mom,” and the quiet that followed felt like the closing of a book.

  He threw packages of beef jerky, several cans of fruit and an extra canteen into his backpack, made sure the desk key Dad had given him was secure in a side pocket, wrote his dad a note, and left the cave, dragging his bike after him.

  As soon as he rounded the corner on the highway he saw the result of last night’s explosion. A jumble of rock choked the tunnel opening, and a bare spot on the mountain above the entrance showed where rock had sheared off to drop on the road. A refrigerator-sized boulder sat in a crater in the asphalt seventy-five yards from the rock pile.

  A fisherman’s trail, the only way out of the canyon, followed the river, where it vanished into a light morning mist that drifted off the water, giving the scene an otherworldly look. Eric hoisted the bike on his shoulder and walked past the remnants of their van, which reminded him of his dream (“The biplanes are coming!”) and generated within him a strong feeling of deja vu; not a bad feeling, but very creepy, like the top of his head was floating away, as if he’d stepped out of time. The farther he walked, the stranger he felt. The trail didn’t seem connected to the real world. Water tinkled musically over the rocks, and the air smelled moist and clean. All the colors vibrated, even through the mist.

  An animal crossed the path fifty yards in front of him. Eric thought it was a German shepherd at first, the biggest shepherd he’d ever seen, but it moved so smoothly that he couldn’t believe it was a dog. It trotted up the hill on its big paws (What big teeth you have grandma, Eric thought), and just before it disappeared behind a ridge it looked back at Eric with clear, light blue eyes. Eric almost waved at it. Eric turned around. The van was out of sight; he couldn’t see the road. For a second, he wasn’t sure which direction he’d come from; both were unfamiliar. He noticed hip high, broad-leafed plants a shade of green he’d never seen before growing next to the water. He dropped his bike and scrambled down the slope. Their leaves were thick and waxy. He broke one in half. A thick, milky fluid oozed out of the wound, and he caught a strong citrus odor like a tangerine. Triangular, dull orange beetles scurried up and down the plant’s stalks. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d stepped away from reality, that these weren’t Colorado plants, that this wasn’t the Colorado he knew. He climbed back to the trail, picked up his bike and continued on.

  Suddenly he realized he wasn’t alone. Sitting on the slope above the trail fifty feet away, their backpacks beside them, three hikers, an old man and two boys were eating a meal. A complicated series of wrinkles criss-crossed the old one’s leather-colored face. He smiled and spoke to one of the boys, but Eric didn’t hear what he said. When he walked just below them, the old one glanced up and met Eric’s eyes. Eric’s throat constricted. The creepy feeling of being displaced in time swept through him so intensely, he thought he would fall over. He didn’t want the old man to say anything to him. Don’t talk to me, old man, he thought. I don’t know what to say to you. Something in the man’s eyes, something compassionate, made Eric think he understood.

  Eric looked away, and as he did he observed a heavy scar marked the side of the boy’s face on the old man’s right. Eric walked a few more steps, then glanced at the group again, but they were gone. A breeze swirled tendrils of mist past the empty spot where the hikers had sat. The sense of deja vu vanished as if someone had thrown a switch, and Eric shook his head. His bike drug at his shoulder and he staggered a couple of steps. He realized he was near fainting; he hadn’t eaten for thirty-six hours. That’s it, he thought, I’m delirious.

  He rested on a stump by the river and ate two beef jerky strips and a can of peaches. This is a beautiful spot, he thought, and he reflected on all the people who had driven through the tunnel for years and years and never seen this section of the river that the highway cut off by diving through the mountain instead of following the canyon. For the moment, he forgot where he was going and why. The jerky tasted salty and good, and the peaches were sweet and cold.

  A junkyard lined the highway on the other side of the tunnel. Starting at the rock-choked tunnel entrance, and stretching for several hundred yards, a mess of cars crowded the road. At first Eric thought someone had painted black dots on the cars, then he realized that holes peppered them. Standing on the trail below, he saw that the closest car, a green Chevy Nova, sat unevenly. Three of its four tires were flat. A tight web of cracks frosted the windows. He clambered up the slope, pulling the bike behind him. A shift in the breeze wafted gasoline fumes over him and another smell, deep, bad and nasty. He snorted to clear his nose and mouth-breathed. When he stepped onto the road, he noticed that many cars had burned, their paint blackened and blistered from the heat.

  Thousands of brass shell casings glittered on the highway by the tunnel entrance. He picked one up; it was much larger than the ones Dad used for the deer rifle. He imagined what must have happened. Weeks ago, when the traffic stopped, the police or the National Guard established a road block. Panic in the last couple of days forced people to flee. They were stopped here. He marveled that his family hadn’t heard any of the shooting. Last night’s explosion the final act to seal the road, provided the only clue of the battle.

  Fearfully, he approached the Nova’s open passenger door and peeked inside where a black stain discolored the driver’s seat The stain shifted and Eric jerked back. Dozens of flies boiled off the stain; some flew out the window, but the rest settled on the seat again He swallowed hard to keep his stomach down. Dad might have been caught here. Maybe he was coming back with help and whatever happened stopped him. Eric checked the next car. It too was empty.

  The third one wasn’t.

  He thought at first that someone had left a pile of clothes on the seat until he saw the bare foot sticking out. Two lines of dried blood like the outline of a carrot traced their way from the heel to the curled toes A swarm of flies lifted itself angrily from the corpse then settled back when Eric stepped away. He sat hard on the pavement and rested his forehead against the cool metal door By wrapping his arms tightly around his midsection, he forced himself not to throw up.

  One afternoon in the sixth grade he’d sneaked into an adult Driver’s Ed class that the elementary school sponsored in an unused classroom He’d heard they were watching a “cool, gross film, and he and two of his friends dared each other into ditching class to see it. The movies, Signal 30 for Danger and Highways of Death, featured real life footage of automobile accidents and even from the back of the room, the images sickened Eric. One scene stuck with him particularly. A man lost control of his car and it careened into a field of tree stumps. He probably would have been all right, but he wasn’t wearing a seat belt; his door popped open
and he was tossed from the car. When he was halfway out, the door crashed into a stump, slamming it on the man’s chest. The camera lingered on his bloated torso for a lone time. Later the friends invited Eric to a sleepover where they promised they were renting Faces of Death I and II Eric declined. For months afterward he had dreams about bodies pulled out of twisted wreckage.

  Dad might be in one of these wrecks. Eric had to check them all, and he couldn’t afford to be sick to do it. Besides, he reminded himself, he didn’t know any of these people. all, and he couldn’t afford to be sick to do it. Besides, he reminded himself, he didn’t know any of these people. Very few of the cars contained bodies. He found guns in some. Suitcases and boxes of clothes filled many. He read a poorly printed leaflet that fluttered on the front seat of a wood-paneled station wagon. It was a call to arms and said that the Coors management had immunized themselves from the plague and that they were withholding the cure from their employees. Eric didn’t make the connection at first, then he remembered that Coors had its main plant in Golden. Much of the populace worked there, and almost all the rest of the town’s economy depended on the plant. He was starting to get a picture of the panic and desperation in the cities that the radio hadn’t provided.

  After he inspected the last car, he mounted his bike and pedaled toward Golden. Smoke discolored the horizon ahead, and the smell of burning grew stronger. Eric kept his bike close to the shoulder, listening for the sound of an approaching car or anything else threatening. He watched for places to hide if he had to. The best plan, he thought, would be to stay out of sight. Whatever happened at the tunnel, people were shooting at each other and a boy on a bike could be fair game.

  The closer he got to town, the slower he pedaled. The road, he remembered, ran above the north side of town. From it, he should be able to look down to see what’s happening, but he felt too exposed. On his left, the canyon rose steeply, in many places unclimbable, and there wasn’t a bush any bigger than a fruit basket to hide behind. On his right, the shoulder sloped to the river. His forearms ached from gripping the bike handles so tightly, and his heart raced. Blood pounded in his ears.

  This isn’t fair, he thought. In the movies, the hero isn’t scared every second. Rambo sneaks right into the enemy’s camp. He looked at his hands. His knuckles were white. Stopping the bike, he unclenched and forced himself to breathe slowly. He recited a mantra he’d learned when he was little, a tongue twister that made him feel better though it didn’t mean anything. “Sixteen stainless steel twin screw cruisers,” he said. He repeated it twice more, then moved on.

  He knew when he rounded the next bend that the canyon would open up and he would be able to see Golden. Smoke filled the sky. The air in the canyon was hazy. He stood on the pedals—the bike glided downhill—to get a first glimpse.

  When he stopped the bike finally, he should have been able to see all the way into Denver, but Golden was burning. Much of the center of town, made up of turn-of-the-century Victorian homes, was blackened, and nothing remained of the quaint brick homes except a few, low, broken walls or a handful of chimneys poking out of the rubble. Some fires still burned there, though mostly the excitement appeared to be over. On the north side of town, however, thick, black smoke poured out of the Coors plant.

  Eric watched for several minutes. He didn’t hear sirens and he didn’t see anyone moving below. The streets were empty, no traffic at all.

  Initially he thought of the burning of Atlanta from Gone With the Wind, but then the more obvious connection came to him. It looked like King Kong had visited Golden, maybe in one of his later incarnations where he met Godzilla. Eric could imagine nothing else that could cause so much destruction. King Kong lives, he thought.

  How will I find Dad in all this? The world had never seemed so big.

  Smoke billowed from the Coors plant. Wind swirled the impenetrable darkness, and for a second, the black clouds formed the shape of the great ape. Just for a brief instant, Eric could see King Kong straddling the wreckage of Golden. Just for an instant he could hear him shrieking his challenge at the powers of the earth, and at this instant, there was no one to answer.

  Chapter Seven

  CROSSROADS, COMING AND GOING

  “Are we still being watched?” asked Eric. Rabbit shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe.” He stopped, scanned the edges of the canyon, then tilted his head to the side as if listening. “Yes.”

  “How do you know that kind of stuff? I can’t do that,” said Dodge crossly. “You give me the heebie-jeebies.”

  Rabbit shrugged again. “Sometimes I get a feeling.”

  Eric laughed. Sometimes he’d felt they were being watched too. It wasn’t anything big, a shiver when he wasn’t cold, a sense of being on stage, of things moving behind him or just below the horizon. It made him want to run around bushes and yell, “Boo!”

  Rain clouds swelled to the east. Thunderhead piled on thunder-head like mushroom clouds, and flickers of lightning flashed at their base. The plains are getting a washing, Eric thought. During the Gone Times, he didn’t pay attention to the weather. Buildings were air conditioned, artificially lighted and always dry. Car heaters held out cold or rain or snow. Now, he checked the weather automatically. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight.

  They hiked quietly for several minutes. Eric decided the storm would stay out on the plains. They needn’t worry about finding shelter from wind or rain tonight. He snapped a glance over his shoulder, trying to catch whatever might be following them, but he saw nothing. Rabbit walked in front of him nonchalantly. If Rabbit wasn’t frightened, then there was probably no need for him to fret. Rabbit “intuited” better than anyone he had ever met.

  “What kind of car did you have, Grandpa?” asked Dodge. Eric surveyed the path before them. Following U.S. 6, they had turned into Clear Creek Canyon a half hour earlier, but a rock slide covered the highway now and they would have to pick their course carefully over the broken and loose rock. Heat waves shimmer off the rock-strewn slope. He could see almost no evidence of the line of gun-shot riddled cars he remembered from years ago. The slide had buried them.

  “I drove several, but I didn’t really have one.” He decided to head down to the river. The rocks looked less steep and jumbled there. “I was too young to get a driver’s license before the plague, and there didn’t seem much point in owning one particular car afterward. For a year or so, everybody who was left could own a hundred cars if they wanted to.”

  Dodge jumped from rock to rock like a mountain sheep. Eric shook his head ruefully. He couldn’t recall the last time he felt that limber and careless of his well being. He continued, “Of course, that was only for a year as I said.”

  “How come we don’t have cars now? Phil said he still had some that worked. I sure would have liked to drive in one. It’d save us from a lot of walking.”

  Rabbit sat next to the river, waiting for them to catch up. “Car won’t do you any good where we’re going,” he said. He gestured up stream where the river tumbled through the clutter of boulders. “We’ll be on a path soon enough,” said Eric. He remembered the fishing trail that went away from the highway at the old, blocked tunnel. “But Rabbit’s right. Most places I expect a car won’t go too far. A car needs a very special environment, a road, and the roads are falling apart.” He lowered himself onto a rock that overlooked a deep pool in Clear Creek. Five trout a foot or so long each lazily swam to the other side when his shadow fell on the water. Heat broadcast from each sun-baked rock. Eric jerked his hand off the black granite. The stream looked refreshing and cold. “I suppose in some parts of the country, the roads will stay good for centuries. After all, when I was a child there were places in the prairie where one could still see one-hundred year old ruts left by covered wagons. If ruts can last that long, highways ought to also. Mountains and winter, though, are tough on roads, and a car needs good ones to get anywhere.”

  “Why don’t we fix them?” asked Dodge.
Rabbit said, “Cars don’t work.”

  “Phil said something interesting I hadn’t thought about.” Eric led them upstream. A rusted mass of metal jammed between two rocks showed that they were at least to the point where the Cars had been parked, which would put them within a few hundred yards of the tunnel, but looking ahead, Eric couldn’t tell. Time had reshaped the canyon. “He said it’s all a problem of shelf life. Some things last and others don’t. A car will last a long time if you keep it out of the weather, but two of its elements Won’t, the battery and gasoline. You can run a car without a battery, but gasoline has additives that evaporate over time no matter where it’s stored. A couple years after the plague, it became very hard to find gasoline that was usable. Without fresh gasoline, most cars can’t run, and no one has made gasoline for sixty years. So, gasoline’s shelf life stopped the car a lot sooner than bad roads.”

  “Why is diesel still good and gasoline isn’t?” “Diesel has no octane.” Dodge looked at Eric blankly.

  “Octane is what gives gasoline its power. Diesel is mostly oil. It doesn’t evaporate or change chemically as quickly as the octane in gasoline. We can find out more about gasoline and chemistry if the library in Boulder still stands.”

  Dodge grinned, “Books will tell us everything!” Eric sighed. Dodge’s enthusiasm for reading as a cure all depressed him. “Reading, study, and careful thought may teach us how to make gasoline again, but cars are just a small part of this shelf life problem.”