Summer of the Apocalypse

by James Van Pelt

  “Where’s the boy?” demanded Eric. His own firm voice surprised him. The smallest and weakest of the men out-weighed him by at least thirty pounds.They seemed like cave men, hard and rangy and animal like.

  Gray Beard looked puzzled. He gestured at his men. “We have no boys here.” The deepness of his voice impressed Eric. The man spoke from the bottom of a well.

  “Our boy,” said Eric. “Where is he?”

  Gray Beard glanced around, then signaled one of his party. “Skylar, you had the watch. Where is the other one?”

  A man carrying a heavy water bag looked embarrassed and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Find him,” ordered Gray Beard. Skylar dropped the bag and circled the camp. He found the trail Eric had noticed earlier and pointed north.

  “He’s gone into the Flats,” said Skylar.

  Gray Beard threw his staff on the ground and stamped his foot. “After him, all of you!” The men melted into the underbrush, and Gray Beard, Eric and Dodge were left to contemplate the rising sun. The rush of men hurrying off, the strangely dressed man standing next to him, and the mystery of Rabbit’s whereabouts confused Eric. He took a step to follow Rabbit’s trail, but Dodge tugged on his arm. “We’re supposed to stay here, I think,” he whispered.

  Gray Beard picked up his staff, inspecting it for cracks. “The Flats,” he said. “One job to do, and I ruin it.” He turned to Eric. “The boy won’t go far, do you think? He’ll come back on his own?” Concern creased his features. Eric thought his posture was odd— forced and uncomfortable—as if he expected Eric to scold him.

  Gray Beard twisted both hands slowly on the staff. “Damn.”

  Eric said, “What is this about the Flats? Do you mean Rocky Flats?” Rocky Flats were a few miles to the north and east, he remembered. They used to make triggers for nuclear weapons there.

  “The Flats,” he said. “We just call them the Flats.” Gray Beard bent and rubbed his hand over the fabric of Eric’s sleeping bag. “You’re jackals,” he said, “but that won’t keep you safe.” Eric remembered Rabbit’s story about the little girl who called him a jackal. “What do you mean, safe?” The man smiled at him, a strained smile but an honest-seeming one that softened his face and crinkled long laugh lines from the corners of his eyes. Eric felt less threatened by him, although still frightened for Rabbit. Whatever was happening, this man was scared.

  Gray Beard said, “I don’t believe the stories, but some of the others do, that Jackals are protected from the spirits in the Flats.”

  “Spirits?”

  The man leaned on his staff and looked past Eric to where the others had headed in their pursuit of Rabbit. “Spirits. Gods perhaps. But my parents told me the Flats were always evil, that even in the Gone Times people feared it. Not because of spirits though. Plutonium contamination.” He pronounced “plutonium contamination” a syllable at a time, as if they were foreign words. Eric wondered if he had any idea what they meant. The man continued, “Animals don’t go into the Flats. People who are stupid enough to go in get sick. Some die.”

  What a strange superstition, Eric thought. “So you patrol the border, to keep people out?” Gray Beard shrugged his shoulders. “Foolish people come and go as they please until an animal eats them or they fall off cliffs. Nobody patrols the boundary. If they ignore a clear warning, who can help them?

  We have been following you since you sang with the wolves.” He paused, embarrassed-looking, as if he were waiting for Eric to laugh at him. “Some of the men think you are a spirit, a manitou. Wolves carry power. To sing with them is a rare gift.”

  Dodge stiffened beside when Gray Beard mentioned following them. “Bugbears, Grandpa. They’re the Bugbears.”

  Eric put a hand on Dodge’s shoulder and pulled him close. “I know.” After being trailed the entire trip (and why?), after listening to Phil’s fears, actually meeting them seemed anticlimactic. They’re just men in badly made clothes, and what do they want with us?

  Too many mysteries here, he thought, but he didn’t let his confusion show on his face. He remembered the first night he left Littleton—it seemed long ago, now—and howling with the wolves in the middle of the night. Their long, sturdy shadows milled around the base of the rock he slept on, and they made harmonies to the sky.

  Gray Beard said, “It’s a small thing, really, I told them, but the young men see the world differently. Lots of ways you could’ve acted around the wolves, and maybe we’d have stopped you from going into the Flats anyway. No one has come so far from the Jackals in years, and you’re old—we don’t see many old ones away from their homes—but of all the things you could’ve done, you sang, so we’ve been watching. We wouldn’t want you to come this far, then have plutonium get you.” He glanced north into the brush. Eric looked too. Surely the man’s fear of Rocky Flats was unjustified, but he realized he knew nothing about how plutonium was stored. All he remembered was the incredible toxicity of the element. A millionth of a grain, less than a dust mote, on your skin would kill. When the plague hit, was the facility safely shut down? Were they even still working with plutonium? He shivered. Dodge handed Eric a coat. “You should wrap up, Grandpa,” he said. Clouds glowed on the horizon. Sunrise was a few minutes away. “How far north would be unsafe?” asked Eric as he pushed his hand into a sleeve.

  Gray Beard shrugged. “A mile or two maybe. Who knows what plutonium will do? We don’t trespass.” He turned, concerned again. “It will kill him if he gets too far. I’ve seen men who’ve tried to cross. They…” He paused. “Their deaths are… ugly.” He stopped as if contemplating a bad memory. “He won’t get too far. A town boy. My men will find him soon.”

  Eric thought about the way Rabbit could move in the underbrush, his preternatural speed and sense of self preservation. “Not if he doesn’t want them to,” Eric said.

  A half hour after the sun rose, one of the men dashed into the campsite. Gray Beard still stood, leaning on his staff. Eric and Dodge had rewrapped themselves in the sleeping bags. Eric had been guessing at what Rabbit had done. When he heard (or sensed?) the approach of the strangers, he must have awakened, realized there were too many to stand up to, and fled. He must have figured that he could do more good if he were free than if the men captured him. But why did he go north? He wouldn’t leave us, would he, and try to reach Boulder on his own?

  The man said, “He lost us, Teach. Got off the soft ground. Skylar split the group, though. He can’t stay gone long.” Gray Beard nodded an acknowledgment, and the man ran back into the brush. Gray Beard shook his head. “Boy must be as fast as blue blazes.” Eric pulled the sleeping bag off his shoulders. It was a climbing expedition bag, and too warm for the summer. “He called you Teach. Is that your name?”

  Gray Beard squatted and faced him, the sun flush on his face. “It’s what I do. Teacher. Teach. It’s a good name. You’re Eric. Littleton’s oldest resident. The last of the Gone Time survivors.” Eric started at his own name. Teach said, “We’ve heard you talking. That one,” he pointed to Dodge, “is your grandson, Dodge. The other is Rabbit.”

  “But who are you? Where are your people? Why were you following me in the first place?” A different man ran into the camp. Teach looked up at him. “Skylar picked up the boy’s trail and we followed it for a while, but he doubled back. Then we figured out he lead us in a big figure eight. The little demon has us going in circles.”

  Teach thought for a second, then said, “Ignore the trail. Tell Skylar to spread the men out and come back toward this camp. Better poke a stick into every hole or pile of leaves. The boy knows what he’s doing.” He turned back to Eric and Dodge. “I’ve told you who I am.” He scratched a figure in the dirt at his feet, a circle, then smoothed the image away. “We live upstream.” He nodded toward the mountains, now drenched with light, the high peaks of the continental divide still white and glistening with snow. Eric didn’t know what to ask next, but there was something alien about Teach, not just his clothes, but his demeanor, s
omething wildly awake about him. When he wasn’t speaking, he listened, not just to Eric, but to the air. He rested his head on the breeze. His nostrils flared, like a blink, a couple of times a minute. He didn’t behave like someone who spent time indoors a lot. It would be hard to sneak past this man at night.

  Teach tilted his head to the side, then stood. The man he’d called Skylar stepped through the bushes and approached Teach. “We cornered him,” said Skylar, “but he got away. The boy’s a devil, Teach. I say we let him go and the Flats can have him.” A large purple knot swelled below the young man’s left eye. He touched it gingerly with his fingertips. “He’s good with rocks too. Jackson caught one in the knee, and I think we’ll have to carry him home.”

  Teach said, “He’s not going north, then?”

  Skylar spit. “Bah! He’s gaming with us. He stuck his tongue at me before he threw the rock.” Teach laughed. “How’d you let that happen? You were a sharp little rock thrower yourself once.” Skylar scowled at him, then stalked out of camp.

  “They won’t catch him, I think,” said Eric, “unless he thinks Dodge and I are safe.”

  “Good,” Teach said, “if that means he’s not heading into the Flats.” They waited for an hour. Three times men came to report no progress. Eric and Dodge packed their sleeping bags. Dodge didn’t seem to be afraid for Rabbit or of Teach, and Eric found himself more relaxed around the man, even though he wasn’t sure if he was a friend, an odd stranger or their captor. Finally Eric said, “You followed us for days secretly. Now that you’ve come out in the open, what’s your plan?”

  Teach said, “Today, the wind is my plan.” He added, “Getting off the flats.” He scuffed the dirt at his feet.

  “And maybe asking you to talk to my students about the Gone Time around a campfire. They love ghost stories. Or you could tell them about singing with wolves.”

  Teach cocked his head to the side, listening. In the distance, a bird chirped. A bit closer, another answered. That’s like no bird I’ve heard, thought Eric. Sounded like nut-hatches, sort of. From the hill above them, a third chirp drifted down. Ah, he thought, not birds at all. Men. He listened intently. After a few minutes he knew approximately where all of Teach’s men were, and Rabbit probably knew too. If they kept chirping, they’d never catch him.

  Eric touched Dodge’s shoulder. Leaning against his backpack, the boy was almost asleep. “Dodge, can you do a meadowlark for me?” He nodded, pursed his lips and blew. The first try came out airy. The top note of a meadowlark’s call is high and hard to hit. He tried again, and the call trilled down perfectly.

  “That’s good, boy,” said Teach. “Meadowlark’s a tough one.” From the middle of a bush fifteen feet away, a meadowlark answered. The bush shook, and Rabbit rose from the center of it like a wood sprite, twigs and leaves caught in his hair, a goose egg-sized rock clasped in each hand.

  Teach didn’t even look particularly surprised. He sighed, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Within a couple of minutes all of the men returned. The last one limped in, supported by two others, his knee darkly swollen. “I was looking the wrong direction,” he said cheerfully. “I figure I can walk on it. Might have to go slow, though. Heck of a throw from thirty yards.” He gave Rabbit a thumbs up.

  “My parents destroyed the old Coal Creek Canyon Road from the highway to the canyon itself,” said Teach. Eric walked behind him; Dodge and Rabbit followed. Spread to either side, the rest of the men hiked, sometimes in sight, other times hidden behind thick stands of scrub oak. We can’t be leaving much of a trail, observed Eric.

  Teach continued, “They told me they blocked all the ways into the mountains. Some they blew up, like the Boulder Creek Road. Knocked down half a canyon. The Peak to Peak Highway to Black Hawk and Central City they cut the bridges. But this one, they obliterated. Earth movers, my dad told me. He and a handful of others dug it up, spread the asphalt and replanted. He called it a ‘deconstruction project’ or ‘highway beautification.’” Teach’s thick, bare calves flexed as he stepped onto a deadfall branch and pushed himself over. Unscarred foothills rose before them, and the land looked clean and untouched. If there had been a highway here fifty years ago, they did a darned good job hiding it, Eric thought. Eric puffed. Legs, achy and weak, protested at the pace, and they’d generally been climbing since they’d walked into what looked like an open field to the west of Colorado 93. “Must have been afraid of people coming,” he said, finally. “Somebody got the tunnel on U.S. 6 west out of Denver the summer I was there.”

  Teach looked back over his shoulder. “U.S. 6?”

  Eric rested, pressing his hand deep into his side, thought a second, then said, “Clear Creek Canyon Road.”

  “Oh, yes.” Teach stopped. “Here, let me handle that.” He took Eric’s pack. A broad sweat patch on Eric’s back cooled quickly, and as soon as they started again he felt like Teach had subtracted years, not pounds. Teach said, “Couldn’t do anything about the maps, Dad told me, but a line on paper doesn’t mean much if you can’t find the road it belongs to.”

  Eric tried to reconstruct a map of Colorado. He had a good head for geography. The Coal Creek Canyon Road led to… to…Golden Gate Canyon State Park, he thought. And above that, a couple of little towns. He couldn’t remember their names, but he didn’t think the road cut north soon. Every step took them farther from Boulder. If we could just go straight, we’re probably not ten miles away. He looked north, past the hills, to Boulder and its library, if it still existed. “How far do we have to go?” he asked.

  “We might make Pinecliffe today.” Teach looked back again, obviously gauging Eric’s fitness. “Maybe not. Then it’s another day and a half to Highwater.”

  Eric couldn’t place the name. “Highwater?”

  It was Teach’s turn to think a second. “Nederland in the Gone Times. That’s where we live. It isn’t safe to cut any closer to the Flats than that, and there isn’t a good trail anyway.” Nederland, Eric recalled, was an old mining town twenty or thirty miles into the mountains and not too far from the Continental Divide. A big difference between twenty and thirty when you’re walking, he thought. A granite boulder blocked their path. Eric drug his hand across its rough face as they walked around, but another one the same size stood next to the first. A wall of boulders choked the mouth of the narrow canyon they were about to enter. “Your dad did all this?” Eric asked. He thought, what an immense project!

  “Persistent man,” said Teach as he ducked into a narrow passage. The rest of the men had vanished. There must be many entrances, thought Eric. Dodge and Rabbit pushed into the corridor behind him. Rock framed a narrow band of sky. Dust kicked up in the passage scratched Eric’s eyes, and he rubbed his wrist across his nose to keep from sneezing. Then they broke into the open on the other side and Eric could see the extent of Teach’s father’s work. From side to side boulders choked the skinny opening of the steep valley. A man on foot would have no trouble getting through, but Eric doubted that one could lead a pack animal through the jumble, and a car, of course, would be stopped. Coal Creek, a three-foot wide ripple, tumbled down beside the two-lane asphalt road and dove under a pair of the boulders. Dodge walked to the creek’s edge and knelt to take a drink. In a move frighteningly fast for a man his size, Teach reached him and grabbed his wrist. For an instant the tabula was frozen, the hulking, leather-clad savage bent over the slight child. Eric’s breath seized in his chest.

  “Don’t, son,” Teach said. “Not till we’re at Highwater.” He released Dodge and turned to Eric and Rabbit. “Let me see your canteens.” After sniffing them disdainfully, he dumped the water on the ground.

  “You’ll drink from our supplies till I tell you different.”

  Friend or foe? thought Eric. The ribbon of asphalt wound up the valley. The group walked single file now, Teach in the lead, then Eric, the boys, and the rest of Teach’s men, his students as Teach had called them. Students of what? What does Teach, teach? Not too far ahead, maybe a mil
e, the bush-covered hills gave way to more rugged mountains, and Eric could see that granite, canyon walls swallowed the road and Coal Creek.

  Dodge pressed close behind Eric and whispered, “They’re Bugbears, Grandpa. I was just thirsty. He’s mean.” Dodge sounded more angry than frightened. Eric reached back and patted him on the arm. They rounded another corner. Here the old road builders had calved away a portion of a landscape to make way for the road. The bed cut deep through a hill, leaving almost vertical walls on either side. The clean cut revealed layers of different colored rocks. A million years an inch, thought Eric, and when mankind is done, we’ll be no thicker than a coat of paint on top of all of it. He walked close to one wall and saw that the road builders had cut into a seep. A line of dampness oozed at about head height and stretched the length of the cut. He reached to touch it, then drew his hand back. The seep looked unhealthy. Instead of clear water, it was red, and it thickly stained the rocks below. He stopped walking. For fifty feet in front of him, the red moisture coated the rocks, and he smelled something from it, coppery and foul. Coal Creek, only a couple of feet wide here, and fast, rushed by the base of the cut. Red leeched into the stream. Tendrils of it eddied in little pools, then vanished in the water that snatched it downstream.

  In the length of creek from the boulders to here, not a thread of algae waved in the current, and, he realized, he’d seen no minnows, water striders or tadpoles, and not a single bird near the stream. He thought of the poem he’d made up that morning, where he’d compared the sun to a red whale surfacing on the horizon, but now he thought of the Earth as the whale, and somehow it was cut, and here it was wounded. Layers of rock scraped away like skin.