Summer of the Apocalypse

by James Van Pelt

  “Right on path,” said Eric. “That’s Chemistry. Arts and Science should be directly ahead, and the library will be on our left.”

  Eric moved the light close to the ladder rungs. “See this,” he said and showed Teach how a thin layer of flaky rust coated each step. “The middles are scraped clean, though. Whoever locked the doors did it pretty recently. Probably in the last year. Either somebody is living in the tunnels, or there is one door that’s locked on the outside.”

  Teach rubbed his finger on the rung and held it up. “Damp. It would rust in a couple of days. Somebody uses this ladder a lot.”

  Eric smiled. “Give me a couple of months and I’ll make a scavenger out of you.” Teach shuddered. “Jackal’s life isn’t for me. Too many poisons. If it’s Gone Time I say leave it lie. Good for cooking fire talk, but don’t play with their toys.”

  “You’d rather a bear ate you, or your children died from measles, huh? Are you happy knowing that your expected life span is twenty years shorter than mine?” Suddenly angry, Eric stomped down the corridor, splashing dark splotches against both walls. He felt the blood rising in his face. We’re so close, he thought. The library’s right around the corner, and this… this… caveman doesn’t know why we’re here. Behind him, Teach said evenly, “I’ve heard a lot about the Gone Time. Mostly horror stories I’ve got to tell you. Stuff my parents told me. What Ripple’s found out. Even the things you’ve said. I’ve heard about Gone Time magic, tales I can hardly believe, but you know what I never hear anyone say? That Gone Time people were happy. For all the cars and trains and subways, for all the medicine and telephones and computers, for all the manufacturing and invention and television, I haven’t heard a single word about how happy the Gone Times were. So why don’t you answer your question? Were you happy in the Gone Time? When was the first time you were really happy?”

  They pushed on in the dark in the silence punctuated by the hollow slap of their feet on the wet floor, and Erie thought back, and he remembered the first time:

  Between conscious and unconscious he drifted, and he was thinking, I’m warm again, and he floated. Slowly he felt himself moving upwards, out of the lethargy and dreaming of sleep, and briefly he thought of going back to the soft blankness, but he didn’t, and slowly he became aware that he was lying on his side. He was wrapped in warmth. It pushed against his back and sides, even over his ears and the top of his head. He breathed in the moisture of his own breath. His head rested on soft, warm cloth. Vaguely, he wondered where he was and how he got here. It was like he’d been sick when he was a child. He’d hide under the blankets with his fevers and chills, and listen to the gentle hiss from the vaporizer, smell the rich penetrating odor of Vick’s Vapor Rub, and he’d stay covered up until the fever broke and he was wet with perspiration. For hours he’d stay wrapped, interrupted only by his mother checking on him. Being sick was no fun, but afterwards, wrapped and warm and tired, he felt content. That’s how he felt now, but he knew he wasn’t a child, and after a while he started to think about what had happened in the last few days: the cave, the long bike ride, the destruction in Golden and the ghost cop, Meg and the basement, wind, the long run from the fire, hail, snow, cold, and Leda. None of these memories worried him. He was just sorting them out lazily, as if they’d slipped out of place, and he needed to file them again.

  Where am I? he thought. What does it matter? he answered, and he let his attention drift away again almost back to sleep. His right arm seemed to be trapped, but he didn’t feel energetic enough to move it. His left arm was draped over something, and the weighty softness of cloth pressed around it all. Beneath his left hand, he felt a warm, damp, smooth surface, and he rubbed it gently. Still not awake, sleep like a great, fuzzy presence in his mind, he massaged the surface beneath his hand and it stirred. An arm tightened around him, and he realized he was holding Leda. They were in bed, and he remembered the white bungalow with blue trim, the blue goose with “Welcome” painted on it on the front door. He felt a hand on his back move; fingernails scratched lightly by his shoulder blade, not purposefully, accidently; she was still sleeping. Her forehead rested on his chest, and he could feel her breathing. He pressed against her back, pulling her closer and continued rubbing. Skin rippled under his palm, her backbone a gentle line of bumps, her skin slick with sweat. The tiny hairs at the back of her neck felt like mouse fur. He left his hand there and moved his fingers in tiny motions, stroking lightly, holding her, and gradually, through his drowsiness, he realized they were naked, that she had saved his life with her body warmth. Her chest rested against his own. His left knee lay on top of her knee. This wasn’t what he’d imagined being in bed with a woman would be like. He thought of the scenes from movies he’d seen, the arching, violent couplings; the athletic, frantic gymnastics in film after film, but here he was in bed with Leda, holding the back of her neck, feeling her breath on his skin as she slept, and it felt comfortable and lazy and… and… right. Not even sexual as he’d always thought of it. Just good. He lay like that for a long time. A half-hour or more he guessed.

  Then, her hand moved again, rubbing his shoulder blade, and he tightened up. She’s awake, he thought, and this moment will be over. I’m warm and safe and we’ll climb out of bed. She’ll never talk about it. She just had to save my life. That’s all.

  But her hand kept moving, and he began to relax again. It was so warm. There was no light at all. He felt as if they’d transported themselves into a different universe, one no larger than the womb of blankets and each other. The only sounds were the sounds of their breath, the rustle of skin on skin. The only smells were the smells of each other, moist, rich human smells. She rubbed one shoulder blade and then the other, and Eric moved his hand down from her neck to rub her shoulder blades, mirroring what she did with her hand, massaging high on her back on one side and then the other; the thin sheen of sweat helped his hand glide effortlessly. For a long time she just rubbed his shoulder blades, working on one gently for minutes, sometimes stopping as if she’d dropped back off to sleep, then switching to the other for more time. Then her hand found larger circles, now high on his side, now reaching all the way around him. Her stomach touched his. Eric followed her lead, letting her hand tell his where to go. Against his chest, in his ear, he could tell her breathing was deeper now. She trailed her fingertips against his backbone, tracing them, bone to bone, from his neck, slowly down his back—his hand did the same; her skin flowed smoothly under his hand—lower and lower until she was in the small of his back rubbing the delicate areas over his kidneys, pulling his stomach against hers with each motion, pulling himself against her, and he was breathing deeply too, not sure if he should be scared or excited, but desperately, desperately sure he never wanted this to end.

  Then Leda reached farther until her hand was rubbing his bottom, and he let his hand do the same; she gasped slightly as he passed the dip in the small of her back to mimic her, and she pulled her knee out from under his, pulling him even closer, shifting her legs. She wrapped her leg over the top of his, used her foot against the back of his legs to pull him against her. He panicked, and all his muscles locked up.

  “No,” he choked out, his breathing as ragged as if he’d just finished a hundred yard dash. She kept him close. “It’s all right, Eric,” she said between her own gasps. “It’s all right.” And after a moment, he relaxed and let her guide him.

  It was the first time he could truly remember being happy.

  And it was after the Gone Time was done.

  Teach said, “Do you remember?”

  Eric looked around. He had lost track of time and the tunnel surprised him. “Have we gone by any other passages?” he said.

  Sounding puzzled, Teach said, “Of course not.”

  “Good. We have to find the library.”

  “I know. You said that.” They splashed on. Teach said, “Are you all right?”

  “Just keep your eyes open is all,” Eric snapped. He bit the skin inside his mou
th until he tasted a little blood. Getting lost in a memory like that, even a wonderful memory, disturbed him. Concentrate, he thought. Stay in the present.

  A few paces later they came to another junction. The sign read, “B-61.”

  “Hah,” said Eric. “This is the way.”

  The tunnel jogged left, then right. They made the second turn, and a line of lights in the ceiling flicked on, revealing the end of the tunnel and a ladder up.

  “Someone knows we’re here,” said Teach.

  Eric blew out the candle. “Maybe, maybe not. That’s a motion detector I think.” He pointed to a pair of boxes mounted on the sides of the tunnel. “I tripped it when I crossed between them.”

  “Motion detector?”

  “It’s an electronic thing. The lights may have gone on automatically. Of course, if the lights go on here, an alarm may have gone off somewhere else.” Looking up the ladder, Eric continued, “You’re right that one door wouldn’t be locked on the inside.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “ This is it,” and started up. Teach followed.

  At the top, Eric pushed the trap-door open an inch and peered out. From what he could see, he was in a basement like the one they’d started in. Broken boiler equipment, moldy-looking boxes bursting at the seams, and a flight of stairs leading to a shut door. The difference was that this basement was lit by electric light. Eric wondered where the power came from as he opened the trap door the rest of the way. Teach was just climbing out when the door at the top of the stairs opened revealing an older woman in a white smock, who was saying as she stepped through, “It’s about time you got back….” She looked at them a second, mouth open, screeched, and slammed the door in Teach’s face as he bounded up the stairs.

  Teach grabbed the handle and twisted it to no avail. He threw his shoulder into the panel, but it didn’t even rattle. He sat on the top stair. “Now what?” he said.

  “I guess we wait,” said Eric. “It’s their library.”

  He heard a voice on a bullhorn coming from outside the building, the voice he couldn’t understand earlier. It chanted the same phrase over and over without intonation, almost without intelligence. “Give up your books for the good of the people. Give up your books for the good of the people. Give up your books for the good of the people….”

  Chapter Eighteen

  GOING HOME

  It’ll be good for you, Eric. You’ve got to eat.” Leda sat cross-legged on the bed, her shirt untucked, the sun a hazy circle in the dark curtain behind her.

  “We’ve got to hit the road,” he answered. Then, embarrassed, he opened his mouth again and let her spoon in another helping of cold tomato soup. “It’s gross,” he mumbled. The unthinned soup felt like a clot in his mouth, like a wad of chicken fat.

  “Hypothermia’s no joke.” With business like efficiency, she leaned forward with a spoonful, and he swallowed it without tasting. “If you don’t fuel the engine, you won’t have any get up and go.” Eric tried to read her expression, but her concentration on not spilling the soup revealed nothing. He hadn’t awakened when she got out of bed. The first thing he remembered was her pulling the covers off his face, and she was already dressed.

  Has she forgot last night? he thought. Trying to keep the irony out of his voice, he said, “I’ve got get up and go.” It came out sounding whiny to him.

  She grunted noncommittally and scraped the can for the last bit of soup. “Well then, get up,” she said finally.

  Keenly aware of his nakedness, he waited until she left the room, then he pushed the blankets off and searched the floor for his clothes. He thought, I don’t feel any different. Today’s like yesterday. His jeans lay in a puddle behind the door and felt as if they weighed ten pounds. They splashed when he dropped them.

  I don’t know why everyone makes such a big deal about it, he thought, but he could still feel her cheek against his, the breath on his neck, her hands on his lower back pulling against him. He shook his head and opened a dresser drawer where he found a pale green long-sleeve shirt two sizes too small that smelled faintly of mint. An old man’s clothes, he thought—a dead man. He couldn’t bring himself to wear the boxer shorts folded neatly in another drawer. In the closet, next to a half-dozen flower print dresses, hung five identical pairs of pressed, gray rayon pants. The cuffs didn’t reach his ankles, and the waist left a six-inch gap when he stretched it away from his stomach. He cinched them tight with a narrow black belt. Since water still soaked his sneakers, he decided against a pair of argyles and slipped his bare feet into the cold shoes instead. Pausing at the door, he took a deep breath, then walked out of the bedroom, through a short hall and into the kitchen.

  Leda knelt on a counter top, reaching deep into a cupboard. “All canned soup. Nothing else. Stuff in the fridge is spoiled too. That’s all there is to eat.” Her muffled voice sounded cool, competent, as if she were addressing a stranger.

  She didn’t pull her head out of the cupboard as she spoke.

  Tentatively, Eric said, “My dad’s probably got plenty of good food. We’re only ten or fifteen blocks from there now.”

  “Right.” She slid off the counter. “Don’t we make a pair?” she said, as if she were kidding, but she didn’t laugh, didn’t smile, didn’t even meet his eyes. She wore a maroon man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled above her elbows and a baggy pair of gray pants that matched Eric’s, although the cuffs piled up on her shoes. “Let’s go then.”

  “Okay. Fine,” said Eric, and he decided to forget about last night. It was a freak thing, he thought. Maybe it didn’t happen at all. Like a dream. But as he followed her out the door and into the bright sunlight of the morning, he felt heavy and bleak, and he wanted to hug her, to feel her reality in his arms—to be hugged back. She strode purposefully to the street, down the sidewalk, away from the blue-trimmed white bungalow with the blue goose and its warm, hand-painted “Welcome.” On the lawns, the reminders of yesterday’s snow existed only in the shadows as thin sheets of slushy ice, retreating as the sun advanced. Steam tendrils wavered from wet spots on the asphalt, and already half the street was dry. Eric guessed it might be seventy degrees. For the first time in days, he couldn’t smell smoke, just wet grass and spring air.

  “We go that way,” he said and pointed up the hill of Littleton Boulevard. Although they were only a quarter-mile from the river, trees and houses blocked his view and he couldn’t see how extensive the fire had been. Littleton seemed almost untouched. Some trash on parking lots, some boarded up stores, but little of the destruction he’d seen in Golden or West Denver. His shoes squished with each step as they walked on the broad sidewalk toward the King Soopers shopping center and East Elementary, where Eric had once gone to school. Across the street, the Crestwood, a restaurant his family sometimes went to, looked sad and deserted. The fountains that sprayed into twin decorative ponds weren’t running;. No newspapers filled the stands, and one of the heavy wooden doors canted away from the other, attached only by the bottom hinge.

  He caught up to her so they’d walk side by side and he could cast quick glances at her from the corner of his eye.

  “What are you going to do if you find your dad?” she said abruptly. Her voice sounded too loud.

  “When I find him.”

  She sighed. “Sorry, when.”

  They reached the top of the hill, and a few blocks farther the intersection of Littleton Boulevard and Broadway awaited, normally the busiest intersection in Littleton, but the crossing lights were dark, and the streets empty.

  He said, “You know, I haven’t seen a car in two days.”

  Water gurgled down the gutter beside him, rushing toward sewer grates. The last of the snow melt echoed tinnily down drain spouts in the houses to his right. Drops pattered into the grass from sodden trees. Water sounds splashed and slithered softly all around them. Other than the bark of a distant dog, he heard nothing else. No planes. No cars. No children. As long as he had lived in Littleton, he remembered that if he stopped and liste
ned carefully on a summer day, he had been able to hear children and horns, the roar of lawn mowers, the pounding of hammers in garages. On Friday nights in the fall, the music of the high school band playing at half time reached his yard. Littleton was a place of friendly noise. Even late at night when he stepped outside, he heard the rumble of cars on Broadway. But now, nothing. Just the water sneaking away.

  Leda said, “It’s too creepy here. Can we get off this road?”

  “Sure. We have to cut right anyway.” They turned up Lakeview Street into an old suburban neighborhood where small brick one-stories nestled side by side. For a second, Eric thought that it had been colder here, that ice shards were catching the sun and reflecting it off the lawns. Then he realized it was glass. In front of where the picture window of each house they passed used to be lay broken glass. They reached Shepherd Avenue and crossed, heading toward Ketring Park. Its trees waved above the roof tops. More broken glass. House after house. In some houses, torn drapery and broken curtain rods indicated the windows had been broken from the outside.

  As they walked he grimaced. We’re almost to Dad, he thought, and right after that, he thought, What’s going on with Leda? His gut ached. Cold tomato soup sloshed nauseatingly with each step. A hot spot on both of his heels told him that his sockless feet in the wet shoes were blistering. He glanced her way again. She kept her eyes resolutely forward. He thought of reasons why she changed. Yesterday we could talk. Yesterday was cool. He cast theories around. Maybe she’s embarrassed. I mean, I’m a just a kid to her. Or maybe she’s got a boyfriend. Maybe she’s married! He checked her hands as they swung by her side. No rings. But none of the theories rang true, not emotionally true, and he concluded that she hated him. Nothing else made sense. He’d done a terrible thing, and now it was all she could do to tolerate him. He felt an urge to apologize. The words danced on the tip of his tongue, and he almost said them, but what came out was, “Why all the vandalism?” A block ahead, in Ketring’s parking lot, two backhoes glistened dully yellow in the sun. Beside them, a flatbed truck piled high with body bags attracted a cloud of flies, writhing and twisting above the black forms like a huge, angry ghost. Eric turned a block early to avoid the park. Leda said, “Fear.” She walked silently for a dozen strides. She shook her head, as if she’d come to a decision. “How far away are we?”