Summer of the Apocalypse

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 listened 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?”

“Ten minutes, tops,” said Eric. They turned onto West Aberdeen Avenue. When he was five, he had chased an ice cream truck down this street. He’d delivered papers here when he was twelve. He knew who lived in most of the houses. The white-bricked one with the lavender trim belonged to the Stewarts, whose two daughters were on the student senate at the school. The Isenbergs lived in the cedar house. Their son, Chaim, was the only Jew Eric knew. Beyond them were the Johnsons, the Cardwells and the Gizzys. All with busted in windows and no signs of life. Home, he thought, I’m nearly home. Leda said, “A couple of week ago, gangs started going around setting cars on fire, breaking windows, beating anyone well enough to be on the street. Not just kids either. Old guys. Sick, angry. People shot anyone coming to their doors. Scary stuff. They were just afraid, I guess, and they couldn’t do anything about it, so they lashed out.” She brushed hair away from her face, then waved her hand at the houses.

“Probably this happened late. One or two guys with baseball bats or something, fever just starting, little bit of itch in their throats. Nothing left to do. Everybody dying and all that glass unbroken. Must have seemed like some kind of metaphor.”

Eric sighed gratefully; his shoulders relaxed, and he realized how tense he’d been. It was the most she had spoken since this morning.

A movement behind a mini-van parked in the Gizzy’s driveway across the street caught his attention. A Doberman, its ears up and pointed, watched them intently. As they passed, Eric saw that its muzzle was torn, and part of the side of its head was ripped as if it had been in a fight or had collided with some barbed wire.

Leda continued, “Of course, the gangs only lasted a few days. The bug caught ’em, or the National Guard or the helicopter boys.”

The Doberman stood. Another dog, a collie, emerged from the shadows by the house and joined him. A couple others lay in the shadow, their mouths open, panting.

“That’s a big dog,” said Leda. It stepped toward them. “Nice puppy,” she said.

“Looks well fed.” Eric scanned the ground for a rock or stick, but grass lapped against the sidewalk, and the dead roses in the flower bed sprawled over mud. He shuffled along sideways, keeping his face toward the dog. Sweat beaded under his arms although it was still cool. “What do you think he’s been eating?”

“Gross thought,” said Leda, walking backwards, watching the dog. “Kibbles and Bits?” Growling and stiff-legged, the Doberman crossed the gutter onto the edge of the street. Leda raised her hand over her head and mimed a throw. It ducked and retreated a step, then started barking. The other dogs stood, heads low, growling deep.

Eric said, “They don’t seem too friendly. Maybe we just need to get out of their territory.” He remembered dogs from when he carried papers, and he thought he recognized the collie from the Kissle’s house up the block. It had always greeted him at the door with slobbery licks on his hands when he collected once a month, but it didn’t look playful now with its lips raised off its gums and its tail straight down and still.

Eric kept moving, thirty feet, fifty feet. Heads low, the dogs crossed the street, matching their pace. The Doberman led, still barking: loud, repetitive, explosive, insane-sounding.

“How big’s their territory?” asked Leda. Her low, calm voice comforted Eric. He swallowed dryly. Step by step, the dogs advanced.

Eric said, “No sudden movements.” Then the other three dogs started barking. “Run!” he yelled, and he sprinted up the lawn.

Arms pumping, breath tight, Leda beside him, he headed for the broken picture window above a knee-high growth of shrubbery. Barking stopped, but a frantic clatter of claws on asphalt spurred him on. He thought of his Achilles tendons, unsocked, glaring below the short pants, crying out “Meat, meat, meat.” And he knew the thought should have been funny, but it wasn’t. He dove through the window, trying not to land on the broken glass, Leda right with him, and they slid across a hardwood floor into a gray and blue pin-striped sofa. A Tiffany lamp on an end table, teetered, fell, and shattered on the floor. “Up! Up!” he yelled, pulling on her arm. Barking boomed outside the window, and he saw them hesitating. He thought, maybe going into a strange house was too new for these dogs who’d learned to adapt so fast. The Doberman circled twice, howling, all black gums and shiny teeth, then charged the bushes, the others in tow.

“Shit!” Leda pushed him in the back, and they scrambled into a short hall with three closed doors. Eric tugged at the first door knob, and it didn’t turn, then things began to slow down for him, became almost dream like. Leda reached for the knob when Eric’s hand slipped off. She’d cut her palm; a shallow flap of skin waved free and blood streaked her wrist. Her dark hair hung down, covering her face. Eric thought, we’ll have to get that cut wrapped.

Still, while he stared at her wrist (a drop of blood broke free and floated lazily to the floor), since so many horrible things had happened to him in the last few days, since so many times he’d been running or scared, the oddness of his detachment occurred to him. He thought, four months ago I was going to school, watching MTV, and now I’m hoping a stranger, an older woman I slept with last night, can get a door open in sombody’s house before a man-eater dog can attack me. He thought it almost laughable. A scratching noise in the living room and then a series of thuds told him of the dogs’ progress. Then a distinct metallic sound from beyond the locked door. Leda pulled, and he heard from the other side a semi-loud chink-chink, like someone shaking a bottle full of coins up once then down. I know that sound, thought Eric.

“Get away!” hissed a voice on the other side.

Leda looked toward him in surprise, her hair flying in her face in slow motion, her own teeth bared, her hand on the knob. The Doberman rounded the corner, tensed his thighs and sprang for Leda’s throat. A connection flashed in Eric’s mind, a sound memory from a scene in Terminator II: Linda Hamilton stalking the second terminator, the one made of liquid metal. Mad as hell, she marched toward it, her one arm hurt or broken, and in the other hand she held a pump shotgun. In a real strength move, one that marveled Eric then, she chambered a shell home with one hand. She jerked the gun up and down once. Chink-chink.

Eric caught Leda’s arm and threw himself backwards. Her head jerked. The dog sailed toward them. They fell.

Suspended, the Doberman hung in the air, mouth agape, teeth luminous.

Then a section of the door blasted out, catching the Doberman, throwing it against the wall. It almost seemed to stick for a moment, and Eric thought he saw, in the second before it slid wetly to the floor, a look of profound disappointment in its furious face. Cordite and burnt wood smoke eddied to the ceiling. Cowering, the other dogs stood at the entrance to the hallway. Eric thought, I didn’t even hear the shotgun.

Chink-chink.

Grabbing Leda’s collar, Eric scrambled backwards to the next door, which swung open easily under his pressure. Still on his backside, he pulled Leda after him. She kicked the door shut.

“You’re choking me,” she gasped, and he let go of her collar.

“Get out of my house!” screamed a voice, and the roar of the gun was deafening this time. In the hollow ringing that followed the explosion, the sound of alphabet blocks scattering across the floor seemed unnaturally loud.

“Get away from my baby!”

On the wall adjoining the other room stood a crib, a tightly sheeted bundle resting in the exact middle of a bare mattress. Chink-chink. Another shell in the chamber! thought Eric. A pie plate-sized hole appeared in the wall, knocking a corner off the crib blowing sheetrock dust in on them. Eric stood, picked up a kid’s rocking chair and heaved it through the unbroken window. While Leda flopped a blanket over the ragged knives of glass and went through the opening first, the repetitive metallic cocking of the gun followed by a click beat out a manic rhythm, and a rising wail penetrated the wall. Filled with grief and death, and hardly human, the sound chased them out of the house. Later, after they’d crossed two more lawns, passed through two more picture windows (careful to yell out before entering, “Anyone home?”), down two more bedroomed hallways, shutting doors behind them, and crawled out two more bedroom windows to throw off the dogs. They sat with their backs against a sun warm cinder block garden wall.

Eric said, “Looks like you cut your hand.”

Sweat soaked Leda’s maroon shirt in wide circles from her armpits to the her belt. Her head was back and her eyes closed. “Yeah.” She breathed deeply and when she exhaled, she shuddered. “Guess not everybody’s dead yet.” Quietly she watched as he tore a sleeve off the shirt, then wrapped her hand. Next to them, water dripped sporadically from drooping branches of a willow. Nearly touching the grass, the longest branches appeared to set the drops down as if they were washing the ground, or baptizing it. Silence stretched between them—she sat, cradling her hand in her lap, staring blankly across the grass—but the silence calmed Eric. He didn’t feel awful about her anymore, sad that she hated him, but not upset. They’d shared sex and near death, and of the two, death was more overwhelming. Nearly dying unites people, he thought. “How long do you think we were in that house?” he asked, making small talk. He guessed that the whole incident from the time they dove through the picture window until they hurdled the chain link fence in the back yard was less than a minute.

“An hour and a half… a lifetime,” said Leda.

Faraway, dogs barked. Eric listened intently; they didn’t seem to begetting closer. “Let’s go,” he said.

“We’re nearly there.”

Leda nodded and pushed herself upright.

When they rounded the corner onto Panorama St. a few minutes later, and his house finally came into view, he thought, how will I face him? They turned up the driveway. What will I say? Glass sprinkled the front yard here too. One of the curtains hung outside the window. He thought, I’m not the same as I was a week ago. I’m not the same kid.

He opened the front door.