Summer of the Apocalypse

Chapter Two THE BEGINNING AND AN INCIDENT

Eric mashed his Cheerios with his spoon until the milk was a uniform tan color. The end of the world, he thought, that’s what they’re calling it. Everyone is heading to California and I’m stuck in school. He turned his cassette player up another notch. The sun poured through the windows, silhouetting his father, and casting a bright morning glow on his mother’s face as she read a magazine. The very image itself, Mr. and Mrs. America in their perfect little home, riled him. So he concentrated on the headphones, where he was at Red Rocks Park listening to U2 playing “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.” He lifted his bowl and turned the pages of The Denver Post, looking for school closure listings. Over the top of the paper, Eric noticed Dad’s grimace. Dad wrote for the Rocky Mountain News, and Eric’s subscription to the rival daily irritated him.

Long articles about the disease’s progress on the East Coast dominated the front section. The banner headline read “80% FATALITIES!” The only pictures were of an overcrowded hospital in Boston and a panicked crowd at an unidentified airport. He turned past them. Boulder schools closed two days earlier, and today was the last day for the Colorado Spring schools. He didn’t find a listing for Denver, though. He pulled the head-phones around his neck. “I’m staying home,” he said. Mom, a heavy woman with three chins and hair streaked with gray—Eric thought of her as a white Aunt Jemimah—reached across the table and felt his forehead. He jerked his head away. “You’re not feeling sick, are you?” she said.

Dad folded the classified ads of his own paper and laid them in his lap. He had been reading the classifieds a lot lately. Eric picked them up once after Dad was done and saw that he had circled various gun ads, mostly shotguns. As far as Eric knew, the only gun that Dad owned was a funny looking over/under 20 gauge that he used to hunt pheasant years ago. Eric had a hard time imagining Dad hunting anything. He reminded him of Barney Fife and Walter Mitty rolled together. Dad looked through his bifocals at Eric for a long time, and then rubbed his own forehead. “Today’s as good as any, I suppose,” he said. “Let’s pack.”

“Are you sure?” asked Mom.

“Take all the practical clothes,” Dad said. Eric hated it when his dad didn’t answer questions. It made him sound stupid, like he didn’t know, so Eric had made it a point of honor to never ask Dad anything. Eric filled his box, the only box Dad would let him take, with personal items. At the bottom he layered thirty comic books, all Conan the Barbarian adventures; then his slingshot and a marble bag filled with steel ball bearings; beside that, his cassette player and tapes (Run DMC, the Rolling Stones, Men Without Hats, The Cure, AC/DC, U2, and a Willie Nelson tape that none of his friends knew about); two paperbacks (The Hobbit and The Stand); a rabbit’s foot; one hundred and forty seven dollars saved from his paper route; a Playboy (November, 1992); a Blue Oyster Cult tee shirt; a picture of a Porsche 911 he had lovingly cut out of Car and Driver magazine the month before. A NUKE THE

GAY WHALES FOR JESUS bumper sticker. A small frisbee (the competition-weight disk was too large for the box); a thick bundle of wallet-sized photographs that his friends in the Eighth Grade had given him in the last two weeks (Mostly girls who signed the backs with “Have a nice summer,” or “It’s been a blast having you in class this year.” None mentioned the disease). He topped the bundle with an old MTV towel of Martha Quinn at the MTV beach party. He looked at the posters on his bedroom walls that the black light made glow like nuclear accidents, the rest of his books and tapes, and everything else he had to leave behind, forlornly. He went into the kitchen to help Mom. Eight hours later, near sunset, the van, filled not only with boxes and suitcases of clothes but also with all the food from the cupboards, pulled off U.S. 6 next to Clear Creek in a canyon west of Denver. Traffic passed them sporadically, heading west. Eric supposed that most people stuck to the newer, multi-lane I-70 rather than the two lane, winding, older highway.

“What are we doing here?” Eric asked Mom. “You’ll see,” she said. The canyon wall across the highway rose steeply to their right, and the thirty-foot-wide stream tumbled noisily over the rocks to their left. Other than the pullout their van almost filled, nothing seemed distinguishable about this stretch of road. “Do you feel like some climbing?” said Dad. Eric decided he definitely didn’t feel like climbing by the time he was far above the highway, as the sun set, one hand bleeding from cactus needles and his back burning under an overloaded pack. He stepped into a space between two rocks where Dad pointed. He handed Eric a flashlight. “Help your mom set up house.” He turned away and started down the “trail,” which Eric couldn’t believe Dad had led them up. Mom leaned against a boulder, breathing heavily.

“How is it in there?” she said.

Eric shrugged off his pack, held his flashlight in front of him, and crawled into the hole at the boulders’

base. The light penetrated deeply into a room that quickly grew wider and higher the farther in he went. Far from being empty, boxes lined the walls, each marked with thick felt-pen labels in Dad’s handwriting: soup, tuna, ham, beans, corn, chili, spaghetti, sterno, gas, kerosine, charcoal, and dozens of others he couldn’t see. Light reflected off something big wrapped in black plastic. Eric pulled a corner of the sheet off the shape revealing three mattresses stacked on each other.

Another light cast sharp shadows around him. He pointed his flashlight at the entrance, and his mother, just getting off her knees, shielded her eyes. “You all right?” she said. They used the plastic as a ground sheet and put the three mattresses side by side on a relatively flat spot on the floor.

Eric said, “What is this place?”

Mom pulled the lid off a box and looked inside. “A fault cave. Your dad learned about it when he was at the Colorado School of Mines.”

“Fault cave?”

“Caves normally form in limestone, but this is granite. Not many people know about it. Your dad has a map of all the passages and entrances. We can explore it later.”

She found sheets and blankets in one of the boxes and just finished making the last bed when Dad crawled into the room. “Why didn’t you light one of the Coleman lanterns?” he said. Later, with the lantern extinguished, Eric snuggled deeper under the blankets and sleeping bag Mom had spread over him. He strained his eyes, but saw nothing. He remembered once when the family had toured Cave of the Winds at Manitou Springs. The guide had turned out the light. After the group had stood in the velvet darkness for a minute, he said, “This is what a blind man sees every day of his life.” Dad breathed softly next to him. Eric guessed he was asleep. He couldn’t hear Mom. After a long while, when he almost felt the rocks of the mountain creaking beneath him, when he was sure that snakes or scorpions or demons were hovering in the air, he said, “Mom…” His voice sounded flat and small in the cave’s space. “… are you awake?”

Cloth rustled against cloth. “Yes.”

“Did Dad carry all this stuff up here by himself?”

She moved again. A blanket scraped across the plastic ground cloth. “When he heard how bad the disease might be, he started buying things and bringing them up on the weekends or after work.”

“No, really?”

“It tired him, Eric. He couldn’t tell anyone.”

“Did you help?”

“This is the first time I’ve been here.” She sighed. “He said he would be fine.”

“How did he get the mattresses? I mean, I could see a box of beans or something, but the mattresses? Arnold Shwarzenegger couldn’t get up that trail with a load like that!”

“He’s persistent when he’s got a goal,” she said.

Eric stood eight inches taller than Dad, which made Dad as small as the smallest kids in his class. “He’s not strong enough!” Eric caught his breath. Dad moved on his mattress, rolling on his back. Eric’s bed, which was pushed against Dad’s, shifted slightly.

Dad cleared his throat, then said, “A man needs a hobby. Now get some sleep.” But Eric couldn’t. Not with the total blackness settled over him, not with the rustle of leaves in the entrance crawlway or the skitter of rodent paws over rock. He smelled mice droppings. Eventually, Eric reached under the blankets for his cassette player and put the headphones over his ears. He listened to Run DMC at low volume, figuring the batteries might last longer that way, and he wondered if Dad had the foresight to bring some double A’s among the other supplies. He doubted it. In the morning they ate breakfast on a large flat rock behind a ridge above the cave entrance: Mom, sitting on a camp stool, Dad standing, back to them, surveying the canyon, and Eric leaning against a branchless juniper trunk that stuck out of the ground like a twisted pole. After they were done, they carefully policed the area of any scraps that might show they had been about. Dad was adamant about this. Then he led Eric to a rocky outcrop that overlooked the trail to the cave and the highway below. While Eric followed him, he silently critiqued Dad’s outfit. The flannel shirt seemed okay, although it was warm for it. Already the sun-washed rocks were too hot to lean against comfortably. But the blue corduroy pants were definitely wrong, and so were black socks with Hushpuppy shoes. The outfit was embarrassing, Eric thought. Dad gave him a canteen and told him to keep a watch for “tourists.” Even though he had sworn not to ask Dad any questions, the words blurted out. “What do you mean?” The canteen hung low on Eric’s hip and the weight pressed coolly against his thigh. Eric wished he had a cola.

Dad said, “You hear that?”

He’s not answering again, thought Eric, and he listened. Below the river mumble covered the passage of cars. Nothing else. Then he heard it, chirping somewhere in the rocks above him. A canyon finch, he thought, but he shook his head.

“It’s a canyon finch, son. You know that.”

Eric shrugged, as if he still didn’t hear it. For years Dad had been identifying bird calls, and lately the exercise wearied Eric to no end. He’d taken to not playing the game.

Dad pushed his glasses up his nose. He turned away from the bird and looked down the steep trail. His hair was matted and skewed to one side. Eric realized he’d never seen Dad before he’d showered and shaved. “We might get sick, Eric. There’s nothing we can do about that. But if we don’t, then there may be…” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “…dangerous men. We’ll be safe as long as no one thinks to come here.” His hand fluttered to his face, took off his glasses. He rubbed the lenses with his shirt tail. “Stay alert, and if you spy anybody coming up don’t let them see you. Tell your Mom. She’ll know what to do.” Dad clambered over a rock and headed for the trail. When he was twenty feet away, he turned and looked at Eric. Eric thought he might say something noble or encouraging like, “You must be the man while I’m away,” or “We’re depending on you, son,” but what he said instead was, “And don’t wear those darn headphones either.”

When Dad was out of sight, Eric popped the headphones on and listened to the radio. News and talk dominated: warnings from the Denver Police to be wary of looters, information about possible quarantines from the Governor’s office, lists of school closings (Denver schools were dismissed. Eric frowned. He’d only missed one day.), and health tips (“Stay away from crowds and keep your immune system healthy by eating right and sleeping well”). Eric roamed through the channels, but couldn’t find any music except for a Ft. Collins station playing spirituals that kept fading out. Cars passed steadily by 150 yards below, household goods pressed against the windows. Families, mostly, as far as Eric could tell. Usually a man and woman in the front seat, two or three kids in the back, a dog maybe or a cat. They moved from left to right, their motor sounds swallowed by the stream’s constant rumble. Eric rubbed the rock he sat cross-legged on with his thumb. Tiny glints of mica or quartz caught the sun and reflected them like stone-frozen stars. Most of the rock in the canyon was dark, almost black, granites and schists.

Something moved on the canyon wall across the stream at about Eric’s height. It was a small mountain goat picking its way across the steep slope. He observed it until it hopped over a ridge and disappeared. The rest of the day Eric watched Dad carry box after box up the trail to the cave. Dad would stand at the side of the highway below and wait until there was a break in the cars. Then he would dash across the road and into the young cottonwood trees that screened the trail’s base. Eric snorted each time. Dad was such a ninny, practically a coward, he thought. Hiding in a cave! Nobody cares if we’re up here. We’d be tons better off if we stayed in Denver, or if we’d gone to California. Surely by the time the disease gets to the west coast they’ll have a cure for it. In the meantime we could be soaking up rays. To kill time that afternoon, Eric practiced with his sling shot, firing irregularly shaped pebbles at targets he set up on the slope. The whiz of the rocks cutting through the air and the sharp crack when they hit entertained him until Mom brought him dinner, a bowl of hot chile and a hunk of bread.

“Enjoy the bread, Eric. We might not have any more fresh food for a while.” Her hair was pinned back and looked greasy. If Dad really cared about her, he thought, we wouldn’t be stuck on this stupid mountain.

Eric set the bowl on the rock beside him to cool. “So what’s the plan?”

“We’re living up here until your dad thinks it’s safe to go home.”

“Dad’s a nut.”

“Think of it as a camping trip. Dad’s afraid that the city will be bad. Exposure to the disease, and there’s already been riots.”

“He’s still crazy.”

Mom frowned. Eric thought for a moment that she might yell at him, that he had pushed too far. She said,

“He’s your father. He’s trying to protect us.” Her face screwed up, like she was going to cry. “The world, Eric. It’s all going away. Don’t you care about the world?”

Eric put a pebble in the sling shot’s leather pocket, aimed it across the canyon and fired. The rock shattered against a boulder on the other side. “I’m getting pretty good with this.” She shook her head and walked back to the cave. Eric wished he’d said instead, “I love you, Mom.” He put on the headphones, cranked up the volume and watched the cars passing below until the sun set and the evening mosquitos drove him inside.

When Eric took his slingshot and cassette player to his post the next morning, the air was already hot, and gnats rose from the scrub oak like nasty tempered clouds. Two motorcycles were parked in the pull-out across the road from the trail. He scanned the canyon and what he could see of the path for the riders, but didn’t spot them. Several times yesterday cars had parked there, mostly to let faster cars pass, although once a woman had jumped from her truck and run down to the stream to squat behind a bush where she was hidden from the road. Eric looked away until she was gone. He didn’t worry about the cycles.

He put a tape in the player, adjusted the headphones and pressed “play.” Nothing happened. The battery cover slid off easily and he cupped his hand below the batteries to catch them when he thumped the player against his knee. He shook the batteries like dice in his hand, which he hoped might revive them, and carefully wiped the terminals against his shirt to remove oxidation. But when he put them back, the tape still would not run.

The radio worked, for what little use it was. The stations were either off the air or broadcasting news. He couldn’t find rock-n-roll anywhere. Finally he settled on KBPI, where at least he recognized the DJ. The governor had declared a general emergency the night before and called for National Guard support at hospitals and “food distribution centers.” Also there was talk about possible vaccines and how the scientists were saying that people shouldn’t panic. Meanwhile, reports from the eastern United States sounded bad, but no one would say how bad. Europe, where the disease started, wasn’t reporting anything now. What bothered Eric was the DJ’s voice. He sounded wheezy and he cleared his throat a lot.

Eric leaned against a rock and watched the clouds. It’s hard to believe that anything is wrong, he thought. A jet dragged a contrail high against the blue. Probably a military flight, he thought. Commercial service was suspended. The shady side of the rock cooled his back, and lichens flaked off beneath his fingers as he rubbed them. Far up the slope, scrub oak leaves twisted in a breeze that hadn’t reached him yet. The announcements droned. The DJ started coughing and couldn’t stop. After twenty seconds or so, they switched to the station’s call signal and kept playing it over and over. Eric held his cassette player in his lap, his hands around it, and cried.

After a while, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

The heat woke him. The shade that had protected him earlier had retreated, and three quarters of his body was in the sun. He sat up groggily, his head foggy with sleep. His first thought was to check the trail. After all, he thought, I’m supposed to be on guard duty. The motorcycles were still there. Traffic slid slowly through the canyon, bumper to bumper now. The windshields reflected brightly, and he couldn’t see the occupants. Baggage was strapped to the car tops. His second thought was of how lucky he was that Dad hadn’t caught him sleeping. He’d have freaked out for sure.

He clipped the player to his belt and walked back to the cave. Maybe Mom knew where some batteries were. If not, he might be able to talk her into running into town with him for some more. If Dad was so set against going into Denver, they could go west to Georgetown or Idaho Springs. Eric stopped at the cave entrance. Voices came from within, his father’s and one he didn’t recognize. He scooted into the crawlway and crept closer. The Coleman lantern’s harsh light left deep shadows through the room.

“You have more than enough for three people,” said the man sitting on a box with his back to Eric. A big soft-looking hulk, over two-hundred pounds, he wore a jean jacket with the sleeves cut off at the shoulder, short, spiked hair, and a dangly earring. Dad stood on the other side of the lantern, his arms across his chest, and another man, tall and scrawny, maybe high school age, sat on Eric’s mattress. Eric pushed himself up slowly and scanned the room. Mom wasn’t there. He thought she might be in one of the back corridors he hadn’t gotten around to exploring yet. She had said that there was a lot more to the cave.

Dad said, “There’s not so much. I’m planning on staying for the winter.” The jean-jacket man leaned forward. “So we go get more when this runs out. Lots of food there if you know where to look.” “Looting you mean.” “A strong man takes what he wants.” Dad stepped back toward a stack of boxes. The high school kid said from the mattress, “Might be we could team up. You got a good start here. Three guys working together could do all right. We get some women and wait for things to blow over.”

“You’re not too old for witch wool are you?” said jean-jacket. “All kinds of babes would be happy to come out here and get away from the city. Scared, you know.”

“I like it alone.” Dad looked relaxed but Eric suddenly felt cold. The leaves beneath him seemed to crackle like firecrackers and the darkness of the crawlway felt like poor cover.

“Maybe he’s already getting some,” said high school. “You notice he got three mattresses here?” Jean-jacket walked over to the beds. “Three. You said you were on your own. Who you hiding?”

“Used to be three of us. My family. They didn’t make it. I buried them out there.” He nodded toward the entrance. Eric tried to look like a rock.

Jean-jacket said, “That’s too bad. Shit happens, doesn’t it?” He seemed to mull over Dad’s news.

“Maybe you’re right, old man. You’d do better on your own. So I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you leave?” High school laughed.

“This is my place. I found it and I did the work to stock it.” Dad stepped back again. Eric slipped his hand down to his waist and loosened the tie on the sling shot’s ammo bag.

“Other people know about this cave,” said jean-jacket. “Getting here first doesn’t make it yours. I figure I got just as much a right to it as anybody.”

“Why you talking to this guy?” said high school. “Let’s toss him off the mountain.” Dad looked back and forth between them.

Jean-jacket paused, as if considering the idea. “Cops. We can’t let him go.” He sighed. “They’re pretty busy, those that ain’t falling down sick, but someone might get interested.” Eric loaded a ball bearing into the sling shot. His hands trembled and he could barely hold the leather patch around the shot.

“You going to do it?” said high school. Eric got up on his knees. They were both looking at Dad. Eric took a deep breath and pulled the shot to his ear.

Then Dad moved. He planted both hands on high school’s chest and pushed. The young man yelped as he stumbled back and tripped over the mattresses. Dad dove to the back of the cave. Eric let go of the shot. The lantern burst into a hundred shards of glass, and the room went black. “Run, Dad!” Eric yelled. He turned and sprinted on his hands and knees out of the crawlway. He stood too quickly at the entrance, slamming his back into the rough ceiling, and then he was out and running to a boulder above the cave entrance. He wanted to be higher than them. He loaded another ball bearing into the sling shot and spread a handful more on a flat spot where he could easily reach them. The entranceway was fifty feet away. An easy shot. But he was gasping. Where was Dad? A bearing rolled off. He didn’t take his eyes off the entrance. One minute passed. Two. He wiped sweat from his eyes. A flicker of movement a hundred yards away. Maybe a squirrel. It kept moving, and then it grew longer. An arm. A head. Dad squeezed himself out from under a rock. Another entrance, Eric thought. He wanted to yell to him, but he was afraid the men would come out any second and know where he was. They shouted to each other in the cave. Eric couldn’t hear their words. He figured they hadn’t found flashlights, and they were feeling the way out in the dark.

Dad climbed to a cairn of rocks higher on the slope and dug into them.

“Here it is!” hollered jean-jacket as he stepped into the light. High school joined him, and they both shaded their eyes.

Eric pulled the shot back, not sure what to do. If they moved toward Dad, he would shoot them, but would the shot drive them off or just make them furious?

Dad yanked a long bundle wrapped in canvas from the rocks and started untying the rope that secured it. The men saw him. Jean-jacket pointed one direction for high school to go, and he went the other. Eric let go of the shot. The ball bearing hissed and nailed high school.

He went down, holding his arm. “Hell, hell, hell!” He rolled under a scrub oak in plain sight. “I’m shot!” Jean jacket ducked behind a rock. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Must have had a silencer.”

“How bad?”

High school took his hand off his arm and looked at it in wonder. “There ain’t no blood,” he said. “But I think it’s broke.”

Eric rose and aimed at jean-jacket, who saw him.

“It’s just a goddamned kid!”

Eric let go and the shot smacked loudly into the rock by jean-jacket in a small puff of rock dust. The ricochet whined into the distance. Jean-jacket dropped out of sight.

“He’s just got a damned sling shot,” he yelled. “It’s not like he can kill you.” Dad stepped onto an overhang that looked down on all of them. “I can,” he said and cocked the shotgun he carried. On the pinnacle of rock, the sun high behind him, he looked ominous and deadly. “Time for you men to go home.”

Jean-jacket stood. Dad swung the barrel in his direction. There was a long silence. Then jean-jacket put his hands on his head. High school did the same, and the two marched down the trail. “We’re coming back, suck-nuts!” screamed high school when they were almost out of sight. Dad didn’t move. The shotgun pointed toward them until they got on their motorcycles and rode away. Eric sat. Dad jumped from the overhang and sat next to him.

“You did all right, son,” he said.

Eric gazed at the dirt between his feet. He didn’t want to look at Dad. If he hadn’t fallen asleep, this wouldn’t have happened. “I thought you were going to die,” Eric said finally. Dad patted him on the shoulder awkwardly. “I thought so too.” He broke open the shotgun. The chambers were empty. “I didn’t have shells in it.”

Eric stared, open-mouthed.

Dad said, “I got in a hurry when you started shooting at them. I forgot to load.” A voice above them said, “Good thing I didn’t.” Gravel skittered down the slope. Eric looked up. Mom, holding Dad’s .20 gauge, picked her way among the cactus and granite. “Someone has to have some sense in this family.” She answered Eric’s unasked question. “I went out the back door when they came in the front. Watched the whole thing.” She smiled. “Sure scared me when the lantern went out. You shot it?”

Eric nodded.

She looked down at the highway, where the line of cars rolled slowly westward. “Will they come back?” Dad snapped the shotgun closed. “No. I don’t believe they will.” Eric said, “They said they would.”

“I think they were sick, Eric. Sick people do desperate things, but they don’t live long.” Dad stood and brushed dirt off of his pants. He helped Mom stand, and they walked hand in hand to the cave. Eric, walking behind them, began to laugh. He laughed so hard that he had to sit on the trail.

“What is it, Eric?” said Mom.

Eric looked at them both again. Their hair was dirty, clothes smudged. She stood over him, shotgun balanced on her hip. Dad rested his gun on his shoulder.

“You look…” He laughed even louder. “You look… so different.” He rolled onto his back, short of breath.

Dad held his hands out and examined himself. “Well,” he said, “it’s not Norman Rockwell.”