James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

Eric had never been to Idaho Springs, and the town looked tacky to him, from the mining scarred mountains above, to the weathered, cracked-mortar Victorian houses with high-pitched roofs, dirty garages behind them, their doors hanging crookedly. Sand piled against the curbs, remnants from an icy winter. Dad told him there wasn’t a mall. No mall! They passed an ugly ski and tee-shirt shop Where a

“Closed for the Season” sign hung in the window. A woman walking toward them on the sidewalk crossed the street to avoid a meeting.

Dad bought Cokes from a machine in front of a closed Conoco. Eric rubbed the cold can against his forehead before opening it. They stood in the shade of the gas pump island and finished the pops. Eric hopped from foot to foot, ready to go minutes before Dad, who leisurely, it seemed, shook the last drops into his mouth.

The Safeway in the middle of town was open—a checkout clerk wearing a surgical mask eyed them as they came through the doors— but most of the merchandise looked picked over. A few lone cans dotted the shelves in the soup section. Much of the toilet paper was gone. The produce bins were empty. Dad headed for the pharmacy in back. Eric picked up a red plastic shopping basket with wire handles, wandered through the cereal section and looked longingly at the Cocoa Puffs. He’d already noticed the empty refrigerators. No milk. A man, shivering under the bulk of three or four sweaters, rolled a cart filled to the top with dried pasta: spaghetti, macaroni, fettuccini, lasagne and green spinach noodles. “Buy stuff that stores well,” he said. Eric nodded at him.

He found batteries by the film display and took all the triple-A’s, eight packs of four, enough to replenish his cassette player sixteen times. Then, thinking about how he wanted the player just for cassettes, he picked up a transistor radio shaped like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle in the toy section, one of the few items the store had in abundance. The turtle in his hand left a gap in the ranks of identical turtles like a missing tooth. He went back to the film display for the right size batteries. Eric’s stomach hurt. What was keeping Dad? No one stood at the Pharmacy desk and the light in the Pharmacist’s station was off. The man with the sweaters, he thought, has the disease. He’s in a supermarket buying noodles and he’s maybe dying. Mom’s maybe dying. Where’s Dad?

He remembered a Metallica lyric. Nobody ever listened to Metallica lyrics except some of his head-banger friends, and they didn’t care what the band said. They just liked the image and the sound. They liked skulls on tee-shirts. The lyric was, “I’m inside. I’m you. Sad but true.” A door beside the pharmacy clicked open and Dad stepped out. He shut it quietly, then stuck a white sack, the kind that held medicine, in Eric’s backpack “Come on.”

“What’d you get?”

“Shhh.” He took two bottle of rubbing alcohol from a shelf and put them in Eric’s basket with the batteries. “I found out there isn’t a clinic, and the doctor commutes from Denver.” At the checkout counter, the surgical-masked clerk leaned back from them. Eric could almost see him holding his breath, and Eric wondered what the man would do if he or Dad sneezed or coughed. Eric emptied the basket. To the alcohol, batteries and the Ninja Turtle radio, Dad added a handful of M&M packages.

The clerk didn’t reach for the products. His eyes glittered blackly above the mask. He said, “You people from out of town?” Dad nodded. “That’ll be two-hundred dollars.” Dad said, “That’s ridiculous. If you think…”

A sawed off baseball bat, a foot and a half long, appeared in the clerk’s hand. He tapped it on the counter. “It’s our going out of business price.”

Dad stiffened, his knuckles going white as they gripped the edge of the check stand. Then he said, “Fine,” and opened Eric’s backpack. The gun in its holster still pressed Eric’s back. He wanted to yell, “Don’t, Dad! Don’t do it!” Dad pulled his wallet out of the pack instead, took two bills from it and laid them by the cash register.

Outside the store, Eric said, “Hundred dollar bills?”

Dad shrugged his shoulders. “I thought things might be pricey.”

Dad walked briskly, almost trotted, farther into town, looking at store signs as he passed them. He stopped at a bike shop and rattled the door, which was locked. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the window into the darkened building, then shook the door again. A second story window slapped open. Eric stepped into the street and looked up. An elderly woman, gray hair wrapped in a yellow scarf, looked back.

“We’re closed. Can’t you see, dear?” Her voice squeaked pleasantly. “The radio just said we’re in quarantine now. You boys should be home.”

To Eric’s relief, she agreed to open for them and sold them a pair of mountain bikes and helmets. Dad paid cash. She gave them a circular about a recreational bike rally from Idaho Springs to Georgetown in July. “This little fuss should be over by then, don’t you think?” Dad smiled and agreed. “Glad I could be of help,” she said. “Biking’s very healthful, you know. Don’t know why we ever bothered with cars.” A few minutes later, after she adjusted the seats and handles for them, they pedaled away. Eric turned and she waved. He waved back.

The trip to the cave went quickly once they left I-70 and its roaring trucks that kept them on the shoulder. The route was mostly downhill. Eric pedaled as fast as he could, then glided for minutes, the new knobby tires buzzing on the asphalt, before pedaling again. Dad kept close. Their shadows raced ahead as the sun dropped behind them.

When Eric reached the path to the cave, he hopped off the bike. Mother was not at the lookout, as far as he could tell. Dad skidded to a stop beside him. “Wait,” he said. “I need to show you something first. Turn around.”

Eric fidgeted as Dad dug in the pack. He heard the crackle of paper. “Here,” Dad said. Eric took the pharmacy bag from him, opened the top and shook out a bottle of pills. There was no label on the bottle. Cyanide, Eric thought. Dad’s flipped like that Jim Jones fellow in Jonestown. He shook the bottle. “What are they?”

“Pain killers. Tylenol four. Tylenol with codeine in them. I want you to know about them in case you have to be on your own.” Dad took the bottle from him. “I made a deal with the pharmacist. I paid fifteen bucks a pill, and he didn’t ask to see my prescription. People were lined up out the back.” Mom was sleeping behind the lookout rock. She’d made a bed with their blankets and set up a beach umbrella they’d taken to Florida the summer before to shade herself. Eric yelled when he saw her. She jerked awake and grabbed for the shotgun before she realized who he was. He hugged her for a long time, letting go only when he heard Dad struggling on the steep path with the two bikes. Mom and Dad sat up late, talking by the light of the Coleman lantern. Their voices rose and fell in a gentle mumble. Twenty feet away, Eric lay on his sleeping bag, looking at the shadows deep in the cracks of the cave’s ceiling high above. He’d washed in the river as the sun set, the water so cold that the shampoo wouldn’t lather, and when he finished, his jaws ached from shivering. Now he was warm and clean. The cassette player rested on his chest. He’d put the batteries in an hour ago, but he wanted to delay listening until his parents went to bed. Their talk, probably stupid stuff about mortgages or car payments he figured, sounded comforting.

I wonder where Amanda Grieves is right now, he thought. I wonder if she ever thinks about that day in the doorway. I wonder what she thought as she walked down the hall with her friends. Mom coughed once, and the conversation stopped. She coughed quietly again. Eric rolled to his side and propped himself on his elbow. The Coleman lantern glowed brightly on a rock shelf behind his parents who faced each other. They were very close, their foreheads almost touching, not saying anything. Eric watched them for a long time before he realized, there in the darkness of the cave, surrounded by boxes of canned goods, shotguns close by, miles from home, Dad held Mom’s hands.