James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

“Check it out first.” He frowned at the building at the end of the path. “What is this place?” The three-story brick building stood at one end of a long stretch of grandstand. Weeds covered the remains of a chain link fence that started at the building and reached for a half mile north. Eric said,

“Bandimere Raceway, I think. There use to be drag races here.”

Rabbit raised his eyebrows.

Eric explained, “Two specially built cars—very fast—raced from one end of the track to the other. Lots of people came to watch. Probably five-thousand or so depending on who was racing.”

“It smells.”

Eric sniffed deeply, “Diesel exhaust. Probably a generator. You boys are in for a real treat.” A broad, cracked but neatly swept sidewalk bordered the building and led Eric and Rabbit to a pair of glass double doors. A hand painted sign hung above the doors proclaimed, Phil’s Place. Eric looked around for Dodge. A long series of stairs tumbled down the hill to what must have been the pit area for the racers. A huge, heavily rusted though mostly intact, girder and sheet metal canopy protected the stands on the west side of the track that stretched for three-quarters of a mile and ended at the base of another hill. Eric thought the knife edged abruptness of the road’s end was odd-looking and somehow disturbing, like a door that opened into a wall or a book with blank pages. He imagined Friday nights, the parking lot full, high-octane dragsters roaring fire from their exhausts, the spectators murmuring expectantly, and he smelled beer slopped out of plastic cups, rubber burnt from smooth-treaded funny cars, and the close, humid warmth of the crowd pressed shoulder to shoulder.

“We loved our cars,” he said.

“’Scuse me?” Rabbit stood by the doors.

“Sorry. Just reminiscing. Where’s Dodge off to do you think?”

Rabbit shrugged, opened the door, then disappeared inside. Eric followed.

The artificial lighting caught Eric’s eye first. Ceiling-mounted panels of translucent plastic glowed brightly. He hadn’t seen electric light for two decades. It took a few seconds for him to look away at the rest of the room. He stepped to a green metal railing and saw on the floor below a dozen highly polished, factory-fresh show cars. Dodge was peering into the side window of a lemon-yellow Ferrari. Rabbit jumped down the stairs and joined him.

“’Lectricity!” yelled Dodge.

The showroom floor glistened under the lights. The darkly tinted windows opposite Eric reflected the scene. Somebody must be watching us, he thought. We’re in a museum. He dropped his backpack to the floor. “Don’t touch anything, boys.”

A door in the middle of the tinted window wall swung open. “Why not?” a voice boomed. A tall man in stained mechanic’s overalls shut the door behind him. “Touch ’em. Bang on ’em. Hell, you can even make love to ’em if you can get ’em on their backs.” His bald head gleamed as he walked toward the boys. He ran his hand over the polished metal of each car he passed. Eric guessed he was in his mid-thirties.

“Heaven knows you aren’t going to drive ’em.”

“Why not?” Dodge asked. Rabbit backed away, putting the Ferrari between him and the stranger. The man patted Dodge on the back. “The gods are dead, son. This is a hollow church. Gas is no good, and their batteries are shot. I’ve got a couple of diesel cars in the garage that’ll run if I start ’em from the generator, but I don’t use ’em much. Roads are awful, you know.” He smiled at Eric, a big smile that bared his upper gums and folded his eyes into a confusion of wrinkles.

Eric said, “You must be Phil.”

“Mom named me after a service station. Hard to believe. Why don’t you come down, old-timer? There’s enough stew in the pot for the three of you, and I can use the company.” He tousled Dodge’s hair.

“Sure,” said Eric. “Nice of you to offer.” But as he was saying it, Rabbit caught his eyes and shook his head, almost imperceptibly, no. Eric hesitated, then continued down the stairs. First chance he got, he’d take Rabbit aside and find out what bothered him.

Electrical appliances packed the room behind the car museum. Pinball machines lined one wall. Above them, shelves held blenders, food processors, mixers, espresso machines, electric carving knives and hot air popcorn poppers. An expanse of televisions, their screens dust free and blank, covered another wall, a VCR tucked beneath each. Video tapes filled cabinets from floor to ceiling. Dodge stopped, obviously awed. The screens tossed back fish-eyed reflections of him.

Phil said, “You ever see one of these working, boy?”

Dodge’s face lit up. “Oh, no.” He spun around. “Grandpa, can we? You can see pictures?” He clapped his hands to his mouth. “Gosh.”

Phil punched a button on the VCR in the middle. The numbers, 12:00, blinked on and off in the clock display. The machine buzzed and ejected a tape. “Don’t think you want to watch this one,” he said. The way he slid it behind the other tapes in the cabinet made Eric wonder what was on it. “How about this?” he said as he selected a title. “ Star Wars. Third copy I’ve used. Wore the others right out. Of course I’ve got a whole case of ’em. Long as I keep the generators running and the juice hooked up the force will be with me.” He laughed at his joke.

The screen flickered. Then Phil fast forwarded through the FBI warning. “Long ago…” read Rabbit, “in a galaxy far, far away….”

“We’ll bring you boys some stew,” said Phil. He motioned to Eric, and they left the room. “Figure that’ll keep ’em for an hour or two. Got some things I want to ask you.”

They walked through a long hallway, doors on both sides. “My mom’s cathedral,” said Phil. He opened the first door and turned on a light. “Have to watch how many lights I have on. Generator poops out with too much of a load.” Eric glimpsed cases of light bulbs piled to the ceiling. Mirrors packed the next room. Long ones, the kind people used to put on the backs of bathroom doors or at the ends of hallways leaned against the wall. Hand mirrors, their handles pointing in all directions, filled boxes on shelves. “You know how hard it is to manufacture a mirror?” asked Phil. “Mom says you have to store the goods people can’t make.”

“What do you mean when you say this is your mom’s cathedral?”

Phil closed the mirror room door. He wiped the handle clean with a rag he pulled from a back pocket.

“Cathedral, man, a church. She says, ‘Keep the flame of technology burning.’” He cleared his throat, then spit into the rag.

Boxes of electric tools filled the next room: drills, saws, screwdrivers, air-hammers, power painters, sanders and others Eric didn’t recognize. “‘America was great,’ she used to say. ‘We ruled the Earth.’” They walked past two doors that Phil didn’t open. “‘Gods,’ she said. ‘We were gods.’ We used to go into Denver. U.S. 6 out of Golden is still passable. She knew where stuff was stored, or she had a nose for it. We collected goods. Mom called it ‘harvesting the fields.’ When I could drive a truck, I helped. Of course, even then we had to push start everything.”

“Batteries,” said Eric. “We can’t make a battery.”

“Don’t you know it. It’s a problem of shelf life. Things just don’t last. If Mom had any sense, she’d have frozen a hundred car batteries while they were still good. We had a huge fight about it. She whacked me, she always whacks me, and said, ‘Hindsight is twenty-twenty. I’d like to see you do better.’ Well, I know now. You keep something perishable like that cold, then take it out later and it’ll be good as new. That’s where most of my electricity goes now, keeping the freezers and refrigerators going.” The hallway’s end door opened into a cavernous garage. The building was much larger than Eric had suspected. He guessed there might be over a hundred vehicles parked there: cars (all on blocks), trucks, tractors, boats, motorcycles and earth moving machines. Back in the shadows, far from the string of lights that ran through the middle of the garage, Eric saw the unmistakable outline of a tank, its gun pointing phallically up. The air smelled vaguely of oil and tires.