James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

After a few minutes, the air cleared, and the canyon was quiet again. The river noise sounded unchanged. An hour before dawn, he fell asleep. Dad hadn’t come back yet.

A black, muscled, immense shape heaved itself over the South Glenn Mall, scattering cars in the parking lot like children’s blocks. Its knuckles scraped the pavement. Sirens howled on University Boulevard behind Eric. He flattened his back on a brick wall and tried not to move, to not breathe. (He knew it was the Littleton Saving and Loan building that stood on the corner of the mall’s parking lot on the corner of University and Bellview.)

The ape tore a light pole from its fixture, studied it briefly, then flicked it a hundred feet. There were no people in the scene, just empty cars and the giant black figure. Eric smelled him, a vast animal odor like a hundred zoos on a hot summer afternoon.

In the background, a harmony of engines hummed, then grew] louder. (The biplanes are coming! The biplanes are coming!) Eric tried to shout, “Run away! Run away!” but his best effort sounded no louder than a squeak. He wanted to wave to him and warn him but he was too frightened. What if the ape spotted him? Eric’s inarticulate love bubbled within, but he was afraid of the size, the strength, the unbridled power. A creature so big shouldn’t die, he thought. They’ll drive him up some tower so they can knock him down. They’ll shoot him and he’ll never understand why they won’t let him live. In the dream—Eric knew he was dreaming—a blue van, its windows knocked out and its tires flat, limped into the parking lot. His mother was driving. “Stop, Mom!” he tried to yell. “Don’t let him get you.” But she drove to the monster’s feet. The ape looked at the van with his vast, glistening eyes, then bent down to peer in the window. Mom stopped and got out. She put her hands on her hips and stared up at him unafraid.

Eric struggled, but it was as if the wall held him. His voice called out in slow motion notes that were deep and incomprehensible. Don’t you know the story? The ape picks up the single person, plucks her from the ground and bites her in two. It’s his nature. It’s not his fault, but you can’t get close to him. He is death.

It is Mom, isn’t it? The woman standing at the ape’s feet became slender and blond. She was Fay Wray. Eric knew she was his mom, but she was also Fay Wray. The ape cupped her into his hand and lifted her from the parking lot.

Eric shouted.

He brought her close to his face, his teeth visible.

He rubbed his cheek against her.

The engine noise rose to a deafening level.

King Kong clutched Mom/Fay Wray to his breast, straightened and shook his fist into the sky. The first biplane circled high above, then winged over and began its attack. The next one followed. The next one followed. The next one followed.

The sun woke Eric, and he lay in his sleeping bag by the boulder for a long time before he remembered yesterday’s events. He slid out of the bag and brushed the goose bumps off his arms. On the rock, the radio still played, but now it repeated one message continuously, “The Denver Public Health Department asks you to please stay in your homes.” Then it listed the hospitals that were no longer accepting patients. From the size of the list, Eric wondered vaguely if they wouldn’t save time by announcing the hospitals that were open instead.

He folded the sleeping bag mechanically, trying to think about what he should do next. His brain seemed full of fog, though, and thinking was like walking in knee-deep mud. Maybe Dad passed him while he slept, and was in the cave right now. Eric crawled through the cave’s entrance, pushing the flashlight ahead of him, but Dad was not there. He avoided looking at the mattress where his mother’s blanketed body lay. The idea of waiting for Dad held no appeal, but he didn’t want to leave her either. Last night’s explosion finally decided the issue for him; he needed to search for Dad. He needed to do something, though, about Mom before he left. The blankets didn’t seem enough protection, somehow. He envisioned mice nibbling on the corpse, shuddered, and quickly spread the sheet of black plastic that Dad had used to protect the mattresses originally over the body. He tucked the edges under and checked carefully for any spaces a mouse might try. When he finished, his hands felt soiled, as if the plastic were slimy. He rubbed them hard against his jeans, but that didn’t help, so he washed them with drinking water.

Squatting next to the body, he watched the play of light reflect off the plastic. Finally, he placed his palm where his mother’s shoulder would be. The plastic crackled and gave off no warmth; it was the exact temperature of the rocks around him. He spoke into the silence, “Goodbye, Mom,” and the quiet that followed felt like the closing of a book.

He threw packages of beef jerky, several cans of fruit and an extra canteen into his backpack, made sure the desk key Dad had given him was secure in a side pocket, wrote his dad a note, and left the cave, dragging his bike after him.

As soon as he rounded the corner on the highway he saw the result of last night’s explosion. A jumble of rock choked the tunnel opening, and a bare spot on the mountain above the entrance showed where rock had sheared off to drop on the road. A refrigerator-sized boulder sat in a crater in the asphalt seventy-five yards from the rock pile.

A fisherman’s trail, the only way out of the canyon, followed the river, where it vanished into a light morning mist that drifted off the water, giving the scene an otherworldly look. Eric hoisted the bike on his shoulder and walked past the remnants of their van, which reminded him of his dream (“The biplanes are coming!”) and generated within him a strong feeling of deja vu; not a bad feeling, but very creepy, like the top of his head was floating away, as if he’d stepped out of time. The farther he walked, the stranger he felt. The trail didn’t seem connected to the real world. Water tinkled musically over the rocks, and the air smelled moist and clean. All the colors vibrated, even through the mist.

An animal crossed the path fifty yards in front of him. Eric thought it was a German shepherd at first, the biggest shepherd he’d ever seen, but it moved so smoothly that he couldn’t believe it was a dog. It trotted up the hill on its big paws (What big teeth you have grandma, Eric thought), and just before it disappeared behind a ridge it looked back at Eric with clear, light blue eyes. Eric almost waved at it. Eric turned around. The van was out of sight; he couldn’t see the road. For a second, he wasn’t sure which direction he’d come from; both were unfamiliar. He noticed hip high, broad-leafed plants a shade of green he’d never seen before growing next to the water. He dropped his bike and scrambled down the slope. Their leaves were thick and waxy. He broke one in half. A thick, milky fluid oozed out of the wound, and he caught a strong citrus odor like a tangerine. Triangular, dull orange beetles scurried up and down the plant’s stalks. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d stepped away from reality, that these weren’t Colorado plants, that this wasn’t the Colorado he knew. He climbed back to the trail, picked up his bike and continued on.

Suddenly he realized he wasn’t alone. Sitting on the slope above the trail fifty feet away, their backpacks beside them, three hikers, an old man and two boys were eating a meal. A complicated series of wrinkles criss-crossed the old one’s leather-colored face. He smiled and spoke to one of the boys, but Eric didn’t hear what he said. When he walked just below them, the old one glanced up and met Eric’s eyes. Eric’s throat constricted. The creepy feeling of being displaced in time swept through him so intensely, he thought he would fall over. He didn’t want the old man to say anything to him. Don’t talk to me, old man, he thought. I don’t know what to say to you. Something in the man’s eyes, something compassionate, made Eric think he understood.