James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

“She’s buried by that boulder,” Eric said. “Underneath this…” The Columbines shimmered in the canyon dusk. “… this… blue quilt.”

Dodge said, “Doesn’t look much like a grave, Grandpa.”

Eric sighed deeply. His breath shook a little when he exhaled. On his knees, the flowers spread out before him like an affirmation of beauty and life, and he recalled when he first went to school how he’d kneel on a footstool in front of his Mother so she could comb his hair. He felt her hand on the back of his neck and her breath in his face.

“That’s the way it should be,” he said. “Nothing ought to look like a grave.”

“Shush!” said Eric. He put his arm across Dodge’s chest to stop him. They were almost to the old watch post. “I saw something.” Rabbit stepped past Eric and surveyed the road. Sun shone on the canyon wall east of them, but deep blue shadows filled the valley Eric had stood watch over years ago. He looked west, toward Idaho Springs. Whatever caught his attention wasn’t moving now.

Rabbit said, “I see them.”

“Who?” asked Eric.

“Don’t know, but they’re sitting by the creek.”

Eric strained his eyes. All he could see was foam on the rocks and a scattering of low plants lining the river. He squinted. Nothing.

“Where? Are they ghosts?” said Dodge.

“By the bank, there,” said Rabbit. He pointed. “Two by that rock and another on the shoulder.” Frustrated, Eric gritted his teeth, then turned his head—an old hunter’s trick—and let his peripheral vision go to work.

Dodge said, “Ah, I see.”

Eric dug into his backpack for binoculars. When he found them, Rabbit was halfway to the road. “What’s he doing?” Eric hissed.

Dodge sighed. “He’s always going off on his own. Lots of times when we scavenge he’ll leave me, and I won’t see him for the rest of the day.”

Eric focused the binoculars where Rabbit had said he saw the figures by the creek. “He’s not going to find anything. Nobody’s there.”

Dodge said, “’Course not. Soon as Rabbit moved, they took off.”

“Where?”

“Up the slope.” Dodge shivered. “They might be ghosts. I watched them until they reached those bushes…” He pointed to a half dozen scraggly clumps of rabbit brush that couldn’t hide a good sized marmot, “…then they kind of melted into the ground.”

Eric raised his eyebrows.

“Honest. Like coyotes. You see them for a few feet, then they’re gone.”

“Were they people?”

“No.” He gulped. “They were b….” He colored and looked away.

“Dodge?”

“You won’t believe me.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “You’ll laugh. It’s just a story they tell little kids to scare them after dark.”

“What’s the story?”

“You won’t make fun?” Dodge asked. Eric shook his head.

Rabbit reached the road, crouched low and ran on the shoulder next to the canyon wall, keeping out of sight of the creek. Eric swept the length of the canyon with the binoculars. Nothing.

“It’s about the Gone Time. Dad told me the story when we went hunting. He said that in the Gone Time people were very proud. That they flew higher than birds and clouds, that they drove faster than arrows in their cars on the roads, that they lived in the buildings we scavenge, but that the buildings were beautiful and rose thousands of feet in the air. He said there were so many people that I could never count all of them because babies would be born faster than I could tally.”

Dodge paused and looked at Eric. “Is all that true, Grandpa. Are all the stories you told us true?” Surprised, Eric said, “Of course. Why would I lie to you?”

“Grown-ups make up stuff. I know about Santa Claus, and he’s a lie.” Rabbit reached the spot where he’d said he’d seen the three figures. He stood on the edge of the road, looking left and right.

Eric stroked his grandson’s hair. Dodge reminded him of Troy, who had been hard-headed and skeptical. Troy had never believed man had walked on the moon, or that Denver used to glow at night like a sea of stars.

“Santa Claus is different. The Gone Time is history, and history is real.”

“Like Star Wars? Eric sighed. How could he teach Dodge the difference between reality and fiction when both sounded so fantastic? “I’ll have to explain that later. What was the story your dad told you?” Dodge looked disappointed, but he continued. “He said the Gone Time people got so proud that they spread all over the Earth building towns and driving their cars and watching their TVs. He said no one had to work because machines did everything and all they did was write poetry and go to parties.” Eric smiled at Dodge’s fractured version of history. “The stories you tell about the Gone Time don’t sound like that, but I’m just saying what Dad told me. Anyway, he said the Gone Time people kept knocking down forests and filling up the world till there wasn’t any place for the Bugbears.”

“The Bugbears?”

“Yes. Dad said they lived on the Earth before people did, and they didn’t mind sharing, but when there was no place for them to be private anymore, they came out of their holes in the ground and their secret places in the trees that were left. They touched people on their foreheads when they were sleeping, and when they woke up they got sick and died. The Bugbears went to everybody’s houses and decided who was bad, and they touched them.” Dodge pressed his finger in the middle of his forehead. “Good people they kissed and let live.”

“You think those were Bugbears by the river?”

Dodge nodded. “Dad said that sometimes you can see one if you’re real quiet for a long time. I figure it’s Bugbears that have been following us.”

Rabbit trotted on the road toward them.

Eric said, “That’s as good an explanation as any, I suppose.” He shouldered Rabbit’s backpack and his own. “Let’s get off the mountain. Unless you want to spend the night with rattlesnakes?” Rabbit waited for them at the bottom.

“Did you see them?” asked Dodge when they finally reached Rabbit. He shook his head. “Nothing there but a footprint on a rock. One of them must have stepped in the water.”

“But where did they go?” said Dodge.

Rabbit took his backpack from Eric and slipped the straps over his shoulders. “Don’t know. They’d have to be mountain goats to climb that hill.”

Dodge started hiking toward the blocked tunnel. “Bugbears,” he said. Eric expected Rabbit to laugh or say something derisive about Dodge’s theory. Instead, Rabbit looked at Dodge and raised his eyebrows as if to say, “Could be.”

After they pitched camp and doused the campfire with creek water, Eric lay on his back staring into the canopy of stars, each as bright and sharp as a new needle. He felt that tonight, if he stared hard enough, he could separate the individual stars in the Milky Way. If he just concentrated, he could pick out the planets circling each, count their moons, follow the paths of wandering comets alone and cold with no sun to burn them.

The grave had him thinking about his parents. I’m seventy-five, he thought, and I miss my mom. I miss them both. Of all the people he’d ever known, of all the reactions he had seen to the plague and the change in the world, they had seemed the most flexible and resilient.

He pushed his hands under the small of his back. The extra support always felt good when he wasn’t sleeping on a mattress.

“Are you awake?” asked Rabbit. Eric rolled his head to the side and saw that Rabbit was sitting up in his sleeping bag, leaning against his backpack. The night was too dark to show his features, but his eyes glistened, reflecting the little light there was.