James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

Sitting back in the employee chair, his flashlight still off, Eric looked at the light under the door, at the shadow. The shower turned off. Silence replaced the throb of falling water. He heard her walk. He heard a towel rubbing briskly. It’s her backpack, he thought. She leaned her backpack against the door, and a thought came to him very clearly, like a wave crashing on a beach: sometime while I was showering, or maybe even when I was toweling off, Leda pushed open that door and looked at me. That’s why my pack was moved. She looked at me, then went back to the clothes section so I would never know. I stood naked in the water, and she watched me.

He didn’t know what to think of the thought.

But it made him happy.

Eric was unhappy. Dodge and Rabbit stood in front of him in a gully removed from the road. Farther down, just out of earshot, Teach argued with Ripple, his gestures wide and sweeping. She stood defiantly, arms across her chest, chin thrust out. High and bright, the sun glared off tiny mica specks in the surrounding rocks, while a fresh breeze swept the bitter smell of cordite away. Federal’s blockade was out of sight, but only the curve of the canyon hid them from it.

Eric shaded his eyes and said, “This has to be my last word, boys. As long as we were just hiking, you could come along, but men with guns are too dangerous. Go back to Highwater with Ripple. Teach says she knows a safe way. He and I will go on alone.”

“Grandpa, you’ll need our help,” said Dodge. He jammed his fists on his hips and glared. Eric could see Troy in him, clear as if his son were there. He wanted to hold him, and for a moment, tears quivered beneath the surface. Dodge was younger than Troy was before the disastrous deer hunt that changed everything between them. Troy had never read with him again, had never said again, “I love you, Dad.” He cupped the side of Dodge’s face; the skin felt smooth and warm. His eyes glistened. The brown orbs reflected back the sun. “You will be helping,” said Eric. “I’ll travel better knowing you are safe.” Dodge’s lips set grimly, and his ten-year-old expression looked tragic and adult. He nodded, then turned away. Eric almost ran after him. The thought that Dodge might grow to hate him the same way Troy did made him queasy. Rabbit picked up their backpacks and followed. When Ripple finished her argument with Teach, she joined the boys, and the three of them climbed over a ridge above the road and disappeared.

Teach’s voice rumbled quietly behind him. “They’ll be off the road.” He clasped Eric’s shoulder. “Of course, she’s like a shadow, that one. I don’t expect Federal’s men could catch her in these mountains if she didn’t want to be caught, and from what I’ve seen of Rabbit, he could hold his own too. About the only mortal there is your grandson, and he’s got a touch of quickness himself.” Eric grunted uncomfortably. “They’re just kids. I’m responsible to the boy’s father.”

“Hah,” Teach chuckled. “All you had to do was lie like a rock and Federal’s gunners walked right by.” He pointed after the children. “Keep your eyes to your hind side. My guess is they’ll double back and trail us anyway. We’re gonna have to catch them, then send them on their way.” Eric thought for a second. The breeze rustled in the pines on the other side of the road, carrying the smell of water rolling past sun-hot rocks. “You’re right. They probably will.” His spirits lightened. He thought, you can’t crush a ten-year-old’s spirit. Dodge wouldn’t hate him. Only a teenager can truly hate his parent. “Don’t know what I was thinking. Of course they’ll do that. So, let’s take off. How far do we have to go to get there?”

Teach scratched his chin. “Only a dozen miles if you were a crow. Crow wouldn’t fly as much up and down as we’ll have to walk though.”

Teach took him up the road away from the blockade, then pushed through a screen of creek-willow. Wet ground sucked at Eric’s boots for a few steps until the path climbed steeply up and turned into a series of rock handholds. Within a few yards, it was all Eric could do to keep moving. “Not much…” he gasped, “of this, is there?”

Teach grunted and heaved himself out of sight. He helped Eric to the top, where a long grassy trail paralleled a stretch of man-high rusted iron conduit that reached in both directions around the curve on the mountain.

“Part of old Boulder’s water supply,” said Teach. “The intake is in Barker Reservoir upstream.” A shower of red flakes fell from the pipe when Eric rubbed it. He wiped the red stain onto his pants.

“Does it still work?”

“You’re looking at the longest unbroken section, I think,” said Teach. “Machinery’s all rusted or busted at the high end, and it’s got dozens of ruptures. Whole piece a few hundred yards long is gone a couple of turns from here.”

They began walking. The service path, a pair of ruts at first, grown over with thin mountain grass, deteriorated, and soon they were pushing through thick, pungent brambles. Eric swore and pulled a long thorn from the fleshy pad at the base of his thumb.

Making a path in front of him, Teach continued, “We can follow this to Kassler Lake, about six miles from here. Then we’ll take the maintenance road under the Bear Canyon power line to The National Center for Atmospheric Research. That’ll put us on Boulder’s southwest corner. Unless Federal’s drummed up a whole hell of a lot of men, we shouldn’t have any trouble getting into town. If he’s got all the roads covered, I’d be surprised. Must be fifty of them.”

“How far total did you say?” asked Eric. A mile of this and he’d be done for the day. He was leg-weary. But it was more than that, he knew. It was age. Plain old age. The first few days were fine, but lately, any path uphill strained in his chest and sent creepy tingles into his arms. He’d caught himself walking a couple of times today, lost. Not just where he was, but who he was and why he was there. For a few seconds, the effect had dizzied him. Boulder was gone. His son was gone. It was like he’d been dropped into the world, a blank slate, and it took a shaking of the head, a look at his own wrinkled and liver-spotted hands to bring himself back. It occurred to him, while he watched Teach pushing aside a bush to make his way easier, that he might not finish this trip. He could drop any moment. No one would blame him. His seventy-five years felt like a long, dry desert road. Behind him it reached, fine and distinct, but the wind was blowing fierce and he couldn’t see much before him. Just dunes.

Leda had said something to him once about dunes. They’d been walking away from the Wal-Mart where they had found fresh clothes. The street was hot, and his new shirt collar rubbed a sunburn he hadn’t realized he’d had (following a few feet behind her, watching her walk, he was thinking about the sound of water, hearing the water fall in the shower, soft then loud, a sudden splash as she must have moved beneath it). She said, “Have you ever been to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument?” A moment of shame stopped him from answering. It didn’t feel right to be thinking of her in the shower. It seemed like a tiny betrayal. “Yes,” he said, finally, and she didn’t comment on his pause. “The park ranger there said the dunes marched. I thought it a funny word, ‘marched,’ since they looked so solid, but he said they did and he said they swallowed everything in their way. Then he read us a poem.” She looked back, shyly Eric thought, the color high in her cheeks. “It’s the only poem I’ve ever memorized. Do you want to hear it?” He said, “Sure,” and she recited the poem. Later he had looked it up and memorized it himself. Steeply, the hillside sloped away from them, and to keep from falling, Eric braced his hand in the dirt, careful to avoid the spiny milk-weeds that sprang up everywhere. In places, the aqueduct’s footings hung suspended above the ground that had once held them sturdy. He breathed unevenly, and the poem came back to him, all of it. He hadn’t really thought about it in years. Her hair had dried in shiny dark ringlets that fell to her shoulders, and as he half slid, half walked behind Teach, he remembered her low-throated voice.