James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

“Shelley,” she’d said, and waved her hand at the city where smoke rose in the distance, and the silence sounded like the end of an epitaph.

“Eric,” said Teach, and Eric gasped. His next step would take him over a ledge and a sixty foot drop. Pine tops fell smoothly away to the bottom of the valley, where a glitter revealed an otherwise hidden stream.

“Sorry,” he said, disoriented. Leda’s voice echoed in his head. “I wandered.” He backed away and leaned against a hip-high, gray boulder sticking from the hillside, gnarled as an old knuckle.

“This might be a place to catch the kids,” said Teach. “They’re clever, but the only way through is right here. No cover. We hide ourselves up in those trees and wait awhile, then we can send them home.” He’s taking this rest for me, thought Eric, and the knowledge didn’t make him angry. He sighed thankfully. If I could get off my feet for a few minutes, I’ll feel better. A half hour maybe, and I’ll be strong until sunset.

Teach cleared an area under a crooked pine for them, then dragged a heavily limbed dead-fall in front for cover. His back against the tree, Eric had a perfect view of the way they had come. The conduit curved around the side of the mountain, more clinging to it than resting on it. Below, the mountain steepened into a short cliff, and a face of unbroken rock set at a steep angle rose above. If Troy, Rabbit and Ripple were following them, there would be no place here to hide. Sunlight stretched shadows up the valley. Eric guessed they had only a couple of hours left before they’d need to bed down.

“How far from Kassler Lake now?” said Eric.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground beside him, tightening his boot’s leather lace, Teach answered without looking up. “Another four miles or so. We’ve got a little dirt road to cross in about a mile.” The lace snapped. He dug into his pack, found another length of leather, and began restringing the boot. “Don’t believe we’ll make the lake today at this rate,” he said without rancor. “Not many miles, but it’s all slow going.”

“I’m sorry,” Eric said, and he was about to say something more about brittle bones, but Teach interrupted.

“I like the pace.” Pushing the stiff string through worn holes, Teach kept his head down, then said,

“You’re almost a legend, you know. My boys are half convinced you’re part god or ghost. You’re of cities, television, cars… that stuff.”

Not knowing what to say, Eric rested his head against the pine’s trunk.

After many minutes of silence, a clatter of rocks in the valley startled Eric out of a near doze. I am tired, he thought. He crawled to the edge a few feet away. A line of deer ran up the stream, their hooves striking rocks as they went.

Teach said, “I heard that during the Gone Time you couldn’t see animals unless you went to a zoo.” Eric grinned. He liked the big, friendly man. “I’ll bet you believe a lot of half-truths. Where I come from, I’m constantly straightening people out about it.”

“Now’s a good time. Educate me. Like, start by telling me about being there, things I haven’t heard before.” Teach ruffled his beard, knocking dust into the air.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard.”

“Start with yourself. Gone Time’s a long time gone now. Doesn’t it seem almost like a fairy tale to you?” Teach asked.

Eric thought about Leda’s poem. For a moment, it was if he could have lifted up his hand and touched her, her freshly washed face, her half-smile as she recited the words. “No, not like that,” he said. “In some ways I feel more there now then I did then. Does that make sense?”

“Some,” said Teach. The clatter of deer hooves had faded. Eric strained to hear, but all that was there was the water music of the stream.

“I miss odd parts of the Gone Time,” said Eric. “Contrails, for example.” Teach looked up, interested.

“Jets, 30,000 feet up or even higher left cloud tracks called contrails. On a clear, blue day, the jets wrote their path across the sky. You’d hear them, humming away, and when I was a kid I’d look for where the sound was. Jets were so fast their sound couldn’t keep up, but they’d leave those contrails so you could find them, a tiny pin of silver reflection pulling that long cloud. I miss that.”

“Yeah,” Teach said. “That would be something.”

“Chocolate bars.” Eric shifted, felt beneath him and found a pine cone under his thigh. Its rough surface was tacky with sap on one side. He flicked it away. “I remember walking into a store and standing in the candy aisle, the smell of chocolate heavy as a quilt. You’d peel away the aluminum, and there it was, dull, dark and delicious. Umm, the thought’s enough.”

“My dad complained he missed cigarettes.”

Eric hardly heard him. He half closed his eyes. “On Christmas, they used to string all the trees on Littleton Boulevard with tiny, white lights. When it snowed and those lights were on, it was like a postcard.” He remembered walking down the street one bitter night when he was five or six, holding the little finger on his dad’s glove. Snow squeaked underfoot, and lights filled the trees. Breath froze in his nose.

“That doesn’t sound bad,” said Teach. “Ripple’s hard on the Gone Time. I hope her version of it isn’t the one that survives.”

“Maybe it will be like memories,” said Eric. “We’ll remember the good stuff and forget the bad. I’m not an apologist for the evils Ripple talked about. She’s right in some ways, but I think we’re losing more by throwing technology and science and knowledge away than we gain by becoming… becoming… barbarians.”

Teach stood up and tested the newly strung boot. “I don’t feel like a barbarian.” With his rough leather vest, short skirt and homemade pack, with his full beard and long hair, Teach looked barbarian to Eric.

“But you know what I’m talking about,” said Eric. “You’ve read about the Gone Time and the things we did. The cities… well, that’s a part, but a small one. The books hold what the Gone Time really has to offer: the science, the mathematics, the poetry. When we get to Boulder, that’s what we’ll find, the knowledge to beat whatever makes my people sick. That’s what I’ve tried to instill in Rabbit and Dodge; it’s what my son never learned, that knowledge and knowing where to go to get it is the difference between man and animal. No matter how far back we slide, as long as there are books, we have a chance.”

He thought Teach looked embarrassed. Eric sat up a little straighter. His legs really did feel a bit better now. “I’m sorry,” said Eric. “I know I’m preaching to the choir. You’ve read books too.” Teach didn’t speak. He walked around the screen of dead pine and peered up the valley. He slapped his hand against his leg. “Dang, I’ve an idea we’ve been had,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m gonna check something. Stay here and I’ll be back in a half hour or so.” He grabbed a piece of jerky from his pack. “One for the road, as my dad would say.” He stepped around the screen again, then paused. He said, “Oh, Eric.”