James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

Water rose to their knees, and Eric lifted his knees high, forcing himself deeper. The inferno howled above. Mid-thigh now. Wind snapped their splashes straight away from them, then Eric stepped into a hole, pulling Leda down with him.

For a moment, silence: cold, clean and clear. Nothing. No explosions. No snapping, crackling, shattering roar. Mossy rocks slid beneath his hands as he let the current move him downriver. Water wrapped around him and held him: cool and calm and wet. The river bathed him, and it was only with real regret, seemingly minutes later, that he pushed himself up to gasp for breath.

Leda, panting, hunched over beside him, her face close to the waist-high water. Water streamed out of the bottom of her backpack, and her sleeping bag hung below it, a sodden, heavy weight, still partly in the river. Back to the wind, all the west bank a mural of fire behind them, they sucked in the moist air on the water’s surface together. Eric stepped next to her, careful of the slick-rock bottom, and put his arm around her shoulders. He could feel each of her breaths. She steadied herself with a hand at his waist.

“I thought you said…” She breathed in four or five more deep gulps of air. “… that the river was less than a half mile run.” She looked up at him, her face only inches away and smiled. Embarrassed, and not sure whether to laugh or not, he said, “Sorry.” He searched for words, but all he could finish with was, “Thanks. You know. For helping me get up.”

“You’re a lousy judge of distance, Eric.” She looked back down at the water an inch from her nose and leaned her head against his. “It’s a mile if it’s a foot.”

A hundred feet up-river, something exploded, sending a shower of glass into the water, turning the surface temporarily into foam. Eric said, “We ought to move to the middle.”

“Yeah,” she said without pulling her hand away, and they shuffled side by side, Eric’s arm still around her shoulder, farther from the bank.

The water didn’t get any deeper, and the current wasn’t swift. He had no trouble keeping his balance. When he judged they were far enough away, he stopped, bracing one foot against a moss-strewn rock on the bottom that he thought might be a cinder block. Fighting the wind was a harder task than the current, so he stayed bent down and let the water hold him in place. Explosions thumped deep in the flames. A foot from his hand, something small splashed into the river. Then, a yard on the other side, two more quick splashes.

Leda slapped her hand over her ear. “Ouch!” She glanced up at him. “Shrapnel?” She pulled the hand away and studied it. Eric saw a spot of blood. He was about to look at her ear, when a piercing pain in his back jerked him to an upright position. All around them, the water turned to foam. Something bounced off his shoulder. Leda scrambled to take off her backpack.

“Help me,” she said. “It’s hail.”

Trying to protect his head, Eric jerked at the sleeping bag’s water-knotted strings. Dozens of more marble-sized hail stones hit him before they opened the bag up. Leda flinched when they struck, but didn’t say anything, working quickly to unzip the bag and spreading it out over the water so they could hide under its thick protection.

They crouched in the cold water of the Platte River while hail hammered down, stinging Eric’s hands even through the heavy bag. Floating ice pellets piled up against his back. Eric shivered, shifting frequently to let them by. After a while, Leda closed her eyes, and Eric guessed from the line of her jaw she was struggling not to let her teeth chatter.

Drips fell steadily from the soaked bag. It ran down their arms. Eric could feel her leg quivering against his under the water. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m cold,” she said. Hail stones crashed the water’s surface into spray, and the chorus of tiny splashes sounded like bacon frying.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. “You’re tough.”

Her face close to his, the weight of the bag resting on their heads, she smiled a thanks at him, and he understood that he had said exactly the right thing at the right moment. He had given her a present. As suddenly as it had come, the wind slowed, and the hail fell nearly straight down. Without the wind to back it, the fires on shore seemed to lose their spirit, and instead of being an avalanche of unbroken flame, they became individual fires. From eye level, the river looked like liquid popcorn, still popping as the hail continued, flowing smoothly past. At his feet, the water seemed almost warm, but under his chin and down his chest and back, the coolness that had at first been such a miracle twenty minutes ago, had turned rock cold, and he found himself quivering in spasms so tight his face ached. Hail turned to rain, pressing down the fires. It didn’t look like the flame had crossed the river anywhere, and Eric realized that if the conflagration had begun on the other side of the river, his house might have burned down. Dad would have had nowhere to hide. The close call made him shake even harder, and Leda said, “Are you all right?”

Eric unclenched his jaw, and found he could barely move his arms to put the sleeping bag down. He stuttered, “Ye…yes.”

She pushed their cover away and turned him toward her, holding his face in her hands. The sleeping bag rolled slowly down stream, and the rain became slushy, not hurting, but mushing against him sloppily.

“Your lips are blue,” she said. “Come on.”

“We’ve lost the packs,” he said. He searched the river surface for any sign of them.

“Doesn’t matter,” she replied as she guided him across the water. Eric tried to help, but his legs seemed far away and unresponsive. Every rock reached out and tripped him. He fell several times, once banging his elbow on the bottom, but that didn’t rouse him. He tried to make a joke of it as they staggered out of the river, but his words slurred and sounded unfamiliar in his own ears.

Although the wind had died somewhat, a breeze still fluttered a torn American flag hanging in front of the bank, and Eric found himself staring at it because it looked strange. At first he decided it was the sunset light through the storm clouds—he was dimly aware that Leda was still tugging on his arm, dragging him up Littleton Boulevard, and it annoyed him; the flag was interesting—but then he saw the snow. The flag looked peculiar because the sleet had turned to giant white flakes, spinning lightly down. He thought, In June. Who’d have thought it’d snow in June? It stuck in Leda’s dark hair. He reached up to pluck a flake out, but his fingers wouldn’t pinch together, and he bumped the back of her head. She said, “You’re frozen.” He thought her lips looked pretty blue too, and he didn’t want to say this, but he liked the way her blouse stuck to her. “We’ve got to get you warm,” she added. He tried to say, “I just need to rest,” but it came out, “I yusht nee to resht.” After what seemed like hours of Leda pulling, and Eric pausing to lean against light poles or mail boxes, he found himself in a front yard alone. Where’s she? he thought. Snow still fell thickly. He couldn’t see the grass at all. Rotating slowly, he looked for her. Their footsteps marking the snow showed where they’d come from. Soberly, he followed their path with his eyes until he reached his own feet. I’m here, he thought. I’m not lost. It’s her fault. He turned and tracked her steps to the house, a white bungalow with blue trim. On the door, someone had painted a blue goose with a “Welcome” sign on it. Her steps led to the front window, and it took him a moment to notice that it was broken in. Nearly all the glass was gone. The front door opened, and Leda hurried out. “It’s empty,” she said. “Furnace is off, but I found blankets.” Her teeth did chatter now, loudly. She led him up the step, through the living room, and into a bedroom. It was so dark inside he could barely see her. He started shaking again. She moved around the room, but he couldn’t tell what she was doing. She said, “We’ve got to get warm.” He could see the outline of the bed, and the urge to lay down moved him toward it. I’ll be better after some sleep, he thought. We’re in Littleton now, and Dad’s not far away.