Soft Apocalypse

short-wave communication with people there,” Phoebe said. “Of course that was almost six months ago.”

We fell into disappointed silence, listening to the two boys talk about killing.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m sick of these ghost towns.”

“Where would we live if we went back?” Colin asked. “With so many people dead, there might be more places to live, or there may be less because so much was burned, but it doesn’t matter, because we have no way to pay rent.”

“The Poohbah’s making a zigzag that’s likely to terminate Twig’s hall pass,” the broadcaster said.

We looked at each other; we looked at the floor.

“Well, if Savannah’s infrastructure is intact, I can certainly provide you with all the money you need to get started,” Jean Paul said. “But I doubt that’s the case.”

I guess I could have interpreted that as a generous offer, but to me it reeked of condescension.

“Why don’t we just head in that direction?” I suggested. “We don’t want to head west toward Athens, or Atlanta, which is bound to be worse than Savannah. South is going to be hotter and dryer. North is where all those rifles are. We can scout out Savannah, and if it’s bad we could head north up the coast.”

No one had any better ideas, so we headed in the general direction of home.

“There is no such word as ‘jerkin.’ I’ve never heard or seen the word ‘jerkin’ in my life,” Phoebe said as she jumped from the roof of an SUV, crashed through bamboo stalks and onto the hood of a sedan.

“There is,” I said. “It’s from back in Conan the Barbarian times—it’s like a leather vest. You can store your quiver of arrows in it.”

“I’m going to find a dictionary. You want to make a bet?”

“It won’t be in a little pocket dictionary, but if you can find one of those giant dictionaries that could fell a charging ox, I’ll bet you. I wish there was still an Internet. We could just Google it.”

I caught a glimpse of color in the distance, felt the stirrings of a thrill deeply conditioned in me from childhood. Bright multicolor flags, red-and-white-striped awnings. A Ferris wheel, stretching high above the bamboo. “Oh my,” I said. “The carnival is in town.”

Phoebe looked confused for a moment, then she saw what I was looking at and broke into a big smile. “Oh man, do I love a good seedy carnival.”

“Me too,” I said. “You think the owners left any good salvage when they abandoned it?”

“Probably not. They were probably traveling light, moving from town to town.” She slapped at something behind her ear, looked at her hand. “Then again, the only way to know for sure would be to make a quick trip over there.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Yes, maybe a quick reconnaissance trip is in order.”

“And maybe one quick trip down that gigantic slide.”

There was indeed a gigantic slide, with three progressively bigger swells. “Let’s go,” I said.

We started at a squat snack stand that promised candy apples-cold drinks-popcorn-cotton candy-soft serve, but it was cleaned out. Most of the games were shuttered. We opened the Baseball Toss: prizes still hung from the ceiling, and all the hairy but deceptively thin trolls were lined up to be thrown at. I vaulted over the counter, and Phoebe followed. A huge crate of worn rubber baseballs sat beneath it.

“Looks like they took off in the middle of the night,” I said. “Cost too much to transport the show, so they just ditched it.”

“Yeah,” Phoebe said, holding a baseball in each hand, not sounding particularly interested in what I was saying. She climbed back over the counter. “Get out of the way.”

Phoebe could throw hard. Her arms were long and as thin as twigs, but sinewy. A little knot tensed on her triceps as she drew the baseball back and fired it, brushing the fringe of hair but missing the elusive meat of the troll.

“Damn!” she whispered.

“You’re an athlete,” I said.

She smiled. “Track and softball in high school. I sucked at softball, but I was good at track.” She grabbed another ball, tossed it in the air and caught it, getting a feel. “You’re all going down,” she shouted at the trolls. “I have plenty of baseballs here, and they aren’t costing me a dime. You can’t run, because you have no feet, and you can’t hide, because, again, you have no feet.” She whipped the ball, laughing. It sailed right between two of them. “Crap!” she shouted, still laughing. She wiped a tear from her cheek.

“You cry when you laugh,” I said. “Not just when you laugh really hard, but whenever you laugh.”

“Shut up,” she said, laughing harder. “I do not.” More tears welled up in the corners of her eyes and rolled onto her cheeks.

“You do!” I pointed at her cheek. “I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s like those birds who can’t help but make a peeping sound with every flap of their wings.”

She laughed harder, and more tears came.“ Liar,” she said, swabbing her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater.

“Shall we to the slide?” she said when her laughter had settled down to intermittent bursts.

“We shall,” I said, motioning ladies first. It felt so good to be laughing, to be having fun and goofing off. Phoebe was so quick-witted; I didn’t remember her being like that when we met all those years ago. Of course, we’d only spent a couple of hours together.

“Did you go to traveling carnivals a lot when you were a kid?” I asked as we picked our way across what had once been the midway.

“All the time. It’s hard to imagine a time when things were that easy. You worked, you bought groceries, you took your kids to the carnival.” She shook her head. “It’s like some fairy tale world.”

Phoebe grasped a rung of the ladder, looked up. “I didn’t realize it was so high.” She craned her neck to look back at me, hand still clutching the rung. “I’m afraid of heights. We could have just as much fun sitting on the merry-go-round horses, don’t you think?”

“They won’t move, they’ll just sit there,” I said.

“That’s okay. They’re pretty, and I’ll make horse noises.”

I pointed at the ladder, laughing. “You promised we’d ride the slide, and it’s the only ride that works.”

“I didn’t promise, I just suggested.”

“The promise was implicit.”

Phoebe huffed. She grasped the rungs and looked up. “All right, but you may have to call the fire department to get me down.”

I laughed. “They’d get you down, all right. With a high-powered rifle.”

I caught a glimpse of Phoebe’s white calf as she climbed, remembered her long legs, how perfect her knees were when I’d seen her in shorts that first day in the motel. Phoebe never wore shorts around us, always jeans.

It took a bit of coaxing to get Phoebe to slide down. At first she clung to the sides and braked herself every few feet, but the first steep drop made that impossible, and gravity ruled the day.

Phoebe clung to her hat so it wouldn’t blow off, which, along with her auburn hair snapping in the wind, made her look like a woman in a Jane Austen novel.

There was something about her very proper, demure nature that was extremely sexy. There was no denying it. But the thought of the emotional part, the thought of love, the negotiation of what the physical part meant… I had no stomach for that, so better not to try to cross that bright red line between a hug and a kiss.

Phoebe shrieked her way down the third and steepest drop. So strange. Wasn’t this what I’d always hoped for? I was with a funny, attractive woman, and we got along effortlessly. We’d met only a few weeks ago, and already we were close friends.

I slid down while Phoebe shouted an undecipherable mix of encouragement and taunts. I hit the steep drop, and felt that tingly falling-feeling in my intestines. It felt great, simulating emotions I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

“What say we check out the World’s Smallest Woman exhibit?” Phoebe said as I climbed back to solid earth. “My parents would never give me the extra three dollars to go in. They said it was a scam.”

“I doubt she’s home,” I said.

“Still, I’d like to go through her tiny dresser and look at all her tiny shoes.” She led the way.

The World’s Smallest Woman’s tent was a bust. It was an empty husk—no tiny dresser, no tiny kitchen