the prairie where one could still see one-hundred year old ruts left by covered wagons. If ruts can last that long, highways ought to also. Mountains and winter, though, are tough on roads, and a car needs good ones to get anywhere.”
“Why don’t we fix them?” asked Dodge. Rabbit said, “Cars don’t work.”
“Phil said something interesting I hadn’t thought about.” Eric led them upstream. A rusted mass of metal jammed between two rocks showed that they were at least to the point where the Cars had been parked, which would put them within a few hundred yards of the tunnel, but looking ahead, Eric couldn’t tell. Time had reshaped the canyon. “He said it’s all a problem of shelf life. Some things last and others don’t. A car will last a long time if you keep it out of the weather, but two of its elements Won’t, the battery and gasoline. You can run a car without a battery, but gasoline has additives that evaporate over time no matter where it’s stored. A couple years after the plague, it became very hard to find gasoline that was usable. Without fresh gasoline, most cars can’t run, and no one has made gasoline for sixty years. So, gasoline’s shelf life stopped the car a lot sooner than bad roads.”
“Why is diesel still good and gasoline isn’t?” “Diesel has no octane.” Dodge looked at Eric blankly.
“Octane is what gives gasoline its power. Diesel is mostly oil. It doesn’t evaporate or change chemically as quickly as the octane in gasoline. We can find out more about gasoline and chemistry if the library in Boulder still stands.”
Dodge grinned, “Books will tell us everything!” Eric sighed. Dodge’s enthusiasm for reading as a cure all depressed him. “Reading, study, and careful thought may teach us how to make gasoline again, but cars are just a small part of this shelf life problem.”
Climbing around a particularly treacherous stretch of sharp-edged rock silenced them for a minute. Eric spotted where the slide ended and the fishing trail, as fresh and vivid as when he last saw it, began. After they stepped off the slide, they splashed water in their faces and cooled their necks on a grassy shore by the creek. Dodge refilled their canteens.
They picked up their backpacks, but didn’t put them on as they looked for a comfortable place to eat lunch. Above the trail, Rabbit found a spot of soft grass shaded by a juniper, and they sprawled comfortably.
“What else about shelf life?” asked Dodge. Eric wished he had a cigarette. He had only smoked tobacco for two or three years after the plague, but the urge still hit him strongly sometimes. “This is kind of a lecture,” he said.
“We don’t mind, do we, Rabbit?” Rabbit shook his head. Dodge said, “We like your stories.”
“Well, this isn’t a story.” He dug into his pack for a jar of crabapple jelly. “A loaf of bread stays fresh for a week if you keep it wrapped up, right?”
Dodge held out a hard biscuit for Eric to put jelly on. “Right.”
“Well, then we can say its shelf life is one week. Shelf life is how long something stays good. Bread has a short life unless you freeze it; then it lasts longer.”
Dodge said, “But we can’t freeze things because we don’t have ’lectricity.”
“Right. But this isn’t a problem because flour, salt, sugar, eggs and yeast either have long shelf lives or are always available. Shelf life, though, doesn’t just apply to food. Lots of technology from the Gone Time had limited shelf life. Batteries, for example, are fairly obvious. A battery stays good for up to five years, or so, then it’s dead. Even a rechargeable one. Ammunition, gasoline, florescent light bulbs and many medicines chemically degenerate. The problem is that we don’t have access to the raw materials, or we don’t have the technology in place, to replace the items with limited shelf lives. Imagine if we didn’t have flour, salt, sugar, eggs and yeast how long it would take to run out of bread.” Dodge said, “Well, we could store up a bunch and it would last a long time.” Rabbit said, “Shelf life. One week. Doesn’t matter how much you have.”
“So, is this what you were arguing with Dad about?” Dodge rested on his back, looking into the sky.
“Exactly,” Eric exclaimed. “Your dad wants to have his cake and eat it too. On one hand he says that we don’t need to read, and on the other he wants to keep finding Gone Time technology to maintain the community. He wants to scavenge, but he doesn’t want to learn how to make these things ourselves. What’s important is not finding a warehouse filled with leftovers from the Gone Time, but teaching ourselves how to make them again. The answers are in the books, and that’s where we don’t see eye to eye.”
Thinking about Troy normally depressed Eric, but today, sitting with his grandson, eating crabapple jelly by Clear Creek, he felt fine. Something about this spot was restful: the way the light reflected from the water, or maybe its musical clattering as it swept around the canyon’s bend. Now he could see their disagreement as philosophic, not solely personal. If he could figure a way to bridge the argument about relearning Gone Time knowledge rather than relying on or abandoning Gone Time technology (Troy seemed to want to do both), then they could work on their real personal differences. The philosophic chasm just complicated matters.
“I don’t understand,” said Dodge. “Why did people forget?” Eric thought, this is the essential problem: why people forgot. “The plague scared people. For a long time after, they kept expecting to die. The ones that didn’t go insane, and there were many, grieved over their dead and worried about living. And during this time, so much technology was lying around that no one thought how to make more of it. The water plants shut down and the electrical generators quit working, and nobody knew how to run them. They were too big and required too many knowledgeable technicians to throw the switches. People just survived, sort of like we are now. Some of us forgot because we didn’t want to remember.”
Rabbit munched on a handful of sunflower seeds. “Cars sound like fun, but I’m happy here, right now. A car or a book won’t make lunch better. Don’t you like this?” He waved his hand at the creek, the trail that ran below them and the spray of wild flowers along the bank.
Surprised, Eric looked at him. Rabbit never talked about himself, how he was feeling.
“This is a nice spot,” agreed Dodge. “I like the way the mist floats on the river. Kind of like ghosts.” Eric noticed the heat from a half hour earlier had dissipated. A mist was rising from the water, and a cooling breeze bent the grass around them. “Yes, it is,” said Eric. Goose bumps rose on his arms and neck. He was trying to remember. He had been here before. He inhaled deeply. The air smelled, oddly, of tangerine.
Dodge spoke, but Eric missed it. “Excuse me?” he said. He looked at Dodge.
“I didn’t say anything,” said Dodge.
In the corner of his vision Eric sensed movement, and a flash of delicious inevitability flooded his head. He didn’t have to look to know what was coming. He
Trudging toward them on the trail, a teenage boy, a bike slung over his shoulder, looked up at Eric. What struck Eric first was the boy’s unwashed hair plastered to his forehead. Smaller details, the cassette player hanging from his belt, the wire leading to the speakers around his neck and the Air Jordan sneakers he noted, but what Eric concentrated on most were the boy’s sunken and exhausted eyes. No one had ever looked so alone to him; so abandoned, lost and alone.
The boy glanced down. Eric almost called out to him, but he realized there was nothing he could say. Eric wasn’t even sure if the boy could hear him. He doubted it. Then his eyes watered, and he blinked the tears away.
The boy was gone.
From the old watch post, U.S. 6’s appearance had changed considerably. Despite the height, Eric could see weeds pushing through the asphalt and rocks cluttering the road. Eric found it hard to imagine the same road crowded with traffic. He remembered the scene, but he couldn’t feel it anymore.
“Come on, Grandpa,” yelled Dodge. “I want to see the cave.” He and Rabbit stood at the cavern’s entrance holding hastily constructed torches. Eric guessed they might give them five minutes of light if they were lucky.
Dodge said, “I’ve never been in a cave before.”
Rabbit lit one torch, handed the unlit ones to Dodge and Eric, then led them into the crawl way. On his hands and knees, Eric followed Dodge. The acrid smoke from the torch stung his eyes, and he couldn’t see anything anyway, so he squeezed them shut and continued to crawl.
He butted into something soft. “What…” Suddenly, Dodge’s rump pushed into him. “What…” Eric said again.
Dodge screeched, “Back! Back! Back!” Deeper in the cave, Rabbit swore. Eric tried to turn around, whapped his head against the rock wall, then backed up as fast as he could. The stone roof snagged his shirt and pulled it snug against his armpits before ripping. Dodge smashed Eric’s fingers twice and kicked him in the chin as they retreated.
