Summer of the Apocalypse

Panting loudly, they stood outside the cave. Rabbit had lost his torch and his left elbow oozed blood. Dodge’s nose bled freely from a kick Rabbit had delivered, and Eric rubbed his chin gingerly.

“Rattlesnakes,” said Rabbit. “I got into the room, saw the boxes you told us about, then I heard buzzing. Cave’s full of them. Must have been two-hundred.” He sat heavily. “I don’t mind a snake or two, but sheesh!”

Dodge held his nose to control the bleeding and said nasally, “I thought your face was on fire or something.”

Cautiously they inspected the other entrances. All were homes for rattlesnakes. The system of cracks and crevices provided an ideal environment for a large rodent population, and the snakes were evidently well fed. They could find no way in.

“So what’s special about this cave anyway?” asked Dodge. The sun touched the canyon rim to the west. Although it was only mid-afternoon, they could expect no more direct sunlight. Eric thought about the last time he’d been here, the summer after the plague. He and Leda had parked their four-wheel drive at the blocked tunnel, then carried a shovel and pick to the cave. He’d dug in the rocky soil most of the day to excavate a hole deep enough to hold his mother. Leda inventoried the items in the cave and packed the most useful ones to the highway.

They’d wrapped the black plastic tightly around Mother, carried her out and buried her. He’d thought of her as a big woman, incapable of being budged once she set her feet, but her body seemed so light. She was no trouble at all to carry to the grave.

He had a hard time relating the two versions of himself in his memory: the one who listened to rock and roll under his headphones and worried whether school would be canceled or not, and the one a year later who with his wife drove a car he’d taken from a Chevy dealer’s car lot to bury his mother. It seemed as if he’d lived two lives.

“This is where I started to grow up,” Eric said. “I wanted to see it again.” He led them to the grave, a flat patch of ground between matched boulders near the top of the ridge. He’d chosen the site because the rocks sheltered it from the wind, and it was a good high place to rest. He barely recognized the spot. No sign remained of the wooden cross he’d made, and the ground was no longer bare. A knee-high bed of Columbine covered the entire area like a blue fog. Their delicate stems and petals trembled in a breeze too slight for Eric to feel. He paused at the edge of the bed.

“Where’s the grave?” asked Dodge.

Eric knelt and passed his hand over the flowers, letting the fragile blossoms brush his palm. He remembered Mom in the backyard of their Littleton house, knees firmly planted in earth she’d just turned over, carefully pushing bulbs into the garden in expectation of the spring. Mother had always believed in the spring, in regeneration. She’d said once, “A flower proves nature is an artist.”

“She’s buried by that boulder,” Eric said. “Underneath this…” The Columbines shimmered in the canyon dusk. “… this… blue quilt.”

Dodge said, “Doesn’t look much like a grave, Grandpa.”

Eric sighed deeply. His breath shook a little when he exhaled. On his knees, the flowers spread out before him like an affirmation of beauty and life, and he recalled when he first went to school how he’d kneel on a footstool in front of his Mother so she could comb his hair. He felt her hand on the back of his neck and her breath in his face.

“That’s the way it should be,” he said. “Nothing ought to look like a grave.”

“Shush!” said Eric. He put his arm across Dodge’s chest to stop him. They were almost to the old watch post. “I saw something.” Rabbit stepped past Eric and surveyed the road. Sun shone on the canyon wall east of them, but deep blue shadows filled the valley Eric had stood watch over years ago. He looked west, toward Idaho Springs. Whatever caught his attention wasn’t moving now.

Rabbit said, “I see them.”

“Who?” asked Eric.

“Don’t know, but they’re sitting by the creek.”

Eric strained his eyes. All he could see was foam on the rocks and a scattering of low plants lining the river. He squinted. Nothing.

“Where? Are they ghosts?” said Dodge.

“By the bank, there,” said Rabbit. He pointed. “Two by that rock and another on the shoulder.” Frustrated, Eric gritted his teeth, then turned his head—an old hunter’s trick—and let his peripheral vision go to work.

Dodge said, “Ah, I see.”

Eric dug into his backpack for binoculars. When he found them, Rabbit was halfway to the road. “What’s he doing?” Eric hissed.

Dodge sighed. “He’s always going off on his own. Lots of times when we scavenge he’ll leave me, and I won’t see him for the rest of the day.”

Eric focused the binoculars where Rabbit had said he saw the figures by the creek. “He’s not going to find anything. Nobody’s there.”

Dodge said, “’Course not. Soon as Rabbit moved, they took off.”

“Where?”

“Up the slope.” Dodge shivered. “They might be ghosts. I watched them until they reached those bushes…” He pointed to a half dozen scraggly clumps of rabbit brush that couldn’t hide a good sized marmot, “…then they kind of melted into the ground.”

Eric raised his eyebrows.

“Honest. Like coyotes. You see them for a few feet, then they’re gone.”

“Were they people?”

“No.” He gulped. “They were b….” He colored and looked away.

“Dodge?”

“You won’t believe me.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “You’ll laugh. It’s just a story they tell little kids to scare them after dark.”

“What’s the story?”

“You won’t make fun?” Dodge asked. Eric shook his head.

Rabbit reached the road, crouched low and ran on the shoulder next to the canyon wall, keeping out of sight of the creek. Eric swept the length of the canyon with the binoculars. Nothing.

“It’s about the Gone Time. Dad told me the story when we went hunting. He said that in the Gone Time people were very proud. That they flew higher than birds and clouds, that they drove faster than arrows in their cars on the roads, that they lived in the buildings we scavenge, but that the buildings were beautiful and rose thousands of feet in the air. He said there were so many people that I could never count all of them because babies would be born faster than I could tally.”

Dodge paused and looked at Eric. “Is all that true, Grandpa. Are all the stories you told us true?” Surprised, Eric said, “Of course. Why would I lie to you?”

“Grown-ups make up stuff. I know about Santa Claus, and he’s a lie.” Rabbit reached the spot where he’d said he’d seen the three figures. He stood on the edge of the road, looking left and right.

Eric stroked his grandson’s hair. Dodge reminded him of Troy, who had been hard-headed and skeptical. Troy had never believed man had walked on the moon, or that Denver used to glow at night like a sea of stars.

“Santa Claus is different. The Gone Time is history, and history is real.”

“Like Star Wars? Eric sighed. How could he teach Dodge the difference between reality and fiction when both sounded so fantastic? “I’ll have to explain that later. What was the story your dad told you?” Dodge looked disappointed, but he continued. “He said the Gone Time people got so proud that they spread all over the Earth building towns and driving their cars and watching their TVs. He said no one had to work because machines did everything and all they did was write poetry and go to parties.” Eric smiled at Dodge’s fractured version of history. “The stories you tell about the Gone Time don’t sound like that, but I’m just saying what Dad told me. Anyway, he said the Gone Time people kept knocking down forests and filling up the world till there wasn’t any place for the Bugbears.”

“The Bugbears?”

“Yes. Dad said they lived on the Earth before people did, and they didn’t mind sharing, but when there was no place for them to be private anymore, they came out of their holes in the ground and their secret places in the trees that were left. They touched people on their foreheads when they were sleeping, and when they woke up they