Summer of the Apocalypse

were a hundred yards ahead and out of sight. “Go on,” he’d said. “Need some time to think, that’s all.”

From Boulder, a thick column of black smoke rose straight up, marking the ruins of the smoldering campus. Before they’d left, Teach had reconnoitered, but found no sign of Federal’s men. “Lots of melted guns,” he had said. “The tents were full of them.”

The road wound steadily uphill, and Eric watched his step. Years of thawing and freezing had buckled the asphalt and made walking difficult. Waist-high, scraggly limbed, loose-barked bushes poked up here and there, so the hike was more a matter of weaving than a straight path.

For the first time, instead of thinking about clearing the brush and estimating how much work it would take to recondition the road, he thought of the inexorable progress of change. In another hundred years, he thought, no one will know that this was ever a highway. Why, a person hiking the other direction in two-hundred years might well think that no other human being had ever been there, and if he continued on, only right-angled mounds of brick will mark the foundations of the buildings in Boulder. A hunk of cement sitting in the middle of a field, vines growing all over it, might be all that’s left of an overpass. He might dig himself a fire-pit and find some other remnants, a key- chain maybe, or a beer bottle. Eric imagined the hiker turning the dirt-crusted bottle over in his hands, watching how the firelight cut through the muddy-colored glass. He would have come from a mountain community, High Water perhaps, one of the first explorers, pushing the boundaries of his world, hoping that the poisons had receded and the world was safe for people again. He would put the bottle aside, finally, and make his bed next to the fire, and then, before he went to sleep, he’d look up at the stars and make up stories about them, never knowing that mankind had once aspired to visit them, had once seen themselves as the inhabitants of a tiny planet, circling a star as beautiful and remote as the ones that wheeled over his head right now. He’d sleep, his next frontier the hill he hadn’t hiked over yet. To him, the world would be new again, filled with wonder and danger, a place to learn from.

The image of the future hiker didn’t seem either good or bad, just interesting. The sun now nearly touched the hills ahead, and the shadows lay long behind him. In the still air, the steady chirping of mountain wrens and the crackle of the occasional twig or dry leaf underfoot were the only sounds. He hadn’t seen Teach and the children for some time, and the stiffness in his legs as he climbed toward High Water slowed him considerably.

To loosen his calves, he walked backwards a few feet. Boulder’s plume of smoke hazed the air. It’s like Golden, he thought, years ago when I first came out of the mountains looking for Dad. The feeling of experiencing it again swept over him powerfully. Goose-bumps raised on his back and legs. Smoke in the sky, he thought. A city is burning, and I’m searching.

The sense of then and now filled Eric so thoroughly, the sense of connection with himself at fifteen and himself at seventy-five felt so solid, that he almost wasn’t surprised when he turned around and saw striding toward him down the road, the figure of a man who could easily be his father. Dodge held the black-haired man’s hand. Behind him, came Teach and Ripple.

“Troy,” said Eric.

They stopped, a few feet apart. Dodge looked from his grandfather to his father and back expectantly.

“I searched for you,” said Troy. “I was worried… you know… the boy. I didn’t think you were serious.”

In wonder, Eric saw that Troy’s eyes were glistening, that he was shaking. Troy said, “I thought you were gone forever, Dad. You never said goodbye.” Silence stretched between them. The feeling of connection held on. Eric felt fifteen; he felt seventy-five. He was a son searching for his father; he was the father the son found. Everything circled around, he thought. Everything circled around.

He said, because he knew it was the only thing to say, the words that had been written but never spoken, the words he had carried with him for sixty years, “I have always loved you, son.” Late that night, in their campsite beneath two old pines, Eric suddenly awoke. Only moonlight cast any illumination. The hillside glowed with its light. He canted his head from one side to another. Was that a bird? he thought, or did I only dream it? It was a bird, a meadowlark. I know that call; my father taught me.

About the Author

James Van Pelt grew up in Littleton, Colorado, where his dad worked for Martin-Marietta designing rockets, and Sky and Telescope magazines were neatly stacked on the coffee table for light reading. His mom, a voracious reader, encouraged James by buying books whenever he wanted them and giving him the freedom to read (as long as she didn’t check on him too often long after he was supposed to be asleep).

Since then, he has taken his dad’s interest in science and mathematics, and his mother’s love of books, and turned them into his own life as a teacher and author of science fiction and fantasy. James teaches English at Fruita-Monument High School and Mesa State College in western Colorado. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Asimov’s, Analog, Talebones, Realms of Fantasy and many others. He was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and his works have been finalists for the Nebula, the Theodore Sturgeon Award for Best Short Fiction of the Year, and others.

His first collection, Strangers and Beggars, was named as a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association, and his second collection, The Last of the O-Forms and Other Stories, is a finalist for the Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award.

His website can be found at http://www.sff.people/james.van.pelt. He can be contacted at [email protected].