Summer Of The Apocalypse Part 4

"Sounds great to me," said Dodge. "Maybe we can see another video?" After they watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Phil took them to a locker room with gang showers. The drag racers, he explained, used the lockers to change before their contests. He found towels for them, then said, "Have to s.h.i.+ne up the cars. Mom insists." He closed the door behind him. Rabbit said, "Let's leave." Eric turned on a spigot. In a few seconds, clouds of warm steam billowed off the tile floor. He wondered where Phil stored the water and how he heated it. Two days of grime decided the debate for him.

"I think we'll be okay. I don't think he's dangerous." Dodge looked from Rabbit to Eric, puzzled. "What do you mean? I like him."

Rabbit started to strip. "Wait a minute," said Eric. He searched the locker room, carefully covering the four video cameras he found.

When he was sure he'd got them all, he said, "I don't think he's dangerous, but I don't want you alone with him either."

Dodge said, "I don't get it."

Rabbit smirked. "He wants to b.u.g.g.e.r you, dolt."

Something woke Eric. He hadn't been sleeping easily anyway. The strange bed, the excitement of the electric lights and the other Gone Time triumphs that Phil had shown him, conspired to ruin his night's rest. Finally, though, he'd drifted into a doze. Now, a night light (a green glow-worm from a baby's nursery) provided the only light. Dodge slept on a bed near a boarded window; Rabbit slept on the floor. He'd smelled the mattress and insisted.

He heard a noise again, a slight rattle, the door. It creaked as if someone were pus.h.i.+ng against it. He propped himself on his elbow and said, "Go away, Phil. We're sleeping." Quick footsteps padded away down the hall. Eric got out of bed and checked the chair he'd jammed under the doork.n.o.b. It still held firmly. Eric smiled and went back to bed.

After a breakfast of pancakes and syrup, Phil walked them to the front doors. He seemed worried. "Get into the city," he said privately to Eric. "Maybe they aren't ghosts, but I don't believe they're human, and those people in Northglenn and Commerce City couldn't have just gone without a good reason. I figure they got scared or carried off." He put his hand on the small of Eric's back, conspiratorially. "You ought to leave the youngster with me, for safe keeping. When you go home, you can pick him up. If it's dangerous, you wouldn't want him with you anyway."

Eric stepped away from him and didn't say anything, as if he were considering the idea. Then he said, "What would your mom think?"

Phil's face clouded. "You're right," he said. "She wouldn't like it at all." He wiped his face with his rag.

"What's a son to do?"

Dodge and Rabbit waited for him at the end of the path.

"Let's not come back this way," said Rabbit.

Dodge nodded in agreement. After he walked for a while, head down, kicking pebbles in front of him, he said, "But he did have nice toys."

Eric thought about the cars in the showroom, mirror bright. Phil wandering among them, dusting each grudgingly for his dead but omnipresent mother. He thought about him sitting alone on his couch watching sixteen televisions at once. He thought about all the rooms filled from floor to ceiling with electronic gadgetry. He thought about Phil's dwindling supply of non-renewable, non-repairable resources and what else Phil had told him when he showed him the tanker truck filled with diesel. "There's enough to last me until I'm gone, and what do I care after that?"

"Yes, they were nice toys," said Eric.

He guessed they would be in Golden before noon, and he realized they would be within a couple of miles of the cave where his mother was buried. "We're going to take a little detour today," he said. "Want to show you something."

A breeze from the hills to the west cooled them. The clear sky was blue, high and vibrant. Eric felt good. He felt as if he could hike forever.

Chapter Six.

KING KONG.

Eric heard his father talking, and that was all he heard. His soft voice filled the cave. "I read a book once that discussed the filming of the 1933 King Kong, a wonderful movie. Great special effects. When that sad ape climbed the Empire State Building, and all those biplanes buzzed around like mosquitoes, I cheered. Smash those planes, I said. Crush them out of the sky." It had been a week since their trip to Idaho Springs. Dad held Mom's hand. Eric supposed he'd held it all night as her coughing worsened and the fever built. With a wet washcloth he'd wiped her forehead, but he never let go. When Eric awoke, Dad was holding on. Mom's face glowed with fever. She'd lapsed into a coma. An hour later, she died. Now the lantern's light dimmed and brightened. It was low on fuel. Eric sat cross-legged on the rock floor of the cave near his mother's feet. He reached out to touch her leg, brushed the rough blanket, then pulled his hand back. He imagined her leg would feel hard, wooden. He didn't want to know. Dad talked. Eric had never heard him like this, non-stop, a droning monotone.

"The funny thing was, about this film, the Hays Office censored it. Nowadays they'll show any G.o.d-awful thing, but King Kong they censored."

Dad leaned forward as if his stomach hurt. "There's a scene on Skull Island, before Kong goes to New York, where he chases Fay Wray to the giant barricades that are supposed to protect the village from him and the prehistoric monsters on the other side. He reaches over the walla"they used a sixteen inch model for all the shots; I didn't know thata"grabs a villager and bites his head off. That's what the Hays Office censored. Too graphic, I guess. But the next scene Kong pushes down the barricade, crus.h.i.+ng twenty or thirty villagers."

He'd been talking steadily for two hours. Eric supposed he should feel grief, but he didn't, really. His eyes felt pressured like someone was pus.h.i.+ng thumbs into them, and his face seemed heavy; the corners of his mouth dragged down and no effort could move them, but he didn't want to cry. The woman lying under the blanket wasn't his mother, not the one who toted a shotgun so jauntily the last weeks, not the one who woke him for school or bought him milkshakes when they went shopping. She was just a body, and Eric had never seen a dead person before. He didn't know how to behave around one. He sat, and his dad talked.

"I didn't understand why they censored that scene. Stupid thing to do. Hundreds of people died in this movie. Why'd they take out one death? The expedition chased Kong, trying to save the girl. Kong crossed a log over a chasm, and, when the men followed, he picked up one end and shook them off, down and down into the ravine. Why not that scene? So I read in this book a theory that the death of one is more horrible than the death of many. It's psychological. Kong nips off a head like you'd bite the end of a hot dog and the censors cut it out, but he can smash a faceless crowd." He rocked back and forth. "One death," he said, "hurts too much." The Coleman lantern sputtered, then lapsed into the rapid fire fut-fut-fut that meant it would go out any second. The light turned Dad's face into a dancing moonscape of black shadows. He started coughing, a long series of dry, painful sounding explosions that made Eric flinch.

When he finished, he moaned quietly and leaned forward again so that he trapped Mom's hand between his chest and his thigh.

Behind Dad a pile of canned goods caught the flickering light but the cave wall beyond reflected nothing. Its gray and black surface sucked in light, returning darkness. Eric stared at it for a long time until he saw high on the dull stone that someone, some earlier explorer, had carved a heart and scratched within it in barely visible, shaky letters: Martha W. loves George "Dad," Eric said finally, "we should take her home."

The lantern flared for an instant, then winked out. An afterimage of the inscription on the wall drifted in front of Eric, the letters and heart now dark on a lighter background. His dad inhaled shakily, held the breath, then let it out in a long hiss. He said, "I'll go into town and bring back an ambulance." Clothes rustled and Eric heard his dad's back crack as he stood. "You stay here with your mother." After lighting a battery lantern, then covering Mom's face, Dad took a filled canteen and dragged his bike out of the entrance to the cave. His parting words were, "I'll be back before sunset." As Eric sat on the cold stone floor an hour later, he suddenly wished very deeply that before Dad had left that he would have held him close, then kissed him goodbye as he had when Eric was a child. Three hours after sunset, Dad still had not returned. Eric took a flashlight to the watch post and listened to the creek rumbling beside the highway below. Clouds obscured the stars, but the night was not dark. To the east, toward Denver, the clouds glowed redly. In the nights before when it was overcast, the lights of Denver lit the sky a pleasant, even electric white, but tonight the clouds boiled like b.l.o.o.d.y sheets. He retrieved the Mutant Ninja Turtle radio from under a rock where he stored it, but it gave him almost no news. Over the last weeks, fewer and fewer radio stations stayed on the air. Tonight he found several channels squealing out the emergency broadcast signal, interrupting themselves every few minutes with a message to tune to KTLK for information about the "current situation." KTLK, however, played elevator music, and the only announcement Eric heard was one warning people to obey the curfew and to report looters to the proper authorities.

He flashed his light down the trail, hoping to see his father, though he knew Dad wouldn't attempt to climb up without using a light of his own. Eric wrapped his sleeping bag around him. His muscles ached as if he'd lifted weights for hours. He'd never been so tired in his entire life, so old and drained. A breeze rattled branches. He flicked the flashlight on again, and its dim light penetrated the thin cloth of his sleeping bag. He thought he might go to sleep, but the idea that he could miss his father frightened him, so he pinched his leg hard. The pain almost felt good. It was real and immediate and normal, not like the body lying in the cave or the horrible red clouds that rolled languidly above him. He thought he should be mourning, and it worried him that he wasn't. Don't I love my mother? he thought. Am I a beast, some sort of sociopath? (He'd heard the term on television one night applied to a serial killer.) He thought about going to school. If everything straightened itself out, or if this is just a nightmare, I'll never hate school again. I'll go to cla.s.s and smile at teachers and do homework and I won't call anything stupid ever. The cliff walls across the canyon lit brilliantly. Eric blinked back tears, the light was so bright. Then all was dark. What? he thought. The air swelled like a crack of thunder, a great slam of sound that pushed on Eric's chest. He screamed, but he couldn't hear himself. Then echoes sounded for several seconds. He thought, this is nuclear. The end of the world for sure. In the distance toward Golden he thought he heard rocks falling, though the ringing in his ears prevented him from being positive. Movement down canyon caught his eye. A wall of darkness slid toward him, swallowing the highway, blanking the glimmer of the river. He stood on the rock, trying to see better as the darkness rolled by below. Whatever exploded between him and Golden had kicked up a cloud of dust; he decided it must be the tunnel. Someone blew up the tunnel.

After a few minutes, the air cleared, and the canyon was quiet again. The river noise sounded unchanged. An hour before dawn, he fell asleep. Dad hadn't come back yet.

A black, muscled, immense shape heaved itself over the South Glenn Mall, scattering cars in the parking lot like children's blocks. Its knuckles sc.r.a.ped the pavement. Sirens howled on University Boulevard behind Eric. He flattened his back on a brick wall and tried not to move, to not breathe. (He knew it was the Littleton Saving and Loan building that stood on the corner of the mall's parking lot on the corner of University and Bellview.) The ape tore a light pole from its fixture, studied it briefly, then flicked it a hundred feet. There were no people in the scene, just empty cars and the giant black figure. Eric smelled him, a vast animal odor like a hundred zoos on a hot summer afternoon.

In the background, a harmony of engines hummed, then grew] louder. (The biplanes are coming! The biplanes are coming!) Eric tried to shout, "Run away! Run away!" but his best effort sounded no louder than a squeak. He wanted to wave to him and warn him but he was too frightened. What if the ape spotted him? Eric's inarticulate love bubbled within, but he was afraid of the size, the strength, the unbridled power. A creature so big shouldn't die, he thought. They'll drive him up some tower so they can knock him down. They'll shoot him and he'll never understand why they won't let him live. In the dreama"Eric knew he was dreaminga"a blue van, its windows knocked out and its tires flat, limped into the parking lot. His mother was driving. "Stop, Mom!" he tried to yell. "Don't let him get you." But she drove to the monster's feet. The ape looked at the van with his vast, glistening eyes, then bent down to peer in the window. Mom stopped and got out. She put her hands on her hips and stared up at him unafraid.

Eric struggled, but it was as if the wall held him. His voice called out in slow motion notes that were deep and incomprehensible. Don't you know the story? The ape picks up the single person, plucks her from the ground and bites her in two. It's his nature. It's not his fault, but you can't get close to him. He is death.

It is Mom, isn't it? The woman standing at the ape's feet became slender and blond. She was Fay Wray. Eric knew she was his mom, but she was also Fay Wray. The ape cupped her into his hand and lifted her from the parking lot.

Eric shouted.

He brought her close to his face, his teeth visible.

He rubbed his cheek against her.

The engine noise rose to a deafening level.

King Kong clutched Mom/Fay Wray to his breast, straightened and shook his fist into the sky. The first biplane circled high above, then winged over and began its attack. The next one followed. The next one followed. The next one followed.

The sun woke Eric, and he lay in his sleeping bag by the boulder for a long time before he remembered yesterday's events. He slid out of the bag and brushed the goose b.u.mps off his arms. On the rock, the radio still played, but now it repeated one message continuously, "The Denver Public Health Department asks you to please stay in your homes." Then it listed the hospitals that were no longer accepting patients. From the size of the list, Eric wondered vaguely if they wouldn't save time by announcing the hospitals that were open instead.

He folded the sleeping bag mechanically, trying to think about what he should do next. His brain seemed full of fog, though, and thinking was like walking in knee-deep mud. Maybe Dad pa.s.sed him while he slept, and was in the cave right now. Eric crawled through the cave's entrance, pus.h.i.+ng the flashlight ahead of him, but Dad was not there. He avoided looking at the mattress where his mother's blanketed body lay. The idea of waiting for Dad held no appeal, but he didn't want to leave her either. Last night's explosion finally decided the issue for him; he needed to search for Dad. He needed to do something, though, about Mom before he left. The blankets didn't seem enough protection, somehow. He envisioned mice nibbling on the corpse, shuddered, and quickly spread the sheet of black plastic that Dad had used to protect the mattresses originally over the body. He tucked the edges under and checked carefully for any s.p.a.ces a mouse might try. When he finished, his hands felt soiled, as if the plastic were slimy. He rubbed them hard against his jeans, but that didn't help, so he washed them with drinking water.

Squatting next to the body, he watched the play of light reflect off the plastic. Finally, he placed his palm where his mother's shoulder would be. The plastic crackled and gave off no warmth; it was the exact temperature of the rocks around him. He spoke into the silence, "Goodbye, Mom," and the quiet that followed felt like the closing of a book.

He threw packages of beef jerky, several cans of fruit and an extra canteen into his backpack, made sure the desk key Dad had given him was secure in a side pocket, wrote his dad a note, and left the cave, dragging his bike after him.

As soon as he rounded the corner on the highway he saw the result of last night's explosion. A jumble of rock choked the tunnel opening, and a bare spot on the mountain above the entrance showed where rock had sheared off to drop on the road. A refrigerator-sized boulder sat in a crater in the asphalt seventy-five yards from the rock pile.

A fisherman's trail, the only way out of the canyon, followed the river, where it vanished into a light morning mist that drifted off the water, giving the scene an otherworldly look. Eric hoisted the bike on his shoulder and walked past the remnants of their van, which reminded him of his dream ("The biplanes are coming!") and generated within him a strong feeling of deja vu; not a bad feeling, but very creepy, like the top of his head was floating away, as if he'd stepped out of time. The farther he walked, the stranger he felt. The trail didn't seem connected to the real world. Water tinkled musically over the rocks, and the air smelled moist and clean. All the colors vibrated, even through the mist.

An animal crossed the path fifty yards in front of him. Eric thought it was a German shepherd at first, the biggest shepherd he'd ever seen, but it moved so smoothly that he couldn't believe it was a dog. It trotted up the hill on its big paws (What big teeth you have grandma, Eric thought), and just before it disappeared behind a ridge it looked back at Eric with clear, light blue eyes. Eric almost waved at it. Eric turned around. The van was out of sight; he couldn't see the road. For a second, he wasn't sure which direction he'd come from; both were unfamiliar. He noticed hip high, broad-leafed plants a shade of green he'd never seen before growing next to the water. He dropped his bike and scrambled down the slope. Their leaves were thick and waxy. He broke one in half. A thick, milky fluid oozed out of the wound, and he caught a strong citrus odor like a tangerine. Triangular, dull orange beetles scurried up and down the plant's stalks. He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd stepped away from reality, that these weren't Colorado plants, that this wasn't the Colorado he knew. He climbed back to the trail, picked up his bike and continued on.

Suddenly he realized he wasn't alone. Sitting on the slope above the trail fifty feet away, their backpacks beside them, three hikers, an old man and two boys were eating a meal. A complicated series of wrinkles criss-crossed the old one's leather-colored face. He smiled and spoke to one of the boys, but Eric didn't hear what he said. When he walked just below them, the old one glanced up and met Eric's eyes. Eric's throat constricted. The creepy feeling of being displaced in time swept through him so intensely, he thought he would fall over. He didn't want the old man to say anything to him. Don't talk to me, old man, he thought. I don't know what to say to you. Something in the man's eyes, something compa.s.sionate, made Eric think he understood.

Eric looked away, and as he did he observed a heavy scar marked the side of the boy's face on the old man's right. Eric walked a few more steps, then glanced at the group again, but they were gone. A breeze swirled tendrils of mist past the empty spot where the hikers had sat. The sense of deja vu vanished as if someone had thrown a switch, and Eric shook his head. His bike drug at his shoulder and he staggered a couple of steps. He realized he was near fainting; he hadn't eaten for thirty-six hours. That's it, he thought, I'm delirious.

He rested on a stump by the river and ate two beef jerky strips and a can of peaches. This is a beautiful spot, he thought, and he reflected on all the people who had driven through the tunnel for years and years and never seen this section of the river that the highway cut off by diving through the mountain instead of following the canyon. For the moment, he forgot where he was going and why. The jerky tasted salty and good, and the peaches were sweet and cold.

A junkyard lined the highway on the other side of the tunnel. Starting at the rock-choked tunnel entrance, and stretching for several hundred yards, a mess of cars crowded the road. At first Eric thought someone had painted black dots on the cars, then he realized that holes peppered them. Standing on the trail below, he saw that the closest car, a green Chevy Nova, sat unevenly. Three of its four tires were flat. A tight web of cracks frosted the windows. He clambered up the slope, pulling the bike behind him. A s.h.i.+ft in the breeze wafted gasoline fumes over him and another smell, deep, bad and nasty. He snorted to clear his nose and mouth-breathed. When he stepped onto the road, he noticed that many cars had burned, their paint blackened and blistered from the heat.

Thousands of bra.s.s sh.e.l.l casings glittered on the highway by the tunnel entrance. He picked one up; it was much larger than the ones Dad used for the deer rifle. He imagined what must have happened. Weeks ago, when the traffic stopped, the police or the National Guard established a road block. Panic in the last couple of days forced people to flee. They were stopped here. He marveled that his family hadn't heard any of the shooting. Last night's explosion the final act to seal the road, provided the only clue of the battle.

Fearfully, he approached the Nova's open pa.s.senger door and peeked inside where a black stain discolored the driver's seat The stain s.h.i.+fted and Eric jerked back. Dozens of flies boiled off the stain; some flew out the window, but the rest settled on the seat again He swallowed hard to keep his stomach down. Dad might have been caught here. Maybe he was coming back with help and whatever happened stopped him. Eric checked the next car. It too was empty.

The third one wasn't.

He thought at first that someone had left a pile of clothes on the seat until he saw the bare foot sticking out. Two lines of dried blood like the outline of a carrot traced their way from the heel to the curled toes A swarm of flies lifted itself angrily from the corpse then settled back when Eric stepped away. He sat hard on the pavement and rested his forehead against the cool metal door By wrapping his arms tightly around his midsection, he forced himself not to throw up.

One afternoon in the sixth grade he'd sneaked into an adult Driver's Ed cla.s.s that the elementary school sponsored in an unused cla.s.sroom He'd heard they were watching a "cool, gross film, and he and two of his friends dared each other into ditching cla.s.s to see it. The movies, Signal 30 for Danger and Highways of Death, featured real life footage of automobile accidents and even from the back of the room, the images sickened Eric. One scene stuck with him particularly. A man lost control of his car and it careened into a field of tree stumps. He probably would have been all right, but he wasn't wearing a seat belt; his door popped open and he was tossed from the car. When he was halfway out, the door crashed into a stump, slamming it on the man's chest. The camera lingered on his bloated torso for a lone time. Later the friends invited Eric to a sleepover where they promised they were renting Faces of Death I and II Eric declined. For months afterward he had dreams about bodies pulled out of twisted wreckage.

Dad might be in one of these wrecks. Eric had to check them all, and he couldn't afford to be sick to do it. Besides, he reminded himself, he didn't know any of these people. all, and he couldn't afford to be sick to do it. Besides, he reminded himself, he didn't know any of these people. Very few of the cars contained bodies. He found guns in some. Suitcases and boxes of clothes filled many. He read a poorly printed leaflet that fluttered on the front seat of a wood-paneled station wagon. It was a call to arms and said that the Coors management had immunized themselves from the plague and that they were withholding the cure from their employees. Eric didn't make the connection at first, then he remembered that Coors had its main plant in Golden. Much of the populace worked there, and almost all the rest of the town's economy depended on the plant. He was starting to get a picture of the panic and desperation in the cities that the radio hadn't provided.

After he inspected the last car, he mounted his bike and pedaled toward Golden. Smoke discolored the horizon ahead, and the smell of burning grew stronger. Eric kept his bike close to the shoulder, listening for the sound of an approaching car or anything else threatening. He watched for places to hide if he had to. The best plan, he thought, would be to stay out of sight. Whatever happened at the tunnel, people were shooting at each other and a boy on a bike could be fair game.

The closer he got to town, the slower he pedaled. The road, he remembered, ran above the north side of town. From it, he should be able to look down to see what's happening, but he felt too exposed. On his left, the canyon rose steeply, in many places unclimbable, and there wasn't a bush any bigger than a fruit basket to hide behind. On his right, the shoulder sloped to the river. His forearms ached from gripping the bike handles so tightly, and his heart raced. Blood pounded in his ears.

This isn't fair, he thought. In the movies, the hero isn't scared every second. Rambo sneaks right into the enemy's camp. He looked at his hands. His knuckles were white. Stopping the bike, he unclenched and forced himself to breathe slowly. He recited a mantra he'd learned when he was little, a tongue twister that made him feel better though it didn't mean anything. "Sixteen stainless steel twin screw cruisers," he said. He repeated it twice more, then moved on.

He knew when he rounded the next bend that the canyon would open up and he would be able to see Golden. Smoke filled the sky. The air in the canyon was hazy. He stood on the pedalsa"the bike glided downhilla"to get a first glimpse.

When he stopped the bike finally, he should have been able to see all the way into Denver, but Golden was burning. Much of the center of town, made up of turn-of-the-century Victorian homes, was blackened, and nothing remained of the quaint brick homes except a few, low, broken walls or a handful of chimneys poking out of the rubble. Some fires still burned there, though mostly the excitement appeared to be over. On the north side of town, however, thick, black smoke poured out of the Coors plant.

Eric watched for several minutes. He didn't hear sirens and he didn't see anyone moving below. The streets were empty, no traffic at all.

Initially he thought of the burning of Atlanta from Gone With the Wind, but then the more obvious connection came to him. It looked like King Kong had visited Golden, maybe in one of his later incarnations where he met G.o.dzilla. Eric could imagine nothing else that could cause so much destruction. King Kong lives, he thought.

How will I find Dad in all this? The world had never seemed so big.

Smoke billowed from the Coors plant. Wind swirled the impenetrable darkness, and for a second, the black clouds formed the shape of the great ape. Just for a brief instant, Eric could see King Kong straddling the wreckage of Golden. Just for an instant he could hear him shrieking his challenge at the powers of the earth, and at this instant, there was no one to answer.

Chapter Seven.

CROSSROADS, COMING AND GOING.

"Are we still being watched?" asked Eric. Rabbit shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe." He stopped, scanned the edges of the canyon, then tilted his head to the side as if listening. "Yes."

"How do you know that kind of stuff? I can't do that," said Dodge crossly. "You give me the heebie-jeebies."

Rabbit shrugged again. "Sometimes I get a feeling."

Eric laughed. Sometimes he'd felt they were being watched too. It wasn't anything big, a s.h.i.+ver when he wasn't cold, a sense of being on stage, of things moving behind him or just below the horizon. It made him want to run around bushes and yell, "Boo!"

Rain clouds swelled to the east. Thunderhead piled on thunder-head like mushroom clouds, and flickers of lightning flashed at their base. The plains are getting a was.h.i.+ng, Eric thought. During the Gone Times, he didn't pay attention to the weather. Buildings were air conditioned, artificially lighted and always dry. Car heaters held out cold or rain or snow. Now, he checked the weather automatically. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight.

They hiked quietly for several minutes. Eric decided the storm would stay out on the plains. They needn't worry about finding shelter from wind or rain tonight. He snapped a glance over his shoulder, trying to catch whatever might be following them, but he saw nothing. Rabbit walked in front of him nonchalantly. If Rabbit wasn't frightened, then there was probably no need for him to fret. Rabbit "intuited" better than anyone he had ever met.

"What kind of car did you have, Grandpa?" asked Dodge. Eric surveyed the path before them. Following U.S. 6, they had turned into Clear Creek Canyon a half hour earlier, but a rock slide covered the highway now and they would have to pick their course carefully over the broken and loose rock. Heat waves s.h.i.+mmer off the rock-strewn slope. He could see almost no evidence of the line of gun-shot riddled cars he remembered from years ago. The slide had buried them.

"I drove several, but I didn't really have one." He decided to head down to the river. The rocks looked less steep and jumbled there. "I was too young to get a driver's license before the plague, and there didn't seem much point in owning one particular car afterward. For a year or so, everybody who was left could own a hundred cars if they wanted to."

Dodge jumped from rock to rock like a mountain sheep. Eric shook his head ruefully. He couldn't recall the last time he felt that limber and careless of his well being. He continued, "Of course, that was only for a year as I said."

"How come we don't have cars now? Phil said he still had some that worked. I sure would have liked to drive in one. It'd save us from a lot of walking."

Rabbit sat next to the river, waiting for them to catch up. "Car won't do you any good where we're going," he said. He gestured up stream where the river tumbled through the clutter of boulders. "We'll be on a path soon enough," said Eric. He remembered the fis.h.i.+ng trail that went away from the highway at the old, blocked tunnel. "But Rabbit's right. Most places I expect a car won't go too far. A car needs a very special environment, a road, and the roads are falling apart." He lowered himself onto a rock that overlooked a deep pool in Clear Creek. Five trout a foot or so long each lazily swam to the other side when his shadow fell on the water. Heat broadcast from each sun-baked rock. Eric jerked his hand off the black granite. The stream looked refres.h.i.+ng and cold. "I suppose in some parts of the country, the roads will stay good for centuries. After all, when I was a child there were places in 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 ma.s.s 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.sy sh.o.r.e 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 gra.s.s 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."