This time the craft came slower, its blade a blur, a cloud of dust beneath it. Eric said, “He knows we’re here.”
They stood. The copter hovered just off the road, twenty yards away. Bits of sand stung Eric’s cheeks. The mirrored cockpit glass revealed nothing. He didn’t feel scared, really, but he stepped in front of Leda, putting himself between her and the ship. She moved beside him.
“What’s he going to do?” asked Eric.
“He’s doing it.” She pointed to a multi-barreled device that hung on a mechanized swivel arrangement below the cockpit. The barrels were whirling around and around. She said, “He’s shooting us.” After a minute, the copter howling on the road, the ineffectual guns spinning, Eric said, “Let’s keep going,” and he walked toward the copter. Leda stayed beside him. As they approached, the craft moved aside, and the guns swiveled so they were pointing at them the whole way. When they’d walked for a couple of minutes without looking back, the tenor of the engine changed and the copter rose and flew away.
“That was odd,” Eric said. He felt like he imagined an athlete would who had just done some amazing feat—a half-court shot that touched only net, or a grand slam homer that wins the game at the bottom of the ninth—then walks away like nothing had happened, the epitome of cool and calm. Just another day. It was too bizarre to comprehend.
She said, “Glad he didn’t have ammo.”
He said, “Yep.”
Later, as they passed a station wagon parked on the shoulder, Leda bent at the driver’s window, cupped her hand on the glass and peered in. It was the third car she’d checked.
His heart still racing from the close call, he noticed her torn shirt drop away from her side, flashing a long stretch of white skin from her belt to just below her bra. This time Eric didn’t glance away. She’s pretty fit, he thought. Good looking for a twenty-five-year-old. He remembered his ex-girl friend at the high school, a sallow-faced blonde plagued with a band of pimples at her hairline that she could never clear up despite her most dedicated efforts. Last winter she’d decided to attack them with heat and cold and Eric had watched her wash her face with snow, then rush into the house to steaming hot hand cloths that she’d drape across her forehead like an Indian head dress. Twice they’d made out on her living room couch. The second time, Eric had experimentally tried to French kiss, and she’d said, “Don’t. That’s gross.” They’d broken up a couple of weeks later. “I can’t get into this pimple thing,” Eric had said. It all seemed so childish now.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Keys.” She straightened and smiled, her face smudged and tired (but clear-skinned, he noticed). “We don’t need to walk to Littleton.”
Eric hooked his thumbs into his backpack straps and pulled them together in front of his chest. Despite the mid-day heat, he shivered. “I saw a cop shoot two looters yesterday. They were robbing bodies.”
“Really?” She banged the door shut; the echo came back off a distant surface. “The National Guard took over police duties a couple of weeks ago, and my guess is most of the Guard are dead or home with their families. You sure he was legit?”
Eric thought of the ghost cop methodically pulling zippers closed on body bags, the liquid speed he’d demonstrated gunning down Beetle-Eyes and his girlfriend. “I don’t know.” He imagined the cop sitting on the edge of the Golden High School Knight’s football field that was now a mass grave, his wife and daughter somewhere under the torn-up sod. “He believed he was. I haven’t seen a car yet today. We’d attract attention.”
“All right, we walk.” She started down the road again, sniffed, then waved her hand in the direction they were headed. “Kind of creepy, don’t you think? Like dry fog.”
A reddish nimbus circled the sun above. He felt adrenalized by the brush with the copter, as if it had awakened him from a deep sleep. “Maybe. It’s more somber than anything.” He caught up to her and matched her pace. Her hands swung easily to her stride.
She turned and walked down an off-ramp to Wadsworth Boulevard. “Look, a Wal-Mart. We can get some stuff.”
Resting on four cinder blocks, a rusty Pinto sat on the street side of the otherwise empty parking lot. Didn’t she hear what I said about looting? he thought as they passed the abandoned vehicle. The broad reach of blacktop made him feel like a bug on a slide, like God was looking down on him so in the open. He walked backwards for a few steps, scanning the street for traffic, but there was] nothing. No trucks. No cars. No copter. He cocked his head and listened. Not even a bird. His left shoe squeaked. Her footsteps padded on the asphalt; her jeans swished lightly.
As if catching his thoughts, she said, “I’ll leave money. We can find food. Clothes.” She plucked at her shirttail. “Not much left of this one,” she said, then rubbed the side of her index finger across her teeth. “I have to brush too.”
Crunching over broken glass, Eric stepped through the shattered front door. Produce littered the floor, as if there had been a riot. He kicked aside an Oreo box, skittering black cookies across the tile. A whiff of old popcorn, the scent of butter soft as plush, lingered. Leda called into the dark store, smiled back, the flash of white startling in the gloom, and said, “Come on. They’re having a sale.” Last summer, he’d gone with Dad to a Wal-Mart to buy a lawn-mower. For hours, it seemed, Dad agonized over the merits of Briggs and Stratton versus Jacobson. Finally, Eric said, “They cut grass just the same,” and Dad met his eyes in answer, leaving Eric speechless as always. After a frightening second, where something mute and dark bubbled between them, Eric dropped his gaze to the mower. “Grass is grass,” he mumbled. Then he wandered over to the music department, and spent the rest of their time in the store deciding between a classical music collection or the latest group he liked. Leda stepped through a mess of Saltines boxes and other crushed cookies and chips packages, heading to the back of the store. He grabbed a plastic bag of Zingers and tore it open as he followed her. It had that flavorless, pure sugar taste he liked. The farther they moved from the windows, the darker it became, and the cavernous echoes of their footsteps made him jump. “Flashlights?” he said, and she cut down an aisle toward hardware.
“Good thinking.”
Another turn later, he could barely make out her silhouette. She tripped. “Can’t see a thing.”
“Here, let me,” he said and helped her up. Her arm felt warm and firm, and she came up so easily he realized he must outweigh her by thirty or forty pounds. “I’ve been living in a cave. This is almost home.” But it isn’t, he thought. He slid his feet cautiously, holding her hand, waving his other hand in front of him. The cave was never home, not like Littleton. He thought of his own room, the posters thumb-tacked to the wall, speakers perched on their pedestals. How he used to lay in bed with his hands locked behind his head, staring at the ceiling, letting the steady thrum of rock-and-roll wash over him hour after hour. Some days he’d pretend to be sick so he’d miss school, and while his parents were at work, he’d crank the sound up, shut his eyes and feel the vibration of the bass in his lungs. As his eyes adjusted, he realized that the dark was far from complete. A gray wash of light illuminated the high, suspended florescents, and the corners of the displays were just visible. Many of the shelves were empty, or their goods were knocked about. Something frantic had happened here.
“Where are we?” she whispered, her raspy voice loud in the silence.
“Households.” He let go of her hand and picked a box off the floor. He shook it. “You want a blender?” he asked.
She snickered.
“I’ll bet I can get you a good one. Ten speeds.”
“Will it slice and dice?”