The Almost-Apocalypse of Apple Valley

The Beginning of the End-1

The Beginning of the EndSaturday, June 10, 1989 - 9:00 AM

It was a beautiful day for Owen “Rocket Man” Thom to break the all-time record.

The four kids were all on their BMX bikes, leaning over their handlebars beneath a crystal-blue sky while they loitered just in front of the electrical substation west of Lion’s Park.

From the distant park, an occasional cheer from soccer-parents in lawn chairs and the referee’s shrill whistle carried through the light breeze, but mainly, a low buzz hung in the air where towering steel relays, transformers, and conductors communicated with each other over thick black wires and cables.

The chain link-fenced station was poorly hidden behind a row of oak trees at the south-east foot of Bass Hill, Apple Valley’s central hill where the since-passed town founder had built his house. It was rarely used and had been for decades, reigning poorly over a cobwebbed, western-style inn below where old Hollywood used to come and play cowboy in the 1950s and 60s.

The landscape was perfect for amateur weekend BMX riding. What wasn’t dirt was brown and gray granite rock. There were boulders the size of tiny houses and smaller specimens that could be chucked at both friend and foe.

Owen and his friends especially liked it here because of the tiny dirt trails that crisscrossed up and down little dips, even going around a dried-up percolation pond. There were plenty of natural jumps that allowed a kid to get at least six feet of pure air (no lie), assuming the rider picked up enough downhill momentum zooming down the road to the hill-top water tanks.

As for landing?

That was easy.

Landing on both wheels and staying that way?

Not so easy.

But if anyone could do it with the semblance of ease, it was Rocket Man.

Owen’s friends called him that because he’d been the ‘max air’ record holder since they’d first started riding here. Not that anyone took out their tape measure and penciled in official records. It was just obvious from the fact that he was the only kid in the group for whom the others would completely stop their own riding shenanigans to watch him fly like a bird over the tabletop they’d built months ago with shovels and sweat.

Owen’s Redline 700SL was a brilliant chrome. He swapped out the standard black seat and handlebar grips for ones that were aqua-blue in order to match, as closely as possible, the Mongoose bike ridden by Cru Jones, his favorite BMX racer from the movie Rad (who cared if he was fictional).

It wasn’t just his bike that stood out—it was his riding gear too. His helmet had been painted red to match Cru’s with a big blue “RM” he’d spent nights and weekends carefully sketching in on each side. It’s sharp-angled chin bar and dark visor made him feel almost like, if not exactly like, a post-apocalyptic road warrior sucked right out of Mad Max and dropped off in a similar bleak landscape.

When Owen took hold of the rubber handlebar grips and flexed his white-gloved hands, he became one with the bike.

His visor was flipped up right now and the kids were shooting the crap when Jake Crawford decided to be the first to dissent on their current topic of conversation.

“It’s all fake anyway,” he said.

They’d been taking a momentary breather, allowing their collective sweat to dry, as the discussion centered on the finer points of WrestleMania V and how Steph Morris felt that Zeus and Macho Man Randy Savage had been robbed of the title by the underhanded tactics of Hulk Hogan.

Of course, Jake would be the first to ignore the whole spirit of the conversation and throw in something irrelevant. He enjoyed stirring the pot like that.

“Fake?” Steph asked. Her voice was slightly muffled by her own neon green chin-barred helmet. Only a single green eye was visible since the other was hidden behind a curtain of pink-dyed bangs that reached her cheekbone. “When we get back to your house, let me hit you over the head with a folding chair then.”

Ryan Toscano snickered.

Jake rolled his eyes. “You have to know how to do it right. I’m not going to let some amateur try, and girl or not, I’d squash you if you did.”

Jake could probably squash all three of them at the same time if he wanted. He was the tallest of them all by at least six inches. Blond with blue eyes, a buzz cut, a pale face full of freckles, and enough leftover baby fat morphing into muscle to squash a whole army of kids into submission, Jake wasn’t one to mess around with.

“So you’re admitting it takes skill?” Steph asked.

“I’m saying it’s still fake.”

“Shut up and ride already,” Ryan chimed in. “Or I’ll hit both of you with chairs.”

Ryan may not have been as big as Jake—in fact, he was even smaller than Steph—but he fought dirty. He was also pretty smart, running neck-and-neck with Owen on the mental skills, though neither one liked to talk about that.

His skin was perpetually covered in dirt or at least it seemed that way. His parents and three younger sisters looked like they’d never had the privilege of living underneath a roof. That whole clan reminded Owen of those desert Bedouins he had seen in a National Geographic video Mrs. Kirkwood put on for the class while she was grading papers.

And with that long nose and buck teeth of his, Ryan probably had some genuine rats in his family tree.

Owen looked back toward the substation. An old man with bushy sideburns and a red trucker cap sat inside his blue Dodge pick-up truck just outside of the fence. His window was rolled down and his elbow hung out the side. He seemed thoroughly engaged in his spread-out newspaper while Owen and his friends jabbered on.

“I’m ready, so I’ll go,” Owen said, flipping the visor back down over his face. “The rest of you can watch and drool.”

He ignored the round of pffts and whatevers, knowing The Crew was actually excited to watch him. He stood on his pedals, briefly spinning his handlebars a full 360 degrees—one of his easier, but more impressive-looking tricks. He rode up the incline to the substation and wound up close to the truck. The man with the paper seemed not to notice his presence, despite the whooshing of Owen’s wheels spitting up bits of gravel. An open, steaming army-green canteen sat perilously on the dashboard alongside half of a white-bread sandwich wrapped in plastic.

The man flipped the page of his paper, shook it straight, and briefly met Owen’s eyes. His sun-reddened face was hard. Stoic. So much so that it unnerved Owen enough to make him look away. Even though Owen wore a visor, it felt like the man zeroed in on his pupils and was going to dive right in.

Owen and his friends typically had the run of this place on Saturday mornings, and they were all a little annoyed that this guy had come along and tainted the atmosphere.

Now it was edging up past annoying into something else.

He decided to put it behind him and looked out past the tabletop which was about fifty yards down the trail.

From this vantage point, he could see where the old Apple Valley Airport used to be. Now, it was nothing but broken up pieces of asphalt and old junk people tossed out of their cars. An abandoned pink doll factory still stood in the middle of the desert shrubs as well, just a little ways behind Church of the Valley, the Gold Strike Lanes bowling alley, and the post office.

A lot of kids made fun of this town and complained about how there was nothing to do. But Owen loved the freedom and fresh air. Most of the kids didn’t have a clue just how lucky they were.

He glanced back at his friends waiting impatiently by the jump. A momentary fear, a stupid one at that, ran through him. He imagined he’d look like an i***t in front of Steph if he didn’t break his record today.

Just behind him was a blacktop road that ran further up Bass Hill to a pair of water tanks. If he really wanted to impress her, he could have climbed that road and come back down at the jump with maximum speed.

But he wasn’t suicidal.

And he wasn’t exactly sure why he wanted to impress her so much in the first place.

Just as he was about to pump down on the pedals, a loud crack emitted from the power substation.

The snap was whip-like. Sharp enough to almost send Owen tumbling over his handlebars from the decibel level, but he managed to shoot his feet out to the sides and keep himself upright. The bike buzzed and vibrated beneath him like it was charged with a hidden energy.

He wanted to let go of the handlebars, but instead, his grip tightened. A keen fear slithered up his body. His breath cut itself short as the feeling traversed his rib cage and shot upward toward his brain.

And then it extinguished itself.

Owen swore he heard something akin to a sighing of relief. Like someone dying of thirst had just taken a gulping drink of water, quenching their agony.

He looked at the man in the truck who seemed not to have noticed anything at all. His weathered fingers were still holding the paper in front of his face.

Then Owen flipped up his visor and turned back toward the substation. The glare of the sun stung a little. What he was looking for, he wasn’t sure. There was no sign of fire. No smoke. No cables dancing around the ground like snakes, spitting sparks of electric venom.

“Hurry up, you puss!” Steph yelled from below, sounding as if she was talking through a mile-long tunnel. “The rest of us want to go.”

No guts, no glory.

Owen turned back to the intended target. He jammed the visor shut, pushed down on the pedals and listened to the wind whistle through the gaps in his helmet as he barreled down the dirt track.

Through the whole fifty yards, he couldn’t help but feel that something was still wrong. Placing it was another matter. It wasn’t until he reached the lip of the tabletop and felt himself floating through the air that he knew something was wrong. He looked to the right at his friends who were a captive audience. Jake, Ryan, and Steph were all leaning over their handlebars, all with mouths opened wide enough to shove an entire hoagie into each one.

Something definitely felt off.

Owen looked down and wished he hadn’t.

His hands were still connected to the grips of his handlebars, but the handlebars themselves were no longer connected to the front forks.

They had just separated like a pair of loose Lego pieces that had lost their grippiness.

Time slowed as the declining side of the tabletop greeted him ever closer each agonizing second.

This wasn’t going to end well.

His nards were already being sucked back up into his guts, anticipating the impact of either landing directly on the neck of the seat or right on top of the frame.

Odd questions piled up in his mind: Would his parents take his bike and give it away for the church rummage sale? Would his friends ever let him live this down?

Could a boy ever become a man without nards?

He let go of the floating handlebars and prepared for landing.

The next thing he felt was the soles of his British Knights high-tops disembarking from the pedals and connecting with the dirt. His knees buckled and without anything to hold onto, there was a messy sort of stutter-stop before he tumbled head-over-rear over the front wheel, the world rumbling lowly outside of his helmet, rolling several times before coming to a stop.

At least he hoped he stopped.

His vision was still spinning.

It was painful to breathe. Oxygen seemed to have a hard time getting through his mouth and into his lungs. The air had been punched out of him by the frame where the handlebars had connected to the forks.

He gasped, trying to talk.

Pain shot through his chest and stomach, and he tasted a gritty mix of blood and dirt on his tongue.