DIG
Impact Series
Book 6
By
E.E. Isherwood
Mike Kraus
© 2020 Muonic Press Inc
www.muonic.com
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Author Notes
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Special Thanks
Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.
Thank you!
Chapter 1
Old Faithful, Yellowstone, WY
“Did you ever think you’d see this place again?” Asher asked Grace, while standing next to the burned-out husk of the Old Faithful Inn. Built in 1904, it was once the largest log hotel in America. As the centerpiece of the Old Faithful tourist area, she’d been taught basic facts about it during her park ranger orientation. She’d been inside a few times, always marveling and gawking at the spacious interior like any other tourist. However, now it was nothing but piles of bed springs, charred logs, and the solemn remains of the foundry-sized stone fireplace.
Grace paused to think it over before replying. “I always knew I’d come back, but I didn’t figure it would be this soon.” It had been three days since they’d survived the attack by Nerio and her husband. She and Asher had split up from Shawn’s people as part of their combined strategy. Shawn and his Crow people stuck with Randy and his train. They planned to come at the dig site from the south. Her mission was to return to Yellowstone National Park and round up all the law enforcement rangers she could find. However, after a quick pass through Mammoth Hot Springs to confirm the place was abandoned, they’d gone to the middle of the park and found the same thing at Old Faithful. Several square miles of parking lot had once provided barely enough room for all the tourists to park their minivans and touring RVs. Today, it was a ghost town coated in black soot.
Asher pointed with excitement. “There! Look at those people.” He pointed across the flat gravel field surrounding the Old Faithful geyser. The geyser itself sat inside a wide ring of flat benches spaced about fifty yards from the water feature. The rocks provided another hundred yards of buffer between the geyser and the ruined hotel. The trees were blackened on the hillside far beyond Old Faithful, which made the people’s bright clothing stand out.
“I don’t believe it,” she said with frustration. “The whole world has gone to pot and there are still tourists trying to get themselves burned with scalding hot water.” On the way into the park, she was shocked to find the gates were wide open, with no one manning them. She didn’t have the authority to close and lock them, but she did shut them. Still, she’d assumed closing them was unnecessary. Everyone knew the asteroid had effectively ended the tourist season, right?
“Come on, we have to hurry.”
“Why?” He looked up in the sky. “Is the helicopter back?”
They’d spent part of their journey avoiding Nerio in her helicopter, but the last few days had devolved into a series of cat-and-mouse encounters with other aircraft. Although they weren’t sure they were being watched or followed, they always used caution and assumed they were being hunted by TKM. Whenever they spotted activity in the sky, they did everything possible to avoid it.
“No,” she replied, now running across the hundred yards of gravel. “But those people are in danger.”
She yelled ahead, unsure if they would hear her. “Hey! Get out of there!”
They ran up to the semicircle of benches. Fifty feet away, a crusty white crater started spewing bursts of steaming water from its top in ever larger quantities. It seemed to defy logic that the tourists would stand right where the water from Old Faithful was about to fully erupt. What were they thinking?
“Hey!” she shouted, hesitating at the bench.
The hiss of the geyser made it difficult for the people to hear her, or so she assumed. None of them were looking back at her. Instead, they pointed and hopped from rock to rock to get a better view of the steamy stream, still growing in intensity.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we have to go out there.”
He looked at her. “Won’t they figure it out?” Asher absently slapped his boot in a large puddle. All the seats were wet, as was the soot-stained walkway. It looked like it had rained recently.
Old Faithful could send water almost two hundred feet in the air. If the people were lucky enough to stand upwind, the spray might not touch them at all, despite being so close. However, the wind seemed to blow in her face; all of them would soon be doused with super-heated water. As much as she wanted to let them learn a hard lesson so she could get on with her more important mission, she couldn’t let them get burned. Then she’d be saddled with finding medical help for them.
“Come on, Ranger. This is what we do.” She hopped off the wooden walkway and went onto the open ground around the geyser. Unlike the thin crust at Mammoth Hot Springs, people had been standing too close to Old Faithful for over a hundred years. She didn’t have to worry about falling into subterranean channels of water.
Asher followed a moment later. The ground rumbled as she went. It had such force it was necessary to halt and observe.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something new,” she said with concern. “It’s never done that before.”
It wasn’t a random grouping of tourists in front of her. It was three teenaged kids and their parents. The two young boys were hanging out on the white rocks next to the building stream of water, already getting wisps of hot steam blown their way. The teen girl and her mother gave the geyser the most distance. The father hovered between the two groups, as if unsure if he should stay back or move forward. He probably didn’t realize all of them were much too close.
She still had half the distance to cover, but she needed to get their attention over the increasingly loud roar of water. The last thing she ever would have done a week ago was pull out a pistol, clear the safety, then fire a round into the air, but she did it to save
them. When the gun went off, the family’s heads whipped around.
Grace waved and screamed, “Get out of there!”
They didn’t respond in the way she expected, though she should have known better. The mother and father flashed her the okay sign, then seemed to shout and wave their kids to one side. Instead of going away from the turbulent chop of spray and steam, they tried to move around it, toward the upwind side.
“Are you people stupid?” Asher said with despair.
The ground rumbled with more force than before. A lone jet of water came out of the geyser spout, spraying them all with a hot mist. That’s when the screams began.
Grace didn’t have the time to explain the tourist mindset. Being outdoors in the presence of Mother Nature didn’t affect everyone the same way. Most people stayed on the benches and watched the spectacle from afar. Others turned off their common sense and walked right up to the edge of the crater to watch it. They were the same type of people who beat their chests or hurled insults to provoke the buffalo, then complained the loudest when the big animals charged them. It happened every season. Despite her private feelings, it was her duty to protect visitors, even the idiotic ones. She bumped Asher. “We have to pull them out. They aren’t getting the picture. I think they’re panicking.”
“I’m not doing much better,” he said in a loud voice. “Is this shaking normal?”
Some of the small rocks sitting on top of the bare ground bounced and scrambled, as if a titan were shaking the land to pan for gold. Soon it would be difficult to stand, much less run.
“No, this is far from normal. I think the falling rock changed something. We have to hurry!”
The family stumbled on their sideways walk, but she ran toward them to help. Ahead, the normally predictable and well-behaved Old Faithful geyser was now a feral dog, spewing alternating blasts of steam and bucket-like heaves of water over its sides. If the shaking and rumbling was any indication of what was coming, they only had seconds to get clear.
When she got right up to the family, she roared in a decidedly un-park ranger-like tone.
“Run for your freaking lives!”
Green River, WY
“I can’t believe we’re almost to Grace.” Ezra wiped sweat from his brow. They’d spent the night in a functioning hotel, but walking across the parking lot in the morning sunshine already had him ready for the air conditioning of the truck.
“Three days on the highway,” Butch replied, not sounding rested at all. “It should have taken us twelve hours, tops, in the old days.”
He agreed with the sentiment. Much of their trip was taken on side roads rather than the main highways. Part of it was because he was certain TKM was going to come looking for their stolen truck, but there was more to it. The interstates were filled with refugees, construction equipment, and military vehicles. Listening to the radio, he was able to piece together the various dig sites of the fallen asteroid fragments. Those locations were attractive to treasure hunters and miners intent on scoring some of the precious ore, but they were also repulsive to civilians desperate to escape the looting and gun battles common around each of the sites. The National Guard was mobilized everywhere, according to the news, but they weren’t anywhere to be seen in the chaos of the high plains. Ezra had to drive on remote two-lane roads to avoid population centers and traffic jams between Kansas City and the western half of Wyoming.
Haley came out of the lobby last. “I’ve been studying the map. The turnoff to head north is at the other end of town. We’re basically there if we can get through traffic.”
They’d done their research. The piece of asteroid which had scraped the treetops of Yellowstone National Park had bounced south and came to a stop in a broad valley between the towns of Big Piney and Boulder. He’d looked at the map, too. They had about seventy-five miles to go. The problem was the highway, as always. She was right about traffic. It was legendary.
“I think that’s the same truck we saw last night,” Butch exclaimed, pointing to the interstate about a mile away. “The highway hasn’t moved.” It looked like a construction site, there were so many dump trucks, flatbeds carrying tractors, and giant mobile cranes.
Ezra paused. “You really think it’s the same one?”
Butch shrugged. “Maybe. It sure doesn’t look like it’s moving. Not even an inch.”
“The map says we’re getting off the highway and onto a two-lane road again. It will take us directly north to the site.”
Ezra walked again. “That explains it. This packed highway is trying to merge onto a smaller two-lane strip of pavement to go north toward the dig. Maybe it was a mistake to take the night off. Now we may never reach her.”
He tried not to get himself down. Ezra had talked to Grace a few times the past few days. He was aware of her choice to go to Yellowstone Park, but they’d agreed it didn’t make sense for him to follow her there since she planned to keep moving. She was going to meet him at the dig site itself with any rangers she could enlist to help her.
Haley chuckled as they reached the truck. “I couldn’t have gone on. The sleep I got last night was the first solid shut-eye I’ve managed to sneak in since I met you two.”
“Yeah, I know,” he replied. “I needed the sleep, too.” If Butch was right and the highway hadn’t moved all night, they’d definitely made the right call to spend that time in a real bed.
Haley went on. “By the by, if we could get the redheaded wench to bring her helicopter back, we could hop a ride on it.”
“As her prisoners?” Butch said with surprise.
“No, you big goof,” she said good-humoredly. “She’d be our prisoner.”
He laughed as he heaved his duffel into the bed of the truck. They’d picked up a few sets of clothes, toothbrushes, and the like over the past few days on the road. Mostly stuff they’d acquired at gas stations and truck stops.
Ezra stood next to the TKM vehicle, looking back at the modern hotel. Behind it, towering above the three-story structure, a pair of massive rock spires dominated the landscape, like two stone elephants walking the ridgeline of the steep hill. Unlike the portion of Wyoming they’d already crossed, the flatlands were gone. There were still a lot of scrubby grasses and weeds, but they clung to broken hills and valleys. While he admired the beauty of the scenery, cars sped into the parking lot.
“E-Z, I think we’ve got trouble,” Butch cautioned.
Five or six pickup trucks came in through two entrances on the lot. The vehicles cut across empty parking spots and drove right for them.
“Guys, weapons.” He said it quietly, and in a level voice.
One thing that had changed in America was the carrying of weapons. Yesterday, they’d walked into the hotel with rifles slung over their shoulders. The prim woman behind the counter gave them a few sideways glances, but she didn’t try to stop them from taking the guns into the hotel. The buffet breakfast room was interesting that morning as patrons propped their shotguns and rifles next to their coffee and donuts.
He never thought he’d need a gun at a hotel.
“Be cool,” he said. It was hard to say how many men were in each truck, but if there were only drivers, they’d be outnumbered five to three. His window of initiative was all but closed when the first truck stopped directly behind their ride.
There was no backing out.
Chapter 2
Old Faithful, Yellowstone, WY
The tourists struggled on the rocks around the geyser, tripping and sliding as the shaking got worse. Once on the ground, they seemed to finally comprehend the danger they were in. Their eyes fell on Grace, and the parents warned their kids. They all got up and sprinted toward her and Asher as if they were the last lifeboats on the Titanic. As they came to her, she was glad they’d turned their back on Old Faithful; it erupted with more fizz and steam than she’d ever observed in past eruptions.
“Don’t stop!” she urged the teen boys as they sped by. She said the same thing as the mother and d
aughter ran by hand in hand, and she shouted the loudest when the father passed her. “Get them far away!”
She and Asher then chased them. The big-city boy still wasn’t quite as fast as her, but he’d improved his pace since their first run across the delicate shell of Mammoth Hot Springs. She was no longer worried he’d fall behind or that she’d have to drag him across the finish line. They were both in better shape, and…
The shaking turned violent, causing her to misplace her foot, fall over, and face-plant on the rocky terrain.
Asher didn’t see her for a few seconds. She was struggling to her feet when he did, then he stopped and turned around.
“No! Go!” she yelled.
The unearthly roar made it too noisy to be heard. He probably knew what she’d said, but he still ran back the ten or fifteen feet to grab her arm as she struggled upright. His eyes went to the geyser behind her, causing Grace to turn slightly.
“Oh my—”
He yanked at her arm, prompting her to move.
She was disappointed in herself for needing to be reminded of the obvious danger, but she’d entered wildly uncharted territory. The plume of water was ten times bigger than she’d ever seen it before. The geyser opening and chambers below must have been widened thanks to the nearby asteroid impact. It was the only option which made any sense.
They sprinted for the benches. The family had regrouped there, and they watched her and Asher approach. This time, they were the ones pointing and yelling at her. She knew what they were saying.
What goes up must come down.
In a flash, she knew why the benches were soaked. The geyser had gone off recently. With its greater punch, the entire walkway and the benches needed to be moved far back.
For a few seconds it was a competition in waving. They waved her in, and she waved them to go back. When she hopped onto the platform, the first drops of hot water slapped off the brim of her wide hat.
Impact | Book 6 | Dig Page 1