by Nick Thacker
She nodded, already trying to find a road that led down to the lake. “I’ll bet there’s a turnoff up ahead. Keep your eyes peeled.”
Ben nodded and began to roll up the window.
“Hey,” she said.
He stopped and looked over at her.
“What’s the time?”
He’d almost forgotten he’d been tracking the bomb’s countdown timer with his watch’s built-in timer, and he suddenly felt a wave of anxiety wash over him.
15 minutes.
“15:14,” he called to the other vehicle. Saying it aloud made him even more nervous.
They’d decided that they would try to allow for a five-minute window before the countdown timer reached zero, as a “safe zone.” It was an arbitrary number, but Ben didn’t want to take any chances that Stephens — or whoever else was behind this — hadn’t programmed the timer to detonate the bomb before it reached zero.
That meant they had about ten minutes to get the bomb out onto the water.
He pulled away from the police car, suddenly aware of the one-way trip they were both on.
They didn’t have time to get to the boat and get to a hill or raised area over the lake.
If they chose the boat option, it was their only option. Either the boat had fuel in it or it didn’t, and if it didn’t…
He didn’t waste energy computing the outcomes of that scenario. Ben focused on the road in front of him, watching for a left turn that would lead them to the lake.
Another variable I’ve got to get right.
They didn’t have the time to search multiple roads.
Luckily, the road they wanted was the first one that appeared in front of them. Ben wasted no time turning the truck and bouncing over the unkept mud and dirt, all the while accelerating as the truck sped up downhill. He barely even checked behind him for Julie’s car — it wouldn’t matter much now if she was there or not.
The road ended at the water in a sort of boat ramp, the kind you might use in a worst-case scenario. Mud and rocks made up the bottom half of the ramp as the road disappeared into the gently lapping waves of the lake, and Ben made sure to stop the truck well enough in front of the ramp so as not to have any trouble leaving the location when they were finished. Time was working against them, more than he’d ever experienced.
He got out of the truck and ran along the shore until he came to the small boat tied to a short dock that poked out from the shoreline. It was a green fishing boat with a small two-stroke engine and stick rudder attached at the rear.
At least that was good news. Let’s hope there’s some gas in it.
He reached the dock, untied the boat, and immediately began pulling the cord to start the engine. Julie had parked her police cruiser haphazardly in a patch of mud on a steep incline off to the side, and she ran up next to him.
“Need help?”
“The keys are still in the truck!” Ben yelled over the sound of the sputtering motor. “Back it up here as close as you can.”
She ran to the truck, and almost instantaneously Ben saw the truck kick up gravel and mud as it backed up at an alarming rate. He looked down to focus on his work and pulled the cord once more, hearing the engine cough to life. He just about had a heart attack when he looked up again. The truck was mere feet away and still moving quickly.
He jumped, ready to dodge the moving vehicle, when it stopped on a dime.
Julie stepped out of the truck and ran up to the boat and its occupant.
“Wow. You can drive that thing,” Ben said.
“Who said I couldn’t?”
“Here, help me get the bomb off the truck.” He released the latch of the tailgate and let it fall down, hopping onto it as soon as it lowered completely. He slid the heavy cylinder back to the gate and got back down.
Together, he and Julie lifted the canister, each holding the bottom with one hand and placing their other hand along its side, and set it on the boat’s floor.
“Is this thing going to be strong enough?” she asked.
Ben knew she was talking about the boat’s rickety aluminum floor. “Should be. We don’t have any other options though, so let’s just pretend it’s a brand new cruise ship.”
“How much time do we have?”
Ben glanced at his watch, then at the bomb’s display screen. “I’ve got eight minutes, and that thing says thirteen.”
She didn’t respond, and Ben understood what she was thinking. He was feeling the same way.
Doesn’t seem like enough time.
“Ben! Look!”
Ben saw Julie pointing at a flashing set of police lights in the distance. The officer must have turned on the lights to ensure anyone around would see them coming.
“Get back in the truck, and I’ll be there in a sec,” he said.
She seemed puzzled for a moment, but ran toward the truck. Ben, meanwhile, turned the boat toward the center of the lake. He reconsidered, then slid the bomb to the back of the small vessel. It would help get the boat on plane when it reached the proper speed, but he was more interested in steadying the rudder.
He made a snap decision and placed the cylindrical container on the left side of the rudder stick, preventing the boat from turning too far to the right. The way the lake was shaped, if he remembered correctly, was such that there was more open water to the left, where there was nothing but shoreline to the right.
Satisfied with his work, he took a final glimpse at the countdown timer.
Eleven minutes remaining.
He really hoped Stephens wasn’t playing them for fools one last time.
He’d forgotten something.
The boat was, literally, dead in the water. He needed a way to hold the throttle down to get the motor to engage and push the fishing boat out onto the lake.
“Ben! Come on!”
Come on, Ben. Think.
He pulled off his shirt and began spinning it into a long, spiraled rope. When he finished, he looped the shirt around the throttle section of the stick, careful to not cinch it tight just yet.
Ten minutes.
He ran one final check over their handiwork. The bomb was situated in the back-left side of the boat, standing on end and silently awaiting its detonation orders, and the engine was roaring, ready to engage. He had formed a loose granny knot with his shirt, now looped over the stick, and he abruptly pulled the knot tight. The tightening engaged the throttle, and Ben jumped backwards on the dock as the boat pulled away from its station. It accelerated, the small but powerful engine doing what it was made to do.
Ben watched the boat for only a moment before he turned back to the truck and police Charger. Julie was already almost inside the cruiser, and he yelled over to her.
“Get in the truck!”
He hobbled quickly back to the driver’s seat of the truck and slammed the door after he climbed in. Julie joined him on the passenger side, and he pressed the accelerator to the floor, hitting the top of the small ridge of the adjoining road and turning onto it without slowing.
The police cruiser’s lights were beginning to recede into the distance, but Julie wasn’t watching them anymore. Instead, she was staring directly at Ben.
“I, uh, wanted to make sure we’d both be able to get out of here,” Ben said.
Julie looked at him oddly.
“You know — that police car… the way it was parked in the mud, and… I didn’t, uh, there’s a lot of mud, and stuff…” his voice trailed off as he realized how weak the excuse must have sounded.
I wanted to be with you.
“Whatever, Casanova,” Julie said, a hint of a smile forming on her lips.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Nine minutes.
Ben was working the controls on his cellphone, trying in vain to get a signal. Julie’s phone was useless out here as well, so she started trying to reach the officers and volunteers they’d recruited using her radio.
“This is Julie Richardson. Anyone copy?”
She ask
ed again.
“Officer Wardley. I copy. We’ve still got quite a few out and about looking for these caches, but there have been at least ten we’ve dropped into the lake already. Where are you?”
Ben grabbed the radio from Julie and gave him the update. “Wardley, we’re around the Butte Overlook, heading back northeast. We need to get everyone out of the park.”
“Copy that, Ben. Any update on the bomb?”
“No more than nine minutes. Wardley, start hailing the others and head to the borders.”
“Nine? Are you sure?”
Ben didn’t respond, instead switching the radio to another open-frequency channel he knew a few of the officers were on. He repeated the message, much to the same reaction. He handed the radio back to Julie, who immediately called for Randy.
“Randy. Randall Brown, you out there?” Julie asked.
“Copy, Julie, I’m here. We’re heading toward a rest stop a few miles from the lake. It’s got a nice brick shelter and all, for what that’s worth.”
She looked over at Ben. He simply gave her a quick update. “I know where that is. Probably get there in six or seven minutes.”
“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” she said through the walkie-talkie. Randy confirmed, and told her he’d continue to track down the others and corral them together at the rest stop. Julie thought about what he’d said. That brick structure will be useless against a volcanic eruption. She appreciated the man’s optimism, however.
“If that bomb is still heading toward the center of the lake, we should be fine,” Ben said, somehow reading her thoughts. “It’ll detonate at the surface, which will obliterate the shoreline, but it should otherwise go straight up.” He stopped for a second before adding, “I hope.”
Julie could see that Ben’s watch showed his altered countdown at less than three minutes, and she hoped it was an unnecessary precaution to have subtracted the five minutes from what was on the bomb’s display screen.
She also hoped that this was all some sick dream; that she’d wake up in bed with a headache and only fading memories of the nightmare that had unfolded. But she knew that was probably an even longer shot than getting out of this alive.
“How’d you know, anyway?” Ben asked from the driver’s seat of the truck.
“Know what?”
“Which cave it was in. How did you just guess the right one?”
Julie paused a moment before answering. “That’s what I worked out with Randy, right after you left the first cave. He got me a map of the seismic activity below the lake, and how the hotspot’s moved every year.”
“Moved?”
“Well, like less than a centimeter, but yeah, over the course of millions of years, the hotspot has moved slightly northeast. Or to be more specific, the plate we’re on has slid southwest, while the hotspot’s remained stationary.”
“And this hotspot,” Ben began, “is what’s caused all of the eruptions in the past, right?”
“Right. But it’s also the reason there’s a Yellowstone park at all. It’s the source, generally, of all of the park’s geologic activity. The Earth’s crust is very shallow directly above it, and the lake is over a portion of that section. All I did was find where the crust was thinnest, where there was a known cave through that area, and then mapped those variables on top of the hotspot.”
Ben was nodding along, trying to follow her logic.
“I just figured that Stephens, or whoever he was working for, wanted to take the smallest risk of failure as possible, and that they’d want the location of their bomb to be directly above the most vulnerable section of crust.”
“Preferably underground, so no one would see it,” Ben added.
“Well, that, but also because the deeper it is, the more likely it’ll cause a fracturing quake that would rip up the crust and cause the volcano. It turned out to be the only reasonable option when I looked at all the data, so I sent you down there.”
“That all sounds pretty nerdy,” Ben said. He shot a quick smile toward her.
“Yeah, well, it saved your butt.”
Ben turned the truck onto a larger camp road, probably a main road toward the gate, and Julie saw him check his watch.
1:30.
6:30, if the bomb’s countdown timer was accurate.
She noticed the truck’s speed, how close they still must be to the lake, and wondered exactly how large this bomb blast would be.
Chapter Fifty-Six
“Everyone behind the wall!” Julie heard Officer Wardley shout.
There were seven others at the rest stop when they pulled up, including Wardley, Randy, and the officer he’d ridden with.
A few stragglers made their way over to the rest stop’s building, a simple men’s and women’s restroom with an outdoor water fountain, covered by a slanted roof. A brick wall stood at the other end, forming a short breezeway area that Wardley and a few other men and women were now huddling behind.
Ben followed Julie as she stepped up onto the concrete floor of the pavilion and restroom.
“Glad you made it, you two,” Wardley said as they approached.
With two minutes left, Julie thought. Maybe less. She wondered if it would have been wiser to just continue driving, see how far away they could get. But she knew it was irrational. Nothing they did at this point was going to change the outcome — either the bomb detonated with or without causing a cataclysmic eruption as well.
A few other officers were wide-eyed, as if they were staring at an apparition, and Julie knew they had questions — question about the bomb, where it was hidden, how Ben knew it would safely erupt over the water, and more. But Ben didn’t seem interested in entertaining questions. He waited for Julie to press in to the group and stood stoically right at the edge of the pavilion.
She moved back a few steps to join him, and her hand found his. He turned to meet her gaze.
“You think this will work?” he asked.
“Stephens — they — seemed to have it all pretty well figured out,” Julie said. “But I can’t imagine the bomb’s blast being enough to open a major fissure in the Earth’s crust. This place has been here for 600,000 years without a major catastrophe like that, so I have to believe it’s stronger than that.”
“Yeah,” was all Ben said.
“I have a question for you, now,” Julie said. She noticed a few officers, as well as Randy, slowly making their way over to the pair at the edge of the concrete step.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“How’d you know about the single occupant campsites? Why did it just suddenly hit you that Stephens or his cronies would be stashing the payloads at those sites?”
Before Ben could answer, Wardley spoke up. “Yeah, and why not just dump the powder in the woods, where no one would ever find them?”
Ben looked at each of the others in turn before he answered. “It was a guess, really. A hunch. But I was thinking about my — about Diana Torres — one of the people this Stephens guy murdered. She was alone, ever since my dad… left.” Julie understood how emotional this must have been for him, and how he was surely not ready to bare the truth in front of these other people.
She also began to understand where he was going with it all. “And Livingston…”
“Right,” he said. “Livingston was the epitome of ‘alone.’ Even surrounded by the people he worked with, he had an estranged family and nothing but fancy toys to keep him company. Charlie Furmann was alone, too. Worked with Diana, but otherwise lived by himself.”
One of the officers stepped forward, looking confused. “That’s a pretty wild guess, Bennett. I don’t mean to sound accusatory, but I wouldn’t be able to stand trial with evidence like that.”
He seemed to be waiting for a response, as did everyone else, and Julie was surprised when he gave them one. “I know. I thought about it long and hard, and the reason it was so compelling to me is that it lines up perfectly with my theory about this virus. About how to beat it.”
Everyone’s eyes, if they weren’t already, were now riveted on Ben. Julie stared at him, too. They all waited for him to reveal his theory, but he wasn’t given the opportunity.
A flash of light washed over Julie’s eyes, and she took a stumbling step backward. She tried to blink the light away, but it was almost immediately replaced by the loudest noise she’d ever heard.
The cracking sound was like standing on a lightning bolt as it ripped open the earth, but it lasted longer. Her eyes must have been bleeding, and there was no way her eardrums could be intact after a sound like that. She tried to reach up and cover them as her vision returned.
Through the white haze, she saw the treetops of the forest bending and crunching under some unseen force, followed closely by a massive shockwave of dust and debris. Her face was glued to the scene, unfolding front of her as if it were an action movie in slow motion.
She felt something pulling at her, and her body was yanked backwards just as the force smashed against the brick wall. The roof above her was gone in an instant, and she saw the blue sky above her head. Dust filled every bit of the empty air in front of her face, and she felt it mingle with the saliva at the back of her throat, causing her to hack and cough.
Still, the force beat down on them. The bricks at the very top of the wall were the first to go, then she watched in horror as a larger portion of them flew away, like birds fleeing from a predator.
And just as quickly as it had started, it was over. She felt a heavy arm covering her, and it relaxed a little as the owner also realized the blast was finished.
“You okay?” she heard Ben’s muffled voice whisper — or was he yelling? — into her ear. She nodded and stood up.
The others recovered from the shock quickly, and soon each of them was examining the wreckage and destruction. Julie stepped off the concrete step and looked in the direction from which the blast had come.
A large, blossoming, mushroom-shaped cloud, probably ten times the size of the one she’d seen only days earlier, had formed and was reaching up to the sky. It was a whitish-gray color, and she could see that toward the bottom of it, a layer seemed to be peeling off.