The Yellowstone Conundrum

by John Randall

  Saucer-eyed, Randy saw a crack forming in the snow-covered parking lot, and then two snowmobiles disappeared into a new crevasse, swallowed in an instant. The crack in the parking lot got bigger; its jagged opening advancing quickly toward the geyser’s viewing area toward them!

  “Shit!” he shouted.

  They were two stumblebums in a tumble, unable to think about standing. The split in the earth headed straight for them, eating a small gathering of 50-year old pines, before splitting in two. The smaller crack continued for twenty feet and then stopped no more than a car-length away while the larger crack zig-zagged toward Old Faithful.

  When the split in the earth hit the geyser, the sound was like the largest walnut ever had been cracked, a snap-crack of a bat hitting a fastball in the sweet spot. A large burst of steam spit into the sky; the split in the earth continuing toward the forest beyond.

  Then it stopped. Silence except for the steam rising from Old Faithful and Randy and Nadine breathing heavily.

  “You OK?” he asked.

  Before she could say yes, a fearful noise from Old Faithful; a terrible groan, then the earth gave way at the blow-hole, forming a nearly-perfect round opening fifty feet in diameter. Seconds later another series of terrible groans and the hole was filled with red liquid. A crust quickly formed over part of it. A quick glance and you’d swear it was a red eye peeking out from underneath the earth, like in a Stephen King novel.

  Wha’z up? Anyone home?

  Just as quickly the scummy crust disappeared, but it sure looked like a wink to Randy.

  What the fuck?

  Old Faithful exploded. Normally, Old Faithful blows its top not on the hourly schedule so well advertised, but every 35-to-90 minutes based on the length of the previous eruption; scalding hot water shoots ninety to sometimes over one hundred twenty feet into the air in three or four movements, the third explosion being the money shot. But, this wasn’t scalding water. It was lava. Molten rock from the center of the Earth shot high a hundred feet into the air-before being overcome by gravity, returning to Earth in goopy clumps of upchuck rock; a cum shot from ol’ Vulcan himself.

  “Run, Randy, run!” shouted Nadine.

  Knees popping, muscles sore from the fall, Randy and Nadine scrambled to their feet and started to waddle as fast as they could, first toward the Old Faithful Inn—closed for the season, then to the Snow Lodge beyond.

  Randy took a last look behind him and wished he hadn’t; to his left and behind, the crack in the Earth stretched back across the large parking lot; to his right, to the geyser and beyond to the woods. In the distance across the parking lot he could see lava spurting, shooting up from Vulcan’s domain, squeezed out into a single line of gushers, each a hundred feet high. In an instant the line of gushers reached the viewing area, and continued back to Mother Faithful, now a chorus line of molten rock.

  Seconds later the woods on the far side of the geyser were on fire. Randy almost made it to the demolished Old Faithful Inn before falling flat on his face; then to his knees and scrambling.

  From behind him he heard the devil himself belch up fire and brimstone as the entire fault line turned from a red fountain of death, split wider, and then sank forty feet into the Earth’s mantle, all in the space of seconds. The parking lot, snowmobiles, skiers, Old Faithful herself and a good portion of the dense forest beyond, folding in on itself like God was making a crepe of fire and rock.

  Seconds passed and God exhaled, this time shooting rock and lava and earth and steam and molten ash not a hundred feet into the sky, but thousands of feet.

  Randy and Nadine Crowe from Flagstaff, Arizona never made it to their cabin. The portions of Old Faithful Village that weren’t destroyed from the force of the blast—from a jagged hole in the Earth’s surface initially over two miles in length—were consumed by fire and burned to ashes as the molten material fell to Earth.

  University of Washington, Seattle

  6:20 AM PST

  Sixth-year grad student Karen Bagley carefully placed her piping hot Starbucks double latte on a small, but clear portion of the left side of her messy workstation, ever so carefully because two years ago she’d casually put a similar cup of on top the tail of an old-fashioned mouse, which when accidentally jerked, spilled the contents into her sleek laptop, instantly frying the circuits. Of course, like the rest of world’s population, she hadn’t backed up her data in over a year thinking; It won’t happen to me, I’m just too smart.

  She still hadn’t backed up her data but she had graduated to Safe Starbucks.

  Karen herself was a messy bag of laundry, her sex features hard to determine other than the smooth, pretty lines of her face; everything else a guy would look at was covered by drab, loose-fitting comfortable clothes; now 22, her girly pimples were gone, most of her freshman 15 lost to semi-healthier eating. However, she hadn’t done her hair in four days, so her ponytail was now a bit heavy, perhaps blond, perhaps not. Her head followed the rhythm of the music from her iPod5. She couldn’t hear anything from the outside world, which in this case was the basement of the seven-story Gothic Johnson Hall, which housed the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.

  Outside, February was now into its third month, or so it seemed. Nothing but a cold grey mist covered everything west of the Cascades, separating Drysiders from Wetsiders. Very few places could beat Seattle in February on the Dreary Scale. It would be four months or more before the girls with short skirts would sit on the steps surrounding Drumheller Fountain and spread just a little, pretending to study, knowing there was a cadre of horny freshmen shooting up-skirt shots from across the quad.

  Faced with actually graduating in June, Karen knew the mornings of monitoring the seismographs and printouts, then transmitting the pages of results from UW’s monitoring station back to US Geo’s Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, were coming to an end. Some other grad student would take over. The data captured each night would be verified from different angles from the other 135 world-wide monitoring stations.

  At 6:20 PST Karen’s double latte lurched into a two-step and did a head-first dive onto her laptop—kind of a swan song, a two-and-a-half-double-latte-backflip and instantly fried her computer. Karen shrieked, her headphones popping out of her ears. Her swivel chair with the roll coasters started to float across the hard computer lab’s raised floor. Books and papers started to jump like they had minds of their own—free the slaves! I’m free at last; thank God I’m free at last and spewed in all directions across the lab.

  To her left the bank of seismographs started to dance like she’d never seen before. Unable to get out her seat because of the shaking, Karen saw the rapid fluctuation of the measuring equipment violently fluctuate on the four monitors, then rip across the printout paper---whacka-whacka-whacka.

  The earthquake felt like it was right under her seat.

  Stumbling, she fell toward the seismographs.

  That can’t be. She thought.

  Some spikes were going off the page; that is, the peak wasn’t sharp, it was broken. The apogee of the measurement was to the right of the piece of paper, the return shock coming back to be printed dutifully picked up where it could—beyond imagination. The top margin of the printout was 10.0. The earthquake being measured was beyond that.

  The epicenter was in Wyoming, six hundred miles away. Thirty seconds into the endless rattle a second set of seismographs began to spaz out.

  The second quake lasted a full 120 seconds, at odds with the first series of quakes. She looked at printer as it regurgitated the results before it spazed, jerking this way and that with the shaking before tipping over onto the floor, still printing.

  The epicenter of the second quake was north of Bainbridge Island, two miles east of the village of Suquamish in the center of the Puget Sound; the Cascadia fault had been triggered by the severe disruption in Wyoming. When the freight train of the quake was over she could hear other noises from abov
e. The greater Seattle area had just experienced a 9.45 earthquake, an aftershock from hell’s imagination inside Yellowstone National Park which had witnessed an 11.2 earthquake.

  The Seismology lab was in shambles.

  The lights went out.

  Karen screamed again.

  Above her she could hear the rumbles resuming in the distance, like the thunder from an advancing storm. A nearby building was collapsing. Was it hers?

  West Yellowstone Village, Montana

  7:20 MST

  “Good morning visitors! Time to get up and rock and roll! Get up out of that warm, comfy bed for a day of play in the snow. It’s a great day! Clear skies, the sun is just coming up over the horizon. Let’s see; what does our trusty thermometer have to say? Ten below. Yes, indeed; going to get all the way up to minus 2 by late in the afternoon,” chirped morning DJ Billy “Little Deuce” Richards. “This is KWYS-AM West Yellowstone Montana, broadcasting at 920 kHz, your 24-hour station with all the news, weather, sports and Yellowstone Park comin’s and goin’s. Get ready sleepyheads! Get up and dance your socks off!” Billy’s voice dropped to a bass. “It’s Alright by Adam Faith and the Roulettes!”

  Although a hit in its own right in 1964, the song was made famous in the movie Good Morning, Vietnam with Robin Williams boogying around the radio studio, flipping 45 records and generally acting like Robin Williams. It didn’t matter that the song consisted of repeating “It’s alright, it’s alright” 72 times to a relentlessly driving beat.

  Well, if you want me

  It’s alright

  It’s alright, it’s alright

  Well, if you want me

  It’s alright

  It’s alright, it’s alright

  Well, if you want me

  It’s alright (it’s alright)

  It’s alright (it’s alright)

  It’s alright (it’s alright)

  But, it wasn’t alright (it’s alright). On the 23rd It’s alright (it’s alright) the strongest earthquake ever recorded since man crawled out of the ooze began to violently shake the village of West Yellowstone, Montana.

  The second floor of KWYS-AM 920 Voice of Yellowstone National Park and West Yellowstone with all the Motels, Hotels and Places to Stay, Eat and Hootnanny fell directly onto the first floor of WKYS-AM 920, etc. killing young Billy “Little Deuce” Richards as he took the first sip from his double vanilla latte mocha from the Starbucks down the street. He never knew what hit him.

  Further down the street the wooden exterior of the IMAX Theater “Yellowstone Bears and Beavers!” took a hit as exterior wall boards first popped in synch, then the roof fell and the IMAX went boom. Wendy’s fell into the Motel 8; the Hampton Inn exploded; and they all died; McDonalds, Holiday Inn, Ramada Inn, Comfort Inn—in fact, ALL of the Inns. All fell into rubble within twenty seconds, anyone inside was dead.

  And if it wasn’t enough that everything was totally demolished and everyone was dead, the earth had the audacity to violently shake for another four minutes, just to make sure all of the bricks were sifted.

  South of Beartooth Pass, Wyoming-Montana border

  7:20 MST

  “Yes! Jesus, yes! Oh--oh, please, yes! God—“

  Penny Anderson felt the earth move beneath her slim, naked body. The vibration of their sex hit her at the exact moment of the best orgasm of her life. The warmth of their oversized sleeping bag and passion of their youth combined for Feast of the Yeast.

  “Yes! God damn it, yes!” she shouted, her pelvis moving at 120 beats a minute to his strokes. “Don’t stop!” Her long fingers had a hard buttock in each hand.

  Jimmy James Johnson, pile drivin’ man. Oh, the front porch was wide open. So was the back porch if he wanted it. “Yes…yes…go…more! Don’t stop!” Penny screamed as her partner and the earth moved as one. Jimmy James hit the runway just as her plane landed and the pair started to glide down the runway to the exit ramp.

  The orgasm stopped moving but the earth didn’t.

  “Wh--” sputtered her startled partner. “What the hell! “

  Penny screamed as their REI 4-season tent started the limbo, shaking to the earthy beat.

  A penis is a funny thing. It knows. It knows when to hold ‘em and knows when to fold ‘em. While part of Jimmy’s brain was still inside Penny, the alert portion of his brain told him something was seriously wrong and that Mandingo needed to fold camp, take a hike; petered out so to speak.

  “What the fuck was that?” Jimmy shouted, tumbling first out of, then off of, the hottest babe he’d managed to snag in the past year. Penny Anderson, second team US volleyball and alternate to the USA 20km cross-country skiing team—a walking, talking hot babefest fucking machine. And he’d scored the best pussy ever.

  The Earth even moved.

  The pair lay panting as the shock poles on the tent continued to rock and roll, the ground beneath them vibrating like a 50-cent bed in the Super 8 in Cody.

  Penny screamed again because of the noise; a rumbling, bumbling, rolling thunder, belying the beautiful morning she saw out of the flaps of the tent; the yellow distant sun just climbing over the statuesque fir trees, the blue sky to the east. She shouted, rolled over Jimmy James and tumbled out into the hard packed snow. He wasn’t far behind her, although equally undressed.

  The two naked twenty-two year olds looked across the wide expanse of the NE corner of Yellowstone National Park; they were alone.

  Trees swayed. Animals cried and wolves howled, the crisp hardness of the snow crust crinkled as the ground shook. Surf’s up, dude. The pair reacted to balancing themselves during the most violent earthquake since the earth’s creation.

  Then it stopped.

  The sound of the ground shaking stopped.

  Pine trees rustled their branches, then stopped, all snow falling to lumps beneath.

  The animals stopped howling.

  Thirty seconds later, Penny and Jimmy James, still naked and scared to death outside their now-collapsed tent.

  “What’s that?” Penny pointed, her small breasts, nipples taut, along with her finger, pointing to the west. Cleanly shaven except for a small vertical tuft of pubis; she was indeed a blond. While perky Penny could point, Jimmy James’ pointer had gone to its hidey-hole.

  Fifty miles to the west a cloud of volcanic ash, molten rock, miniscule portions of Old Faithful Village, and maybe a piece of Nadene and Randy Crowe of Flagstaff, Arizona shot skyward into the blue-black sky, just now clearing the far horizon.

  Dressing quickly, Penny Anderson of Eugene, Oregon and Jimmy James Johnson of Ogden, Utah scurried to break down camp, each knowing their portion of morning chores in the backcountry. Fifteen minutes later they were ready, boots on, skis attached.

  “Where to?” Jimmy asked.

  “Not there,” Penny nodded to the west, looking like she was ready for a Nordic pentathlon; clear skin, short blond hair cut shake-‘n-bake style. In fifteen minutes it had taken to take down camp the sky to the west was blocked by a shroud of volcanic debris now approaching twenty-five thousand feet, making the cloud look like a fierce thunderhead.

  Penny turned and faced north, the sun blocked by a range of E-W Mountains that ran along the border between Wyoming and Montana; the range was the western extension of the Bitterroots.

  “Well, you know, we could check the radio,” added Jimmy.

  Penny smiled. “I knew I had you along for a reason other than that stiff thing you bring out every morning.”

  Jimmy smiled and fetched his GPS, a marvel of technology that included a telephone, an Emergency Band radio, and the positioning software. The device woke up and beeped cheerily. Hello, what can I do for you? Jimmy switched to the Emergency Weather Band.

  Static; then more static, then a faint voice.

  “Daddy, are you OK? Talk to me, please. (girl’s voice) Oh, God—please make it stop…Daddy! (sound of destruction)

  “Why’d you stop it?” Penny asked.

  “I didn’t.” It’s gone”,
Jimmy James twiddled with the dial. “It was, I don’t know. The signal’s gone!”

  The voice of the girl on the emergency weather station was terrifying. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Where’d the signal come from?

  In front of them was a beautiful valley, mountains on two sides, and what they knew would be a large meadow, now buried under twelve feet of snow. It was shaking. Everything was shaking. The whole valley was shaking, trembling just a bit. The fir trees were shaking, their snow dusting dribbling down like confectioner’s sugar.

  Jimmy James ran his hand across his mouth, now dry.

  To the west the sky was dark from the explosions.

  The ground began to shake again, violently.

  The young couple was thrown down. Around them a cluster of pines swayed back and forth, what remaining snow on the branches shaken to the ground.

  They were surfing on the ground.

  Penny shrieked. “Stop it!” she shouted.

  The two skiers bounced to the earth’s vibration.

  Then it stopped again.

  Oblivious to the cold, the pair was spread-eagled, each trying to gain a measure of control over their out-of-control environment. After a full minute the dull roar of the catastrophe to the west subsided; trees stopped shaking. Penny got to her feet, followed by Jimmy.

  “We can’t go back there,” Penny said, pointing to the west.

  “That’s where our car is,” Jimmy James said simply.

  “I don’t care,” Penny replied. “I’m not going—there—“she pointed to the west where the evil clouds had continued to climb into the morning sky.

  The two of them had parked their car at the West entrance to Yellowstone. The road to Cody was open most years, although the road over Beartooth Pass closed at the first snowfall, normally late September. They then skied into the backcountry across a beautiful forest setting; laughing, swooshing, and loving where they were and what they were doing. They were happy. Two days of constant skiing had brought them northeast of the park, flat up against the Absaroka Range.