The Yellowstone Conundrum

by John Randall

  This time she hit him with her knuckles clenched, which really hurt. What she couldn’t do was hit herself. She’d had passionate sex with a man she didn’t know, not five hours after her husband and children had been killed in a horrible accident.

  But they weren’t my children she rationalized. And, I didn’t love him. And I didn’t love them. I tolerated them.

  Don Jamison had been good to her. They were on their first family vacation. Last night they’d stayed in Moorcroft; took the kids to see Devil’s Tower and watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind at the Park Service Theater; the movie was fun, a little draggy in the middle and the twins were just a little too young; kept her so busy she didn’t have much time for the film. Still, it was a good family outing—but nevertheless, strained. She had married him because I’m 34 and I’m not making it on my own. There, she’d said it. The night before they’d stayed outside Rapid City; saw Mt. Rushmore and paid to get in to the unfinished monument to Chief Crazy Horse.

  Don had wanted to get going early today? Was it only this morning? So they’d left at six; then felt the earthquake an hour later; then the huge plume of black smoke and more earthquakes; every town and village was flattened. The power was out; phones didn’t work; so instead of turning around and heading due East, Don’s logic had told him to go South, not realizing the prevailing wind patterns would move the ash and smoke toward Denver.

  “Is that black cloud going to change everything?” she looked up at him.

  “What do you mean; in what way?” he asked, interested. He knew she was smarter than she looked.

  He didn’t answer her; instead he turned to help her up into the passenger seat of the rig. Her coat was open to the waist in front, the top two buttons of her shirt were undone; the wind toyed with the fabric and exposed peek-a-boo views of her tiny breasts.

  Jesus, I’m getting hard again.

  He opened the door but didn’t boost her up, instead he kissed the back, then the nape of her neck and whispered dirtily “You like it from behind, don’t you?” He was hard again, she backed into him.

  “Not outside,” she replied, her voice husky, but did nothing as his hands slipped under her shirt in front, his erection poking the crease in her pants.

  “You like it, don’t you?” he said again, more

  urgently. “You dirty little girl,” his voice filled with lust. His hands molested and roamed her breasts. She groaned.

  “Yes, God yes, I do.” It had been so long since she’d had passionate sex, longer than she wanted to remember.

  His right hand slipped down inside the front of her pants, his fingers finding the target again. She was wet.

  “Not outside, Cam—please, no—someone will see us!” But that was the whole point; the excitement; the dirty talk; the pure rank animal lust of sex. Cam lifted her onto the first step; her pants came down a foot, his erection now free, her beautiful butt began to rub, then he was inside. They were fucking in the parking lot of the Exxon gas station in Wright, Wyoming like two teenagers in heat.

  She was able to grab onto the passenger seat and began to respond to his urgency with an urgency of her own.

  “Yes, God damn it, yes. Do it! Harder!” She cried in lust, which made the thrusts from his big body into her small pussy even more urgent. It didn’t take long for either of them to ramp up the excitement scale; done, she was enveloped in his arms, both breathing heavily.

  I never had sex like this in my life. Never. She thought. Twice in one day. No, twice in an hour!

  Breathing heavily, but beginning to get back to a regular heartbeat; “What was your question?” She was about to whack him again when his hand pinned hers down; his lips touched hers, then the kiss became passionate as they embraced.

  Ten minutes later Cam brought the rig around to the Civic Center. It was 4:30 and the sky to the west was pitch dark; it could not have been darker at midnight. Wade McGriff, Gladys Holt and the supermarket manager, Jared Hastings all gathered along with others in the community. The lights were out. Young Adam Pickett had not returned; his parents were distraught.

  “You see the problem we have here, Mr. Hedges,” Wade spoke softly. In 2005 this down was nearly wiped off the map by tornadoes; but we came back, rebuilt the town. Look at it,” He spread his hands out.

  If the town had been a failing junk heap, the leaders might have figured a way to leave; but the Wyoming and Federal government along with the Black Thunder Coal Mine and Atlantic Richfield Corporation, re-built the town to the point where the average family income was nearly $60,000/year and only 6% of the population—including the rest of Campbell County—were below the poverty line. The schools were good at all levels and people were working. The neighborhoods were clean. (Of course, with the constant wind, any loose debris soon would find its way to Nebraska.) People knew and greeted each other by first name. Except that the town was located in the middle of nowhere, Wright, Wyoming was a Norman Rockwell dream of America and its potential.

  “I understand,” Cam started, tears in his eyes. “But, I can’t stay. I, we, have seen too much. I hope I’m wrong,” he paused. “But that would make you Wright, wouldn’t it?” He reached down and shook Wade McGriff’s callused hand. There was a good deal of commotion and laughter at the comment as the community leaders and residents began to return to their homes.

  As they left town, they passed the Exxon station; Cam had given the owner his credit card for the six hundred dollars in gas he’d syphoned out of the tank. A crooked smile cracked his lips as they passed the point of The Second Ecstasy, which drew another smack on his arm, but this time not so hard.

  The green sign on state route 387 said Wright, Pop 1347, Elev 5000. Turning right onto highway 59 south, Cam then turned left onto state route 450 into the Thunder Basin National Grassland.

  “Where’we goin’?” Betsy asked.

  “Not sure. You want to learn how to drive this thing?”

  Geologic Science Center

  Golden, Colorado

  To the east the sky was black; not black like the night that would have stars and the moon; but black like ink. Gathered around a hole in the USGS building on the fourth floor, Nancy and her seven USGS employees watched as within a half-hour a black veil, swiftly and surely covered the I-25 corridor in eastern Colorado. The NOAA weather radio had given them virtually no time to escape.

  “We can only hope the wind doesn’t shift,” Nancy had concluded. There was no escape north, east or south. Highway 58 was blocked, as was I-70.

  The scene was mesmerizing. Downtown Denver was eight miles due east of Golden at 5,280 feet elevation; separated by the community of Lakewood at 5,480 feet, then Golden at 5,674. Lakewood was the oldest of the bedroom communities of Denver, now a mixed industrial/small business/services city. Virtually in the center of Lakewood is the Federal Regional Center (Region VIII) on 6th Ave., home office for all of the Civilian agencies of the United States government for Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana and both Dakotas; including USGS’s small office, William “Bill” Gallagher, manager. Bill, of course, was on vacation. Nice timing.

  Like the baseball players who walk from the Field of Dreams into the cornfield, that last tantalizing moment before life and death, where the players are half-here and half-there, so it was with Lakewood and its 144,000 inhabitants.

  Alma Bevins began to cry as Lakewood began to waver between being-seen and not-being-seen.

  “Oh, my God!” she cried. There was nothing to say.

  Nancy was rarely nonplussed. People two miles from them were in the darkness, probably trying to escape. The fact that the small USGS group hadn’t had to do anything wasn’t lost on her. Never look a gift horse in the mouth her father had told her, without really understanding what he meant. Luck was something never mentioned in her family; you make your own luck, however was; meaning people who appear to be lucky oftentimes are just beneficiaries of their own hard work.

  “I think we should expect the unexpected,” she said to t
he group. “Given the circumstances, going over the mountains appears to be the choice de jour. Can we spend the next couple of hours before sunset trying to consolidate our luck? Cars? Cars with gas? Anything to keep us warm,” Nancy wanted to keep the group busy.

  “Miss Nancy? They’re having a prayer service on campus at four o’clock, at the chapel. It might be good—“ she let the sentence die.

  Nancy nodded yes, and turned to the others. “Please spend the next hour trying to figure out how we’re going to spend the night here. There is a church service at the chapel, which is just over there, “Nancy pointed. “The service starts at four. We are. . .,” Nancy paused. “We’re in a different universe from yesterday.”

  Nancy was running out of gas. She was ashamed to admit she hadn’t thought of Robert for the last two hours.

  “I have no magic for you tonight other than you are alive. We are alive. Those of you who believe in God know He has a purpose for us; it is not for us to know that purpose. We must discover it. That is life. That is the life we’ve been given.”

  Two voices aid “amen” as they nodded their head in unison.

  “So, it is our job to remain alive,” added Nancy. “I know that when my mother died, she was a shell of a human being; there was blood going through her veins, the pump was her heart, her brain was alive and she wanted to live more, even through the pain. Momma can I help you, I said. And she shook her head no. She couldn’t say it but if she could it would have been; this is as hard as being born. I have to see it to the end. I’m not going to give up.”

  And she didn’t, not until the pump gave up.

  “And we, that is—you and I—are not going anywhere unless we do it together. We are going to survive this.”

  Nancy turned to the window. I don’t know what else I can tell you,” she started to cry. She threw her hands into the air in a I-don’t-know-what-to-do; then knuckled down. “This isn’t God saying we’ve reached the end of the road; that he’s taking all of us into his sweet arms and returning home. This is home. This is life; we’re here, we’re breathing, we’re figuring out how the last blood in our veins will be spent on life. I’m not going to give up!

  “Before it gets dark I’d like to know the status of the remaining automobiles; how much gas is in each tank, do you have 4-wheel drive, and how many passenger seats you have. I also want you to come up with a watch list. If the wind shifts and the ash comes our way, we’ll need to get out of here pretty quickly, even in the middle of the night.

  “Tomorrow if we wake and if it’s black to the East and it’s not black to the West, then we’re going to figure out how to go west,” Nancy O’Brien, new-born pocket evangelist ended her sermon. None of the seven said a word of disagreement. “If you want to go to the church, do so,” Nancy paused. “If anybody has any idea about food, I’m all ears. I’d love some takeout; otherwise we’ll eat the snack machines and figure it out tomorrow.”

  The White House Situation Room

  “Sir, this is incoming streaming video from the International Space Station, from Commander Vilyusk,” JCS Air Force General Johnny Goodwin pointed to the left-hand screen on the wall of the Situation Room. The President hadn’t left the room since the 12:30 briefing to the public; another one was due soon. The weather in the West was clear except for the Puget Sound area in Washington where a low pressure system had been stalled, blocked by the Cascade Mountains. The videos needed little explanation.

  “Can I speak to him?” the President asked. Goodwin nodded yes.

  The ash plume had reached 35,000 feet and had been moved south at 150 miles an hour by the jet stream. Seven hours had passed.

  “Commander, Vilyusk; this is the President of the United States. Can you superimpose political boundaries on your picture?”

  “Yes, Mr. President; one moment.” The screen changed to show national boundaries, then a second time to show territorial, state and province borders.

  “Thank you, commander.” The tip of the Yellowstone contrail had reached Amarillo, Texas; the plume showing up as varying degrees of white, black and grey. “Can you give me counties and cities? I want to see how wide it is.” The screen blipped again. Northern and eastern Wyoming; Casper and Cheyenne, then the ash started to widen and shift to the east as the jet stream approached and was affected by the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. Sterling, Colorado, 125 miles from Denver was on the eastern edge. Colorado Springs and Pueblo were spared, the beast having moved out into the dry prairie lands of eastern Colorado; then the NE corner of New Mexico, the panhandle of Oklahoma, and now into Texas.

  From Atlanta, the nation’s weatherman was on the center screen.

  “Charley, can you show me the jet stream again, please,” the President asked.

  “Yes, sir.“

  It was a classic winter pattern. In the Pacific the jet stream had split into Artic and sub-tropical paths; the southern stream crossing Mexico, Arizona, southern New Mexico and into Texas where it met the southward moving branch that had gone way up to the Gulf of Alaska before making its mad dash down, across the Puget Sound, across Washington State, then a dipsy-do into Canada, and down the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in Montana.

  Once in Texas, the two portions of the jet stream became one in the Lubbock area, and then turned eastward; crossing Dallas-Ft. Worth. The ash trail was as wide as Little Rock to Shreveport, Memphis to Jackson, MS. It would pass over Birmingham, Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbia, Ashville, Richmond, Chattanooga, then up the eastern slopes of the Appalachian Mountains; Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Raleigh, Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, New York and Boston.

  “How bad is the fallout going to be, let’s say in Memphis?” the President asked.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Spann replied. “Nobody here does. We have no tools, no computer programs to generate estimates of how dense the cloud will be. The best guess is that the area from Yellowstone to the Oklahoma border will see ash deposits enough to cover cities; completely cover cities in feet, yards, meters, probably deeper. I really have no idea what the deposits will look like from Dallas eastward. We will work on an analysis, sir.”

  “What would you recommend?” the President asked.

  Spann paused before giving a deadpan answer. “Florida is nice in the wintertime, so is Arizona. On the other hand, Minneapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago—they’re not going to get much ash unless the eruption continues into spring.”

  “Thanks, Charley. Please stay available,” the President disconnected before Spann could say yes, sir. He went back to Commander Vilyusk.

  “Commander, can you focus on the pink plume further west. Can your cameras drill down?”

  The cameras came down several levels to the red and pink plume of radioactive material being generated by the tank farm explosions at Hanford. The superimposed maps showed the clouds had already reached Spokane and were in northwestern Idaho, soon to race over the Rockies.

  “What was that?” the President exclaimed.

  East of Yakima, Washington

  Tears drained down from Andy Everett’s eyes; he was crying so hard he could hardly see the road ahead; state highway 24 cut through scenic rolling, barren hillsides between Hanford and Yakima; so, he pulled over. Ahead was Yakima, the wine-growing capital of Washington State; the 8th most populated city in the state; a valley where 75% of the hops used in making domestic beer in the US were harvested.

  You have to go back. You have to go back and get them. They did so much for you. Andy’s guilt had grown from a chimp, to a Howler, now to full-sized gorilla. He had no doubt that if he hadn’t found a way out the containment building, that he’d be dead by now. Only twenty-eight miles in the distance, the sky was a drunken rainbow of pinks, oranges, reds and yellows with blue sky in the distance and straight up. He got out of the car, balanced himself on the hood, and threw up, or tried to. On a normal day he would have already had dinner, breakfast for regular-shift people and be getting to enter his ca
ve, complete with black-out windows and fans to knock down any noise.

  He used his thumbs to alternately blow what seemed like a bag-full of snot out his nostrils; the crying stopped, his shirt wet from tears and not from the exertion of getting out of Hanford alive. His gorilla guilt was for his parents, whom he’d left behind. They’d done everything for him and on a day when he knew his Dad could have used a hand getting Mom out of the house and to safety, he’d run away. They might die and not know he was OK.

  Surface of 200-West tank farm corroded single-shell 1M gal tank

  Construction pictures of tanks

  At 2:25 PST thirty-four of the remaining 152 (of 177 total) tanks at 200-West exploded in near unison, almost in Chinese firecracker sequence—bang, bang, bang, bang—fashion, except in this explosion series, the explosions weren’t atomic or hydrogen bombs like Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but instead were individual bunker-busters, blasts that alone were powerful, but together were much more than the sum of its parts.

  The earth shook, the sky over the Hanford Reservation was vaporized as thirty-four million gallons of radioactive crap were set off in explosions not imagined by their designers. Let’s see, we’re going to simultaneously detonate thirty-four million gallons of radioactive waste. Hmmm, what’s going to happen?

  Uranium 235 and Uranium 238; used in the production of nuclear weapons, crud-encrusted waste water, vaporized and sent on a three-mile high road trip. Most of uranium by-products ingested by through poop, but the remaining 1% enters the kidneys and is processed by the kidneys, exiting as urine. Some stays in the bones where it could theoretically stay for a very long time.