The Yellowstone Conundrum

by John Randall

  Jesus Hernandez Fernandez was deep into the tunnel; in fact, close enough to see Karen Bagley drop her new friend’s Zippo into the eastbound water runoff, and then watch in amazement as the water ignited.

  Gasoline. Not water. Make wine from water, not gasoline.

  Jesus and three of his disciples made a rush for the door, which was impossible to see otherwise; smack into the fire door bar, nothing but a rattle. Again, they dove into the door as a team; but the team’s pants were being set on fire (liar liar) by the exploding gasoline beneath their feet. Screams of death-defying anger followed; inside Karen and Jerry continued advancing up the stairwell as fast as possible, now to the second big red arrow.

  Inside the tunnel, within fifteen seconds the flames were wall-to-wall, small fires made into big fires; the flames feeding on each other; the air quickly un-breathable. The conflagration sucked fresh oxygen from both the eastern and western tunnel entrances, hot enough inside to melt the steel support framing, and then in a massive regurgitation, spit out a double fireball of death as if this was the Olympic Synchronized Dead Car Revenge Explosion.

  Jesus and his disciples found their just reward.

  Inside the stairwell it was half-past toasty. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that if the doors below were compromised the Mt. Baker Tunnel would send a fiery fart up the stairwell that would kill them all.

  Four floors up, the stairwell exited into a well-concealed maintenance building on 30th Ave. S. that controlled the now-defunct ventilation system. Unlike everything else that could get fucked up, this one didn’t. In fact, on their initial inspection of “what’s up there”, Denny had suggested she bring her bike with her. He helped her by lightening her load. Denny had already figured it was going to be a different kind of day.

  Both panting, Jerry and Karen stumbled to the top step of the stairwell and opened the door into what was a glorious, wet evening with fresh air. Ten or fifteen of those rescued were still inside.

  “Listen,” if that door goes down there, there’ll be an explosion, right up the stairwell we just climbed. We need to move out of this building. Now!” Karen shouted. The creepy feeling was about to overtake her. She found her bike, shouldered her back and quickly moved across 30th Avenue to the eastern edge of Sam Smith Park. A grove of trees provided relief from the rain.

  There was some pissing and moaning, but everyone more or less went outside into the misty night.

  “Where are we going to go?”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “How do we get home?”

  “Do the telephones work?”

  “Can I call a cab?”

  “Who’s coming to rescue us? (!!!)”

  “People! Move! Now!” Karen shouted. “Get out of here!”

  The firewall door on the eastbound emergency exit, which had been cleverly boxed in by Jerry, Karen, Denny, Denise and Janice; quick thinking that saved 42 people from being immediately beaten, raped and murdered, gave up the ghost and melted. Hungry flames gobbled the new source of oxygen and shot straight up 40 feet of emergency stairwell to the WSDOT Mt. Baker Ventilation Building at the corner of 30th Avenue S. near the cross-street of S. Atlantic Street.

  Flat blew the sucker straight to hell.

  Like someone was snorting a volcano.

  The roof of the maintenance building was incinerated in an instant, the three large ventilation fans turned to dust; flames spewed in all directions around the building, instantly setting fires in the Mt. Baker neighborhood; gasoline, bits of Jesus and his disciples, pieces of Prius and Buicks and Fords, tires and who the fuck knows what else. It was the 4th of July on the 20th of February; and a bookend for a freaky night in Seattle.

  The light show over the Mt. Baker Tunnel’s lid went on for another thirty minutes before most of the energy died out, but not before the entire Mt. Baker neighborhood was on fire, including the woods across the street. The WSDOT facility was a burnt crisp. The area around it was a burnt crisp. Those that had run, heeding Karen’s shouted warning, now had a chance to live.

  Karen had done her job; she was proud of herself. Denny would be; no, Denny is proud of her, she knew. She patted the cell phone in her pocket and started to take off on her bike northbound on 30th, then right on S. Irving, headed for Lake Washington.

  Whoa. Kinda selfish, aren’t we?

  Behind her were Denise, Jerry and Janice.

  Maybe the I-90 floating bridge was still an option. If not, she would be self-sufficient until the morning. Who knew when the creepies would come out again?

  With the inferno behind her, she walked her bike back to them.

  “Maybe we can make the bridge and get over to Mercer Island. What do you figure?” Karen asked.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Jerry agreed. “You’re not going to, take off?”

  “No. I’m not. I’m Karen Bagley. I am. . .that is. . .I was—a grad student at U-dub. “

  “I’m Jerry Bridges, and I just gave up smoking.”

  * * * * *

  It would be a long time before anyone figured out what actually happened at the Mt. Baker Tunnel disaster, and then the facts would be so smeared to the point of being unrecognizable. Those who were there talked of heroism and danger. A lot of people had died and it appeared as if “regular” people had taken a stand against the forces of darkness.

  Harborview Medical Center

  Seattle

  Denny’s arms were shaking because he was holding onto the Roadmaster’s steering wheel with a stranglehold. His face, neck and shoulders had been cut in multiple places from flying glass. Perhaps it was the young woman’s aim, or the strength of the large window, God’s finger of fate or just plain luck; whatever it was, he was just bleeding and not shot. None of his passengers had been shot.

  The ten blocks from Rainier Ave. S. which turned into Boren Avenue then to Harborview; no traffic signals, no traffic period, no lights on in the communities; left onto Jefferson, then left to the Emergency entrance into East Hospital. The trip took no more than eight minutes.

  They’re going to come and get you, Denny. You killed one (two?) of their own, their mamas; their bitches.

  Harborview had taken a massive hit. Like most urban medical centers, Harborview had grown as the community had grown; now managed by the University of Washington, whose own Medical Center along Montlake Cut had been severely damaged this morning; and had been the start of Denny’s day.

  Was that just this morning?

  The original hospital, the tower building, was surrounded by newer buildings, finally by two newer wings that faced I-5 across Harborview Park. Just north of the hospital on James Street, the twin condominium towers had suffered catastrophic damage as the entire outer skin of the buildings had failed; the concrete decking had telescoped with the earthquake, until a forty-foot high ring of concrete debris ringed the shell of the building.

  Harborview’s parking decks along 8th Avenue had collapsed. The newer sections of the hospital had survived because of better building techniques and materials.

  Harborview medical center map; http://www.uwmedicine.org/Patient-Care/Locations/HMC/Campus/Documents/HMC_Map.pdf

  “You’re going to have to move your car, sir!” ordered a very tired uniformed officer whose tag identified him as Lewis Wilson. Lewis wasn’t Seattle PD but part of Harborview Hospital uniformed police, a semi-private security firm hired specifically to ensure safety at the hospital.

  “Sir! Don’t get out! You’re going to have--”

  Patrolman Wilson then saw the condition of the Roadmaster and that Denny was cut and bleeding and couldn’t “roll” down his electric window because the electrical system of the Buick had taken more than its share of beating today. Denny put the gear in neutral and got out. Wilson looked at the Roadmaster with respect. It looked like it had been the winning car at a Demolition Derby.

  “Jesus,” exclaimed Lewis Wilson. Met a couple of Jesus’s today Denny thought. “What happened to you?” Denny looked
like one of the walking dead that just wouldn’t die; just kept crawling out of the coffin.

  “I’ve brought ten people who need emergency medical care from the Mt. Baker Tunnel explosions.”

  “You were at Mt. Baker?” Denny nodded yes.

  “Can we get help?” Denny was about to drop. “I’m really ready to. . .”

  In the distance the pair could hear a roar.

  “The same as this morning,” said patrolman Wilson, softly.

  “Same place, officer.”

  “God in heaven.”

  “I’ve come to hope so,” Denny added. Please be all right, Karen.

  While Harborview was no Embassy Suites, it and its parent hospital the University of Washington Medical Center, was one of the top five hospital systems in America. Today it was like a war zone; Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan. The quad area between buildings was littered with concrete, masonry, and glass. The covered walkways that connected the East Building with the Norm Maleng Building, named for the late King County prosecutor, an architectural highlight of the area with its blue-tinged lighting, provided comfortable, modern waiting rooms for family members waiting for surgery; rooms with a spectacular view of Mt. Rainier, when the mountain was in view; referred to in the area as ‘The Mountain is out.’

  The walkway building between the Maleng and East Buildings survived, sort of. The reinforced steel connector floors survived; however when the earthquake hit the buildings shook on such different planes, up and down and sideways, that the glass exterior walls on all seven floors exfoliated and shed.

  Down below and ten hours afterwards, gurneys couldn’t roll straight across the glass- and debris-strewn 9th Avenue. The ten wounded survivors of Mt. Baker disaster, five men and five women, were carted into the hospital via stretchers. They would later tell stories of bravery that would be hard to believe. Like most crowded downtown hospitals, there is never enough room; never enough nurses and orderlies, never enough doctors.

  As the injured were being removed from the station wagon, Denny approached Patrolman Wilson. “Officer, in a matter of minutes I think the hospital may be under siege from a Yesler Avenue gang.”

  “Deuce 8s,” Lewis Wilson added quickly.

  “You know your territory,” Denny nodded.

  “We get gunshot and knife wounds, cocaine overdose, and domestic shootings. You’ve got the Deuce 8s from Yesler over to 23rd in Judkins Park, and the SSL-13s—the Hispanic gang further south.“

  You might not have to worry about them for a while. Denny thought, hoping that was the case.

  “How many officers are there here today?”

  Not as many as normal. Not as many as needed. Lewis Wilson’s eyes answered. Lewis was on second shift, started working at 9:00 p.m. last night, was ready to leave this morning at 7:00 a.m. when the earthquake hit; then the tsunami that rushed water, bodies, cars, smelly sea things, oil, building supplies, ships moved everything toward the hospital, only to be saved by the barrier that was Interstate 5. All the crapola that the tsunami stuck its finger into Puget Sound, and then purged, threw up, barfed up, followed by the shallow Elliott Bay, finally finding the path of least resistance in the lower-laying areas of South Seattle, where the waterfronts, sports complex had no hills to stop the on-rush.

  “How many officers do you have, Mr. Wilson?” Denny was being respectful, even though he knew time was not on their side.

  “Maybe twenty,” Wilson replied, and then thought. “Maybe ten,” the lump in his throat was real. The staff at Harborview had been run absolutely ragged. No one had been able to report to work after the earthquake. What remained was last night’s third shift. There would be no third shift turnover tonight. Everyone was on 24-hour emergency.

  “I need to get out of here, for your protection,” as Denny watched the last of the Mt. Baker Ten leave the Friendly Confines of the 1995 Buick Roadmaster. “I think they’ll make one shot at finding me and then try to burn the hospital down. Whether I’m here or not, is irrelevant. I busted through their barricade, probably; no, I killed somebody, to bring these people here,” Denny’s worn face now showed his age lines along the sides of his mouth. “They’re going to come here to kill, just to kill. One shot, one push-back and they’ll leave, but it’s going to have to be a tough push-back,” Denny urged.

  By habit, patrolman Lewis Wilson went to his arm radio; didn’t curse, but realized the system was down. While there were emergency lights and lanterns inside the hospital, everything was dark. He took a deep sigh. There was no way to effectively communicate throughout the huge complex. A second officer stood inside the partially-lit emergency room entrance where the Mt. Baker Ten had been carried.

  “We have an incoming 911,” Lewis informed the other officer. “As many as you can. Code red. Everyone needs to be armed,” was all he said.

  Double Gesus looked really stupid riding up Rainier Ave. S. on a kid’s bicycle; now at the point where Rainier turned into Boren Avenue; but his roughneck companions, roughly 40 or so, were also riding bicycles; others were running; all were carrying arms of some kind; guns, home-made guns (a 25mm sniper rifle made out of kitchen PVC piping, 22 pistols made out of left-over BB guns and duct tape, nail guns, multiple pockets loaded with zip guns) along with some “standard-made” guns. Slung on at least a half of the backs was their last supply of gasoline bombs, nail bombs and bombs that would generally cause great mayhem.

  In addition to being armed to the teeth, they had hate in their eyes.

  The problem with the explosive bombs was that in order to be truly effective, the gang had to penetrate the barrier. Exploding a Molotov cocktail type device in the parking lot was a waste of manpower and resources. Exploding the same device inside the interior of a building, well—that was something else; flames, high intensity destruction; one well-placed cocktail could bring down a building.

  Harborview was coming down; after the dude gets his.

  Harborview Medical Center was a huge facility, a one-time simple idea that now encompassed six square blocks or more. Terrific views from the hospital; of course, we’ve all been in hospitals. You don’t get the view unless you can get out of bed and can stand on a visitor’s chair and look sideways; not possible when tied to IVs. Forget it on weekends.

  Gangs—black gangs, Hispanic gangs, mixed gangs, gay gangs, Asian motherfucking gangs, she-gangs; they all had one thing in common. Since they were all basically dumb shits, none of them knew any military strategy except Pickett’s Charge; which works when you have an overwhelming force in a limited space.

  Lewis Wilson, black, graduate of Cleveland High School in 1992 lived only a few blocks away from the boundary of Franklin High School on the lower Mt. Baker neighborhood; three blocks from the Burger King on Rainier Ave. S. Fate, his mother living three blocks on the Cleveland side instead of the Franklin side; still, he didn’t join gangs; went to school, and as an adult began to appreciate things he “learned” in High School that seemed to have real life application.

  As an adult, Lewis began to enjoy history because he saw history repeating itself over and over in the daily newspaper and on TV; and he pondered why the fuck do people make the same mistakes over and over? There must be something in the decision itself that obviates reasoning.

  Double Gesus would be an idiot if he came right down 9th and in the front door of Emergency Services; although with Mr. Denny’s beat-up Buick parked out front, he might.

  “The only way they get in is through the front door,” Lewis re-assured himself, although not re-assured he was going to get any actual backup. Communications within the campus was non-existent. The emergency police band was down to nothing but squawks and static; the area to be covered was immense; roughly four blocks square, perhaps six square if all the professional buildings were included.

  Denny simply had to relieve himself; piss on it so to speak, so instead of peeing on the front steps of Harborview Medical Center’s Emergency Services entrance, he went inside and found the men’s room; which
was dark. There was nothing like feeling around a men’s room to find a urinal to add to the pressure on a guy’s bladder. What if you got lost in the men’s room and couldn’t find your way out? Denny chuckled to himself briefly picturing a reporter standing outside with a TV camera; quickly forgetting the scenario as his hand found purchase on the flush.

  Two additional officers came out of the East Building hospital, the main emergency services facility to join Officer Lewis. They talked briefly.

  “Nobody’s coming down 9th from the south,” one said, pointing to the terrible mound of glass and debris from the seven-story connector building.

  “If they’re coming, it’ll either be up 9th from the other side of the 9th and Jefferson Building,” the second officer pointed to his left. Ninth and Jeff had been significantly re-furbished with seismic upgrades; good, but not enough for what had happed today. The 14-story building occupied an entire city block and was housed the infectious disease control center and the King County Medical Examiner’s labs.

  Denny had found the door to the men’s room even in the dark; back in the lobby, with emergency generators providing only limited illumination, he headed back outside; waving to Officer Wilson. The other two patrolmen had decided to split up.

  “You should stay and get checked out,” Wilson suggested. “You look like shit.”

  Denny smiled, and then turned toward the Buick. He saw movement in his peripheral vision. The movement reminded him of the electronic spiders in Minority Report; bodies moving in the dark, this way and that, coming at the East Hospital on Jefferson Street from the east and down Ninth Avenue from the North.

  I hate it when I’m right.

  “Officer Wilson! Buckle up! They’re here!” Denny shouted. There was no way to get to the Buick, which remained parked in the drop-off lane.