The Yellowstone Conundrum

by John Randall

  Wilson and the other two police officers could see the trouble headed their way.

  A half block up Jefferson, four or five men on bicycles stopped in front of the King County Coroner’s Office; the entrance was closed and un-manned. In the space of thirty seconds it was open, un-manned and on fire. Or, apparently it wasn’t unmanned. The sneaky snakes outside were receiving gunfire from inside, but the entrance to the 14-story building was on fire.

  Faster and meaner than Denny could imagine, the Deuce 8s swarmed down 9th toward the Emergency Room.

  Denny saw three projectiles headed toward the front entrance of the hospital; it was a slow-motion dream, one where his feet tried to run to catch up with whatever it was he was supposed to be chasing, but he couldn’t, he was failing. I can’t I can’t I can’t.

  But then God freed his dream-like steps and Denny crossed the exterior of the entrance and dove for Lewis Wilson before the projectiles landed, knocking the career Good Guy off balance and down into the shrubbery.

  Smack! Smack! Smack! The glass of The Molotov Cocktails made sick sounds as they struck the entrance to the hospital. One exploded, two didn’t. Flames consumed the entrance to the hospital. Gasoline spread through the entrance way and into the emergency room lobby. Two bottles didn’t break; instead they spun out of control on the lobby floor, wicks burning to toward the business end, spinning wildly. Inside nurses and doctors ran for cover, fearing the inevitable.

  Denny instinctively scrambled to his feet and stumbled toward the lobby.

  Lewis got to his knees and began to shoot at the attackers, aiming to kill. This wasn’t a game, it wasn’t something some review board would say up or down at a later time ‘did you play fair’; this was life and death. These motherfuckers were trying to kill us and trying to burn the hospital down.

  With his second shot he killed Double Gesus with a single shot over the left eyebrow. Gesus took a swan song just as he was ready to launch another whiskey bottle of death to the hospital.

  Denny raced into the lobby; female screams filling the air. He found the first bomb, still rotating; picked it up and ran back outside into the rain of bullets and heaved the bottle as hard as he could. It exploded twenty feet from him, or about half way to the bad guys; bits and pieces of glass spread like shrapnel, slicing skin and bone; including Denny’s.

  A second time, Denny went back into the lobby, limping, smeared with blood. This is so unlike me. The third bottle was ready to explode, the bottle not rotating any longer; Denny grabbed the bottle by the neck and tried to extinguish the flames by hand, knowing that if the bomb exploded inside the waiting room that the entire hospital could possibly burn down because there were no resources to put the fire out.

  Grabbing the bottle, Denny struggled to regain his feet and head toward the entrance doors, now blown out.

  He screamed and threw the lethal bottle back toward the Deuce 8s.

  This is so unlike me were his last thoughts.

  Hanford Nuclear Reservation

  Nighttime had settled on the dry side of the Cascades, which 24 hours ago had been a normal, working day. Today, all parallel universes were in traction. From above, the 200-West storage tanks seemed perfectly in union; except for those red plumes streaking toward 40,000 feet. The explosion at 1:30 had settled the issue.

  You guys aren’t so fucking smart.

  Across Adams, Grant and Lincoln Counties there were families who had gathered around the table; blood now dripping from all orifices; they were going to die an agonizing death tomorrow.

  Fucking Hanford.

  There was nothing else to say.

  It didn’t matter that they were right forty years ago, or thirty years ago, or last Thursday. They would be dead tomorrow.

  20 Miles east of Yakima, Washington

  “Please save me! Please oh please save me,” muttered Andy Everett. “God, don’t let me die like this. Please oh please don’t let me die like this,” Andy’s brain circulated back to his condition, which was flat-pinned to the ground by his over-flipped 2007 Jeep Wrangler. Andy had been in and out of consciousness, each time diving into a dream of being sixteen and pinned inside his locker; his shoulder muscles hurt from involuntarily flexing inside his dream.

  What’s that?

  In the depths of his tormented soul Andy knew. No car had passed by since the explosion and shock wave. He was in the desert. It was cold outside. He was a warm body. And a snake was crawling up the inside of his left pants leg.

  Andy’s screams started in a terrified yell. The snake cuddled a bit, then rolled over his left leg parked his head not three inches from his manhood. Andy’s scream then became a series of breath-gulping cries. Because he was pinned, he had virtually no lateral movement. The snake had found a warm host for the night. The 29-year old former Power Control Specialist was near cardiac arrest.

  Words wouldn’t come out of Andy’s mouth, nothing but a high-pitched whine. After ten minutes Andy’s brain mercifully went into sleep mode.

  King County Public Library

  Third floor, Seattle Public Library; Rem Koolhaas, architect

  “Ray, I don’t know what else we can do. I think we’re ready,” Diane Bryant’s face could barely be made out in the dim light of the 5th Avenue entrance. “I don’t have the slightest idea how you managed to do what you did in the last hour,” she said with admiration. “Bank of America will have a high-level job for you when this is done,” she added, not understanding that Ray was happy with his place in life.

  Across the narrow entrance was John Banner’s piece of preparation was done as well.

  “Stay low everyone,” Ray instructed. “We’re not going to open the doors for them. It’s going to be noisy. If you have to hit someone, hit them as hard as you can. Everybody in position, please. Sound off.”

  One by one the Fifth Avenue Defense “OK’d” their position; more than one had a quiver in his or her voice. Darkness had helped them all. After four hours of running around in the dark, down hallways he thought he knew, Ray’s heart beat as quickly as his new friends’ did; they were focused.

  On the outside on Fifth Avenue a savage gang of sub-humans, intellectually to the level of drooling, but physically able to be in the battle of Fallujah, wandered up 5th from the Hyatt Hotel; a block away a similar group of deadheads slouched up 4th Avenue; storefront windows that hadn’t been broken, were joyously celebrated. No one was in the streets. The bad guys had won the evening; perhaps not the war, but the battle.

  The leader of the Fifth Avenue Destroyers was none other than First Dude, who along with Hard-On had managed to escape the fury of The Library Guy and The Big Fucking Dog four hours ago; Hard-On was determined to get some of that orange thong poon pussy along with some well-earned butt-work for dessert, and led a similar-sized group of eight-to-ten thugs approaching the Fourth Avenue entrance. Library pussies didn’t have a chance.

  The Fifth Avenue entrance was protected by the aluminum and glass outer skin of the library, a big-baggie tie-down; regardless, it offered protection from the oppressive mist, now into the evening a really heavy fog. Fire engines blared in the near distance as the Seattle Police Department, City Hall and the Columbia Center was under siege by the Yessler Street Bloods. First Dude was glad to get out of the rain; he shook himself off like the dirty dog he was. The other thugs were simply indistinguishable lowlifes, pants down to their crotch, dirty underwear from waist to crotch exposed, long sleeved shirts with no buttons, tattoos on every exposed surface, greasy, smelly cocksuckers one and all.

  First Dude leaned into the entrance door, two doors wide, which, surprisingly, gave a bit.

  “Come on!” Then two of them pressed on the door. A couple of the other jerks tried some of the other doors, but they were blocked solid; then concentrated on the double entrance that gave. What kind of crap is behind here?

  “We’re in!” shouted First Dude, as the center set of doors finally gave way, pushing library debris back away from the useless m
etal detectors. “Here, eat this,” First Dude waved a handgun at the scanner in contempt.

  None of them had ever been in a library in their entire lives, much less the thought-provoking, architectural wonder set smack in the middle of their city.

  “They’re here! They’ve broken in on Fifth Avenue!” came two shouts from straight ahead. The library was darker than white whale shit at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Normally there would be a beautiful cityscape view in all directions, with the harbor lit, the surrounding spectacular tall buildings in an array of illumination. But not tonight; however if any of the thugs had paid any attention to space, they would have noticed that they’d only gone twenty feet into a very large building.

  Instead of casually approaching the center of the third floor, labeled the Living Room because of its open ambiance, casual reading areas, card catalogue kiosks arranged in radiating lines of knowledge on top a lush carpet with northwest natural images; the thugs were instantly drawn toward the double escalator, which during normal times connected the first and third floors, with a nice view of the interior of the second floor, which was the Staff Floor and loading dock on the Madison Street side; opposite on the same floor was the Spring Street entrance to the 143-car parking decks.

  They were drawn there because from the entrance way there was smooth wall on either side, a natural “go-forward”, yet wide enough for the eight thugs to have space, yet drawn forward, not to either side. Even though none of them had been in the military, they walked in the pitch darkness toward the sounds of people scurrying around.

  We got ‘em now.

  The Lead Dude looked up and saw dim light in the distance across the Third Floor Living Room and into the darkness of Seattle beyond. Ahead and down he heard noises; now much louder as there was a commotion; he was at the escalator.

  “Cool, dudes. We’re here. Let’s get these motherfuckers!” he shouted; a shout returned by the other seven.

  A sliding noise; ignored.

  Lead Dude found purchase on the escalator steps and peered down the 60 feet toward the first floor. There was activity; lots of it.

  “Let’s go!” he shouted, and took one-two-three-four-five steps down the right-hand escalator, normally the down escalator of the twin pairing.

  There was a cry of support and kill-the-motherfuckers as the bad guys started down the silent escalators. Behind them, though was the equally silent sound of something being moved.

  Bing! On the fourth step Lead Dude’s foot caught on a string of Ethernet cable that had been strung between the second full step and wedged into the fourth step downward. Have you ever tried to remove an Ethernet cable from a PC socket when the cable didn’t want to be removed? Might as well throw the PC out and start over. The first fifteen stairs were all crisscrossed with the ubiquitous blue-shaded cable, laid at above-ankle level. When the cable at step 2 crossed step 3 it did so at mid-calf level.

  Going downstairs at a high momentum and in nearly complete darkness, Lead Dude’s foot tripped on the first cable; the result? Airmail, first class. Lead Dude, off balance, a gun in his left hand, clumsily sprawled forward, downhill; his face hit the eighth step of the escalator, embedding the familiar steel horizontal BBQ pattern across his face, which then slid down—one-two-three—more steps, resting in front of Ray Spaulding. When the gun hit the metal steps it clicked once, firing an empty chamber.

  Got lucky. Must have graduated from a safety class.

  “OK, I got one,” he nodded to John Banner on the next stairwell. Banner, for his part became more relieved as the second, third and fourth dipshits came down the same pisspot to the same conclusion. On the first side, Ray Spaulding’s military training came to the surface. He unmercifully beat Lead Dude’s head and back, to the point where Dude could have had cardiac arrest; then, as prepared, used plastic cable binders to lock Dude’s hands behind his back; then taking a single string of Ethernet cable, wrapped Dude’s feet so he couldn’t move. Clicking the safety, Ray stuffed Lead Dude’s gun into his pocket.

  Then he made his way up the escalator. To his left he could hear John wheezing, but making way with the same methodology they’d outlined. John hit the thug he had hard with a closed fist; smack in the middle of the dude’s back; then hard on the shoulder and neck.

  At the top of the escalator, the last three or four of the thugs; semi-realizing the problem turned and tried to leave; only to find a wall blocking the top of the escalator. They weren’t actually walls, but moveable kiosks; the FriendsShop (a souvenir shop with overpriced items for people leaving the building who wanted to send something to someone telling them they’d been to this cool building) and the Starbucks coffee shop, originally on the other side of the lobby, but had been moved to a more high traffic location to help Starbucks and to raise money, were both constructed of break-down-able segments which could make them look like a cube, a wall, or probably an endangered species—in this case; a wall suited Ray just fine. They were on casters so they would roll easier, but not when Ray’s people were done with them.

  Ray had told John to arrange the kiosk pieces from the entrance doors and re-assembled in wall format, shopping crap to the outside; smooth wall on the inside; so that when the thugs broke through the entrance door, brain logic would say “straight”. The walls stopped at the top of the two-sided escalator stairs, which in turn led straight downhill toward the first floor, about 60 feet. The ladies had done the rest.

  Behind each of the kiosks were two volunteers.

  Thugs five-through-eight were a lot harder to subdue.

  Shit-head number six was the last to catch the CAT-5 cable. When he fell, his body went crunch, a different sound.

  His left side pocket also went clink-clink-clink; fire bombs aboard. The smell of kerosene instantly filled the air. No smoking, please. Standing on the third step down, the last three turned around and started climbing back up—only to be met with a barrage of loose items thrown as hard as could be thrown; waste cans, display monitors, chairs from the Starbucks area; computers from the public access area.

  “Noyoudon’t noyoudon’t noyoudon’t noyoudon’t!” Diane Bryant shouted as she and a first-shift office manager for Wells Fargo named Karen stabbed and poked number 8 with a metal-framed six-foot three-paneled direction sign; now catching his foot on a strand of Ethernet cable, Mr. Eight fell backwards into Seven and Six, knocking all three to their knees.

  In the prep time, John had everyone collecting everything that wasn’t nailed down and staging the stuff on the inside of the escalator wall. The grey wall was made of concrete masked as granite with a 12” ledge. As the stumblebums piled into the escalators, the FriendShop kiosk wall was slowly moved, shifting shapes, closing the space behind the gang members, until the point where the wall was two kiosks thick; difficult, if not impossible for someone on the other side to break through. The only way was to attempt to climb out of the escalator pit and scale the wall.

  Here, the combat became hand-to-hand; with the thugs up against the Desperate Office Workers from Redmond, eight screaming ladies who hurled anything they could get their hands on at the assailants. Twenty feet down the escalator John and Ray were subduing the first four. Asshole number six, on his knees, being pummeled unmercifully, managed to find his gun, turn and fire three shots blindly, which was followed by high-pitched screams, and angry shouting;

  “Diane! Get down! Diane!” Ray shouted the safety off of Dude 1s handgun. Ray aimed and fired.

  Woof woof woof woof WOOF WOOF! Marmaduke was agitated, first at the commotion, then at his inability to help Ray; who had strung Ethernet cables at three points on the elevator; up at the third floor entrance, half-way down, roughly at the second floor level and again a third of the way up. Marmaduke was not happy with the Ethernet cables, so he turned his attention back to the gang breaking into the Fourth Avenue entrance.

  There was gunfire, angry shouting and a hell of a commotion going on up the long escalator to the third floor. Looking up from the b
ottom, it was impossible to tell what the hell was happening.

  What was possible to see was that Hard-on and his group of slimebags were making progress on getting in through the 4th Avenue entrance. Half of the remaining people on the first floor had already scrambled for the interior stairwells; scared to death.

  “Go—go—go—go!” Molly shouted to the others. She saw, and then felt the tall young man’s laser eyes from outside the aluminum and glass shell; she stopped and turned—and he saw her. His eyes widened and his face exploded in anger; he threw himself against the entrance doors, blocked as best as possible from the inside. But they were no match for an angry Hard-On and his followers. The Fourth Avenue center doors opened into the library’s silent security scanners; in walked ten members of the West Side Street Mobb (with two “b”s), a Blood gang that controlled the 3rd and Pine area of downtown Seattle.

  The Fourth Avenue Crew Defense Crew had been very busy, putting up a decent façade at the security gate; but with the remaining twelve men and women heading up the dark stairwell to the library’s second floor; with the building’s loading dock on the Madison Street side, the automated and semi-automated book sorting area, staff offices—including the I/T “pit” which had two desks and the typical piles of miscellaneous keyboards, mice, monitors, tower PCs, and boxes (and boxes) of cables and cable parts. Along the inboard wall was a relatively small cabinet with the network wiring box, routers, and modems; compact for controlling 400+ workstations.

  On the Spring Street side of the floor was the entrance to the underground parking level under Level 1. Fortunately, the secure metal gates were still closed and locked; the library didn’t open until 10:00 a.m. and the guard didn’t report until 9:00. Lucky bastard was probably home in his jammies, if his home was still standing.

  In the center of the 2nd Floor was the continuation of the third floor auditorium; to get from the Spring Street garage entrance to the Madison Street loading dock, one had to walk around the third floor auditorium; the floor of the auditorium continued all the way down to the first floor; so to get from the first floor’s ESL area to the Children’s Center, again one had to walk around the third floor auditorium.