Death Canyon

by David Riley Bertsch

  “Has this ever been attempted before?”

  “Not attempted, no. It has arguably happened before, but accidentally, of course.” He took a big sip from an oversized soda.

  “How? And how would it be done?”

  “Just a simple change of conditions. You shift stuff around deep in the earth, and you just might cause some instability that could lead to an occurrence.”

  “How do you cause instability?”

  “You could do it quite a few ways, really. Explosives would work, I suppose, if you had enough of them.”

  “So in theory someone with bad intentions could make this happen?”

  “No way. You would need the explosives inventory of a large country and hundreds of millions of dollars of drilling equipment. The operation would be huge.”

  “But you said it has happened before, right, just not with explosives?”

  “There’s a lot of evidence it’s happened before, yes. Especially in one specific event in Switzerland. Government experiments caused it. Nothing malicious. Just some miscalculations.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, the exact way the quakes were caused never really got out to the public. It’s likely only a couple of drilling companies and the Swiss government know exactly how it went down. They would have to be involved to pull something like this off.”

  “Could that happen here?”

  “Not possible, at least not with these quakes. Again, the scope is too big. If it was even attempted, we’d know about it by now. You couldn’t do it on federal land without somebody noticing.”

  Noelle raised her hands in defeat. Jake spoke. “I think that’s all we’ve got. I guess we are barking up the wrong tree. Thank you for your time, Doctor.”

  Noelle exchanged “thank yous” and “nice to meet yous” with Stevenson. Keith shook his hand and asked one last question.

  “Hey, should we be worried about this stuff? All the activity, I mean . . . everybody knows Yellowstone is a supervolcano, does this mean it’s getting ready to erupt?”

  Stevenson patted Keith on the back. “Nothing to worry about. This sort of activity just comes along from time to time. Nobody really knows why it happens, but there’s no reason to think it’s an indication that the whole thing is going to blow. Of course someday it will, but we’ll never see it coming.”

  A lovely thought.

  Keith nodded at him and shook his hand again. Jake and Noelle exchanged dubious looks.

  The trio walked back to Noelle’s truck. It was just after noon.

  “Y’all are welcome to stay and hang out. It’s a long ride back, and I know a place that makes a mean green-chili stew,” Keith told them as he walked them to the car. “Jake, man, we can BS about fishing, like the good old days.”

  Jake and Noelle looked at each other. “Maybe just a quick lunch, then we’d better get back.”

  * * *

  Lunch took longer than Jake or Noelle would’ve liked. In the two hours they spent at Rio’s Café, six small quakes interrupted Keith’s animated stories of bears, trout, and general adventure.

  As Keith walked them back to the truck, he looked from Noelle to Jake. “Wait, are you guys like . . . you know . . . ?” His voice trailed off into an embarrassed laugh.

  “Are we what?” Noelle asked.

  “Like an item or whatever, you know, a couple?”

  The question made Noelle uncomfortable. Her short fling with Keith was a long time ago, but romance was still a topic she didn’t want to discuss with the present company.

  Noelle finally responded. “Why would you think that?”

  “No reason.” He hugged Noelle and firmly shook Jake’s hand, promising to come down to Jackson for some fishing “if the world doesn’t end.” He was kidding, but the joke failed in the face of the looming uncertainty.

  They got in the truck, Jake in the driver’s seat, and waved to Keith. As they headed south, neither of them said a word about Keith’s question. Both wondered if a conversation on the matter was really necessary. If it was, this wasn’t the time or place to do it. They sat in silence.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, just a mile from the north entrance, a female grizzly bear was digging furiously at an embankment. Every thirty seconds or so the sow would stick her dish-shaped face into the dirt, huffing, trying to smell for any signs of life. Then she resumed digging more frantically after each break.

  Her hackles were up, making her already huge shoulders look all the more impressive. The pile of dirt and rocks behind her was nearly three feet tall already—this is what the animals were built for, using their powerful shoulders and long claws to scrounge for food when conditions were tough.

  This mother’s urgency stemmed from another primal urge, and when she lowered her heavy head to sniff the earth one last time, she had hope. A small black nose was protruding from the wreckage of the collapsed den.

  She started digging again. More carefully this time and only around the outside of the dusty form she had discovered. When all the dirt was cleared away, she grabbed her cub by the scruff of his neck and dragged him a few feet away from their collapsed home.

  The cub lay motionless for a moment. Its mother was distraught. Then, without warning, the cub stood up and shook off. The elated mom licked away the remaining dust and dirt from his fur. She curled her lips and huffed at the collapsed den. Then she turned and sauntered off with the cub in tow, looking for safer ground.

  * * *

  Noelle was pumping gas into the truck at a station twenty miles south of Bozeman. It was three fifteen. “Do you want to go through the park or around the long way?”

  “Was thinking the long way,” Jake answered. “Unless you have a preference. We’re not in a hurry, are we? No reason to risk it.”

  “I’m not,” Noelle said, but she was disappointed in his decision. She paused, then spoke again. “Let’s just go through the park. If someone stops us, I’ll just fess up. It can’t be that big of a deal.”

  He laughed. “Okay, Ranger Klimpton.”

  “You mind driving for a bit?”

  When they got to the next intersection, Jake turned the vehicle left toward the north entrance of Yellowstone.

  Fifteen miles north of the park, another bison jam held them up.

  “Weird to see them this far out of the park,” Noelle said.

  “Wonder what they’re doing?”

  “Fleeing, maybe.” The implications of Noelle’s statement made them both stay silent for a few minutes. The line of animals crossing the road stretched on for a few hundred yards. They moved at a deliberate pace.

  “Still want to go through the park?” Jake gave her a concerned look. He lowered the windows and killed the engine to let the bison pass.

  She nodded.

  * * *

  They were about ten miles from the north entrance of Yellowstone when they felt another shiver in the earth. This time the car shook hard, jostling its passengers in their seat belts. CDs fell from the overhead compartment. The tall evergreens that made up the forest swayed at their pinnacles.

  Noelle was afraid. She fidgeted with her seat belt, which had become uncomfortably tight.

  The quake stopped abruptly like all the others. Noelle bent to pick up her CD collection from the floor of the truck.

  Jake looked at her. “You’re sure you still wanna go through the park?” he asked one last time.

  “We’re committed now.” The herd had continued moving in behind the truck after they’d passed. “I don’t want to wait for the bison again.”

  She shoved the albums back into their storage compartment. Outside, the pine needles and leaves knocked from their roosts were still floating in the wind, descending slowly and playfully.

  They went on a few more miles in silence. Small quakes occasionally broke through the landscape’s facade of serenity.

  Jake was thinking about their visit with the seismologist, trying to decide whether or not there was anything of value in
his assessment. “What do you think he meant by government experiments, exactly?”

  “Who, Dr. Stevenson? No idea.”

  The truck bucked like a bronco and Jake fell silent. He slowed the vehicle to a crawl. Then another bump. Jake cocked his head, trying to feel for the source of the bump.

  Is the truck breaking down?

  There was a pause in the chaos before the earth roared back to life. It was the strongest one yet. Noelle braced herself by pushing her palms against the roof of the truck. Jake held the steering wheel tight, trying to keep the vehicle on the road.

  The earth groaned louder. Jake feared the worst. The eruption. Scrambled thoughts cycled through his mind. I’ll never see Noelle again. We were so close to figuring it all out. I’ll never know what could have been.

  Jake slammed the truck to a complete stop as folds of asphalt were heaved up in front of them. Noelle could see that Jake was afraid, and that frightened her more. She reached over and held his hand on the steering wheel.

  Tree branches were falling from the forest. Birds left their perches and hovered in the air, looking for solace. Squirrels scrambled down the tree trunks to the ground.

  A hard knock threatened to roll the truck over. Noelle screamed.

  “Hold on!” Jake shouted back.

  The roadway bucked, releasing steam and water. The tremors intensified. All around them, the earth buckled, hazy smoke pouring forth.

  Noelle yelled through the chaos, her voice trembling. “I’m guessing that’s not a water main?” She was pointing to a jet of water shooting forty feet in the air.

  “Don’t think so!”

  The shaking was making them dizzy, affecting their vision. Everything was a blur.

  Holy shit!

  Whole trees fell. First the smaller Engelmann spruce. Then a handful of lodgepoles flopped to the ground, many that had proudly stood seventy-five feet tall. Their branches slapped the earth as they fell and sent clouds of dust up and out.

  The steam bursting from the road increased, and the temperature was rising fast in the truck. Noelle yelled at Jake over the rumbling earth and hissing steam. “Get out or stay in?!” Her face was panicked.

  “Stay in!” Jake yelled back, and pressed down the automatic door lock.

  It was getting hotter in the car, and fast. Probably ninety degrees. Now around a hundred. Jake looked at Noelle. They were both sweating. He was rethinking his decision to stay in the vehicle.

  The chaos was still carrying on outside. One hundred and five. They heard a crack below the truck’s transmission and the body tilted backward. The road was literally crumbling beneath them. Steam flowed around the cabin. One hundred and ten degrees.

  “Shit! We’re parked on a steam vent!” Noelle shouted.

  Jake and Noelle exchanged a horrified look. They held each other as tight as they could.

  The singular thought in each of their heads was identical.

  This is it.

  30

  YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

  One hundred and twenty-five degrees.

  Jake threw the transmission into reverse and floored it. With a thud, the truck slid off the ramped slab and back onto the flat road. Jake reached across and opened Noelle’s door and then his own. The heat poured out of the passenger cabin like smoke out of a burning oven.

  The quake stopped. Jake took stock of the damage. It looked like a tornado and wildfire had swept through the woods at the same time. But we’re still here. Yellowstone hadn’t erupted, but the quakes were intensifying.

  They got out of the truck to cool off. It was still outside now. After a few minutes, Noelle stuck her head back in, looked around, and found a bottle of water on the floor. Its plastic had melted slightly from the heat. But it was still full. Jake insisted that she take a drink first. It was warm but still tasted good. She handed the bottle to Jake.

  “Well,” he said after taking a gulp. “It would be nice to say we could turn around. But it looks to me like we’re going through the park no matter what.”

  Noelle followed Jake’s glance back up the road. About fifty yards away, an enormous pine rested on the road. There was no way through the mess that they could see. The tree extended sixty feet past either shoulder of the road. On one end, the dirt-packed ball of roots sat heavily, soil still falling from its gangling tentacles. On the other end, the wispy upper limbs hung in the air.

  “Shit!” Noelle was visibly shaken. She brought her trembling hands to her head. She was losing it.

  Jake had to keep her sharp if they wanted to survive. “How could you know? Let’s get out of here.” He put his arm around Noelle’s shoulders and led her to the car, embrace more protective than romantic. When they got in, the evening breeze had cooled down the vehicle’s cabin significantly.

  Ahead of them, the right lane of the road was damaged to the point that travel would be impossible. Although the earth’s tremors had ceased for the time being, there were still steam vents and miniature geysers dotting the roadside. It was an unearthly atmosphere.

  “We’ll get through the park as quickly as we can.” Jake skidded out, turned into the left lane, and drove as fast as possible until they came to the north entrance.

  “No!” Jake put the truck in park and killed the engine. They exited the car. The small ranger station booth was in ruins. Two of the four walls had fallen outward, leaving the interior of the building exposed. A medium-sized pine rested menacingly against one of the remaining walls. Worse yet, another tall pine lay suspended across the road to their south. Four feet in the air, its tip resting on the upturned roots of another fallen tree. There was no way to go under or over with the truck.

  “Now what?” Noelle asked him as she dropped her hands to her sides. “I’m sorry—” Jake stopped her. As he did, the earth groaned again. They braced for another thrashing, but it never came. Instead, the noisy grumble faded back into the silence that normally came with the isolation of the park.

  “Don’t be sorry. We’re fine. I’m going to see if the phone in the booth still works. I’ll be right back.”

  Noelle looked around nervously. It was starting to get dark. Her fears of the wild—bears, mountain lions, and storms—had long faded after years of living in the mountains. Now, though, there was a new set of threats. The deserted woodlands had transformed into a nightmarish landscape.

  Inside the remains of the booth, Jake was fiddling with the phone. No dial tone.

  He looked around for another means of communication. The fax machine had suffered the same fate as the phone. On the floor below it, though, Jake saw a facsimile. He picked up the paper. It was dated only a few hours before. It looked to be the product of some automated disaster alert system. It contained information on the series of quakes in the last few days; “nothing to worry about,” it said. Park employees should do their best to keep the public calm during evacuation.

  On the bottom of the page was a simple map of Yellowstone, really just a rectangle with a few markers for the obvious points of interest. Tiny asterisks showed where the most recent geological activity had been. It was hard to say from such a rudimentary map, but it looked as if they were centered in the area that Keith was referring to as the epicenter of the quakes, in the northwest corner of the park. If not there, somewhere damn close.

  Jake and Noelle were near the epicenter, and he got the feeling it wasn’t coincidence. He had never believed in fate, but he couldn’t shake the thought that they were there for a reason.

  He ran out of the booth and headed toward Noelle.

  “Noelle!” Jake called for her as he left the booth. “Look at this!”

  Noelle had wandered a short distance into the woods. She came jogging back. “Did you find a phone?”

  “Yeah, but it’s dead. I found this, though. It gives us the locations of all the tremors in the last forty-eight hours.” He passed her the fax.

  She looked it over. “Not too far from here. What’s your plan?”

  Jake p
aused for a second, trying to think how to best phrase what he was about to propose. “We’re never gonna get around this tree. I’d say we try going back north. I think there might be a big enough gap at the end of that tree to get through. You have four-wheel drive, right?”

  “Of course. But what’re we going to do when we get past the tree? There could be more roadblocks. It could be worse up there closer to the epicenter.”

  “Well, we have a map now; we could drive up there and take a look around.” He felt a tinge of guilt at his proposition. The idea would only put Noelle in more danger. His instinct, however, told him that this was a lead that needed to be followed. “I have a feeling this isn’t going to stop unless we stop it.”

  “Go to the epicenter, you mean?” She looked at Jake dubiously.

  “It sounds worse when you say it. I don’t think we’re going to be safe until we find out exactly what’s causing these quakes.”

  She looked for confidence and determination in his eyes and found it.

  “I’m in.” In a fraction of a second, she was back in the car.

  31

  YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

  Jake was in the driver’s seat again and going fast. He deftly maneuvered around potholes on the freshly pocked road, fallen trees, and newly formed geothermal features. They arrived back at the roadblock in less time than their original opposing journey.

  He pulled the park service vehicle over to the shoulder—an unnecessary move because of the seclusion of the road. There was no way another vehicle would cross their path; the precaution was a habit, a remnant of their world that had just been turned upside down.

  “I’m going to walk around the end here.” He pointed to the tree’s upper terminus. The root ball on the other end created a much bigger obstacle. “Stay in the car. It’s hard to tell how solid the ground will be out there.” The gruesome scene he’d witnessed at the geyser basin flashed in his mind.