The Yellowstone Event (Book 2): A National Disgrace

by Maloney, Darrell

  They pay lip service to scientists and invite them to testify before them on a regular basis.

  But unless the scientists’ views support their own, the scientists’ words are quickly forgotten; their knowledge and expertise discounted.

  That, more than anything, was what soured Wayne on the city.

  He actually had nothing against the people of D.C. All in all they were a good and honorable people.

  No, he didn’t mind the people. He hated the system and the way the politicians played the citizens.

  To Wayne, the politicians were no better than the dirt beneath his feet. Every one of them was crooked. Every damn one. And he couldn’t wait to get out of this God-forsaken town.

  Chapter 40

  Wayne stepped out of the cab and onto the curb of the Clayton Hotel. The doorman immediately opened the door for him.

  But he waved the doorman off.

  He’d passed a fast food burger joint a couple of blocks back, and it occurred to him he might be locked in his room, tied to his computer for hours.

  He was one of those rare men who was so dedicated to his craft he tended to get lost in his projects. Sometimes when working on something big he’d gone for days, never leaving his house, seldom sleeping, seldom taking the time to shower or shave.

  It paid to plan ahead. If that was to be the case, it would help to have a bag of burgers handy.

  Burgers he could heat up in his room’s microwave and eat on the run.

  He’d probably drop catsup and get grease on the papers he was reviewing, but that was okay.

  For Wayne Hamlin was like a lot of other scientists.

  He was a slob.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. His house was neat and tiny, but that was mostly due to his wife’s efforts.

  His car might have a couple of half-empty water bottles rolling around on the floor and a paper sack on the back floorboard with a half eaten sandwich from the week before.

  But didn’t everybody’s car have such a sandwich?

  All in all, Wayne’s cleanliness habits were pretty much average. Like most men, or at least most in his profession, Wayne didn’t particularly care if he had a spot of spaghetti sauce on his tie or some red wine on his jacket.

  It was much more important that he remain well nourished so he could focus on the task at hand. And while his dietician might argue burgers and fries from Bucky’s Burger House was far from nutritionally adequate, it would at least keep the hunger demons at bay.

  So Wayne walked back to the burger joint and got four double meat cheeseburgers and four large French fries to go.

  He then went to a storefront convenience store and bought two six packs of cola from a man named Achmed who never stopped smiling at him.

  By the time he made it back to his hotel, both arms full of bags, he retired to room 708 for what would be the long haul.

  He was well prepared to stick it out to the end.

  The day was already half over when he turned on his laptop and slipped the drive into a USB port.

  He sat down in front of it and delved into the data.

  And he was still in the same chair six hours later.

  He’d ignored his ringing cell phone, although he recognized from the ring tone it was his wife and he’d surely pay hell later on.

  He’d ignored the hunger pangs when his stomach tried to tell him it could smell the burgers from across the room and it was time to have one.

  He’d ignored the maid’s knock on the door, until she got tired of an answer and walked in.

  She saw him there, in a white t-shirt and boxer shorts, bent over his computer screen.

  He didn’t acknowledge her; didn’t even appear to be aware of her presence.

  She apologized, said she’d come back later, and quietly closed the door.

  The only thing he didn’t ignore was his swollen bladder. Two hours in he’d made a mad dash to the bathroom, then right back to his data.

  Finally, as the sun was setting over the nation’s capitol, he leaned back in his chair and cried.

  He had good friends in Los Angeles.

  An aunt and uncle in Las Vegas.

  A cousin in Salt Lake City.

  And every single one of them was in peril of dying an agonizing death.

  He’d gone over the data several times, hoping to find a hole in it.

  He’d never met Hannah Carson. Never even heard her name. Yet he was performing exactly the same checks she’d been performing before she was taken, exactly the same way.

  And with the same desperation.

  In the end, they came to the same conclusion.

  The Yellowstone super volcano was going to blow.

  Wayne went one step further, though.

  As a volcanologist for over thirty years he had vastly more experience than young Hannah did. He’d not only learned tasks she hadn’t been exposed to yet in her career.

  He’d also had time to master them, to polish them. He’d even lectured on some of them.

  One of them was the very specific timeline all volcanoes follow just prior to eruption.

  He could not only read the data and know an eruption was imminent.

  He could also predict the approximate time of the eruption, based on factors which had already occurred.

  The sulfer levels had already reached a critical phase. That was always the first thing to watch for.

  The next was the sub-surface temperature beneath the volcano. It sounded counter-intuitive, but it was actually a more reliable indicator than temperatures above a buried volcano.

  For it was the superheated rock beneath the volcano which expanded and started the push of the magma toward the surface.

  Wayne found the rock beneath the Yellowstone Caldera had already far surpassed the tipping point.

  Yellowstone was a massive freight train which was speeding out of control at an ever-increasing rate.

  With no brakes and no way to stop it.

  He finally picked up the phone and called his wife, who by this time was worried frantic.

  What he had to tell her didn’t calm her down any.

  “Honey, start packing our bags. I’ll be home tomorrow to get you.

  “We’re moving to Florida to be with the kids.

  “And we won’t be back.”

  Chapter 41

  Wayne Hamlin was a card. His students knew him as an all-business professor, ultra-dedicated to his profession. And indeed he was that.

  But he also enjoyed a good belly laugh, and was one of those people who forwarded humorous e-mails to all his friends.

  He was a practical joker, and enjoyed pulling pranks on his colleagues.

  But this… this was deadly serious, and he felt the need to convey that.

  He didn’t want anyone to misinterpret this particular e-mail as folly.

  He crafted his words carefully.

  On the “To:” line he listed a total of 124 colleagues.

  Most, like himself, were Science Department heads at major universities in the United States.

  A few held similar positions in universities around the world.

  A few others weren’t science professors or volcanologists. Rather they were what various universities considered “muckrakers” or troublemakers.”

  Outspoken student leaders or members of vocal student rights groups.

  In the “CC” box Wayne courtesy-copied the mayor of every city of any size within five hundred miles of Yellowstone National Park.

  That wasn’t all the cities which would be affected when the Yellowstone volcano blew. Virtually every city in the United States would be affected to some degree, either sustaining damage or by the influx of massive numbers of refugees.

  No, the cities he wanted to notify fell in a special category all their own.

  They were the cities which would simply cease to exist when the volcano blew.

  The list included the biggies: Salt Lake City, Denver and Boise, as well as many other smaller cities whic
h were just as significant.

  At least to those who lived there who would die in the initial blast.

  He left off another group. Those within a thousand mile radius.

  Those cities, he reckoned, wouldn’t be instantly flattened by the blast. But they would be buried in several feet of ash and debris. Nearly everyone who hadn’t evacuated beforehand would perish. The ash would be impossible to breath, and vehicles would be clogged with the stuff and would shut down after a minute or two.

  The second and larger radius included Los Angeles and San Francisco, Las Vegas, Portland and Seattle, and too many others to mention.

  Scientists had long believed when Yellowstone went she would take up to twenty percent of the United States with her.

  But that was just the initial blast.

  The death and damage tolls would be much, much higher.

  As for the eruption, there was nothing anyone could do to stop it or slow it down.

  That was a given everyone agreed to.

  The next best thing was to sound the warning alarm early. The earlier the better. For starting the evacuation process as early as possible was key to saving the greatest number of lives.

  This was the most important e-mail Wayne Hamlin would send in his lifetime.

  It was critical it not be taken as a joke or a prank.

  On the “Subject” line he typed:

  THIS IS NOT A JOKE: YELLOWSTONE

  IS GETTING READY TO BLOW

  He sat back in his chair before progressing.

  He couldn’t make it any plainer than that.

  As he began to type the message’s body he felt a tinge of pain in his left shoulder.

  He tried to put it out of his mind.

  He was a smart man. He was well aware of his health problems.

  He was also aware he’d been under a lot of stress lately.

  And that, while he lied to his doctor about eating lean meats and vegetables, his diet was more like that of a college kid who thought he’d live forever.

  Wayne was well aware that the pain in his left shoulder could well have been one of the warning signs of a heart attack.

  But he tried to slough it off.

  He’d been taking his baby aspirin religiously, each morning with his third cup of coffee. He took his statin tablet, his CoQ10, the krill oil he had to order over the internet every couple of months.

  He didn’t exercise at all, didn’t watch his weight, and didn’t watch his diet.

  He worked in a job that could be very stressful, and he drank like a fish on the weekends.

  He was making the mistake hundreds of thousands of other American men make each and every year.

  He relied on his medication to prevent another heart attack, while ignoring all the other things he should have been doing.

  Instead of reading his own body’s warning signs, and giving the shoulder pain due attention, he merely popped a couple of ibuprofen.

  And he went back to his email.

  It turned out it took a lot longer than he’d expected.

  The subject was long and tedious.

  The data was outright boring to anyone who didn’t understand it.

  He tried to find a way to convey with the nonscientific recipients… the mayors, specifically, how much he was concerned without turning them off.

  When he neared the end of his task the room started to spin just a bit.

  He had to blink his eyes once, twice, a dozen times as his vision started to blur.

  The pain was back in his left shoulder. Back with a vengeance.

  And it was starting to radiate down his left arm.

  His left hand started to tingle, then went numb.

  He burdened his right hand to do all the typing, which slowed him down even further.

  Finally he stopped the typing and realized he might be in danger.

  He rifled through his bag and found his bottle of aspirin. He chewed one.

  It tasted nasty.

  He didn’t care.

  He had to lie down. Just for a minute, he told himself.

  He’d overdone it. Overworked himself.

  Allowed himself to take on way too much stress.

  He told himself he just needed to rest. Just a few minutes, he convinced himself, as he stumbled from the desk to the bed.

  He collapsed there, looking at the light fixture on the ceiling.

  Watching it go round and round, until it faded to black.

  Chapter 42

  If Wayne hadn’t chewed up that awful aspirin tablet he may well have died.

  And with him may have died any chance the world would have to learn about a pending volcanic eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera.

  That tiny aspirin not only saved Wayne’s life.

  It saved, by extension, the lives of millions.

  He came to after just a few minutes. He still ached along his left side. He was still dazed.

  But he was alive, and seemed to sense the bullet he’d dodged.

  He might not have another chance.

  He stumbled across the room, back to the laptop, and continued to type.

  When he was finished he believed he had just the right mix of provable data for the scientists in his audience. And laymen’s terminology for the politicians.

  He reviewed his words one last time before sending out the message:

  TO: Martin Samson, Annalisa Horan, Benny Ortega

  and 121 Others

  CC: Annita Blair, Dan Grayson,Tina Sondrini

  and 55 Others

  FROM: Wayne H. Hamlin (hamlin.w.h@missou-spr.edu)

  SUBJECT: THIS IS NOT A JOKE: YELLOWSTONE

  IS GETTING READY TO BLOW

  Those of you who know me well know I joke around sometimes. You also know I ALWAYS tell the truth. I’m being truthful when I say this is not a prank, a joke, or a laughing matter.

  For those of you who do know me, I am Head of the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Missouri-Springfield. I’ve been a scientist and volcanologist for more than half my life. I know what I’m talking about, and I hope you take heed in what I’m about to tell you. The lives of millions of your citizens are at stake.

  Beneath Yellowstone National Park is an active volcano. It’s been down there for millions of years, although most Americans don’t know about it. The Yellowstone Caldera is what generates the superheated gases that give tourists their geysers and hot springs.

  Since the volcano last erupted roughly 300,000 years ago, we in the scientific community have gotten complacent. It’s always been something somebody else would have to worry about. We simply put it out of our minds.

  The National Geological Survey has been monitoring the site intermittently since the Eisenhower administration, and has never raised an alarm.

  However, that’s not because there hasn’t been any danger.

  It’s because the United States government is trying very hard to keep its data secret. So hard, in fact, it’s killing people or making them “disappear.”

  The Yellowstone super volcano is getting ready to blow, and sooner, not later.

  The window has already opened. It opened four years ago, by my calculations. Sometime in the next eight to ten years the volcano will erupt. And with each passing year, the chances of it blowing the following year will increase tenfold.

  Those of you who are geologists or volcanologists can review the data in the attached file and confirm it for yourselves. The data was taken by a company called Geo-Dynametrics roughly two months ago.

  For those of you who are not scientists, here are the facts in a language you can understand:

  The Yellowstone volcano, when it erupts, will immediately destroy about twenty percent of the United States. Some land will simply be blown to bits as a two hundred mile wide crater gets blown into the earth where the national park now sits.

  For several hundreds of miles around the park, every living thing will be pelted by debris. Boulders the size of houses will come crashing down
like cannon balls, crushing everything in their wake. Smaller rocks will number in the hundreds of millions. It’ll be like a hailstorm of rocks, and houses will not provide adequate shelter. Every living thing will die.

  In the outer ring, within a thousand mile radius, a billion metric tons of ash and dirt will cover the earth like a blanket. Some land will not be usable for generations. People will suffocate and will not be able to evacuate because their vehicles will choke and die as well.

  Make no mistake about it. This is going to happen. If you are a mayor and have received this email, your city is in one of the zones.

  To save the lives of our citizens we must alert the public. The federal government has betrayed us. They have no answer for a catastrophe of this magnitude so their answer is simply to let it happen.

  That, in my opinion, is not good enough. If you agree, help me spread the word.

  Again, this is not a hoax or a prank. For those who are able to check the data for ourselves, I encourage you to do so.

  For those of you who aren’t in the scientific community, I encourage you to write or call me to voice your concerns and ask your questions. I’ll be back in my office tomorrow, and can be reached at (417) 313-4509.

  I would encourage you to mobilize your students. Have them start picketing. Tell them to demand the government stop keeping secrets and tell people what they know about the pending eruption.

  And also to picket their Congressmens’ offices to demand someone be held accountable for the murders of Ron Linkes, Brent Barber, Shirley Mason, Joe Martinez, Bradley Gunderson and likely several others.

  Have them demand the release of Hannah and Tony Carson, Bud Avery and likely others as well.

  Respectfully Yours (and God have mercy on us all)

  Wayne H. Hamlin

  Chapter 43