The Yellowstone Event: Book 6: The Aftermath

by Darrell Maloney

  She remembered seeing his pill bottles on the counter in the RV’s galley.

  She knew he took them out of the cupboard with the intention of taking them.

  She also knew that sometimes the bottles sat there for hours before he finally got around to opening them.

  She honestly couldn’t say whether he’d had his meds; therefore she had to assume he hadn’t.

  He certainly couldn’t tell her one way or the other.

  She also had to assume he was in serious danger of a clot or of nerve damage to his pinned leg if she couldn’t free it.

  She paused and breathed as deeply as she could.

  She knew that getting plenty of oxygen and resisting the urge to rush her mission was her key to staying awake and alert.

  For five full minutes which seemed much longer she rested and listened to Darrell’s heartbeat.

  When she was convinced she defeated the blackness she pressed on, a bit at a time, until half her body was beneath the recliner.

  She took a deep breath and rolled her body to one side.

  It took the mightiest of efforts and caused her a world of pain, but the recliner rolled off his leg and off to the side.

  She felt his leg, looking for an abnormality.

  There was no open fracture. No closed fracture that she could feel.

  If the leg was broken it was a hairline fracture.

  It would cause him a lot of pain when she moved the leg, but she wouldn’t exasperate his injuries.

  With both hands she lifted the twisted leg and tenderly placed it back in its correct position.

  He let out a deep breath.

  She hoped it was a sigh of relief instead of an expression of pain.

  In any event, he didn’t wake up to tell her.

  Now she was as exhausted as he was.

  She lay upon his chest and allowed herself to drift off to sleep.

  Darrell started to stir a couple of hours later.

  It might have been the warmth of Rocki’s body against his that brought him back to consciousness.

  Perhaps it was because the circulation was returning to his now-free leg.

  No, that wasn’t it.

  Once his faculties were a bit clearer he realized it was the noise which woke him.

  A loud creaking of some type.

  He had no clue what it was.

  And under the circumstances, being as miserable and hurting as he was, one would think a smile would be impossible to muster.

  But he was grinning ear to ear.

  Rocki found him in the dark. She rolled the recliner off of him. She reduced his pain, and quite possibly prevented a blood clot which might have cost him his life.

  She was his hero.

  Best of all, even better than all of that: he could now touch her. Feel her. Know that she was alive.

  He enjoyed the warmth of her body.

  He wanted to wrap his arms about her. To squeeze her. To let her know he was awake.

  But he held back, not knowing where she was bruised and battered.

  After all she did for him, the last thing he wanted to do was cause her pain.

  So he settled for running his fingers through her hair.

  Since they first became intimate some years before, it was his way of tenderly waking her from a sound sleep. His signal to her that he was in an amorous mood, and wanted to make love to her before they had to get up and get ready for work.

  The first time he’d later apologized to her, telling her it was unfair to deprive her of sleep just to satisfy his own selfish desires.

  She assured him he was welcome to wake her up in such a manner anytime, anywhere, so long as he completed the process and made love to her to reward her.

  Since then it had become a “thing” for them.

  Until today.

  He could have let her sleep longer. But it was important he bring her back to consciousness so they could discuss their predicament and find a way to escape.

  And he wanted to share something else with her.

  No, not that.

  Something far better than that.

  He wanted to share with her the thing that made him smile.

  She started to stir and managed her own smile.

  She read the signal to mean what it always had before.

  Without opening her eyes she groggily muttered, “I’m sorry, honey. I’m not really in the mood.”

  Chapter 14

  The smile left his face, but only for a moment.

  He said, “You’ve never told me that before. Not even once, in the whole time we’ve been together.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ve never been blown all to hell and came to in an upside down RV before either.”

  The truth was, neither of them was in the mood for romance. It would have been far too painful, and they had other more important things to worry about.

  But they’d always been able to banter.

  They’d always been able to joke around, even in the worst of circumstances.

  They’d always been able to brighten each other’s moods.

  Despite the catastrophe, despite all the pain, the banter was back.

  It was a major step in the right direction.

  “Start waking up, honey. When you can open your eyes I want to show you something wonderful.”

  She fought mightily to open one eye.

  She only got it halfway open before it began to falter.

  “Is this good enough?”

  “I don’t know. Can you see the smile on my face?”

  “Yes. You must be insane.”

  “Insane? But why?”

  “Because you have absolutely nothing to smile about. We’re in the worst situation we’ve ever been in. And you’re sitting there grinning like the damned Cheshire Cat.”

  “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, oh love o’ mine. I’ve got plenty of things to smile about and be grateful for.”

  “Oh yeah? Name one.”

  “I can name several. First of all, we’re still alive. We seemingly have no broken bones, other than maybe concussions. We made it, baby. We’ve beaten Yellowstone. We’ve gone into the mouth of the dragon and survived.”

  “Okay. I’ll grant you that. Name another.”

  “I can see. When I came to the last time it was pitch black. I thought I was permanently blinded in the crash. But now I can see it all. I can see the furniture. The debris. The dented and twisted metal which was once our RV.

  “Mostly I can see your beautiful face.”

  “I don’t feel very beautiful, honey.”

  “Baby, you’re always beautiful.”

  “Even with my hair a mess and filth all over my face?”

  “Yes. Even with all that. Of course…”

  “Of course what?”

  “Of course, even though I’m not blind, my vision is still out of focus, still very fuzzy. You could be ugly as sin for all I know.”

  He said it with a smile on his face.

  She had one too when she asked, “Where can I punch you where it’ll hurt you the most?”

  He ignored the question, knowing she was kidding.

  Or at least hoping she was.

  Instead of answering he asked his own question.

  “Have you checked your body?”

  She didn’t miss a beat. She immediately answered, “I’ve always thought it was your job to check my body.”

  “For injuries, you dope.”

  “Well, I don’t think any bones are broken. I was able to drag myself across the floor… I mean the ceiling, without any bones poking out of my skin.”

  “We should assume you have a concussion. How about your ribs?”

  “Honestly, they hurt. A couple of them hurt really bad.”

  “Are you having any trouble breathing?”

  “Not really. It hurts, but no more than the rest of my body.”

  “Good. That means your lungs aren’t punctured or collapsed. You need to be very careful, though. If your
ribs are cracked it won’t take much pressure to break them, and the sharp edges could rip into a lung.”

  “Trust me, Doctor Darrell. I plan to take it real easy not just on my ribs, but the rest of my body as well.

  “Anything else?”

  “Did you check for internal bleeding?”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Press into all parts of your abdomen. Look for spots which are hard, or very warm. Either one can indicate your blood is pooling.”

  “I’ll do you if you do me. You know… like in the bedroom…”

  She smiled again.

  “Honey, I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously.”

  “Wrong. I’m taking this extremely seriously. I’m trying to keep things light so I don’t all-out panic and freak out and make things a lot worse than they have to be.”

  “Okay. Me poking and prodding on you when I don’t know where you’re hurting is a bad idea.

  “It’s best if you do yourself and I will too.”

  She didn’t argue the point.

  He made too much sense.

  She sometimes called him Doctor Darrell, but it wasn’t meant as a slam. It was meant as a sign of respect, for he knew a lot more about first aid and emergency medical treatment than she did.

  He wasn’t a real doctor, of course.

  But he’d spent a lot of time in the Air Force practicing what the USAF called “self-aid and buddy care.” It was a fancy term for battlefield emergency medicine. How to stop bleeding and apply dressings and bandages. How to set a broken leg and make a splint out of darned-near anything.

  Even a magazine.

  How to make a stretcher with a blanket and two tree branches.

  The right way and the wrong way to apply a tourniquet and why it was important to know the difference. For it was quite literally a life or death decision.

  Darrell’s final assessment:

  They were in bad shape. But it could have been much worse.

  Chapter 15

  “How long do you think we’ve been here?” Rocki asked.

  Darrell reached up to his face and felt his beard. It was two days growth, no more.

  He’d shaved the morning of the eruption.

  “Not long. A couple of days. And as my head gets more and more clear, I feel like more and more of an idiot.”

  “Oh, honey… why?”

  “I was in and out of consciousness. But every time I woke up it was at night.

  “I assumed that since everything was pitch black that I’d hit my head hard enough to render me blind. It just never occurred to me it might just be nighttime. That there was nothing wrong with my eyes at all. How could I be so stupid?”

  “Darrell, don’t sell yourself short. Don’t you dare do that. If you talk bad about the man I love I’ll kick your ass. And I mean it too.”

  “Honey…”

  “No. Let me finish. You said there’s a very good chance we both suffered concussions when we hit our heads while rolling around in a tumbling vehicle.

  “That makes sense to me. It explains the confusion we’re feeling. The blurred vision. The blackouts and long periods of unconsciousness. It explains everything.

  “And nobody is on their best game and thinks things through when they’re suffering from a concussion.

  “What happened two days ago, the assumptions you made when you couldn’t see… that’s all in the past now.

  “It no longer matters. What matters now is how we get the heck out of here before we starve to death or get eaten by bears.”

  The last words she said sent a chill up Darrell’s spine.

  Their last full day on the road, the day before the eruption sent their RV flying through the air, they’d seen no less than five black bears walking down the highway in an effort to escape the trembling ground beneath their feet.

  And they looked damned hungry.

  For several days they’d made their way out of the mountains around Yellowstone National Park.

  They were driven with only one goal in mind: to get away from the earth’s rumbling, from the scalding steam coming from fissures which seemed to be opening up everywhere.

  To get back to solid and stable ground.

  To do that they weren’t stopping to eat.

  They weren’t even stopping to sleep until they fell over from exhaustion.

  And it wasn’t just the bears.

  They’d passed two packs of wolves.

  One was just a single female and two males which were following her.

  Hours later they encountered a much larger pack. At least twelve wolves at a full trot.

  Not long after they saw a lone wolverine.

  All three were deadly animals.

  And all three, assuming the blast didn’t kill them, were out there somewhere.

  Desperate for food.

  Two defenseless humans would make a tasty treat.

  And they truly were defenseless.

  Although the pair were big believers in the Second Amendment and kept several weapons and ammo at their home in Little Rock, they made a decision two years before to leave them all there. At home.

  It wasn’t an easy decision to make.

  For it was a major change for them.

  They used to travel with two 9 mm handguns.

  His and hers Ruger SR-9s

  While they were interviewing a man about a ghostly encounter their Winnebago was broken into.

  Both pistols were taken.

  Now that in itself was bad enough.

  But it got much worse.

  A week later both pistols were used in a church shooting which killed a minister, two elders and four other parishioners.

  The shooter was a mentally ill man with a grudge against the church.

  He was a convicted felon who was unable to purchase his own firearms.

  A long line of unoccupied RVs at an RV park made a juicy target, for he’d hidden in the tree line of nearby woods. He’d watched as one by one the RVers left their motor homes and walked to a New Year’s Eve party at the park’s community center.

  It only took three break-ins to find exactly what he was looking for: Darrell and Rocki’s guns, two extra boxes of ammunition and three extra magazines.

  Of course it wasn’t their fault.

  They knew that.

  If he hadn’t found their weapons first he’d have kept looking until he found someone else’s.

  The shooting spree still would have happened. People still would have died.

  But Darrell and Rocki had been around for a long time.

  They seldom made key decisions lightly; they always looked at a problem from various angles.

  They looked at it another way.

  They’d been on the road for five years at that time.

  Almost exclusively, except for an occasional respite they took in Little Rock to hang out with the chitlins.

  In all that time they’d never had a requirement to defend themselves, or to intervene in a bad-guy situation.

  In all that time, both weapons sat in a drawer in their RV’s galley, unused and gathering dust.

  Sure, they’d been absolved of all responsibility.

  But they didn’t seem to need the guns very badly.

  And if they hadn’t been there, the shooter would have had to move on to find them elsewhere.

  Every time he broke into another RV, there was more chance of him getting shot or caught.

  Preferably shot.

  Chapter 16

  The shooter was eventually convicted and sent away for life.

  The local police eventually returned their handguns from the evidence room at police headquarters.

  Darrell and Rocki never needed their guns on the road, and made a conscious decision not to take them along with them when they finally got them back.

  Sure they were big followers of the Second Amendment.

  Just not on the road. They figured anything they could do to slow down the next guy the better.r />
  Now, as they realized they were bear bait, they knew they’d made a terrible mistake. For while two 9 mm handguns weren’t exactly the ideal weapons to use against an angry and starving bruin, they would have at least evened the odds a bit.

  They weighed all those odds.

  They decided that to stay where they were waiting for help was folly, for surely few people were out and about in the wake of the eruption.

  Those who were certainly weren’t searching the ravines below the highways, looking for smashed-up recreational vehicles.

  No, help wasn’t coming.

  Only a slow, agonizing death was.

  They had to go, despite the dangers.

  They decided that laying low for two days was beneficial to both of them.

  It gave them a chance to start to heal.

  It allowed the swelling in both their brains to subside a bit.

  It gave their heads a chance to clear; they began to think more easily. Their confusion started to subside.

  And there was no more dizziness; no more stars.

  They found it easier to crawl around the wrecked RV now. They were able to find food and bottled water.

  They ate and drank as much as they could, as that meant less they’d have to carry.

  Darrell was able to retrieve the backpacks they carried with them on occasional hikes, and filled them both.

  His with bottled water, hers with lighter MREs.

  They figured they had enough provisions for five to seven days.

  If they couldn’t find help by then they’d likely perish, for there was no chance of finding food or water in the wilderness.

  The entire area was covered with several inches of poisonous ash.

  And it was still drifting down, like a dirty gray snow.

  Only this snow didn’t melt.

  The creaking Darrell had heard above his head was the heavy ash collecting on the undercarriage of the vehicle.

  The RV was no longer structurally stable.

  It had been bent and twisted and weakened, and the heavy ash collecting on the bottom of the vehicle was threatening to collapse it.

  That was okay. Hopefully by the time that happened they’d be long gone.

  Darrell was able to open the large viewing window on the driver’s side slide out and the two crawled out into the muck.