Volcano Watch

by Toni Dwiggins

  Fallen bookcases. Books, binders, artwork, knickknacks on the floor. Map cabinet skidded halfway across the room. The apothecary cabinet still stood in place, its doors open.

  “Walter?”

  “Huh?”

  I went rigid. Sweet Jesus he really is here.

  There was another soft sound, an exhale.

  “Walter?” I looked around, my headlamp sweeping the room. On the floor between the desk and a supine white bookcase was a body. I choked back a scream. My headlamp caught a face. And then relief hit me. The body was Adrian Krom.

  His arm came up to shield his eyes from the glare of my light.

  “Where’s Walter?” I said.

  His arm went limp.

  I was on my knees, cupping his chin, comparing his pupils, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, running my hand down his leg to where it disappeared beneath the bookcase, and he flinched, and I was surprised to find myself glad to suddenly have some company. It could have been the devil himself and I’d be glad.

  His eyes were open and tracking. I had to suppress the urge to tug on the leg; if it could be pulled free, I guessed he would have freed it.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered.

  “Evac sweep.” Hardly words. More like croaks. “Water?”

  I pushed up. “It’s outside.”

  I ran, leaving him in the dark. As I picked up my pack, the thought came: I could just go. Continue my search for Walter as though I’d never stumbled across Adrian Krom. If he remembers me at all, he’ll call it a hallucination.

  I felt, suddenly, every ache. The memory of yesterday’s crazy high astonished me. The more calculated confidence with which I’d set out from the house this morning, full on sweet potato pie, just evaporated. I gripped the snowshoes, seeing clearly. Get going, find Walter, get out while you both can. You want revenge? Here it is. Leave Krom. You think he’d hang around this ghost town if you were in there pinned on Lindsay’s rug? You can’t prove he killed Georgia. You can’t prove he killed Lindsay. But you’ve got him. Walk away and he’s nailed.

  Only, he might know about Walter. I turned and went back inside.

  Krom was up on one elbow. I opened the water bottle and gave it to him. He sipped with surprising restraint. I realized, he’s been there before, trapped in his truck screaming with a burned arm as the tribe’s volcano rained fire on him. He’s learned to survive. Ration supplies, don’t be greedy. He drank for a long while, pausing finally like he was going to speak but he was unable to take his eyes from the bottle and he drank again, draining it. In the end, greedy after all.

  “Have you seen Walter?”

  He took so long to answer I thought he hadn’t heard. Then he shook his head.

  My heart turned over. I stood and headed for the door, and it was his stone cold silence that stopped me. Even now, pinned beneath Lindsay’s bookcase, he seemed able to reel me in. I turned. He simply watched me, eyes flat in my light, waiting to see if I’d really go. I felt pity, astonishing myself. Evidently, I’m capable of anything. I asked, “Are you hurt?”

  “Leg.”

  I came back and got on my stomach and shined Jimbo’s light into the space beneath the bookcase. Leg looked intact. There were books under here, and they had probably cushioned his leg. I pushed on the bookcase. Like pushing a wall. I worked my tender hands under the edges. “If I can lift this, can you pull free?”

  He nodded. I wondered. It didn’t matter anyway, because I could not budge the case. My mind raced. Car jack? No, no room to slide it underneath. Some kind of pulley? Maybe, if I knew how to rig a pulley and what parts I’d need, I could break into the hardware store, assuming there was any hardware left. First, though, I’d need to break into the library and find a book that explained pulleys. Or was it a block and tackle I wanted? Shit. I was helpless as Walter. Not my father’s daughter after all.

  I had to fight off the sudden impression that the walls of Lindsay’s office, beyond the gloom, were made of compacted snow.

  He coughed. “What…” He swallowed, and gestured at the window.

  I said, “What’s going on? That what you’re asking?”

  He nodded.

  I thought hard about that one. Didn’t need him to panic. Had he panicked during his stay in that truck? I said, flat, “Phreatic eruption in the moat. Stopped, for now.”

  He nodded. Not the type to panic.

  I dug in my pack and set up an emergency supply kit beside him: water bottle, flashlight, granola bars, Tylenol. I said, “I’m going to look for Walter.”

  “I’m cold.” He jerked his chin, toward the chair. “Parka.” He added, “Please.”

  How about pretty please, you shit? But I went over to Lindsay’s chair and picked up his big heavy parka and dropped it on him, then walked out the door before he could demand something more.

  I left the building and headed down the road. Nothing was happening, no black column in the sky, just fine ash hanging in the air until it lost wing and idled down.

  I walked the town. The Ski Tip. Community center. Hardware store, Von’s, Grumpy’s, hospital, Center Snowmobiles. No snowmobiles to be had. I walked home, got skis, tried Walter’s house again. I skied out of town, along 203, passing that long line of cars—abandoned vehicles of the refugees. I looked; no keys. I found his Explorer, just where Eric said it was. Locked. No keys. Cartons of casework and equipment inside. Wouldn’t he have taken that? He hadn’t. He hadn’t got out. I moved on, all the way to the chasm and in the ashy daylight it looked more savage than it had on TV. Guard trucks parked here. No keys.

  How simple, on my skis, to detour the chasm and keep going. Get out.

  I worked my way back to town, zigzagging across 203, checking every ditch, every hollow. He was nowhere.

  Finally I made my way back to Lindsay’s office. Krom lay flat, arms folded beneath his head. The water bottle was half-empty, the food gone.

  He spoke. “Help’s on the way.”

  “Help?” I stood dumb. And then I saw Krom’s little emergency radio lying beside him. And I realized why he’d wanted his parka, and why the parka was so heavy—because his radio was in one of the deep pockets. I said, faint, “Who’s coming?”

  “Search and Rescue,” he said. “From Bridgeport, where I set up the emergency ops center. It will be hours. Once they hit the ash zone, they’ll have to go slow. They’re worried about ash clogging air filters.”

  “Do you realize what you just did?”

  “They’re volunteers, Cassie. And once they get here and free me, I will get all of us out safely.”

  “You will? Your leg…”

  “Does not affect my training or my skills.”

  “What about sacrifice, Adrian? What about the tribal elders who sacrificed themselves so the others could live? I thought that’s what you wanted to do but now that it’s real, you don’t want to. You’re willing to have other people do the sacrifice and come into a goddamn eruption zone.”

  He regarded me coldly. “No sacrifice will be necessary.”

  I returned his icy look. I wondered if that’s what he was thinking when he lay here pinned, alone. Hearing the eruption. I’d bet he was pissed. The volcano’s winning, and he’s lying here in his enemy’s office, on the rug stained with her blood. I bet he sure in hell thought about the sacrificial irony in that. The volcano wins, she gets her revenge.

  But then of course I came, and everything changed. I looked at his radio.

  He clamped a hand on it. “You can’t call it off, Cassie. You have no authority.”

  I knew. I knew how Search and Rescue worked, how volunteers got charged up on adrenaline and bravery and then went with open eyes into whatever lay ahead. If I could get the radio away from Krom, I could go outside and call Bridgeport and say he’d died and I was skiing out on my own, self-rescuing.

  But Krom held the radio to his heart.

  I shivered. Cold. And, suddenly, afraid. A new species of fear—unlike the fear of the eruption,
of another avalanche, which were fears that had made themselves at home. My fear of Krom was specific, at a point I could fix in my solar plexus as accurately as I could plot a coordinate on a map. I was afraid of this man under a bookcase, who likely didn’t have the strength to walk two steps should he be set free to walk. But he still had two good strong hands with which to take me by the neck, should I get too close. He still had the power.

  “Of course,” he said, “you’re free to leave right now.”

  “No I’m not. Why do you think I came back in the first place? Walter didn’t get out. That’s why I’m staying.”

  His eyes closed. The earth shook, hard. He seemed not to notice.

  “Call Bridgeport, Adrian. Ask if anyone has located Walter.”

  He opened his eyes. “If you like.”

  He radioed and a half hour later Bridgeport radioed back. Walter was not in Bridgeport. Nor in Bishop, nor in any other little Sierra town, as far as the emergency operations center could ascertain.

  So he had to be in Mammoth.

  I went out and looked again. Roamed the town, went up the Bypass until stumbles interrupted my stride, then gave in and went back to Lindsay’s office to wait for rescue.

  Krom was asleep. I made myself a place in the corner and curled up. The room was a tomb, dim and cold with stale air that tasted of ash. I’d brought the smell in on my clothes, in my hair, or perhaps it had just seeped in. The pervasive smell of ash. Almost masked the coffee scent coming from the apothecary cupboard. I lacked the strength to go close it. I drank. Ate. Granola bar tasted of ash. I glanced up at the desk. The little Japanese teapot was near the edge; one more quake should send it over. I thought about rescuing it but didn’t. Never love anything that can’t love you back. I aimed my headlamp at the empty wall where the Mexican mask had hung. I played the light around the floor and found the thing amidst the debris, its hideous tongue sticking out at the ceiling.

  There were two sharp quakes and the teapot went. Krom’s eyes opened.

  I said, “Why are you here?”

  He rolled his head to look my way. “Saw the lights on through the window.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t leave until everybody’s out.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Nobody here when I came in.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “Forced the lock.”

  “Why’d you take off your parka? It’s cold in here.”

  “It’s cold everywhere. I decided to put on a thermal undershirt. I’d just got my sweater on over that when the quake hit and the bookcase fell.”

  I looked at his pack, lying beside her desk.

  “Gloves in there. Gaiters. Wool hat. Help yourself.”

  I looked back to him. “How did you get to town?”

  “Took a Guard jeep.”

  “How’d you get the key?”

  “From the driver. And then I had him evac with someone else.”

  “Where’s the jeep?”

  “In the parking garage around back.”

  “Why didn’t you just park on Minaret?”

  He turned back to the ceiling and studied it. “Habit,” he said. “I always park in the garage.”

  “How long were you in here?”

  “Cassie,” he said, “I’m in your debt. For the water. The food. But I won’t put up with this much longer.” He coughed, and cleared his throat. “You want to know why I’m here? Because I waited until everybody was gone and then I came back to town and drove every street to be certain. I almost lost these people, with your damned bears, but I turned it around. And I got them out. And then I came back to be sure. And when I was driving down Minaret I saw the reflection. So I checked. I wasn’t going to leave somebody behind.”

  “Like Walter.”

  “Walter is out. Everybody is out. There is nobody here but you and me.”

  And Lindsay’s ghost. The smell of coffee oils suddenly hit me. I got up and went to shut the doors to the apothecary cabinet, where she stores her beans and paraphernalia. I froze. The shelf was swung aside. The shelf wall was a false wall. Behind that, in the real wall, there was a hole. Rectangular, deep. I scoured it with my light. It was a safe.

  She had a safe. She’d never told me that.

  I gazed into the empty hole, wondering what she’d kept there. And then I came to. Never mind what she kept there—who took it? Who opened the safe?

  Krom lay quietly watching me.

  It couldn’t have been Krom. How would he know? And if he’d terrified her into telling him, if what she had in the safe was what he’d come for the night he shot her, he would have opened it back then and taken it. Why was the safe open now? Well, how about Walter? Walter knew about it and he changed his mind. He did want something of hers. Something that could love him back. Love letters, I thought. Love letters guarded in her safe behind her coffee. When did Walter come? It could have been days ago. Weeks ago. Or it could have been yesterday.

  Maybe it was Walter who left the lights on.

  And maybe Krom came in and found Walter at the safe.

  Maybe it was more than love letters. Maybe there was a letter that incriminated Krom. And so Krom killed Walter and took the letter and hid it in his pocket. I stared at him, at his tan parka draped over his trunk, his brown sweater, his brown cords, pelt draped loosely on his frame. I stared at his arms, which could wrap around me quick as a snake strike, and I kept my distance.

  If he killed Walter, I would have found Walter.

  I shut the apothecary doors and returned to my corner. The quakes were picking up, two and three per minute. I listened to the rattling of loose stuff—background noise. I listened for the sound of rescuers from Bridgeport. I thought about topography. We’re not in a bad place, here. About fifteen hundred feet higher than the moat. Wind’s away from us. And if the moat progresses to a magmatic eruption, if it’s the main event? Hard to say. I seemed to have acquired the rectitude of the Geological Survey’s calmest of the calm, Phil Dobie.

  The earth shook, hard, and Krom’s hand lifted a moment, then dropped. If he had been a stranger, someone inexplicably trapped here, I would have gone over and taken the hand. I would have held the devil’s own hand, waiting in this miserable place, but in the end I did not care to take Krom’s.

  I closed my eyes.

  It was some time before I noticed that the quakes had slowed. Maybe one per minute now. I said nothing to Krom. His eyes were closed again. I may have dozed off myself. Sooner or later, I’d learned, you go to sleep unless the roof’s falling in on you at the moment. I got up and went to the window. Same old, same old. Dark ashy sky. Was there any other kind of sky, anywhere in the world?

  I took my empty water bottle and went to fill it next door at the bathroom sink. By my headlamp in the mirror, I caught a look at myself. Halloween night. I turned on the tap then realized there was no way to wash my face without soaking my bandages. And washing matters? I started to laugh, and I was still there hooting when the bathroom door opened and someone shined a fat beam of light in my face and said “Cass?”

  Eric filled the doorway in a huge pack and hard hat and slick yellow suit that shone even in the dark, and even when I’d got my own beam focused it took me a moment to recognize him with his blackened face and the goggles and dust mask around his neck, but I sure did know his voice. It made my heart drop. Why did it have to be Eric who came, why not some other adrenaline-charged rescuer? And then against all my fears, my heart lifted and I ran to him.

  A second yellow-suited figure crowded into the bathroom. “Where is he?” Mike said, “where’s Mr. Krom?”

  *****

  “We’ve got a problem,” Eric said.

  We moved out into the hallway, leaving Mike to finish splinting Krom’s leg.

  I said, “What kind of problem?”

  Eric assessed me as if he were lining up a shot. “How you doing, Oldfield?”

  “I’m okay.” I’m dying. I’m doing beautifully
now that you’re here, except that I’m doing hideously because it’s you who came. I shrugged. “Always with the problems, Catlin. What’s the problem?”

  “Have you been outside?”

  “Sure. Not for awhile though. I fell asleep. You believe that? What’s outside?”

  He put his arm around me and led me out. I saw ash. Always ash. I heard a faint hissing, far away, like sprinklers turning on. I went into the middle of the street and peered down toward the caldera.

  “Not that,” Eric said.

  I went numb. Understood the problem. Didn’t want to see it. I stood frozen.

  Eric nudged me forward until we passed the office building and then he turned me ninety degrees. “Look up.”

  I looked up.

  “You didn’t know?”

  I shook my head. I had a fine view, a line of sight that shot straight up the two thousand or so feet of elevation gain that separated us from this new eruption on Red Mountain. I was transfixed, although as spectacle it wasn’t much. A plume of ash, like chimney smoke. Rising above the murky silhouette of trees, it could have been a small forest fire. Phreatic, judging from the look of it.

  Activity was no longer confined to the caldera. The volcano had opened its second front.

  Topography was no longer in our favor.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “Where, Cassie?” Eric checked his watch.

  We were packed and ready, and the three of us—Eric and Mike and I—stood around the open tailgate of the National Guard jeep. Krom sat in back, propped against packs, his splinted leg straight. A sled and snowshoes were racked on the roof. The jeep was parked inside the police department garage, where Eric had cannibalized a vehicle left behind in the mechanic’s pit. Only when we had a dozen spare parts was Eric satisfied. Soon, real soon, we were going to have to expose the jeep to the elements. The only question was, which way to go?