Volcano Watch

by Toni Dwiggins

  Just like in my dreams.

  “There’s town,” Mike said, and we turned our attention downward.

  The higher we rose, the more the town came into view. Same ghost town we’d abandoned yesterday. Eons ago. Events now seemed to unfold in geologic time.

  Although if the Red Mountain eruption went pyro now, events would unfold in a flash. A hot burning flash rolling down to envelope the town.

  I craned to look for the summit of Mammoth Mountain. Eleven thousand feet and some change. Gain some altitude above the moat, above Red Mountain. Good. By God we were going up and there was the illusion we would climb right out of the ash, rise to the clean blue sky that must exist up there somewhere.

  “What’s that?” Walter said.

  There was a bump like we were passing through a cable tower, and then another bump and the car gently seesawed.

  We stopped.

  We stared up at the cable, waiting, and then I peered out the window and estimated the fall to the slope below. Probably not survivable.

  Mike got to his knees to look. “We just need to wait until it starts again.”

  Krom said, “Wait? You’ve got the manual.”

  “I can’t fix it from here. That’s for when we get to the top, for maintaining the machinery so we’re not stranded. Mr. Krom, you have to realize….” Mike stopped.

  Of course Krom did not realize because none of us had thought it useful to advise him of contingencies.

  Eric opened his pack.

  Mike said, “Let’s give it time to start.”

  “How long?”

  Mike agonized. “Fifteen minutes?”

  Eric looked to me. I scanned the terrain, getting my bearings. We were suspended over East Bowl, two-thirds of the way to the summit. To my left, I could just make out the Red Mountain vent. We were stopped cold. No hum of machinery. I thought, this is Mike’s show. Mike does know his stuff, he’s devoured the manual, he did lend a hand with repairs when he used to work the gondola, and if I hadn’t interfered with his repair that long-ago day in the station he may well have fixed that problem. I said, “Let’s wait and see if it starts.”

  “No.” Eric dug in his pack.

  “Ten minutes?” Mike said. “How about that, man?”

  Eric said, “We go now.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but really I didn’t know if it was better to stay or to go, and so I let the moment pass. Walter was helping Eric with his pack. Mike tucked his hand into his armpit and kept his mouth shut.

  “Go where?” Krom asked.

  “Up,” I said, “still up,” and I crawled over Mike to sit on the sliver of bench beside Krom, to allow Mike and Eric access to the door.

  Krom began to laugh.

  Eric had the gear out and he helped Mike into the harness and roped him and tied the rope to the crossbar inside, and Mike went out the door and with a thump spread-eagled over the roof. Through the window we saw him reach down to unlash the sled. Eric hauled Mike inside and the sled came after him, screeching across the roof. With ropes and carabiners they secured the sled outside the door. Mike put his weight on it and raised a thumb. There it held, a step into nowhere.

  “No,” Krom said.

  “It’s o-kigh.” Mike went over the side. I stretched to the window and watched him rappel down.

  Eric turned to Krom. “Now you. Just try not to stiffen and don’t go limp.”

  For a dark moment I wondered if Eric would just toss Krom over and let him free-fall, if I asked. I moved to Krom’s legs. Walter prepared to get him around the middle. Eric had the head. Krom watched us in surprise, as though we had not heard him decline the invitation. Contrary to instructions, he stiffened.

  I said, “Ease up. We’re wasting time.”

  “Wrong way,” he said. He gritted his teeth as we moved him, biting off the pain. We worked him out the door and Eric strapped him in.

  “Ready below?” Eric yelled.

  Mike shouted.

  We slipped the carabiners and began to let the sled down. Krom’s eyes locked on me, and he slipped me back to that day in the lab when he’d told me where the wrong way led, where the driver who made the wrong call during the eruption took them. And then the sled descended out of my sight. Nothing for him to do now but descend to the mercy of the volcano, take the pain, and survive.

  Below, Mike caught the sled.

  Eric hauled up the ropes and harness. “Sir.” He helped Walter strap in and belayed Walter as he worked himself into position. I watched Walter rappel down, holding my breath for an eternity, thinking Walter’s getting too old for this.

  Eric hauled up the gear. “Cassie.” He checked the hardware and webbing and then held the harness open for me, like an evening coat. I buckled in.

  Eric shouldered into the radio pack. “I’ll toss the other packs when you’re down but I’m going to carry this baby mys…”

  There was a bump, and we looked at each other in instant knowledge. Eric cursed. He spun to the door and then back to me and for a moment I thought he was going to toss me over anyway since I was already roped.

  “Throw them packs,” I screamed.

  We lunged, grabbing packs, taking time only to aim wide, and Eric shouted “wait there” and Mike was waving his arms and shouting too but we couldn’t make it out because the gondola car yanked us forward out of earshot.

  Ash consumed their faces, their shapes, and then there was just the yellow tinge of their survival suits and then ash assimilated that, as well.

  Eric swung the door shut.

  We rose, helpless. I got out of the climbing harness, watching through pitted glass for explosion craters or crevassing, and when at last we topped the final hump of cable track and funneled into the gloom of the summit station, Eric shoved open the door and we jumped. I hit the floor hard and scrambled for the switch. It had been fifteen years but the simple skills of my first paid job were intact. I shut down the gondola.

  Eric sprinted to the other car and unstrapped a pair of skis. I was on his heels. I reached for a second pair.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Not you.”

  “It’s steep. We’ve got to haul that sled up.”

  “Three can do it. Stupid to risk a fourth. I’m bigger and stronger. I go.” He put on ski boots.

  The concrete bumped beneath our feet, like heartbeats. Quakes picking up.

  I said, “Walter’s down there. I’m going.”

  “The hell you are. This one’s mine. My responsibility. My fucking fault. Mike thought it would start and I pushed us to go.”

  I grabbed a pair of skis.

  Eric yanked them from me, rough. “We don’t have time for this, Cass. You’re not going. You try to go, I’ll have to stop you. You follow me, I’ll have to tie you up and drag you back up here—and you damn well know I will.”

  “You are so royally stubborn, Eric—Walter’s an old man and Mike’s a runt and they’re both crapped out by now and the sled weighs a ton and you’re saying you can’t use a fourth? Yes you can. You need me.”

  We stared at each other, staring each other down. There were a thousand things to say. We’d only got started that night in the cottage. There were a thousand things to say but what Eric said now was, “I need you to stay up here.”

  I began to panic.

  He said, “We need a fourth up here with the radio who can tell Bridgeport where we are if something goes wrong down there.”

  My heart turned over.

  He tossed my skis. They hit the concrete, hard. “Cassie?”

  I said, “Don’t do anything foolish.”

  “Come up the knoll.” He opened the big door and we tramped outside and up the knoll to the vista point above the gondola station. He pointed. “Here’s the route. They’re down in East Bowl. From there we’re gonna traverse to Saddle Bowl and loop over the saddle and switchback up Dave’s Run past Huevos Grande and then around up to here. Got your watch? It’s twelve-ten. Three hours go by and you don’t see us, notify B
ridgeport. We get close enough you do see us, come down and lend a hand. Otherwise, I don’t want to see you.” He stepped into his skis and set his goggles and poles. He hesitated, then raised his dust mask and brushed me a kiss. His mouth was ice cold.

  I met him, held him. We tasted of ash.

  Eric broke away first. “Sizzling sendoff, Oldfield.”

  “Dynamite, Catlin.”

  He set the mask. “Adios.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  I watched Eric push off, double-poling, and then he lunged into a skate like he was starting a sprint. He caught speed and paralleled his skis and dropped into a tuck. His skis cut a long lovely track down the ash of Dave’s Run.

  I wiped my eyes and lifted my gaze, scanning from the mountaintop along the Sierra Crest to the Lakes Basin, and met the sight of the eruptive column on Red Mountain.

  I turned and headed back to the station. I had no stomach for the view.

  For a moment I thought of setting up our shelter in the interpretive center that sits atop the mountain with a roundabout view, but it’s mostly glass-walled and I had no faith in glass walls right now. The gondola station is built to withstand blizzard conditions and protect what’s inside. A whole lot safer than down in East Bowl.

  I contacted Bridgeport. They had no advice.

  Fifteen minutes gone by. I got to work, unloading the gondola and setting up house. Always the female who gets stuck. I laid out the Inn’s quilts and beside those beds made a kitchen of the backpack stove and cookpot. I lit the propane lantern. I put out matches and spare fuel canisters. I organized the food. I created a first aid station and inventoried supplies. I piled beside the door skis, boots, poles, snowshoes, and climbing equipment.

  My hands stung. I sat and dwelt on that awhile. Whether to reapply ointment and rebandage, whether there was permanent damage. Hurts enough. Unlike Krom, I did not find that pain got rid of fear.

  Forty-five minutes. Eric should be with them now. They should be climbing up.

  Quakes. Magma on the move somewhere.

  Where were they? A zillion things could have gone wrong. Eric fell and broke his leg. Eric couldn’t find them. They’d been caught in an avalanche. The sled broke a runner. Eric decided it was easier to get them down to the mid-station.

  I spent half an hour going through the manual. If they’d gone down to the mid, was it insane to bring them back up on the gondola?

  Were they having a picnic down there?

  I put on jacket, helmet, goggles, mask and hurried outside and up to the vista point. Eric’s ski tracks were still visible. No sign of any living creature. No color but gray.

  I sat in the ash and hugged my legs. The world at my feet. A dozen ways to look, even in ash, and what I chose to look at was the snake in the sleeping bag. I’d moved well beyond the stage of hearing the hissing and fearing what I’d find. I knew what I’d find and yet, perversely, I opened the bag and looked. Maybe the thing was asleep.

  It wasn’t. The eruptive column grown into a larger and fatter snake.

  I gave myself up to it and watched in grudging awe.

  I should be taking notes. Recording the progression of events. Lindsay would. Unparalleled observation point up here. I had no fieldbook so I made mental notes. Estimated height of the eruptive column, estimated diameter. Color. Wind direction. Estimated speed at which the column climbed. Estimated composition of the ash.

  I caught ash on my glove, like snowflakes, and studied it. Fluffy. This was not phreatic ash—ash pulverized from old rock. This was new stuff. This was ash from juvenile magma. It made my heart turn over. Not that the phreatic eruptions weren’t nasty enough beasts in and of themselves, but this new phase, this magmatic phase, was the stuff of my nightmares.

  I stared down Dave’s Run. No sign of them below. Nothing to note. No estimated speed of climb.

  Twenty minutes. I went back for my gear.

  I dumped my pack and started fresh. Focus. Essentials. No kitchen sink this time. I couldn’t find my pocket knife. I wanted my knife. My eye fell on Walter’s pack, one of the packs Eric hadn’t thrown overboard. The pack bulged—it held whatever Walter had taken from the Explorer when he’d abandoned the evac and headed for town. Maybe a knife in there.

  Or maybe I just needed the excuse.

  I found his knife but I didn’t stop there. I looked for the love letters, not really believing in the love letters, and indeed did not find them but I did find something that was surely of value to Walter, because it was heavy and yet he had hauled it into exile—wrapped in a sweater for protection.

  It was an oblong box, and for just a tick I thought it must have been hers, because its purpose was to monitor the heartbeat of the volcano. Then I remembered. The image formed—Krom with this device at Hot Creek, measuring the stinging gas. Clever little thing, his design. I’d been impressed. And Walter must have been impressed as well, when he’d come across it, or he wouldn’t have stowed it in his pack.

  Another image—Walter at her safe. Is Krom there? I couldn’t see.

  I couldn’t see what it meant. Why did Lindsay have Krom’s monitor in her safe? And why did Walter take it?

  I fiddled with the switches. It was dead. I opened the battery door. Power supply, but no juice. It was dead and silent and told me nothing.

  But it sure must have spoken to Walter. And to Krom. Walter and Krom, trading hard looks. Walter waving off all help loading his gear.

  I’d bet Krom down there on the mountain knew that Walter had found Krom’s monitor in Lindsay’s safe—and why it mattered.

  I returned the monitor to Walter’s pack, but I pocketed his knife. I radioed Bridgeport and reported landmarks and routes. Bridgeport had maps; they could do the coordinates. I put on ski boots, shouldered my pack, grabbed skis and poles, and went. I clumped up the knoll, fastened into my skis, and started to push off. Which way? Would they still be down in East Bowl, or had they already passed the saddle? Because it made a difference. I had a choice of runs. I stared through ash. Nobody. Nothing. Which way?

  There was a sound, or rather an absence of sound, that turned my head.

  I took a look at the eruption rising from Red Mountain.

  The snake was still there, fatter than ever. Lazy, like it had ingested a meal and was stretching to let its belly out.

  I hung on the lip of the summit.

  The air turned strange, a soundless stifling feeling like the sky was going to fall. There was no up, no down, only ash. And the snake. And then there came a moment of utter calm as though the vent had sucked in its breath, and the column of ash seemed to freeze in place, neither climbing nor expanding but just existing, suspended from the roof of the sky.

  A shiver took me and I slipped my skis backward.

  A low-pitched rumble came, from every direction, and it came with such a vibration that the sound waves rolled through the air like scattering boulders and I ducked.

  With dread certainty I turned to look down at the caldera and saw the moat going, stuff flinging into the sky like the caldera had spat, and I spun toward the snake but it was holding back, deferring to the display of its parent, and when I looked back to the moat I saw that the eruption there had fractured at the top and was spreading into the branching lobes of a mushroom cloud in full nuclear fury. It fluffed and sent arcs of lightning from one hemisphere to the other.

  My legs buckled and I went down, hitting my knees hard on my skis, and on my knees I turned to face Red Mountain. The snake bobbed, and when it had commanded my full attention, it struck.

  The column slumped and collapsed back down upon itself, and now it became a different beast. Its surface billowed and it glowed dull red from within, superheated to incandescence. An impossible beast, a dense dry mass of gas and ash and pumice that began to flow like fluid. A horrifying beast, this pyroclastic flow, a hot venomous thing.

  With a hiss it spilled over the treeline and surged out of the Lakes Basin, downward, sending glowing tongues to probe every topographic
depression in its path.

  The beast flashed snow into steam and white plumes lifted in its wake.

  Hardly had this avalanche begun when it threw off particles of lighter material and this cloud rose from the flow like steam from hot coffee. It boiled upward and outward, piggy-backing the flow, bulging into great gray and black blooms which swelled and burst and multiplied and spawned more. And then the cloud took the lead in the race downhill.

  It was like Krom’s helicopter spewing smoke.

  It was worse.

  The flow spilled wide at the plateau on which the town sat, one lobe shooting northward as though following the Bypass on its channel through the Jeffrey pines. The main mass continued downhill from town, down along highway 203, and then the advancing wall of gas and rock met the eruptive column in the caldera moat and then there were no longer any points of reference. The entire ground below, from the Lakes Basin down through the plateau of the town, well north beyond the Bypass, and down well into the valley of the caldera was a uniform sea of mineral foam.

  I was on my hands and knees, dumb with disbelief.

  Lightning coruscated the sky and winds eddied madly around me as the eruption engendered its own weather system.

  And as the flow finally lost momentum, its attendant cloud untethered itself and, borne by the winds, came back across the valley and up over the town’s bones. If Pika Canyon had been spared by the downflow it was surely caught on the way back up, for nothing was going to be spared because the cloud now rose to the very base of Mammoth Mountain and slowly began to boil up its flanks.

  I knew it must rise to bury the Inn and Lodge and lifts and then scale the final heights of the mountain to overtop this summit.

  As they died below, I would die right here on my knees.

  But the cloud remained simmering far below. The onslaught came from another direction. Red Mountain had not yet finished its work. It spouted a new column, and the violent winds skimmed off tephra and swept it westward, toward my summit. Ash began to fall on me like powdery snow, thick and suffocating, and then I was pelted with a rain of pumice stones, and within the space of time it took me to come alive and struggle to my feet a gloom had fallen so dense that I could not see the gondola station. I switched on my headlamp and bent, curling away from the downpour, and started down the knoll. Something cold and wet hit my neck. I put out my hand and caught ashfall and it was no longer dry and powdery but falling wet like a thin stream of oatmeal. Water in the air—condensing steam.