Other than the array of electronics it featured few amenities. A small room in the back featured four bunks, where the eight-man crew “hot-racked” it, submariner style.
It had a full-sized refrigerator in a tiny galley and a latrine which nobody used by mutual agreement.
The crew was all male, not by design but by luck of the draw. And they’d all voted among themselves to do their business outside to avoid stinking up the joint.
A tiny shower was used, though. That was mandated by the commander. It just wouldn’t do to have sweaty bodies making already-cramped living and working conditions even worse.
For provisions, a Forest Service resupply van came into the park every other day to bring them bottled water, sodas and coffee, two days worth of MREs and prepared sandwiches.
It wasn’t a glamorous life, but they were well paid.
They fancied themselves scientists, though they were little more than data collectors who’d agreed to put themselves in harm’s way because they saw this as the opportunity of a lifetime.
Strike that. It was the opportunity of a thousand lifetimes; something they could brag about to their grandchildren someday.
The resupply van came looking for them the previous day and couldn’t find them.
That in itself wasn’t unusual, for the mobile command post had moved several times in recent days.
What was unusual was that it failed to answer its radio. For they were always happy to see the resupply crew, as they were usually out of everything before it arrived.
It was the resupply crew who, after doing their due diligence and searching for over an hour, finally reported them missing.
The fact was they weren’t missing at all.
The resupply crew just wasn’t looking in the right location.
Oh, it wasn’t their fault.
They never thought to look a hundred and fifty feet below a high mountain road, in a deep ravine only frequented by gray wolves and wolverines.
That was where the huge command post on-wheels ended up after being knocked off the roadway by a ten-ton boulder flying through the air. The vehicle rolled some thirteen times.
Thirteen is frequently viewed as an unlucky number, and it was indeed for this bunch.
Paradoxically the vehicle’s radio played on, the jarring activity failing to disconnect the battery.
It played a song from the big band era.
Moonlight Serenade.
The vehicle itself was a mangled mess, the crew’s bodies even worse.
The crashing sound as it rolled like a pair of socks in a tumble dryer didn’t attract much attention.
There were a lot of thundering and crashing sounds bouncing through the park these days.
No, it was the blood that attracted the attention.
Bears and wolves sensed the blood almost immediately despite the mix of other unfamiliar scents prevalent in the air.
They’d make quick work of the human bodies and body parts that had been ejected from the vehicle.
The scraps they left behind were being picked at by raccoons and rats and field mice, mostly.
And a fox named Felix who once belonged to an old hermit named Sam who’d been talked into evacuating.
Nearly all the buzzards had already vacated the area.
Now a lonely wolf who smelled more meat inside the mangled wreck circled it, sniffing it, trying to find a way in.
He wouldn’t find it.
The two bodies left inside were destined to become the feast of the field mice, the only creatures small enough to slip through the cracks in the mess of twisted metal.
It wasn’t a surprise the converted bus didn’t burn, given the wetness of the foliage and the slow drizzle falling from the sky.
It could have exploded but didn’t.
Even if it had the explosion likely wouldn’t have been heard by human ears.
Later in the day, the feasting mice would have to leave their tasty find and evacuate the area in front of a fog rolling in: this one especially putrid, smelling strongly of sulfur and vinegar.
The stubborn mice that refused to leave would pay a very heavy price for it, for sulfur dioxide was just as deadly for them as it was for humans.
Off the park, the gas had already taken its first human victims; a family of four who’d been living off the grid for several years and liked it that way.
They weren’t even aware that Yellowstone was a thing, and died in their sleep after wondering at bedtime what that strange smell was.
At least they were blissfully unaware they were in danger.
So was the rest of the world, for that matter.
The thick storm front still shielded the breeches and lava flows from the prying eyes of satellites and airplanes.
There were few people on the ground beneath the cover to witness first hand what was going on, and they weren’t in a position to report what they saw.
Or had no inclination to do so.
It was becoming quite ugly in the Yellowstone area.
And the rest of the world still had no clue.
Chapter 42
Mike and Marty and Katie were having a party.
The people who’d been kind enough to leave the door to their cabin unlocked were, they’d decided, truly awesome.
For they’d left all their booze behind.
Not only that, but Marty played a hunch when he saw a poster advertising the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws hanging on a bedroom wall.
He started a search and discovered the resident’s bong, and in an airtight container next to it, his stash.
It wasn’t much. Just a few grams.
And it wasn’t fresh, nor particularly high quality.
But it was free, and that made it possible for the brothers to overlook everything else.
Now, two hours after finding the stuff, the brothers were high as kites and trying to convince Katie it was okay for her to join them.
“I’m getting a little buzz just being in the same room with you guys,” she said. “That’s more than enough for me. I don’t know if it’s safe for the baby or not, but I’d rather not take any chances.”
Mike giggled and said, “Well, would you mind making us some sandwiches, then? I’m very hungry all of a sudden.”
It was a request, not a demand. She knew that. Mike was a good man and a very good husband.
Before they met she’d gone through a long line of worthless men. Some were abusive, some were cheats. Some were unmotivated and others wanted to take advantage of her.
One overdosed on heroin and she didn’t even know he’d started using again.
He died; she grieved for him for a few days and then decided she was better off without him.
That was when she swore off men.
She just wasn’t lucky in love, she decided, and it was time she accepted that.
They say the best way to find love is to stop looking for it and that’s the way it happened for her.
A couple of weeks after she cremated Jesse Mike walked into her life.
He was the ever-elusive perfect man. The one every girl wants to take home to meet her parents. He was kind to her and seemed to cherish her.
He said he wanted to take care of her instead of the other way around.
He was, her best friend pointed out, a “keeper.”
“You better scoop him up,” Katie’s friend had warned her. “If you don’t I’m going after him myself, best friends or no best friends.”
That night he told her something she thought at first was just a line.
And then she saw the sincerity in his eyes.
“I’m pretty sure you’re the one for me,” he told her. “Before I met you I was just stumbling along, not knowing where I was headed or what I’d do when I got there.
“Now my life all makes sense. With you, I am complete.”
When she realized his words came from his heart, she was all in.
His brother Marty was a good guy
, but nowhere near as mature.
But she loved him too. He was a goof with a heart of gold, and he’d do anything at all to help his brother.
Or his sister-in-law too, for that matter.
All in all she considered herself lucky. She was in love with a good man who loved her in return.
She was with child and things were going well.
She’d decided on her own that she wanted to have a boy.
She’d also decided she wanted to name him Michael David Sorenson Jr.
He was to look like his father, act like his father, and make her feel like the luckiest mother on the face of the earth.
Just like his father.
Suddenly the cabin was jolted enough to knock photographs off the walls and things off high shelves.
Katie went running back into the other room.
It was her first earthquake.
“Relax,” Mike told her. “I think earthquakes are pretty common around here.”
He was perhaps calmed by the “who cares?” attitude the marijuana was having on his mind.
Marty didn’t even notice the quake.
He was sitting in a corner of the room, his shoes and socks off, examining his toes for the tiny space creatures he was certain were living beneath his toenails.
Indeed, earthquakes were not unheard of in Yellowstone National Park and the vast wilderness surrounding it.
They were typically nothing to worry about.
Earthquakes were, after all, simply earth’s way of settling; of making adjustments.
It wasn’t that different than a sleeping human, repositioning himself in bed ten to fifteen times a night in an effort to get comfortable.
The earth’s version of that was to have earthquakes to fill voids beneath the earth, accommodate moving tectonic plates and compact itself.
This particular quake, though, on this particular day, was different.
It came from underground activity in Wayne Hamlin’s “buffer zone.” The section of rock which separated the upper magma pool from the lower magma pool.
More specifically, this earthquake happened when the first crack appeared in the buffer zone.
As more and more steam and superheated dry air was released from newly opened fissures and geysers, pressure in the upper pool started going down.
Every cubic yard of lava which poured out of the cracks and fissures reduced it even more.
That meant the downward pressure, the pressure from the upper pool against the buffer zone which prevented it from cracking, was no longer sufficient to do its job.
Meanwhile the upward pressure from the lower magma pool seemed to sense the buffer zone weakening; becoming vulnerable.
It was not unlike the cork in a champagne bottle. If one could imagine the buffer zone as being the cork and the lower magma pool being the champagne trying to force its way out, it wasn’t hard to imagine something dramatic was getting ready to happen.
Chapter 43
Our hapless pot smokers were guilty of other things besides breaking and entering and complacency.
They’d also failed to do their due diligence on a monumental scale.
All they’d had to do was give credence to the things Wayne Hamlin was now saying all over the television.
Sure, they were like most other Americans and were just tired of hearing about the whole darned thing.
But then again, most other Americans weren’t dimwitted enough to march headlong into a park when nearly everyone else was abandoning everything they owned to get away from the same park.
They discounted Dr. Hamlin’s assertion that an eruption was imminent and placed their bet on lesser-known and lesser-qualified scientists who still insisted it was years away.
Perhaps even generations.
The three had decided to risk themselves and their own new generation, forming inside Katie.
It was a foolhardy thing to do.
But even if they had second thoughts… and the weed’s calming effect was preventing them from doing so… it might well be too late.
Perhaps it was the stress Katie was feeling from having the ground shake beneath her feet for the very first time.
Perhaps it was because she was a bit peeved at Mike for having so curtly brushed off her concerns.
Perhaps it was because her husband and his brother had effectively kicked her out of their little party.
She’d made it known she wasn’t going to drink or smoke dope with them.
“It might be dangerous for the baby,” she’d said.
Most husbands would have agreed and declined to partake themselves.
Mike could have done that.
Should have done that, maybe.
But he didn’t. He and Marty dove headlong into it anyway.
Katie wasn’t happy about that.
And it caused a bit of stress on top of everything else.
Stress and environmental factors frequently cause a baby still in utero to get restless and active.
And so it was that as Katie walked back out of the room where her husband and brother-in-law were getting drunker and higher, her hands were suddenly drawn to her midsection.
She said, “ohhh” with a start and she felt, for the very first time, the baby kick and then reposition himself.
She smiled.
A mother-to-be only feels her baby kick for the very first time once, and it’s a special moment many mothers will remember for the rest of their lives.
Eventually the kicks and squirms become routine, and even a pain at times.
But that very first time, for that very first baby, is something special.
She thought about going back to share the moment with Mike.
But no.
She was too irritated with him.
She’d keep this little jewel all to herself, at least for the moment.
There was plenty of time to tell him later.
When he heard the news he’d be all “ooh and awe” and insist on placing his hands all over her midsection in anticipation of the next movement.
Normally she loved her husband’s touch.
But all women who are pregnant for the first time go through a phase where they don’t like the way they look. They see themselves in the mirror and see not the miracle of life but rather a rapidly expanding body.
They feel fat and self-conscious.
And their changing hormones certainly don’t help alleviate their undue concerns.
Men know the age old adage about women being most beautiful when they’re carrying a child is absolutely true.
They really do glow. They really are beautiful.
Women, on the other hand, see themselves as fat and unattractive.
Eventually they get over it and accept their husband’s claims that they’ve still got it.
But in the meantime it causes them a lot of really unnecessary internal turmoil.
Katie happened to be going through that phase on this particular day.
When she looked in the mirror that morning she noticed her face was puffier than usual. A bit oilier than usual.
She saw a tiny pimple next to her nose.
She’d cursed it.
How dare it invade her pretty face? She hadn’t had a pimple on her face since… what, high school?
No, this was not a day for Mike to be putting his hands all over her midsection awaiting the baby’s next kick.
Besides, Mike Junior, or “Little Mike” as she’d been calling him lately, seemed to have settled back down again and gone back to sleep.
It might be hours or even days before he made his presence known again.
Other than giving Katie gas and making her back hurt, that is.
There would be plenty of time to share the news with Mike later, after he sobered up and came down from his high.
In the meantime her mind, going ninety miles an hour back and forth between the earthquake and the baby’s kick, abandoned both of those and went somewhere else.
It
dawned on her that, from her baby’s standpoint, life would never get any better than it was right now.
He was warm, well nourished, and had none of the social drama he’d have to worry about later in life. No worries about getting his homework done, what his girlfriend was mad at him about this time, why his boss didn’t seem to like him.
At this point in his life all Little Mike had to do was wiggle every once in awhile to get comfortable, then go back to sleep.
She decided to follow his lead.
She went to one of the bedrooms, sprawled across a queen bed and closed her eyes to nap.
Then a second earthquake came.
This one was much harder than the first, and lasted almost a full minute.
She’d get no nap on this particular afternoon.
She’d spend the next couple of hours staring at the ceiling and worrying.
Chapter 44
They didn’t hear the Winnie Minnie pull up in front of the house.
They didn’t hear the RV’s door shut behind Darrell and Rocki as they stepped out of it and onto the sidewalk.
There was a reason for that. Rocki, who the chitlins called “Nana,” and Darrell, who they called “Grandpa,” loved nothing better than to surprise them.
So there was no advance phone call to let them know Nana and Grandpa would be rolling into Little Rock that day.
No text messages or emails either.
Autumn was lying on the couch napping. Her brother Samson was sitting next to her, surreptitiously tying her hair into little knots as she slept.
Meadow was lying on her bed, still fuming because she’d had words with her boyfriend on the phone and was wondering whether it was time to trade him in on another one.
They never heard the RV pull up.
They never heard the door shut.
But all three of them heard Penny bark.
And all three of them came running.
Autumn was a bit sleepier than the other two.
And she wouldn’t notice her knotted-up hair for another half hour.
That was when Samson’s beating would begin.
For now though she was overjoyed, for their Penny was back home.
So were Nana and Grandpa, by the way. But they were just incidental.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 5): The Eruption Page 13