Yellowstone: Inferno: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (The Yellowstone Series Book 2)

by Bobby Akart

  ~ Oliver Goldsmith, Irish Novelist

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  “The path to paradise begins in hell!”

  ~ Dante

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  “Don’t dance on a volcano.”

  ~ French Proverb

  PART ONE

  Fire on the Mountain, Lightning in the Air

  Chapter 1

  Sikorsky UH-60Q Helicopter

  Yellowstone

  No mortal man can describe the indescribable. Futurists, scientists, and authors might have imagined what the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would look like, but none knew because a cataclysmic eruption of this magnitude had never occurred in the history of modern mankind. The sheer enormity of the Earth exploding could be re-created in the talented minds of those adept at digital technology and virtual reality. But none had actually seen the upheaval of the Earth’s crust caused by a force as powerful as Yellowstone—until now.

  Ashby Donovan was the first, and last, to see Yellowstone explode. In those few seconds, with her face pressed against the glass of the helicopter that was rushing them to safety, she watched the caldera sink into the earth as if someone had pulled the drain plug out of a sink full of water. As this happened, the sounds of gas bursting out of the Norris Area were deafening, happening in rapid succession like hundreds of fireworks detonating, except with the force of nuclear missiles.

  Then lightning surrounded them, providing a psychedelic light show unrivaled by any Super Bowl halftime extravaganza. However, it was the sudden rush of wind, exceeding speeds of two hundred miles per hour, surpassing any recorded hurricane known to man, that forced the Sikorsky upward, bending the helicopter’s blades unnaturally, only to be pulled back down by the force of gravity towards the violently erupting supervolcano.

  Everyone let out a primal scream in fear—pilots and passengers alike. The sudden jolt of the helicopter didn’t necessarily trigger the reaction, but the sheer power and the massive change in pressure below them was terrifying.

  Ashby was tossed about the cabin like a rag doll. Her screams of fear turned to one of pain as the helicopter suddenly dropped, causing her shoulder and head to crash violently against the door. Dazed, she tried to crawl toward her seat, only to slide across the steel floor toward the rear of the helicopter as the seasoned pilots regained their composure and steadied the Sikorsky.

  Jake Wheeler scrambled to remove himself from the Martin Baker Mission Seat specially designed to protect passengers in the event of a crash. He nervously attempted to release the five-point harness system in order to help Ashby. Just as he freed himself, another blast of wind overtook them, forcing the helicopter to lurch forward. Jake and Ashby became entangled and rolled across the floor toward the front of the cabin.

  Ashby, writhing in pain, begged the pilots, “Please. Go fast! As fast as you can!”

  “Roger that, ma’am,” the pilot yelled back as both men frantically made adjustments to maintain the helicopter’s stability.

  Jake found his footing and carefully lifted Ashby off the floor. “Let’s get you strapped in.”

  Tears were streaming down Ashby’s face as she attempted to reach for her right shoulder. “Jake, I think it’s broken. And my head. It’s pounding.”

  Her voice trailed off as her body went limp in Jake’s arms. He quickly got her seated and buckled up. He then scrambled to his seat to get secured for the ride. Thus far, the young scientists whom Ashby had taken under her wing, Rita Charles and Dusty Holder, sat motionless, eyes wide and mouths open with fear.

  “Based upon our weight, our max speed will be one hundred eighty miles per hour,” the copilot could be heard through the internal communications system. Jake adjusted his headset to hear better. “If we push it, we might be able to get two hundred. At two-two-two, we fall apart.”

  “Roger that,” replied the pilot. “Let’s set cruise for one eighty. Another ten or twenty won’t make a hill of beans’ difference, based upon what I just saw.”

  Jake reached over to Ashby and tried to steady her head in the seat as it bounced around from the helicopter’s tossing and wobbling. He turned his attention to Dusty and Rita. “Are you guys okay?”

  “I peed myself a little,” replied Rita dryly.

  Jake immediately wondered if she was having an acute stress reaction to the blast. He tried to look into her eyes, but the sky was beginning to darken, and visibility inside the cabin was poor.

  “Dusty? How about you?” asked Jake.

  “Peachy,” he replied. Dusty reached over to Rita, who extended her hand back. They were only able to touch one another’s fingers, a rare show of affection between the two. The moment drew them closer together.

  “Jake,” mumbled Ashby, who was suddenly awake from her momentary spell of unconsciousness, “they have to go faster. It will catch us. It always does. They have to go faster.”

  Jake continued to hold her head in place to avoid injury. She hadn’t lost her motor functions, although she was somewhat incoherent. He immediately became worried she’d suffered a minor concussion.

  Jake turned to the other volcanologist on the team. He hoped he could bring Rita out of her mental angst.

  “Rita, you guys mentioned a cloud of debris. How soon will it come out and how fast?”

  She responded quickly and coherently. A good sign. “It’s already out and blasting upward into the stratosphere. The pyroclastic flow of gas, vaporized rock, and volcanic glass is surging in all directions from Yellowstone. After that, heavier material, flows of lava, will destroy everything in its path.”

  Jake exhaled. “Rita, the initial pyroclastic flow, how fast will it travel?”

  Before she could answer, she was interrupted by communications chatter between the pilots.

  “External temperatures have just increased to one-oh-one,” said the copilot. Then he corrected himself. “Make that one-oh-five, oh-six. Still climbing. Oh-eight, nine.” His voice trailed off.

  “Rita?” Jake repeated.

  “Four hundred to five hundred miles per hour,” she responded with trepidation.

  Jake paused to consider the chopper’s speed in relation to their position at the time of the eruption. He looked at his watch. It had only been twenty-five minutes.

  “It feels hot,” mumbled Ashby as she slipped in and out of consciousness.

  “I’m registering one hundred eleven degrees, external temp,” said the copilot. “Engine temps are slightly elevated.”

  “Jake,” said Rita, “the heat. First, we’ll feel the heat as we ride at the front of the flow. It’s coming.”

  Chapter 2

  Sikorsky UH-60Q Helicopter

  Eastern Idaho

  Death by being consumed in a pyroclastic flow was petrifying, literally. Like a massive demon summoned from the depths of the planet’s core, the ferocious ash cloud emerged seeking its victims. The supernatural creature held no animus toward any living thing in particular. It simply wanted to escape and consume.

  The mixture of ash, lava, and broiling gases at temperatures reaching a thousand degrees or more sped across the landscape at four hundred miles per hour. Death and destruction was taking place below them.

  Tourists and residents attempting to evacuate found themselves stranded on major highways, like Interstate 15, and were overrun by the pyroclastic flow. If they weren’t crushed by the debris or burned by the searing hot gases, they breathed in the superheated air, which severely damaged the linings of their lungs.

  The extreme heat burned away the clothes of anyone in its path, scorching their skin until it ruptured and blackened. Jewelry or any metal became so heated that it seared itself onto their flesh, assuming their bodies still had any. Any living thing was killed within a fraction of a second by the superheated air.

  If the enormous heat of the leading edge of the pyroclastic flow didn’t kill them, the subsequent ash and dust did. As soon as the flow overcame them, their muscles involuntarily contracted, forcing them into a pugilistic pos
ture, a protective pose similar to that employed by a boxer to guard himself from an opponent’s blows. The extreme heat instantly dehydrated the body, causing it to contract before it was covered with the mummifying ash.

  “The outside temp continues to rise,” said the copilot after a brief moment of silence on the comms. “And, sir, our airspeed is increasing.”

  “What? Against the prevailing westerlies?” the pilot questioned. “If anything, we should be battling a headwind. We set our cruising speed accordingly.”

  “Jake, it’s getting closer,” Rita warned. “Yellowstone doesn’t care about prevailing westerlies. We either have to go higher or faster. Now!”

  Jake leaned forward in his seat and addressed the pilots. “Gentlemen, can we go higher?”

  The copilot looked into the cabin to address Jake. “Mr. Wheeler, our max ceiling is nineteen thousand, but we lose cruise speed capability at higher altitudes.”

  The pilot interrupted. “Let’s take it to twelve K to avoid dealing with pressurization. Plus, I wanna be able to see terra firma, considering what’s chasing us.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the copilot.

  Jake looked to Rita, who shrugged. She was seated directly behind the copilot against the bulkhead, the wall that separated the cabin from the helicopter’s cockpit. Jake craned his neck to look outside the window as they passed the eleven-thousand-foot summit of Scott Peak. Snow had just blanketed the highest point of the Northern Rockies after a low-pressure system had brought wave after wave of moisture off the Pacific Ocean.

  The chopper moved forward, occasionally battling fits of gusty headwinds courtesy of the cold front and the tailwinds caused by the leading edge of the heated flow of air from Yellowstone. The two climactic events were destined to collide at any moment behind them.

  “Jake,” Dusty began, joining the conversation for the first time, “um, it only takes a millimeter of ash to cause damage to the internal components of any aircraft. So, like, we’re screwed.”

  “Don’t say that, dork!” shouted Rita, who was back to her old form. “We’re out ahead of it.”

  Dusty accepted his beatdown. “I’m just saying, you know, the numbers aren’t on our side.”

  Suddenly, the noise inside the Sikorsky grew to a deafening roar. The engines groaned, and the cabin’s metal panels bent in resistance to the dark forces that surrounded the helicopter. Repeated vibrations came in large waves, causing the cabin to contract and expand back into place. It was as if an enormous fist were squeezing the chopper like it was a large stress-relief ball.

  The nose of the helicopter pitched upward, causing everyone to gasp and grab onto their seats. The sudden jolt brought Ashby out of her semi-stupor, which also brought back her moans of pain. The pilots fought against the turbulent air. Alarms were sounding and lights flashing from one side of the controls to the other.

  “Brace! Brace for impact,” shouted the pilot.

  Jake closed his eyes and squeezed Ashby’s hand as the Sikorsky flailed about, rolling and plunging toward the Rocky Mountains below them.

  Chapter 3

  Sikorsky UH-60Q Helicopter

  Eastern Idaho

  Fighting unconsciousness, Ashby’s mind began to wander as she closed her eyes during the tumultuous flight. The pain of her shoulder was suppressed and replaced by the memories of the loss of her parents. As she took herself back in time to the day Mount Pinatubo erupted and stole the lives of her family, she recalled, for the first time, the minutes after she had been placed into the rescue basket by her father.

  The basket wouldn’t stop spinning. The helicopter couldn’t be controlled as the unstable air attacked it from all sides. She remembered looking up at the chopper the first time the rescue basket crashed into the side of her father’s truck, causing her to spin like a top. In that moment, Ashby feared she would die from it falling on top of them.

  Then, suddenly, it lifted her high into the air. She was shaking, a small child whisked away in a cloud of ash and fire, as her parents became smaller and smaller below her.

  As the helicopter climbed, the air cleared. She could see the fires raging all around her. The lava flowed hot and red down the sides of the mountain. The pilot climbed to a safe height above the ground, and the soldiers methodically began the process of pulling the rescue basket toward them.

  With each tug, Ashby lost hope of ever seeing her parents again. She did not become emotional at the loss. No, that came later.

  The young girl focused her ire on the creature that was responsible for what was happening to her—the volcano. Glowing ash continued to shoot out of the sides of Pinatubo as more vents opened up in the crumbling ground. Ashby watched the rushing flow of lava displace the river, which provided much-needed water to the villages in the surrounding area. This killer can’t be stopped. It will cease its murdering ways when it’s good and ready.

  Just as Ashby was pulled into the cabin by the Filipino soldiers, a gust of hot air shot upward, forcing them upward and causing everyone to fall to the floor. There were no modern, ergonomically designed safety seats complete with fancy harnesses. Wood benches surrounded the interior, and the occupants were expected to hold on the best they could.

  Ashby recalled there was one thing for certain. Then, like now, she had been in mortal danger. The pilot of the rescue helicopter at Mount Pinatubo did his best to maintain control of the aircraft. He made adjustments and sped toward Clark Freeport, an airfield in the nearby city of Angeles.

  However, the pyroclastic flows emanating from Mount Pinatubo were faster. To gain speed, and out of fear, the pilot brought the helicopter to just above the treetops, flying through the clouds of debris and barely missing the tallest of the falcata trees, which rose high above the palms.

  Soon, the ground flattened out over a golf course near the Sacobia River. The pilot followed the river basin as he made his way westward toward the airport and their national guard facility.

  That was when Ashby heard a choking sound. A sputter followed by a violent shaking of the helicopter. The consistent whomp she’d heard when the chopper first found them was replaced by a high-pitched whine and the sudden slowing of the rotor blades.

  The rescue helicopter had succumbed to the ash and debris. Ashby shrieked as the machine suddenly dropped downward. The soldiers all crowded around the windows as they saw the water growing larger in their field of vision.

  Ashby didn’t want to look, as she’d seen enough that day. Instead, she crawled on her hands and knees into a small open compartment at the back of the cabin, a decision made out of fear, or primal instinct, that saved her life.

  Unable to maintain control, the pilot tried to manually guide the helicopter in a desperate attempt to land in the river rather than crash to the ground. He was successful, in part.

  The front of the rescue helicopter collided with a bridge connecting Angeles to the remote jungle. The cockpit was crushed, and the impact threw all of the soldiers into the bridge railing or out of the jettisoned helicopter doors.

  Ashby was wedged into the cubbyhole, and the force of the impact was insufficient to dislodge her. Despite the chaos going on inside the Sikorsky, her mind remained at the base of Mount Pinatubo as she continued to remember the details vividly.

  She recalled clenching her eyes shut and gripping the sides of the compartment to keep from falling out. For a brief moment, the tail section of the helicopter remained level in a state of suspended animation, until gravity took its toll.

  A loud creaking sound, followed by the ripping and tearing of steel, preceded the tail section breaking loose and falling thirty feet toward the water. Ashby remembered seeing the badly mangled wreckage and several mauled bodies before looking skyward as the tail section twisted ninety degrees.

  The remains of the helicopter plunged into the warm waters of the Sacobia River, taking Ashby underneath with it. The rear of the helicopter imbedded into the sandy bottom of the river and remained there. Ashby, who had taken a deep b
reath as she made impact with the river, worked her way out of the compartment and shot to the surface.

  For a minute, she allowed the flow of the river to carry her under the bridge as she tread water like a fishing bob cut loose from its line. A good swimmer, she found her way to the bank, which was when she realized she’d lost her backpack that had been given to her by her mother as she was being lifted to safety.

  Ashby stood on the bank and wiped the water out of her eyes. She scanned the water desperately in search of the only connection she had to her parents. Then she heard a voice.

  “Batang babae. Nasaktan ka ba?” Little girl. Are you hurt?

  Ashby burst into tears as an old fisherman walked along the river’s edge, holding her backpack. She ran to him, kissed his cheek, and quickly slung the backpack over her shoulders.

  He continued to speak to her in Filipino, but she was unclear about what he was saying. Ashby recalled stopping, looking past the man to Mount Pinatubo, which continued to spew its venom into the sky, and realizing—she was seven, she was alive, but she was alone.

  And now she was reliving those horrors all over again.

  Chapter 4

  Sikorsky UH-60Q Helicopter

  Central Idaho

  “Failure! Main rotor failure!” shouted the copilot as the first of the twin GE turboshafts stalled. The main rotor, affixed to the top of the helicopter, typically rotated at nearly two hundred sixty revolutions per minute. As the engine stalled, the rotor slowed, causing the UH-60 to suddenly lose altitude.

  “Rear engine?” the pilot asked calmly.

  “Stable at twenty thousand rpms.”

  Jake leaned forward to get a better view of the cockpit. He was amazed at the quiet professionalism on display by the seasoned Army National Guard pilots. Their heads and hands moved in unwavering fluid motions. Adjustments were made, and switches were flipped as alarm bells with accompanying flashing lights filled the cockpit with warnings of an impending crash.