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

by Bobby Akart

  She jumped up and ran towards him. He couldn’t move. His feet felt like they were cemented into the granite floor. Ashby stared into his eyes, sincerely jubilant at his return, and then he saw her glance past him. She slowed her run, and gloom washed away her excitement. Ashby never made it to Jake as she stopped, covered her mouth, and began to sob.

  Sometimes, saying nothing speaks volumes.

  Jake moved forward to hug Ashby. Tears flowed from his eyes as he whispered in her ear, “Ashby, I’m so sorry. I tried. The earthquake. It was too much, and I couldn’t—God, I’m so sorry.”

  Ashby couldn’t find the words to express her grief. She didn’t ask for an explanation or excuses. She only wanted to cry, so Jake held her tight. Comforting someone during such an emotional loss was best handled by allowing the person to let their feelings out. Jake knew Ashby had to grieve, and then there would be time to relay the details if she wanted to hear them.

  The hoarse, screaming cry of a hawk flying by startled them both and caused Ashby to pull away.

  She finally spoke her first words to Jake. “I’m so glad you’re safe.” Then she dropped her head and sniffled. “I’ve been trying to make a fire and I can’t.”

  In the awkward moment, Jake found her girlish pout amusing, and managed a chuckle. It was such an odd thing to say, as if her inability to make a fire bothered her more than the loss of Rita. Then he realized she might be hiding within herself, suppressing the psychological shock of Rita’s death.

  “Come on,” said Jake as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him. “I’ll get it going; then we’ll get you warmed up, okay?”

  Ashby simply nodded and allowed Jake to lead her deeper into the chamber. He saw that Dusty was still unconscious or asleep, but not dead, as Jake could see the mylar blanket slowly rise and fall at his chest.

  “Dusty’s been out this whole time,” she offered as she wiped her nose with the sleeve of Jake’s shirt she’d continued to wear. With both hands, she rubbed her eyes as if to force the tears back into her head. “I’ve changed his dressings once. His wounds look pretty good.”

  “Fever?” asked Jake.

  “Nope, not at all, in fact. His body temp has been steady between ninety-eight and ninety-nine.”

  “I don’t know what a coma looks like, but he must be in one, I guess,” said Jake as he removed his knife from its sheath. He removed all of the wood from the small firepit Ashby had built with rocks. She’d done a good job of creating a circle and stacking them to allow gaps so oxygen could fuel the fire without the flames escaping through the sides. The rocks would also act as a means to insulate the heat and radiate it throughout their part of the cavern.

  The two sat in a daze, mindlessly watching as Jake picked up the smallest of the pieces. He used his knife to strip away as much bark and wet layers of wood as possible.

  He explained what he was doing. “Pine makes a great fire starter, as the sap is flammable after it’s heated. I’ll take these larger branches and split them open to expose the dry wood inside, like this.”

  Using his knife, he forced the blade into a broken end of the branch and then pounded the other end into the ground until his blade began to split the branch. Once it was cut open enough for him to insert his fingers, he removed the knife and pulled the pieces apart. He did this for half a dozen pieces.

  Jake stood and went to his medical backpack. He retrieved some cotton balls and a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol. He soaked six of the cotton balls in the alcohol, covered them with Vaseline to control the rate of burn, and quickly placed them on a bed of splintered wood in the middle of the rock floor within the fire pit. Then he built a teepee of the smaller pieces of wood that had been stripped of their wet outer layers. Finally, he soaked a seventh cotton ball and skewered it on the end of a sharp stick like a marshmallow.

  “You don’t want to get too close to this stuff when it ignites. It just takes a little to get the fire going, and under the circumstances, we don’t want to waste our alcohol on a fire.”

  Jake rummaged through a zipper pocket on the outside of his medical bag and located a lighter. He carefully ran the flame under the cotton ball, and a flash of fire started immediately. He then placed it within the teepee structure, and the entire structure was engulfed in flames.

  Jake quickly took the larger pieces and laid them across the rocks near the small fire, which was burning nicely. The flames would help dry the wood of the larger pieces so they could be added to create a bed of coals.

  “Whoa, it’s smoky,” Ashby observed as the flames shot higher into the air and puffs of smoke rose to the cavern’s ceiling before being caught by a draft and carried away.

  “Yeah, but that will calm down in a minute,” said Jake as he stood. “We’re gonna need more wood and it’ll be dark soon. I’ll be right back.”

  “Let me come with you.” Ashby began to stand, and Jake assisted her. “The fire will keep the critters away from Dusty, right?”

  “Yes, and I could use a hand. I need to get our backpacks out of the tail section. They have blankets and blow-up pillows for us. I’d feel better if I had the guns with us, too.”

  “Are you expecting trouble?”

  Jake turned to Ashby and reached for her hand. He gave her a comforting smile.

  “After today, nothing would surprise me.”

  Chapter 18

  Sheep Mountain

  Central Idaho

  Jake and Ashby held hands as they prepared their mental checklist. Halfway through their trek to the tail section, Ashby mustered the courage to ask Jake what had happened. He provided her a brief summary but avoided some of the details that would simply serve to make Ashby more upset and cause him to feel guiltier for failing. He was certain their grieving wasn’t over, but focusing on the task of survival would provide a necessary distraction.

  He retrieved his gun bag and ammo, which weighed well over a hundred pounds. He slung it over his shoulders, forcing him to hunch over slightly. Carrying an armful of tree branches added to the stress his body had been through that day.

  Ashby, to her credit, was able to carry both backpacks and still dragged a large tree limb with her free hand. When they arrived back at the cavern, the fire was dying down. Jake quickly set about adding fuel to the flames after he stripped the wet bark to expose the drier wood underneath. The large branch Ashby dragged into the cavern would have to be broken into pieces, or, as Jake suggested, laid across the rock pit until it burned into more manageable sizes of wood.

  After they checked on Dusty, the two settled under a wool blanket, which had been stowed in one of Jake’s camping backpacks. They each ate a meal replacement bar and drank water made from melted snow in a canteen cup.

  “Jake, I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me,” Ashby began as she passed the water to him. “Did something else happen on that ledge? Was something said?”

  Jake closed his eyes and sighed. He took a big gulp of the water and left Ashby for a moment as he refilled the canteen cup with snow. He set it on top of the rocks to melt and crawled back under the blanket with her. It was dark now and temperatures were plummeting into the low thirties. The dampness of the cavern only added to the chilling effect on his sore muscles.

  Ashby helped him under the blanket and studied his face. He couldn’t avoid the subject any longer, and if they were going to take their relationship to the next level, he didn’t want any secrets between them.

  “When I was in California, I met this girl named Julie and we’d become close. She was actually a stuntwoman and a body double for an actress named Christina Hendricks, who was also a redhead. The two of them had a lot in common. Hendricks was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, but was raised in Twin Falls, Idaho. Her father was from England and worked for the U.S. Forest Service. Julie’s father was also from England, but he was an executive for Key Energy in Casper.

  “Anyway, the two of them shared a love of hiking, climbing, and the ou
tdoors. Julie was born and raised in Wyoming and loved everything about Yellowstone. In any event, we met on the set of Las Vegas, an NBC television show. She doubled for Christina, and I handled stunt work in place of Josh Duhamel.”

  Ashby interrupted. “I loved that show. I guess I can see the resemblance between you and Danny McCoy.”

  Jake chuckled. “Well, thanks. Josh’s character, Danny, was a former Marine with guerrilla training. There was always a scene where he had to get physical with someone, and they called me in to handle the beatdowns, both administered and received.”

  Ashby nuzzled closer to Jake and watched the fire as sparks shot out of some air pockets in the wood. “So, um, you and Julie became a thing.”

  “Yeah. You know, you’re working together, and one thing leads to another. We started dating, but a lot of it was long distance because we both traveled to where the jobs became available. We’d get together and hike, climb, etcetera. You know, outdoor stuff, which is what we had in common.

  “We’d been dating a couple of months and she wanted me to meet her parents, so I traveled to Casper with her one weekend. Her father’s opinion of me wasn’t that great, although her mom seemed to like me. Frankly, he was kind of a jerk. I’m not sure what his expectations were for his daughter. Sure, back then, I didn’t have a lot to offer. I barely spoke to my family. I didn’t have a steady job. I lived in an apartment with a beat-up Chevy Blazer for a vehicle. But I treated his daughter with respect, and I guess, well, I loved her.”

  Ashby squeezed his hand, offering him encouragement to continue. “Were you guys going to get married or something?”

  “No, well, for sure not after I met the family. The morning after we arrived at their house, I woke up and heard Julie arguing with her father. I decided to get dressed and ready, assuming we weren’t going to hang around the house and make small talk. I mean, they were going at it.”

  “What happened?” Ashby asked.

  Jake chuckled. “Julie had a tendency to live up to her redhead stereotype. The fun-loving, ready-to-do-anything Julie was who I admired most. The angry, smoke-coming-out-of-the-ears Julie, not so much. Anyway, she stormed up the stairs, busted into our room, and announced we were leaving. She started throwing all of our clothes in the luggage, and less than ten minutes later, she was dragging me out to the truck.”

  “Wow, that must’ve been some argument.”

  Jake shook his head and looked at the ceiling of the cavern. “It was odd, Ashby. Once we left, she didn’t say a word about it. All she said was she wanted to hike as deep as she could into Yellowstone and get away from her family.

  “She directed me toward the upper falls of the Yellowstone River, where we hiked along the trails overlooking the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It’s a beautiful place, Ashby, but also very dangerous.”

  Jake paused and tried to control his emotions. Ashby reached under the blanket and found his hand, which she squeezed. This was the first time he’d relayed this story to anyone. It had been bottled up inside him for all these years until now.

  He continued. “Anyway, there were several steep walls to climb, including one in particular that took you to a ledge overlooking the tower falls. It required us to do a free solo climb, which in itself was dangerous. But it was all the more difficult because of Julie’s frame of mind.”

  “Free solo climb,” interjected Ashby. “Is that what you did earlier?”

  Jake nodded and grimaced. “Yeah, except this was different. Ashby, we should never have tried it, especially on that day. I mean, the weather was fine, but it was late in the afternoon, we’d hiked a long way to get to the base of the cliff. And …” Jake’s voice trailed off as he hung his head.

  “Ashby, I tried. I tried to talk her out of it. I unpacked the tent and started setting it up, but she ignored me. She put on her climbing shoes, stuffed a bottle of talc in her shorts, and took off, leaving me standing there. It was all I could do to get my gear on and try to catch up to her. By the time I got started, she was forty feet up the five-hundred-foot wall.”

  “She was on a mission, like she had something to prove,” surmised Ashby.

  “Possessed is more appropriate. I couldn’t stop her, so I followed her up the cliff. If she’d taken a moment to look at her path before starting, she would’ve noticed the ledge required an upside-down ceiling climb, something we’d never done together.

  “Anyway, after an hour, I gave up trying to talk her down because she kept ranting about her father. My best hope at that point was to calm her down by changing the subject and forcing her to focus on the climb.

  “My last shot to call it off was when she reached the ledge and the ceiling that required her to climb inverted. She knew what to do but had never attempted it without safety gear and never at that ridiculous height.”

  Jake laid his head back against the inflated pillow and stared upward. He closed his moistening eyes and shook his head from side to side as he recalled the moment.

  “Ashby, I tried again. She just wouldn’t listen. She made her way across the ceiling and then she glanced down. She froze. I could see her arms trembling as fatigue overcame her body.”

  Jake began sobbing and Ashby wrapped her arms around him. “It’s okay, Jake.”

  But he shook his head again. “I should’ve raced after her and stopped her before she got started. I should’ve set safety measures as I climbed up behind her. Maybe I could’ve thrown her a lifeline. Maybe I should’ve insisted we stay at the house so she could square things with her family. Heck, I should’ve just stayed in LA.”

  He couldn’t continue. He wasn’t able to vocalize his vivid memory of Julie’s right hand slipping out of its precarious grip, followed by her hips sinking downward, an unforgiving shift of weight that resulted in her falling to her death. After watching her body tumble and spiral in the air, and then exploding in a burst of blood at the bottom, Jake had to face the arduous task of climbing back down the face of that ridge.

  The two sat in silence for several minutes as Jake released his emotions. He’d seen death twice now, and it wasn’t pretty.

  Chapter 19

  Sheep Mountain

  Central Idaho

  “I don’t consider myself an alcoholic,” Jake suddenly blurted out, causing Ashby to laugh and sit upright.

  “Well, Mr. Wheeler, that was random.”

  Jake chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it sorta was. I have to warn you, I’ve lived alone for a long time, and sometimes I say out loud what I’m thinking inside.”

  “Cool, I get that. But what brought on this inside-to-outside revelation?”

  “It’s the way my brain works,” he replied. “You see, I think of one thing, and then that branches off in another direction. Then that thought leads to a whole ’nother and so on.”

  “Oookay,” said Ashby with a puzzled look on her face. “That’s a little weird.”

  Jake sat up too and tried to relieve her concern. “Okay, let me explain. I was thinking about how nice it is to sit here, you know, by the fire, under the blanket. It reminded me of our first night at the cabin when we circled the chairs around the fire and cooked hot dogs. I really enjoyed laughing and talking with everyone as we threw back some beers.”

  “I did, too.”

  “Yeah,” Jake continued. “So I got to thinking about that, and then I wished we had some beer because, after this frickin’ day, I feel like we deserve one. But I remembered that we don’t have any and I wished we were back at the cabin, where I always had lots of beer. Then I asked myself why I always had so much beer and I started to calculate how many beers I had every evening and wondered if drinking that much beer, alone, made me an alcoholic.”

  Jake exhaled, as did Ashby.

  Ashby was laughing heartily now. “I gather the end of this freight train of thought processes led you to the conclusion that you’re not an alcoholic.”

  “Yup.”

  “All righty, then,” said Ashby with a chuckle.

  T
hey laughed together for a moment while Jake stoked the fire and added some more wood. They didn’t have enough for the night, so he unfurled a nylon parka, which had been stuffed in his camping backpack, and grabbed a flashlight. He made his way out of the cavern, where the warm winds continued to blow from the direction of Yellowstone. Based upon their earlier observations, it probably was the leading edge of another pyroclastic flow. That meant Yellowstone had erupted for a third time that day, which most likely had caused the seismic activity.

  He returned with his arms full of branches and started the peeling and drying process again. At this point, the bark and slivers from the earlier wood had dried, and Ashby was using it to keep the fire going. When they got settled under the blanket, Ashby decided it was her turn to bare her soul.

  “Well, as you know, I lost my parents to a volcano. From what I can remember, they were good people, Jake. They certainly loved me a lot.”

  “How old were you when it happened?”

  “Seven, but I was a grown-up seven. I was with them all day long. I didn’t have other kids to play with, really. Sure, from what I remember, there were kids in the villages that I’d do things with when my parents were there, but I couldn’t call them friends necessarily.”

  “Why were your parents in the Philippines?”

  “At the time, my dad was thirty years old and my mom was a year younger. They were both students at Cal Berkley, and I guess they were what people nowadays would call radical environmentalists.”

  Jake laughed. “Tree huggers.”

  “Yeah, sort of, but not really. Let’s just say they were outdoorsy. In fact, they would’ve liked you. Dad wanted to be a geologist and Mom wanted to be a grade-school teacher. They had an idealistic, utopian view of the world, you know?”