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

by Bobby Akart

  Jake glanced over as he tightly gripped the wheel. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, I swear. I’m not. It’s just, I don’t know. It shows me that you have depth.”

  “Depth?” he asked as he glanced over at her again.

  “Come on, Jake. I’m not being critical. I’ve just come to know you as this caring guy who happens to look like the Marlboro Man, lives in the woods, and is one with nature.”

  “With depth,” said Jake as he began to find the conversation humorous.

  “Exactly,” said Ashby. She turned her attention back to the map. “Hey, there should be a town up ahead where we need to turn right. It’s called Stanley.”

  Jake looked in the rearview mirror and stuck his jaw out so his lower teeth raked his upper lip. He nodded and mumbled to himself.

  Depth.

  Chapter 45

  Salmon-Challis National Forest

  Stanley, Idaho

  Stanley, Idaho, was one of the rural towns that had sprung up because the Department of Highways blessed a certain geographic location with an intersection of a north-south route coupled with an east-west route. The traffic on the roads generated the potential for small businesses to spring up, such as a small hotel, an auto repair center, and a convenience store, which also sold gasoline.

  Of all the businesses in Stanley, population sixty-three, the motel was doing the best following the Yellowstone eruption. Stranded vehicles bearing many states’ license plates were parked along the shoulder, as well as in the parking lot. Like Challis, the power was out, so the No Vacancy sign consisted of three weathered gray planks of wood with the words scribbled upon them in white paint.

  Across the street, the Mountain Village gas station also had disabled cars scattered about and appeared to be without power. Jake slowed the motor home to a crawl as he approached the entrance to the Sinclair fuel pumps. The big green dinosaur statue at the entrance gave him a friendly, welcoming smile, but it wasn’t Dino the Apatosaurus that gave Jake the idea to purchase fuel there. It was an elderly man whose face was wrapped in a scarf, waving a fluorescent orange flag in the parking lot.

  “I guess they’re open for business,” said Jake as he pointed the man out to Ashby. He unconsciously turned on his blinker, not that there were any cars around. Other drivers wouldn’t have been able to see the flashing lights anyway.

  “I don’t see any power on. How do their pumps work?” she asked.

  Jake shrugged and carefully wheeled the motor home under the log-style canopy. He turned off the motor and carefully exited, being careful not to lose his footing on the ash-covered step.

  “Let me check it out first, okay?”

  Ashby smiled and flashed him an okay sign with her hand. She was searching for more radio stations.

  Jake was about to approach the man when he stopped and scratched his head. “Hold on, sir. I don’t know if the fuel tank is on this side or not.”

  Jake turned to examine the Bounder when the man shouted at him, “It don’t matter, sonny. We ain’t pumpin’ fuel anyway.”

  Jake was puzzled and was about to question why the man had flagged him into the station, when the old guy pointed toward four gas cans sitting on the sidewalk. “I’ve got two diesels and two gas. You probably need diesel, but I’ll sell you the gas too, if you want.”

  Jake looked at the red five-gallon fuel containers. He walked toward them with his hands on his hips and looked around the station. There was no one else there. Finally, he got up the nerve to ask the fundamental question that would dictate what happened next.

  “How much?”

  “Hundred dollars.”

  Jake was taken aback. He glanced at the four canisters. Twenty gallons at five bucks per—there oughta be a law.

  “Pretty pricey,” mumbled Jake as he turned back to the old man. “I’ll pass on the gas, but I’ll take both of the diesels.”

  Jake began to reach into his pocket when the man said, with a straight face, “That’ll be two hundred, two fifty if you wanna keep the containers.”

  Jake shoved his money back in his pocket. He was incredulous. “You want twenty dollars a gallon for diesel? That’s outrageous.”

  “It’s the goin’ rate,” the old guy shot back.

  Jake spun around in search of another gas station. “Where else are they selling diesel for twenty dollars a gallon?”

  “No place else. We’re it. Cash only, please.”

  Jake kicked at the ash. He noticed the man wasn’t wearing a mask. For a moment, an evil thought passed through his mind about the future of the price-gouger’s health.

  “Two hundred, and we keep the gas cans,” Jake countered. The cans would come in handy if they had to siphon diesel out of farm machinery.

  The old guy thought for a moment, and then the sound of a farm tractor in the distance could be heard by both men. It grew louder.

  “Two fifty, and you best hurry,” the man said with a toothless grin. He nodded toward the noise. “The price is fixin’ to go up, unless you wanna dillydally some more. It might be fun to have a good old-fashioned auction.”

  Jake quickly shoved his hand in his pocket and begrudgingly forked over the money. The man was kind enough to loan Jake a funnel at no additional charge.

  As Jake poured the last of the fuel into the tank and secured the containers to the back of the motor home with bungee cords, the tractor slowly ambled by and gave them a wave. The old gas station owner laughed and spat out some tobacco juice.

  “Thanks for stoppin’ in,” he said as he wandered back into his store.

  Jake was still grumblin’ when he returned to the driver’s seat. Ashby was staring at him with a huge grin on her face.

  “What?” asked Jake.

  “He stuck it to you, didn’t he?”

  “Maybe. I don’t have anything else to compare it to.”

  Ashby pointed at the radio. “I found a Boise station, which just reported that fights broke out in long lines at several gas stations. People were trying to fill up milk jugs, water coolers, and empty cans, hoping to get enough gas to move their cars. At one station, they ran out of gas, which resulted in the clerk getting shot.”

  “Jeez,” said Jake as he started the motor home and pulled back onto the road.

  “How much did you pay?” Ashby finally asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. It was a bargain.”

  Chapter 46

  Ontario, Oregon

  The closer they got to Boise, the better radio reception they received. Naturally, as they found themselves in a valley flanked by tall mountains and peaks, their reception alternated between nonexistent and clear. However, the nonstop news coverage they managed to catch provided enlightening bits and pieces of information.

  Major airports were in chaos across the country. Virtually all transcontinental flights had been cancelled, and all regional flights across the upper half of the United States were grounded indefinitely.

  Truck and rail transportation had come to a standstill as well. Motor vehicles were not faring well in the ash fallout unless they had specially equipped air intakes like the military vehicles used in Middle East operations. National Guard troops had been deployed in every state, performing tasks ranging from rescue and recovery to riot control.

  The death toll from the first two eruptions at Cascade Corners and Norris resulted in several hundred thousand deaths. Buildings and infrastructure were destroyed, and impact deaths from the pyroclastic flow were unimaginable.

  The president had declared a national emergency and instituted martial law in all but the Sunbelt states. Reciprocal agreements with South and Central American nations to take American refugees in the event of a Yellowstone eruption, which had been negotiated and paid for, were reneged upon.

  By the start of the fourth day, Americans were seeing a glimmer of hope, as there hadn’t been a major eruption in 36 Hours. Scientists warned that the eruptive matter, the ash fallout, would continue to eject from Yellowstone fo
r weeks. However, the lull in major eruptions was not the end, as some media types wanted to believe.

  The ash began to dissipate as they exited the mountains and entered the Snake River Valley at Ontario, Oregon. The highway made its final turn alongside the Payette River and down into the valley, where they saw their first glimpses of green since they’d crash-landed on the top of Sheep Mountain.

  Giddy with excitement, Ashby unbuckled her seat belt and bounded out of the seat across the motor home to give Jake a hug. She whispered, “Thank you,” in his ear and kissed him on the cheek.

  She asked if he wanted something to drink as she made her way back to the bathroom next to the kitchen. He was tempted to have a beer, not worried about getting pulled over under the circumstances, but opted for water instead. There’d be time to have a couple of cold ones and unwind later.

  Jake checked his watch and recalled Ashby’s best estimates as to where they were. Ontario straddled the Snake River, which also acted as the state boundary between Idaho and Oregon. They both agreed to follow their gut instincts and avoid major towns and highways. Based upon the reports of looting and lawlessness in the large cities, all was not well with the collective psyche of America at the moment.

  Jake stuck to State Highway 52, which took them around the north side of Ontario, and later they planned to pick up Highway 20 West. They’d taken virtually all day to travel a quarter of the way to the Mad House, but Jake considered it to be the toughest leg of the journey.

  Ashby returned from the back with two bottles of water, and Jake thanked her with a smooch. The two had grown closer since the crash on Sheep Mountain, and soon they’d have to talk about their feelings in a more intimate setting. Jake imagined a quiet evening strolling along the river, cold beer in hand, and the sounds of water moving downstream. It was this vision that kept his nose to the ground as they approached the congested area around the Love’s Travel Stop.

  “Busy place,” Ashby said as they pulled in to get in line. While they waited, they talked about where to stop for the night.

  “It really doesn’t matter now that things have cleared up,” said Jake. “We can park this thing in any parking lot. My guess is we have another few hours of daylight, so we could knock out another one hundred fifty miles or so.”

  “Let me take a look,” said Ashby. She studied the map for a moment and then input their route into the Garmin. “Well, we’re about one sixty from a small town called Riley. That’s where we turn south on US 395 to California. Wanna go for it?”

  Jake hesitated before answering. He noticed that none of the trucks had advanced toward the fuel pumps.

  “Jake?”

  “Um, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, that’ll work. Gimme a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  Jake exited the motor home and walked past four or five rigs before he got to the gas pumps. Several of the drivers were standing around talking amongst themselves.

  “Hey, fellas,” Jake began. “Why aren’t they pumpin’ gas?”

  One of the men, a burly lumberjack-looking driver, let out a hearty laugh. “’Cause these here are the diesel pumps.”

  His buddies laughed along with him and patted the smart aleck on the back.

  Jake, somewhat embarrassed, persisted. “Yeah, yeah. My mistake. What about the diesel?”

  “They’re out,” replied another. “Whole city is. Bein’ on the interstate, it didn’t take long.”

  “Are they getting more?” asked Jake.

  “Supposed to. Maybe another hour or two. Don’t rightly know.”

  Jake had heard enough and returned to the motor home. After he was inside, he started the engine.

  Ashby questioned him. “Why are we leaving?”

  “No fuel,” answered a frustrated Jake. “How far did you say it was to Riley?”

  “Hundred and sixty miles.”

  Jake performed some mental calculations. He wished he had internet access so he could see what size town it was and what his prospects were for purchasing fuel there. Riley, just like all the other small towns along their route, was just a dot on the map.

  Usually, each town had a post office, a flashing yellow light, and the only drama was who was screwing around with whom. And that was it, ordinarily.

  Chapter 47

  Yellowstone

  It had been a hundred hours since the mass murderer had been unleashed at Cascade Corner in Yellowstone. From the moment of that first, relatively minor eruption, to the subsequent eruptive blast of ash and magma that jetted to the surface and beyond, Yellowstone had unleashed its fury on the planet. It was revealing itself as the greatest killer known to mankind.

  Over the next three days, earth-shaking eruptions occurred from Grand Teton in the south to Cascade Corner in the west, and up to the Norris Area on the Montana border. An umbrella of glowing ash coupled with pyroclastic surges of hot gases and volcanic glass raced down the slopes of mountain ridges, then over their peaks, in an unimpeded tsunami of death.

  For one hundred hours, the pyroclastic flows charged along the valleys, destroying everything in their path. These surges of glowing ash traveled two hundred miles outward from Yellowstone in those initial hours before settling and welding themselves to the ash spewed at the time of eruption. Beneath the several feet of ash, petrified until discovered by paleontologists decades later, was the evidence of modern man—homes, cars, machinery, infrastructure.

  And modern man himself. Human beings who, by virtue of being blessed in the most technologically advanced time in the history of the planet, presumed that catastrophic events like Yellowstone couldn’t happen during their lifetime.

  Why? Because we’re too smart for that. Our lives are far more important than geologic changes to the Earth.

  It occurred at the height of the era of mankind’s self-absorption.

  Yellowstone didn’t care about man or his accomplishments. Yellowstone had no interest in punishing man for his sins, past or present. No. Yellowstone was an indiscriminate, incomparable killer, determined to remind all others that it had no peer.

  After four days, Yellowstone was nearly spent as the vents opened up in the caldera that continued to hurl rock, gas, and ash into the sky. The magma chamber was creating a void as the Earth’s surface continued to vaporize. The rim of the caldera began to break apart. The ground near the ring fissures split. The Earth’s crust became further destabilized.

  The Earth’s greatest killer, this mass murderer, prepared to cover its tracks—hide the evidence, so to speak. In one final, massive outburst of molten venom, Yellowstone gave it all it had. The caldera, which was once fifty miles across, collapsed, sucking its surroundings into the depths of hell.

  Grand Teton was sheared in half, the fourteen-thousand-foot mountain sinking in a heap into the vacated chamber where the caldera had once enticed visitors to view the beauty of Yellowstone. In all directions, mountains fell like dominos, disappearing into the void left by the spent magma.

  One only had to imagine a sinkhole, like the ones shown in Florida, swallowing the front end of an automobile or, at times, entire homes. Then imagine the sinkhole being the size of New Jersey, sucking everything from Atlantic City to Philadelphia and Cape May to Newark, into a massive hole in the earth. A cauldron bubbling with red-hot molten lava, liquefying everything it touched.

  The Yellowstone Caldera doubled in size during those one hundred hours as a result of the caldera collapsing. Any remaining magma was immediately expelled into the atmosphere, creating the largest blast of ash and debris during the entire process.

  These dark clouds spread out in all directions and chased their victims at five hundred miles per hour. No one was safe from their grasp, as the eruption would become the first VEI 9 in history, a thousand times stronger than any of its predecessors.

  Chapter 48

  Cairo, Oregon

  “Why in the world would there be a traffic jam here?” asked Jake in frustration. They’d made the decision to leave Ontario, Oregon, without f
uel and continued until they found a suitable place to stop for the evening. They discussed the fuel issue at length before they left the town, which sat on the border of Idaho and Oregon. It was entirely possible the last of their diesel could be spent in search of more. Based upon Ashby’s calculations, the remaining diesel in their tank would carry them to within a single fill-up of their final destination.

  After leaving the truck stop, Ashby tried to access a couple of ATM machines, but they’d been emptied. They still had some cash, but suspected closed banks and empty ATM machines would be the norm for the foreseeable future.

  They continued to idle, moving only a few feet at a time. Ashby was feeling the pressure of time and an emptying fuel tank. “The way this thing drinks fuel, we’ll run out before we turn west up ahead.”

  “I don’t remember any side streets back there, do you?” asked Jake; then he continued. “No. Wait. We’re moving again.” Jake sat a little taller in the seat to see around a U-Haul truck in front of them.

  “Maybe they cleared a wreck?” Ashby surmised.

  “You know, this is why I loved living in the woods. Seriously, give me a deserted island and I’ll do just fine.”

  Ashby laughed. “You’d end up crazy like Tom Hanks in that movie with the volleyball. Remember?”

  “Yeah. I remember Wilson,” replied Jake. “Nah, I would love it. Especially if you’d be my Wilson.”

  Ashby laughed heartily as they got closer to the source of the traffic bottleneck. She then feigned Scarlett O’Hara’s Southern belle voice. “You and me on a deserted island? Oh my, sir. What would I wear?”

  “Nothing would be fine.”

  Ashby threw the atlas at Jake, causing him to flinch. “You wish, mister!”

  Jake inched forward to provide himself a better view ahead. “It’s a roadblock. They won’t let anyone turn west.”