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

by Bobby Akart

  Ashby unbuckled her seat belt and retrieved the atlas, which had slid behind Jake’s seat. “Let me check our options.”

  She studied the map for a moment as Jake drew closer to the military Humvees, which were parked nose to nose, blocking the westbound highway. “They’re talking to people as they approach. What’s it look like?”

  “Just as I thought. South is not an option. The road turns southeast and takes us at least two hundred miles out of the way.”

  Jake’s mind raced. He came up with a solution. “We have to bull our way through.”

  “What? They might shoot at us.”

  “No, by bull I mean be insistent,” added Jake. “Quick, pull up our position on the Garmin.”

  Ashby fiddled with the GPS device until the screen zeroed in on their location. “Got it.”

  “Check the map. What’s the first town to our west?”

  Ashby studied the map book. “Vale. Just twenty miles or so.”

  “Okay, back to the Garmin. Punch in Vale, Oregon, and choose the POI option. Points of interest. Hurry!”

  “Okay, okay,” she replied nervously. “What am I looking for?”

  “Business names, schools, anything that might help me bluff these guardsmen into letting us pass.”

  “Chiropractor. Hey! There’s a Wheeler Chiropractic on A Street in Vale.”

  Jake slowed to a stop as the guardsman approached and raised his hand, motioning for Jake to slide open his window.

  “Good afternoon, sir. I’m afraid the westbound highway is closed. You’ll need to keep moving south or use the gravel parking lot up ahead to turn around.”

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t we go west?”

  “There has been a state of emergency declared in Lake and Harney Counties,” replied the guardsman. “We’re assisting local law enforcement in closing access highways into the area while they conduct their manhunt.”

  “Manhunt?” asked Ashby, who stood to lean over Jake so the guardsman could see her.

  “Yes, ma’am. A group of criminals from Portland are on the run from state police with the assistance of the Guard. They’re anarchists, actually. Highway 20 is closed from Bend all the way to this point. US 395 is also blocked off at the NorCal state line.”

  Jake had a decision to make. He didn’t need the aggravation of battling thugs, but the fuel situation prevented them from taking long detours.

  Jake retrieved his Yellowstone identification and handed it to the guardsmen. “Sir, our children are with my folks in Vale. You know, just down the road. You might know my father, Dr. Wheeler. He’s a chiropractor.”

  The soldier examined Jake’s credentials and passed them back through the window. “I’m not from around here. Just a moment.”

  The soldier walked toward the Humvees, and Ashby sat back in her seat.

  “Two questions,” she began. “Do you think he bought it, and more importantly, do we really want to go that way?”

  Jake shrugged as he looked upward at the sky through the windshield. The skies began to darken. “I think they’ll let us through. As for what lies ahead, I wanna believe that a police operation of this magnitude, involving the National Guard, would make the highways safer to travel.”

  Ashby reached for her bottle of water, which sat in a dashboard cupholder. She suddenly froze. She patted Jake with her left arm and pointed to the water with her right.

  “Jake, look.”

  The water continued to shake, and then a low rumble accompanied the movement.

  “An earthquake?” he asked.

  Ashby ran to the back of the Bounder and looked out a window toward the west. She screamed and then shouted, “Close the window. Hurry, and shut off the motor!”

  Jake turned off the ignition and slammed the sliding window shut.

  “What’s happening?” he asked as he turned around. Ashby had pulled the comforter off the bed and was headed toward the dining area of the motor home.

  “Hurry! Come here under the blanket!”

  Jake scrambled and joined her under the dining table, beneath the blanket. He turned his body so he could face her.

  “Aren’t we too far—?”

  Jake’s voice was muted by the roar of the pyroclastic flow, which engulfed the state of Idaho and roared across Oregon toward the Pacific Coast. For several minutes, the motor home rocked back and forth, almost tipping several times. Wave after wave of heated ash and gas flowed over them with the force of a hurricane, darkening the skies and causing the temperatures inside to rise to over a hundred degrees.

  When the worst of it was over, a blizzard of fallout swept over them, burying the ground and the guardsmen’s smoldering bodies in two feet of ash.

  Chapter 49

  Cairo, Oregon

  The ground shook for twenty-six minutes as the mountain ranges surrounding Yellowstone collapsed into the Earth. The immense power of gravity, coupled with the superheated magma that melted the caldera’s surroundings, caused Western Wyoming and Eastern Idaho to fill the void left by Yellowstone’s massive eruption. The collapse of the Earth’s crust and the sheer magnitude of the mountains being drawn toward the planet’s core generated earthquakes that were felt throughout North America. The impact on the tectonic plates across the country caused tsunamis that stretched from the Pacific Northwest to Japan, and from America’s east coast to Europe.

  Jake took Ashby’s face in his hands. Tears were streaming down both of their faces. Ashby was trembling as Jake tried to calm her.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded and then struggled to find her voice. “I had no idea, Jake. I mean, I lived through this at Pinatubo. No, not this. There’s been nothing like what we’ve just experienced. The models. The models were all crap. Pure garbage. We should’ve known.”

  Jake considered moving out from under the table, but Ashby seemed content where they were.

  “Should’ve known what?” he asked.

  “The caldera grows,” she replied as she kicked at the bottom of the bench seat with her foot in a petulant stomp. “With every eruption of Yellowstone, the caldera grows because the supervolcano consumes its surroundings. Sure, the hot spot migrates. We all know that. But it doesn’t migrate fast enough for Yellowstone’s opening, the caldera, to get away from the massive magma chamber below.”

  Ashby suddenly slid out from under the table and sat cross-legged on the floor. She unknowingly blocked Jake in, creating a captive audience. She continued. “Think about it. It’s a magma chamber that continues to get bigger because of that consumption. Which necessarily leads to each subsequent eruption being larger. Do you know what this means?”

  Jake never got a chance to respond as Ashby answered her own rhetorical question.

  “This means, if Yellowstone is truly cyclical, as I think it has more than proven the last four days, the next eruption will be a thousand times greater than this one.”

  Jake slipped in a question while Ashby came up for air. “When will that be?”

  “In roughly six hundred thousand years, give or take.”

  Jake nodded and smiled. He forced his way past Ashby until he was sitting next to her. “Good. Not my problem.”

  He rose to one knee and peered through the side windows of the motor home. Fortunately, the blast had not broken out the windows in the high-profile vehicle, but they were scorched. Outside, however, the pyroclastic flow had left its mark.

  Jake stood and reached down under Ashby’s arms and lifted her to her feet. She got her first look at the devastation.

  “Man, oh, man,” she whispered as she took in the surroundings. “The soldiers are gone. They must have been sucked up into the flow. Jake, look!”

  Ashby pointed toward a man who’d apparently exited his vehicle out of curiosity. He’d been impaled by a street sign. Another car had been overturned and a woman was hanging half in, half out of a shattered windshield.

  Jake sought out his camouflage parka and gloves. He quickly put them on an
d adjusted his particulate mask for a tight fit.

  Ashby grabbed his arm. “Are you going out there?”

  “I need to check the tires to make sure they didn’t melt. It got really hot in here for a few minutes. I can only imagine what it was like outside.”

  Ashby slipped her mask down enough to kiss him on the cheek; then Jake slipped through the side entrance of the motor home. He was only outside for a minute or two before he returned. He carefully removed his jacket and shook it through a narrow crack in the door before he brought it into the motor home. He dropped the jacket and gloves in a heap at the bottom step.

  “Tires look fine, but the plastic gas cans on the back melted somewhat.”

  “Hopefully, we won’t need them again if we can fill up somewhere,” added Ashby.

  “Also, the left side had its paint scorched off. It looks like someone took a flame thrower to it, melted the paint, and then sand-blasted it for good measure.”

  “So the kangaroo is missing?” asked Ashby with a chuckle, referring to the Bounder logo.

  “Yeah. He hopped on down the trail.”

  “Uh-huh. Very funny. What now? Should we try to help people?”

  “Ashby, I didn’t see anything moving out there except for the fallout blowing sideways. I say we take advantage of the tailwind created by Yellowstone and head west as planned. Let’s see if we can get fuel in Vale, and if not, we’ll try the next town.”

  Jake and Ashby, still shaken from the ordeal, drove around the Humvees, which had been spun out of the way. They were on the road again.

  Chapter 50

  Vale, Oregon

  They slowly approached the small town of Vale, Oregon, crossing the bridge at the Malheur River, which was littered with dead and injured people. The parking lot at Logan’s Market was bustling with activity as the locals carried their neighbors from the bridge into the grocery store. Dozens of dead had been set to the side while the injured were cared for. Jake and Ashby speculated as to why this many people had been near the entrance to the small town at the time the pyroclastic flow overtook them. The devastation touched them, but they thought it best to keep moving through town.

  A mile later, they were on the open highway again, kicking ash fallout behind the motor home like it was fresh powder from a spring snow in the high desert of Nevada. They barely spoke a word as each of them tried to cope with what they’d been through in the last hour. Highway 20 swept through ash-covered fields alongside Bully Creek until the farmhouses became few and far between.

  It was getting dark as Jake started looking for a place to park for the evening. “Ashby, here’s what I’m looking for. This area still has power, and I’m working under the assumption that these homes are occupied, unless their lights are off.”

  “Makes sense. What are you thinking?”

  “It’s getting late and I don’t want to park on the side of the road considering there’s this manhunt thing going on.”

  “Surely, that’s been called off with what just happened,” Ashby opined.

  “Well, if it was, that made the road to the Mad House that much more dangerous. I like the thought of parking near an occupied residence, but not too close where they might consider us a threat.”

  “Jake, I’m not tired. We can keep going if you want. Let me drive.”

  Jake glanced at the fuel gauge and silently cursed himself for not trying to find diesel back in Ontario or Vale. The Bounder had dipped below a quarter tank and tended to drop off rapidly from there. Jake wasn’t going to push his luck under the circumstances.

  “The highway turns south at Riley. That’s US 395, right?”

  “Yeah,” she replied.

  “How far are we?”

  Ashby mapped their position and then determined the distance to Riley. She glanced over at the fuel gauge. “Too far, but there is a closer possibility. There’s a small town, two right together, actually. The first one is called Burns. They might have diesel.”

  “Okay, how far is it to Burns?”

  Ashby performed the same calculation and then responded, “It might be too far.”

  “Seriously?” asked Jake as he glanced over at her several times. It was pitch black outside except for the reflection of the headlights on the white ash, which continued to fall out of the sky and was accumulating rapidly. He had to constantly remind himself that the fallout wasn’t snow. It wasn’t going to melt. In fact, if it rained, it would turn to pumice and rock.

  “Sorry, but we lost a lot of diesel sitting in traffic and bypassing Ontario,” she replied. Ashby leaned forward in her seat and pointed toward the windshield. “Wait, slow down. Look to the right. Are those silos?”

  Jake slowed the Bounder and saw a long run of fencing that contained farm equipment, silos and several cattle trailers. He gently braked to a crawl as a gate appeared with mounted signage on both sides that read Pressley Farm.

  Jake pulled the motor home to a stop. “I can’t see beyond a hundred feet. Should we take a chance?”

  Ashby replied, “I think we’re at the point where we have to go for it. We have cash. At the worst case, the farmer sells us enough to get to the next town. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Jake turned onto the gravel driveway and eased through the partially opened gates. He slid his hand off the steering wheel to touch his pistol. Moving slowly through the fenced area, they searched for fuel storage or pumps, but found nothing.

  “There has to be more, Ashby,” said Jake. “Let’s keep easing onto the farm, but I want us to keep our eyes open.”

  “Do you have a bad feeling? If so, let’s turn around.”

  “I don’t know. Just in case, grab our rifles, okay?”

  They reached a point where the driveway split off in two directions. Their visibility was horrible, so Jake had no idea which way to turn. He eased on the gas and pulled the steering wheel toward Ashby.

  “Right is right,” he mumbled. After another hundred feet, his headlights lit up a white farmhouse with a covered wraparound porch. There were no lights on in the house that he could see.

  “Jake, I don’t like this. There could be rifles pointing at us already.”

  “Maybe,” he said. Jake stood and walked toward the middle of the motor home. He put on his jacket and returned to the front to grab his rifle. “I’m going to leave her running. I want you to kneel down behind the dash and wait until I slap the sides. When I do, honk the horn, but not annoyingly so. Loud enough for them to hear.”

  “What are you gonna do?” asked Ashby.

  “They’ll be blinded by our headlights, which will allow me to circle around and get under the porch roof. If they shoot at us, I’ll shoot back. Otherwise, I’m going to ask for some fuel.”

  “Jake, this is desperation. Are we already at that point?”

  Jake sighed. “I’ve come to a certain realization, Ashby. This is not gonna get better. It’s getting worse. As people begin to fight over limited resources, like fuel, it could become deadly.”

  “Is getting in a gun battle worth it?”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope, as the lack of lights and contact lead me to believe, that the place is empty. It if is, then no harm, no foul. If it isn’t and they ask us to leave, we will. If they start shooting, then I’ll consider that rude and shoot back. I believe this is the world we live in now.”

  “That bad?” she asked.

  “Yes, that bad. Let’s just be glad you and I are ahead of the learning curve. Are you ready?”

  She quickly replied, “Yeah, be careful.”

  Jake turned toward the side door and Ashby stopped him. “I love you, Jake Wheeler.”

  “I love you back. Let’s do this.”

  Jake eased out the door with the barrel of his M16 leading the way. He closed the door with a gentle push and then eased to the front fender. He lowered himself into a crouch and smacked the side of the Bounder. Ashby immediately began to honk the horn in three sets of two quick spurts.

  B
y the time she was finished, Jake had kicked his way through the fallen ash and reached the porch at the side of the house. He held onto a corner post with his left hand and hoisted himself up. Within seconds he’d hurdled the railing and was positioned at the corner with his rifle ready, looking for any movement.

  The night was still with very little wind now. The gusty tailwind they’d experienced from the pyroclastic flow an hour ago had calmed. The ash fallout was completely silent as the dry debris fell to the ground to join the rest of what used to be Yellowstone National Park.

  Ashby decided to honk again although that was not part of the plan. When she stopped, Jake shouted, “Hello! Is anybody home? We don’t want any trouble. We’d like to buy some of your farm diesel. We have cash!”

  There was no response, so Jake eased forward to look inside one of the windows. Inside, he could see the dim glow of a night light, which illuminated a bedroom. He decided to pound on the wood clapboard siding.

  “Hello! Is anybody inside? We’d like to buy some of your fuel? Can you help us?”

  Nothing.

  Jake eased his way around the back of the house. Each time he passed a window, he dropped to his hands and knees to crawl. When he found the back door, he became a little more daring and peeked in the windows.

  There were no signs of life, so Jake decided to try the doorknob. It was locked. He looked around the door. People had a tendency to hide a key to their home in the worst places—under a welcome mat, beneath a flowerpot on the porch, or inside a poorly placed fake rock.

  Jake looked for all of these options; then he looked at the porch light fixture over his head. After checking his surroundings, he reached on top of the fixture and smiled as his fingers touched a key. Within seconds, he tried it and opened the back door.

  He was in. Now things got dicey. A frightened homeowner, especially in a rural setting, was likely to have a shotgun or hunting rifle capable of shooting through walls. Jake decided to take the honest, forward approach.

  “Sir! Ma’am! I’m inside your home, but I mean you no harm. I’d just like to purchase some fuel and I’ll be on my way. My name is Jake Wheeler and I’m a law enforcement ranger from Yellowstone. I escaped the volcano and I’m trying to get to California. Can you help us out?”