by Lou Cadle
Bent over, pushing at the edge of the fencing, Chad steered the dog over to the edge of the lahar. “You can go now, boy,” he said, but the dog looked miserably at him. Chad pushed the fence all the way onto the pavement until he felt it scraping on concrete. When he couldn’t push it any further, he left the dog sitting there. The dog would figure out it was safe to move eventually. Chad gathered the gear up and waded back in to join Francie.
He was almost to her when she slipped on something and went down. Her head disappeared under the gray flood.
The mud fought him every step. Something tangled in his ankles and he kicked it away. Francie’s head broke the surface. It seemed like forever since he had seen her but it could have only been a few seconds. She spat, shook her head, spat again.
“Chad?” she called. “I can’t see.”
“I’m here,” he said. He heaved the first aid kit and watering can into the bed of a pickup truck. Next to Francie floated the carcass of a cow, half submerged. “Hang on to me. I’ll get us back to solid ground.” He waded back to the truck and picked up the watering can. “Shower of water coming,” he said, and he poured it over her head. It did little good. “Don’t open your eyes yet,” he said. “I’ll guide you to water.” He got her down on the ground by the closest outdoor spigot and turned it on. She thrust her head under it, then her hands, her head again, and finally opened her eyes, blinking them clear. “Thanks,” she said.
“Just get yourself clean.”
“Water pressure’s low. I hope we aren’t losing it entirely,” she said, ducking her head under then spitting. “Sorry. Boy, if there’s a fire….” She shook her head. “Bad news.”
“That was in that disaster report I read at the firehouse. About earthquakes, though, losing water mains while gas lines exploded and set fires.”
“At least we don’t have broken gas lines.” She spat again. “I gotta wash my mouth out.”
“But the water,” Chad said. “They said it’s not good.”
“The mud is inside every orifice already. Whatever bacteria or chemicals are in there must be worse than what’s in the tap water. But I promise I won’t swallow,” she said. She rinsed her mouth and spat it out repeatedly. “Here, you clean up some, too.” She ceded her spot at the spigot to him.
Chad’s hands were coated, his chest had been muddy since he had carried that first kid out, his right cheek felt like it had mud drying on it, and his white work shirt would never be white again. He cleaned the worst of the mud off, and he took his vest off and rinsed it so that “Fire” was visible again.
“Good idea,” said Francie, and she did the same.
Now she looked like horror movie Clay Person with a bright yellow vest on. He imagined he did, too.
“Did that cow carcass get you?” he asked, rolling up his wet sleeves
“No. I slipped, like an idiot. Stepped on something, maybe only the edge of a curb, and couldn’t catch myself.”
“You hurt?”
“No, but looks like you are,” she said, pointing. “Your arm.”
“What?” he looked down. A streak of red was visible through the light coating of diluted mud.
“Dog, I think,” he said. “His claw must have got me.”
“Rinse it really well. Then let’s put antibiotic cream and a bandage on it.”
“For all the good it’ll do.” He imagined the bandage falling off the first time he put his arm back into the mud.
“It’ll do some good,” she said, looking around. “Where’s the first aid kit?”
He pointed to where he’d left it.
“I’ll get it.” She stood up. “I’m getting tired of plowing through that mud. How ‘bout you?”
“Thirsty, mostly.” The morning was getting on, and it was a warm sunny day.
“We should have taken more water with us,” she said.
“We can knock on doors, ask for some.”
“No. I hate to take their only drinking water. They’ll need it too. Safe water is going to be the worst problem in all this, I bet you dollars to donuts.”
Chad looked around at the altered landscape of the town. “You know, we’re only four blocks from the Safeway. If there’s anyone there, we can get drinking water off the shelf.”
“We’ll head that way. But first, let’s fix your arm.”
After she had, they made their way along, their feet making faint slurping sounds as they dipped in and out of the mud. Chad felt his bad Achilles twinge.
I’m going to hurt so much tomorrow he thought, then felt ashamed for whining, even silently to himself. Imagine what the parents of the little girl whose body they left on the porch would feel. Soreness was nothing compared to that.
They found one elderly, querulous man sitting on his front porch a half-block later and had to spend fifteen minutes calming him. They pointed out the mud level was dropping and that by the next morning, he’d likely be able to leave the neighborhood if he wished. The phone lines, the landlines, were out now too, and the old man didn’t have a cell phone. “It must be hard,” Chad said after they left, “sitting there alone with nothing to do but worry.”
They made it to the Safeway at twenty before noon. It was closed, locked, and the lights were off. Chad led her around back to the service entrance and pounded on the door. “It’s Chad Keppler,” he shouted, pounding again. He waited a minute and repeated his pounding, starting to think that no one was inside.
He was relieved when the door opened, Mr. Fonville standing there looking dazed. “You’re back,” he said.
“We’re working the streets, rescuing people,” he said, though they had rescued none so far. They had only comforted and explained. “We need water. A quick bite to eat, maybe.” He gestured towards Francie. “This is Francine Quill, one of the city’s firefighters. Mr. Fonville, general manager of the Safeway.”
Fonville offered his hand but Francie smiled ruefully. “I’m too muddy. And we don’t know what contaminants are in the mud, so maybe a handshake isn’t a good idea.”
Fonville blinked and snatched his hand back. “Oh! Well. Of course, come in.”
“You’ve closed the store?” she said, following him inside.
“Got all the customers out, like Chad said to.”
Francie gave Chad a nod of approval. To Fonville, she said, “Good.” She pulled off her boots, and Chad kicked off his sneakers. Chad put down the first aid kit, and Francie picked it right back up, carrying it along as she trailed Fonville into the store.
He said, “There are three employees still here.” He let the outer door close and the room turned dark. “We’ve lost electricity,” he said, turning on a flashlight.
While they walked back through the storeroom, Francie gave the well-rehearsed spiel about tap water. “The mud level is coming down, but it’s getting more treacherous to walk over. It’s slippery stuff. So you may want to stay here until it dries entirely.”
“How long will that be?”
“I really don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen a lahar before. If the weather stays clear and hot, it could be a day. Or more.”
“I can’t stay overnight,” he said, sounding appalled at the idea.
“Then be very, very careful with your footing if you do walk out,” she said. “Go in a group, just in case, and go before nightfall. There’s all sorts of debris under the surface. I’ve fallen myself, and I don’t want you to hurt yourself. If you get cut, go home and disinfect it well. She turned her head, studying the full shelves in the aisle they were entering. “I need to radio in and ask about all this food,” she muttered.
“What?” said Fonville.
“And the bottled water,” Chad said, reading her meaning. Most people had food for a few days at home. But what about water? The bridges were out, and Chad had no idea about the status of the big bridges over at Portland. It could be Washington and Oregon were totally cut off from each other. The store must have hundreds of gallons of water of various brands, fruit
juice and soda, enough for many, many people. Would it be commandeered, or bought? Would the distribution be regulated? Chad had no idea. This was one of the thousand details those emergency plans hadn’t given.
Somebody far up the command chain would know the right thing to do. Or he hoped they would know. They must have a thousand other things to think of at the same time. He was happy to be a soldier, not a general, at a time like this.
Francie didn’t talk about any of that to Fonville, but she must have been thinking about it too. She said, “I appreciate getting some water and a bite. We’ve been working hard just to get through the mud.”
Fonville glanced at Chad. “He’s a good worker.”
“He is that,” Francie said.
Chad felt a wash of embarrassment heat his cheeks.
She said, “Mr. Fonville, could we replenish our first aid kit?”
“We don’t have electricity,” he said, “so we can’t use the checkout.”
“Keep track and bill the fire department, then,” she said.
“No, no, Of course, just take whatever you need,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. The morning has been so….” He waved his hands in the air as if searching for the right word, but he couldn’t find it and shrugged.
After taking more antibiotic cream, saline in squirt bottles from the contact lens supply area, and the largest bandages the store carried, Francie and Chad grabbed wrapped deli sandwiches, Cokes, and an eight-pack of bottled water, each of them downing a bottle immediately. They put the rest of the water bottles into the large vest pockets and sat in the coffee shop to eat their sandwiches. When they were done, they headed back to their assigned streets.
“It’s more public relations than rescue,” he said, after answering another person’s questions.
“Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s social work, or just being a decent human being. Most times the job is heart attacks and strokes, you know that. Big fires are pretty rare for a firefighter,” she said.
He nodded. It had been in front of him all along, but he was seeing the job anew today. This was a major disaster, and he was a working rescuer, but it had been mostly trudging through mud and very little excitement, Band-Aids and reassuring words. Hadn’t he once heard that about being in a war? 99% boredom and 1% terror. That made sense to him now.
Francie pointed down the street to a lump the retreating mud had left in the street ahead. “And then there’s recovery,” she said. “That’s another body, I think.”
They made their way over, and it was a body, an adult human battered nearly beyond recognition. Broken limbs and neck, the head twisted around almost backwards, one jagged leg bone sticking out through jeans, gray with mud but still recognizable as human bone. Chad felt sick at the sight. There was no doubt this one was dead. Francie stooped over it to tie on a black tag. “You know, this guy might have come from way up river. It could be someone from Troutdale or Gresham or farther up still.”
Chad tried to imagine bouncing all the way down ten or twenty miles in the lahar, only to be cast up in downtown Camas looking like this. Of course, you’d have been dead for the whole ride, but it still seemed like such an abuse of your humanity. You wouldn’t want this end for yourself. He shook his head. “I don’t think I like recovery.”
“Nobody does. You make sure you talk to our psychologist after all this.” She stood, turned, and looked him in the eye.
“But I’m not a firefighter or on your medical plan or anything,” he said.
“I don’t care. I’ll tell Rausch to make sure you get to use her. And you can call me, even at night, if you wake up and need to talk. You’re at risk of PTSD, same as us all.”
“I am?” He thought of that as a wartime thing, guys who freaked out at the sound of helicopters. He couldn’t imagine being wrecked for life by this one day of work. Yeah, it was awful seeing bodies, and that little girl might haunt his daydreams for a while. Or the mud-covered bone on this person, jutting out like that, the weirdly twisted head. Okay, yeah. He could believe he might have nightmares, especially once he didn’t have a task to focus on.
She patted his arm. “Don’t worry about it now, but—”
Thud.
An explosion. Somewhere distant, he couldn’t tell where. He felt it through his feet and legs as well as heard it. An oil tanker somewhere? Or maybe a propane tank at the edge of town? Oh boy, they had low water pressure. If a big fire got going, that would be the worst. And could the fire engines trying to rush to put out a fire get stuck in the mud?
Then, BOOM.
The second explosion rocked him. He flinched from the noise, the loudest noise he’d ever heard or ever hoped to hear in his life. He pressed his hand to his right ear, which ached. A wave of nausea swept through him. Even his knees felt nauseated. Crazy. He pulled his hand away from his ear and looked at his hand, expecting to see blood. There was none.
His head rung like a struck gong. His right ear was buzzing, like right after a loud concert where he’d been pressed up against the amplifier stacks. “What—” he started to say, and he realized he couldn’t hear very well either. He forgot what he was going to ask and touched his ear again.
Then he saw that Francie was staring up and over his shoulder, her face pale, her mouth open in shock.
He turned. In the southwest sky was the familiar white of Mt. Hood’s glaciers. But from its tip—his mind registered that the shape was all wrong—there rose a black cloud of…of…. His mind was stuttering with naming it.
“Erupting,” Francie said. “The volcano is erupting.”
17
Below McNeil Point, 11:55 a.m.
Ellen and Ty had taken their time leaving the campsite that morning. He had treated some glacial melt water first thing and refilled all their water bottles, in case, he said, they decided to take a detour on their hike back down to the car. Up there in the clearing the world was beautiful under a clear sky. Amazing wildflowers, white avalanche lilies, purple heather, red Indian paintbrush, lavender shooting stars that opened up as the sunshine touched them. Ty knew all their names.
When she had her fill of the view, they had gotten their gear organized and had begun the hike down. After an hour, they made it to the turnoff he had taken to the lava tube cave yesterday.
Only yesterday? She felt as if they had known each other for weeks, not only a few days. She couldn’t remember the last time the first three dates with a man had been anywhere near this much fun.
He stopped and pointed out some sickly trees. “Invasion of some sort of Asian beetle causing that damage.”
She got her water bottle out and drank. “Is it serious?”
“They don’t know yet. It’s the container ships from Asia. They carry creatures and seeds on them, in them, and they get into the North American ecosystem and wreak havoc.” He stretched, and she admired the shape of his lithe arms. “It’s already so warm today. The clouds cleared up, and bam, it’s summer. Overnight, literally.” He smiled at her. “Hungry yet? I have an apple and some cashews.”
A tremendous bang shocked them both. Then a second explosion came, and with it, the earth beneath her rocked. She stumbled and flailed to keep her balance. He grabbed her arm and steadied her.
The noise had been so loud her ears hurt. No, her whole head hurt, her jaw, too. “Hello?” she said, testing. She could hear herself, but the sound was fainter than normal.
Ty was looking into the sky. “Run,” he said, yanking her by the arm and taking off down the narrow side trail.
“What?” He let go and she stumbled along behind him.
“Run harder!” he yelled and dropped her arm, sprinting down the trail.
She ran after him, confused, but with no doubt that he was seriously afraid.
He glanced back at her and forward again, sprinting harder. She forced her legs to move and tried to close the growing distance between them. Branches slapped at her as she ran.
In less than two minutes they had made it
down the trail to the lava tube. Ellen glanced up and saw a tower of black ash, a cloud looming above them. She stopped and gaped.
“Get in there now! Now!” Ty stood at the entrance to the lava tube. She realized it wasn’t ringing in her ears that she heard now, it was that thing, that black tower of ash, making a sound like a jet engine trying for take-off. She ran over to him and he shoved her through the narrow cave opening. He pushed in behind her, slamming into her body.
“Go. Go,” he yelled.
She stumbled down the slope of the lava tube toward the dark rubble at the end, his hand touching her back, falling away, regaining contact again.
“All the way back!” he said. “Faster!”
Stumbling on the uneven floor, she ran down the slope, away from the entrance, trying not to trip on the rough surface.
Then the whole world went black. She tripped over a bump and fell to hands and knees. Ty crashed into her and went down on top of her. He pushed her down flatter and covered her body with his.
The sound of a freight train. Two freight trains. No, a hundred freight trains, right over their heads, roaring, roaring, making her stupid with the noise. Her mind flashed on the column of rising ash and red lightning—red lightning?—she had just seen outside and, bizarrely, flashed back to her job and those book-banning crazies, their vision of their Hell, and she thought, that was it. I actually saw their Hell. That’s what they think will happen to ten year olds who read Harry Potter. What kind of hateful madman would come up with that? Her mind snapped back to the present, to the weight of Ty over her, his mouth at her ear. If he was saying something, his words were lost in the hundred-freight-train roar. She wanted to cover her ears, but her arms were trapped.