by Max Brooks
Then the howl, faint, distant. Not a wolf, or, at least, not like the wolves I’ve heard in movies. I know what coyotes sound like and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t one of them. I’m still not sure it was an animal. It could have been the wind shifting through these tall trees, or some trick echo across the mountains. What do I know about what sound does up here? The howl faded into a trio of short, deep grunts, the last one sounding just a little bit louder, or closer, than the others. I didn’t move, holding my breath, listening for another sound. Any sound. The whole forest seemed to go still.
Then I felt eyes on me.
I know you’d say it was all in my head, and I can’t think of any reason to argue. Standing there, all alone, under that eerie, smoky sky with a guilty head full of apocalyptic musings. But I’ve had that feeling before, on the playground or when Mom judged my outfits from across the room. That intuition is how I met Dan, freshman year, through the crowd and the music. I just knew. I felt. I looked up and there he was.
I didn’t see anyone this time. Even when I turned back to the house. I didn’t run. I’m proud of that. I just walked slowly, purposefully, and the feeling was gone halfway home. And now all I feel is embarrassed. I can’t believe I freaked out for no reason, that I let imaginary monsters pollute my happy place. I feel ridiculous, sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the back door, hearing Dan snore blissfully upstairs. The wind’s kicked up, the sound of the trees is so soothing. Maybe I should go back out there, finish my walk on a high note.
Nope. Just tried. Legs like oatmeal. Mmmm, oatmeal. I just finished an instant pack. Half, actually. Enough to quiet my stomach.
I can feel the irritation coming on. Dieting angst. I’m still not 100 percent sure that I should be torturing myself with Mostar’s batshit “rationing.” Even if she’s right about being cut off. How long can we possibly expect it to last?
I really need to sleep. Crawl in bed next to Dan. With earplugs. And maybe half an Ativan. A good night’s, day’s, rest. Give the world a chance to get itself together. And if it hasn’t, at least I can get myself together with a nice evening stroll in the woods.
From my interview with Senior Ranger Josephine Schell.
I call it a “Massoud Moment,” connecting the dots only after it’s too late. I got the name from Ahmad Shah Massoud. He was this Afghan guerrilla leader who fought the Russians and then the Taliban. I don’t expect you’ve ever heard of him. I didn’t until the day he died. I’d just gotten into New York. It was a late flight, like one or two in the morning? The cabdriver at JFK was listening to the BBC World Service. They were talking about how Massoud had just been assassinated by terrorists pretending to be journalists. I wasn’t paying much attention and I think I might have even asked the driver to switch stations. I mean, c’mon, I was just starting my vacation. I’d never been to New York, my friends were waiting. We had Producers tickets.
That was September 9, 2001, and I only learned later that killing Massoud was the opening act of the World Trade Center attack. I couldn’t have known that at the time. Nobody would’ve expected me to connect the dots. Still, I think about that moment a lot, about connecting the dots. I’ve thought a lot about it since….
She glances up at the map.
We found these bones. Pieces of them. Smashed fragments, like someone’d gone crazy with a hammer. You could tell they were deer, hooves, a few teeth, patches of fur. There wasn’t much left. No meat. Licked clean. Same with the leaves. Just enough residue to tell they’d been splashed with blood. I remember seeing this rock, big…
She holds out her hands in the size and shape of a soccer ball.
…with blood, marrow, bits of brain on one side. And it was reasonably fresh, a few hours maybe? But I didn’t stop to check. We didn’t have time. Remember this was Day Three after the eruption. None of us had slept, all those missing people…that’s why, looking back, I didn’t think much of the tracks. I probably wrote them off as ours, everybody just tramping sloppily through, nobody paying attention to anything except getting where we needed to be.
It wasn’t until after we’d discovered Greenloop—shit, it wasn’t until after I’d read her journal…that entry about discovering the remains? That was when I started asking around. And some of the other rangers, guardsmen, a few civilian volunteers, they had this “oh yeah, right” moment. And when I began to map and time-stamp everyone’s recollections…
She stretches an arm to the map, touching a collection of small, black pins I hadn’t noticed before.
That’s the first discovery, Day One.
She touches the next pin.
Day Two.
Again.
Day Three. My team.
She continues to move her fingers down the pins, drawing a clear, straight path toward Greenloop.
The “Massoud Moment,” connecting the dots.
* On November 13, 1985, the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia caused the deaths of approximately 23,000 of the 29,000 people living in the nearby town of Armero.
A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.
—CORDELL HULL, secretary of state to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
JOURNAL ENTRY #6
October 4
Ash. Falling from the sky. Big, lazy flakes. On the houses, the driveway, the windshield of my car. That’s where I am now, writing all this down, listening to the radio.
I should be sleeping. That’s what Mostar’s doing. The garden’s done. Dirt and compost from Mostar’s bin, all mixed together. Dan even came up with an irrigation system. He’s connected both our garden hoses to the garage sink, snaked it in curly waves across the entire garden, poked holes every few inches, and tied off the end with packing tape. He calls it a “drip line.” All on his own, no prompting.
And he’s moved on, again, to his new job of figuring out how the house works. “One thing at a time.” He’s asleep now, I think, but after finishing the garden he got right to work syncing his iPad to every system of the house’s CPU, learning how everything operates, losing himself in kilowatts and British thermal units. No prodding from us, no rest. More work in a few hours than I’ve seen him do in years. Who is this man?
Mostar’s moved on too. She plans to pick, slice, and dry all the fruit from our trees. Plums, pears, apples. Even the sour little crabapples on her tree that I never would have touched before this. “Every calorie counts.” She would have started this morning but it has to be, in her words, “after dark, so no one sees me.”
And my new job. I’m the gardener. I’m supposed to care for and keep an eye on all the seeds we planted. Not that we planted that many.
I picked through every item in both our houses and all I could come up with were some Chinese peas and a couple of sweet potatoes. I’m not sure if those have the same nutritional value as “the real thing”—Mostar-speak for conventional potatoes. “Better than nothing.” So sure, despite her utter lack of knowledge on how to plant any of it. Cut up the yams to plant the eyes, which Dan seems to remember from a sci-fi book he read recently, or plant them whole? Which we did. And what about the peas? Soak them first? Wrap them in a wet paper towel, which I vaguely remember from kindergarten, or just stick them in well-watered ground, which we did.
Mostar had no idea. She even said so. “No idea.” She confessed that she’s a “lifelong city girl” and that the only plant she’d ever taken care of was a tomato vine on her windowsill, which she managed to kill, by the way. And none of that seemed to bother her. Confidence, clarity. “We need to try.” She said this as I poked the last pea in mud. So satisfied, chubby hands on her broad hips. “We need to try.”
And now I’m with her. The needle’s moved again. I’ve been listening to the radio. A lot.
I just wanted to learn more about what’s going on, ge
t a better picture. Especially when I saw that Tony’s car was missing today. Maybe he pulled it into their garage but I’m pretty sure that’s their gym. He couldn’t have been gone long. When I came out of our garage/garden this morning, his Tesla was still there. He must have driven off when I was showering. He must have tried to go for help. But if a lahar really has covered the valley, how far can he get?
But what if the road’s clear? Vincent only thought he heard that story. Maybe Tony just wants to see it with his own eyes. Go Tony!
And yes, I admit, I feel kind of adrift, vulnerable now that he’s gone. I was hoping to ask him about the news before going to Yvette’s class. I could really use his grounding voice. Yvette must be so worried about him. I could hear the edge in her voice today, the slight rush in her timing. I guess that’s also a kind of courage, staying here to keep us all happy while Tony risks his life out there. That’s another reason I started listening to the radio, to maybe hear some good news I could tell Yvette to make her feel better.
Okay, that’s not true. I started listening just for me.
And wow, do I regret it.
It’s been about an hour and I’m more frazzled than ever.
If our valley isn’t covered, a lot of others are. They act like funnels, channeling the mudslides. My nightmare scenario, picturing people trapped in their cars. That’s exactly what happened. They don’t know how many people were buried. And not just in their cars. I was also right about people being killed at home, either in their beds, or else up and awake without ever being warned. That’s a huge problem now, getting the word out in time. They did this whole story on how most people get emergency messages from their cellphones instead of landlines the way they used to. A lot of people turn off their phones when they go to bed, or forget to charge them, or else ignore unknown callers because they think they’re telemarketers.
And what’s this about being cut off from the south? One of the slides reaching all the way to Tacoma, cutting the 5, the way we drove in? Something about rerouting to the I-90, and trying to organize evacuees north to Vancouver. What’s “contraflow”?*1 They keep mentioning that, and how people trying to drive out are getting really frustrated and angry.
Tacoma must be an important port. A lot of ships are jamming Puget Sound. A lot of accidents, especially with the little private boats. Ferries can’t get out. Something called the USNS Mercy can’t get in. I’m only catching snippets about why nothing’s flying. Something with the ash in plane engines and covering the airports, but also something about a crash, a drone hitting a helicopter. Everyone was killed, including some rescued hikers. I’ve heard two different stories about where the drone came from: an army type looking for people or a private one trying to get pictures to post on social media. Both stories talk about “suspending UAV supply drops.” Is that why I haven’t seen a plane or helicopter, or even a drone, since all this started?
We might be cut off from Seattle, but it sounds like Seattle might be cut off from the world!
I don’t get how this could have happened. There’s too much coming at me. One report on budgets and politics. Budget sequestration? Shutdowns affecting “long-term talent retention”? What does it mean to “destroy the administrative state”? And what is the USGS? Someone from there complaining about local businesses not wanting to hear the warnings, accusing them of “another Mammoth Lakes.”*2
The USGS guy is also trying to dispel what I guess are rumors going around. Lots of rumors. He sounded really frustrated the way he talked about Rainier not exploding sideways toward Seattle or triggering a tsunami or setting off a chain reaction where all the other volcanos erupt as well. He must be hearing these rumors a lot. And the reporter wasn’t helping. She kept bringing up these horrible eruptions in history, Krakatoa, Fuji, Vesuvius. She asked about how many people “could die” and “hypothetically, what’s the worst-case scenario,” and when she tried to get him to imagine what the “Yellowstone super volcano” would look like, he said, “Jesus, why are we even talking about this!”
Anger. And violence.
A local station, 710am, talking about a shooting at a Whole Foods on Denny Way. Where is that? More about long lines at other stores, fistfights, a hit-and-run at a gas station. A truck driver was pulled out of his cab and beaten almost to death. It was a bread truck. It was looted and burned.
I’m listening to a press conference now. The signal’s going in and out. This woman, I think she’s the governor, trying to answer all these questions coming at her. So many of them, the reporters, the things they’re asking. It can’t be true that rescuers are focusing on “corporate assets” like Boeing and Microsoft. They can’t be choosing rich neighborhoods like Queen Anne over middle-class ones like Enumclaw. That’s what one reporter asked, along with another one who shouted, “Isn’t it true that the USGS intentionally withheld warnings so the eruption would clear these towns for high-end development?”
A question about martial law. Oh my God! I’ve heard that question! Earlier today! When I got in the car, I flipped past some rant, not a news station, I think, maybe talk radio. Some guy, gravelly, frantic voice, railing against the “deep state,” and how this was all a conspiracy of withheld warnings to cause this catastrophe “as a pretext for using federal troops to disarm the public.” Those are the exact words I’m hearing now. Is the reporter just repeating the same rant we both heard?
The governor’s talking now. She sounds mad. Writing as I hear it:
“Settle down! Please, all of you! We need you to listen carefully to what we’re saying now. We cannot afford rumors. We cannot afford speculation. A lot of people are in real danger. They need accurate, honest reporting. They need the facts. You need to be responsible for what you’re putting out there! You don’t want to cause a panic! Please, think before you speak. Think about the consequences of your—”
Tony!
In my rearview mirror! His headlights, pulling back up to his house!
From my interview with Frank McCray, Jr.
Again, you can’t just blame Tony, or even the whole tech industry, for not being prepared. They all should have had emergency supplies on hand, but, really, who does? How many people in L.A. have earthquake kits? How many midwesterners are ready for tornadoes or northeasterners for blizzards? How many Gulf Coast residents stock up for hurricane season? I remember partying in New Orleans before Katrina and people talking about “when” the levees fail. Not “if,” “when!”
And that’s just the dramatic stuff. How many have a fire extinguisher in their kitchen or emergency flares in their car? How many of us have opened the medicine cabinet in the middle of the night to find that one pill bottle we so desperately need has a long-expired label?
And when it comes to supplying everyday life, being caught unprepared wasn’t unique to Greenloop. Neither was the one-click, online delivery system they depended on. The whole country depends on that now. No one remembers that Christmas in the late ’90s, before the dot-com bubble burst, when everyone thought they could click their way through Santa’s list. They didn’t understand that the gifts they were ordering still had to be transported, in most cases, from overseas, on very big, very slow ships. The result was that a lot of my friends didn’t get their e-toys on Christmas morning, while their parents spent the night before rushing from one sold-out Toys “R” Us to the next. And that was when we still had Toys “R” Us.
And what did we all learn from that giant kerfuffle? Speed up the distribution network— instead of preparing for what happens when the network fails. Go into a grocery store, any big chain, what kind of food do you see? Canned? Pickled? Dried? Not anymore. Not like it used to be. When I was a kid, most grocery stores had a very small fresh meat/fish/produce section. Now that’s all front and center. The business model of America’s food industry is same-day delivery of farm fresh ingredients.
But wha
t happens when the delivery trucks don’t come? What if they can’t? That’s what happened in Seattle during Rainier, that plus the power cuts. How much farm to table food spoiled in the first forty-eight hours?
And when it came to emergency supplies? FEMA doesn’t stockpile. Not anymore. Too inefficient. They contract out to the private sector, the big box stores, who don’t stockpile either because it’s too inefficient. All stock has to be turned over within twenty-four hours, and if a crisis just happens to hit at the exact moment you’re waiting for a shipment…
You can’t blame the people in Greenloop for having their cupboards bare. The whole country rests on a system that sacrifices resilience for comfort.
JOURNAL ENTRY #6 [CONT.]
Tony was filthy, covered in ash and what looked like mud from the waist down. His knees and elbows were scraped and he was missing a hiking boot. As I got out of the car to meet him, I saw a few others coming out of their houses. Carmen, Vincent, Yvette (in workout clothes with a towel around her steaming neck). He saw us all coming and waved up with a smile. He saw us just half a second after we saw him, long enough for me to notice the look on his face. Dazed, slack-jawed, staring straight ahead. Even when he saw us, the smile seemed definitely forced.
Yvette asked what had happened when she got close enough, then, as an afterthought, she remembered to hug him. Tony nodded to her, then to all of us, with that confident demeanor of his.
“Well, now I know what a ‘lahar’ looks like.” He took a sip from the water bottle on his hip and said, “I wanted to see…you know…for myself…” (I was right!) “…and yeah, I never got to the valley because the bridge…well, it’s gone…the river, mud, a lot of…stuff…debris…yeah, it’s gone…” His words kind of trailed off, like he was going to say something else. But his eyes unfocused as he took another swig.