Cataclysm

by Tim Washburn

  The girl glances up from the screen. “Don’t know. First time I heard them was this morning. I’m just working here for the summer.”

  “You mean when they ordered the evacuation of the park?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I think they’re for tornado warnings, but I didn’t think we were going to get any bad weather today.”

  Kelley turns away, her heart hammering in her chest. She spots Richard trying on a straw hat and hurries over. “Do you not hear the sirens?”

  “I hear them. Maybe they’re just reaffirming the evacuation.” He rakes a finger across the rim of the hat. “What do you think?”

  “I think we need to get the hell out of here. Why would they blow the sirens again if the evacuation is already under way?”

  Richard thinks about her question for a moment, then whips the hat from his head. “You’re right. Let’s round up the girls.”

  They hurry toward the back of the store, where they find both girls posing in front of the mirror, shiny new cowboy boots on their feet.

  Kelley latches a hand on each daughter’s arm. “We’re leaving.”

  “But I just found the perfect pair of boots,” Lori whines.

  “We need to leave now, girls. I promise I’ll buy you some on the Internet.”

  “They all fit different, Mom,” Lacy says. “These fit perfectly.”

  “Okay, just take the damn things off.” Both girls work on prying the boots from their feet as Kelley turns to her husband. “Grab the damn boots and pay while I load up the girls.”

  Richard scoops up the boots, once free of his daughters’ feet, and begins sorting through the boxes scattered across the floor.

  “Mom, I need my real shoes,” Lori says.

  Kelley lowers her voice. “Find your shoes right this damn minute.”

  The girls scurry up and down the aisles searching for the shoes they arrived in.

  Kelley whirls on her husband. “Fuck the boxes, Richard. Just go pay.”

  “But I don’t know how much they are.”

  “Maybe Einstein behind the counter will know the price.”

  The girls return, carrying their sneakers. Kelley pushes them toward the car as another round of the sirens begins. Kelley stops, whips out her wallet, and digs out a wad of hundred-dollar bills. “Give me the goddamn boots, Richard. Go start the car.” She snatches the boots from his grasp and hurries to the counter, where she plops down four of the bills. “That’s for two pair of girl’s boots. Keep the change.” She spins away and hurries for the exit. When she steps outside she glances toward Yellowstone and sees a row of dark clouds boiling toward them. She flings open the door, tosses the boots into the backseat, and piles in. “Go, Richard. Something’s headed this way.”

  He squeals the tires reversing out of the parking spot and rams the transmission into drive. He mashes the gas, but they hit a red light at the next intersection.

  “Run it,” Kelley shouts as she leans forward to peer out the side-view mirror.

  “Traffic’s coming,” Richard says.

  She glances up at the intersection. “You can beat it. Punch the damn accelerator.”

  He floors the accelerator and the minivan jumps into the intersection. The girls scream as a pickup clips their back bumper. Richard hits the brakes.

  “Don’t stop. Drive!” Kelley screams.

  Richard glances in the rearview to see if the truck is turning to come after them. The truck is slowing, but what he sees beyond the truck sends fear racing along his spine. He floors the gas and barely misses a car trying to back out of a parking space. He lays on the horn as the minivan shoots by.

  “Faster, Richard,” Kelley shouts.

  “I’m trying.”

  In the backseat the two girls turn to look out the back window. They shriek in terror and begin begging their father to speed up. Richard blows through the next light and sees open road ahead of them. He floors the gas but the small V-6 is straining in the altitude. Another glance at the mirror, and a pit the size of Yellowstone canyon forms in his stomach. Half the town is now ablaze.

  Kelley turns to her husband. “We’re not going—”

  The pyroclastic flow, traveling at over 100 miles an hour, envelops the minivan. The seething mass of superheated gas and ash begins melting the tires as the van lurches off the road. After a few brief seconds of coughing and choking, the sounds end as the Altmiller family is incinerated. The last items to ignite are the new cowboy boots that lay scattered across the backseat.

  CHAPTER 57

  West of Cody, Wyoming

  Kenny Huff, owner-operator of Huff Wireline Services, climbs from the cab of his brand-new unit and turns to one of his workers. “Go around and make sure all cell phones are switched off. I don’t want the damn perf gun to blow while I’m loading it.”

  The worker scurries away, and Kenny opens the back bay of the truck and begins assembling the perforating gun. This afternoon he’s using a two-inch hollow carrier gun with six deep penetrating charges per foot. Working with a six-foot section of pipe he begins loading the thirty-six shaped charges, carefully removing them from their egg-shaped carton and inserting them into the holes of the gun. He’s placing the detonator cord in the last charge when he hears the faint echo of sirens.

  He wipes his hands on his grease-stained coveralls and sweeps his gaze around the drilling pad. “What now?” he shouts.

  Hank Caldwell, the oil company geologist, slips out from behind the truck where he had sought cover. When you’ve seen a perf gun explode and rip through the man loading it, you quickly learn to find a safe place to hide. With a velocity of 25,000 to 30,000 feet per second, to better punch through the casing and into the rock formations, a human body offers little resistance. “I think they’re still trying to evacuate Yellowstone. I think they had a small eruption earlier.”

  “Are we safe here?”

  “We are as long as the whole thing doesn’t blow. Believe me, you’ll know when that happens. Gun ready to shoot? J.J.’s about to have a cow to get these wells producing. Hell, you’d think the man was down to his last dime, the way he acts sometimes. But hey, he pays better than anyone else.”

  “Gun’s ready as soon as we get her fed into the well.” Huff bends over and delicately feeds the gun into the riser pipe that will connect to the wellhead. “What do you think old J.J.’s worth now?”

  Hank kicks at a dirt clod. “Several billion dollars. Not sure of the exact figure, but I figure any man’s got more than one billion is one rich son of a bitch.”

  “If I had several billion dollars, you’d find my ass down in the Caribbean with my own damn island. Nothing but margaritas, blue skies, and pretty women.” Kenny finishes his task and walks around the pad making sure all of his workers are in place. One mans the crane, another handles the wire, and the third member of the crew climbs into a lift unit to connect the perf gun to the blowout preventer at the top of the Christmas tree.

  They’re fifteen minutes into the operation when a dark cloud appears on the horizon. But with everyone focused on their area of responsibility and the mind-numbing roar of the diesel engines, the approaching pyroclastic flow goes unnoticed. Kenny rotates his hand in the air to signal the crane operator to begin lifting. All eyes are on the perf gun as it slowly rises in the air, all hoping it doesn’t slam into the wellhead and detonate. With most of Huff’s more experienced workers leaving to take more lucrative jobs in North Dakota, this is the crane operators second month on the job.

  The crane man pauses the lift to dry his hands on his coveralls. He works his head back and forth to relieve the tension and, when he rocks back to the right, he spots the seething cloud of ash, now only a half a mile away. He turns to warn the others, and his forearm slams into one of the levers. The sudden movement causes the pipe to lurch, and it slams into the stacked collection of valves, knocking the blowout preventer from the stem. With five thousand pounds of flowing pressure, the mixture of oil and gas shoots high into the air.

>   Before the whole series of events can register in Kenny’s mind, the wave of scorching ash and debris races across the drilling pad, igniting the oil and gas in a fiery explosion that launches his new wireline truck thirty feet into the air. None are alive to witness the truck’s fall back to earth.

  Camp 6–Panama City, Florida

  Interview: Rhonda from Red Lodge, MT—grocery store manager

  “My husband has worked in the oil fields all his damn life. And there are plenty of others down here who have done the same. But boy, if anybody brings up the subject, we get more dirty looks than one of them homosexuals kissing his lover on Main Street. Some of these crazy-ass people have a wild hair up their ass that drilling had something to do with what happened. That’s bullshit, that’s what it is. They don’t give a damn that my husband busted his ass so they could drive out to the mall or sit in their warm houses. And on top of the disrespect, I haven’t heard from my husband since the whole mess started. He got him a brand-new truck and started his own business. Things were starting to look up, you know what I mean? Now this. Can I give you my information in case you come across my husband somewhere? His name’s Kenny and our last name is Huff. He was working down around Cody that morning.”

  CHAPTER 58

  South of Jackson, Wyoming

  The town of Jackson, Wyoming, is nestled within the Jackson Hole area, a long narrow valley, or “hole” in the Teton Range. With a little more than 9,500 residents, Jackson is a frequent winter playground for skiers and snowboarders looking for the thrill of steep terrain and abundant snow. But in the middle of June, most of the town is occupied by a transient population headed for Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, or a half a dozen national forests that line the slopes of the Teton Range. Now the residents and tourists are running for their lives as the ash paints a hazy smudge on the horizon.

  Andy Barlow steps over to the cabin window and lifts the curtain to see heavy ash falling from the sky. The ash, a mixture of rock and glass particles, infiltrated the air intake of his Accord, killing the engine only ten miles south of town. But he and Michelle weren’t the only ones left stranded. The highway is littered with dead automobiles, a mixture of RVs, eighteen-wheelers, pickups, and motorcycles—an entire smorgasbord of vehicle types. After a grueling two-hour hike, they arrive at a cabin owned by one of Andy’s friends.

  Michelle Marchetti steps out of the bathroom with a towel swirled around her head. She’s outfitted in a lacy black thong and a matching black spaghetti-strap bra.

  Andy ogles the outfit before saying, “We need to get going, babe.”

  “Yeah, where are we going?” She cocks her hip out. “If you haven’t noticed we no longer have a car.”

  “I don’t know how yet, but we can’t stay here.”

  “I thought one of your buddies owned this cabin?”

  “I mean, we can’t stay in Jackson, Michelle.”

  Michelle sits on the edge of the bed and unfurls the towel, running her fingers through her hair. “There’s no hair dryer.”

  “The lack of a hair dryer is way, way down the list of our problems at the moment.” Andy drops the curtain and walks over to the bed. “Which part of volcano eruption do you not understand?”

  She scowls. “Don’t start on me, Andy. I mean it.”

  He kneels before her and places his hands on her smooth, muscled thighs, which are honed twice a week by a trainer at the local gym. “The town of Jackson will cease to exist if a larger eruption happens at Yellowstone.”

  “All I’ve seen is a bunch of ash. I think we should hitch a ride back to my apartment.”

  Andy sighs and stands. “A ride with who? If you haven’t noticed, most of the cars are dead.”

  “Andy, I told you not to start.” She stands from the bed and brushes past him on the way back to the bathroom. “We’ll walk, then.”

  Andy throws his hands up in the air. “You want to walk back to a certain death?”

  She glances back over her shoulder. “I think you’re being a little melodramatic, Andy.”

  Andy’s cell phone chimes. He walks over to the bedside table and groans when he sees a message from his father: Where r u?

  Andy thumbs out a response: Where are you?

  His father’s reply: Bozeman. Now where are you?

  Andy sighs as he types: Just south of Jackson.

  He waits for his father’s scolding reply, but instead the phone rings. Andy answers.

  “Andy, why the hell are you still in Jackson? I told you to get the hell out of town.”

  “Well, Dad, it’s a long—”

  “Listen to me, son. A major eruption just occurred around the Norris area. You need to get in that car of yours and start driving. And I do mean now.”

  “Dad, my car died. I think it inhaled too much ash.”

  A long, pained sigh hisses across the connection. “Andy, this is only a precursor event. But it could be strong enough to hit Jackson with a pyroclastic flow. If not this one, then most certainly the next eruption will. I don’t care how you do it, but you need to get as far south as you can. Move, son. Call me when you’re in the clear.”

  Andy begins to gather up Michelle’s clothes with the phone pinched between his shoulder and ear. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”

  “Your mother and I love you, Andy. Please don’t fuck around with this.”

  The call clicks off and Andy pockets his phone. He steps into the bathroom and lays Michelle’s clothes on the vanity. “Get dressed, Michelle. We’re leaving.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “South. And we’re going now!”

  “Don’t yell at me, Andy.”

  Andy grabs her by the wrist. “I don’t know what it takes to get through to you, but if we stay here, we die. You have a choice—come with me now or get left behind.”

  “Fine.” She begins to pull on her jeans and top. “How are we going? We going to spread our wings and fly?”

  Andy pushes through the cabin door and stands on the porch for a moment, his mind spinning fast enough to make him dizzy. “How?” he mumbles as he searches for an escape route, his head swiveling one direction, then the other. The sky to the north is dark, ominous. A wash of dread rushes down his spine as his eyes drift toward the river. He stares at the rushing water for a moment before turning and hurrying back into the cabin. He grabs Michelle by the hand. “We’re leaving.”

  “I don’t know where my shoes are.”

  Andy tamps down the urge to strangle her and flips up the comforter, finding her shoes. He scoops them up and heads for the door. “Let’s go.”

  Michelle follows him outside. “Where are we going?”

  He thrusts the shoes into her hands. “Head down to the river. I’m right behind you.”

  “We can’t swim our way out of here. That water’s freezing cold.”

  He grabs her by the shoulders. “Just trust me, okay? Wait for me down at the water.”

  She nods and tiptoes through the high grass toward the river. Andy hustles around the side of the cabin, quickly unlashes a two-person kayak, and grabs a couple of double paddles. After tossing the paddles into the kayak, he drags it down to the river, where he eases it out into the cold, clear water. He holds out a hand to help Michelle aboard.

  “We’re going to float the river?”

  “Only option we have.” Andy gives the kayak a shove and scampers aboard. He grabs a paddle and backstrokes far enough into the river to catch the current. The kayak picks up speed. The Snake River runs almost parallel to the road, and they shoot through the bridge under the highway. Andy looks back to see a group of people watching their retreat from the bridge. Andy shouts out, “Start moving. Head south as quickly as you can.”

  An older couple waves and laughs, and Andy shakes his head. “I warned them.”

  Michelle hunkers down in her seat, trailing a hand through the water. “I still think you’re overreacting.” She sits up and turns around. “I left my cell
phone back there.”

  “It’s a goner now.”

  “My whole life is on that phone. We have to go back.”

  Using the paddle like a rudder, Andy steers the kayak over to the far bank. “Hop out.”

  “I can’t get out here. Take us back up to the road and I’ll run back to the cabin.”

  Andy hands her a paddle. “Start paddling.” He ships his oar and leans back in his seat as Michelle flounders around, windmilling the paddle and barely skimming the surface.

  Michelle screams and whirls to face him. “Are you going to help?”

  He crosses his arms. “Nope. Paddling upstream is nearly impossible, huh?”

  She screeches and stands, swinging the paddle toward his head. He ducks, and the paddle flies out of her hands, sailing into the river. She screams again and balls her hands into fists. Andy swallows a chuckle as he steers the kayak over to retrieve the paddle. Michelle spins away, loses her balance, and tumbles head over ass into the water. He offers his hand and Michelle slaps it away. She flounders around and finally crawls back aboard, flopping over the front of the kayak like a landed fish. Andy watches as she repositions her butt into her seat, never uttering a word.

  They float along in peaceful silence, the rocky cliffs lining both sides of the river creating a cocoon for the swift-moving water. Five miles downstream, the river makes a big sweeping turn back under the highway, their first glance of open sky since shoving off. Andy’s mouth flops open when he looks back to the north. The hills are dancing with fire. A roar like a thousand freight trains drowns out all other noises, and a dark, angry cloud of debris hovers on the horizon. Rocks and other debris splash into the water around them like rifle fire, some rattling off the plastic hull of the kayak. Andy scoops up the second oar and hands it to Michelle. “Paddle toward the far side,” he shouts over the roar.