Rain of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  Tonight, as the bright bead of another satellite fell between the stars, she was in a different sort of cold war. Ten feet from her, Nick snored evenly, while Wyatt had spread his bedding farther away. The wind bore the stench of burned rug.

  She’d never been able to sleep when she drank. Oh, she’d fall into a stupor for a while and then awaken feeling like hammered rat shit. With a cottony mouth and throbbing temples, the iceberg peak of a huge submerged hangover, she realized that even though her sleeping bag had good insulation, the cold was seeping through.

  Reality was insinuating itself back into her consciousness, as well. Brock’s prediction had come true. And if the new moon quake’s focus plotted on the plane of the fault running through the Saddle Valley what did that mean? Could her suspicion of this afternoon be correct, and the gas seeps along the valley really be evidence that magma was rising along the fault? She would have to talk with Nick about it in the morning.

  She looked at him, his forehead a pale shape against the darkness. If there had been no earthquake, what would have happened between them? She thought she knew, something naked, raw … and needful, for she’d been alone too long. Yet, how did he view what they’d been about to embrace, with the passion she thought she’d seen in his eyes, or with the kind of crass male indifference he’d thrown in Wyatt’s face?

  Twisting her head toward Wyatt, she saw that he lay with his hands clasped behind his head, staring at the heavens. She had an idea how much more virulent his anger would have been had he walked in on her and Nick in flagrante delicto.

  Something surged inside her. Whether it was anger at Wyatt for not joining the Nick Darden fan club or hurt at his continued betrayal of their prior closeness, she didn’t know. Maybe she’d brought this on herself by refusing to tell Wyatt the reason for her tears at Earthquake Lake, or not recounting enough details of her and Nick’s past when Wyatt asked the other day, but that didn’t make her sense of loss less painful.

  She didn’t expect to fall back to sleep, but the next thing she knew her eyes stung in the relentless morning light. The generator rattled and coughed. Her headache was a horror, and her head stung in the cold.

  When she raised it, she saw that at least four inches of powdery snow covered her sleeping bag. Nick’s was still mounded nearby and his frosty hair stood up in disheveled little peaks. Wyatt was gone. Over by the stable, the three horses munched breakfast from the bin he must have filled.

  Kyle worked the zipper and slid out of her cloth cocoon. Retrieving her jacket, she brushed it off, and found her boots stiff from the cold. Carrying them, she headed toward the cabin. Wood smoke poured from the leaning chimney. At the door, she stumbled and wondered if she might still be drunk. Then she realized the jamb was askew.

  Inside, the pungent aroma of coffee greeted her. Last night she would have sworn they’d have to abandon the cabin, yet now the cheery fire made a mockery of last night’s terror. Clean-shaven, save for his moustache, Wyatt was intent on the computer screen. A steaming mug sat beside him.

  “Morning,” Kyle muttered.

  “Coffee’s ready.” He did not look up, but she saw the livid bruise beginning to form, a bona fide black eye. Its colors were likely to rival those of her bruise from the dinghy when they’d swamped in Yellowstone Lake.

  A brief war waged between hot caffeine and cold feet. She dropped her boots by the fire, picked her way across the boards for a mug and poured. As she did, she realized Wyatt had piled the fallen rock, pulled down the loose timbers and swept. “You’ve been busy.”

  “Um.”

  She stood by the hearth and drank.

  Wyatt raised his head. “Nick still sleeping it off?”

  Something sharp in his tone brought back her anger. “I don’t have to defend myself to you. At least Nick was drunk when he hit you, what’s your excuse?”

  “I seem to recall you asked me to hurry back here last night. Christ, if you’d told me you had other plans, I’d have camped on the trail.”

  “Maybe you should have,” she returned. “What in hell’s the matter with you?”

  He slowly flattened his palms on the table. “You’re a smart woman, Kyle. You figure it out.”

  The intensity of his gaze combined fury and something passionate. The fire toasted the back of her thighs while the morning chill nipped her front. Her coffee mug began to tremble.

  She cradled it with her other hand, while holding eye contact with Wyatt. Somehow, she had trouble breathing.

  “Darden’s a player,” he went on. “He lights where the volcano blows.”

  “So what?” Nick stood in the doorway.

  Kyle turned toward him.

  “I’m a guy who drives fast and does handsprings on fence rails.” He walked to her and plucked the cup from her hand. His Adam’s apple bobbed beneath his stubbled jaw as he swallowed and made a toasting motion toward Wyatt. “Kyle’s a big girl, as I vaguely recall telling you last night.”

  Kyle felt heat rush to her face and prepared to tell them both to stand down.

  Before she could, Wyatt glared at Nick. “Let’s not go there again. We have to work together, at least until we get off this keg of dynamite.”

  Nick shrugged. “Come on, Kyle. What say we make breakfast?”

  If she had to face food, she’d probably throw up. Still seething, she went out onto the porch and resisted risking another splinter in her palm. When Nick followed, she put out her hand in a stop gesture. “Not now. Just not now, okay? Let me be a few minutes and then I’ll help you cook.”

  He opened his mouth, but appeared to change his mind and went back inside. Though she listened to see if he and Wyatt had words, it stayed quiet.

  A hard wave of nausea rose. She deep-breathed until it passed.

  After a few minutes she went in and helped Nick with breakfast. He worked by her side with uncharacteristic quiet, but knowing him, she likened it to the seismic lull that had preceded the earthquake. She was less able to hold things in, breaking eggs into the skillet so viciously that they were peppered with shell and the yolks broke.

  As they sat to eat, an aftershock rattled the dishes. Wyatt sat quietly through the tremors while Nick rode them with a surfer’s grin.

  “That was the first I’ve felt this morning,” she said. “I would have expected more.”

  Nick took on a thoughtful look. “Scientists in Japan often use a period of relative inactivity along a fault system to predict a sharp release of stored energy. Maybe the period of quiet we observed led to last night’s event?”

  “I thought those periods of quiet were measured in months and years,” Wyatt said. “We’re talking about too short a time period here.”

  “I would have thought so, but things seem to be happening here on an accelerated timetable.”

  Kyle was glad that speaking of their mission brought the two men to a truce.

  Nick went on, “We know for a fact from Wyatt passing safely through the canyon the other morning that the gas seeps popped up within a matter of hours.”

  A mouthful of pancakes grew bigger and dryer as Kyle chewed and forced them down.

  Wyatt pushed back his plate. “You guys should look at the quake records from the remote stations. Unless I miss my interpretation, the focus of last night’s quake was right under us at Nez Perce Peak.”

  “Uh-oh,” Nick said.

  Kyle got up and paced. Charring marked the floor from the burned rug. “We need to gather the quake data from the stations we’ve set out near here.”

  Wyatt agreed. “We’ll go on horseback and split up to save time.”

  “Whoa.” Nick held out his hands. “I’m walking, especially with the snow.”

  Wyatt looked exasperated. “I’ll take Thunder down the Lamar Valley. He can cover more ground in a day than Kyle on Strawberry or Nick on shank’s mare.”

  “Whoa,” said Nick again. “Kyle stays here.”

  “This is going to take all three of us,” Wyatt argued.

&nbs
p; “I’m going with you guys,” Kyle insisted, while Nick and Wyatt left their dishes on the table and started putting their gear together.

  Nick stopped rummaging in his pack and gave her a level gaze. “You need to monitor the stations.”

  Wyatt went to the computer.

  Kyle looked at the machine. “We need to email Mammoth and tell them how bad the quake was up here.”

  “I sent Radford a message earlier.” He glanced at Kyle. “Now I’m letting Alicia know I’m all right up here.”

  Sleeping at Wyatt’s house, as she had been since he left, usually gave Alicia a good feeling upon awakening.

  This morning she was uneasy.

  In the night, she’d been shocked awake by a quake that went on for many seconds, sending her heart into her throat while she waited for it to stop.

  In Wyatt’s terry robe that dwarfed her, she moved restlessly around his kitchen making tea. She turned on the TV and found out that last night’s shake was bigger than she’d imagined.

  A still photo of earthquake predictor Brock Hobart was in split-screen with host Monty Muckleroy.

  Monty smiled. “Folks, our friend Dr. Hobart has done it again. Brock, tell us what happened in Yellowstone last night.”

  “With the new moon rising,” Brock’s voice sounded a little thin, “Yellowstone experienced an earthquake of magnitude 6.1, as I predicted last Friday.”

  “I believe you said 6.0.” Monty looked coy.

  The audience laughed.

  “Monty, if you don’t think a 6.1 was close enough, I’ll have to find another talk show.”

  “Oooh,” went the audience.

  “As far as I’ve heard,” Brock went on, “there were no casualties. Most of the energy hit the park interior.”

  “What do you predict next?” Monty asked.

  “My preliminary analysis, based on public information on the Internet from the Yellowstone Seismic Network, makes me suspect there is a lot of energy still in the ground.”

  Brock’s casual prediction of more trouble infuriated Alicia. There he sat far from harm’s way while Wyatt and the real scientists were treated as nobodies.

  After Monty promised to keep the nation informed through more chats with Brock, Alicia headed up to Mammoth. Two news crews waited in the lot outside Headquarters. Inside the Resource Center, Iniki Kuni had a rumpled look to her spiky hair.

  “Did you feel that earthquake last night?” Iniki asked.

  “It was tough not to,” Alicia allowed, realizing that the young woman was more frightened than she had been. “But, didn’t you grow up here? Aren’t you used to it?”

  Iniki got up, revealing a thigh-high skirt. “It’s never been this bad. First that landslide, then last night…” Her voice went shrill. “Brock Hobart says it isn’t over.”

  Alicia said kindly, “Maybe we ought to wait and see what Wyatt and the scientists have to say. Wouldn’t you rather rely on them?”

  Iniki subsided back into her chair. “Okay, but I haven’t heard from them.”

  “I came to send email to Wyatt,” Alicia said. She vowed that after Wyatt’s absence this time she’d stop being computer illiterate and get her own account.

  With a glance over her shoulder at the large corner office, Iniki said, “Radford’s always freaking out about security. He doesn’t even let me into his email, but since he’s not here, why don’t you use Wyatt’s computer?”

  “Password?” Alicia asked.

  Iniki pulled open a drawer and pointed a dagger-like nail at a sticky note. “It rotates every week. Thunder for his favorite horse, stone, like rocks, get it? Or,” she grinned, “Alicia.”

  As she moved down the hallway, Alicia smiled to herself. Inside Wyatt’s office with the door closed behind her, she smelled heat from the radiators and could swear she caught the scent of him, a subtle mix of deodorant soap and evergreen. Finding his dress jacket hanging, she buried her face in woolen folds. She wanted to cry, for staying at his house was a poor substitute for being with him. Even his office felt abandoned.

  She moved behind his desk and sat, trying to hold on to her sense of him.

  After booting up Wyatt’s computer, and finding his password was ‘stone’, she opened his email. Not checking up on him, she did scroll through his inbox. He must have cleaned house recently, for he’d deleted almost everything except a long list of messages from kstone@ut.edu.

  Frowning, Alicia opened the oldest one that dated back over a year.

  Congratulations, Wyatt! I’m so happy you decided on the Yellowstone job instead of going for the oil company money. At least you won’t be far, for I’m going to miss my favorite student. I look forward to our working together in the future.

  In the next half hour, Alicia learned that Salt Lake City was at risk for a major earthquake, that Wyatt and Dr. Stone communicated at least once a week, and that the professor’s favorite color was blue.

  Alicia closed the folder. She brought up a new message box, but whatever had been in her head to tell him had gone. As for his password, Stone, yeah, she got it.

  Leaving the Resource Center, she found Superintendent Janet Bolido in her uniform and badge, fielding questions from reporters on the lawn.

  “Last night’s earthquake measured magnitude 6.1. The last time we had one that strong was in 1975,” called Carol Leeds of Billings Live Eye. Her faded mass of red hair made her look like Medusa in a jeans jacket. “What about damage?”

  “The Lake Hotel got a good shake,” Janet said, “but in the morning light we’re finding harm was minimal. Glassware, souvenirs, and the round glass window in the main stairwell were broken.”

  “Aftershocks?” another reporter asked.

  “They haven’t been too bad,” Janet said with evident satisfaction.

  Carol Leeds broke back in, “The main road was clear yesterday, but last night’s quake rained more rock and dirt into Gardner Canyon.”

  “Is that a question?” Janet countered.

  Alicia leaned against a porch post and found she was checking to see if it felt solid or whether there were more tremors.

  Carol went on, “What do you think about Brock Hobart predicting last night’s quake?”

  Janet’s voice stayed even, but Alicia thought she looked infuriated. “I take my information from park scientists. They tell me that earthquake prediction, as to the specific time, place, and magnitude, is impossible. Brock may have made a lucky guess. So did psychic Jeanne Dixon with the Kennedy assassination.”

  “What do your scientists tell you is going to happen next?”

  “There is a team in the field even as we speak, adding more seismographs to our already extensive network. If they come up with anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  SEPTEMBER 26

  After Wyatt and Nick had gone into the field, Kyle studied the seismic data. As she worked, the information coming from the stations corroborated their suspicions.

  The focus of most of the recent earthquakes, including the 6.1 magnitude they had dubbed the New Moon Earthquake, made an accurate map of the Saddle Valley fault plane, dipping down into the earth at about seventy degrees. A shiver ran down her back as she looked at the time and intensity of the previous shocks. Small tremors had stopped a few days before the New Moon Earthquake, the period of relative quiet a potential indicator of stress building in the ground. Noting the continued lack of post-quake aftershocks, her fingers went still on the keyboard.

  No, she told herself, it wasn’t time to start thinking like Brock Hobart.

  Yet, she decided to access his website. To the right of his publicity photo, shot in a rustic field setting, blared the headline:

  YELLOWSTONE QUAKE FAILS TO EASE BUILDING PRESSURE.

  Pressure, the kind that sent gas to the surface …

  Grabbing a gas detector, she went outside to check on the area around the cabin to make sure it was safe. Too high a concentration and she’d be forced to start climbing
to avoid the heavier-than-air hydrogen sulfide.

  Once she’d gotten a negative reading, she decided to risk a quick check on the progress of melting snow for the horses’ drinking water. Down the hill in the sunny Saddle Valley, she and Wyatt had spread a black plastic sheet and scooped a thin layer of snow over it. The edge of the sheet was draped over a rock and folded to funnel melt water into a PVC bucket. Around the black expanse, bare earth glistened, with sparse areas of frost propping up little castles in the dirt.

  Although the wind cut coldly at Kyle’s face and neck, even those ice palaces were collapsing in the sun. Certain they had laid the tarp out on snow a few hours ago, she looked around and found that across the hillside, the hummocky blanket of white renewed.

  If she had not been so concerned with checking her gas detector, she realized she might have seen it sooner. The area of barren ground was perhaps twenty yards wide, the melt line roughly linear. It followed the slash of Nick’s red pen across the map, as heat from below the ground escaped along the Saddle Valley Fault.

  When dusk fell with no sign of Wyatt or Nick, Kyle began to imagine the worst. Wyatt had gotten into a pocket of poison gas, or wandered onto a thin crust and fallen through. Nick had gone into the lava cave he had found up the mountain and been unable to find his way out.

  Just before full dark, she walked outside and used her gas detector again to be sure all was still clear. Coming back, she checked on the horses. Gray fell eagerly upon the fresh food she put in the buckets, while Strawberry sniffed at Kyle’s pockets for the expected sugar treat. “Good girl,” Kyle whispered, petting her velvet nose.

  Next came fueling the generator, building a roaring fire on the hearth, and lighting the Coleman lantern. Finally, she decided to make dinner. It was supposed to be Wyatt’s turn, but the guys would be hungry when they got in. With their food stores nearly down to canned and dried items, she chopped an onion and mixed in cans of beans, tomatoes, and chili. As she was stirring the pot, she heard the sound of boots on the porch.

  “Yo, Kyle!” Nick opened the door with a grin, his nose red from the cold wind, his jacket and pants smeared with dirt. “That chili I smell?”