Rain of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  He leveled out over Saddle Valley, flying at around two hundred feet.

  Kyle scanned the slope for the seismic station. There had been a brushfire, no doubt ignited by a glowing bomb. The charred area covered several hundred yards and had burned out upon reaching a line of trees. A hundred feet or so up a steep hill, blackened vegetation surrounded a copse of boulders, a landmark Kyle had used before to help locate the station while on horseback. With the normally pink rhyolite rock covered in soot, she almost didn’t recognize it.

  A five-foot mast stood out from the blackened slope, its solar panels canted and smashed. The burned tarp lay on the ground. What had been the plastic storage chest formed a black and bubbly drape over the lump of batteries and recording gear.

  Deering brought them into a hover over the ruined gear. Beside Kyle, Wyatt reached for her hand. In the same instant, she recognized the smashed casing of Nick’s satellite phone.

  Carol spoke into her headset. “How could anybody have made it through this hell?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  OCTOBER 1

  Could he have taken shelter in those rocks?” Wyatt pointed to the copse.

  “Maybe,” Kyle hoped.

  Nevertheless, after several minutes of slow reconnaissance, Nick did not appear to hail them.

  “What now?” Deering asked.

  “I suppose we should see if Nick climbed back up the mountain,” Kyle said.

  The pilot began to apply more throttle.

  “Wait,” Carol said. “Let me and Larry out here.”

  “What?” asked her cameraman. His medium weight rain gear was no more suitable for the weather than Carol’s denim jacket.

  “Look at this view,” she advised. “A clear shot all the way to the summit. I’ll be able to get a signal and phone in the first eyewitness account before anybody else gets here.” She scanned the sky as though looking for other aircraft.

  Having been hired for dual purposes, Deering diplomatically hovered.

  Carol twisted in her seat toward Kyle and Wyatt. “Larry and I will look around for Dr. Darden here.”

  “I can imagine the story if Billings Live Eye finds Nick,” Kyle challenged.

  To her surprise, Carol shot her a direct look. “You have every right to dislike me, but, like you, I have a job to do.” Her voice softened and Kyle had to strain to hear it above the helicopter’s racket. “If we find Dr. Darden, and he consents to be interviewed, we’ll talk on camera. Otherwise … I promise no pictures.”

  Carol acted sincere, but Kyle sent an inquiring glance at Wyatt.

  “We can use all the eyes we can get,” he said.

  The reporter’s alert gaze flicked down to their clasped hands, then she turned to Larry. “You in?”

  He gave the eruption cloud a baleful glare. “Let’s do the story and get out of here before this whole place blows.”

  Once Larry went out the rear door in a blast of cutting wind and Carol vacated the front seat, Kyle moved to take her place. Deering once more lifted off and flew up along the valley.

  Wiping condensation from the windshield with her fist, she noted a promontory where the footing would be easier than in the valley. “Nick probably would have walked up that way.”

  Deering guided the Bell above tree line. Wyatt spoke into his microphone. “Surely he wouldn’t have had time to get all the way up here.”

  Kyle hoped he was right. Below, volcanic bombs dotted the barren surface. There was no sign of Nick’s bright parka or the moon suit. But if he’d been struck down, he might already have been buried by the rain of particles.

  Turbulence hit once more and Kyle’s stomach lurched. As Deering banked, they bumped and tilted. Squinting out at the lowering visibility, he fought the controls. “This ash fall may put an end to our search window.”

  Kyle rubbed her chest to ease the tightness and tried to believe Nick hadn’t been in the line of fire.

  “What if he had some warning?” she hoped. “Something that caused him to get out of the exposed valley?”

  Wyatt bent forward. “I’d have headed up to the spine. Hidden out in some rocks where I was safe from bombs and had enough elevation to avoid a nuée ardente.”

  Deering nodded and flew toward the great dike. On the way, they flew over the Nez Perce patrol cabin, nestled below the ridge. Several holes in the roof attested to falling missiles.

  “Surprised it didn’t burn,” Kyle said.

  They headed farther up the irregular backbone of dark rock. A past fire had burned the hillside, making way for young pines that bristled over the slope.

  “If your friend hears us, he’ll come into the open and signal,” Deering suggested.

  The ridge top was narrow, in places only a few feet wide. “Can we fly lower for a better look?” Kyle asked.

  “The winds along the knife-edge are treacherous,” he replied. “I crash-landed up here during the ‘88 fires.”

  Kyle sucked in her breath and stared at the rugged terrain.

  “The visibility is going fast,” Deering said. “We need to pick up the others and get out of here.”

  Ash continued to drift like gray snow. Yet, seen through filtered light, the column erupting from the cone seemed to be diminishing.

  “See,” Wyatt observed. “It’s quieting.”

  Deering shook his head. “Can’t take a chance on that lasting.”

  Despite wanting nothing more than to be a thousand miles from this mountain, Kyle turned to the pilot. “Set me down. I’ll look for Nick on the ground.”

  Wyatt’s hand gripped her shoulder through the thick parka he’d loaned her. “Set us down, she means.”

  “You can’t cover any distance with that ankle.”

  “I’ll have to.” But as he bent to touch the bandage, a twinge of pain passed over his face.

  Deering looked at them both. “Anybody who gets out may have to stay behind while I fly away.”

  “If it were someone dear to you down there …?” Kyle proposed.

  Deering glanced at the photo taped to his dash. “Kendra … my girl’s learning to fly …” He gestured to the young woman with bright hair. “If she went down, I’d run through a forest fire to find her.” But with the next turbulent rut, he shook his head. “Be that as it may, I can’t land on the ridge.”

  “Go higher, then.” She pointed. “Up where the slope

  eases. Just let me out and I’ll start down, looking for Nick as I go.”

  Deering studied the clearing visibility. “I guess I could do that.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Wyatt said again.

  “And I told you no. Somebody has to find Nick and you’ll just slow me down.”

  He hesitated a moment more, fiddling with his boot. “All right, but we won’t go far.”

  “And if you have to leave …” Kyle said.

  Wyatt’s hand slid from her shoulder down to stroke her fingers. “If we leave, you’ll freeze to death in this wind chill.”

  “I’ll get down to the cabin. Build a fire and eat the emergency rations. You need to go pick up those reporters before they get hypothermia.”

  “You’ve got a goddamn answer for everything, don’t you?” He shook his head. “Nobody could say you were scared now.”

  As Deering began to climb once more through bumpy air, she realized Wyatt was right.

  Unfortunately, that ended as soon as her boots touched earth. The ground shuddered like a shivering dog. Wind knifed at her face, ears, and torso while she struggled to zip Wyatt’s parka and get on her gloves. The chill factor must be minus twenty, the risk of hypothermia real.

  Kyle watched the helicopter take off and head down into the valley. Moments later, it lost elevation, hovered, and landed on a flat spot low on the ridge. Wyatt climbed out, waved Deering off, and began to limp up the summit trail.

  She wanted to shout for him to go back down and meet her near the cabin. But despite her raised arms and wild gestures, he was a tiny figure far below who p
robably couldn’t see her signal.

  Worse, there was no evidence of Nick amidst the strewn boulder field. Seething at the knowledge that if he lived he was no doubt thrilled with the mountain’s display, she was surprised to realize it was affecting her, too.

  Perhaps it was the scientist in her, but there was something exhilarating about the charged air. Nez Perce’s change from peaceful, snowcapped mountain to angry, heated monster was both shocking and awe-inspiring. She’d only experienced such transformation once in her life, and as a terrified child, been unable to process it.

  A gust of wind struck Kyle in the back and sent her sprawling uphill. As the gale drove back the plume and cleared the worst of the sulfurous fumes, she saw for the first time the jagged edge of the vent.

  It was closer than she’d thought, less than a hundred yards. No more rocks ejected from the crater, and the ash column had faded from deep charcoal to a steamy gray.

  That pale hue gave hope. If the eruption at 1:12 PM had released the built-up pressure it might be weeks, months, or even years before any further activity. In the meantime, steam from the melted snow meeting hot rock would tend to form smaller phreatic explosions, like flinging water onto heated stones in a sauna.

  Kyle stared up the hill, while the steady wind continued to hold the cloud back. From all over the world, volcanologists were no doubt en route to Nez Perce Peak in order to stand where she did.

  She began to climb.

  Her boots dug into the soft mix of cinders and ash. Two steps forward and one back, trudging around the twisted bombs that ranged in size from softballs to Suburbans. Foot by foot, she advanced toward the unknown, urged on by the ancient drive of a student of the earth, to be the one who made it to the top of every mountain.

  Moments later, Kyle stood on the rim and stared into the fresh raw wound. The top of the mountain had been replaced by a bowl at least three hundred feet deep. Freshly broken rock littered the cindery surface as it did on the outside of the crater. At the bottom was a black hole around four feet across with yellow sulfur coating its lip. Inside the crater where the wind did not reach, steam billowed and ascended sinuously from the vent.

  Gazing into hell’s gateway, Kyle realized that if Nick had crossed the line where she stood, he’d never be found.

  Wyatt saw no sign of Nick as he toiled up the summit trail along the rocky spine. Sweating beneath his parka, he scanned the scree on the west side, checking to be sure Nick hadn’t fallen into a crevice between the large boulders. He also looked into each of the dense thickets on the eastern slope. His ankle, which had been better this morning than yesterday, was hurting again.

  A few minutes ago he’d seen Kyle up on the crater rim, something he could not imagine her doing for mere curiosity. After redoubling his effort in case she’d found Nick, he lost sight of her as the wind brought a cloud of steam into his line of sight.

  The tremors ramped up from a shudder to several sharp jolts that nearly threw him off the path. Gaining his balance, he tried to hang on while a ground roll of at least magnitude 5.0 went by. He hoped it wasn’t worse for Kyle up higher, but suspected it was. Wanting to rush to her side, he knew that if this level of quaking kept up, he’d be stuck in place no matter what happened.

  Crouched in the center of the trail, it was amazing how quickly he went from overheated to trying to turn his face away from the frigid air blasting at his cheeks and nose. With the ground this unstable, there was no way he could climb. Much as he hated to admit it, Nick must be dead … probably had been since the first eruption at 1:12.

  Above the rocky spine, up in the trees, wisps of smoke rose from a wildfire set by the lightning thrown off by the eruption or a falling volcanic bomb.

  Hearing a faint whopping, he looked up to see a helicopter circling. He waved and hoped to attract Deering’s attention, but this was a different aircraft. Painted olive drab, it looked like surplus from the Vietnam War. Even at a distance, he could see it was packed with passengers, their cameras trained on the reborn volcano. If this group, and there, a fixed-wing appeared from behind the peak… with them in the air, then Deering should still be able to fly.

  Wyatt craned his neck, but saw no sign of the Bell.

  As the arctic front’s assault grew more feral, he considered the merits of warming before a crackling fire. Hot beef stew, Kyle’s recipe. Hell, he’d settle for canned, even welcome blankets of coarse, scratchy wool.

  Down the slope sat the Nez Perce patrol cabin.

  Wyatt snugged the hood of his parka closer around his face until he peeked out through a narrow tunnel. Though he wanted nothing more than to sprout wings and get off this powder keg, he had no choice but to try and survive until help arrived.

  He prepared for the effort of getting to his feet, but before he could move, a low frequency rumble began to be audible. Accompanied by renewed tremors, it sounded as though the Devil rolled barrels in the bowels of the earth.

  Larry filmed Carol as she spoke into the satellite phone. Then he panned around and up the long slope toward the fuming peak. Fine ash created a hazy effect, but she was right about this being a wonderful vantage point. With the wind holding the steam back, he could see the crater rim through his viewfinder.

  He could even zoom in and make out a tiny figure, practically skiing down the loose surface of the upper cone.

  Behind him, Carol said into the phone, “We’re watching the rescue effort from the last known position of USGS scientist Dr. Nicholas Darden. There is no sign of him here, so it is assumed he headed up the peak. Right now, we can see Dr. Kyle Stone near the mountaintop searching for her colleague. Formerly of the Utah Institute, Dr. Stone appeared yesterday morning on America Today to predict just such a debacle as has occurred.”

  Larry watched Kyle run, hoping she didn’t fall for the ground was shaking constantly. The dull resonance he’d sensed beneath the howl of the wind rose.

  “Standing here is like riding in the back of a truck on a rutted road,” Carol reported. “There have been several larger shocks in the last few minutes …”

  All at once, the sound surged upward into a shriek that made Larry imagine the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. A sharp shock of earthquake struck, the sensation of an elevator dropping a few feet and jerking to a halt. He braced his feet and kept the camera running.

  Through the LED screen he watched the crater rim dissolve. Then an explosion tore the peak apart in eerie silence.

  “My, God,” Carol screamed. “It’s going up.”

  Out, thought Larry, as a boiling mass that looked and behaved like an avalanche of gray snow poured down the mountain. Glowing, incandescent, shot with electricity. As the jet-like sound subsided, Larry heard the flow. Hugging the lows on the mountain’s face, it gave forth an animalistic growl, mixed with an ominous clacking.

  Beside him, Carol’s mouth was open; she appeared to scream. He staggered up and shouted, “Run!” but she stood frozen.

  He grabbed her arm and gestured to a man-high stack of boulders up the slope. They needed to get behind it or they would have no chance.

  Still, she did not move. Unable to manage holding the camera and dragging Carol, Larry let the video unit drop. It bounced off a twisted chunk of lava rock, landing soundlessly amid the clamor.

  The flow came on, billowing, surging; enveloping everything in its path.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  OCTOBER 1

  From the upper end of the mountain’s eastern spine, Kyle watched the crater’s side collapse. Impossible to think she’d stood there only moments before with the faith of a child in Santa.

  As the nuée poured over the rim, her throat constricted. She knew she could never outrun this fiery gathering of broken rock and ash, tumbling particles that threw off lightning spears and charged the air with ozone. It thrust forth from the mouth of the declivity and spread over the slope with a horrible energy. Constantly shifting, forming new shapes, it sprang down the mountain like a leopard dropping from a br
anch onto prey.

  Knocked to her hands and knees by a quake, Kyle watched annihilation wing toward her, furious, alight with a reddish glare.

  She struggled to her feet; half running, half sliding down the gravel slope on the east side of the spine and into the forest. With no time to escape, she sat with her back against the nearest large pine and pulled her pack up to protect her head. Knees drawn to her chest, she unzipped Wyatt’s parka and ducked her face inside, creating an air pocket in case part of the nuée crested the ridge and dropped down over her.

  Her ears already ringing from the piercing note preceding the eruption, she flinched at the cacophony of the surging current. It managed at once to whoosh, roar, and clank, like a flash flood she’d once heard in a desert wash.

  She took a big breath, wondering if it would be her last, and wished she had let Wyatt get out of the helicopter with her so he’d be here to hold her … but no, if she were going to die she’d want him to live.

  Listening with horror to the uproar, she suddenly realized it had reached the peak of its crescendo and began to lessen. When no roiling cloud overtook her, she inhaled with care.

  On a puff of foul air, she tasted the taint of burned matches. Hugging her knees, she tried to tell her knotted muscles to relax.

  When the sound and the sulfur fumes diminished, she decided to climb back onto the spine and see if she could see Wyatt. Leaving her pack at the base of the tree, she dragged herself back up the slope to the ridge top. Though the wind shoved her shoulders and tore at her hood, she planted her feet against the earth tremors and looked down the west valley.

  Ash coiled like smoke in the air above the dying avalanche. The path of newly deposited gravel and sand size material formed a meandering path down the lowest downhill route. It had passed close to the ridge where Kyle had hidden out and even closer down near where she’d last seen Wyatt. But what chilled her even more was that the place they’d left the journalists beside seismic station four had been overrun and buried.

  It was time to get off this mountain. Her watch read 5:55; with the lowering ash cloud, a premature darkness began to fall. The thought of night sent an arrow of alarm through her. After the violence of the last surging flow, she had to accept that she might be the only person left alive down here.