Eruption (8 page)

Tomás pulled the truck over and Cindy got in. She told him about her broken conversation with John Masters. Tomás told her about the conversation he'd had with the broken-legged thief in back while changing the tire and repairing the undercarriage.

The man had said that he and his friend were working in Lago when the earthquake hit in the middle of the night. There had been a great deal of damage to the houses, and people had been killed, but he didn't know how many or who.

Cindy looked at Tomás's children smiling in the photos taped to the dash. Tomás wasn't showing it, but she was certain he was sick with worry.

Tomás explained that the village priest had returned to Lago just after the earthquake with a van full of orphans, three circus clowns, a dozen performing dogs, and two very small women.

“Mrs. Rossi and Nicole's sister, Leah,” Cindy said.

Tomás nodded.

Mrs. Rossi, Leah, and two of the clowns had been badly injured. A few miles from Lago the road had opened up,
swallowing the Rossis' camper and the other vehicle. The priest and orphans had been right in front of them and had missed falling into the enormous crack by inches. Because that road was the only way in or out, Lago was completely cut off. The two men had decided to head out on foot. They were both from Puebla and wanted to find out how their families were. They were surprised to see Chase drive up on the quad. The man with the broken leg claimed he had no idea that his friend was going to hit Chase in the head and take the quad.

“Do you believe him?” Cindy asked.

Tomás shrugged.

Neither of the men had ever driven a quad. When they reached the landslide, his friend took the quad off-road and it flipped. The man in back crawled up the bank because he didn't know what else to do. He had been expecting to die there.

“He may yet die,” Tomás concluded in English, “if Chase is unwell.”

Cindy took her phone out, hoping to reach Nicole with the news about her mother and sister. The signal was gone again.

 

John drove the truck up the mountainside at an impossible angle.

Mark was holding on to his precious camera with white knuckles. “You know,” he said, “these tires don't have suction cups.”

“But we do have a roll bar,” John said. “If we flip, we should be okay.”

“Comforting,” Mark said.

“Do we have a signal yet?” John asked.

Nicole tore her eyes away from the tops of the trees and glanced at the satellite phone she was carrying. “No.”

“Maybe it will get better when we get above the tree line.”

“
If
we get to the tree line,” Mark said. “Where did you learn to drive?”

“In the Navy.”

“Figures.”

 

“Lago de la Montaña,” Chase said. Pepe looked up at him. “I'm not sure how you say it in poodle, but in English it means ‘Lake of the Mountain.'”

The last half mile of road had been steep. The small lake was above the tree line and fed by glaciers, which had now turned from white to gray. The village was on the opposite side of the lake. Looming behind it like a petrified tooth was the summit of Popocatepetl. A thick plume of gray ash and steam billowed from the peak into the darkening sky as far as Chase could see.

Pepe scampered to the edge of the water and started drinking. Chase joined him. The surface was covered with fine ash and what looked like white floating rocks. He picked one up. It was porous and as light as a feather.

“Pumice stone,” he said.

Pepe picked one up in his teeth and tossed it into the air.

“Knock yourself out. It's not poisonous.”

Chase kneeled, cleared an area of ash and pumice, and scooped water into his mouth. He wasn't aware of just how
thirsty he was until the icy liquid hit the back of his throat. He put his head under water and came up gasping from the glacial chill.

“Whoa!”

Having his face clean made every other part of his body itch. He looked across the lake at the village. It had taken him so long to get this far, five minutes more couldn't hurt. He quickly stripped off his clothes, tossed them into the water to soak, then dove in. He thought his heart would turn to ice. He lifted his head above the water. His teeth chattered. Pumice stones bobbed around him like an armada of toy ships. Pepe ran back and forth along the shore, barking.

“Come on in! The water's fine!”

Pepe would have none of it. Chase stayed in as long as he could, which was less than three minutes. He waded back to shore, shivering. Facing the lake, he rinsed and wrung out his clothes as the air dried his skin. The wind had died down to almost nothing, which meant the ash was not blowing around as much, for which he was grateful. It meant he might be reasonably clean when he got to Lago. As he pulled on his underwear, he heard something behind him. He turned, expecting to see Pepe tossing more pumice around. Pepe was there, but he wasn't tossing volcanic rock, and he wasn't alone. He was sitting next to an old man and five children. Next to the old man was a wheelbarrow filled with sticks. The five children were carrying bundles of sticks in their arms and giggling. He didn't blame them. A second earlier, they had been staring at his shivering butt. He would have laughed too.

He quickly pulled on the rest of his clothes.

When he was dressed, the old man said something to him, which Chase didn't understand.

“
No hablo español. ¿Hablas inglés?
”

The old man shook his head.

Chase pointed at the village. “Lago de la Montaña?”

The old man nodded.

That was just about the extent of Chase's Spanish. He thought about mentioning Tomás's name, but realized he didn't know Tomás's last name.

I've known Tomás my entire life. How could I not know his last name?
He looked at the five children. He did know what Tomás's children looked like, though, and none of them were here with the old man.

Why are children out gathering wood?

He would have to
see
why when he got to Lago because he didn't know how to ask.

 

Tomás eased around the curve, then stepped on the gas. He didn't see the dog crates until they were bouncing off the windshield. He slammed on the brakes.

“What was that?” Cindy shouted.

Tomás shook his head.

They got out. The man in the truck bed moaned. Tomás checked on him before coming around to the front of the truck, where Cindy was pulling something out from under the bumper.

“Dog crates. Obviously from the circus, but why did they leave them in the middle of the road? And where are the dogs?”

Tomás squatted down and looked at the ground in front of the truck.

“What do you see?”

“Footprints.”

They followed them to the crack.

“Chase put the crates there to warn us,” Cindy said.

Tomás got down on his knees and pushed on the trailer to test its stability. It moved. He took the flashlight from his go bag and leaned over the edge with it. Cindy had seen him and John do the same thing on the levee road during the worst of Hurricane Emily.

After a couple of minutes, Tomás popped back up and said, “I will go first.”

This implied that Cindy was going second. She wasn't sure she wanted to go at all. “What about our friend in the truck?”

“He will have to stay here.”

“Maybe I should stay with him.”

Tomás shrugged and jogged back to the truck. He drove forward and parked it as far to the right side of the road as he could. He came back with a coil of rope and Chase's go bag slung over his shoulder. He tied one end of the rope to the bumper.

“What are you doing?” Cindy asked.

Instead of answering, he handed her a webbed harness with a carabiner attached to it.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

Without a moment's hesitation, Tomás danced nimbly across the wreckage to the other side of the crack. The trailer and camper were still wobbling and screeching as he pulled himself up to the road.

“Are you with the circus?” Cindy shouted across the fissure. “I can't do that!”

Tomás wrapped the rope around a tree, took up the slack, and tied it off. He motioned for her to put the harness around her waist and clip the carabiner to the rope.

“You are crazy!”

Tomás pointed at his watch.

“I know you're in a hurry, but still … I can't do this. I'll stay here and take care of the man in the truck.”

Tomás gave her another shrug and turned to leave.

“Wait!”

Tomás turned back.

Cindy snapped the carabiner to the rope. “Just go before you regain your sanity,” she muttered to herself. She stepped onto the twisted metal and immediately dropped to her hands and knees. There was no way she'd be able to cross it like Tomás had. She began to crawl. Three quarters of the way across, she heard a loud rumbling coming up from the fissure. The wreckage started to sway. She looked up. The sides of the fissure were grinding back and forth like jaws. The metal dropped away as if the earth were swallowing it.

Cindy screamed.

The old man was kneeling, with his arms wrapped around three of the children. Chase was crouched down, his arms around the other two and the poodle. Pepe was whimpering. The children were crying. As the ground rumbled and rolled beneath them, Chase looked up at the volcano. The plume had turned darker and thicker, as if someone were stoking the fire beneath. A church bell rang from the village. He wondered if someone was pulling the rope or if the quake was causing it to toll.

Chase had glanced at his watch the moment they had dropped to their knees in the middle of the road. When the quake finally stopped, only thirteen seconds had passed.

 

The shaking terrified the tiger. He unsheathed his claws and gripped the dirt so the ground would not drop out from beneath him. When it finally stopped, he continued to hold on for several seconds. He had lost track of the deer some time ago. Other scents were now pushing up the mountain. He lifted his head and listened. He heard the bang of metal in the trees below. He did not like the sound. It reminded him of the night before, when the
world came apart and the other cats lay still. He moved away from the noise so it could not catch him.

 

John, Nicole, and Mark were sitting upside down, pushing airbags out of their faces. Thirteen seconds earlier, they had been heading up the mountain on a steep incline. The trees had begun to thin out, making it easier for John to pick and choose his route. The truck had started to slip sideways and tip to the left. John shouted for them to lean to the right, but their weight wasn't enough to put the truck back on four wheels. The 4x4 rolled over in slow motion and landed on its roof. Then it started to slide, spinning like a windmill, banging off several trees before coming to a jarring stop against a boulder.

“Everyone okay?” John asked.

“I'm fine,” Nicole said.

“It seems to me that we were in this exact same position a couple of days ago,” Mark said.

“Not the exact same position,” John said. “That time we were on our side.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right. On a train trestle!”

“Are you okay?” John repeated.

“Couldn't be better,” Mark said. “Can we do that again?”

John unhooked his seat belt, righted himself, and kicked out the windshield. The three crawled out of the truck and looked it over. The quad had been smashed into several pieces.

“Guess we won't have to flip a coin to see who rides,” Mark said.

John didn't hear him. He was already headed up the mountain.

 

Cindy dangled over the steaming chasm, suspended by her waist. Eternal blackness loomed beneath her. There was no sign of the wreckage she'd been crawling on a moment before. The earth had swallowed it. She reached up and grabbed the rope, not trusting the harness alone to hold her. The rope bowed under her weight. She was ten feet below the road's jagged edge. Was Tomás okay? Would the rope hold? Did she have the strength to pull herself up if it did?

Tomás's respirator-covered face appeared over the edge. He shined his flashlight down on her. Cindy could see only his eyes, but he looked as relieved to see her as she was to see him.

“Rope fraying. Stay still. I pull you up.”

His face disappeared before she could ask him to explain.

Fraying
is not a word you want to hear when you're hanging from a rope
, Cindy thought, tightening her grip. As a television reporter, she had been in a lot of frightening situations, including Hurricane Emily, but this was by far the most terrified she had ever been. Her heart slammed in her chest. Tears poured from her eyes. She couldn't breathe. She tore the respirator off and dropped it into the void. She took a deep breath and started to choke. Something bad was in the air.
Sulfur? What's taking Tomás so long?
The end of a rope dropped down. She looked up.

“Tie to harness,” Tomás shouted through his respirator. “Tight.”

She fumbled with the line.

“Hurry!”

Cindy was doing the best she could. The respirator had not worked well against the foul air, but she realized now that it had been better than nothing.
What was I thinking? I've got to get out of this hole!
With fumbling fingers she managed to get the line through the carabiner and tie it off.

“Secured!” she shouted.

She began to pull herself along the rope, but found that Tomás was pulling her faster than she could move her hands. Within seconds he had her over the ledge and onto the road. He dragged her away from the crack and gave her a bottle of water. Her mouth and throat were raw from breathing ash and toxic steam, but she washed her face and rinsed her eyes before taking a drink.

“The village is not too far.” Tomás helped her to her feet. He took his respirator off and handed it to her.

Cindy shook her head. “You keep it.”

“Please. I insist.”

Reluctantly, she put it on. Tomás took his shirt off, wet it down, and wrapped it around his nose and mouth.

They continued up the road toward Lago.