Read Supervolcano: Eruption Online
Authors: Harry Turtledove
Supervolcano: Eruption (31 page)
“And so I used to be a cop down in San Atanasio, California,” Schurz answered. “Colin Ferguson’s a buddy of mine. He asked me to see what I could do about getting you out of here. Are you ready to go?”
Colin had said he might be able to pull some strings. He must have meant it. Colin, Kelly had discovered, commonly meant what he said. That was so far out of the ordinary, she was still getting used to it. “Am I ready?” she echoed.
“Yes, ma’am,” Chief Schurz said. “I’ve got a Humvee with a desert air filter parked out front. It’s what I came here in.”
In case you think I bounced in on a pogo stick or something
. The mirrored shades kept his face from showing how big a jerk he thought she was.
In case you think I bounced in on a pogo stick or something
. The mirrored shades kept his face from showing how big a jerk he thought she was.
“Let me grab my purse,” Kelly said. All at once, she believed. It wasn’t as if she had much more than that here. She hugged Ruth and Larry. “Tell Daniel thanks a couple of million for me.”
“We will.” Ruth Marquez sounded wistful, or more likely jealous.
Kelly followed Roy Schurz out to the Humvee. It
was
a Humvee, too, not a Hummer: a military vehicle, painted in faded desert camo. It mounted the biggest machine gun Kelly had ever imagined. A soldier sat behind the gun.
was
a Humvee, too, not a Hummer: a military vehicle, painted in faded desert camo. It mounted the biggest machine gun Kelly had ever imagined. A soldier sat behind the gun.
“National Guard,” Schurz explained. “I borrowed the vehicle—and Edwards there—from them. Colin, he thinks you’re something special.” He didn’t say
Hell with me if I can see why
, but it was in his voice.
Hell with me if I can see why
, but it was in his voice.
“I think he’s something special, too,” Kelly managed.
“Good. When him and Louise broke up, he was mighty, well, broke up about it. Now he’s more like his old self again.” Schurz gestured. “Hop on in.”
It was a tall hop; the Humvee had humongous tires. Kelly climbed aboard. The seat was severely functional. Chief Schurz got in on the driver’s side. The engine might boast a desert filter, but it sounded raspy anyway. Of course, it probably had that filter because it had seen action in Iraq or Afghanistan. It wasn’t new, or close to new. It was a Regular Army castoff good enough for the Idaho National Guard. Chances were it had sounded raspy for years.
Roy Schurz put it in gear. It rode as if it had left its shocks near Kandahar, that was for sure. “Do we really need a gunner?” Kelly had to shout to make herself heard.
“Well, you never can tell,” Schurz shouted back. The Humvee kicked up its share of dust and then some. He pulled a surgical-style mask out of his shirt pocket and put it on with one hand. The Smokey Bear hat went into his lap for a second, no more. He extracted another mask and offered it to Kelly. “Your own air filter.”
“Thanks.” She put it on. When she turned around to look at the machine gunner—Edwards—she discovered he’d also donned one. The less volcanic crap you put in your lungs, the better. A lot could kill you pretty fast. Even a little wasn’t good news. Twenty, thirty, fifty years from now, she expected mesothelioma cases to shoot through the roof. Not much of what the supervolcano belched into the air was asbestos fibers, but when you were talking about several hundred cubic miles of material there’d be plenty to go around.
A Missoula policeman with a shotgun stood guard at the edge of town. He was also wearing a mask. He waved to the Humvee as it got on US 12 heading south—Orofino evidently wasn’t on the Interstate. Chief Schurz gravely waved back.
“Well, you never can tell,” Schurz repeated. With the mask and shades, his face was almost completely unreadable. But the way he fidgeted in the hard, uncomfortable bucket seat told Kelly he realized he needed to say more: “People are starting to run low on all kinds of stuff. They’re putting armed escorts on food and fuel convoys. We haven’t had a lot of trouble yet, and nobody wants it to start, y’know?”
“I guess,” Kelly said. How many folks couldn’t get to a Safeway or a Mobil station so easily these days? How many couldn’t get their hands on ground chuck or gasoline even when they did? How many of those folks had guns? In this part of the country, quite a few. And what would they do when they got hungry or otherwise desperate? If you had to take what you needed or starve, who wouldn’t think about turning robber?
“I’ve got some jerrycans of gas in the vehicle here,” Chief Schurz went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. “That’s one of the reasons I brought Edwards along. Nothing like a soldier on a .50-caliber to keep people honest.”
“God, you sound like Colin!” Kelly blurted, all at once missing him more than ever now that she was actually heading toward him, not stuck in Missoula.
The Orofino (would that be
Fine Gold
in Spanish?) police chief chuckled. “Wouldn’t be surprised if we rubbed off on each other some. You ride in the same patrol car a few years, that’ll happen. Almost like being married, only without benefits.”
Fine Gold
in Spanish?) police chief chuckled. “Wouldn’t be surprised if we rubbed off on each other some. You ride in the same patrol car a few years, that’ll happen. Almost like being married, only without benefits.”
Not knowing what to say to that, Kelly didn’t say anything. They climbed toward the hills, which were covered with a light coating of ash, a little too dark and a little too brown to look like dirty snow. Most of the clouds in the sky were just clouds. It was a gloomy, chilly, lowering day. Her heart soared like a skylark anyhow. She was out, out, out of Missoula!
Hardly anybody shared the road with the Humvee. She didn’t know how many people used US 12 on an average day, but this had to be way down from that. Just across the Idaho line, Schurz pulled onto the shoulder. Some grass showed through the ash here; they were right at the western edge of the throw line.
“Is the, uh, Humvee okay?” Kelly asked.
“As okay as it ever is,” he replied. “Gotta throw in some fuel. It can do more than a jeep can, but Christ, it’s a gas hog.” He and the silent Edwards emptied two camo-painted jerrycans into the vehicle. Then he got behind the wheel again, fired up the machine, and drove on towards Orofino.
XIII
T
hings in Kansas were better than they had been in Colorado. Vanessa was con
vinced of it, even though she breathed through three masks worn one on top of the next and kept swimming-pool goggles on even when she slept. Her eyes itched all the time anyhow; she hadn’t got the goggles soon enough. She couldn’t take them off to rub or use Visine or anything. The air was still too full of fine dust.
hings in Kansas were better than they had been in Colorado. Vanessa was con
vinced of it, even though she breathed through three masks worn one on top of the next and kept swimming-pool goggles on even when she slept. Her eyes itched all the time anyhow; she hadn’t got the goggles soon enough. She couldn’t take them off to rub or use Visine or anything. The air was still too full of fine dust.
Pickles was even less happy than she was. He couldn’t wear a mask or goggles, poor thing. She didn’t know what to do about him. She couldn’t keep him in the carrier all the time, but she couldn’t let him out, either. She still had nasty scratches from when she’d extracted him from under the Toyota’s front seat. She had to get someplace where he’d be able to move around more—and where she would, too.
width="1em">She carried a snub-nosed .38 revolver in her purse. Her father had taught her how to handle firearms when she was twelve. She’d never used what she’d learned; she always worried more about a moment of rage or stupidity or black depression than about blowing away a burglar. But the times, they were a-changin’.
She’d got the gun in Pueblo. Another hundred miles and a little bit away from the supervolcano, it hadn’t been hit as hard as Denver. She stopped for gas and a fresh air filter. She paid ten bucks a gallon plus another fifty for the filter, and she didn’t say boo. She could count the cost later. Now was a time for doing what she had to do.
The guy who took her money was already wearing goggles. “Where did you get those?” she demanded enviously.
He pointed across the street. “Walgreens is still open.” She could barely see the sign through swirls of dust, but she stopped there as soon as he finished with her car. He used a mask, too, and had probably also got his hands on it at the drugstore.
Volcanic ash came in every time the automatic door opened, and would keep coming in as long as it kept working. Still, like the air inside her car, the air inside the Walgreens improved on the general run of things. There was a display of goggles with bright plastic straps.
Only three boxes of masks were left. “One box to a customer, ma’am,” the clerk said when Vanessa tried to buy them all. “We want to spread ’em around as much as we can.”
She could see the logic in that, even if she didn’t like it. Unlike the man at the gas station, the Walgreens clerk didn’t gouge her for what she bought. “How long will you stay here?” she asked him as she put on the goggles.
“I don’t know. A while longer. I’ll see if it looks like it’s getting worse or better,” he answered.
“It won’t get better.” Vanessa spoke with great conviction.
“Well, you may be right,” he replied, which had to mean
I ain’t paying any attention to
you
, lady
.
I ain’t paying any attention to
you
, lady
.
She put on one of the masks before she went outside again, too. Either it made a difference or her imagination was working overtime. That was when she noticed the gun shop between the Walgreens and a tropical-fish store. The fish place was dark, but a light burned in the gun shop. Out in the middle of—this—having a real weapon looked like a terrific idea. She went inside.
The man behind the counter looked like a shop teacher. He was leafing through—surprise!—a hunting magazine, but he put it down. “What can I do for you?” he said.
“I made it down from Denver,” Vanessa answered. “I want to keep going. In case my car doesn’t, I may need to take some chances. A pistol could come in handy.”
He nodded. “If you know how to use one.”
“My dad’s a cop in California.”
“Then you probably do,” he allowed. “You’ll have to fill out about five pounds of forms.”
“As long as there’s no waiting period,” Vanessa said. “I’m not going to wait.”
“Not in this state,” he assured her. “I do have to perform a background check, though. Right now, the phones are out, and so is the Net.” He rubbed his chin. “Turn around, please.”
“Huh?” Mystified, Vanessa did.
“Thank you,” Vanessa said, more sincerely than she was in the habit of doing. She handed him her Visa card. “Here.”
He took it, but he didn’t do anything with it for a few seconds. Was he going to ask her for a blowjob, too, or something? If he did, she’d . . . She didn’t quite know what she’d do. In normal times, she would have told him to go fuck himself. In normal times, though, she wouldn’t have been standing here in a Pueblo, Colorado, gun shop. She needed a piece. If he decided he needed one, too . . .
But it didn’t come to that. He just said, “You want to be careful on the road, Ms., uh”—he looked down at the little plastic rectangle in his hand—“Ferguson. A pistol can get you out of some tight spots, sure. Maybe you’d do better not getting into them in the first place, though.”
She shook her head. “If I hadn’t bailed out of Denver when I did, I would’ve been stuck there. If you don’t get out of here pretty damn quick, you won’t be able to leave, either.”
“I’m still thinking about it,” he said. Vanessa left it there; she was a refugee, not a missionary. He went on, “You’ll want to buy a couple boxes of cartridges, too, am I right?”
“That’s why God made plastic,” Vanessa agreed.
As soon as she got back to the car, she loaded the .38. It was a double-action model; you could safely carry a round in every chamber in the cylinder. And she did. She felt better having it. She might have faced a nasty choice in the gun shop. Out on the road, there were bound to be sons of bitches who didn’t believe in giving any choices.
If she got back on the Interstate, she’d end up in New Mexico. If she chose US 50 instead, she’d cross the Colorado prairie till she got to the Kansas prairie. Kansas held no appeal. Sometimes, though, you didn’t get what you wanted. She hadn’t been off I-25 very long, but when she went back cars were coming off at the on-ramp. That couldn’t possibly be a good sign.
And it wasn’t. A cop in a pig-snouted gas mask—which had to work better than goggles and a surgical job—waved what looked like an orange light saber. He yelled something at Vanessa. She couldn’t make out what it was. Reluctantly, she cracked the window. Ash started coming in.
“Interstate’s closed,” the cop said, his voice sounding distant, almost underwater, through the mask. “Big old accident south of town. Worst mess you’ve ever seen, I swear to God.”
Vanessa doubted that. She’d seen L.A. messes, after all. But then she had second thoughts. All the blowing dust might have done to I-25 what tule fog did in California’s Central Valley—it could turn I-5 into Slaughterhouse Five, and did just about every winter. Twenty or fifty or eighty cars and SUVs and trucks all turned to crumpled sheet metal, some of them burning, with dazed and bleeding people wandering around coughing from the ash, every now and then a fresh, tinny crash as a new fool didn’t spot the wreck up ahead soon enough....
“Maybe I’ll go east instead,” she said, thinking
And to hell with Horace Greeley
.
And to hell with Horace Greeley
.
“Good plan,” the cop said in that otherworldly voice. “If there’s wrecks on 50, they aren’t close to Pueblo.”
Which meant they ound t’t his problem. But which also meant she could put some more miles between her and the supervolcano. By Interstate standards, US 50 was old and shabby. It was also open, though, so Vanessa did her best to make lemonade. She might not be able to go as fast as she wanted to, but at least she was going. She tried to ignore Pickles’ yowls, which was like trying to ignore a toothache.
A lot of cars were crapped out by the side of the road. She blessed the new air filter she’d got in Pueblo. Every so often, she’d come up on a car that had crapped out in the middle of the road. A couple of times, she almost rear-ended one. Was that how the giant pileup on I-25 had started? She wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.
She was a little more than an hour—say, thirty-five miles—out of Pueblo when it started to rain. When the first big drops splatted down on her windshield, she let out a war whoop of delight. Rain would wash the ash out of the air. If she could see where she was going, she’d get there faster.
But the rain didn’t wash all the grit out of the air—there was too much of it in the air for that. And when she turned on the wipers, they did as much harm as good. They pushed grit back and forth across the windshield; she could hear it, almost feel it, scraping first one way, then the other. And it was rock grit, some of it at least as hard as the glass it was grinding across. Arced scratches spread across the broad pane. That wasn’t smeared dirt, the way she hoped for a moment; the windshield was marked for good.
Vanessa swore as loudly as she’d whooped, startling the cat into momentary silence. There was so much ash and dust on the highway that she soon began to feel she was trying to drive through mud. That was exactly what she was doing, too. She had to slow down even more instead of speeding up the way she wanted to.
A lordly Cadillac Escalade zoomed past her. Its giant tires splattered the side of her car—and her side windows—with muck. Then the supersized SUV cut in front of her. She had to hit the brakes to keep from smashing into it, or more likely going under it. More gritty mud splashed her windshield. The wipers did their best to shove it aside. Their best abraded the glass some more.
“You dumb fucking asshole!” she howled, and flipped the Escalade the bird. The imbecile behind the battleship’s wheel probably couldn’t see her do it, what with her filthy, scarred front glass, but she was most sincere.
Then she remembered the brand-new .38 in her handbag. She’d never understood road-rage shootings before. They’d always seemed the province of gangbangers with shaved heads and teardrop tats. Now she got it. Somebody did you wrong, so you went and made that sucker pay.
She imagined the Escalade slewing crazily off the road, flipping over—weren’t all those stinking SUVs top-heavy as hell?—and bursting into flame. She imagined the jerk driving it toasting till he was overdone, along with Mrs. Jerk and all the little Jerks in their car seats.
And she let out a long, shuddering breath and made damn sure she didn’t reach inside the purse. A moment of fury would be all it took, all right. You couldn’t—well, you shouldn’t—give in to something like that. But people did, all the time. Her old man wouldn’t go out of business any time soon.
Thinking of him made her stick one hand in her purse after all. The only thing she took out was her cell phone. Maybe, with the rain scrubbing the dust out of the air, she’d finally have bars.
No such luck. She tried his number anyway. Again, no luck. Nthing coming in. Nothing going out. She turned off the phone and stowed it.
On she went, slowly. With the road the way it was and with her poor, abused windshield the way
it
was, slowly was the only way to go. Most of the people heading toward Kansas had sense enough to see things the same way. The jerk in the Escalade was no doubt still doing ninety. He was long gone in front of her. Even if she hadn’t shot him, she wished him no good.
it
was, slowly was the only way to go. Most of the people heading toward Kansas had sense enough to see things the same way. The jerk in the Escalade was no doubt still doing ninety. He was long gone in front of her. Even if she hadn’t shot him, she wished him no good.
Every once in a while, Somebody listened when you made a wish like that. Less than fifteen minutes later, she drove past the Escalade. It was over on the shoulder with the hood popped. Mr. Jerk—who proved what he was by not bothering with a mask—stared forlornly at the engine. If he was waiting for AAA to come rescue him, he’d have a long wait.
Vanessa not only knew the feeling of
Schadenfreude
, she knew the word. Knowing the word sharpened the feeling. If only sex worked that way! The Escalade shrank in her rearview mirror and vanished into rain and dust.
Schadenfreude
, she knew the word. Knowing the word sharpened the feeling. If only sex worked that way! The Escalade shrank in her rearview mirror and vanished into rain and dust.
Then she had to hit the brakes and crawl. Someone hadn’t slowed down enough or had skidded in the new mud on the asphalt. The crash hadn’t closed US 50—not yet, anyhow—but it sure had snarled traffic. If a jalopy in the backup decided this was a good time to overheat . . .
Why are you borrowing trouble?
Vanessa asked herself.
Don’t you have enough already?
In a way, those were questions without answers. In another, they were questions that hardly needed answers. She borrowed trouble because she was the kind of person who borrowed trouble. If she wanted to, she could blame that on her tight-assed father or on being the middle child or on Mrs. McKenzie, her neurotic—
make that nutso
, she thought, remembering Wes across the street from her folks—first-grade teacher. None of which changed things one goddamn bit. She borrowed trouble.
Vanessa asked herself.
Don’t you have enough already?
In a way, those were questions without answers. In another, they were questions that hardly needed answers. She borrowed trouble because she was the kind of person who borrowed trouble. If she wanted to, she could blame that on her tight-assed father or on being the middle child or on Mrs. McKenzie, her neurotic—
make that nutso
, she thought, remembering Wes across the street from her folks—first-grade teacher. None of which changed things one goddamn bit. She borrowed trouble.
This time, she got to pay it back pretty soon. No steam plume ascended to the heavens from some old clunker’s radiator. She inched along with everybody else, but she kept on inching. The accident involved four cars. Nobody seemed badly hurt. Men wearing wet clothes and glum expressions stalked around examining damage.
More gunk flew onto her windshield when the car ahead of her sped up as it found open road in front of it. Resignedly, she waited for the wipers to clear the smear, and to scratch up the glass some more. The only way she could have prevented that would have been to stay in Denver. This might be a bad bet, but that was a worse one—though poor Pickles would have disagreed.
She found more things to worry about. How much cash did she have left after that outrageous gas stop and air filter? Would it be enough to do her any good when she needed to fill up again? If it wasn’t, would the station guy take plastic? Or could she find a working ATM? Odds were decent, she supposed. If a gas pump was working, an ATM ought to be. For now, with the needle well above the H, she kept making miles.
Making miles, these days, came with a price, though, or at least it did in a big part of the country, very much including the part she was in. By the time she got over the state line into Kansas, her car was starting to sound like hell, even with the new air filter. How much volcanic crud was getting in despite the filter? Jesus, how much had got in when she took off the gas cap to fill the tank in Pueblo? What was all that shit doing to her engine? What was all the grit on the road doing to the rest of her moving parts? How long would they keep on moving? Long enough? She had to hope so.
In spite of the way the car snded, she smiled for a second. She must have been about ten years old when Rob, a couple of years older, opened some atlas or other to a map of the USA. “They’re gonna build a college right here,” he’d said, pointing to the border between the state she’d just left and the one she’d just entered.
She remembered going, “Yeah? So?” Big brothers were obnoxious enough even if you didn’t let them get the jump on you. When you did, they turned insufferable. She might not have known that word when she was ten, but she sure had understood the idea.
And she remembered his leer. He was just learning how to do it, which of course meant he overdid it. “So they’re gonna call it the First United Colorado-Kansas University,” he’d answered. “Only for short it’ll be—”
Vanessa had understood the idea of acronyms, too, even if she might not have known that word yet, either. “FUCK U!” she’d shrilled, and laughed so loud, and in such delighted horror, that their mother had come into her room to see what the hell was going on. They’d both solemnly denied everything, of course. With no more than an open atlas for evidence, Mom hadn’t been able to pin a crime on them.
Even then, you might have guessed Rob would end up playing in a band called Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles. Vanessa didn’t much care for the music, though she had to admit some of the lyrics were clever. She had no idea where the band was right now—somewhere back East, if she remembered straight. If she did, the odds Rob was okay were good.
The odds on herself, or on Pickles, or on the Toyota . . . Red lights on the dashboard warned SERVICE ENGINE SOON. The car was running hot even though the eastbound US 50, heading away from the Rockies, tended downhill. If it crapped out, how far could she coast? Till the next hill, anyhow, and those were few and far between around here.
She drove through Coolidge, just over the border, almost before she realized it was there. If the place had ever had a hundred people, she would have been amazed. How many were still here, and how many had lit out when the supervolcano erupted? She’d never know.
US 50 paralleled the Arkansas River. The rain had washed some of the ash off the trees that grew alongside the river, so they looked a little more like their old selves. The river, by contrast, looked muddy and full and angry, even though it wasn’t raining all that hard.
For a little while, Vanessa wondered why. Then the old metaphorical lightbulb went on above her head. The rain was washing volcanic ash off the trees, sure, and off the grass, and off the ground generally. And it was washing that ash . . . straight into the river. Where else could the stuff go?
How long till the Arkansas started flooding? The Missouri was a lot closer to the eruption, which could only mean even more ash would be going into it. So it would start flooding sooner, if it hadn’t started already. The other rivers flowing from the Rockies toward the Mississippi would do the same thing.
They would also wash the volcanic ash toward and then into the Father of Waters. What would happen when the Big Muddy turned into the Big Muddier, and then into the Big Muddiest? Vanessa didn’t know in detail, but this was one of those times when the big picture did fine. The big picture was lots of muddy water spreading out over lots and lots of land.
Other books
Mermaids Singing by Dilly Court
If It Flies by LA Witt Aleksandr Voinov
Payback by Melinda Metz - Fingerprints - 7
Hunting by Calle J. Brookes
F*ck Feelings by Michael Bennett, MD
Perfectly Shattered by Trent, Emily Jane
Vibrizzio by Nicki Elson
Stonewiser by Dora Machado
Mask of Flies by Eric Leitten
Lone Star Courtship by Mae Nunn
