The Yellowstone Conundrum (35 page)

 
“Rescue operations can’t start until the ash stops falling; troops, logistics—people and equipment—can’t go into the danger zone. Seattle, yes. We can go into Seattle, assuming SEATAC and Fort Lewis are available, or Boeing Field.  Are there any Air Force pictures of Seattle?”

 
Sounds of some shuffling of papers and fingertaps tapping on the computer.

 
“No.  It’s raining.  No pictures.

 
“So, there are no overall pictures of Seattle; yet we know the city has experienced a 9.45 earthquake and tsunami of the downtown area. Where would you like us to start supporting the poor people of Seattle? 

 
“Richland, Pasco and Kennewick, Washington. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation has turned into a worst-case scenario.  The sky is filled with puffy clouds of radioactive nuclear waste; not just your everyday industrial nuclear waste, but shit that won’t be safe for a thousand years! 

 
“The city of Portland, Oregon has seen the collapse of the two most-used commuter bridges with over 100,000 vehicles combined per day. 

 
“Salt Lake City has experienced the collapse of the Morman Temple, the Salt Palace, the Wells Fargo tower and other office buildings; and continues to receive aftershocks from the on-going explosions at Yellowstone.  The city and surrounding mountain communities are in shambles.

 
“Every city in Idaho is in ruins. Mountain Home Air Force Base is out of commission. Johnny, don’t we have some pretty big planes there?”  George Johnson already knew the answer. He wasn’t waiting for the Secretary of the Air Force to respond.  “Dams have collapsed on the two most important rivers in the Western US; the future of other dams is uncertain. For certain is the loss of electricity at a minimum to the western half of the United States; at worst, to every place without a tie into the big network.  Joe’s Electric Company has its day in the sun. Rates will probably go up,” he added sarcastically. “Our electric companies, freed from regulation in the 90s and 00s, under the same assumption that Republican administrations allowed the bankers to make their own rules,‘Well, we’re the electric companies, we know best, have perpetuated a New World of transferring power from one place to another, creating pricing infathonable to regulators, much less the average man. It’s no different than the packaging and bundling of mortgage debts in the mid 00’s, to the point where banks were betting on slices of billions of dollars of bad debt, up or down—fucking the average person in the ass.

“Aftershocks continue to rock the Northwest from the Yellowstone explosions; which by the way we can’t see because there
is no way to be on the ground. Fires rage out of control in the forests of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho—and now the grasslands of eastern Wyoming. 

 
“By tomorrow morning radioactive dust will be joining the Yellowstone caldera explosions, beginning its journey around the world in 48 hours.

 
“Mr. President,” the room was silent. “Exactly what do you want us to do? You pick. You tell me and my agencies who to help first and you take credit or blame for it. I don’t have a clue. The telephones don’t work.  The computers don’t work, and my administrator of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) has grounded all inter-continental airline flights with the US until further notice. Tomorrow we will most likely ground all commercial airlines, including international arrivals and departures.  By tomorrow the black crud is going to slice through the US like a hot knife on butter.

 
The problem was bigger than a breadbasket.

 
What to do?

  The President had no real plan other than listen to the incoming calls from the Western states. And, there were few of them. There were probably a billion Tweets out there ready to be sent, but nothing to forward them to. He’d done the right thing by establishing coordinating units at the White House for officials to call directly; but the problem was there were no phones, no e-mails, no communications, no fucking power. Until the various states could identify specific problems and request help, the Federal government, whether under Republican or current Democratic leadership, has no authority to usurp state government unless that state is breaking a Federal law. This goes back to the Constitution as developed by the Founding Fathers.

 
The President turned back to Hugo Di Niro, who in turn looked at Admiral Roscoe Chambers, Secretary of the Navy (and Marines).

 
“If,” the President tried to choose his words carefully.  “If this turns to shit and our cities are shut down because of no power; and the dark side of our populace takes over,” the President shook his head, not wanting to ask. “I want a plan from the military, including moving the carriers, to not just securing our borders but to protect the people of the United States from themselves.”

 
The move would be unprecidented in US history.

 
Di Niro nodded to Admiral Chambers, who cleared this throat.

 
“Sir, the George Washington is in waters off Korea. The Lincoln has just returned to the Straits of Hormuz. The Eisenhower remains in the Mediterranean. The Nimitz is in port in San Diego. George senior is in the Atlantic. The Stennis is in the Indian Ocean. The Vincent is in Pearl.  The Truman is in training in the south pacific. The Reagan is off Japan. The Roosevelt is in port on two-year maintenance at Newport News. The Ford won’t be completed until next year,” Chambers ripped through the locations of America’s most deadly forces.

 
“Nothing in Bremerton?” The President asked.

 
“No sir,” replied Di Niro.

 
“Do you understand what I want?” asked the Presdent.

 
Di Niro looked around and after receiving “yes” eyes, turned to the President and replied.

 
“Yes, sir.  We understand what you want.”

Wright, Wyoming

  “What about the animals?” Betsy asked. Cameron’s brain was stuck on dogs and cats; Betsy nodded her head, tightly blond and a bit shaggy.  Right now she was a little dirtbag running on empty. It was two in the afternoon and Cam realized he was running a bit light himself.  He’d just transferred 150 gallons of diesel fuel from the Exxon station’s tank to his rig and paid the owner with a credit card imprint, smiling to himself
did you just steal $800 worth of fuel?
The transfer involved a siphon hose, a portable pump and twenty feet of 1.5” surplus fire hose--and the station owner even helped.

 
“No,” she saw he didn’t understand. “What about the cattle? And the buffalo?” she asked. That stopped Cam.  He scratched himself in several places, like a base coach in baseball; head, nose, crotch, stomach, back to crotch, then shifted into idle. 

 
“I donno,” he answered plainly. It was hard enough trying to save bitty Betsy in the middle of an earthquake-created firestorm on I-25; way more brain power was required to figure out what was going to happen to moo-cows and cheesburger steers. But, Cam tried to bring the subject to the forefront; and couldn’t answer. “I guess they’re going to die. If people are going to die and we can drive to Iowa and they can’t, then I guess they’re going to die.”

 
Betsy’s face, more cute than he remembered, kind of a more plain Holly Hunter, scrunched into a blonde eyebrow furrow. “That’s going to be bad,” behind her in the near distance there were several groups of people meeting; hands were waving and people were angry. Clearly there was no agreement amongst the citizens of Wright, Wyoming on what to do, no matter what assurances blue-shirted Wade McGriff tried to convey; especially from stocky Jared Hastings, 42, sent to Wright from the family’s corporate HQ to manage the market in Wright. Cam didn’t need to be in the group to hear Hastings tell the crowd that hell, no he wasn’t going to let people ransackle his grocery store because of the earthquake three hundred miles away.
Hell, no, I won’t go he shouted.

 
“I guess the price of a Big Mac is going to go up,” Cam said, brilliantly.

 
Yeah, guess it will.

 
While Wyoming and Montana provided 4% of America’s beef, Texas, Nebraska and Kansas provided 40%, followed by Colorado, Oklahoma, Iowa and South Dakota for another 13%.  Within days fifty percent of America’s beef supply could be buried in volcanic ash.

 
Cam looked at Betsy like he’d just run into a Rhodes Scholar.

 
“Makes you think, don’t it?” she added.

 
“Yeah, makes you think.” Cam replied slowly. Look, we gotta get moving,” Cam nodded to the black western skyline which was only eighty miles away. It seemed to Cam that the pitch black sky was getting closer. “Hop in,” he nodded to Betsy.

 
Cam drove his rig back over to the statue of the bison, which had fallen off it’s perch during the first earthquake; still surrounded by townspeople.

 
“How’we doin’?” he asked Wade.

 
“Not so good,” the cowboy mayor replied. Wade looked like he’d aged ten years in the last hour and a half. “People don’t want to go,” he added. “I was able to get the mine (Black Thunder Coal Mine) to provide some port-a-lets,” Wade nodded behind him to two rows of the familiar portable potties. “But, they’re not all cleaned out,” Wade’s face blanched at the thought. “They’re also not anxious to stop production. The sky’s clear.” Wade turned to the west.

 
Holy mother of God Cam thought.

 
“And most of the people here just don’t want to pack up and leave the home they’ve made,” Wade’s face was anxious.  “This isn’t an easy place to live in,” he continued.  “Besides, this may not be as bad as it looks. It might blow away by tomorrow,” Wade added, whistling down the dark alley.

 
Cam got out of the cab and started speaking loudly.

 
“Miss Betsy and me are the only ones of us who have actually seen—actually been in—the Black Cloud. People!  You can’t breathe. It’s like trying to sniff out the bottom of a fireplace!  The people on I-25 who were trapped in their cars—they’re dead. The people in Midwest, they’re dead!”

 
“How do you know that?” shouted a red-jowled man in the back of the crowd. “You were runnin’ away!” several people added.

 
“OK, do this,“ Cam wasn’t sure why he was trying to save Wright, Wyoming from itself. “Send a scout back to where the cloud is; probably sixty miles. He can make it there and back in less than two hours. If everything is OK, he’ll be back here in plenty of time for us to leave—but we need to be ready!” Cam urged. Betsy put here hand on his arm in support. “You need to have the grocery store packed, the pharmacy packed, vital records packed; people need to have their homes prepared for evacuation—minimum clothes, personal records, computers, money, whatever.” Cameron’s voice was waivering because he was shouting.

 
“I’m not going!” shouted one man, followed by agreement from a woman.

 
“We’re all going to fucking die
,”
Shouted another, a wide-eyed fifty-ish woman with straw-colored hair and a beat-around-the-edges look, straight out of a Stephen King novel. All that was needed was a man in a clown suit hanging around in the background. Talk about creepy.

  There was no electricity.
It hadn’t gotten above 15 all day, and now the day was dipping across the yardarm heading quickly to a long winter night, one that started at 3:45 in the afternoon and continued to seven the next day. The evening’s heat would come from gasoline space heaters; death machines, some would be started in a confined area with a result that people would die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

 
Wade understood Cam’s logic and wanted to believe him.  He turned to the crowd.

 
“Any volunteers?” he asked, the crowd now quiet. No hands. 

 
Then a young man in the back shouted. “I’ll go.”  The townsfolk turned. Eighteen-year old Adam Pickett, his face still bombed with acne on his chin and forehead, and unseen across his back. Adam was captain of the basketball team, a senior at Wright High School and a nice kid—one who had plans to go to Laramie in the fall to attend the University of Wyoming.  His parents Cheryl and Don half a foot shorter than their young sprout, voiced their displeasure but he quickly said “Mom, somebody has to go; otherwise we’re all going to sit here and wait for it to come. If it comes, it will be too late.”

 
Spoken like a true leader of tomorrow. Without discussion, young Adam jumped on his 2004 blue-streaked Kawasaki—spun out, turned west on 387 toward Edgerton.   The sky in his horizon was black.

 
Unbenownst to Cheryl and Don, young Adam loved to race his Kawasaki at 120 mph or higher in either direction on highway 387. He knew every bump on every road in the three-county area. Head crouched, Adam Pickett was a blue bullet.  There was hardly ever any traffic on 387, especially at night when he loved to leave his bed, sneak out of the unlocked house. They were in Wright, Wyoming; who would steal anything from anybody. He’d carefully walk his cycle to the outskirts of town, start it up and race to Edgerton 46 miles away before closing time at the Arcade Bar, where the solitary Google review said “Don’t let the landscape fool you, the pool table is level.”  Likes? Food, atmosphere, service, value. The bar was right next to Bob’s Trailer Park.

 
He’d down a couple of beers, not able to afford much more than Coors on tap for a buck, grab some beer nuts and head back down 387 going as fast as his brain would let him. No one ever ratted on him; drinking beer at 13 was the norm.

 
Hunkered down and racing at 120 miles a hour, Adam’s concentration was on the immediate section of highway in front of him, roughly a quarter mile. He remembered the one accident he’d had when he’d run over a muffler that had broken off of a ’87 Chevy three years ago and had sat patiently in the middle of highway 387 for him to zip along and run over it. The muffler had acted like a ramp and Adam’s brain hadn’t caught up to the realities of the moment until he was nearly through his 40-foot airborn trip into the desert. He was lucky he didn’t fall into the thorny brush or worse, onto the macadam surface, instead bouncing like a rock skimming across a lake.

 
One glance up and he could see the black cloud miles ahead of him, the blue sky at the edges. The road ahead was clear, the peripheral desert gray and tan. His sense of smell was the first sensation to check in; the air smelled different. The highway ahead was clear but the sky on either side was bland, tannish, kind of melted into the color of the desert. Adam blinked a couple of times.  Taste was the second sense to check in; a bitter, gritty sensation was on his tongue. He tried spitting, but it was difficult going so quickly.

 
He never once thought about slowing down. 

 
And then, just in the blink of an eye, Adam Pickett entered the eastern edge of the Death Cloud, which was whitish-tan on the outside, a mixture of smoke, ash from burning forests and lighter debris from the explosion.   Zoom—whoosh—gone. The inside layers of the cloud were dark with heavier material. In vision in one second, gone in the next; sucked into the cloud. The road was gone, quarter-mile visibility one second, five-foot visibility the next.  Again, all Adam had to do was turn his wrist to slow his Kawasaki; but his brain had locked, brain fart.

 
Driving a motorcycle at high speed requires precision handling; a twitch can send the driver clear off the road.  Adam twitched big time. The blue bullet left highway 387 at 120 mph and began to wobble uncontrollably as the wheels sunk into sand, hard enough to twist the handlebar to the left. Adam fought the sand’s drag but as the Borg would say
; resistence is futile
.

 
For nearly two hundred feet Adam wrestled the Kawasaki as it twisted left, then right; finally hitting a good-sized bouder, sending Adam airborn as if thrown from a catapult.  The Kawasaki went to the right, Adam flying to the left; Adam came to a stop first with a thump into the desert floor.  To his right, if he’d been awake, he would have heard his motorcycle spinning and whining, finally sputtering to a stop.

 
Chinka chicnka chinka.

 
Some time later—less than ten minutes—Adam woke up. It was the smell of the new air; acrid, gritty, nasty.  Adam began to cough; he scrambled to his feet, eyes wide open frantically looking in all directions. He stumbled to his left, coughed hard; there were no motorcycle tracks, nothing to lead him back to highway 387.  The sun was nothing more than an ill-defined area in a all-tan room, one where desert ground looked like desert air.  Adam started to cry, then to yell, only to choke on a mouthful of crappy air. He staggered, guessing the direction to the highway, hardly able to breathe. A track!  A motorcycle track!

 
Adam turned to his left and began to follow the track; step-by-step it was getting harder to walk. Just a few more feet! I know it! His brain shouted.

 
Instead of heading toward highway 387, only sixty feet away, Adam Pickett began following a motorbike track made three years ago. He was headed away from the highway. Five minutes later Adam fell to the dirt. Another five minutes and he would be smothered, then buried—perhaps buried alive for the last moments of his life.

  “I need to rest for a while, Betsy,” Cam confided.  What kind of report the kid came back with would determine what the rest of the day and night would hold in store.

 
“You stink,” she said, smiling.

 
“I imagine I do, at that,” he returned the smile. “But did you know that you’re not just a little pile of rosebuds yourself?” Cam hauled his bulky self into the lower bunk behind the front seating area. Although old, the Peterbilt had a microwave, a small fridge, a toaster, a coffeemaker, built-in stereo system, and a TV with outside antenae. The upper bunk was used for storage; mostly food, rolls of TP, towels, a plastic bin for clothes.

 
Outside, it was getting colder as the sun began to head toward mid-afternoon. He pulled the curtain between the front and back compartments, darkening the area. Within 30 seconds of his head hitting the pillow, Cam was asleep, gone to visit Morpheus. He was so fucking tired. Slipping off her burnt, torn and ragged pants, in another minute he was joined in sleep as Betsy pulled back the blanket and slipped inside, taking the near inside edge of the bed.  Her eyes were wide open one minute, then closed and she was softly snoring the next. Both were whipped.