The Yellowstone Conundrum (53 page)

 
Jesus HF watched as a lone bicycle came out from the same eastbound entrance to the Mt. Baker Tunnel.

 
What the hell? His mob was a half-mile from the entrance, still laughing at the Deuce 8s problem, when the totally-out-of-bounds rider came wheeling out the tunnel. 

 
It was a woman, a young girl, actually; wearing only a shirt and, well, panties. She motored herself out of the tunnel, then stopped about fifty feet in front of the entrance. Over a hundred Hispanic and mixed race thugs were no more than a football field in front of her. To her right she could see that night had captured Seattle and that things were burning in places. 

 
She slowly approached; then stopped. A light breeze riffled her shirt, exposing what had to be a very cold midriff, not enough for the titties to hang out, but enough for imagination from a distance. She then slowly rode her bicycle in a circle, standing as high as she could on the pedals so her butt was sticking into the air; then repeated the circle again.

 
A roar could be heard from across the length of the I-90 concrete. A white bitch had just told an established national gang to go fuck itself. The reaction was visceral; beyond crazy. There was nothing Jesus could do but lead the charge.

  Out of breath, Karen rode as hard as she could back into the tunnel; which by now was mostly unoccupied. “OK, they’re going to be here in about two minutes,” she said, out of breath.              Like spiders, the everyday people selected by Denny and now Karen as leaders, started running toward the darkness of the tunnel; stopping every twenty feet or so to click various key chains. Even though a car may be dead in the water or smashed in an accident, it still had the key response system embedded. What happens when you click the open door; the light comes on. What happens when you click the panic button? The panic button turns on; the lights start double-flashing and the horn starts to flash; and inside a tunnel it sounds like a New Wave intro to Halloween Part XVI. 

 
The gang members of SSL-13 rushed toward the Mt. Baker Tunnel, now approaching the entrance. Full of their manhood, but wary of the sounds and sights they were seeing; Jesus signaled with his hand to approach slowly, not exactly sure why, but if he had hackles on his neck, they would have been risen indeed; but, he didn’t; WTF on everyone’s lips. The sounds inside the tunnel were like the sounds he liked to use when approaching an unsuspecting or overmatched foe; loud, nonsensical noises; the odd noise/music make by Oriental instruments as heard by Occidental ears. 

 
With a hand motion he waved toward a 2012 Prius that had been gently, not completely, smashed in the later part of the Great Crash; probably could have been removed and turned around with the right manpower. In response, ten gang members went after the Prius with everything they had; smashing the windows, beating the crap out of the car with crowbars, ugly sticks, bricks and whatever could be gathered inside the tunnel. 

 
But, as they say down South, bless its heart; the Prius kept on ticking; its relentless beeping turning into an odd form of bleating;
Blaappppt blaaappp
a kind of a rude response to such a magnitude of manhood.

 
The further into the dark tunnel Jesus went the more pissed he became; he urged his people to inspect the cars they found; rape and pillage. But there was nothing but darkness, and no people! After a hundred feet, the lights and beeping began to fade, but there was enough light to that the western entrance was blocked—as was any hope of getting to the eastern side. The smell inside the tunnel was a mixture of gasoline, body odor and exhaust, with gasoline the prevalent odor. The ventilation system was off and the Foam-Water Deluge System had not been manually reset.

 
The SSL-13 moved forward relentlessly, crawling over cars;

  “Dead motherfucker!
Two dead motherfuckers!” came two voices in unison.

 
Along the gutter of the roadway the drippy slushy sound of water draining could be heard.

 
“Three and four!” from the inside lane; then the numbers multiplied, soon up to 17 dead. From a distance the Prius now sounded like a goat being strangled.

 
“Dead people everywhere back here!” A female shout echoed in the distance, which was followed by what sounded like car engines being turned on.

 
Jesus was really getting pissed, shouting a string of expletives, half-expletives, mixed metaphors and general bad language; and he was getting louder, like everyone wad deaf, as were the ninety-two members of his gang still in the tunnel. The woman was teasing him, them, his gang; a gringa slit, a puta-bitch was making fun of him.  

 
Then from a distance of about two hundred feet the headlights of six cars came on, one after the other; bright lights. The cars were pointing in their direction. They can’t go anywhere! What the fuck is happening? Cars starting up, followed by bright headlights, were then followed by emergency Panic Button horns. The noise was deafening inside the tunnel.

 
The sound that came out of Jesus’s throat was primal anger; instructions shouted were roughly translated as
get the motherfuckers
, a shout all 92 SSL-13 members picked up, and started advancing as quickly as possible through the carnage inside the tunnel. Multiple shots were fired toward the blinding high-beam lights, to no effect.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be able to do this?” Denny asked, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have guessed it earlier in the day. Even now, I’m not sure; but shit, you set my shoulder and you rescued me from the elevator. You just don’t look like the hero type,” then, he smiled. “I’m going to be the one out there and you all. . .,” Denny eyeballed the other leaders that had volunteered. “. . .are going to have to pull it off.”

 
“Would you rather have Jerry, or Denise or one of the others?” Karen asked. “Do you think anyone else can pull this off?”  A pause. “You could,” Karen added. “But, I can’t do what you have to do,” she nodded to the Buick.   She turned to balding Jerry, who shook his head no, unashamed of not being able to step up to risking his life getting the seriously injured out of the tunnel. There were 45 of them left, not counting the ones who had walked out on their own earlier in the day, leaving the group behind.

 
The injured had to be cleared because there was going to be death and destruction in their wake. 

 
“All right, then you have to get them pissed and disoriented.” said Denny.

  ‘Pissed and disoriented’ would be a good description of Jesus’ troops as they advanced further into eastbound Mt. Baker Tunnel. The SSL-13 gang members with flashlights wildly covered everything inside the eerie tunnel; the new lights illuminated the sides of the tunnel. Every twenty-five feet there were was tiny one-foot-by-three-foot door, which wasn’t an actual door but a ventilation shaft; which if the ventilation system was actually working, would suck up the diesel and carbon monoxide fumes from the tunnel, transport it upstairs to the “lid” level where the scrubbers would magically convert it to a discharge that would be harmless to society and everyone would live long and prosper; thank you, Mr. Spock.

 
However, none of that was working because a 9.45 earthquake had struck offshore from Bainbridge Island, WA at 6:20 a.m., putting everything into a State of Fuck.

  “It’s time,” Karen had slipped her fleece pants back on, along with her jacket. “How many cars?”  Like it matters now; not much we can do if it isn’t.

 
“Twelve,” replied Jerry, badly out of breath. “But half of them were already leaking.

 
“Don’t you have a heart attack on me,” she said earnestly. “Is everybody up?” The noise in the stairwell above them answered yes. “OK, then we’re the last ones.  Jerry, let me have your lighter. That would be a bugger to forget, wouldn’t it?” she laughed to herself. Jerry handed her his trusty Zippo. 

  The Mt. Baker tunnel is 1440 feet long. Approximately 850 feet into the tunnel, at the point where the eastbound traffic can switch lanes and enter the HOV lanes there is a single door marked with the white letters EXIT. The fire door opens inward from the tunnel and is on the inside lane, the island between the HOV and eastbound lanes, doors discovered by Denny and Karen an hour ago. 

 
The door opened into a small landing, painted pukey green—floor, steps and walls. Opposite the door accessed from the eastbound lanes was a similar door providing access from the HOV lanes. Both doors opened inwards into the small landing; Jack and Jill doors. A flashlight up the stairwell showed EMERGENCY EXIT and a big red arrow painted on the stairwell wall; Denny estimated it would be forty feet up to the Mt. Baker lid, which meant since they weren’t climbing a ladder, about 60-70 steps, maybe a bit more. “Notice, they’re not saying how far the climb is,” he said with a wry tone in his voice. “Wouldn’t want people to get discouraged, climbing for their lives and all.”

 
The lobby was jammed with stuff that they all hoped would prevent the SSL-13 gang from breaking through.

 
“Bombs away!” Karen flicked the Zippo just once. What a dependable product and a nice flame appeared ready to fire up a cig. Karen dropped the lighter into the gutter of the eastbound lanes and quickly closed the door behind her.  The liquid running in the gutter wasn’t water, instead gasoline. Karen could feel the heat on the other side of the door as the gasoline traces began to flame. 

 
The men in the group had done a good job gathering “stuff” from inside wrecked vehicles, including three backseat clothes poles, which just fit the distance between the two doors.

  “Hurry!” Karen urged Jerry.
It was a simple block; three sets of snow tire chains laid flat on the concrete floor and hooked together, then three 15” wide snow tires laid end to end on top of them, which just fit between the two doors, with maybe an inch of wiggle room on either side, followed by three more sets of tire chains laid on top of the tires, linked together. While six tires would have been better, three did the job; it was impossible to open either door inwards.

 
With thanks in her eyes she involuntarily linked her right arm with Jerry’s left. 

 
“I should have quit smoking a long time ago,” he said, perspiring heavily.

 
“Let’s just go up a fast as we can; given the way the day has gone, you just never know what the hell is going to happen,” she replied as she shouldered her backpack, groaning slightly at the addition of weight to an already tired body; sleeping bag, tent, all the things that Denny had insisted on getting—were in her pack.

  The eastbound lanes of I-90 had become the Killing Fields for the SSL-13 gang members, including Jesus Hernandez.  The flames from the Zippo ignited a tracer that raced back toward the western portal; every twenty feet or so, a line of fire broke off and headed toward a wrecked vehicle. The first car to explode was the 2012 Prius; true, a pathetic amount of gas, but revenge in this case was sweet. Other cars, simply booby-trapped by a screwdriver and a hammer to the gas tank, began to explode, one-by-one.  

 
Jesus Hernandez Fernandez was deep into the tunnel; in fact, close enough to see Karen Bagley drop her new friend’s Zippo into the eastbound water runoff, and then watch in amazement as the water ignited. 

  Gasoline. Not water.
Make wine from water, not gasoline.

 
Jesus and three of his disciples made a rush for the door, which was impossible to see otherwise; smack into the fire door bar, nothing but a rattle. Again, they dove into the door as a team; but the team’s pants were being set on fire (liar liar) by the exploding gasoline beneath their feet. Screams of death-defying anger followed; inside Karen and Jerry continued advancing up the stairwell as fast as possible, now to the second big red arrow.

 
Inside the tunnel, within fifteen seconds the flames were wall-to-wall, small fires made into big fires; the flames feeding on each other; the air quickly un-breathable. The conflagration sucked fresh oxygen from both the eastern and western tunnel entrances, hot enough inside to melt the steel support framing, and then in a massive regurgitation, spit out a double fireball of death as if this was the Olympic Synchronized Dead Car Revenge Explosion. 

  J
esus and his disciples found their just reward.

  Inside the stairwell it was half-past toasty. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that if the doors below were compromised the Mt. Baker Tunnel would send a fiery fart up the stairwell that would kill them all.

 
Four floors up, the stairwell exited into a well-concealed maintenance building on 30
th
Ave. S. that controlled the now-defunct ventilation system. Unlike everything else that could get fucked up, this one didn’t.  In fact, on their initial inspection of “what’s up there”, Denny had suggested she bring her bike with her. He helped her by lightening her load. Denny had already figured it was going to be a different kind of day.