The Yellowstone Conundrum (59 page)

The White House

 
“Chuck, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get to sleep tonight,” the President said. 

  “You will, sir. We all will.
Then we’ll wake up tomorrow and do what we have to do.”

 
“What are the latest numbers?” The President had been in The President’s Seat in the Situation Room for twelve hours.

 
“The number of dead we estimate to be one million five hundred thousand Americans; the largest amount in the Denver, Colorado area; nearly six hundred thousand alone, along with nearly the entire population of Cheyenne and Casper, Wyoming; another two hundred thousand. The Black Death they’re calling it; the Black Cloud. In Seattle there are forty thousand dead, and the city is on fire; no lights, no communications; inland, the Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick—another two hundred thousand dead because of the failure of the Columbia Generating Plant; in Portland, ten thousand, primarily because of bridge and infrastructure failure.

 
“The dams on the Missouri and Snake Rivers have failed; the water is running free; there is no power west of a line from Minneapolis to Omaha, then drawn over across Oklahoma City to Texas. Texas has power. Southern California has no power and it’s as rough as you can imagine.

 
“The ash reached Amarillo this afternoon; DOE decided to keep the Pantex plant in operations. An ice storm is in the process of striking Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee; then will continue up the East Coast tomorrow.  Power will be out and may not come back up because the Ash Cloud will start passing through this evening. It’ll be here tomorrow.

 
“We have no idea what effect it will have.

 
“The good news?” The President said with some sarcasm.

 
“Air Force infrared recon indicates a large number of people have gathered at Husky Stadium in Seattle; the Army is going ahead with a deployment of troops along with fuel and supplies, food, manpower, tents, generators, you-name-it from FEMA without waiting for local request. The National Guard in Oregon has been called up to support the Portland area, along with FEMA temporary housing. 

 
“Unfortunately, sir,“ Chuck Leonard wanted to bite his tongue. “We, the government, have no idea what to do with the nuclear disaster at Hanford. It’s already happened.  The NRC and DOE are looking into possible burial scenarios, but the scope of the problem is way beyond anything they’d ever imagined.”

 
“Then concentrate on helping the people, not the process,” the President instructed. “Don’t worry about plant, equipment or buildings. Help the people to safety.”

 
Charles Leonard left the room, the President there alone in his seat, with some DoD high-level personal at the end of the table who were doing their own thing in other parts of the room. The President looked up; the center screen had an Air Force shot from space with the effluent from the Yellowstone Caldera erupting unabated; a closer shot showed forest fires in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming burning out of control. On the left screen was a feed from KCBD-11 a NBC affiliate out of Lubbock, Texas which showed the Black Cloud in the distance as it approached, hovered over, and continued on past Amarillo, only 123 miles due north of Lubbock. For whatever reason, the right screen was frozen on a picture from this morning of a single man running from the Fort Peck Dam moments before it collapsed.

 
“Hope you made it,” the President whispered.

Circle, Montana

 
The game was Omaha; seven card stud hi-low, you need jacks to win high and an eight to win low; failing that everyone still in the pot went on to play another round.  It was a good drinking game because every hand became a reason to drink. 

 
Sitting around the table were Charlie Lame Deer and his brother Billy Lame Deer, Robert O’Brien, Stacie Higgins, 52, who was looking better and better as night wore on, and her grand-daughter, 26, the ever-gorgeous Tiffany Smith, bouffant hairdo and all the fixin’s. There was no music, just the banter, flipping of the cards and the chinking of the chips. Sexual banter was back and forth, up and down.  A good time was being had by all.

 
Candles on the bar and adjoining tables shed enough light to play; Stockman Lanes was open for business (strike up some fun at Stockman Lanes!  Six lanes of bowling fun!); or, at least the bar was. 

 
Circle, Montana was a small town. Down the street was the Lutheran Church; across from them was the Evangelical Church, most likely at one point in time there had been only one church; but abortion and homosexuality and Bible study; the Bible doesn’t need to be interpreted, like Popeye “I yam what I yam” had caused the congregations to split. Further up the street, a safe distance away was the Catholic Church. In between on B Street was the Exxon station, The Original Wooden Nickel Store, and a slew of green and yellow John Deere tractors all in a neat line; the State of Montana Liquor Store and Gun Shop would have been open for business, one-stop shopping for your Jack Daniels and Colt 45 products.

 
Robert and Charlie had made it back to Circle on fumes.  The Exxon station on Avenue B and 8
th
Street might have had gasoline, but there was no emergency power, so the gas was going to stay right there in the pit; the phones weren’t working, and there wasn’t anything Robert could do about it. They hadn’t tried the Sinclair station down the street but Charley had guaranteed they could get gas tomorrow morning at the Farmer’s Union Oil, out in the back lot, or the USDA Service Building.

 
Just sit down and play some poker; walk on down to the Traveler’s Inn (dark), fall asleep and try again tomorrow.

 
“Well, I’ve just about had enough fun for one day,” Robert said to the dismay of Stacey and Tiffany.

 
“A coupl’a mor’ hands, Jim-Boy,” mumbled Stacey, who was about to climb all over the Undersecretary of the Bureau of Land Management.

 
An unusual noise, voices came from outside the front door to Stockman Lanes; then through the door came a woman with two children, a girl in her arms and a little boy by the hand.

 
“Hi, my name is Penny Armstrong, and I’ve had a really bad day,” the girl looked to be in her early twenties, tall, attractive, dirty, clothes torn. “I need some gas and a place to stay.”

 
“There’s a place for you and your kids to stay,” Robert O’ Brien stood and covered the distance between the poker table and the entrance to the bar in three quick steps.  Turning to Charley, “Do we have anything for these folks to eat?” Charley and Billy Lame Dear headed for the dark kitchen.

 
Robert guided Penny to his chair, which Penny gratefully accepted; Amanda in her arms. Little Jason stood in the middle of the room and observed. Penny started to cry big-time tears, “crocs” as they were called, geysers of tears.  Stacie and Tiffany put down their cards and went to hug the children. Robert’s hand was on her shoulder in comfort.

 
They were new members to the Circle of life.               

Picture of Stockman Lanes    Picture by “pilotcoach” 2009

115 Main Street

                  
 
Postscript

 
I hope that none of you were terribly disappointed that all of the loose ends weren’t resolved by the end of the book; hoping you’d figured out ahead of time that this isn’t a one-book read.
The Yellowstone Conundrum
was a really bad day for everyone involved, especially for gang members in Seattle; and of course, the city itself.

 
But, didn’t we meet some interesting people? Penny Armstrong arcing in character from being selfish and self-centered to heroic; I have to tell you that I was going to have Penny save the obnoxious Clyde Stillwater toward the end, but she wouldn’t let me; the guy was an asshole and deserved what he got. And, he was a potential threat to Amanda and Jason.

 
All of the characters speak to my fingers; some plots went on longer than expected because the characters had a lot to say and do; others didn’t.

 
My last published novel was
The Tojo Virus
in 1991; before that
The Jihad Ultimatum
, 1988; and my first novel
The
Hatterask Incident
in 1987. All would make terrific movies, as will
The Yellowstone Conundrum
, I hope. All my books are still available on the internet, via Amazon or other locations.

 
Thank God for the internet; I regained the passion I originally had for writing because of it. It was so much fun writing this book because I can have eight different Foxfire or IE9 screens open with my Word document in another screen, and jump back and forth to enhance descriptions and/or make the research more accurate.

 
What’s ahead?  We’re not going to lose the attachments we’ve made, but some may be less prominent than before.  Think of the tasks ahead. Clearly, the Army Corps of Engineers has a huge task in figuring out what to do with the Missouri and Snake Rivers; power is going to remain a big, big problem. We’ve seen recently how raw emotions can get when the power is out for two weeks. Imagine five or six months.

 
What’s going to happen to the radioactive clouds from Hanford?

 
What happened to Denny?

  What about Global Warming and Global Freezing?

  And at the last moment, Karen becomes a leader of the Mount Baker Survivor Group.

 
Is that snake going to chew on Andy Everett’s left nut?

 
I can tell you that the Yellowstone caldera explosion continues; meaning that the United States is going to be cut in two (at least two), with transportation between the North and South very difficult.

 
The President is going to have his international problems ramp up quickly as everyone starts to roll the dice in the real game of RISK.

 
The cost of saving Seattle will reach a go/no-go/you’re-on-your-own point. 

 
I hope you enjoyed the novel as much as I enjoyed writing it. The characters in
The Yellowstone Conundrum
were for the most part, like what I hope all of us would do when put under very unusual situations; making the best of lose-lose situations.

 
Lest you be disappointed, we have some new characters; one an antichrist; the lights are out and you remember what Newt said.

             
They mostly come out at night, mostly.

John Randall

Atenas, Costa Rica