It was tedious, tiring, and thankless to get all those tourists back to their cars. True to form, some complained she was illegally trying to cut their vacation short. When she pointed to some new fires burning the fallen trees on the ridgeline above them, they started for their cars, though even the smell of smoke didn’t prevent them from taking photographs on the way out.
It had only been light a few hours, but she was exhausted when she finally returned to her beat-up Chevy at the head of the messy line of cars. Tessa and Asher were already there, having assembled those closer to the visitors’ center, and there was a third ranger she recognized from the day before.
Asher introduced him. “This is Chester. He’s from the—”
“Visitors’ center,” Grace finished for him. “I remember you from inside.”
If Tessa was old enough to be her mother, Chester was old enough to be her grandpa. His hair was all white, as was his short beard. Like most park rangers of that generation, his face was gaunt, like he hadn’t eaten for a month and his eyes were distant, like he hadn’t slept for a week. It wasn’t necessarily an unhealthy look, more like he’d seen a few things too many. She figured it was a side effect of being around all the demanding tourists. They sucked away happiness like vampires.
“Hi,” he said while giving her a penetrating glare. “You’re the one who discharged bear spray in my visitors’ center, right?”
She gulped. “I’m so sorry, there was someone—”
Chester held up his hand. “Don’t care. Water under the bridge. You’re doing a positive thing right now, and for that I’m grateful. I’ve kept these people from eating each other, but if you don’t get them moving, the bear spray debacle is going to be a nothing burger on your buffet of disappointment.”
At first, Grace hovered there, thinking Chester was going to take over, surprised he acted indifferent to the situation. She looked around, suddenly aware of the faces on drivers inside the many cars spread out behind her. They weren’t happy to be kept waiting; one man raised his arms as if to say, “well, are we moving?”
Any of the cars near the front could have driven around her truck and been on their way, but they were waiting for her to lead them. That responsibility sank in, and her heart raced ahead of the rest of her body. They were counting on her, the big, important park ranger, to get them to safety.
Grace wanted to talk to her parents, if only for a few seconds. She needed to confirm her plans with someone who knew what they were doing. Her dad always seemed to know what to do, no matter the situation. He’d tell her she was on the right path or playing an incredibly dangerous game with the lives of others.
The plumes of smoke from the fires to the south kept growing larger. Maybe the decision was easy, given the impending threats. She had no way to know what was around the next curve in the road. Were there more fires? Unruly bison herds? New, dangerous hot springs under the thin surface?
She fought the rising panic in her belly and tried to stay professional. Without the ability to call for backup, she had to do what she’d suggested to Asher not long ago.
Time to fake it.
Kentucky
Ezra went into the firehouse through the open garage door. Although there were no vehicles inside the four bays, he expected to find a fire chief or other boss in charge of the facility. As much as he appreciated Butch’s perspective, he wanted to prove the kid wrong. Having a rifle couldn’t be the measure of authority. Not yet.
The garage doors were pulled up to the roof, and they still had glass in their small windows, meaning they must have been up when the blast hit. The rest of the firehouse was like everywhere else in the area. All the window glass was gone. Still, people sat on the ground and along the walls. They’d gathered most of the shards into small piles near the front doors.
Some of the men stood up and came over to them. “You here to take more of our stuff? We’ve got nothing to give.” The middle-aged man was dressed in a colorful set of swimming trunks and a white T-shirt. Ezra didn’t recognize him, but he could have been a neighbor out for a day on the lake. The man’s eyes weren’t on his, but on his rifle.
He thought about slinging the weapon over his back, and he even glanced over to Butch to see if he thought the same thing, noting his partner kept his where it was. “No. I live a mile from here. I’m looking for someone who knows what’s going on out there.” He pointed out the garage doors.
“That’s a good thing.” The man sighed with relief and gave a nod to his cohorts. The men fell back into the crowd, and Ezra got the distinct impression they’d been closer to a fight than he thought. “The first two crooks didn’t look like you two. They weren’t locals, that’s for sure. Came on four-wheelers pretending to need help until they whipped out guns when they got inside here. They demanded all of our water bottles. We gave it to them because we’re right under the freaking water tower; they could have taken all they wanted. But we’ve wised up since last night. Today, we’re wary of strangers.”
Ezra took a chance asking a sensitive question. “Can you defend yourselves?”
The man smiled. “Oh, we have lots of guns. This is Kentucky, am I right?”
He grinned back. Living in the country made it natural for him to own and carry guns, though he seldom took his pistol out of its normal hiding spot under the front seat of his truck. And if their positions were reversed, with Ezra sitting on the floor of the garage, he’d have his pistol at the ready for anyone who came in. He imagined he was now surrounded by guns, intended to keep him honest.
The man went on. “Last night, none of us wanted to take a life over water, but it turns out those guys did us a favor. They opened our eyes to how fast people change under high stress. We’ve scared off a few sketchy-looking men since then.”
Ezra let his guard drop a bit, so as to not appear as confrontational. “Glad we’re not sketchy-looking. It sounds like you have things in hand here. All we’d like from you is information. Do you know the situation?”
“We’ve heard from people passing by how Paducah was flattened. Something else came down last night across the water, over in the Land Between the Lakes recreation area. The most popular theory is that they were meteorites, but I’ve heard people say it was aliens landing their ships, getting ready for an invasion.”
He cracked up. “It’s not aliens. Trust me. This was the world’s worst industrial accident. You’ve heard of a mining company called TKM?”
The man nodded. “Who hasn’t?”
“They did this. I know someone on the inside.” He thought of Grace feeding him the information that saved so many lives last night.
“I guess I have to believe you. This is the first I’ve heard of it. I’ll be sure to add your theory to the list.” The guy smiled to be polite, clear he didn’t fully believe the explanation. “Hey, do you know where we can get any food?” The man gestured to the people around him. “We’ve got kids who are going to need to eat. We already picked the firehouse clean, though there wasn’t much.”
That brought him back to another reason why he was there. “Did you see the firefighters? We could use medical help back down the road.” Babs still needed assistance for her arm, as did many of his neighbors. It was clear they weren’t in the firehouse, but he had to know if they were close.
“No. The place was empty when I got here. Our guess is they left yesterday morning to go help in Paducah, but no one knows for sure. And the radio is trashed; we checked.”
The big picture was still murky, but he now had a better understanding of the local scene. It made complete sense the more he thought about it. All emergency services vehicles would have rushed out to help save people in and around Paducah. They probably passed the start of the line of refugees heading in the opposite direction. Later, with traffic petrified on the county roads, they couldn’t get back to the station. When the second impact happened, they were far from where they could do any good.
He wasn’t yet ready to give up, so Ezra t
urned and looked outside the firehouse. There was one easy way to see what was happening beyond his neighborhood.
“We’re going up.”
Isla Socorro
“Fifty Tunguskas? Do you mean all the pieces burned up in the atmosphere?” If the rocks had all disintegrated, it would mean he’d have nothing to recover. That would be devastating for his bottom line, and probably fatal for his company after news organizations picked up all the pieces of how it happened. Far down the list of concerns, he found one that might be suitable for Dorothy’s ears. “And does it mean lives were saved?”
Dorothy stood next to his dining room table. It was made of expensive white Carrara marble. A personal gift from the prime minister of Italy, another one of his close friends. She motioned like she wanted to sit down, but she waited to make sure he was all right with her intrusion. He needed the information, so he gestured for her to take a seat.
“No, to both questions. The pieces didn’t burn up. The key difference between 586001 Tuonela and the Tunguska explosion is your meteorite was made up of solid metal. The blast in 1908 was mostly ice, they think, like a comet. But the comet’s ice exploded when the superheated atmosphere piled up in front of the falling rock until the pressure ripped it apart. That thing hit in the middle of the forest of Russia, so it didn’t kill any save for a few tree herders. It did, however, knock down almost eight hundred square miles of forest, and set a good chunk of it on fire.”
“And what happened with mine?” He almost couldn’t ask the question. The answer was what he’d been dreading since arriving at the island.
She flashed a cautious smile. “Sir, some of the small pieces did blow up, causing considerable damage to terrain and local structures. The larger rocks survived the pressures and made it to the ground, mostly as a result of Captain Davis blowing up his ship and pushing the debris sideways. The shallower trajectory allowed what I predicted in my thesis: the big fragments bounced.”
“Meaning what?” he asked, knowing what he wanted to hear, but willing to let her say it.
“Well, it means all the valuable ore is now here on Earth. If you thought mining on the moon was going to be easy, you ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s going to be lying there for the taking.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeppers,” she replied happily. “I’ve been able to see satellite data from one of your orbital platforms.” TKM’s early space program was devoted to satellite reconnaissance of more terrestrial matters; they had several pointed at Earth to help with exploration of new sources of mines. “And I’ve seen live feeds from helicopters and local TV stations who are now on scene at the disaster sites.”
“Dorothy, consider this your approval for the suitcase full of gold. You can have a truckload of it if you can tell me where the biggest viable piece of my asteroid is now located. We’ve got to move fast if we want to stay ahead of the blame train.”
“It would go a lot faster if you’d give me the codes for accessing the satellite feeds. It slows me down to have to keep hacking them.” She smiled broadly.
“Yes, whatever you need. Just get this done. I’ve got to call my friends in the federal family…”
I can save this.
Chapter 5
Yellowstone National Park, WY
After all the effort to get the convoy moving, Grace had only gone a mile before she was forced to pull to the shoulder. The road split in two directions, and each one had implications for those behind her.
“We have to get out and give people a choice which way they want to go.” She slammed her creaky door shut, and when she walked around the front, she caught the all-too-familiar whiff of burning wood. The nearby trees were mostly tipped over, always facing north, but the giant forest fire was to the south, as if the impact had both blown over the trees miles away and set them alight closer to where it fell. The people at the end of the convoy were still by the visitors’ center; they were closer to the fire than she was.
There was no time to have a big powwow with all the drivers. The first truck was a snow-white Chevy Suburban with chrome wheels and deep-tinted windows; it was a mirror image of her own truck, though hers was a mess by comparison. She waved it over, frantic for what to say.
“What’s up?” the male driver asked.
“Decision time. You can go north to the smaller towns of western Montana, or you can go east toward the larger city of Billings, Montana. From there, you can drive to the more distant cities of Rapid City, Sioux Falls, and maybe Denver.” Denver was to the southeast; once they got around the burning forest, those people should be safe to drive south again.
The man turned to his wife and they shot words back and forth. Then, he turned back to her. “We’re going east. We live in Milwaukee, so that’s the direction we want to go.”
Grace pointed to the right fork in the road. “Go toward the mountains. There’s a little town about fifty miles up the road called Cooke City. Wait for us there, okay? You’ll have people coming behind you, I’ll tell them to wait there, too.”
“You said we’re going to Billings. Why do we have to wait?”
She yanked off her hat and wiped sweat from her forehead. The guy had a point; he could drive on and never look back. Her role had been instrumental in getting everyone out of the congested Mammoth Springs area. Maybe she wasn’t necessary on the open road. It wasn’t like normal people had a hitman after them.
That stopped her cold. She was convinced Misha was still out there. She reflexively looked all around, as if the act of remembering the guy would summon him. It was comforting to believe Asher and accept the bad guy had been blown away by the blast, but the simple fact was people survived, despite being outside. The travelers in her convoy were proof.
Grace refocused on the man, aware the other cars waited impatiently behind him. “You don’t have to stop if you don’t want to. I figured there’s safety in numbers is all.”
The guy started to roll up his window. “We’ll think about it.” He accelerated around the turn heading east.
The next car went north; the woman driver barely needed a second to make her choice. After that, it went quick. Most cars needed ten or twenty seconds to make the call, then they were gone. As the minutes dragged on, the smoke in the air became thicker. For a short time, she wondered if she should wave everyone north, but most people chose to go east, toward their hometowns, so she didn’t think they’d listen to her.
Asher stood nearby, waving cars through. “We’ve got a problem,” he called out to her when she let another one go.
She glanced over to find him pointing to some toppled trees about fifty feet from the intersection. A small fire had taken hold. As she watched, the breeze made the embers hop along the ground until they started another fire in the pine needles.
“We’re out of time.” She ran to her truck and pulled out the CB handset. “Tessa, you back there?”
Tessa and Chester rode in a second park service truck at the tail end of the procession. “I hear you, over.”
“How are things back there?” Grace asked, praying for good news.
“The roof of the police station is on fire and the road to the south is blocked off by flames. We’re still here at the visitors’ center waiting for all the cars to clear out. Why are things moving so slow? I’m not anxious to get moving, I’m just asking for a friend.” She spoke dryly, obvious at being sarcastic.
“I’ve been talking to people about which way they wanted to go at the junction, but we’re getting some flames up here, too. I’m going to let people decide on their own from here on out. We’re moving again, okay?”
Tessa was all business. “We understand. We’ll push people on this end. Out.”
When she hopped in her truck, the next car in line raced up so a woman could yell out the passenger window. “Why aren’t you pine pigs moving us? You’ve got to tell us which way to go.”
Grace knew the park police sometimes had rude names called at them; she figured it was a b
adge of honor to be mistaken for real officers. She spoke in her friendliest and cheeriest voice. “Do you live north or east of here?”
The woman was taken aback. “How the hell should I know? I live up by Mercy, Montana.”
It seemed incredible the woman didn’t know which direction she’d come from, but she remembered the important advice about how stupidity didn’t end at the park boundary. The lady was obviously upset, and willing to chew Grace a new one. She also didn’t know a thing about direction. As much as she wanted to bark back, Grace kept herself composed.
“You’ll want to go north, ma’am. That way.” She pointed toward the Montana border, which couldn’t have been more than a few miles away.
“Aren’t you going to lead us? Our GPS isn’t working. We need help getting home.”
Grace wanted to unload on the rude woman, instead maintaining her hard-fought professionalism. “Sorry, ma’am. I’m going this way.” She pointed toward the mountains to the east, which were still shrouded in dark clouds. Grace started the motor, which drowned out the cursing woman.
She spoke to Asher out of the side of her mouth. “We can’t hold up the entire line for one Code W, you know?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea what that is.”
The woman still hadn’t moved. She continued to berate Grace from the adjacent car, as if it was going to change her mind.
“It means a park visitor is acting like a little baby. It’s called a Code Wimp.”
The two of them laughed together, when, for the first time, she experienced a strange premonition not everyone was going to make it home.
Kentucky
Standing on top of the municipal water tower gave Ezra and Butch a top-down look at the entire region. The town of Fairdealing was a high point in the landscape, which was probably why the planners chose to put the water tower there in the first place. It would all flow downhill to people’s homes.
Impact (Book 2): Bounce Page 4
