She got out her phone, expecting to dial the number where her dad had called her from yesterday, finding there was no signal. After staring at the useless device for a few seconds, she pocketed it and took in what remained of the scenery. “My God. The entire park is on fire.” Bridge Bay Campground was out that way. So was Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake, and almost every spring, geyser, and mud pit. Plus all those people, including her fellow rangers. Her voice turned distant. “I was supposed to be down there.”
Asher acted like he was going to wrap his arm around her shoulder, then he switched at the last second and patted her back. “I’m so sorry. Really, I am. Whatever fell last night, it was big enough to burn all those trees. Who knows how far south it goes?” He took a deep breath. “There is a bright side, you know.”
“I have my hat?” she replied with dry wit.
He cracked up. “Yes, there’s important stuff like that, but also—” He turned her around to face up the valley. She easily saw through the trees; the forest had been thinned out by the burn the previous day. “The fire you rescued me from came through here and sucked up all the fuel. The other fire will never reach this valley.”
Grace reflected on how Randy had sent her on the late-night rescue to the alpine hut. At the time, it irked her to be the one called to do it—a job for the low woman in the pecking order. Turned out, that call accidentally saved her life. Randy was probably dead.
You’re still on duty, girl.
She snapped back to reality. “You’re right, but it could go around us. Trap us here for who knows how long. Mammoth is north of the burn line; we should head that way. If people survived there, we have to get them out before the fire burns through.” They’d been at the visitors’ center and tourist village the day before; it would be the place to find someone, if anyone was left alive.
The impact did have an effect on the landscape around them, even if the fire hadn’t reached them. About half the trees had been pushed over, facing north, and dirt, detritus, and billions of charred pine needles created two-foot debris drifts toward the road. When her eyes were drawn that way, she caught sight of white metal.
Asher saw it, too. “The truck!”
They jogged through the wrecked forest for about a hundred yards until they got to the gravel road. Her eyes were drawn to the Chevy Suburban. She also sought another shape which should have been in the open a bit down the hill. She stared intently, hoping to see evidence of a dead body—it wasn’t there.
“Do you see Misha?” she wondered.
Kentucky
The sun came up for Ezra, too, but he’d barely slept the night before. After losing his dear Susan, he’d gone back down the steps and collapsed in exhaustion. The hole where the door used to be was like an open wound, and smoke and dust blew in, causing endless coughing fits for the fifty people crammed in the basement. He drifted off a time or two, even with the hacking fits and his painful sunburn, and then the rain began.
He’d gone upstairs right away to wrap Susan in a giant spill-proof tablecloth from Roger and Ethel’s basement. There was no way he’d leave her exposed to the elements, but as the night went on, he wondered if anything could possibly keep her dry up there. They were like no thunderstorms he’d ever heard.
The skies were already unsettled from the cracks of hypersonic rocks screaming to Earth, and the world rumbled for a solid hour afterward as if to shake out all the vapor in the atmosphere. Once the deluge began, it sent too much water down the steps; they had to find an old tarp and stretch it over the hole up top. A short time later, the tarp collapsed under the weight of the storm, which sent more water splashing down the stairs. They’d set it up again, putting it at an angle so the water would flow sideways into whatever was left of the kitchen. He sat near the steps to keep watch, always sure the tarp was one wind gust from blowing away. The torrential storm dumped pools of rain for hours afterward.
Finally, when daylight signaled the end of the night and the rain was only a drizzle, he stood and took a few steps toward the top. He had no rain gear, or an umbrella, but he didn’t much care about getting wet. He needed to see his wife in the light of day.
Butch grabbed him before he got to the tarp, rifle in hand. “Don’t go out without this.” He handed over Ezra’s Bushmaster.
“Thanks. You, uh, can have that one, for now.” Ezra pointed to the second rifle, unable to speak the name of the previous owner. He’d made a point of saying it was temporary, as if Susan might return, though he immediately knew it was impossible.
Butch went back and grabbed the rifle. When he returned, his eyes were filled with concern. “You all right, sir?”
“Call me Ezra,” he said sadly. “And yeah. I just need to get up top, you know?”
Butch, the giant ex-soldier, gave him a martial nod, then followed Ezra up the steps. As he pulled back the tarp and stepped out, he looked everywhere but the corner where he’d left his wife. Maybe she was sitting up elsewhere in what was left of the house. Maybe she was standing in the kitchen, admiring the wreckage of the big RV that had once been the source of neighborly disputes. Maybe she’d gone back to their own house, despite it being a smoldering ruin. Eventually, when he finally glanced over to her corner and saw her wrapped in the colorful holiday tablecloth, he choked up all over again.
Ezra crouched next to her and prayed. It wasn’t anything fancy; he asked God to take care of her soul and get her to heaven, where she belonged. He also asked if He’d keep a seat warm for him, too. Ezra desperately wanted to see her again, and he dwelled on that happy reunion for an unknown length of time…
When Butch tapped him on the shoulder, he snapped out of his reverie. Some of the others had come out of the basement, and people moved in small groups out on Happy Cove Street. He would willingly stay at his wife’s side forever if he didn’t make himself move. “Hey, we should see what’s going on up at the top of the hill. I’d like to know if everyone in the cars made it to safety.”
“I’m with you, sir.”
Ezra forced himself to chuckle, then looked over his shoulder at the young man. “If you call me sir one more time—” he couldn’t think of a suitable threat that was more ominous than the blast zone around them.
“All right,” Butch reached an arm to help him up, “E-Z. I won’t call you sir.”
“Easy? Are you trying to tell me something?” He let Butch pull him up and lead him away from Susan’s resting spot like a walking robot. They went down the three steps of the front porch. He was shocked to be standing in six inches of water and his autopilot switched off. “Butch, this is impossible!”
He sloshed through the water to get a look to the backyard. The lake had gone over the three-hundred-seventy-five-foot-above-sea-level elevation line behind the houses, which was the top of the spillway at the dam. Water should never be higher than that, much like water in a tub would never rise above the height of the rim. The flat surface of the lake was broken up by millions of bits of debris floating toward the dam.
“Either we dropped several feet, or the dam went up. This water can’t be here!” Ezra tried not to panic, but the lake was already at full summer pool before the meteorite impacts. Even so, the hurricane-like deluge must have driven the lake level off the charts. He remembered a record rainfall a few years back; it drove the lake up four feet in twenty-four hours. Looking down the line of houses on the lake-side of the street, many foundations were surrounded by water. The back of his property was swamped, too. The lake must have shot up ten or fifteen feet overnight…
“How high will it get?” Butch asked.
“No idea. At some point, the water will reach the roadway on top of the dam and drain over. There’s a physical limit, I’m sure of it, but I don’t know exactly where the line is. Nobody ever thought of drawing it.” The first floor of Roger’s house was still about three feet above the waves. If it kept rising, he’d have to move Susan’s body. “Let’s go find someone who knows what’s happening.”
&nb
sp; They hustled toward the end of the Happy Cove Avenue. The houses on the far side of the street weren’t flooded, but most of them had suffered the Big Bad Wolf treatment; they’d been blown apart. The two-story homes seemed to take the brunt of the wind gust from the asteroid impact. They’d been reduced to a few walls, or, at best, had their top floors and roofs ripped off. The single-level ranch-style models fared better. Their roofs were stripped of shingles and the plywood backing, although the framework was still there. Those few landmarks helped him navigate along houses he no longer recognized.
The wet, misty air smelled like campfire ash mixed with the earthy odor of lake water. As they walked along Happy Cove, he noticed a line of debris filled the street, as if a big wave had placed it there.
“The impact sent a shockwave over the lake, and that blast picked up water as it went. Yesterday it did the same thing the other way; Susan and I were on our boat. We dove in before the wind and water tossed it ashore on the far side of the lake.” He pointed to where he remembered losing his boat. Did the blast of wind send it back in his direction? Maybe it was now out on the lake, or under it, or in a neighbor’s yard. “It must have pushed a giant wave close to the street. It also probably helped rip Roger’s house down to the foundation.”
Butch nodded appreciatively. “We did get splashed with water in the basement. Ruined my phone, too. I guess we barely noticed while we suffered the earthquakes, thunder, and howling wind.”
The drizzle returned, prompting Ezra to stop gawking. “We’ve got work to do.”
I made a promise to get back to Grace.
Chapter 2
Yellowstone National Park, WY
“He’s not there,” Grace said cautiously, worried Misha might be lurking nearby, ready to pounce. “I know he was burned. He was down on the ground when we ran for the geyser pit. There’s no way—”
“He didn’t make it,” Asher finished for her. “I saw him there, too. I’m sure the shockwave carried him away.”
“Yeah, maybe,” she allowed.
They stood there for a moment, until she was startled by a loud banging of metal. She whipped her head around to find Asher playfully slapping at the side of her truck. “How about this baby, huh? She’s as tough as you are.”
After pushing her heart back down her throat, she allowed herself to smile. “It’s not a contest, but I think she’s tougher than me.”
The park service Chevy Suburban had been a rolling junkpile before she and Asher abandoned it the night before. It had been struck by bison, had several windows shot out by Misha, and carried black smudges and melted plastic from her drive through the forest fire. She’d assumed the disastrous wind of the meteorite impact would push it into a ditch, or blow it away, but luck finally gave her a break. The wind had only smashed it against two parallel tree trunks.
“We’ll have to tell your bosses they made a good choice with this model.” Asher kicked at the rear bumper, which made it creak. He then stepped back, angling his watch in a funny way. When he saw her confused look, he added, “My watch has a camera built in.”
“A phone and a camera? What else does it do? Serve food?”
He laughed. “If I was back in Denver, I could use it to order takeout, so, yes. Sort of.”
“Okay, so why are you taking pictures of my truck?”
“Oh, I’m cataloging our journey. This is the first trip into the wild I’ve ever taken. I didn’t tell you yesterday. Figured you’d think I was too weird to rescue.”
“You took pictures?”
“Yep,” he tapped his phone. “Lots.”
Grace walked over and pried open the front door, giving her a chance to see it all up close. Flying rocks had broken every side window and pockmarked the sheet metal like the world’s worst hail stones. The only intact glass was the front windshield, though it still carried the bullet holes from Misha’s attack. The motor started, to her relief, but it took some back and forth before the truck got clear of the trunks. One of the passenger-side doors seemed to get wedged alongside the tree, but she didn’t bother to study the problem and dislodge it. She gunned the motor, ripping off the back-passenger door in the process.
True to his word, the young man had stood there tapping his watch, recording it all. “If you’re done snapping pics, please get in,” she said dutifully when the truck was back on gravel.
Asher tried to get the passenger door open, but the locking mechanism was bent. He yanked on it a few times, seemingly desperate to prove it could be done. She didn’t want to waste more time, so she pointed to the opening of the missing door. “Just come up through there. We’ve got to roll.”
Misha could be out there.
She shivered at the thought. She’d fought him off with the bear spray flamethrower, but his body wasn’t anywhere in sight. Did he slink off and die, or was the hitman proficient in survival situations, even those as serious as a meteor strike? She hoped for the former, while knowing realistically it was probably the latter.
The hitman’s TKM truck was fifty yards down the road, sideways in a ditch. When they drove by, she pulled to a stop. Asher shoved open the damaged front door and walked to the wreck to confirm it was empty, lending more evidence to the theory the man was dead.
“Come on back!” she shouted, anxious to leave.
He climbed in through the front door, though he had trouble pulling it all the way shut. Asher had to slam it a few times to get it closed. The truck had more problems as they got moving. The engine wheezed and a fan belt squealed annoyingly on the short drive off the gravel road, but once they hit pavement, the motor seemed to return to its normal operation.
“Thank God this hunk of junk works,” Asher said when they were up to speed. “That noise was going to drive me insane.”
“I’ll take the annoying sound as long as we don’t have to walk with the fire brewing back there. Plus, whatever we’re heading for up that way.” The forest fires to the south continued to send up their plumes, but she pointed out a dark bank of clouds also perched on top of the mountains to the north. Lightning flashed almost constantly inside the blackest clouds, suggesting it was a monstrous storm. Given the time of year, it wouldn’t be unusual to get an early summer storm front, but the severity seemed extreme.
“Does any of this make sense to you?” she asked while driving around a fallen pine tree almost blocking the entire northbound lane. The blast had tipped over much of the forest, but most trees faced north. A few fell or rolled sideways, into the road.
“What part?” Asher never took his eyes off the lightning strikes twenty miles away.
“Was all this caused by a meteor falling to Earth? I didn’t think it would cause fires and weather like that. There has to be something more going on, right?” She swept her hand both ways, to capture both the storm and the forest fire.
“My sister said all this was coming down; to be honest, I’m shocked we’re still alive. The asteroid was one thousand six hundred meters in length before it broke apart above the moon. The smaller part came down, uh, yesterday, over your hometown…”
He paused as if to see if she would complain.
“The rest came down last night. Before they nuked it, that was the bigger piece. Depending on the angle of approach, the remaining pieces could have all come down on the same place, turning us into Swiss cheese.”
“But it didn’t?” she said, catching on.
“Nope. It was more like a series of airbursts, blowing up those pieces five or so miles above us. That would destroy everything immediately below it, and in a huge radius around it, but those hits wouldn’t send us back to the Stone Age.”
“The sky was full of lights before the big one hit us. What if there were too many of them?” They’d both witnessed what appeared to be hundreds of pieces flaring through the sky last night. It was hard to get a sense of scale; some pieces seemed large and close by, but others were far away.
“I don’t know—” he said before cutting himself off. They’
d finally made it back to the edge of Mammoth Hot Springs. Many of the wooden walkways along the terraces of the springs were gone. Where the surface wood had blown away, only the pylons remained sticking out of the calcium carbonate foundation. “Hey, should they be up there?”
“Those people are nuts,” she said dryly. “We can’t stop to get them down.” It gave her no shock at all to see tourists walking around up near the springs, even without the boardwalks. She was too tired to get out of the truck and issue warnings that would be ignored the second she went on to the next task. Instead, she drove by the springs until they came to the tourist village.
Lingering people once again crowded the visitors’ center, but they didn’t look nearly as animated as the day before. They sat on the front stoop and on the lawn, as if waiting for something to happen. Some perked up when they saw her truck, though the damaged exterior seemed to obscure its role as an official vehicle. She took off her hat, and she sat low in the seat while driving by, willing them not to figure out who she was. Almost by accident, she noticed an unmistakable line of about twenty bodies in the backyard of the center. They’d been placed under blankets and jackets, probably from other tourists.
Her heart bled for the people she was supposed to support. “There’s nothing we can do for these folks right now. It looks like no one is helping them, which tells me the other rangers aren’t around.”
“That’s bad, right?” he suggested. Her problems the day before had as much to do with not being able to contact her superiors as they did with the falling rocks and maniacal killers. If she was going to get ahead of the new day, she needed to think of how to find someone in charge.
Or be the one in charge.
She flashed a grave look of concern at Asher. “I know where we need to go. This time, we have a gun.”
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 21
