Death Canyon

by David Riley Bertsch

“Click on his username.”

  Jake did as Noelle asked. “CarlofNature went to Stanford.” Jake looked up at Noelle in disbelief. “It’s a fake name. C. Stanford is CarlofNature.”

  Noelle finished his thought. “And Cursed1 is Hawlding. Open the rest of his profile.”

  Jake looked at the “About Me” section—“cursed like Palemon,” he read to himself. It didn’t ring a bell immediately. Jake handed the laptop to Noelle. “You’ll be faster.”

  Jake gave the name some thought. Palemon. Greek mythology? He couldn’t pin down the source of his memory. Palemon, palemon. A painting? An opera?

  “Do you know the name Palemon? I mean, does it sound familiar?” Jake asked Noelle.

  She shook her head. “The only place I’ve heard of it is in that ballet.”

  Jake paused and looked up at her. “What ballet?”

  “Ondine or Undine. I’m not sure which it is. One was a book and the other was the ballet.”

  Jake took a moment to think. “That’s it. I knew it sounded familiar. The story of Ondine, do you remember what it was?”

  “Not really, no. I was young when I saw it. I was just interested in the costumes.”

  “I don’t remember all the details, but Ondine was some type of water nymph. Palemon fell in love with her. At the end of the story, Ondine finds out that he has been unfaithful and she gives him one final, fatal kiss and then returns to the sea.”

  “Wow. Impressive knowledge of ballet, Jake. You’re a real man’s man.” She laughed. “How does it help us?”

  “Look here, under ‘About Me,’ Hawlding wrote ‘Cursed like Palemon’ . . .”

  “Yeah, so what? He had his heart broken and wrote something cheesy on the Internet to express himself.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s a medical condition called Ondine’s curse.”

  Noelle smiled at him, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “I did a medical malpractice case for a sufferer of Ondine’s curse once. The automatic reflex related to breathing is nonexistent. The person has to breathe consciously. Depending on the severity, they may have to have a pacemaker-like device surgically installed. It tells their body when to breathe while they’re asleep.”

  “So this guy had this disease? What does that mean for us?”

  “I think he was a human sacrifice. They mention a celebration; it must have been that night at the tavern. A farewell party of sorts.”

  Noelle was speechless for a second.

  “Why would he sacrifice himself? How does it help their cause?”

  “He felt he had nothing to live for. Ricker mentioned that one of the group’s aims was to show others that to ignore Mother Nature’s dangers could be a fatal mistake. That if you didn’t respect her you would be struck down. Hawlding didn’t want to fight his disease with modern medicine; it was against his belief system. His death also served the purpose of furthering the cause. They feel our land is overused, abused. Death in nature would certainly put a damper on tourism and spread their message. If you’re a maniac, those are some pretty good reasons to die.”

  The ground shook hard under them. “A bunch of earthquakes coming from the world’s largest volcanically active region would sure put a damper on tourism. And spread a message too.”

  A jar of rice fell from a shelf and crashed loudly to the floor.

  “They’re still getting stronger, Jake.”

  “Feels that way. Might be in our heads, though.” Jake thought of the serenity they had just witnessed on their walk.

  He paused for a bit to think. “You can’t just start an earthquake, Noelle. You’re overestimating the ability of man.”

  “I don’t know,” Noelle said. “But I know where we might be able to find out. Keith’s got friends in the geology department up at MSU. We should check out Yellowstone on the way: the camp was near the park, the geyser basin death, your car chase—”

  “Noelle, that’s silly,” Jake interrupted. “Plus, it’s dangerous; we’d be driving through the hotbed of all this activity. It’s insane.”

  Noelle ignored Jake. “You have a better way to figure this out? We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

  28

  WASHINGTON, D.C. WEDNESDAY MORNING.

  It was sweltering in the nation’s capital. Cherry blossom season was long gone. There was only heat and humidity to look forward to until September.

  Five men were spaced evenly at one end of a large, rectangular table. They all wore dark suits, except for one, who wore an army uniform. They kept their voices low, and each man had a laptop in front of him.

  At the opposite end of the table, a screen unfurled from the ceiling, stretching nearly to the floor. After a few seconds of blank blue, a figure appeared and the men quieted down.

  The man was skinny and relatively young, in his early forties. He looked nervous, adjusting his eyeglasses as the men in the room acknowledged him.

  “We need you to come back to the States,” the army man said. “We need you to go out there and tell us exactly what’s going on.”

  The other men in the room nodded.

  “I’m swamped here.” The man spoke with a British accent. “Besides, I have access to all the same information here that I would if I were there.” His voice cracked ever so slightly.

  One of the men in a suit stood up, raising his voice: “We’re not making a suggestion, Jules! We need to know what the hell is happening out there!”

  The man to his left calmed him down, and then he spoke. “Look, Jules, what’s your most recent prediction, given the current data?”

  The man called Jules looked anxious. “Despite the news, Jim, my prediction remains the same. I’ve told you this a million times. Nothing has changed. There’s no way to know exactly what is going on down there.”

  “Then what are we paying you for?” another man said in an icy staccato.

  Jules took a deep breath. “You’re paying me for the best advice there is. And remember that I never recommended this way forward. I said it was too unpredictable. Now, here we are.”

  The second man snapped, “Is this your project, Jules? Did you fund it? Who pays your salary?”

  Jules shook his head silently.

  “You’re a fucking scientist. Do your job.”

  “You let us know immediately if anything changes. And if you don’t return our calls, know that we will find you.”

  The screen went blank. The man who had last spoken slammed his computer shut and stood up to leave. The others filed out behind him.

  29

  GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK. THE SAME MORNING.

  Jake and Noelle were in Noelle’s ranger truck and headed toward Yellowstone. Noelle had called off work, citing a family obligation. It was first light. “Remind me, how is Keith gonna help?” Jake asked. She had just picked up her cell phone to make a call. She gave him the universal hand signal for “just a minute.”

  “Keith? It’s Noelle.” She’d woken him. “Listen, Jake and I are headed up to Bozeman to see you.” She paused. “Yeah, right now. Both of us. We need your help with something. We need to talk to a seismologist, someone we can trust. And we might need access to their lab.” She was silent for a few seconds and then hung up the phone.

  “Seismology lab?” Jake asked.

  When they reached the south entrance to Yellowstone, the ranger booths were empty. Jake knocked on the office door, but that was abandoned as well. The entrance gates were chained and locked.

  “Shit. We’ll have to go around, through Idaho,” Jake said after taking one last look around.

  “No way, that’s gonna take too long. Watch out.” Noelle grabbed a thick-tined digging rake from the back of her truck and headed to the closest gate. She jammed a tine inside one of the chain links on the lock mechanism.

  “Cover your eyes. Stay back,” she told Jake. Noelle started twisting the rake clockwise by its wooden handle, and the chain began to creak. After four or five turns, it was twisted and coiled ont
o itself in quite a mess. She couldn’t turn the rake anymore. Jake walked up to help. Using all their strength, they tried one last turn to break the chain free. Jake planted his feet and pushed, holding the rake at the terminus to generate the most leverage. After a few seconds, the chain couldn’t take any more. It popped and clattered to the ground in a heap. Jake stumbled, and Noelle fell over from the instant lack of resistance.

  “How do you think your boss would feel about that?” Jake asked as Noelle threw the chain into the weeds and opened the gate.

  “Let’s go” was her only response.

  They got in the vehicle and sped through the park. There were no rangers, no speed limits. Near Norris Geyser Basin a group of scientists was huddled around the geothermal feature. They thought nothing of another park service truck speeding by.

  Jake and Noelle kept their eyes open but saw nothing out of the ordinary, aside from the unusually intense activity in the geyser basins. No Makter. No protesters, no bodies. The park was deserted.

  In less than two hours, Jake and Noelle were crossing the Montana border. To exit the park, they simply drove around the gate on the remnants of a construction entrance. Again, the ranger station was unoccupied. Jake was relieved not to have to cause more property damage.

  They got to Keith’s lab at Montana State by quarter after nine. He greeted them as they entered. “Noelle, wonderful to see you! Have a seat.” He hugged Noelle and shook Jake’s hand.

  “Keith. Nice to see you,” Noelle said.

  Keith turned to Jake. “Glad to see she roped you into this mess! It’s been too long. How’s the fishing?” Jake pronated his hand to say “so-so.”

  “Did y’all feel that quake an hour ago? Shook enough to rattle my stuff around.” Keith swept his hand across the vials, tools, and cameras on his shelves.

  “So you’re feeling them here, too?” Keith’s observation invited Noelle to get right to the point. “We were in the car; we wouldn’t have felt that last one. But there’ve been plenty of them. That’s why we came.”

  Keith looked confused. “Feeling them? Hell, they think they’re centered not too far from here. Northwestern part of the park, they say. Probably equidistant from Jackson and Bozeman. What do you mean you came because of the earthquakes?”

  “Well, sort of. We wanted to hear from an expert, you know, someone in that field first. We think . . . er, I think there’s a chance that someone is causing the quakes.”

  There was silence in the lab while Keith processed the statement. Then he spoke nonchalantly. There was no real sense of surprise in his tone.

  “And how do you want me to help you?”

  Noelle answered first. “MSU has a big seismology department, right? We just want to talk to someone who can tell us if this is possible. We thought you might have a friend or—”

  “It would probably be silly to ask if you have involved the authorities, right?” Keith interrupted, grimacing. Neither of them responded.

  “Okay. Didn’t think so. Then, I suppose we need someone we can really trust?”

  Jake spoke up. “Afraid so, yeah. We actually think the police could be involved. And obviously we don’t want word to get out and cause a panic. You know what all these earthquakes could mean as well as anyone. Part of me hopes they are caused by humans.”

  “Right. Okay, I’ll send some emails; it’s usually the fastest way to get ahold of folks on campus.”

  Keith didn’t bother sitting down at the desk. He leaned over his keyboard and entered a few email addresses. Then he typed a short message and stood. “Done. I guess we wait now. It shouldn’t be long. Can I get anyone a coffee or tea?”

  Jake declined, but Noelle accepted the offer, asking for tea. Keith left the lab and walked down the hall to the employee lounge area. Noelle and Jake were left sitting in the lab alone looking at each other. The wait made them feel idle and anxious.

  Finally Noelle broke the silence. “Do you think anyone will help?”

  “I don’t know.”

  As Jake spoke, things on the shelves began to clink and clang. The ground shook for the next several seconds. Jake and Noelle looked at each other but didn’t utter a word.

  Again, Jake could the see the fear in Noelle’s eyes that had surfaced only a few times since he’d known her. The intensity of the quake increased and she grabbed onto an epoxy-resin lab table to stabilize herself. A large glass jar slid off its perch and smashed on the floor. An organ of some kind flopped out. The smell of preservatives filled the air. It reminded Jake of the morgue.

  Keith came skidding around the corner and through the lab door just as the tremors subsided. “Whooooaaa! That was wild! Another one! Bad news about your tea . . .” He held up a clear mug filled with opaque brown fluid.

  “What is that?” Noelle asked. Her voice was shaky.

  “It’s what came from the tap. Quakes must have broken a water-line. It’s contaminated.” He smelled and shook his head. “Smells like sulfur.”

  Sulfur. Jake thought. Just like the geyser basin.

  The computer made a dull beeping noise. “Email! Nice to know something still works.” Keith hustled over to the machine. On his way, he noticed the spilled jar. “Yuck, sorry about that, guys. Just a grizzly liver.”

  This time, Keith sat down before opening his email. “Nice! Dr. Stevenson wants us to come over and chat with him.”

  “Uh, might wanna clean that up first . . .” Noelle pointed at the liver. Her hands crossed over her chest, holding herself.

  “Oh, shoot, right.” Keith cleaned up the liver and replanted it in a new jar. “We test them for all sorts of stuff, deformities, illness, probably the most important is the presence of pollution or chemicals. This one hasn’t been dissected yet. It’s from a big bear, though, I can tell you that from the size of it.”

  When he was finished, Keith led them across campus. They left the main sidewalk for a path that crossed the big lawn in the center of the quad. As they did, a shudder again rolled through the ground at their feet. It lasted only a short moment, but it was enough to get the attention of the students on the lawn. They looked around with fretful faces.

  Jake looked around as well. The earthquakes seemed more real to him here. Just a few minutes prior when they got out of the truck, the campus had felt friendly and safe. Being out of Jackson Hole was a relief. Now it occurred to Jake that there was no easy escape from his troubles. Here, the lawn was manicured, there were more buildings and people, but there was still no sense of control or order.

  Could Noelle be right about the quakes? Is it actually possible that they tie into all this somehow? If she’s right, this is no minor disturbance where the deer go on grazing. Not a fly left stuck in a streamside bush. This is meddling with a force that no one can predict or understand.

  Jake hoped that Keith’s friend might be able to answer those questions. This was a matter far beyond his realm of knowledge. Another shudder in the earth. He turned to see Noelle and Keith a ways ahead of him, so he jogged to catch up.

  In another basement laboratory, they found Dr. Stevenson. He was tall and skinny and of Asian-American descent. His hair was well groomed and he wore expensive eyeglasses, but there was a childlike quality about him. They shook hands all around.

  “So what can I do for you? There’s a lot of exciting stuff going on right now!” He sounded giddy.

  To Jake, his enthusiasm was off-putting. Despite how interesting the quakes might be from a scientific standpoint, they were destructive already and bound to get worse.

  Noelle was on the same page. She inquired into his meaning. “What do you mean, exciting?”

  “The earthquakes of course, and the changes in geology, especially in the park—”

  “Right. Sorry to stop you, but changes in geology?” Jake asked. “As in, the earth is moving?”

  “Yes, of course. Something like this hasn’t happened since 1959—the Hebgen Lake quake. It’s pretty remarkable.”

  “What exactly is ch
anging? Geologically, I mean?” Despite his eccentric bedside manner, it seemed to Jake that Stevenson knew what he was talking about.

  “Everything. Well, the earth always moves when there is an earthquake. Around here we have extremely sensitive geothermal features. Any slight movement underground can change them—creating new geysers, eliminating old ones . . .”

  “Like Old Faithful?” Noelle asked, thinking of the newspaper article.

  “Exactly! In 1959, it was a 7.5 that did it. That quake delayed Old Faithful’s eruption time by nearly nine minutes! This time, it seems as if these smaller quakes have had the same effect.”

  “But the geyser isn’t erupting at all right now.”

  “Right! And it may never erupt again. There’s a complicated network of tubes and ducts down there, naturally formed, of course. If some get blocked and others open up, it changes the location and intensity of the geyser. It might never return to the state it was in before the quakes.”

  The explanation got Keith’s attention. “So, if Old Faithful isn’t erupting now, does that mean that the energy—the heat—is being stored somewhere and might cause a more massive eruption?”

  Stevenson laughed. “No, not at all. The water and steam would likely be escaping elsewhere, through cracks and springs and the formation of new geysers. Another close-by geyser might get bigger or more regular, who knows? Anyway, I don’t mean to overwhelm you with my excitement. You were saying, Ms. . . . ?”

  “Noelle, please. Our question is a little out there, but we were wondering whether there is any way for a person to start an earthquake?” She paused for a second and then spoke again. “Well, I guess a series of earthquakes.”

  Stevenson gave Noelle a grave look. Then he started to laugh. “Sounds like a Superman movie or something.” He looked at Jake and Keith for a laugh but didn’t get one. “I mean, no. Impossible. Not on this scale.”

  Noelle felt silly and so she fell silent, but Jake spoke. “You say not on this scale, what do you mean by that?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, ma’am,” he said, turning to Noelle. “All I mean is that yes, it is technically possible to cause an earthquake, or at least increase the chances of one. That being said, it could never have been done across such a huge area.”