Death Canyon

by David Riley Bertsch

  The most horrifying difference between the Swiss project and the Hot Rock Experiment was the underlying geology. Basel was on a fault, sure, but Yellowstone floated atop the largest magma pool in the world. Not only were earthquakes likely, but any shifts in the underground vents and ducts could potentially trigger the biggest and most dangerous volcano in the world. The results were hard to predict but predictably dire: ash clouds, dramatic climate change, even a new ice age. Not to mention the direct effects of the lava explosion.

  Jan went to the bathroom and washed his face. He was hungry and tired of thinking about drilling, fracking, earthquakes, and volcanoes. He needed a break. He jogged down the stairs to the kitchen, knowing there wasn’t any food there but opening the fridge out of habit.

  It held only a few beers and a bottle of tomato juice. He slammed the door shut and hurried toward the stairs to the garage, grabbing his keys and jacket on the way. The closest place to find food at this hour was up in West Yellowstone, about fifteen miles of back roads away. At least it would get him out of the house.

  Jan backed out of the garage and plugged his cell phone into its charger. He didn’t expect a call, but he wanted to be sure he could receive the orders to abandon ship if they came. Jan floored it down the long driveway. The vehicle rumbled over the ruts and potholes in the dirt. It was freeing to get out of the house.

  * * *

  “What’s that humming noise?” Noelle asked.

  “Sounds like a generator nearby. Construction maybe?”

  “This late in the day?” It was a quarter after eight. The sun was set. It was getting dark.

  Jake shrugged. “Household generator?”

  “Kinda spooky,” Noelle said.

  Jake continued driving. He occasionally checked the fax to see their position relative to the epicenter.

  “We should be getting close,” he said. The humming was growing more intense. It was all around them, more like they were inside a machine than near one.

  “Stop!” Noelle shouted. Her voice filled the cabin of the truck. “Turn your lights off. There’s someone coming.” The truck shook hard with another brief quake as Jake applied the brakes. Noelle gasped.

  “It’s okay.” Jake put his hand on her forearm.

  In the distance a set of headlights looked like they were coming toward them down a slope in the road. There were no streetlights and the darkness gave the illusion that the vehicle was slowly descending from space like a UFO.

  “What should we do?” Noelle asked.

  “Nothing. Turn the lights back on and keep going. We don’t even know who it is. They won’t think anything of it, another car passing them.”

  Noelle wasn’t so sure, given the remoteness of the area. Jake flipped the lights on, but before he could start moving, the lights in the distance angled off suddenly, a turn. Now only the red taillights were visible.

  “He turned. Where was he coming from? It looks like he just drove down that hillside.” She looked at the facsimile. They were at the epicenter. She showed Jake.

  “There must be another road up there.” Jake looked to the hill where the car had come from. “Or a driveway—an entrance or something. Come on. Let’s go.”

  A half mile down the road there was an opening in the brush that revealed a narrow uphill drive. Jake looked in both directions and turned up the drive. A few hundred feet in, he turned off the truck’s lights again and navigated the path by the remnant glow of the just-set sun.

  As they made their way up the hill, they began to see the dim outline of a structure. Jake slowed the truck to allow the vehicle to travel with minimum noise. A house. Cedar siding and expansive lodgepole decks adorned the exterior. The humming was coming from within.

  Jake switched off the engine and got out. Noelle followed him. A single interior light was on, but the rest of the house was dark and lifeless. Noelle cautiously peered in through a window to see if anyone was inside. Nothing.

  Noelle glanced back to find Jake, but he had already moved to the side door and found it unlocked. He waved her in. The home’s interior suggested vacancy. No furniture, no dishes in the sink, no shoes by the door. When Noelle caught up with Jake he held his palms out to her. Stop! She stopped in her tracks. He had already endangered her enough; before he would let her go any farther he wanted to check the garage for cars.

  Jake found himself wishing he were armed. In general he hated guns—they complicated things unnecessarily, and they always put the bad guys on edge. The Argus incident wasn’t the only time in his career that a gunshot had completely ruined years of investigation. Still, there were times he wished he had the advantage of a pistol. This was one of those times. Noelle’s presence had a lot to do with his sentiment. He had to protect her at all costs.

  Jake walked across the kitchen and down the stairwell that, he assumed, accessed the garage. The space was empty, but it smelled faintly of exhaust. There was no doubt that car had come from the house.

  Another strong quake. Creaking and crashing noises overshadowed the humming for a moment.

  He returned to the kitchen and spoke aloud for the first time since they entered the house. “No cars in the garage. I think we’re safe to look around for a minute. Just a quick walk-through, though, okay? Check upstairs. Be safe.” He gave her a stern look.

  Noelle nodded and headed up the stairs. Jake continued the search on the first floor. After only a few minutes, Noelle’s voice startled him.

  “Jake!” she shouted, before remembering to keep it down. “I think you’d better get up here!”

  Jake ran up the stairs and found Noelle standing in the middle of a large room. Around the perimeter of the space were computer monitors and unidentifiable electronics. The room looked like something from NASA or NORAD, but here it was, secretly tucked away just outside of a national park.

  Noelle spoke first. “What the hell is this?” She was sorting through stacks of dot-matrix printouts on a desk, looking for a clue that might answer her own question. They were graphs of some sort—dates on the x axis and unusual acronyms and numbers on the y. A tremor made Noelle jump. Jake jogged toward her, hoping to protect her, but backed off when the shaking stopped. A small one.

  “Don’t know. Looks like a lab of some kind. I’d bet it’s a seismology lab, based on the circumstances.” Jake gave her a meaningful look. “Did you try the computers?”

  Noelle left her stack of paper and walked over to one of the keyboards. She pressed the return key and the screen lit up. A window popped up asking her to log in.

  “No luck. Wants a password.” Jake and Noelle quickly checked the other computers in the room, but all of them required a username and password.

  Jake looked around the room again, thinking and repeating Noelle’s sentiment under his breath.

  “What the hell is this?”

  His mind searched for the answer. He thought of the eco-terrorists, Ricker and the mysterious Shaman character.

  It still doesn’t add up. What am I missing? Jake looked around. It all looks so sophisticated. He wasn’t familiar with the equipment in the room, but it was easy to guess the cost would be in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Too much for some grassroots environmental campaign.

  Jake was more than curious to snoop around, but the elegance and refinement of the lab troubled him. He couldn’t put Noelle at risk any longer. “Another sixty seconds and we’re getting out of here. This is too dangerous. Whatever is going on is way beyond our comprehension. We need to go to a safe place and get ahold of my contact in the FBI.”

  Jake thought back on past searches gone wrong. How every time, the person you didn’t want to see come back always showed up before they were expected to.

  Before you could get the information you came for. Before you could get out.

  With Ricker, Jake had known better than to surprise a potentially dangerous suspect in a private place. That’s why he had arranged the meeting in public.

  I need to exercise the same cau
tion now, he thought. Although he sensed they were tantalizingly close to the answers they wanted.

  “Sixty seconds,” he said again. Another tremor.

  Jake starting rifling through the stacks of papers, and then the filing cabinets below the desk. It was all gibberish, readouts in units that Jake wasn’t familiar with and more graphs that documented unknowable variables. Finally he came across a blue folder labeled “Phase One/Hot Rock Experiment.”

  Experiment? What is this place?

  Jake opened the file and took it to the surface of the desk where the light was better. Noelle joined him there. In the middle of the file, among more cryptic graphs and readouts, was finally something they could read. Jake unfolded the large sheet. It was a blueprint of some kind.

  “Looks like landscaping plans.” Noelle sounded nervous. The sketch showed what appeared to be large spruce trees spaced evenly throughout an area that the key said was about ten square miles. Weaving through the space and connecting each tree was what looked like an irrigation line. Something about the plans seemed oddly technical; again, acronyms and data were interspersed among the tree graphics. The main irrigation line led to another structure on the land.

  “Why plant full-sized trees? Look at these trees. If they are shown to scale this plan shows them to measure out at about forty-five feet.”

  “Revegetation, maybe? There could’ve been a fire or beetle kill and the park is trying to restore the landscape.”

  “The park doesn’t revegetate when there’s a fire, do they?” Jake looked puzzled. “Think of the fire in the eighties. They let nature take its course. And still, why would you plant full-grown trees?”

  “And even if they did, those trees surely wouldn’t need irrigation up here. This is their natural habitat.”

  “Something’s funny about the piping too.” Jake glanced at the key and did some quick calculations in his head. “These irrigation lines are four and a half meters in diameter.” He looked up at her.

  “That’s big enough to drive a small car through. What kind of plant could possibly need that amount of water?”

  “Shit!” There was a splash of dim light out the window. “Someone’s here!”

  Noelle grabbed the blueprint and ran with Jake to the front of the house, where they could see down the driveway. Somebody had just turned in and was headed up the hill.

  “Get the lights,” Jake whispered. Noelle ran back to the control room and flipped the switch. When she got downstairs, Jake was at the side door, holding it open. “Back to the truck! Hurry!”

  The car was getting close. It was less than a hundred yards away and closing, but because of the hill, the headlights and the driver’s line of sight were pointed up into the night sky. They can’t see us yet. At that distance the noise of the ignition would alert the driver to their presence, so Jake improvised. Without starting the engine, Jake put the transmission into neutral. He had a slight slope to his advantage.

  “Put your seat belt on! Hold on!” he whispered to Noelle, who, out of confusion, had opened the passenger door, thinking they were going to run for it. Jake centered himself on the rear bumper and pushed as hard as he could. The truck crept forward. The downhill slope increased its momentum and Jake ran to the driver’s side and jumped in. The front wheels left the driveway and started bouncing down the sagebrush slope behind the house. The beam of the headlights was now projecting only a few feet above the roof of the truck. The car was closing in on them. They had only a few seconds before the headlights and the driver’s field of view would be right on them.

  The rear wheels rolled over the edge and the truck was moving fast. Too fast. It bounced and bucked as it rolled without resistance over rocks and miniature arroyos. Jake buckled his seat belt and clutched the handle above the door with his left hand. His right hand left the steering wheel to hold Noelle down in her seat. The violent bumps were bouncing both passengers around. Their heads were nearly reaching the ceiling.

  After the thrashing came to a crescendo, the slope leveled to flat ground, and Jake pulled the parking brake. The truck gave them a few more jolts and then came to a lurching halt. Afraid to move, Jake and Noelle stayed still for a few moments.

  “Did he see us?” Noelle whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Jake was watching the top of the hill in the mirror.

  The driver never came down over the hill. Safe, for now. Jake looked over at Noelle to see if she was hurt. She looked okay.

  He checked himself for injury. Everything was intact. Noelle shook her left hand in pain so Jake asked to have a look.

  “It’s fine, really, just bruised, I think. I bumped it on something.” Maybe not broken, but more than a bump. Her hand was swelling quickly.

  “Look!” Noelle pointed through the windshield with her right hand. “The trees!”

  Jake followed her gesture and immediately noticed what she was talking about. The truck had rolled into the flat that was cultivated according to the plans they found in the house. Around them, large, evenly spaced pines stood barely visible in the night. They could hear the sound of rushing water emanating from the ground beneath them.

  Humming.

  What the hell?

  33

  THE HOT ROCK TRACT. THE SAME EVENING.

  Jan took the plastic bag of snacks up to the control room to eat. He’d decided to stop at a gas station rather than drive to West Yellowstone. He was worried his phone wouldn’t get reception on the way and he would miss an important call. The call that might end all the chaos.

  As he ate, he felt calmer, if not resigned. If he died up here, so be it. It didn’t matter, as long as his son was safe. His family would get the payout if anything went wrong. He had lived a long and prosperous life, considering the risks he had taken. What more could he ask for?

  Jan headed upstairs and into the control room to check the house phone and computer for messages. Before he got to the phone, he noticed something amiss right away. The blue folder. What the hell is it doing out on the desk?

  He picked it up and paged through the file. Pages were missing. He cursed aloud and stuffed the remaining pages of the file into the paper shredder.

  Someone was in the house! Jan panicked for a moment and then collected himself. He crept over to the desk and opened the top drawer, where he lifted his Glock subcompact out of its case and crammed a magazine into the sleeve inside the grip. Then he put the two extra magazines in his jacket pocket, slipped off his shoes for stealth, and started walking.

  He quietly approached each bedroom and spun inside with his gun aimed at chest level. The top floor was empty. He walked down the stairs, listening for the noise of an intruder. He heard something that made him pause.

  Just another tremor.

  At the bottom of the stairs he turned right toward the kitchen. Nobody. Whoever it was must have fled the house right before he got back—he was gone for less than an hour.

  Jan turned on some lights in the house and jogged back upstairs to the control room. He logged on to one of the computers and checked for Makter’s location. He watched for a moment. His old friend was close to the house, but it looked like his vehicle was heading toward him, not away.

  What the hell is he doing?

  He dialed the phone and laced up a pair of shoes while it rang. Makter didn’t pick up and the call went to voice mail. “Dammit!”

  What is he doing here and why is he coming back? If it isn’t Mak, who the hell could it be? Jan picked up the Glock again and headed outside.

  * * *

  Jake and Noelle left the car and walked toward the nearest tree. The starlight illuminated the terrain just enough to see where they were going. They could hear the hiss from the pumping water in the irrigation system. It was getting louder and louder as they approached.

  “Can you feel that?” Jake abruptly stopped walking. “The ground is shaking.”

  Noelle stopped. “What is it? A quake?”

  Jake shook his head.

 
Noelle was afraid now. Horrified, really.

  What the hell am I doing up here? How did I let myself get in so deep? For the first time in quite a while, she longed to be back in her lonely cabin.

  Curiosity killed the cat.

  “The irrigation line, probably. There would be a ton of water coursing through those lines; maybe that would be enough to shake the ground. Let’s keep moving.”

  Now a quake roared, clearly detectable despite the humming below them. The tree in front of them threatened to fall, but the shaking stopped just in time, leaving the tree pointing to the sky at an unnatural angle.

  It stood like a sentinel in the night air. It was wider at its base than any pine Jake or Noelle had ever seen. The whir of unknown man-made mechanisms was loud enough now that they strained to hear each other speak.

  Noelle placed her hand on the tree. It was warm to the touch and quivering intensely. Confused, she reached up and grabbed the lowest bough, running her fingers through the needles. It felt strange. She tried to pluck some of the needles from the limb, but they wouldn’t come free.

  It’s fake?

  34

  TWENTY MILES SOUTHWEST OF JAN’S COMPOUND. THE SAME EVENING.

  Makter was speeding north. Since the park was closed, he had to drive the whole way around through eastern Idaho. Shitty timing for a road closure. He was anxious to see Jan so he could appeal the decision on Jake Trent. The urge to kill Trent had grown within him since the day before, in part because of Jan’s scolding. If Jan objected again, he would just have to kill them both.

  He turned east toward West Yellowstone.

  * * *

  Jan had a small flashlight in his pocket. He didn’t want to attract any attention so he left it there for now. Besides, once his eyes adjusted, he knew he’d be able to see well enough. That way, he could use the shadow of darkness to his advantage rather than announcing his presence to whoever might be lurking in the night.