Chapter 9
On the day the Yellowstone Volcano finally blew its top the country was still building its stockpiles.
There were no less than eighty freighters and container ships at sea heading to the United States. Some were carrying oil, some grains, some soybeans or other staples.
Many were ordered by their nations of origin to turn back.
No one knew why, exactly.
Deals had been struck. Contracts had been signed.
In many cases the goods were already paid for.
Some shipping nations, it was believed, thought it a bad idea for their ships to dock in the United States after the eruption dealt chaos, death and destruction to the mightiest land on earth.
Some thought that now, more than any time since 1776, America was at its most vulnerable.
They thought, perhaps, that they could bring the goods back home, that the United States would write off its losses. That it had better things to do than whine about commodities they paid for and needed which never arrived.
Other shipping nations had other reasons for wanting to turn their ships around.
They were afraid that any ship which docked in the United States would be rushed by Americans desperate to escape the wrath of Yellowstone.
And that the ships would return to their home ports carrying thousands of American refugees who refused to leave the ship and insisted on being relocated to another land.
One which didn’t have volcanoes blowing up and dirty gray ash falling from the sky and poisoning everything it touched.
Whether their fears were founded or not, it didn’t matter.
The United States’ Department of Defense was having none of it.
Day three, post-eruption, word got back to the Pentagon that ships from China, Russia and half a dozen other countries had come about and were steaming back to their ports of origin.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff met in emergency session to discuss the problem.
They were briefed that only England, Ireland and South Korean ships were still inbound with critical supplies.
“Oh, hell no,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Clinton Moore said. “Oh no they didn’t.”
But they did.
United States Fleet Forces Command went into immediate action.
The Atlantic Fleet was ordered to steam at full speed and chase the running ships down.
Then to fire a shot across each of their bows and force them to turn back toward the United States.
The doves in congress cried foul.
“That could be considered an act of war,” they whined.
“I don’t care,” Moore said. “We’re not going to let our people starve to death because our so-called allies and trading partners are afraid of a little ash.”
The house majority backed him up, being a little bit more hawkish than the whiners. And they claimed, anyway, to be the policemen of right and wrong.
They’d not, as Moore maintained, sacrifice any more Americans than had already been lost.
Only one of the ships gave them any problems, and it wasn’t in the Atlantic.
A South Korean ship’s captain told his superiors he didn’t care what the South Korean government demanded of his company. He didn’t care if Seoul made good on their threats to suspend or revoke the company’s contract to ship government commodities all over the world.
This rogue captain, for whatever reason, was spooked and convinced his ship would be taken over by evacuating Americans. His crew of fourteen could not hold back hoards of terrified people scampering for any way they could to get out of a nation that seemed to be falling apart around them.
He was a timid man by nature, Chong Ho Wei was.
As afraid as he was of being overrun by American evacuees, he was even more afraid of his crew.
And they’d already threatened to mutiny if he pulled into the Port of San Francisco the previous Tuesday as they’d originally planned.
The USS Cisco ran down the vessel mid-Pacific and, as ordered by PacCom, fired a warning across the huge tanker’s bow.
It didn’t faze Captain Chong in the least.
It wasn’t until the Cisco brushed against his hull that he finally took notice.
He knew an armored battleship would win a battle of bumpers against the lightly-skinned ship he was operating.
He turned hard to port and plotted a new course back to San Francisco.
Oddly enough, his crew didn’t complain.
They were laborers, and not very bright ones at that.
But even they could see that taking a chance of being overrun in San Francisco was better than having a gaping hole punched into the side of their vessel by an American battleship with two inches of Kentucky iron plates reinforcing its forward third.
Once Chong’s vessel was turned around word got around the United States expected the rest of the world to meet its obligations and its contracts, and there were no other problems.
The ships in port during the eruption did thorough inspections prior to their departures and encountered a handful of stowaways.
But it was nothing like they’d feared.
The stowaways were dealt with forcibly but with compassion, for no one blamed them for being frightened.
As each day went by it became less and less of a problem, as it became known that there was no need to stow away for a long and grueling trip to a faraway land.
Friendly nations on every continent were stepping up and offering to accept their fair share of refugees.
Two hundred forty years of the United States making friends and being kind to other nations was finally paying off.
Chapter 10
The big Lufthansa passenger jet was diverted from Rhein Main Airport to Frankfurt to accommodate several American warplanes which were airborne at the time of the eruption.
Rhein Main had the hanger space needed to safely store the U. S. Air Force jets in the event the massive cloud crossed the Atlantic and started dumping ash on American air bases.
In recent years many of the cold war hardened revetments were being removed, as it was believed Russia was an impotent adversary without the Soviet bloc countries to back them up.
Revetments were costly to maintain and it was thought American planes would be just dandy sitting in the open on tarmacs.
But the acidic ash, if it made its way to Europe, would cause great damage to the aircraft skin if they didn’t find shelter.
Of course it made no difference to Wayne Hamlin or his wife Julie either way.
They had friends who lived just outside of Rhein Main American Air Base, and were looking forward to seeing them again.
That would have to wait for another day.
Not to worry, though.
They also had friends who lived near Frankfurt.
They tried to make an in-flight call to ask the friends to pick them up at the airport, but the lines were all busy.
Much of North America had lost cell service completely.
The rest of the continent’s cell systems, and indeed those all over the world, were overloaded as everybody, their brother and their mailman were on the phone all at once, spreading the word of the massive explosion in the central United States.
It was, after all, arguably the most catastrophic event in recorded history.
Other than Noah’s flood.
And that was written about after the fact.
Everyone in the United States knew someone in the danger zones.
Virtually everyone else in the world knew someone who resided in the United States.
Those people, the ones who lived in other nations around the world, typically weren’t familiar with America’s geography.
They didn’t know if North Carolina and North Dakota sat side by side along the Canadian border.
Or whether it was New Mexico or New Hampshire that shared a border with Arizona.
All they knew was that there had been a monster explosion and a dirty gray cloud was quickly
encompassing the earth.
They were doing the same thing those with working cell phones in the states were doing: looking for phone numbers of their friends and trying to contact them to see if they’d survived.
Wayne and Julie landed in Frankfurt without incident and cleared customs in record time.
Customs officials sent half their people home to get some rest, suspecting the days ahead would be rough on everyone, as Lufthansa and all other international airlines were gearing up for massive refugees moving in with distant relatives and friends all over the world.
They were doubling scheduled flights, all the while knowing many might be cancelled based on the ash cloud and atmospheric conditions.
It would have been a good time to be a drug smuggler moving product through Frankfurt International, for the usually-meticulous customs inspectors were only checking every tenth bag.
Already harried and looking at having to work a second shift, they were taking only cursory glances at passports and abandoned all screening interrogations completely.
Wayne went to the Hertz counter and rented a Mercedes for only sixty Euros a day, which he considered an excellent price for a luxury car.
“That’s a good price. I’ll take it. But just out of curiosity, how much for a Ford?”
“I’m sorry, sir. The only cars we rent are Mercedes.”
“Why is that? Why would you only rent luxury cars?”
“You have to remember where you are, sir. Mercedes Benz is one of the oldest car makers in Germany. Over here they’re just as cheap for us to purchase as are Fords.
“And if you’ll look on the autobahn on your way to Wittlich, you’ll notice they don’t just produce cars. Practically every truck on the road, from pickups to tractor-trailer rigs… they’re almost all Mercedes.”
Chapter 11
It was true, just as the clerk said.
And he didn’t mention nearly all the Mercedes Benz trucks were the same shade of olive drab green.
It reminded him of his twenties, when on a lark he signed up for the National Guard to have something to do on the weekends.
The National Guard liked olive drab green too.
Now, the German landscape was also mostly green. But it wasn’t all one shade. It was a myriad of greens. Some light, some dark, some browns thrown in for good measure.
“I’ve forgotten how pretty it was over here,” he told Julie. “We should have come back to visit more often.”
“You know what it reminds me of, Wayne?”
“No. What?”
“The winding roads and dense forests. It reminds me so much of Wyoming. The area around Yellowstone.
“I’m afraid it’ll never be like that again. At least not in our lifetimes.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The ash cover won’t last forever. Eventually it’ll be washed away by the rains and blown away by the winds. It’ll all make its way to the sea, like everything else does eventually.”
“Do you remember when Mount Saint Helens erupted? 1982, I think.”
“1980. I remember it well. Why?”
“It flattened every tree for miles. Then covered the ground with a few inches of ash that took months to clear out.
“All the ground was poisoned. Killed the roots outright. The poison kept new trees from establishing roots. Every tree the forest service planted for several years died.
“It was years before the ground cleansed itself to become viable again. Then, when the new seedlings stopped dying, it took them many more years to grow.
“That area is still feeling the pain.
“And you yourself said Mount Saint Helens was only three to five percent of what Yellowstone was capable of.”
“Let’s just agree to disagree, honey. Hopefully Yellowstone wasn’t as powerful as it could have been. If it was, it’ll take less time for the earth to mend itself.”
“Wait a minute. Isn’t it also true that if the blast wasn’t as large as everyone expected, that it might not be finished?”
Wayne put his finger to his lips.
“Shhhh. Yes, that’s entirely possible. But I wouldn’t say it too loudly.”
Chapter 12
Darrell appeared to have lost consciousness, there in the darkness. He said he was getting dizzy and seeing stars, then went silent.
He was pinned and couldn’t move.
He said he couldn’t feel all of his limbs.
It was possible he’d lost an arm or a leg in the blast and didn’t even know it.
Rocki was worried.
Getting dizzy and seeing stars could have meant exactly what Darrell assumed it meant: that his body was reacting to the pain. And was going to put itself to sleep to give him a merciful break from the stress and the misery he was feeling.
But Rocki knew there was another possibility.
Perhaps one of the limbs he couldn’t feel was no longer there. Or perhaps it was so badly injured the nerves had been severed.
Perhaps even as Darrell spoke to her, trying to reassure her, trying to convince her everything was going to be all right… perhaps even as he spoke his life’s blood was pouring out of him.
Perhaps the dizziness and stars were a precursor to death.
Rocki was in agony.
The last thing she wanted to do was move.
But she just couldn’t wait to see if he was going to start talking again.
Not when there was a chance he was seriously injured.
Not when she might be able to save him.
They’d been together for many years, and had loved one another from afar for several more.
They didn’t always agree, but both were certain of one thing: life wasn’t worth living without the other.
Rocki crawled toward the spot she’d heard Darrell speaking, not knowing how far away he was. She didn’t even know where she was, but was able to figure it out as she felt her way along.
The square vent in the floor beneath her was actually the roof vent of the RV they’d been driving in. It was now upside down, having rolled and coming to rest on its roof.
The soft cushions blocking her way as she crawled along were the cushions from the RV’s couch.
Luckily the couch was bolted to the floor above her. If it wasn’t it surely would have crushed one of them.
As it turned out Darrell was only ten feet or so from her.
But it might as well have been ten miles, as it took her a full twenty minutes to reach him.
She couldn’t see him. It was just too dark.
But she reached out with a hand and felt the warmth of his leg. It moved slightly at her touch, but he didn’t say anything.
That was okay.
He was alive.
Nothing else mattered.
She crawled half on top of him and used her hands to pat him down.
His body was intact. All his limbs were still attached.
She didn’t feel the sickening sticky sensation of blood.
That was a good sign.
She felt his pulse.
It was rapid and weak.
But at least he had one.
From her new location she could hear him breathe.
Regular and steady with no rattle.
That meant he suffered no lung damage.
In the darkness she relied on touch alone. It took her a minute to determine it was the RV’s recliner which had his leg pinned.
From his position he didn’t have the leverage needed to push it off of him.
From her position she might be able to.
But it wouldn’t be easy.
He always called her his hero.
The first time she asked him why.
“You saved my life,” he told her. “Before you came along I was a miserable wretch. I was just going through the motions, with no real purpose in life. I had no hopes, no dreams, no real reason to live. I was just getting up each day, going to bed each night, and wondering whether the next day was to be my last. And not really caring if it was.
“Then you came along and added a bit of joy to each of those days.
“I began to hate the twilight, for it meant I had to wait several hours to see you again.
“I began to look forward to the dawn, for I knew you’d find a new way each and every day to make me love life again.
“You made it fun to live again.”
They were pretty words, but she didn’t buy it.
She threw a sofa pillow at him and told him he was sweet, but full of it.
Still, it was kind of him to say it. And she really liked the thought of being his hero for real.
In all the years they’d been together she’d never had the opportunity to really save him.
This was her chance.
She wouldn’t let him down.
From her position on the RV floor she didn’t have the leverage or the strength to flip the recliner away from him.
But she thought if she pushed her body beneath the chair, if she wedged herself under it, she might find a pivot point somewhere in the middle. From that position she might be able to rise up and roll the recliner out of the way.
The trouble was she was in as much pain as he was.
She was fighting to remain conscious herself.
But she wouldn’t… she couldn’t… let him down.
Chapter 13
An inch or two at a time she forced both legs beneath the monstrosity.
At least it was soft.
But it was also heavier than she imagined.
After several minutes she felt herself getting dizzy. She saw her own stars.
She was in danger of passing out just as Darrell had.
And if she did, then what?
If she couldn’t get the recliner off soon, would he suffer nerve damage?
He was prone to clotting. He took medication to thin his blood.
If he stayed there too long in one spot; if it took her too long to be his hero, would he develop a blood clot? Would it break free and kill him, or cause a stroke?
She wondered whether he took his medication that morning.
He was notorious for forgetting. More often than not she had to remind him.
The Yellowstone Event: Book 6: The Aftermath Page 4
