by E S Richards
“Jeez,” Riley sighed, giving some thought to what her brother had said. “I’ve never really pictured that.” What she said was true. Every time Riley had thought about going home and returning to the farmhouse, she saw it exactly how they’d left it in her mind. She pictured her grandma sat at the kitchen table preparing dinner and Pop upstairs in the den reading a book or looking through his old journals. She never imagined that her grandfather might be laid out on his bed, struggling to stay alive, or that their grandma would have to spend all her time caring for him. It put a whole new perspective and level of urgency on the task they were doing. Riley felt like there was even more pressure on them making it back home now.
“I wish I’d never left,” she mumbled, suddenly feeling very small and insecure. “I should be there helping them. What if they’re in trouble and I could’ve made a difference?”
“You can’t think like that Riley.” Chase took hold of his sister’s shoulders, making sure she was focused on him instead of the vast expanse of the warehouse. “Remember what Mom used to say: everything happens for a reason. I’ve needed you on this trip. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you. You can’t go blaming yourself, okay, no matter what we find when we get back to the farmhouse. None of this is your fault, do you hear me? None of it.”
Riley nodded, though she struggled to hear her brother’s words completely. Her mind had fogged over with thoughts of her grandparents, worries and concerns swimming through her head like the ash cloud swam through the streets outside. She had to keep believing that they would be fine or she wasn’t sure how she would keep going each day. Her grandparents would be fine and when she saw them again, Riley would see that for sure.
Chapter 8
Mia didn’t know what to do. She stole another glance across the store at Jadon and the others, but all three of the boys were simply mimicking her, their hands above their heads and looks of terror on each of their faces. Mia could tell that much like the countless other situations they had been in, she was going to have to take the lead here and try to get them out alive.
“This was an honest mistake,” she started. “We didn’t know anyone still lived here. We thought it was all abandoned. I’m sorry—we’ll put everything back and just get out of your way. We’ll—”
“Shut up,” one of the men—with a shiny bald head and large bushy eyebrows—cut Mia off. “I’ve had enough of people coming in here and trying to take what they want just because they don’t think anyone else is around. You wouldn’t have done that before all of this mess happened, so why is it acceptable now?”
“It’s not,” Mia replied quickly, hoping to appease Eyebrows. “And I’m sorry. We were just trying to take what we need to survive. It’s not easy out there; I’m sure you know that.”
“You don’t look like you’re having that much trouble,” the other man who wore an old-fashioned hunting jacket, complete with a few small knives pointing out of the breast pocket and an attached whistle. “That car out front seems pretty stocked up.”
Mia started to panic. They needed the Jeep desperately if they wanted to stand a chance of making it back to her parents’ house and then Marcus and the others back to Philadelphia. “You’re right,” she replied to Hunter, “we’ve got a lot. But we’ve got a long way to go. I need to make it back to my family in Houston and these guys have to get all the way to Philly. We’ve been traveling from Montana. Please, we don’t want any trouble. We just want to get back to our families.”
“Pah,” Hunter huffed in response. “We’ve heard it all before. You think we’re going to believe that you made it all the way here from Montana? You would be dead if you’d been that close to the eruption.”
“We have,” Marcus interjected. “Honest. Mia is a scientist. She was studying Yellowstone. We were all at college in Montana. We’re telling the truth. We’re just trying to make it home.”
“You were studying Yellowstone?” Eyebrows questioned, looking at his companion with a curious expression on his face. “Do you know what caused all of this then? Why it exploded?”
“Actually, I do,” Mia replied, remembering what they had uncovered at the fracking site. “If you want someone to blame”—which she secretly believed the two people in front of her did—“then you should blame the government. They caused all of this through fracking, drilling into the Earth’s surface too close to the volcano itself. It made the ground unstable and triggered the eruption. That’s what I was studying. I was trying to determine if fracking was linked in some way and I can conclusively say now that yes, it is.”
Eyebrows and Hunter stared at Mia for a few seconds, processing her words. They were still holding the four of them hostage in the store, yet as far as Mia could see, there wasn’t anyone else providing backup. She didn’t really like her odds against them while there were two pistols pointed at her, but Mia figured if she could get them to put down the weapons then the four of them stood a chance of escape.
Stealing a glance over at the boys, Mia could see that Marcus and Jadon had managed to shuffle slightly closer to one another than they originally had been. She could only assume that meant they were planning something and while she wanted to get out of the situation, she didn’t want either of them putting themselves in danger. Clearing her throat, she continued to try and alleviate the situation with words.
“Will you let us go please?” She asked politely, trying her best not to anger or irritate either of the two men in any way. “We’ll put everything back.”
“Not so fast,” Eyebrows shook his head. “We want to see what you’ve got in that car as well. Which one of you has the keys?”
Mia cringed, hoping that Marcus would remain quiet.
“I do.”
She cursed internally. She could’ve guessed he would ’fess up; Marcus was the kind of person who would do anything if it meant he could protect others, even if that put him in more danger. It was an admirable quality, but one Mia wished in that moment he didn’t possess.
“Hand them over then,” Eyebrows demanded, walking a few steps closer to Marcus and pointing the pistol in his face. “No funny business.”
“Why don’t I come out with you?” Marcus replied stoically, refusing to be intimidated by the weapon in his face. “I can help you sort through what’s in the Jeep.”
Eyebrows looked at Marcus for a second, weighing the suggestion before he replied. It looked like a lot was going through his head, clearly trying to determine whether Marcus had an ulterior motive behind his offer. Mia was doing the very same thing, confused why Marcus would be so willing to leave the store with one of the men.
“Yeah, all right then,” Eyebrows eventually replied. “The rest of you stay here. One move and you’re shot. Got it?”
“Yeah!” Hunter joined in, brandishing his pistol in what he believed was a menacing manner as he refused to be shown up by his companion. “Nobody move!”
Mia, Jesse, and Jadon all did as they were told, standing still with their hands in the air as Marcus was escorted out of the store, Eyebrows’s pistol occasionally prodding him in the back. Whatever plan Marcus and Jadon might have come up with was over now, Mia believed. She just hoped that Marcus could look after himself outside and didn’t try anything stupid.
“Tell me more about this fracking thing,” Hunter spoke up, focusing everyone’s attention on him. “What does it involve?”
Mia sighed. She wasn’t really in a position where she wanted to explain what had happened to cause the eruption, but she was also very aware she didn’t have a choice. It was clear to her that neither Hunter nor Eyebrows were particularly skilled in this sort of thing—she found it very likely that they were just two small town hicks who had let the power of a weapon go to their head. They weren’t thinking straight and it didn’t really seem like they had an endgame for any of this. The best plan she could come up with was just to keep them talking until they could figure out a way out without losing their possessions, car, or lives.
“It’s a process that is used to extract oil or gas from the ground,” Mia explained. “Massive drills are pushed down into the Earth and then they inject liquid at high pressure into the rock, which forces open existing fissures and crevices where the gas may be stored.”
“And that made the volcano erupt?”
“Effectively, yeah,” Mia nodded. “Liquid being forced into the fissures can also cause earthquakes and tremors beneath the Earth’s surface. That happening so close to an active volcano can set things off in the magma chamber and then cause an increasing buildup of pressure, due to the liquid the fracking pumps in. One thing leads to another and then boom: Yellowstone erupts.”
“That’s criminal.”
“Yep,” Mia nodded again, the irony of Hunter’s choice of words not lost on her. “It is. The government knew they were fracking too close to Yellowstone, and yet they chose to continue anyway. All of this could’ve been avoided, if one or two people had just made slightly different decisions in their lives.”
“Like yourself.”
Mia spun around, shocked to see Marcus standing by the door, Eyebrows’s pistol in his hand and pointed at Hunter. “Drop your weapon.”
Hunter panicked, freezing up just long enough for Jesse and Jadon to pounce on him, knocking the man to the ground before he had a chance to fire. Both boys remained on top of the man, pinning him down and not letting him move or retaliate in any way.
“Nice one, Mia, that story really kept him occupied.”
“What?” Mia genuinely didn’t have a clue what had just happened. She had no idea what Marcus had done outside and was unaware that she was being used as a distraction, keeping Hunter’s focus on her while Marcus re-entered the store and Jesse and Jadon maneuvered themselves into position. She didn’t know how the three boys had managed to plan and execute it—or whether they had just been acting on instinct—but she was grateful nonetheless.
“Are you okay?” Marcus asked, placing a hand on Mia’s shoulder as her expression clearly gave away how shocked and confused she was. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No, no,” Mia shook her head. “I’m fine. What happened to the other one?”
“I knocked him out outside,” Marcus smiled. “It was easy enough once he started rifling through the stuff in the car. Oh, here,” he paused and threw a rope over to Jesse and Jadon. “We should tie his hands and feet together until we’re out of the way. That one outside will wake up eventually and then they can lick each other’s wounds.”
“Incredible,” Mia grinned, finally grasping what had just happened and snapping out of her state of shock. “Great work, guys.”
“It was nothing,” Jesse beamed, standing up from tying Hunter’s hands behind his back while Jadon wrestled with the man’s feet. He was howling and struggling, but between the two of them Hunter was no match for the boys. The finishing touch was a strip of duct tape over his mouth to keep him quiet, and then the four of them all stood back and admired their handiwork.
“Let’s grab what we need and get out of here,” Mia commented, not liking being in a store with someone they had effectively just tied up like a hostage, even though they had only done it to save themselves. “I’ll be happy to see the back of this place.”
“Agreed,” Jadon nodded. “What should we do with these?” He held Hunter’s pistol in his right hand, making sure it was pointed away from everyone else and down at the ground. Marcus still had the other in his hand, both of them turning to look at Mia for her opinion.
“Bring them with us,” she declared. “Better than leaving them with these guys so they can do that again to the next group that stops by. I’m sure we’ll find a use for them somewhere.”
“Good idea,” Jadon replied. “I shudder to think whether they’ve already played this trick before or not.”
“Let’s hope not,” Mia replied as she walked toward the door, picking up one of their bags on the way. “Anything else you reckon we need before we go?”
“I think we’re good,” Marcus replied. “We just might need to clean out the car a bit before we get going. It sort of started snowing and I feel like it’s clogging the exhaust like before.”
“Oh yeah, of course. Is it really snowing?”
“I’m not sure what you’d call it,” Marcus replied as he pulled open the door and allowed everyone to walk past him outside. “It looks like snow, just a lot less white than I remember it.”
Marcus was right. What looked like snow was falling from the sky and settling on the ground, but it wasn’t the pristine and clean white that Mia remembered from her childhood. She recalled the mornings when she had woken up and opened her drapes, her eyes landing on fields and fields of white in front of her, the blanket of snow covering everything. Now it was happening again, but in gray.
Dirty tufts of what Mia could only assume was ash drifted down around them, the sensation almost feeling like a winter wonderland—if it hadn’t been July and the “snow” wasn’t potentially poisonous. The four of them worked quickly to clear out the exhaust of the Jeep as a result, also checking the engine to ensure it hadn’t been damaged while they stopped. Once they were certain the car was good to go, Mia climbed back into the driver’s seat with Marcus next to her, Jadon and Jesse cramming into the back.
“Here we go again,” Mia sighed, wondering how many more obstacles were going to cross their path before they reached Texas. “We won’t be stopping again for a while if we can help it. That’s not something I want to repeat.”
“Me neither,” Marcus nodded, the man he had knocked out still visible out of his window. “Let’s drive.”
Putting her foot on the gas at Marcus’s instruction, Mia allowed the wheels of the Jeep to spin a couple of times in the dirty snow before she released the brake and the car sped away. She was glad to leave the place behind—though the two pistols in the glovebox would be a constant reminder of their time there. Once again, she reminded herself just to be thankful that they had escaped with their lives. It was yet another brush with death they hadn’t needed, and those were becoming far too frequent for Mia’s liking. She could only hope that they made it to the farmhouse in one piece.
Chapter 9
“Cutting it a bit close, aren’t you?” Gemma remarked as she smuggled her cousins Mike and Rylan along with everyone else back into the office facility. “Your dad is starting to wonder where you guys are.”
“Really?” Mike asked, closing the door behind himself and turning to face his cousin. “What’s he said?”
“Nothing much,” Gemma replied, “just general wonderings about where you were. I think I got him off the scent, but it’d be a good idea to get noticed pretty soon, I reckon.”
“Gotcha,” Mike nodded with a smile. “Thanks, Gem.”
“No problem,” Gemma grinned. “Now forget I was ever here. I’ll catch you around, Mike, Rylan.” She waved to her cousins and then disappeared around a corner, off to carry out whatever tasks people in the faction did on a day-to-day basis. None of the children had really been briefed on that, so they were still fairly in the dark. Mike knew more than most, though his father had sworn him to silence on several matters. As much as he liked his new friends, he still wouldn’t betray his father’s trust for them and so was keeping quiet where he could.
“We better go and meet Blake,” Chase commented, remembering what his ally had said about reconvening in the cafeteria. “Who’s coming?”
“We better go and find our dad by the sound of things,” Mike replied. “We’ll catch you a bit later, man.”
“We should go and see Mom too, Hazel,” Joel said to his younger sister, aware that their mother would probably be concerned about them. “We might be getting bunked with her tonight, so I’ll see you guys tomorrow?”
“Yeah, okay,” Chase replied to both of his friends, watching after them as they peeled away with their siblings in tow. That left only Chase, Riley, and Leo behind; the three who were without any other family
in the office facility. “You want to come with us, Leo?” Chase asked, “It’d be good for you to pass on what you found out about that truck. Maybe there’s someone in here who’ll be able to fix it.”
“Yeah, sure,” Leo shrugged. “Got nothing else to do.”
Chase laughed awkwardly, unsure how to react to his friend’s choice of words. Leo had been quieter than usual since they visited his house earlier, not that anyone could blame him. He tried to act normal as the three of them walked toward the cafeteria, immediately spotting Blake sitting at a table with Vic and a few other people who Chase didn’t recognize.
Blake looked up and noticed Chase, giving him the slightest of nods that only Vic seemed to detect. Happy that the man was aware of them, Chase, Riley, and Leo all grabbed a plate of food and sat down together, making small talk until the cafeteria emptied out somewhat and both Blake and Vic sauntered over to their table.
“So?” Blake said sitting down across from Chase. “Good day?”
“Yeah,” Chase replied, looking over at Vic for a second and wondering how much the Ukrainian knew.
“You can talk freely,” Blake commented, noticing the look on Chase’s face and guessing what was going through the teenager’s mind. “Nothing will leave this table.”
“I thought you could trust me, my friend?” Vic purred with a smile, his accent making the suggestion almost sound seedy, though Chase told himself it wasn’t intended that way. “Especially after I shared my coffee with you.”
The corner of Chase’s mouth twitched into a slight smile, his internal want to trust both Blake and Vic pushing him to talk to them. “Sorry,” he started again. “Really good day actually. How have things been here?”
“Business as usual,” Blake shrugged. “Jackson was looking for you guys earlier. I think he got preoccupied with something else instead, thankfully.”
