Volcano Watch

by Toni Dwiggins

  “Yeah, all right.” Eric got up. “I’ll go get the radio.” Eric clapped Mike on the shoulder, thumped my boot with his, and headed for the door.

  I pushed myself up. “For your dining pleasure, we have the Yodler Restaurant and Bar, the Mountainside Grille, and a wine cellar I’d bet. No room service.”

  Mike said, “You shouldn’t be making jokes.”

  You are such a pain, I thought, you’re such a world-class judgemental pain and you’re a bigger pain now than when you used to boss me around the gondola station. You’re going to get your ego pierced somehow in this mess and you’re going to lose your temper, like you did that day in the station. Like you did at the drill, when Stobie wouldn’t listen. Like you did with Georgia? Did you?

  I glanced at Krom. He watched me. He tugged the little knot of fear in me.

  “Sorry,” I said to Mike. Sorry it was you who volunteered to come back. Sorry for us all. I took my flashlight and set off in search of the kitchen.

  Mike and I were wildly successful. We brought blankets, goosedown coverlets, cushions, feather pillows, hurricane lamps, canned salmon, canned mandarin oranges, Greek olives, dried pears and cranberries, cracked pepper water biscuits, anisette biscotti, and a wheel of parmesan cheese that had hidden in the dark pantry recesses. We brought out china plates and the good silverware and carafes of water and glasses. Eric carried in wood but none of us expressed any enthusiasm for a fire. We were warm enough wrapped in wool and goosedown. In truth, I was afraid that a big quake would come while we slept and knock flaming boughs from the fireplace to set us all ablaze.

  We slept, in fits and starts. Exercise hard—slog through snow and ash. Lie in pain from a broken leg. Raise the heart rate with intermittent bouts of terror. Wears a body out. We all slept. Never slept so hard as the times I slept through Lindsay’s eruptions.

  Sometime in the night, somebody screamed. It wasn’t me. I froze. There were quakes again. Hard little jolts. Rattled the dishes and lamps and knocked the candelabra off its shelf. Beeswax burned on the hardwood floor.

  “People all right?” Eric moved to put out the candle.

  Krom said, “Alive.”

  Voice right in my ear. I jerked around. He was right beside me. He’d been on the chaise when we went to sleep, a good yard from me. Had he been the one who screamed? When he maneuvered off the chaise and dragged himself along the floor, had fractured bone scraped bone, more than even he could bear? I saw into his eyes, pools of pain. Or maybe it was just the squirrely shadows cast by the hurricane lamps, which warped us all.

  We lay close as lovers. Krom’s big hands could caress my face, my neck, only he was holding one of the Inn’s fine goosedown pillows.

  “Cass?” Eric said. “Mike?”

  “I’m o-kigh,” Mike said. His voice cracked. Maybe it was Mike who screamed.

  I unfroze and shoved up and took my blanket and lay down beside Eric.

  Tell Eric, I thought. Only not in front of Mike. Mike belongs to Krom. Wait until Mike drops off again and then tell Eric. Doesn’t matter if Krom sees. He knows I’ll tell. And he knows I can prove nothing, other than that in the terror of the night he craved the closeness of another human being enough to endure the pain of dragging himself and his pillow to lay by me.

  I had no doubt he could have endured the pain of being carried on a sled, or Mike’s back, through the minefield of Pika. All he’d cared for was to get us out on his road. At least one of us. I couldn’t prove that, though. And I couldn’t prove there was something he hadn’t wanted me to see in Lindsay’s office. But I felt it. And I felt he’d shut me up, just in case, if he got the chance.

  Funny the way things work out. I’m like Lindsay. I keep getting in his way.

  I scanned the room for Eric’s pack. I wondered if he had handcuffs in there. I wondered if he had his gun. After all, he was on duty.

  My hand brushed Eric’s hand. We locked fingers.

  We all lay still, listening to the dishes rattle. Every few minutes I peered at Mike, waiting for his eyes to shut. Like some kind of weird slumber party. I kept an eye on Krom. He lay still, eyes open, examining the timbered ceiling. His face was stony brown petrified wood.

  There was a scraping sound and then a tattoo of thuds and Mike screamed and we all sat up and Krom exhaled sharply in pain. I gasped.

  Out of the inky recesses of the great room, into our halo of light, came Walter.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  We built a fire.

  I gripped Walter’s cold hand, grinning.

  He would tell us nothing until we explained. Eric told him how he and Mike had come to be here, and Krom told his part, and through all that Walter sat stoically hearing them out, but when I had to explain what brought me back to town, Walter appeared to age before my eyes, a sight I’d never wish to see again.

  We pressed cheese and olives and dried fruit and water on him but he refused it all. He said, “I’ve already eaten. I have my own supply.”

  “Where, my God Walter, I searched the whole Inn.”

  “You didn’t search my room.”

  “I was shouting. In every hall.”

  “I found that the only way I can sleep, Cassie, is with earplugs. Did you know the Inn supplies earplugs along with the toiletries?”

  “Then what woke you?”

  “Earthquakes,” he said. “I can’t seem to get used to them.”

  Mike said, “Oh yah.”

  Walter cracked a smile, then, squeezing my hand, harder than I’d been squeezing his. He leaned across me to shake Eric’s hand, then Mike’s. His gaze shifted to Krom. Krom was out of reach, handshake-wise. A hard look passed between them. Or maybe it was just the shadows cast on their faces by firelight. Walter said, “You’re fortunate Cassie found you, Adrian.”

  Krom said, “Blessed.”

  “What about you, Walter?” Eric said. “How did you come to be here?”

  He cleared his throat. “I was trapped in town, along with a good many others. I was waiting my turn to go out. Perhaps the wait was too long. It gave me time to think, and I was at a very low point, and the two made a persuasive combination. I simply felt that—now that I was trapped—I should stay. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic but I decided to do as she would. I came up here to wait and watch. To see what the volcano was going to do.”

  I let out a sound.

  “I had no intention of dying, Cassie. I still don’t. That’s why I came all the way up here. This provides the safest vantage point. And all the comforts of the Inn.” He forced another smile.

  “How did you get here, sir?” Eric asked.

  “I appropriated Bill Bone’s station wagon. He’d been evacuated. He had no further use for it.”

  “How’d you start it?” I asked. “Every car I saw on 203 was locked and the keys were gone.”

  “I broke the window and hotwired it. Something I learned in my undergraduate days. Then I drove up here and settled in. I parked the wagon in the garage by the gondola, where they keep the snowmobiles. Keeps the ash off it. It is, after all, Bill’s property, and I intend to replace the window.”

  I gaped. Nothing stops him. He’d survived on vandalism, like me. “How’d you get in here? Break a window?”

  “No, I used a credit card to let myself in the service entrance around back—the same way I opened the garage lock.” He squeezed my hand. “A trick Lindsay taught me, the time she locked herself out of her office.” He cocked his head. “By the way, Cassie, I had a thought on my drive up here. Bill could use a nice CD player for the wagon.”

  “What?”

  “The gift,” Walter said. “For Bill’s birthday.”

  I was afraid Walter might crack open.

  He lifted his eyebrows. “As I’ve told you all, I don’t intend to die. Thoughts do creep in. Large and small. About this and that. Like Bill’s gift.”

  Eric said, finally, “Sure, I’m in. Mike too—right, man?”

  Mike said, “I already paid.”
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  Walter turned a cold look on Krom. “Adrian? Are you in?”

  Krom returned the look. “You bet your life.”

  The fire popped. Silence fell.

  Walter broke it. “And so, my friends, here I am. Yesterday I hiked partway up the mountain and found myself a view. Stupendous.”

  And here he was. Here, not in a ditch or her office or the lab or mired in the muck of her half-finished escape route. Now Eric didn’t have to worry about my running off. Now Mike didn’t have to whine. Now Krom had one less thing to use against me. I tensed. No. I’d got that wrong. Now Krom had one more thing to hold over me. He had Walter. Because there was clearly something between them. Something had happened. Maybe something down at the 203 crater during the evac. Maybe something in her office. I considered the open safe. The love letters. I thought over Walter’s story, trying to read it coldly—without the intense rush of relief and worry and anger and pity—and something was off. There was something he wasn’t telling us.

  I said, probing his story, “Why’d you have to take Bill’s wagon? Why didn’t you take your Explorer? I saw it out on 203.”

  Walter met my look. “I left my car in the expectation that people would assume I had evacuated. I left it hoping to avoid the very thing that occurred. You coming in here after me, dear.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Had there been the slightest indication that the sky was clearing, had the quakes stopped, we would have been content to sit tight at the Inn and wait for choppers.

  But it was a grim dawn. Standing on the porch, stamping my cold feet and stirring up ash, I stared up the mountain. Bridgeport reported that USGS remote sensing indicated intermittent eruptions from Red Mountain and the moat, which had reawakened sometime in the night. Still phreatic eruptions. I could not see either eruption—I’d have to climb up to Walter’s viewpoint for that. Mammoth Mountain, which protected us, also blinded us.

  Quakes talked, though, loud and clear. Magma’s on the move.

  Eric and Mike came out carrying Krom. Walter followed. Walter was no longer in the mood to wait and watch. He wanted out, badly as I did. Walter’s priorities shifted, with me on his hands.

  Whatever it takes.

  We wore yellow survival suits. Eric’s pack had carried three extras; he’d known he was coming after two survivors when Krom called; he’d also known Walter was missing, so he’d come prepared. His pack held suits, rations, flashlights, ropes—nearly as much stuff as I’d brought—but he’d come equipped for rescue, not arrest. I’d watched him repack his gear. He had no handcuffs, no gun.

  We clumped down the front steps to the snowmobiles Eric and Mike had brought around from the garage. Krom, wrapped in one of the Inn’s fine quilts, was lashed onto the sled; the sled was attached to Eric’s snowmobile with ropes. We lashed packs and skis to the vehicles, Walter waving off attempts to help him load his bulging pack.

  Eric said “one last check” and went machine to machine.

  These were sturdy machines, used by crews to crawl all over this mountain, but I had limited faith in them. They have box filters meant to keep birds from being sucked into the engine but they have no defense against ash. I waited until Eric was squatting to check the front runners of his machine and then I squatted beside him. I leaned in close as I could, bulky suit to bulky suit, and in a whisper told him about Krom. He slid a glance back at the sled then continued fiddling with the drive-chain. He said, to the chassis, “You certain?”

  “No proof.”

  “But you believe it?”

  I nodded.

  He rose, passing so close to my ear that I felt his breath same time I heard his words. “Count on me this time.”

  By the time I’d got to my feet Eric had his goggles and mask on. I pulled on mine, veiling my face, gamely pretending I did not want to hide in his arms.

  The others finished suiting. We all mounted. We were bright tropical creatures with goggle eyes and plastic beaks and neon yellow plumage astride squat metal beasts. We were absurd, but against all logic my hopes rose.

  Engines started smoothly. Headlights shone. We passed our lone Guard jeep in the parking lot and took the chute up to the unplowed continuation of Minaret Road. Eric broke trail, slow. We followed in line, at a distance, spacing ourselves so as not to eat each other’s ash.

  The road wound through mountain hemlock, burred in ash, the drooping tips like fingers trying to shake themselves clean.

  Plan is, we round the north slope for about a mile and then reach Minaret Summit, the low point in the Sierra crest. From there, another five miles as the road drops down into the deep canyon of the San Joaquin River and heads north to the campground of Agnew Meadows. Primitive facilities, but space for a rescue chopper to land when the air clears.

  Could be days. Could be weeks.

  We crawled. Ash was shallow but Eric’s runners kicked up twin plumes that flanked the sled. There was no apparent movement in there. Krom could have been dead and frozen as Georgia on her litter ride down from the glacier.

  Walter followed, as he’d followed Georgia’s sled over two months ago.

  I followed Walter, eyeing his pack. Last night, when the two of us went to his room to collect his supplies, I’d asked about the open safe, the love letters. He’d shown surprise; he’d said he didn’t realize I’d known about the letters. He’d agreed that the letters were what drew him to her office, that he’d collected them on the way up the mountain. Her office was empty, he’d said. There was nothing between him and Krom, he’d said. I eyed the bulging pack lashed to his snowmobile and thought, that’s a whole lot of love letters.

  We rounded the corner, and Eric and Krom up ahead rounded the next.

  Ash worked under the edges of my dust mask and burrowed into my skin. Already, ash was scratching and frosting my goggles. My snowmobile sucked in ash and the particles were surely incising their way through the engine.

  I began to worry about avalanches. Not so much here, but over the summit—once we started our descent we’d be at risk. I came around the bend and saw Walter’s and Eric’s snowmobiles and it was a moment before I realized what was wrong. They were not spouting ash. Eric was twisted on his saddle gesturing at Walter. Krom was sitting bolt upright.

  Avalanche? I neared them, getting a better view. There were boulders in the road. Maybe a rock avalanche, from quakes. Please be that.

  I drew up behind them, and Mike behind me. We left our engines running. Eric and Walter and I left Mike to tend to Krom, and we set out on foot.

  The road was strewn with rocks—boulders, stones, chips, gravel, like a mad quarry crew had been at work. I examined the mountain. Where there should have been a scar, some indication of the source of this rockslide, there was nothing. I felt sick.

  We picked our way through the field of rocks until the road turned the next bend.

  There was devastation, far as we could see. Bigger boulders here, some large as snowmobiles, and the pulverized remains of others, and where the ground showed through it was no longer the familiar coating of ash but a congealed mud, and everywhere there were branches and limbs and stumps of trees, and those trees that had escaped dismembering were dead anyway, killed a decade ago by carbon dioxide, for this was one of the old treekills. Slightly upslope was a crater with fresh rock showing, like a tooth that had lost a filling. Steam issued from the hole.

  I fought to get my glove off my bandaged hand and bent to touch rock, mud, splinters of trees. Cold. Walter scooped a handful of rock chips. We looked, heads together. “Old stuff,” I said. He nodded. Quartz latite, basement rock. I eyed the crater, a few tens of meters across. It had spat out old stuff.

  We moved around the next bend and it was the same, rock and steam.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Eric said and we all three broke into a run.

  Mike was shouting “what, what?” as we hauled up.

  Eric pulled down his mask, fighting for air. “Some kind of eruption,” he got out.r />
  “Phreatic,” I gasped.

  Walter was bent double.

  “What?” Mike’s voice rose.

  “Steam blast,” Krom said. He alone breathed easy.

  Eric said, “What now, Cassie?”

  I shoved aside my mask and wiped my face. I tried to think. What’s setting off steam blasts up here? Compared to the eruptions in the caldera and on Red Mountain, this was a little guy, like someone had set off a charge of dynamite. But you wouldn’t want to get closer than a football field to something like that. Is this puppy going to vent again? Are there others? What’s the alignment? I looked at Walter. He shook his head. Years of Lindsay pouring this stuff in his ear, years of Lindsay drilling it into my head, and she hadn’t made a volcanologist of either one of us. “Let’s go back,” I said, already moving, because we surely could not go forward.

  Krom gave a brusque nod. Both of us, momentarily, in alignment.

  We retreated two abreast, in double line. I kept looking back, although if that thing vented again we’d feel it before we’d see it. My snowmobile died. I moved my gear to Eric’s machine and doubled up with Mike. Walter’s machine died not an eighth of a mile later. He put on skis and saddled up his pack. We paced Walter, creeping, and then Mike’s machine crapped out and then Eric’s. We all saddled up with gear. We had to abandon one pack. Eric dragged the sled and Mike and I took turns pushing from behind. We ran on adrenaline but that crapped out too. We took forever and a day to cover the last quarter mile.

  When the lifts showed above the hemlocks, I let out a sob. We’d made it. And then I sank to the snow. Where to now?

  Georgia whispered in my mind. No way out.