If the listener was familiar with Yellowstone he might describe it as sounding just like the “mud pots” in another part of the park.
Mud pots, of course, are a naturally occurring phenomenon where gas escapes from the earth in a perpetually muddy lake and makes a “burping” sound every time a bit of gas escapes.
The other thing our hypothetical observer might note would be tremendous heat.
It wouldn’t be steam coming from the ground, as it was being emitted from other vents in the area.
And the burping or gurgling sound wasn’t mud.
This wasn’t a new mud pot.
No, this was heat from a pool of magma bubbling and gurgling just beneath the surface of the earth.
And directly below the crack which had opened up above it to help vent its pressure.
One of the most common questions the scientists were getting from newsmen these days was what the difference was between magma and lava.
The scientists spoke mostly of molten magma.
Laymen didn’t speak in terms of magma.
Lava they knew. But not magma.
Scientists had to explain they were talking about the same thing.
Essentially, super-heated molten rock is magma when it’s beneath the earth, and lava when it breaks through and goes above ground.
Out in the middle of nowhere, far from the eyes of any living creature, a small crack opened up in the earth.
It vented super-heated air that smelled of sulfur. The air emanating from the hole was hot enough to scorch the trees around it.
The leaves on trees as far as fifty feet away withered and dried and died.
And lava started oozing from the crack.
Chapter 11
Wally Williams was a man of small stature with an oversized ego.
It was a common occurrence for people, when meeting him for the first time, to comment, “Wow. You look much bigger on television.”
It was an understandable mistake for people to make.
For when they saw him on television or the internet making a speech, they always saw him behind a podium.
They never saw the ten inch step he was standing on.
It wasn’t his physical stature that was oversized. It was his ego: the view he saw of himself.
It was his bluster. The way he almost shouted every word in his speech, in the same way an old Baptist minister shouted his fire and brimstone sermon.
Williams was a god in his own mind.
He was peeved when he wasn’t instantly recognized everywhere he went.
And over the years he’d bullied hundreds of hotel clerks, waiters, policemen and newsmen with the same verbal abuse.
“Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know I could ruin you?”
He could, of course, ruin nobody. Running afoul of him never damaged anyone’s career or reputation.
The only thing damaged in such encounters was Williams’ fragile psyche.
He was as famous for the stunts he pulled as for his news conferences and speeches.
A year before Wayne Hamlin announced the pending Yellowstone eruption to the world Williams was arrested just outside of Lubbock, Texas.
He was trespassing on city property, on what used to be Reese Air Force Base before the Department of Defense closed the base in 1995.
The city of Lubbock took over the property and turned it into an industrial park called Reese Center.
Rumors had been flying for years that a hanger on the far side of the runways was being prepared as a Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, processing center.
Once it was finished, it was said by conspiracy theorists, civilians who were considered troublemakers would be rounded up and taken there late at night.
Once there, they’d have explosive devices inserted next to their hearts. Microchips would be implanted in their necks, next to their jugular veins where they couldn’t be easily removed.
They’d be told, “If you cause any more problems for any government agency the small explosive charge in your chest will be remotely detonated.
“It won’t leave a mark on the outside of your body, but it will blow your heart to pieces.
“It will appear to be a massive heart attack, and no autopsy will be performed so no one will prove otherwise.
“Oh, and by the way, Mr. or Miss Troublemaker, you cannot run and you cannot hide. The microchip in your neck will act as a beacon. We will find you wherever you go, even if you flee the United States.
“We have people everywhere.”
Although the basics of this particular conspiracy theory remained fairly consistent, its intended victims were widely debated.
Some in the tin hat crowd, including Willie Williams, believed the target list consisted mainly of political malcontents.
In other words, those of the opposing political party who had the gall to march in protests and carry signs opposing policies of the current administration.
Others went a step further and insisted that other blights on society would be included:
Drug users, unwed mothers, convicted felons and sex offenders.
And anyone else the powers that be didn’t like for whatever reason.
Williams never made it to the hanger on the far side of the old Air Force base that night.
He was spotted and captured by the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office and booked in the Lubbock County Detention Center on trespassing charges.
When he got out of jail, though, he went on his podcast and insisted the arresting officers were CIA operatives.
The dark state was after him, he claimed, and he surely would end up at the FEMA processing station himself at some point.
“There will come a day when I will disappear without a trace,” he practically shouted into the microphone.
“The day that happens you’ll know exactly what happened to me.
“In the meantime, though, I will fight hard to keep you informed about all the evil things our government is hiding from you, all the secrets they’re keeping from you.”
Then he added a cheap plug to the identity protection and gold bullion companies which advertised on his show.
He had to “pay the bills,” you see.
The Yellowstone Event gave Williams a new cause.
Something else to sound his trumpet about.
Something else to fight the “deep state” over.
Another conspiracy theory to foment.
He’d planned his current adventure for several weeks and it was a simple plan, really.
All he had to do was to defy the evacuation order and to sneak onto the closed park.
He’d find the crews from the oil companies doing their exploratory drills and obtain video evidence of same.
If he was able to do that he’d be the undisputed king of late night radio.
He’d rule the internet.
Even legitimate news sources would clamor to get him. Publishers would flock to him and ask him to write a book about his exploits.
Discovering he couldn’t write a coherent sentence to save his life he’d be told that’s okay. All he had to do was hang out with a ghost writer and tell his story. Somebody else would put it on paper for him.
He’d be told that politicians and television pundits do it all the time.
He’d be rich in no time.
Chapter 12
Julianna was understandably distraught after she finished her call from Jamie.
Her head was still swimming, trying to make sense of what Wayne Hamlin had said in the video.
Jamie’s intention was to knock out Julianna’s resolve with a one-two punch combination. The video would loosen her up; weaken her a bit.
Then the guilt Jamie served up would be the knockout blow.
“It’s admirable that you’re doing what you’re doing,” Jamie told her.
“But at the same time you’re being very selfish.”
“Selfish?”
“Yes, Jules. Selfish and unreaso
nable.”
“But… how so?”
“You’re thinking only of yourself. And people you’ve never even met who live all the way out there because they no longer want to be part of society.
“You’re bullying them to force them away from the land they love. Overruling their decision to live life on their own terms.”
Julianna tried to object.
“No. That’s not what we’re doing, Jamie.
“We’re not forcing anyone to do anything against their will. If they don’t want to come with us we’re not forcing them to. But they can’t make a rational decision if they don’t know how dangerous it is to stay.”
“Okay, let’s talk about that for a minute, Jules.
“Let’s talk about how dangerous it is to stay.
“When you lay your head on your pillow each night you probably go right to sleep. I know you’re tired from slogging through those woods every day.
“And you probably sleep well, knowing in your mind you’re doing some good.
“But for every person you save you’ve got half a dozen of your friends and family who cry ourselves to sleep at night because of you.
“Put yourself in our shoes, Jules.
“We can’t eat, we can’t sleep, we can’t think straight because we’re worried sick.
“Stop thinking about those people you don’t even know, and put yourself in our shoes, Jules.
“Think for just a moment about the people who love you, for Christ’s sake.
“Think about what your playing Wonder Woman is doing to us.”
Jamie Albertson had no children of her own.
She’d never been a mother, though she hoped to have children after she and her husband relocated to Alaska.
But she had the mother’s guilt thing down.
It came from her own mother, and the way she grew up. Her mom could shame her into anything simply by dropping a few tears and a couple of guilt bombs.
Julianna’s own mother had been dead for years.
But Jamie filled in for her quite nicely.
So yes, Julianna was distraught after she finished the phone call.
She was totally unaware she’d been played like a fiddle.
But then again, Jamie’s heart was in the right place, just like every mom who’d ever used guilt to manipulate her children.
She was trying to save Julianna’s life, after all.
She was convinced her friend was so caught up in helping strangers she didn’t realize how she was endangering herself.
As Jamie saw it, it was her job as a good friend to point the danger out to her. And how genuine worry was affecting those who loved her.
Julianna caught her breath before calling Deputy Dave back.
They knew one another well enough now not to have to identify themselves on the phone.
A “Hey!” was sufficient.
Dave answered on the first ring.
“Hey!”
“Hey. Did you check my message?”
“No. I figured I’d just call you back. I’m kinda bummed and I wanted somebody to talk to.”
“Somebody broke into my place. They stole all my best stuff.”
“Seriously? Who’d burglarize a sheriff’s deputy?”
“I don’t know. Somebody really stupid, I think. I hope I find him out there with a pickup full of my stuff.”
“You sound bummed too. Wanna come over?”
“You got any beer?”
“Yeah.”
“Give me twenty minutes.”
Chapter 13
A couple of miles away from Julianna’s apartment a stubborn little old lady of seventy seven years sat in front of her television.
She was watching what she called her “stories.”
They were the same types of programs once known as “soap operas” or “serials.”
Her name was Mamie Sellers, and she’d lived in the tiny brick home for forty one years.
“That’s more than half my life,” she kept telling concerned neighbors who were coming by to urge her to leave.
“When you’ve been in one place for that long, you’re not inclined to just up and leave.”
“But Mamie, honey,” a good friend asked her that morning, “It’s not safe here. If you don’t leave soon you’ll die.”
Mamie grew up in the shadow of the depression. During the World War II years, when talk was that Hitler was bringing his troops to the east coast to invade America.
Word was that Hirohito was bringing his own men to the west coast, and the two had plans to sweep across the country and to meet in the middle.
She remembered her own mother crying at night and saying, “They’ve taken all our men overseas to fight for somebody else. Now the only ones left to defend us are old men, women and children.”
The war years were years of uncertainty to be sure.
The nation wasn’t even back on its feet from the dust bowl and the great depression, and here they were scared sick of the war coming to its shores.
It was a rough time for other reasons as well.
Mamie was eleven years old before she got her first pair of shoes.
They were hand-me-downs from a cousin with holes in both soles.
She remembered tearing pages out of a Montgomery Ward catalog to stuff into the bottom of the shoes.
Even then she could feel the sharp corners of the caliche rocks she walked on going to and from school every day.
Kids were tougher back in those days.
They grew up expecting nothing from nobody, and usually got just that.
Disappointment was the order of the day, every day.
They weren’t concerned about how many toys they had, or how many luxuries they enjoyed.
Any night they went to bed with food in their stomachs they counted their blessings, for there were many other nights they didn’t.
Someone asked her once what it was like growing up with nothing.
Mamie said, “We didn’t know we didn’t have anything. Nobody knew they were poor because everybody else was the same way. That’s just how it was on the plains of Kansas back then.
Everybody was in the same boat, and everybody just pitched in to help paddle.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, then, that Mamie grew up an independent woman.
She seldom asked anyone for anything.
And she considered it a personal affront for anyone to imply she couldn’t take care of herself.
Mamie married on her twenty-first birthday. Her parents set the date because they couldn’t afford both a wedding and her birthday gift.
So they proclaimed the wedding was her gift.
As it turned out, it wasn’t much of a gift.
George, her husband, was an occasional worker and a full-time drinker.
It’s been said there are two distinct types of drunks.
One is a happy drunk, who slobbers all over everyone around him and tells them all, “I love you man.”
The other is an angry drunk, who curses everyone in sight for imaginary slights and starts fights just for the sake of fighting.
Angry drunks usually think nothing of beating their wives.
George was an angry drunk, and Mamie paid a very heavy price for staying with him.
A year into their marriage he shoved her down a flight of stairs.
She was six months pregnant.
She lost the baby, as well as the ability to have other children.
After she got out of the hospital and got her cast off she held a knife to George’s throat and told him to get out.
Of her house, out of her life, out of the tiny town of Noble, Kansas.
It was the first and last time he’d seen her fury. He was frightened enough to heed her warning.
He left town and never looked back.
A month later word got back to Mamie George had been killed in a horrific accident with a train.
“Oh, my,” she’d said. “Did the train derail?”
She had a one word comment.
“Dumbass.”
Later on she was a bit sad, for they did have some good times.
But they were mostly bad, and he didn’t deserve being mourned.
Mamie was a pragmatic type, borne of the tough environment she’d grown up in.
“It’s probably better this way,” she’d told her mom.
“How so?”
“Well, the preacher at the Church of Christ says that divorce is a sin.
“But being a widow isn’t.
“I may have lost a husband, but at least I won’t go to hell.”
Another place Mamie wasn’t going: away from her home in the evacuation zone.
She was adamant, no matter how often her neighbors tried to talk her into leaving.
They told her, “You’ll die if you stay.”
She answered, to each and every one, “I’m gonna die somewhere. It might as well be here.”
Chapter 14
Julianna didn’t plan to get involved in a relationship.
It was, quite literally, the last thing she needed.
There was too much going on, too many “ifs” in her life already.
A romance would just complicate things further.
But Dave was in a bad place.
He busted his butt and risked his life each and every day, finding and briefing people he didn’t even know. In many cases he endured their curses and their threats to mind his own business and to leave them alone.
He did it all out of a sense of duty.
He’d taken an oath, as a sheriff’s deputy, to serve and protect the citizens of Teton County.
He took that oath seriously.
Yes, he worked for the county.
Yes, he was drawing a paycheck.
But he didn’t have to be there.
When the county was ordered to evacuate, they emptied out most of their payroll fund and gave each county employee sixty days advance pay.
“To help with your relocation,” they’d said.
And there was more.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 5): The Eruption Page 4
