And it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, because he’d merely pass the baton to a colleague who hadn’t been served such an order.
Wayne’s mailbox was full of written offers from as far away as Tokyo, Sydney and Riyadh.
“Oh, great,” he deadpanned to Julie.
“We finally get a chance to travel the world on somebody else’s dime, just before the world blows up.”
They hadn’t left the house in days.
News vans parked in the street at the end of their driveway blocked them in, making it impossible to get their cars out.
They called the cops to complain once and the cops told the stations to move their vans or they would be towed.
They complied, and as soon as the cops left a competing network parked their own van in the newly empty space.
The news media, once respected and respectful, were these days little more than rabid animals.
When Wayne gave his news conference he tried to explain the pending eruption in terms everyone could understand.
Newsmen, being newsmen, seemed to have difficulty understanding and kept asking the same tired questions time and time again.
One of them was “How come some volcanos blow up, like Mount St. Helens, and some just ooze lava like Mount Kilauea?”
He looked for a simple way to explain it to them.
“It’s like a teenage boy in the midst of puberty who’s suffering from acne.
“He has pimples on his face, and even though he’s told by his mama and his dermatologist and his girlfriend that popping them will leave scars, he’s got his prom coming up and he pops them anyway.”
“Some of them will be on parts of his face where the skin is pliable. And they’ll be close to the surface. They’ll have only a couple of layers of skin covering them.
“Those will break the skin easily. They will ooze out, much like the lava at Kilauea.”
“Others will be on parts of the face where the skin is less pliable. Or they’ll be deeper and have several more layers of skin covering them.
“Our wannabe prom king will have to squeeze them a lot harder to make them pop. Squeezing them hard will exert great pressure beneath them, and when the pressure is great enough they’ll finally break through the several layers of skin.
“The greater pressure will cause the pimple to explode, leaving a mess on the bathroom mirror and causing the poor boy’s mom to yell at him later to clean it up.
“It’s kinda the same thing.”
At that point some clueless reporter would invariably ask, “Well, what makes you think that Yellowstone will be like the hard-to-pop pimple? Maybe it’ll be like the easy-to-pop pimple and be like Kilauea.”
“Actually,” Wayne explained as patiently as he could, “it’ll be like both.
“We can tell by the subsurface magma and pressure readings that there’s a subterranean wall which separates the upper magma pool, which in under little pressure, from the lower magma pool, which is under greater pressure.
“The wall is only about a hundred feet thick.
“Now, a hundred feet of rock may sound pretty solid, but remember it’s under tremendous pressure from beneath it, much like the boy squeezing the pimple.
“The situation is helped by the weight of the upper magma pool, which is bearing down on the wall at the same time and helping keep it stable.
“As the upper magma pool empties out, though, and oozes out onto the ground as lava, its weight in the upper magma pool will start to diminish.
“Taking that extra weight off the top of the rock wall will enable the pressure of the lower magma pool to push the rock wall to the breaking point.
“Eventually, like the pimple, it will blow.”
“When will that process begin?”
“Any time.”
Unfortunately and unbeknownst to Dr. Hamlin and everyone except the Parks Service command post in the park itself, the process had already begun.
Nobody else knew because the slow-moving storm front was hiding it from the world.
Chapter 32
Marty and Mike and Katie weren’t the only ones risking arrest or death by traipsing around the park.
Wally Williams, king of late night radio’s tin hat crowd, was making his way across the far side of the park with a videographer and producer in tow.
They had quad runners… good ones, for the conspiracy theory business was a lucrative one, and their mission was two-fold.
First, they were trying their best to avoid the law enforcement officers traveling around the area trying to root out illegal campers, survivalists and off-the-gridders.
If they were spotted their first course of action would be to try to outrun them.
The Polaris Sportsman 750s they brought in on the back of a trailer were top of the line and would climb almost straight up.
And on flat ground they’d push forty miles an hour. They’d almost certainly outrun anything the cheap federal government gave their park rangers.
And word was the local sheriff’s department was still using four-wheel drive pickups or full-sized SUVs. Neither was small enough or nimble enough to catch and out-maneuver a Polaris.
So they had that part covered.
The other reason they were in the park… the real reason, was to get video evidence that the big oil companies were bringing equipment into the park.
Williams salivated at the thought he might be able to catch big oil surveying the area trying to figure out the best place to drill.
And if he were to actually catch an actual drill rig in action?
Well that would be better than sex.
With that kind of evidence he’d not only be able to have someone ghost-write a book for him and put his name on the cover. He’d have the talk shows lined up for months.
He could do a book tour under the guise of a series of interviews. All at the expense of the TV networks.
The tin foil crowd of conspiracy theorists had already made him a millionaire. He’d gotten them all heated up over a dozen different things. They believed the government was after them and their dogs. That the Department of Homeland Security had GPS tracking devices on every one of their cars and was tracking their every move.
And that eventually, probably very soon, the government would swoop in, armed to the hilt and riding in black helicopters.
First they’d capture the entire populace, then microchip them and place them in FEMA concentration camps.
Oh, and they’d confiscate their weapons and gold ingots in the process.
Williams had them about half talked into believing the whole “Yellowstone is a scam so they can let big oil drill inside the park” thing.
A video would help convince them further.
But mostly it would make him richer.
The three of them… Williams, the producer and the cameraman, had been in the park for three days now.
So far they’d seen a lot of animals.
Most of them were headed out of the park to the south.
They’d seen a couple of sheriff’s deputies but weren’t chased.
Instead, they were yelled at from a distance. Told to get out of the park.
Williams made a big show of nodding his head as though he understood. He even yelled back, “Yes, sir, officer.”
But he had no intention of leaving until he got what he came for.
In the three days since they’d snuck into the sprawling park they hadn’t seen anything even resembling a piece of exploratory or drilling equipment.
Rather than admitting perhaps his theory about the oil companies was unfounded lunacy, Williams began to rationalize.
Because that was his way.
If he couldn’t find evidence to support one of his wild conspiracy theories he’d bend the facts or make things up to provide the support he needed.
After all, the process worked quite well for Washington politicians. He could use the same methods to his own advantage.
He finally a
nnounced, “The problem is we can’t see the drilling equipment because we’re too low. We need to get higher.”
The producer was tired.
The cameraman was ready to pack it in and give up.
But both would follow Williams, for Williams and his radio show kept them employed.
Like faithful hounds they followed Williams’ lead, went where he told them to go.
He pointed out a high outcropping, due north of Lewis Lake and directly overlooking the Lewis River.
“If we can work our way up to that ridge we can see everything to the east of there for miles.
“And if that ground fog lifts and the cloud cover breaks up we can see even farther.”
He jumped back on his Polaris and led the way.
The going was slow, though.
The terrain was steep and covered with loose rock. Where trees would grow they were thick.
And the brush… the brush was everywhere and seemed to grow directly from the rock itself.
They rolled down their sleeves when Williams spotted some poison oak.
One thing they didn’t need was for one of them to become incapacitated and turn the other two into nursemaids.
By lunch time they were there, on the outcropping.
Williams was at the same time right and wrong.
On a clear day this would have commanded a spectacular view of everything east for miles.
On a rainy day, cursed by thick ground fog, the view was minimal.
But Williams wasn’t one to admit defeat. Not when millions of dollars were involved.
Now they had an additional problem they weren’t even aware of.
Now they were being watched.
Chapter 33
She had no name. Well, technically you could call her Ursus americanus. That was her scientific name, but it was awkward and ungainly, and only scientific types and geeks called her that.
A more common term was American black bear.
As far as a more recognizable name, she had none. She wasn’t called Pooh or Yogi or even Boo-Boo, not even by the park rangers who knew her and tracked her movements around the park.
To the rangers and campers and tourists alike she was nothing special, and therefore deserved no affectionate or cutesy name.
She was just another bear, no more no less.
Just like any of the hundreds of others of her species in Yellowstone Park.
Most of them were gone now, scattered in all directions, trying the escape the maddening vibrations beneath their feet.
For weeks they’d been trickling out of the park in search of a safer place.
Many fell victim to hunters or lawmen, shot down though they were guilty of no crime other than trying to save their own lives.
And perhaps wandering too close to areas where people were concerned for their own safety.
She watched them from a distance.
They were nothing special either, these three men decked out in camouflage to help them blend in, yet wearing bright yellow rain gear to help keep them dry.
This bear was a mama bear who’d lost her only cub a few days before.
He’d run across the road in front of a fast-moving ranger vehicle and never had a chance.
The ranger who hit him, the son-of-a-bitch, got out and looked at his fender, decided his vehicle was still drivable and went back about his business.
The young bear died a very painful death, whimpering for help on the shoulder of the road.
The mother was young.
He’d been her very first cub.
Moreover, the cub’s father had been a massive brute of a creature who was four times the mama bear’s frame.
The cub was to inherit his father’s size, and was a very large baby. He’d have been tough for any bear to birth. Much less this mother, who was petite by fully grown Ursus americanus standards.
He tore her up internally.
She’d been bleeding on the inside since the birth process. It was making her weak, confused and nauseated.
Bears eat grass when they’re not feeling well.
It typically helps to some degree.
But she was past the point of help. She threw the grass back up almost as soon as she swallowed it, and the lack of nutrition was making her even weaker.
Then she found the cub by the side of the road.
Death wasn’t new to her. She killed whatever came along to augment her diet.
But this was different.
This cub was her own.
And while she didn’t understand how or why he died, dead was dead.
Anyone who says animals aren’t capable of grief has never seen a mother of any species stand vigil over a dead offspring and watch the look in her eyes.
So then, this bear was injured, probably mortally.
She was sick and getting sicker by the day.
She was hungry and dehydrated, also getting worse by the day.
She was confused.
And she was broken hearted.
It wasn’t a good combination to deal with for any hapless human which wandered along.
And Wally Williams had the misfortune of doing just that.
Actually, he wasn’t wandering, exactly.
Wally was a rather portly man, you see.
He had no desire to exercise or to place himself on a diet.
Gym memberships and diets were for losers.
He considered it one of the finer things in life to sit at an expansive table and to have a good meal.
Steak, lobster, lasagna, chicken wings… it didn’t matter as long as it was good and there was plenty of it.
It was said behind his back that Wally could eat as much as ten men and still complain about being hungry.
And for sure, he did eat way more than he needed.
He and his team were staying in a fully stocked cabin which belonged to someone else.
That didn’t stop them from breaking a back window to gain entry, though.
He’d found a tray of leftover chicken tortellini in the freezer and had feasted the night before.
The thing is, people who eat a lot of food must go to the restroom more frequently to expel what’s left of it after the digestion process.
That’s why Wally left the producer and the cameraman on the outcropping to watch for any signs of drilling equipment happening by.
He himself grabbed a roll of toilet paper and wandered into the woods.
Now, this mama bear wasn’t particularly mean.
And like most bears she didn’t like the smell of humans and was a bit afraid of them.
Under normal circumstances she’d have caught his scent as he drew close and would have wandered away in the opposite direction.
But she was in a very bad state.
On top of every other part of her which wasn’t working right, her nasal cavity was dried out.
A dry nose affects one’s sense of smell, be ye human or bruin.
As she lay there, in absolute misery, more or less waiting to die, Wally walked around from behind a huge boulder.
They startled one another.
And mama bear was in no mood to have her privacy invaded.
She roared her objection and used what little was left of her strength to find her feet and to charge Wally.
He, in turn, immediately did what he’d gone there to do, at the same time running away as quickly as his squat little body would carry him.
Chapter 34
Wally Williams was accused of many things over the course of his fifty one years, but being smart wasn’t one of them.
Every camper, every sportsman, every hunter knows the last thing one should do when encountering a bear is to run from it.
The generally accepted rule of thumb is to stand one’s ground and face the bear down. Be as scary looking to the bear as it is to you.
That doesn’t guarantee you won’t be mauled to death and find pieces of yourself on the inside of the bear’s stomach.
But rea
lly, it’s the best chance you have for survival.
Now, to be sure, avoiding the temptation to run when faced with a charging bear is easier said than done. It goes against man’s basic instinct. Those who study such things maintain that man has two deeply ingrained options when faced with danger: either fight or flight.
One typically won’t win a fight against a bear without a very large caliber gun and a little bit of space, so the desire to run instead is great.
Perhaps Wally knew he shouldn’t but just couldn’t bring himself to be brave.
Or perhaps he was just stupid.
Whichever the case was he took off like a bat out of hell and ran out of the woods, past a stupefied producer and cameraman, through some brush which blocked the view of the steep cliff just beyond it… and eighty four feet to his death.
Actually, eighty four feet and two inches.
The producer and cameraman froze in their tracks, even when the bear came into view in hot pursuit of poor Wally.
Even when the bear, perhaps not thinking because she was in a rage, or maybe was beyond caring, followed the fat little man through the brush and over the cliff, landing with a nauseating thud twenty yards beyond him.
She bounced farther than he did, it turned out.
The odd thing was, he didn’t even scream. Running for his life took away all his breath and he simply had no scream left in him.
The entire spectacle, from the first time he came into view of the producer to the time his body hit the bottom of the ravine below them, took less than eight seconds.
The producer shoved the cameraman hard, saying, “Why in hell didn’t you record that?”
It took the stunned cameraman a few seconds to respond.
He was still trying to make sense of what he’d just witnessed.
Finally he said, and rightfully so, “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”
His camera was wrapped in plastic to protect it from the rain, then tucked into the backpack upon his back.
The battery was wrapped in a separate plastic bag in a side pocket of the backpack.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 5): The Eruption Page 10
