Natural Disaster (Book 1): Erupt

by Lou Cadle

  “On some damned forest road. Let me get out the GPS. Wait.” He turned on the GPS and gave Greg the reading.

  “Plugging it in to the map. Okay, I see where you are, on a forest road. About two miles down, it tees into a real road, gravel, I think. Turn left and there’s a—hang on, switching to satellite view—okay, a ranch maybe, or a farm, barely a mile on. Then another four, five miles to another one. Then maybe three more miles to quite a bit of housing.”

  Akroyd finally huffed his way to the top of the hill. “Got something?”

  Norio nodded. Into the radio he said, “Get down the GPS location of the instruments we left behind, just in case.”

  “Tell them about the pilot first,” Akroyd said. “Their location.”

  Norio read the GPS for the instruments first. But he also read those for the injured pilot’s location.

  Greg confirmed. “We’ll see what we can do, but you know they won’t fly until first light. Can you get yourselves down the hill? Most of the bridges are out, so getting to you with a car will take some time. I imagine it’ll be dawn before we can do anything.”

  “Roger that.”

  “It’s good to hear from you. Anything else? I gotta go.”

  “No, that’s it, over and out,” he said. Norio could see that retrieving those instruments would probably fall on his own shoulders. He said to Akroyd. “You up for another bit of walking?”

  “If we have to. I can’t get through on my cell phone here.”

  “It’s downhill now, at least.”

  Forty-five minutes later they were knocking on the door of a white ranch house. A security light shone in the side yard. At their knock, dogs began to bark out back. That’s all they’d need, dogs attacking them. But none appeared; they must be fenced in. He found the bell and rang, and then he pounded on the door again.

  A man in a robe appeared at a window next to the door, a shotgun in his hand. “Who the hell are you?”

  “We were in a helicopter crash up on the mountain. We could use some help,” said Akroyd.

  The man studied them for a moment. He turned away from the window. Norio waited impatiently, and finally the front door opened.

  Akroyd introduced himself and Norio.

  “What were you doing in a helicopter?”

  “Taking readings on the volcano gasses.”

  “You’re scientists?” said the man.

  “We study the volcano,” said Norio.

  “Then why the hell didn’t you know it was about to blow?”

  Norio bit back a reply.

  “They can be unpredictable,” Akroyd said. “We knew it was rumbling, but the eruption came faster than anyone could have known.”

  The rancher still hadn’t backed out of the doorway. “If this gets worse, we could lose everything,” he said.

  Like it’s our fault you build your frickin’ home on the side of a volcano, thought Norio.

  “We have an injured man,” said Akroyd. “A helicopter pilot. And two others we left with him, in okay shape. Our cell phones aren’t working yet. Could we call for help for our people on your phone?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Edward, let them in,” said a woman’s voice.

  The rancher backed off and gave a curt nod, which Norio took as an invitation to enter.

  Akroyd said, “Thank you ma’am. Where’s the phone? You have a land line?”

  The woman, dressed in a lavender sweat suit, nodded and led him back through a doorway. He heard Akroyd say, “Can you talk for me? My hearing got damaged in the blast. I’ll tell you the details, but you’ll need to listen for me.”

  The rancher finally cracked open his shotgun and Norio breathed a little easier. “You want some coffee?” the man asked as he pocketed shells.

  “Thank you. Water, maybe.”

  “Mariah, get this guy some water!” he called. Distantly, outside, the dogs started barking again.

  “Get it your own self,” the woman called. “I’m busy here!”

  When the rancher went into the kitchen, Norio sat down on a flowered sofa and glanced around the room. Kitschy knickknacks, family photos, fake posies in straw baskets. The place smelled fake floral, like one of those plug-in room deodorizer things.

  The three of them came out of the kitchen all at once, the man with a glass of water for Norio.

  “The bridges are out, the roads across the Sandy are impossible. They can get an ambulance here but it’ll take almost three hours,” said Akroyd. “Best bet is a medical helicopter, if we can get one at dawn.”

  Norio finished drinking the water and flipped open his cell phone, which was showing no bars, still. He checked the time.

  “We can at least get your friends down here to our place,” said the woman. “If the road is clear up to them. Can’t we, Ed?”

  “I suppose. If you think it’s safe to drive up there.”

  “For now it sure is,” Akroyd said.

  They decided Norio would go back up with the rancher in his SUV, while Akroyd stayed here with the woman and called his family and the CVO and tried to arrange for a medevac flight. Out there, the volcano was still erupting without him. As soon as he could, he needed to get back to it.

  “If they have a computer,” Norio said to Akroyd, “get online and look at whatever is up. Seismograms, news footage. Or turn on the TV, if they don’t have access. Try to get us up to speed.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Akroyd. “Just get the others down here safely, okay?”

  Norio joined the rancher. It took twenty-five jouncing minutes to retrace their path up the mountain. The three others they had left behind appeared in the headlights. Norio jumped out and said, “How is he?”

  Ty squinted back at him in glare of the headlights. “Worse, but he’s still alive.” He came forward to shake the rancher’s hand and introduce himself and his girl. “Thank you for coming. We were freezing out here.”

  The four of them lifted the pilot into the rear of the SUV as carefully as they could.

  “Sorry about your car seats,” said Ellen to the rancher, as she got inside. “My jeans are still filthy with ash.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’ll clean up,” said the rancher. “Looks like you two had a close call.”

  “Too close,” said the woman. “We were camping last night. Hiking the day before that.”

  “Your name might be on the TV,” the rancher said. “Sixteen hikers are missing. And that’s just the ones they know about.”

  “They didn’t know about us,” said Ty. “McNeil trail doesn’t require a permit.” He added, “Not that the permit boxes could have survived the pyroclastic flow. I wonder how they knew about the other names.”

  “Maybe family called them in,” said the rancher.

  Norio was just about to get in the car when he realized he was closer to recovering the instruments right here than he’d likely be for hours. He leaned on the open car door. “I’m not coming.”

  “What?” the rancher asked.

  “It’s your damned instruments, isn’t it?” said Ellen.

  “Yeah, it is. I have to get them safe and back to the office.” And he wanted to be on the mountain, though it’d take him hours to get anywhere useful—useful and possibly dangerous, same thing.

  Ty said, “Look, why don’t you get some food, take a nap, and then go up? Or maybe you can get a rental car delivered to you out here and drive halfway back.”

  “I don’t know.”

  The rancher said, “Hell, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you want to come up here again, I’ll drive you back after you’ve eaten and rested a bit.”

  Norio could feel the eruption pulling him like a magnet, but he knew they were right. He needed food to eat and food to take with him, if he were going to hike back in.

  When they got back to the farmhouse, they decided not to move the unconscious pilot again. The rancher went and got an extra blanket to throw over him. His wife had fresh-baked muffins, a carafe of coffee, and a
bowl of fruit set out on the table. She came out and tutted over the pilot who was now fevered and still. The ranch wife led the hikers inside and into a back room for a shower. Akroyd went into the kitchen with the rancher and called back in on the landline to confirm the medevac helicopter for dawn at this address.

  When he got off, Norio told him his plans.

  “Well, I guess I can come,” said Akroyd.

  “No, you get back to your family. And get your hearing checked, too. I can handle it alone.”

  “You might be more in the center of action if you get back into CVO and find another helicopter.”

  “I might. But how long might that take? And what might I find out on the mountain this morning instead?”

  “Who knows if there might not be a lateral eruption in your direction?”

  “Maybe I’ll get a chance to retrieve the instruments first. Maybe I’ll be able to record something important, something that will even help predict future eruptions.”

  “I’m worried about you. You haven’t even slept.”

  “I’ll nap an hour, and I’ll be fine. I’m worried about your hearing. Get it attended to. Now let me call around and see if I can get a rental car.”

  But there were none. Incoming journalists had snatched them all up. It was a big story, national and international. A call into the CVO confirmed that there were no helicopters available, either. He asked Greg to find him an intern, anyone, who could bring his car to the ranch house later that day, and Greg promised he’d work on it.

  After eating and taking a short nap, Norio packed some food and water into Ty’s pack, which the man insisted Norio take. The rancher, still grumbling about not understanding why he was returning to the mountain after working so hard to get off it, took him back up the fire road. When his GPS indicated he was as close as he could get to the instruments as the road allowed, he told the man to stop.

  “You sure about this?” the rancher asked.

  “Positive.”

  His exhaustion could be ignored. If he got injured, that would heal. But scientific discoveries, revelations about the natural world at moments like these, those were forever. Knowledge would last as long as people lasted. And his mountain was calling.

  ^ ^ ^

  Ellen stood in the spare bedroom and thanked Mariah for probably the fourth time and the woman said, “Stop, now. You two get yourselves clean and I’ll get you some clothes for you to put on. Ed’s should fit you fairly well, Ty, but mine are going to be a little loose on you, I’m afraid, hon.”

  “As long as they’re clean, I’ll feel like Cinderella,” said Ellen.

  “And when you’re dressed, I’ll have a full breakfast ready for you. How does that sound?”

  “Like heaven,” Ellen said. “You’re so kind.”

  “If people can’t help strangers at such times, what kind of world would it be?” She left the room.

  Ty said to Ellen, “You can shower first.”

  “Thanks. I won’t be long.”

  The shower was heaven. She tried to hurry, but the encrusted ash wasn’t easy to get off her arms or neck. At times, she had to peel chunks of dried ash off, leaving her skin red and raw. As she shut off the water she thought her hair might not be entirely clean yet. But it was Ty’s turn, while there was still hot water. She came out in a towel, a second towel wrapped around her head, and he was sitting on the floor, slumped against the bed. He looked terribly tired.

  “Hey, your turn,” she said, kissing him on his forehead. “Ack, grit. Get clean so I can kiss you for real.”

  “Great motivator,” he said. With a groan he stood and went into the bathroom. Ellen dressed in a pair of pink sweatpants and a flowered top, hideous looking but clean. Her suitcase and carry-on bag were in her car’s trunk along with her laptop, which was still probably safe in the Walmart parking lot, but who knew when she’d be able to get back there?

  She sprawled onto the bed and waited for Ty and when he came out they stood, her in her goofy pink outfit, him in a towel, and held each other for a long, sweet moment. “We did good, kid,” he said. “We’re alive.”

  She left to let him get dressed and joined the others in the kitchen. “The food looks amazing,” said Ellen, sitting down. “I’m starving. You’d think it had been days and not hours since I ate last.”

  “We burned a lot of energy carrying Corey down,” said Ty, coming in the door, tucking in his shirt.

  Oh gods, Corey, she’d forgotten. Ellen jumped to her feet. “How is he? Has anyone checked on him?”

  “Sit,” said Mariah. “He’s breathing. He’s unconscious. All we can do is wait for the experts to come and care for him. You can go see him again when you’ve eaten something.”

  Ellen was torn. But she realized it was true, there was still nothing she could do for Corey. And if he wasn’t conscious, he wouldn’t know if she stood over him or not. She sank into the chair. She was so tired and hungry. She wanted to eat. She wanted a real bed. And she wanted to wake up with Ty next to her in that bed and celebrate being alive with him.

  After breakfast, she checked Corey, who was looking flushed. His breathing was even but rapid. She wanted to wake him—to see if he could wake, to reassure herself—but she stopped herself. Whether he was asleep or unconscious, at least he wasn’t feeling pain right now. Let the poor man be.

  Forty minutes after dawn, the medical helicopter arrived. The medics took Corey and Akroyd. The EMT in the helicopter looked at Ty and Ellen too, listened to their chests, and said, “You need to go in too, this morning, as soon as you can. You’ve been breathing ash, and they’re saying the gas is even worse.”

  “What hospital are you taking them to?” asked Ty.

  “Pacific.”

  The helicopter took off with Corey and Akroyd, leaving Ellen and Ty to find their own route to help. “We’ll go to the same hospital,” said Ty. “We’ll be able to find out how he’s doing much more easily. Maybe get into his room later on to see for ourselves.”

  “If he lives,” said Ellen, watching the helicopter speed east. She had survivor’s guilt, she realized, even though Corey was still alive. “Everything could work out,” she said, trying to reassure herself.

  “It will,” said Ty.

  She hoped he was right. Turning west and looking up into the brightening sky, the sight of the continuing eruption did not reassure her.

  30

  Day 2, south flank.

  Jim never wanted another night like this one. Before all light faded, he searched everywhere around the trailer for tire chains, but there weren’t any. He found a folding shovel in one of the storage lockers, better than the dustpan, and cleaned the roof with it before heading inside for fitful sleep.

  Twice during the night he got up and went out into a pitch-black world of swirling ash. The flakes brushed his face like cobwebs, like ghostly fingers. The worst was the absolute darkness. He couldn’t see his own hands gripping the shovel.

  By feel, he made his way around the trailer and up the ladder again. Once on the roof, he moved a few inches at a time, patting all around himself to make sure the edge of the roof wasn’t close. He was so worried about falling off, so disoriented in the total darkness, it took him twice the time to clear it than it had when it was light. The tension of walking on a roof blind was like the tension right before a big test that he hadn’t studied for at all, multiplied times ten, and lasting ten times as long. By the time he crawled shakily down the ladder, he was tired out by clenching his muscles against the fall that had never come.

  As he worked cleaning the roof the second time that night, he thought of the stories his father and mother had told about the old country and how they had to run for their lives or hide from men with guns, how his grandparents had been lucky to survive wars, how many far-ago ancestors had to fight the Chinese. All that had sounded distant and boring to him. But up on the roof, alone in the dark, feeling the weight of responsibility for keeping his family safe, with the edge of the roof one
misstep away, he had begun to understand that there had been real terror for the people in the old stories. He was not the first of his family to feel fear or to have to do something difficult in the face of uncontrollable forces. He understood that despite his fear of falling, despite the ash irritating his eyes, that he still had it easier than others had it before him, and he glimpsed that there must be a whole range of terrors that surpassed his own.

  Inside, his mother was waiting up for him, fretful and wanting to help. As he stripped off his outer layers, she began to cough.

  For a few minutes, it wasn’t very bad. She got control over the cough, sipped some tea, and offered him a cup. He declined and went to the sofa to try and catch some more sleep.

  That’s when his mother started coughing again, much worse. After a minute, it hadn’t stopped, and Jim got up to see if he could help her. She waved him off and sat, hunched over, hacking and hacking. The cough possessed her, wracking her body. Jim hovered, trying to think of something he could do—pound her on the back? He helped her stand up, thinking that might relieve her, but it didn’t. He did tentatively slap her on the back, but that did nothing. In between coughing fits lasting minutes, for maybe fifteen seconds at a stretch, she was able to stop and breathe. But then the cough started up again.

  Finally, he was worried enough to wake his father from the back bedroom. Jim stepped to the other side of the main room and watched his father try to help his mother. He figured maybe the ash floating off him was causing the problem, or making it worse, so he kept his distance.

  By the time dawn broke, all of them were up and watching his mother with worry. Lida was rigid with fear. He couldn’t coax a word out of her, nor could he spend much time trying. He did what he could to help his father comfort his mother, but when she coughed, her face turned purple with straining for oxygen. The awful question would not leave his mind: could she die if they didn’t get out of here?

  His mother went to the bathroom. She was still coughing, but behind the shut door, it was muffled. His father peered through a window. “Almost no ash in air now.”