by Steve Alten
New mud spots were sprouting up weekly. Ground temperatures on the foot trails were approaching 240 degrees Fahrenheit. Options to deal with the caldera’s threat were discussed. An elaborate system of vents and canals linked to Yellowstone Lake could potentially quell the beast, only Congress decided the $25 billion price tag was “far too excessive for a tourist attraction” and that the US Geological Survey’s “scare tactics” were not appreciated.
Scare tactics? A full-scale eruption of the supervolcano carried the devastating effects of a major asteroid strike. Forget about the lava, which would spread for hundreds of square miles, or the explosion itself, which would kill hundreds if not thousands; the worst problem was the sulfur dioxide–laden ash cloud. With the equivalent impact of ten thousand Mount St. Helens volcanoes, the cloud would span the planet’s upper atmosphere, reflecting the sun’s life-giving solar radiation back into space. Global temperatures would plummet, crops would die, then the animals, then the people. Nuclear winter would consume the planet for years to come.
But hey, there was some good news: at least the ongoing oil wars in Venezuela and Nigeria would end, saving any surviving US taxpayers a trillion dollars a year.
The rumbling builds again. Jon Bogner stands, ready to dash to the toilet, when he realizes the disturbance is not coming from his stomach.
Caitlyn Roehmholdt is growing impatient. The twenty-four-year-old Japanese translator has blisters on her feet from walking across the hot boardwalk in sandals, and her father, Ron, refuses to leave Yellowstone until he videotapes Old Faithful.
“Dad, enough already.”
“One more minute. Five, tops. Trust me, it’ll be worth the wait. Here, listen to this.” He reads from a brochure. “‘Geysers are hot springs with narrow constrictions near the surface that prevent water from circulating freely to allow heat to escape. Old Faithful’s eruptions have increased in both duration and altitude over the last year due to an increase in earthquakes that have rocked the park. There are more than ten thousand geysers in Yellowstone—’”
“Who cares?”
“I care. Did you know that my father took me to see Old Faithful when I was seven?”
“Baka ka, I’m twenty-four, a bit old to care about a fubishitting dirt hole that farts steam.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“Sorry. Anyway, it’s just stream slang.”
“I meant the Japanese. You called me a stupid asshole.”
Caitlyn smiles. “Asshole, dirt hole … what’s the difference?”
The detonation from the cone geyser cuts off her father’s retort as eight thousand gallons of pressurized steam and water rise nearly two hundred feet into the sky, causing hundreds of tourists to clap.
“Okay, I admit, that’s pretty cool. I like the colors.”
Ron looks up from behind his camera. “Colors?”
“The red mud. It reminds me of Moby Dick’s bleeding spout.”
“That’s not mud, it’s lava! Come on!” Grabbing his daughter’s wrist, Ron pushes his way through the throng of onlookers, his heart racing even as he questions his own reactive behavior. Maybe it’s not a prelude to an eruption. Maybe it’s nothing. No one else is running.
“Dad, stop! I can’t run in these shoes!”
He pauses at the bridge walk encircling Yellowstone Lake, out of breath. “Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“The lava … I thought maybe the caldera was erupting.”
“Dad, it was mud.”
The crack of thunder echoes across the lake. Followed by screams.
Ron steals a quick glance over his shoulder to see a panicked mob rushing away from Old Faithful, the geyser now spouting fountains of lava a thousand feet high.
“Come on!” He grabs her hand and heads south for Grant Village. Caitlyn has gone numb, her eyes watching the lake where a wall of water, sixty feet high, is sweeping up boaters and Jet Skiers as it rolls in their direction.
“Dad—”
“We can outrun it!”
“No we can’t!”
“We have to in order to get to the car. Come on!”
They sprint across the length of walkway spanning the southwest tip of the lake, making it halfway across before the wave breaks upon the boat rental with the sound of pounding thunder, bashing the docks into splintering shards that are quickly engulfed in a raging tide of flipping boats and mud-laced debris.
Caitlyn feels the ground beneath her sandals rumble, a low roar filling her ears as the wave announces its arrival with stinging pellets of horizontal rain and debris before the churning wall of water swallows her sideways in its fury.
YUCATAN PENINSULA
The jet-copter pilot glances nervously from his radar screen to the white-haired man-child meditating in the copilot’s seat next to him.
Devlin Mabus’s hands form a pyramid in his lap. His black pupils are rolled up beneath his lids, exposing only the crimson red of his eyes. He is breathing rapidly, each breath a low growl.
“Excuse me, Dev? I’ve got a fix on JC-1. It’s moving southeast, heading for the Atlantic coast. Should I pursue?” The pilot contemplates tapping his arm, but fears the teen might bite him.
Immersed in the Nexus, the demon that inhabits Devlin’s mind has long vacated the chopper. Moving remotely through the Yucatan jungle forty miles to the south, it prowls the heavy pungent aroma of Palenque’s surrounding forest, its powerful olfactory sense homing in on the scent of the womb that birthed its current physical vessel.
A second scent accompanies the first … a Hunahpu male.
Devlin’s eyes reopen, the demon shaking itself loose from the Nexus.
“—about seventy miles away. Dev, should I follow your mother or stay on course to Palenque?”
“She’s not aboard the chopper. She’s with him. Set us down in Palenque.”
Devlin treks through the now-familiar jungle, following a trail of scentladen foliage until he arrives at the clearing.
The old Aztec woman is seated on a rock. Blood drips from the obsidian knife held within her knotty hands and from her whisker-laden mouth.
The teen glances at the half-eaten human heart. “My pilot?”
“He was young, filled with spirit.” Chicahua smiles, her gums and the few remaining teeth in her mouth stained red with the remains of Antonio Amorelli’s heart. “At least his death had meaning.”
“Will yours?” He circles his great-great-aunt. “You’ve hidden my mother’s scent trail from me. Why?”
“Because I know who you are, demon, and I know what you want. We’ve met before, you and I … a long time ago, back when I was a beauty like your mother and in love with a man who was destined to be my soul mate. His name was Don Rafelo and he was a Nagual witch—a sorcerer whom you beckoned to the dark side.”
“You have it all wrong, Chicahua. It was Don Rafelo who beckoned me. Like Devlin and his mother before him, Don Rafelo sought the limitless power of the eleventh dimension. I gave him what he wanted until he became drunk with it.”
“You forget, I am a seer, one who can see through your serpent lies. Through time eternal you’ve plotted every action, manipulating countless thousands on your unholy quest to occupy the vessel of a Hunahpu. You sought Quetzalcoatl’s bloodline, targeting my soul mate and the Aurelia clan. You used Don Rafelo to curse Madelina Aurelia and arranged her death immediately following Lilith’s birth. You brought the darkness that still haunts her tainted soul, and now you possess her child, but for what end? Your actions extended the fifth cycle once. Now the Gabriel twins have ended that charade.”
“Nothing has ended! The black road shall open again, only this time I shall be ready. Devlin’s vessel is pure energy, able to function simultaneously in multiple dimensions. His genetics offer me immortality. Yours, however …” He retrieves the obsidian knife, using her dress to wipe the blade clean.
“Kill me if you wish. My spirit shall continue to mask your sight within the Nexus.”
“N
ow it is you who forget, Chicahua. As your former lover I know it is not your soul that allows you to blind me.”
Flying into the Nexus he is upon her, gripping her by the scruff of her neck with one hand, stabbing the blade deep into her right eye socket with the other. Using the cavity’s bony curvature as leverage, he scoops out the sight organ by its root, then pops it into his mouth before turning his attention to the remaining eye—staring at him through the ether.
ATLANTIC OCEAN 167 NAUTICAL MILES SOUTHWEST OF THE UNITED KINGDOM
The Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis buoy, more commonly known as DART, is a ten-foot-diameter flotation ring, its dorsal surface mounted with GPS antennas and a sensory mast, its belly rigged with two acoustic transducers. Tethered to the sea floor by swivel chains and a series of thousand-pound anchors, the system is designed to measure the force of an open-ocean tsunami, then transmit the data via acoustic signal to a tsunameter situated on the ocean bottom. When data is received, the tsunameter releases a glass ball flotation device, which surfaces and transmits information via Iridium satellite to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The arm of the megatsunami that rushes toward the DART buoy is the northern tail of the wave unleashed by the Cumbre Vieja landslide. Having been partially deflected from open ocean by the northwestern end of La Palma Island, the expanding ripple represents the monster’s weakest appendage.
The sixty-two-foot trough of water sucks the DART buoy into its vortex with the force of a commercial jetliner landing next to a baby stroller. The monster flings the device straight into the air before churning it into an unrecognizable configuration of aluminum and plastic.
NOAA TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER
HONOLULU, HAWAII
Alexis Szeifert is director of ICG/NEAMTWS, a useless acronym meant to abbreviate the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System overseeing the Northeastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and connected seas. While the Pacific and Indian Ocean divisions of the TWS command large staffs overseen by a director and three assistants, Alexis represents half of the North Atlantic group’s entire work force, the other two seismologists being part-timers. While she is happy not to be busy, she has twice requested a transfer, seeking a greater use of her talents.
Seated at her desk, she rereads the garbled seismic report coming from the Canary Islands for the third time, her eyes scanning the data for the volcanic epicenter.
Cumbre Vieja. Been a while since that one erupted. No real seismic displacement to worry about. Still …
Noting the time of the event, she calculates the path and speed of a potential tsunami. Using her interactive screen, she clicks on the west coast of Africa, then zooms in tight on the Canary Islands. Locating La Palma, she finds the nearest DART buoy lying in the path of the ghost wave and checks for any oceanic disturbance.
DART A-114 … . … . … . … . . . STATUS: OFF-LINE.
Off–line? In seven years she has never had a DART fail to respond to a command. Open-ocean tsunamis were two- to three-foot ripples at best, hardly anything powerful enough to damage a buoy or its acoustic uplink. Even in the worst of storms the system never went down. Something out of the ordinary has to have happened.
She contemplates calling the tech department when a frightening thought takes root.
Cumbre Vieja wasn’t just an ordinary volcano …
Her heart flutters in her chest as she scans the seismic report once more, searching for any information about a possible landslide.
Nothing mentioned. Then again, if the volcano was still erupting, it could take days, even weeks to assess the damage. She recalls her supervisor’s favorite saying, “Pray for the best, prepare for the worst.” The worst-case scenario La Palma offered was a global nightmare.
Her fingers dance across the keyboard, hurriedly typing in her user name and password as she seeks to access the NOAA satellite array orbiting the planet.
ACCESS DENIED: SYSTEM IN USE.
Leaping onto her chair, she yells over her cubicle across the crowded chamber, “Who the hell’s tying up GOES?”
A few heads turn. No one responds.
“Goddammit, whoever’s using the array to sneak peeks at the nude beaches better log off now before I start tossing desks!”
“Alexis, what’s the problem?”
She turns, confronted by her supervisor. Jeramie Wright is a 280-pound former mixed martial arts champion exuding a 9.7 intimidation factor on a scale of ten.
“Sir, I need access to—”
“—to GOES, yes, we all heard you. In case you haven’t heard, every sector except yours has been in full-alert mode since six a.m. We’re tracking over a hundred volcanic eruptions along the Ring of Fire alone, and have already issued seven tsunami warnings along the Western Pacific. I need you to assist a team monitoring a potential wave event in Sumatra—”
“Sir, I’m already tracking an event—Cumbre Vieja.” She shows him the report. “I checked the nearest DART on the estimated event path. The buoy’s off-line.”
“The system’s on overload. Give it half an hour and try again. Meanwhile, report to Bonnie Fleanor, she needs your help.”
“Half an hour is too late. Sir, please … I know it’s controversial, but Cumbre Vieja is still considered to be a potential megatsunami catalyst.”
“The odds are too long to calculate.” The intensity of her eyes softens his objection. “Where’s the next closest DART on the estimated event path?”
“Way out in the mid-Atlantic. Which is why I need to access GOES. If the eruption did cause a landslide, the array would have recorded it.”
Jeramie leans over her shoulder, using her keyboard to log in using his own user ID and password. “You’re in. Do it fast.”
The screen activates, granting her access into the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite network, known as GOES. She enters La Palma’s latitude and longitude, the system linking her to GOES-15.
Her supervisor hovers close by as a real-time image of West Africa appears on her screen. Using her mouse, she maneuvers the screen as far west into the Atlantic as the orbiting satellite’s on-board camera will allow, zooming in on the three main Canary Islands to the east, La Palma remaining too far to the west to be seen. “Sir, La Palma’s in a blind spot, what should I do?”
“Forget checking the tape. Enter the coordinates of the off-line DART buoy.”
She complies, the system accessing GOES-12. The new satellite image reveals parts of Spain and the Mediterranean Sea to the east. Again she pushes west, searching an endless screen of blue ocean from a zoom-lens altitude of two thousand feet. Matching the DART buoy’s coordinates, she tracks to the northeast.
A thin white arcing line appears, barely noticeable over endless blue ocean.
She zooms in gradually until the line becomes a moving mass of water with no discernible backside, churning rapidly toward the coastline of Great Britain.
“Good God.” Jeramie Wright stares at the object on-screen, even while his hands activate the communication device in his right ear. “This is Wright. We’re tracking a megatsunami. North Atlantic, bearing … Szeifert?”
“—forty-seven-point-five degrees North, fourteen degrees West, 132 nautical miles southwest of Great Britain. Wave velocity 522 miles an hour, estimated height … sixty-three feet. At its present speed, the wave will strike the southwestern shores of Cornwall, England, in twenty-three minutes.”
“Did you hear all that, Davis? Issue a tsunami warning for Cornwall, then track down Director Turzman at Homeland Security and patch him through ASAP.”
The head of NOAA’s Tsunami Warning Center eyeballs his pale division head. “You did good, Alexis. Unfortunately, we both know that trough is probably nothing compared to its big brother heading for the States. I want the rest of that wave tracked down and up on the main screen within the next five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
YELLOWSTONE PARK, WYOMING<
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Unleashed, the monster had gone wild.
Molten silica-rich magma had been chemically evolving in the sleeping giant’s belly for years, blending with water and volatile gases within the upper region of the thirteen-hundred-square-mile subterranean chamber. As these gases mixed with the magma, it expanded the sea of lava to fill the entire underground pocket until the pressure from the percolating gases and the broiling 1,800-degree Fahrenheit heat combined to exceed the force weight bottling seven miles of overlying rock that had corked the caldera for more than 600,000 years.
With the crescendo of a thousand Hiroshima-size atomic bombs, the monster had erupted.
Liquid fire exploded into the sky, scorching the air, earth, and every living thing in between for three thousand square miles. Plumes of dense mouse-brown ash clouds billowed into the stratosphere as if unleashed from Hades. Carried by the prevailing southeasterly winds, the volcanic dust quickly blanketed the states of Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas with its toxic gray snow.
For the first hour the pyroclastic lava rolled faster than the local population could flee. Molten asphalt melted tires. Flames turned vehicles into gasoline-powered explosives. Trees and houses and buildings burned as if ignited in a blast furnace.
Terrified populations living in the Midwestern states hurriedly packed their belongings and loaded their cars and SUVs, praying and waiting for the authorities to advise them in which direction to run. Certainly not west, where earthquakes were uprooting Los Angeles and San Francisco, turning the San Andreas fault line into a separating jigsaw puzzle.
Four hours after the Yellowstone Lake basin had risen as if propelled by Poseidon, every eastbound highway west of the Mississippi was bumper to bumper in traffic. All domestic flights were canceled, the ash rendering the skies too dangerous to fly.
