Cataclysm

by Tim Washburn

  The corner of S. Parker Road and S. Peoria Street, Denver, Colorado

  Abhay Kapoor, a second-generation Indian-American, stands behind the locked door of the family-owned grocery store, watching the foot traffic along Parker Road through the ash-filtered sunlight. His parents had fled the growing unrest between India and Pakistan, choosing to leave the random gunfire of Punjab for the safety of Denver, Colorado. The transition was difficult, but with other family members close by, the Kapoor family settled in and his father used their life savings to purchase the small grocery store.

  Abhay turns from the glass and meanders down the aisles, taking a mental inventory of remaining stock. The count doesn’t take long. With no power, he hustled to move most of the frozen and refrigerated stock, and had a run on most of the canned goods. All the bottled drinks were hot sellers, and Abhay had quickly squirreled away several cases of water for family use. About the only things left in the store are greeting cards, automotive accessories, and assorted overripe fruit. At least that’s all that’s left for sale. Abhay also stashed a pallet of canned goods in the small locked office at the rear of the store.

  With the store abutting a residential area, most of the patrons are local, many of them Indian immigrants much like his family. But over the last day or so, a steady stream of unfamiliar faces has invaded the neighborhood. Robbed last night, the Quick Cash store across the street stands abandoned, the glass shattered and the front door ripped from its hinges. Luckily the owner escaped, suffering only a moderate concussion. National Guard troops have filtered into the area, but their focus appears to be evacuation.

  Abhay wrings his hands and returns to the front of the store, astounded at how quickly events have spiraled out of control. His father refused to leave the store abandoned, so Abhay is standing guard. But at five feet six, and 150 pounds, Abhay is not exactly an imposing presence. Across the street he spots a group of four or five individuals, all carrying baseball bats. Teenagers, by the look of them. His body gives an involuntary shudder and he steps back into the shadows. With his gaze focused on the group of boys, Abhay doesn’t see the brick that comes crashing through the window. He screams as a group of three older men follow the brick through. One puts a knife to Abhay’s throat as the other two fan out through the store.

  “Money and food. Where is it?”

  “We . . . we . . . have neither.”

  The man, with greasy long hair and a teardrop tattoo near his left eye, leans his head down, now nose to nose with Abhay. “Bullshit. You fuckers come to town, take our jobs, and then hoard your money like pack rats. I want it.”

  Abhay swallows, his mouth as dry as cotton. He fumbles his wallet from the back pocket and tries to hand it across to the man. “This is all the money I have. And . . . and as you can clearly see”—he pauses to lick his lips—“we have little food remaining.”

  The man slices across Abhay’s cheek with the knife. He swallows the scream as the hot poker of pain registers in his brain.

  “I guess I’m not seeing clearly. Where’s the safe?”

  Abhay puts a hand to his face to stanch the flow of blood. His jaw clenched in pain, he mutters, “Back office. Empty.”

  With a flick of his wrist, the man opens a gash on Abhay’s other cheek. This time he screams. His knees sag with the pain, but the thug grabs him by the shirt collar and drags him toward the back of the store, Abhay’s feet cutting a groove through the blood splattering onto the floor. The man kicks in the door to the office.

  “Well, looky here.” He pulls Abhay upright. “Thought you didn’t have any food?” He draws back a foot and kicks Abhay in the crotch.

  Abhay moans and sags against the man’s hold as hot bile shoots up the back of his throat.

  “Lied about the food and you’re lying about the money. Where’s the safe?”

  Abhay manages to mumble out “closet.”

  The man drags him toward the closet and swings open the door. He releases Abhay, allowing him to sink to the floor. “Open it.”

  Abhay uses a bloody hand to protect his crotch. “Safe . . . empty.”

  The man rears back and sends a heavy boot into Abhay’s midsection. “I’m supposed to trust you after lyin’ about the food? Open the fuckin’ safe.”

  Abhay crawls toward the safe, leaving bloody smears across the linoleum. He shakily pecks out the four-digit combination as the other two men enter. The man levers open the safe and screams as he begins stomping on Abhay’s arm. “You little cocksucker. Where’s the money?”

  Abhay manages a small shake of his head. “There is no—”

  The words die in his throat as the other two men begin kicking and stomping him. Worked into a fury, the men don’t stop until long after the light dies in Abhay’s eyes.

  Camp 53–Augusta, Georgia

  Interview: Alyssa from Aurora, CO—high school student

  “I’m disappointed to be away from my friends, but being down here is better than those last couple of days at home. It was scary. Aurora is really part of Denver, and when the power went out, it was like someone loosened the hounds of hell. All the stores were looted. People carrying these crazy-big televisions and there wasn’t any power to watch them. Just crazy stuff like that. My parents wouldn’t let me go outside after that first day, not that I wanted to go out anyway. I would sit on the back porch and, at night, it was freaky dark. Couldn’t see the hand in front of my face. Oh, and it wasn’t just dark, you could hear gunfire all across the city. Sounded like one of those war zones you see on CNN. You know, those reporters with the helmet and the bulletproof vests with a scene of destruction in the background? Anyway, I do feel safe down here, though they are pretty strict. Zero tolerance, they call it. Several people have been hauled away, and no one really knows where they took them. Scary, now that I think about it.”

  CHAPTER 64

  Yellowstone park headquarters

  Tucker pulls on his pants and stoops to tie his boots. “You ready to go out there?”

  Rachel pulls her T-shirt over her head. “I’m ready for air. It’s stifling down here.”

  Tucker rips his undershirt in half and hands Rachel a portion. “This’ll help until we can find some respirators or masks.”

  Rachael ties the rag over her nose and mouth. “I feel like a masked bandit.”

  Tucker struggles to slide his Park Service shirt over his sweaty arms. “Let’s hope there’s something left to steal.” After covering his own nose and mouth, he carries a bucket over to the sealed entrance. “Better stand back. No telling what could fall through.” He steps on the bucket and levers his shoulder against the steel plating. With a grunt, he inches the makeshift door open. Ash pours into the opening, obscuring his vision. The bucket wobbles under the weight, but with one more shove he opens the plate wide enough for them to make their escape.

  Rachael steps over to climb up.

  Tucker holds up a hand. “Let me go first.”

  “Southern chivalry is dead, Tucker.” She latches on to the edge of the metal plate and pulls herself topside. “Oh my God,” she shouts.

  Tucker scrambles out behind her and stops in his tracks. The only things left standing are a few scattered stone fireplaces. Flames flare at the remaining hot spots, and heavy smoke hangs in the still breeze.

  “I feel as if I just landed on the moon,” Rachael says in amazement.

  “Any hope for masks or respirators is out the window,” Tucker says.

  Rachael points toward the distance. “So is our transportation.”

  Tucker squints, trying to peer through the smoke. His stomach plummets when he spots a smoldering chunk of scorched metal where the pickup had been parked.

  “Is all of this volcanic ash?” Rachael asks.

  Tucker bends down and scoops up a handful, letting it slide through his fingers. “A mixture of fire ash and volcanic ash, but mostly volcanic.” He takes her by the elbow and steers her toward the faint outlines of the road. Ash swirls with each step and the smok
e stings their eyes.

  “You still have the sat phone?” Rachael asks.

  “Battery’s dead. I was hoping to recharge it.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s out the window, too. How are we getting out of here?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I wasn’t expecting the fires to have incinerated everything in sight.” They trudge forward, both rubbing their eyes. A breeze stirs out of the south, whirling the smoke into wispy contrails. “Let’s head east.”

  “We can’t walk all the way to where your family might be. We’re on borrowed time as it is.”

  “No, but we can walk that way. Maybe we’ll get lucky and stumble across some type of vehicle in the staff housing area.”

  They walk east. If the smoke isn’t bad enough, the heat from the remaining hot spots radiates like a furnace.

  “We’re going to need water, and lots of it,” Rachael says.

  “And something to carry the water in. Keep your eyes peeled for any type of container.”

  “My eyes are stinging so bad I can’t see much of anything.”

  “Mine, too. You’re the water expert. Any natural springs in this area, other than the geysers?”

  “There’s a little spring-fed creek off the southern loop of Lower Mammoth Road.”

  “I guess we have a destination.”

  They leave the remnants of Officers’ Row and walk onto Grand Loop Road. One wall of the old stone chapel stands erect against the horizon, the stone cross at the precipice standing guard over the ruins.

  “Want to look in there? There might be a chalice or two.”

  “We’d waste half a day digging through all that rubble. Need to keep pushing forward.”

  They walk around a wide turn and start the long descent into the valley. The once-lush sage hills continue to smolder, and the only breaks in the blackened earth are the granite boulders that have surfaced after centuries of erosion. Rachael grabs for Tucker’s arm as she leans forward, racked by coughing. Once finished, he helps her to a standing position and tucks the edges of the rag down into her shirt.

  “You”—she coughs again—“trying to feel me up?”

  “Yeah, was it good for you? Try to keep that rag tucked in. The volcanic ash is extremely fine. It can sneak in through the tiniest of crevices. Ten times worse than beach sand.”

  Rachael nods and Tucker turns to continue their journey. A little farther down the road he leads them off the highway, taking a shortcut to Lower Mammoth Road. The ash is much heavier where it collected on the undulating terrain, and they plunge ahead as if trudging down a snow-covered mountain. Once they reach the smoother surface of the road, the walking grows easier. The lower Mammoth region, which once hosted a row of small homes for park staff, now more closely resembles the old photos of war-torn London. Mostly stick built out of two-by-fours and sided by wood siding, the homes lie in mounded heaps of ash. Charred autos are parked in driveways to nowhere.

  They walk along the neighborhood streets where they and their friends lived, their sorrow weighing on every footstep. “Good thing they evacuated when they did,” Rachael says.

  “Still, a lot of memorable items are lost forever.”

  “They’re just things, Tucker. It’s the human lives that are irreplaceable. Anything at your house we could use to carry water?”

  “Don’t know. I lived in pretty sparse accommodations.” Tucker snaps his fingers. “Wait. I did have a couple of old metal canteens.”

  “There you go. Just what we’re looking for. And I’m not really surprised about your scanty living quarters. Did you even have a picture on the wall?”

  Tucker looks away. “No. But I did have some maps on the wall.”

  “’Bout what I figured.”

  Tucker leads them through the side yards of crumbled houses and pulls up short when he sees the pile of rubble that was once his home. Borrowed, but still home for seven years. “That’s going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Anything over at your place?”

  “My roommate and I drank out of plastic cups from random bars. No chance of finding anything over there. Do you remember where in the house those canteens were located?”

  “I do. The spare bedroom.” They step across the ash-covered lawn and Tucker points to a spot on the far side of the debris. “It was over in that corner.”

  “That’ll give us a starting point.”

  “Okay, but we can’t afford to spend a lot of time looking for them.”

  “I think I could’ve done without that reminder. We’re not going anywhere without water. We need those canteens.”

  They sidestep around the larger rubble and start digging through the wreckage. Within minutes they’re covered in soot that runs in rivulets down their faces as the sweat leaches from their bodies. Tucker finds a couple of fishing reels, minus the fiberglass poles, and tosses them aside in hopes of retrieving them later. Rachael backhands the sweat from her eyes, leaving a dark smear across her milk chocolate cheeks. She pauses in her search.

  “Which side of the room would they have been on?”

  Tucker thinks for a moment, replaying a movie in his mind. “One of them was on top of a bookshelf against the outer wall.”

  Rachael high-steps over the wreckage and begins digging in an area near the foundation. She pulls something from the ruins and screams. She holds the canteen aloft as if hoisting the Super Bowl trophy. One down, one to go.

  “Where would the other one have been?” Rachael asks.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Might have been in the closet.” He climbs over the remains of a sofa. “Which would have been right around here.” He pulls away a stacked of charred wood, and Rachael comes over to help. They dig and pry but after a few minutes, Tucker stands and stretches his back. “Maybe we should go with the bird in hand and move on down the road.”

  “We could probably share one canteen, but your family is going to be thirsty.” Tucker agrees and they renew the search with vigor. Ten minutes later, he pulls the second canteen from beneath a pile of smoldering books. “Lead us to water, oh messiah.”

  After climbing out of the detritus of a past life, Rachael leads them to the spring-fed creek the next road over. “We’ve solved one problem, but a bigger one looms. How are we going to get out of here?”

  Tucker raises a finger in the air. “I think I might have just the ticket.”

  CHAPTER 65

  University Seismic Observation Lab

  Eric Snider glances out of his window, where it appears to be snowing in June as the ash rains down on Salt Lake City. He stands and exits his office, striding down the hall to the lab area. The room is fully staffed, and people are working around the clock as the crisis at Yellowstone continues. Most of the geology instructors are apprehensive, yet also somewhat excited to bear witness to possibly the largest volcanic eruption in the history of mankind.

  Snider approaches Emily West and takes a seat in a vacant chair. “Have you seen any recent InSAR data for Yellowstone?” InSAR is the acronym for Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar, a satellite-based system used to measure ground deformation.

  West twirls a finger around a strand of her hair as she uses the other hand to steer the computer mouse. She scrolls through a series of bookmarks and clicks on a page. “Latest data package is two months old.”

  “I asked for a new data study yesterday.”

  “Could be they’re having trouble with orbital repeat times or, more likely, atmospheric problems with all the ash.”

  “With half the instruments offline, we don’t have a clue what’s happening at the caldera.”

  “We’re still getting intermittent data from the borehole seismometer at Lake Yellowstone.” West pulls up the webicorder display for seismometer B208. A normal seismogram is a continuous series of multicolor lines in fifteen-minute increments. The webicorder display for B208 is littered with gaps, some as much as two hours in duration.

  Snider points at the screen. “W
e could have an eight magnitude earthquake and that instrument wouldn’t help a damn bit. Do we have any active seismographic data from within the caldera?”

  West shakes her head. “Just the spastic borehole. Tiltmeters are offline and the GPS units aren’t sending data. They might be functioning but the ash is obscuring all transmissions. We do have recent satellite imagery but most of the park is obscured.”

  Snider picks up a paper clip and begins to straighten it. “I’ve been on the phone for what seems like thirty days. What’s the latest seismic activity out west?”

  “Continuing earthquake swarms. There was a fairly large spike with the last eruption at the park.”

  “Strong enough to trigger an eruption?”

  West shrugs. “Who knows? But a caldera-wide eruption might well tip the scales.” She turns away from the monitor. “Do they really matter, Eric? Yellowstone’s the headliner. All those others are just background noise.”

  “It’s not background noise if one of those volcanoes is in your backyard. Seattle is sandwiched between Glacier Peak and Mount Rainier. They’re both listed as a very high threat for eruption. You can bet those people will worry if one of those erupts.”

  “I didn’t say that to be insensitive, Eric. Hell, I spent some of my formative years in Seattle. Yes, there will be devastating regional effects if any of the Cascade or California volcanoes erupt. But Yellowstone will be a global event. We can’t become distracted by what might happen elsewhere. The greatest show on earth is happening right under our noses.”

  “You’re passionate about the subject.”

  West blushes. “I’m fascinated and horrified at the same time. We spend all our lives studying and analyzing data about what might occur. Now we’re living it.”

  Snider works on putting the paper clip back into its original form. “And many are dying or will die.”

  “Yes, that’s the horrifying part. But we have no physical control of the caldera. It’s Mother Nature in her most violent state.”