Rain of Fire (45 page)

The violence did not diminish. Protected from rocks coming in laterally, Nick peeked up from under his pack for those falling out of the column of ejecta. As fast as they were coming, he heard one auger in nearby before he saw it. Then another landed uphill, giving him just enough warning to jump aside before it jounced and rolled to lie hissing on the tarp. Smelling hot sulfur, he kicked the missile aside and watched it continue downhill.

It began to happen with chilling regularity. With horror, he knew it was no use watching out. He would either be hit or not.

All the while, he prayed there would not be a pyroclastic flow. His position low on the flank of the mountain would be a death trap should a mix of hot rock and gases come rushing down the volcano.

With a crash, a red-hot bomb hit the chest three feet from Nick. Small bits flew, embedding themselves in his forehead and cheeks, and burning like branding irons. With a cry, he clawed at his face, tearing at both rock and flesh. His hands came away slick with blood.

God, it hurt. Even with the slivers removed, he felt the raw searing and smelled scorched flesh along with smoke and rotten eggs.

A moment later, a new and noxious odor filled his nostrils. Heat flared … the tarp over the chest was on fire.

Wind whipped up the flames and forced him from his shelter.

More bombs hissed and sizzled through the air, some streaking in on his left with a sound like a passing bullet. He could hear nothing out of his right ear. It ached deeply, yet felt as though it were plugged with cotton.

A baseball-sized rock struck his right hand, smashing his little finger as neatly as a hammer blow. Pain exploded in his head.

He wasn’t going to get out of this. The thought sounded crystal pure against the cacophonous backdrop of noise assaulting his remaining ear.

Fighting back from the edge of giving up, he scanned the slope for a better hiding place. It was barren, but for dry grasses he believed would soon be a raging brushfire. Around fifty yards upslope was a copse of aspen, but that would burn as well.

Nick gauged the wind and decided. Instead of just holding his pack, he shrugged it on. His moon suit lay nearby. Grabbing the heavy material, he slung it over his head and shoulders and began scrambling upwind of the fire.

A bomb landed on a nearby boulder and shattered both. Shards flew in all directions, and more small fires started in the nearby grass.

It could only have been a few minutes since the eruption began, but he was already reduced to staggering uphill on trembling legs. Thinking of how worried Kyle would be when she realized what was happening, he managed to keep moving.

With an eye on the sky for falling bombs, he put his foot down on a loose rock. It turned, his ankle followed, and the next thing he knew he was on all fours. Trying to steady himself, Nick managed to set his hand down on a glowing fragment and burn his palm through his glove. His breath hissed in through his teeth and he swore. With his head hanging like a whipped dog’s, he waited for a fresh assault of pain.

For like the solid earth, his pain was layered. Topmost was the sharp agony of his seared face and neck, like a never-ending scream. Next, his smashed finger refused to go numb even in this cold. He pulled off his bloody glove and saw white bone where the meat had been stripped away. And beneath those pains were the deep aches of numerous and distinctive bruises where rocks had struck until he was like a punch-drunk boxer.

Nick rocked his weight back and forth between his hands and knees in preparation for getting to his feet. One and two and … nothing. His arms and legs shook with the futility of the task.

Another wave of tremors propagated through muscle and bone. He turned and looked up at the rim of the crater.

He’d been lucky so far today, as he had been all during his career. To keep his good fortune coming, he now ignored a sharp jolt of quake and lifted his good hand. His injured finger sent an arrow of pain that seemed to pierce his skull, but he managed to transfer his weight and move a knee forward.

Sweat ran down his cheek and dripped from his chin onto the rocky ground as he crawled. Twenty feet, fifty, and the slope steepened. Dark sparks began at the periphery of vision and closed down into a tunnel before his face.

He had to keep moving, but despite determination, he felt himself going down. His cheek landed hard, more insult to his burned flesh. In fact, pain was the only thing keeping him conscious.

In just a minute, he’d go on, but for now, he lay still. The cold wind found his sweat and started him shivering.

With an effort, Nick raised his head and looked toward the summit again. This time, he had to swipe blood out of his eyes and blink until his sight cleared.

Kyle would be so pissed at him for dying up here.

N
ick doesn’t answer,” Kyle told Wyatt as she replaced the receiver and wiped her damp palm on her trousers.

He concentrated on the computer screen. “Look at this.”

The signal from seismic station four was like nothing she’d ever seen. Similar to the harmonic tremors Nick had pointed out, but this pattern had symmetrical excursions that went on for three or so cycles, subsided, and then renewed with greater amplitude. The effect was to draw something that looked like threads on a screw.

As they watched, the signal from the station flat-lined.

“Think things just got quiet up there?” Wyatt asked.

“Not a chance.” Kyle tried to breathe. “Station four is off the air, just like Nick’s phone.”

A shimmer from the surface of Wyatt’s coffee attracted her eye. It was on the move, a sure sign that tremors were passing beneath Mammoth.

Wyatt brought up station five, near the crest of Nez Perce Peak. It too had gone off line.

“What about the others?” Kyle gripped Wyatt’s shoulder.

“I’m clicking as fast as I can.” It took mere seconds to discover that the core stations surrounding Nez Perce had all gone down at precisely 1:12
PM
.

Kyle pressed her fist to her mouth. “Keeping fanning out.”

He did. The first station they found that had recorded past the time was in the Lamar Valley. It showed that the screw-shaped signal continued.

A sudden rumbling shivered the office windowpanes and shook the ancient walls of the Resource Center. A distinct resonance Kyle remembered from once hearing a grain elevator explosion forty miles away. Long and rolling, it grew louder by the second.

Wyatt swiveled his chair and looked out the window.

Kyle was already on her way to the door. She heard Wyatt’s boot heels clacking behind her as they went through the lobby and out onto the lawn. Hugging herself against the biting wind that presaged the cold front, she walked away from the Resource Center so it wouldn’t obstruct her view of the southwestern sky.

As the initial roar began to subside, Kyle saw a dark plume rising miles away in the direction of Nez Perce Peak. Much taller than it was wide, like every textbook picture of a classic Plinian eruption column, described by Pliny the Elder at Vesuvius where hundreds of thousands died.

“God,” she said. “Oh, God. Nick.” The chill air did not seem to contain enough oxygen.

Wyatt put his arm around her. “I’m sorry, Kyle.”

Numbly, she stared at the roiling smoke pushing toward the stratosphere and tried to maintain hope. She continued to be awed by the column’s massive height.

“It doesn’t look big enough to have blown up the whole mountain,” she hoped. “More like a sustained release from a crater.”

“Perhaps.” Wyatt sounded doubtful.

“Maybe he’s alive.” Yet, his satellite phone was dead, and there was no signal from seismic station four.

There was no reply from Wyatt.

“He was over a mile from the peak,” she argued. “Just because the equipment was damaged doesn’t mean Nick didn’t take cover somehow.” This was foolish, but once the seed was planted, she couldn’t stop it growing.

“Kyle.” Wyatt’s face was sober.

“Yes,” she insisted. “The eruption has stabilized.”

Wyatt squinted through his old pair of glasses.

Though she had trouble imagining going near the mountain
… “After St. Helen’s exploded, there were helicopters and planes in the air right away. Some of the best news footage came from 15,000 feet.”

“But another blast, a bigger one could happen at any moment,” Wyatt said.

Something shifted inside her. “Wasn’t that true then? Isn’t it true every time a scientist steps onto an active volcano?”

Though Nick and the others who walked the edge were unarguably daredevils, she was the one who’d tried to have it both ways. To study Yellowstone from a distance, while rationing the time she dared spend there. Yet, she went through life trusting oncoming cars to stay on their side of the highway line, believing in the ability of a many-ton aircraft to fly, in short, fearing earthquakes and the dark because she had never shed the baggage of her past.

Kyle watched the eruption cloud billow skyward, realizing she and Wyatt were the only people who knew Nick’s position. If he could be found, given needed medical care, God forbid if it were only to retrieve his remains, they had to act fast.

“Wyatt, what was the name of the helicopter charter Nick used?” A raven, wings spread to catch a lift, cruised from the roof of the Resource Center to a nearby tree. “Some bird name.”

“Eagle Air.”

“Let’s go.”

They rushed back to his office. She dialed the number Wyatt found in the Internet White Pages. As the ringing went on and on, she felt like screaming.

After nine tones, a man answered brusquely, “Arvela.”

“Is this Eagle Air?”

“Yeah. Johnny Arvela. I own it.”

Across the desk, Wyatt sat in his guest chair, legs crowded by the scarred Park Service desk. She felt the tightness in him as he listened third-hand to the conversation.

“This is Kyle Stone calling from up in Mammoth,” she told the pilot. “You flew Nick Darden to Nez Perce Peak this morning?”

A snort, then, “I flew the crazy SOB.”

“I’m calling because Nick needs to be picked up and brought back down.”

The man laughed, but he didn’t sound as though he found anything funny. “He said the mountain might blow. Well, sister, have you taken a look out your window in the last few minutes?”

“Look, I’m with the Utah Institute of Seismology. Did you happen to see me on
America Today
?”

“I surely fucking did,” Arvela answered. “Based on your own prediction, your buddy is one crispy critter. And if you think I’m going to fly back up there, you’ve got another thing coming. My family and I are getting out of here.”

Kyle sensed his readiness to hang up. “If you won’t help, do you know any other pilot who might? Being on the scene to film an erupting volcano could mean a lot. Whoever gets the first footage will certainly be on the news.”

Awaiting the verdict, she met Wyatt’s concerned dark eyes. Then she followed his gaze out the window and saw that snow had begun falling in earnest. If they didn’t move soon, they might be socked in. “Please,” she appealed.

“I know one guy with the cast iron balls you’re looking for. Chris Deering.”

“Thank you,” Kyle said.

Wyatt grinned and put his feet to the floor, ready to go. She shook her head, grabbing a piece of paper to write down the number Arvela gave her.

“Not there yet,” she told Wyatt, dialing the cell phone of the other pilot.

The call was answered on the first ring. “Deering.” Though clipped, the deep, certain voice inspired her confidence.

“There’s a volcano erupting in Yellowstone,” she said. “How’d you like to be first on the scene?”

Deering chuckled. “I’m already going to be.” Her mouth dropped open. “You what? Where are you?” “You caught me in West Yellowstone. We can see that sucker blowing from here. Another five minutes and I’ll be in the air with a photographer.”

“How many passengers can you carry?” “Six, but I’m not waiting around here on anybody.” Her heart sank. “What if I told you a volcanologist from the United States Geological Survey is on the mountain? I’m Dr. Kyle Stone, and Ranger Wyatt Ellison and I have lost communication with Nick Darden from Park Service Headquarters here in Mammoth.” She threw a desperate look at Wyatt, wishing he could come up with the magic words she needed.

To her surprise, the mention of Nick being on the mountain was the key. Deering said, “I’ll land in front of Headquarters in half an hour.” He paused. “Weather permitting.”

As Kyle hung up, she cast a worried glance out the window at the swirling flakes. “We’re on,” she told Wyatt, who had subsided back into his seat. “Chris Deering will fly us.”

“No kidding?” He pushed up. “Deering was the one who picked up David …”

“Weather permitting,” she advised.

Wyatt frowned. “This is one bitch of an arctic front. Wind chill on the mountain’s going to be well below zero.”

Kyle looked at her lightweight, hoodless down jacket lying crushed on the seat. “The pilot said he’d be here in thirty minutes.”

“Then let’s get some winter gear from my place.”

She slung on her coat while he put on his heaviest uniform jacket.

“Wait,” he said. “We forgot to call Teri.”

But when he called the guardhouse at the north entrance, there was no answer.

“She probably took off when she heard the eruption.” Kyle gathered her coat and headed into the hall.

Pausing to turn off the coffeepot in the employee lounge and scatter the ashes on the lobby hearth, Wyatt led the way through the arctic entry. As he opened the door, a gust caught it and slammed the portal back against the clapboard outer wall. The front had most definitely arrived.

Kyle followed him out, struggling to see as the driven snowflakes battered her eyelashes. Sure enough, this wind cut through her clothing as though she wore nothing. By the time they reached Wyatt’s Bronco, her cheeks and nose hurt from the frigid gusts.

When he turned onto the road to his house, the snow let up a bit, allowing Kyle a hazy view of the long shoulder of Mount Everts across the Gardner River. She could only imagine the distant eruption cloud.