Authors: Harry Turtledove

Supervolcano: Eruption (54 page)

BOOK: Supervolcano: Eruption

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“Yeah, I guess.” Gabe didn’t sound completely convinced. No, he hadn’t had much luck with his love life since his marriage hit a mine and exploded. “It’s good to have you back in the saddle, though.”

“Good to be back,” Colin allowed. No matter what kind of carnal excesses he’d managed at the Bonaventure and the Coronado, a man his age couldn’t do that all the time, not unless he wanted to roll up like a window shade, thwup, thwup, thwup!

“You figure we’ll ever drop on the goddamn Strangler?” Gabe asked. It wasn’t out of the blue. There’d been a fresh killing over in Manhattan Beach while Colin and Kelly were on their abbreviated visit to San Diego. Colin hadn’t heard about it till he came home. Watching the news hadn’t been his biggest worry while he was there. As long as no more snow came down, he hadn’t cared what happened in the outside world.

Now he did. Now he had to. And now he said what cops all over the South Bay had been saying all along: “He’s bound to goof sooner or later. Trip over something in the dark and break his ankle, maybe. Something.” Some bad guys got away with things for a long time, either through fool luck or because they were the uncommon smart people who turned to crime. Very few went to their graves uncaught. Colin was sure of it. He had to be, if he wanted to keep thinking he was doing something that mattered.

“This one’s not in our jurisdiction, same as the last one wasn’t,” Gabe said. “Let the guys in Manhattan Beach take the heat. See how they like news vans lined up outside the department all the time and the clowns with the expensive haircuts asking dumbass questions.”

“I’m sure they enjoy it as much as we do,” Colin said. Gabe laughed harshly. Colin went on, “What I want to be is, I want to be the one who busts the son of a bitch. I don’t know if I can be that lucky twice, but I sure want to.”

“Twice?” Now Gabe sounded puzzled. Colin had been a solid, steady, capable cop for a hell of a long time now. He’d caught a lot of perps, some smart ones and even more of the jerks and losers who went wrong. But he’d never pulled a coup that even came close to what arresting the South Bay Strangler would mean.

He wasn’t thinking of policework, though. “Lucky. Uh-huh,” he said. “Only reason I ever went to Yellowstone was to get away from everything after Louise walked out on me.”

“Me, I went to Vegas when things hit the fan,” Sanchez said. “I bet you got away cheaper—I’ll tell you that.”

“I bet you’re right,” Colin agreed. “So there I was, walking around in this cold, miserable drizzle, still kind of hungover, looking at the hot pools in the West Thumb Basin, and I reamed out this gal for going off the boardwalk.”

Gabe chuckled. “Once a cop, always a cop.”

“Tell me about it. So Kelly showed me she had every right to be where she was ’cause she was doing her research, and I felt two inches tall and covered in dogshit. But then I got lucky one more time. This earthquake hit, and it gave us something to talk about besides what a moron I was. I ended up getting her e-mail, and I gave her mine, and we just went on from there. Fool luck all the way, nothing else but.”

Instead of answering right away, Gabe concentrated on getting to the bottom of his bowl. Then he said, “If you tell me the same thing ten, fifteen years from now, I’ll be more impressed.”

“Mm, I know what you mean,” Colin admitted. People went into first marriages sure theirs was a passion for the ages, and just as sure love would last forever. They went into second marriages hoping things worked out. Even that might have been the triumph of hope over experience. But it also might have been a more realistic attitude.

“Sometimes even ten, fifteen years aren’t enough. Look at us. Our first ones both lasted longer’n that, but when they died, they fuckin’
died
, man,” Gabe said.

“I know. Sometimes you grow together, sometimes you grow apart,” Colin said. He worked at his own ramen. The broth was salty and porky and delicious. His doctor would probably scream that it was a sodium bomb—and a fat bomb to boot—but sometimes he just didn’t care.

“You know what I’m really jealous about?” Gabe asked.

“What?” Colin worked to keep his voice neutral. How could his buddy help being jealous of his happiness? Gabe didn’t have a hell of a lot of his own these days.

But the sergeant’s answer blindsided him: “I’m jealous you got to see Yellowstone. See it while it was still there
to
see, I mean. Nobody’s ever gonna be able to do that again, but you did.”

“You’re right,” Colin said in surprise. “Kelly goes on about so much stuff being gone, but I hadn’t thought about it that way. Hell of a lot of stuff nobody’ll see again.”

“You were there.” Gabe paused. “Wasn’t that the name of a TV show a million years ago?”

“I think it was. Something like that, anyway.” Colin finished his lunch. Before the eruption, this place had served its ramen in big old styrofoam cups. You could wash bowls and use them over and over. The only time you needed a new one was when you dropped an old one. Once these people ran out of styrofoam, they fell back on Plan B.

Plan B . . . Plan C . . . A lot of the time these days, it seemed as if the country was on about Plan Q. Nobody had any good ideas to pull it out of its mess. Or, more likely, the mess was simply too goddamn big for anything so trivial as some human’s good idea to make much difference.

And, as Kelly kept pointing out, this was only the beginning. The eruption was over, but the aftereffects lingered on. How long would it be before the Midwest was the world’s breadbasket again, not buried under ash and dust? How many people would go hungry on account of that? Would the Midwest be the world’s breadbasket again, with the weather getting so much colder? How long would the chill last? Years? Decades? Centuries? Nobody knew for sure, but everybody was going to find out.

Things probably wouldn’t be anywhere close to the same for the rest of his life. What were you supposed to do?

Gabe put money on the table. “Here, Mister Just Back from His Honeymoon, this one’s on me.”

⶜Thanks.” Colin stood up.

So did Gabe. As they walked out to their car, he asked, “So . . . You got your ducks in a row to testify at the Ellis trial?”

The kid from the projects was up for three counts of armed robbery and one of first-degree murder. The case looked open-and-shut to Colin, but nothing was open-and-shut if you messed it up. “I’m getting there,” he answered. “Still reviewing the videotapes and the reports and all. How about you?”

“Pretty much the same,” Gabe said. “If they don’t stick a needle in his arm, they need to make damn sure he doesn’t get out again.”

“Yup.” Colin nodded. Maybe
this
was what you were supposed to do: what you’d always done, as well as you could for as long as you could. What else could any one person do?

He unlocked the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Gabe got in on the other side. They drove back to the cop shop under a sundogged sun in an ague-cheeked sky.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

W
henever you happen to read
Supervolcano: Eruption
, it opens the following Memorial Day weekend. I sure h
ope it does, anyhow!

The supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park
is quite real. When it will next erupt—next year, fifty thousand years from now, or maybe even never—is anybody’s guess, and a subject for learned argument among geologists. The Sour Creek magma dome, and the Mallard Lake dome farther southwest (not mentioned in the text), are real, and are bulging. The Coffee Pot Springs dome is fictitious. Again, I hope it stays that way.

Also fictitious is the town of San Atanasio, California, though the surrounding South Bay cities are real. So is the Trebor Mansion Inn. I couldn’t possibly make it up.

Special thanks for hospitality and help go to Robert Shaffer, John Frary, CthulhuBob Lovely, Justin Barba, and Joanne Girvin. I also need to thank my father and mother, though sadly they aren’t here to read this. More than fifty years ago, they first gave me a subscription to the
National Geographic
. They kept it up even when times got tough, and I’ve done so ever since. I found out about the supervolcano in its pages.

If you’re so inclined, you can sing “Came Along Too Late” to the tune of “Josephine Baker,” from Al Stewart’s excellent album,
Last Days of the Century
. When my youngest daughter, Rebecca, was taking Western Civ in college, she asked my wife—Broadway maven Laura Frankos—and me for songs on historical themes. Laura gave her ersatz Sondheim. My contribution was an earlier version of “Came Along Too Late.” It also seemed to fit what was going on here. Thanks again, Rebecca.

ALSO BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE