The Yellowstone Conundrum (30 page)

Thunder Basin National Grassland

Campbell County, Wyoming

  Cameron pulled the rig to a slow stop. Betsy gave him a non-verbal “what’s up?” with her eyes.

  “Just stoppin’, I guess.
I’m not sure where I am.”

 
“Well stomping Jesus on a stick, I just met me the first man in my life who admitted he didn’t know where the fuck he was!” her voice was filled with genuine laughter, the twang in her voice from Texas or Tennessee. She started to laugh hard and long, enough to bring tears to her eyes.  After a minute Cameron started to laugh as well. It had been a tough morning. It was obvious God was giving Betsy a break; her tears of an hour ago a release that allowed her to compartmentalize, something women do very well, sometimes to extreme.

 
They’d been driving for an hour and hadn’t seen another living soul. Eastern Wyoming approaching the Nebraska border was West Texas with four inches of rain and about three feet of snow more, the bare minimum to grow grass instead of dust. It was beautiful country, all sky.  Here was the earth and above it was the sky—nothing to get in the way of either.

 
In the far distance they could see what they thought were farm homes, set miles off of the highway; most on the other side of locked gates. Apparently, people liked their privacy.

 
The further he went on state 387 the more worried Cam became. The black cloud continued to drift eastward and southward. It was the eastward part that he didn’t care for much. The first intersection in an hour had been twenty minutes ago, state route 50; forty miles due north was Gillette. His instinct told him north wasn’t a good idea—also; his gas tank wasn’t thrilled with the idea, either.

Thunder Basin National Grassland

 
“Miss Betsy, we’re going to need a town up ahead. I didn’t fuel up last night. Be on the look-out for a gas station,” Cam turned to his diminutive passenger and gave her his best oh-shit cover-up smile. She didn’t see the oh-shit behind his mask. Cam’s shoulders hurt real bad; not used to the exercise. His legs felt like two telephone poles stuck in hardened concrete. He could tell from Betsy’s eyes that she was exhausted. Tiger Kitty didn’t bat an eye.

 
“This might be a real town, Miss Betsy,” Cam’s hopes picked up. The sign said welcome to Wright, Wyoming, elevation 5000 feet; kind of an oddity, wasn’t it; five thousand feet; exactly. Another 280 feet and they could have called themselves the Mile High City. But, it wasn’t just the sign that was encouraging. Not all the homes were trailers like in Edgerton and Midwest; streets south of 387 were regular with street lamps and curbs; small, but nice.   There were ads for the Exxon station and the Wright Inn, even a modern little strip mall. 

 
Exxon, there’s the ticket
Cam thought.

 
Even though they were at high elevation, there wasn’t a tree to block a whisper of a breeze. Cam imagined how the wind had to feel; hard, bitter, like a nasty dog taking a chomp on your ears. To his right he saw a fairly large group of people in the parking lot, two blocks across the brushy weeds from 387; he turned to the right and approached.  The closer he got into the neighborhood, the more real the damage from the earthquake.

 
The roof of the Wright Town Hall had fallen in; thankfully, too early for Gladys Holt who was the receptionist and office manager for the city, population 1440. A group of people were in the parking lot, standing around the statue of a bison which until 7:20 this morning had been standing on a five-foot high concrete trapezoid.   The bison had reacted poorly to the morning’s shakers; now lay on its side with a hole punched through its left foreleg where it fell onto the ground.

 
A man approached his driver’s side, concern and doubt written on his face; behind it was fear.

 
“How is it?” the man asked.  He was dressed in a blue flannel shirt, black vest and wore a black cowboy hat that was perfect for him.  Even though it was a cold morning and the sun was rising, the man didn’t look like he was cold; he just looked so damn cool
. I’ve never for one single day in my life looked as cool as this guy; not an hour in a single day
Cam thought; Wright, Wyoming written on his forehead; bison, ranching, mining, Republican, four kids, Ford trucks.

 
Cam brought the truck to a growling stop.

 
“I need gas.” was Cam’s first response.

 
Cool cowboy, 42 shook his head. “We don’t have any power.  The Exxon is the only station in town. Gas is in the tank but there’s no power to get it up; the station doesn’t have any emergency power. No power and no phones. We can’t get connected to anyone; tried over and over. No luck. Can’t even pull in the emergency weather channel; never seen anything like it.”

 
Cam put the truck into safe neutral and got out, his bones hurting from stem to stern. Betsy stayed inside the cab.

 
“Wade McGriff,” blue shirt introduced himself, his grip solid as Cam expected. “What the hell is happening, here?  Do you know?” Wade asked, behind him were citizens of Wright, Wyoming; every one with fear behind questioning eyes.

 
“See that?“ Cam pointed to the black cloud in the distance. “From what I gather, Yellowstone has exploded.”  Cam stopped, and turned to Wade and the others. “The only radio I can get is Praise Jesus from that station in Nebraska,” several people in the group nodded their heads.   “Which isn’t from Nebraska but someplace in Texas,” he added.

 
The morning in Wright, Wyoming was pretty much gone. The storm that went through yesterday and dropped two inches of snow, mostly melted this morning, was long gone…down in Texas someplace and headed East. Wright, Wyoming was a pretty place. Oil and mining and tourism were the major sources of income. This was the High Plains, elevation in the low 5000s, grassland as far as you could see, real home for
Dances with Wolves
. The town had enough taxes to have a modern school, a town hall, real roads, a modern motel and a gas station; paid for by taxes from Black Thunder Mining and other surrounding mining and ranching interests.  Unfortunately, none of it worked today because there was no electricity and the ground continued to shake softly every few minutes from the aftershocks of the Yellowstone explosion, albeit 400 miles away.

 
The real bummer was the Exxon station had no emergency power. Not many places can afford an $18,000 generator for emergency use.

 
Slowly, people from the surrounding neighborhoods began to congregate around Cam’s cab and the town hall. A closer look at the community revealed damaged houses, trailer homes knocked off their foundation, cracks in the road.  The beautiful recreation center, the heart of the town—with a full gym, racquetball courts, a weight room and a full-sized Olympic pool—had taken a major hit from the earthquakes, splitting the roof lengthwise on both sides of the new building.  A closer examination would find significant cracks in the bottom of the pool and on the gym court.

  “I-25 is closed.
Overpasses have collapsed,” Cam started.  “That black cloud isn’t a dust storm. It’s volcanic ash.”  Cam ran a hand through his hair; his fingers came out black with crusty crud. “You won’t last ten minutes inside the cloud. We were lucky. Another two minutes and we would have suffocated.”

 
The crowd had legitimate worried looks.

 
“Doesn’t look like it’s headed this way,” Wade observed.

  “Yeah, I’ll buy that.
Looks like we’ve outrun it; but let me ask you this—does the wind ever blow here?” 

 
“A bit,” Wade added, sheepish, knowing the wind was a constant companion on the high plains. Today it was obvious where the wind was blowing by the trail of Black Death drifting to the south in the western sky not 40 miles from them. The usual blown-over-backwards wind from the West was absent today because of the storm that went through yesterday. Tomorrow would be different. Today was a day off from wind. The entire western sky was black. This was no puffy little pussy willow.

 
“I don’t know about you, Wade. But, I’m scared shitless,” admitted Cameron, the crowd of locals quietly listening. “I just rescued the bitty woman in the cab from a firestorm of wrecked cars on I-25 the other side of Midwest,” he paused and there wasn’t a sound from the thirty or so folks who were gathered around. “That cloud is past Casper,” he pointed to the West. “By the size of it, it could already be down to Cheyenne on the way to Denver. It’s a hundred fucking miles wide! All it takes is a tiny shift of wind and we’re going to be covered with black ash.  And once you’re in it you can’t breathe. You’re deader than a doornail.”

 
The crowd started to pester Wade with some what-if questions; the cowboy held up his hand. “Everybody quiet for a second. We’re a proud community. It takes some strength to live in Eastern Wyoming; so, we’re going to need to channel that strength. These people have been under that cloud and say that you can’t breathe. I could tell you to go home and everything will be all right, that the tooth fairy will drop a quarter on your pillow by tomorrow morning. Of course, that might not be true. That cloud might start to shift eastward and tomorrow morning we’ll all be like those people in Italy—Mt. Etna, I think. All buried in ash, dead because they didn’t do anything when everything told them to get the hell out of there.”

 
Wade was doing OK.

 
“Jared,” Wade pointed to a tall, but rotund man in his early 40s, Jared Hastings, owner of Don’s Supermarket, a chain store in Eastern Wyoming. “I know you’re on generator, but that’s not going to last forever. Do you have a current inventory?” Wade turned to the store owner. 

 
“I could limp along for a week,” Jared admitted.

 
“You have stuff that’s going to go bad. I’m ordering Sheriff Townsend,” Wade turned to a second rotund man in his late 50s, only taller than Jared. “To impound the supermarket, to cut off sales, to inventory the rest; it is 11:30. I want an inventory of the canned foods and the stuff that will go bad by 3:00. Nobody’s stepping on anybody’s rights, here; we have to be cautious,” Wade turned back to Jared. “Are you going to be able to do that, Jared?” he asked the store manager, who at first shook his head no then in the opposite direction yes. “What help do you need?”

 
“Everybody who works there will help, Wade,” the manager replied simply, sorrowful at the takeover of his store, not yet understanding the scope of the problem.

 
“Great,” Wade turned to Cameron.

  “Gasoline,” Cam replied.
“I’m down to a quarter of a tank. If we’re going to get out of here, we’re going to need fuel. And there is no namby-pamby here, Wade. These are your people. There’s not going to be time to persuade people. They come or they stay. I’m not sure how much I believe in All-Jesus radio, but I have a hunch Jesus is cutting us a break here with the weather. I’m leaving, heading east, and I’m willing to help if you’re coming—but I’m leaving. I’m going over to the Exxon and fill up with diesel.”

 
“How are you going to do that?” asked Wade.

 
“I’m a long-distance driver, Wade. I may look like a fat fart, but I’m not stupid. When a diesel runs out of fuel, it’s a pain in the ass to re-start. You just can’t put fuel in the tank and turn the crank. You have to, well, I won’t describe it the way we truckers do. You have to get the air out of the system,” Cam added gently. “I have a siphon pump and forty feet of used 1.75 fire hose, which I use for special occasions—like saving my ass. Most truckers have something similar.

 
“I’m going to be over at the Exxon refueling. I’m going to keep an accurate count of what I take from his tank.“ Cameron Hodges sounded more like a leader than a 42-year old loser running long distance loads between Minot, North Dakota and Fanning, New Mexico.  “I strongly recommend that any vehicle that runs on diesel fill up now. After we run through the diesel, we’ll figure out how to get to the octane. I can’t use the same fire hose. If you want me to haul something, make it heavy and worthwhile. A fifth wheel, maybe turn it into the grocery store, or an infirmary to house all the sick.”