Volcano Watch

CHAPTER THIRTY

The mood was ugly at the intersection of Minaret Road and the Bypass.

The rolled-gravel escape route branched off Minaret and disappeared into a forest of Jeffrey pine. Somewhere in there, the trucks and dozers and cats sat idle. Work had stopped because the road crew was here along with the rest of the town.

It was a whipped crowd, sunk deep into parkas. Council members huddled in their own group, not looking any happier than the rest of us. They’ve got their own emergency meeting, so I’ve heard, in three hours.

I couldn’t wait three hours. I had eyes now for only four people:

Phil Dobie, more haggard than he’d looked five hours ago up at the fissure.

Lindsay beside him, hot-eyed, still riding the fever.

Len Carow, babying a cigarette until it flamed.

Krom, on his cell phone, watching Carow.

It’s been forty-eight hours since I sat in Krom’s office and told him about the fissure. He’s moved almost as fast as the Survey. He got Carow into town yesterday and now, right here, he’s got his own Event Response going.

It can’t come too soon.

“Man.” My brother dug his elbow into my arm. “Man, it’s cold.”

Walter, on my other side, said, “Cassie, are you warm enough?”

I said “yes” and my breath condensed like a fumarole. Come on, I thought, before we all freeze, it’s getting later by the minute.

Krom pocketed his cell phone, then tilted his head back. Others, noticing, tilted their heads as well. Carow’s cigarette tipped skyward and Phil’s beard rose and even Lindsay lifted her chin. The movement rippled through the crowd. Walter and Jimbo followed suit and I couldn’t resist if I’d wanted.

We all looked up to a view we’ve seen a million times. The plateau on which the town sits rises to the broad Lakes Basin, which is bordered by a string of peaks.

Why look? Everybody knows what’s up there.

There came the distant rumble of an engine and a big-bellied helicopter rose above the toothy skyline. I didn’t get it. But I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

The chopper came to hover above Red Mountain.

It looked like some kind of rescue attempt.

But it wasn’t. The chopper dipped its nose and came our way, skimming treetops, laying down a smoke trail. As it barreled over our heads, I saw the National Guard insignia on its belly. I covered my ears and turned along with everybody else to follow its path as it shrank into the morning sky.

We were left with smoke in our eyes and the taste of sulfur on our tongues.

“What the shit was that?” said Jimbo.

“A simulation.” My voice shook.

Lindsay obviously thought so too. Phil had to know. Carow surely got it. People lifted fingers, following the smoke trail, tracing the chopper’s route. It began at Red Mountain and paralleled the Lake Mary Road down the three miles to town. It crossed Minaret and then followed the Bypass in its push northeast toward highway 395.

It was a simulation of an eruption from the site of the fissure. The smoke was meant to show the likely path of the avalanche of burning gas and rock known as a pyroclastic flow. A pyro is probably the deadliest thing Mother Nature can throw at you. The ground flow moves at around eighty miles an hour. It throws off a cloud of hot ash that goes at, say, a couple hundred miles an hour. You can’t outrun it. You can’t outdrive it. You can’t outfly it in a helicopter. Although, clearly, you can do a convincing simulation with a chopper trailing smoke. You can show the path the ground flow would take, seeking the clean funnel of the Lake Mary Road and then burning right through the Minaret intersection — where we all stood — and barreling along the Bypass.

Of course, a real flow wouldn’t confine itself to this one path. It would send fingers into every inch of hospitable terrain of the Mammoth plateau.

But this display confined itself to the fact that the Bypass was in the pyroclastic flowpath of an eruption from Red Mountain.

Krom had confined himself to the matter at hand.

I’d asked for this, hadn’t I? Do something, I’d demanded.

And now he gave those who hadn’t understood a lesson in topography. He didn’t use a bullhorn, as he had at the race. He made us hold our breath to listen.

“We’re now fighting a battle on two fronts. The caldera is the first front and that’s been enough to command all our resources. But mark this, chums — we’re sitting two thousand feet above the caldera.” He put out his hands and raised one above the other. “An eruption down at the caldera — the most likely sort our friends in the Geological Survey will predict — would not destroy our town. Damage us, yes, but we could weather it. With a caldera eruption, topography is in our favor.” He waggled the upper hand. “But a second front has been discovered up on Red Mountain. It is an offshoot, so I am informed, of activity centered around Hot Creek. When I insisted on fencing off Hot Creek, I didn’t know of that connection, but I wish I’d pushed harder. Now, it’s fenced.”

That’s totally out of line, I thought. Reminding us that Lindsay was the one who resisted the fence. Making himself the hero of Hot Creek, instead of the sex czar.

Krom smiled. “We mustn’t blame our volcanologist friends for not finding this second front sooner. Resources, as I’ve said, are spread thin. We can only be grateful that finally it was found.”

Thank Georgia, why don’t you?

He did. “And that is one comfort we can take from the tragedy of our mayor. We don’t know who killed her but we do know she died a hero. She just might have saved our bacon. She’s the one who found the fissure and she knew enough from working on evac plans to realize what she’d found. In fact, she wrote it down.”

A buzz went through the crowd.

“Officials kept that a secret for good reason. We didn’t want to cause panic. And we didn’t know what her notes meant. We do now.”

He let the moment run, and then he continued:

“No way out, she wrote. And she was right — not if we leave things as is.”

And then he drove it home:

“You’ve just seen how an eruption up there would reach us down here. Us, and our emergency escape route. And, I might add, it would take out the only road that currently exits town. Highway 203.”

Heads turned. Back and forth. We were at the intersection of the uncompleted Bypass and Minaret Road, which becomes Highway 203 on its way out of town. We were at the deadly intersection of two escape routes that the volcano could wipe out.

“Chums.” Krom lifted his lower hand — his caldera hand — above his town hand. “Topography is no longer in our favor.”

There was silence. If he’d shouted motherfucker in church he could not have shocked this crowd more. He’d shocked me, and I’d already had this vision, two nights in my dreams and about once per waking hour.

He said, almost gently, “You thought you were building a safe evac route. You’re not. We’re up the creek, as the saying goes, without a paddle.”

The hush was broken by Mike. He called out, “So what do we do?”

That’s a setup, I thought, that’s Krom moving Mike’s mouth but I didn’t care, I just wanted the answer.

“If I had my druthers,” Krom said, “we’d move everything we’ve got to extending the forest service road that cuts through Pika Canyon. Do what we should have done a month ago.”

He paused, letting us do the math. A month ago, the meeting at the Inn.

“Still looks good, chums. Looked good back then because it got us out of town without passing the Inyo volcanoes. Looks even better now. Go home and study your maps. You’ll see my route cuts southeast of the likely flowpath from Red Mountain — it should be spared by intervening ridges.” He gave a graceful shrug. “Of course, back when I hammered out that route I didn’t know what was brewing up there. I can’t foretell the future.”

I gave a little jump.

“But I do take credit.” He flashed a wise-up smile. “I thought back then the Pika route was a damn good one, good enough to take whatever our volcano throws at us.” He hiked a shoulder south. “Should we decide to build it.”

He paused, letting us recall the reason we didn’t start a month ago, although he didn’t look at her. He didn’t have to, because nearly everyone else was looking.

“Hey Lindsay,” Phil DeMartini yelled, “you picked the wrong way out.”

“She didn’t know, asshole,” Jeanine yelled back.

I was rigid. Lindsay didn’t know about the fissure but she should have known a whole lot better than to come here. Why’d she come? She could have skipped this setup and waited three hours for the Council meeting to pull the plug on the Bypass. Why’d she come here and let Krom humiliate her?

Walter started for her but she waved him off. She raised her chin. She ignored the crowd, the Council, Phil Dobie, Len Carow. She was looking at Krom and he was returning her look. Her brows lifted. She seemed to be asking Krom’s permission. And he seemed to give it, with a smile of indulgence. His favorite, indulged dear lady. She spoke then. “Have you a schedule, Adrian?”

I understood now why she’d come. She was showing everyone with her presence that the volcanologist is, at last, in agreement with the emerg-ops guy. The battle is over. Lindsay capitulates, for the good of the town. Krom wins. He’s the hero.

But it’s Lindsay, in my eyes, who just did the stand-up thing.

Mercifully, Krom turned from her. “Let’s ask the expert if there’s time to build Pika.” He motioned, and Jimmy Gutierrez came forward, patting down his white crown of hair. “How about it?” Krom asked Jimmy. “If we all pull together?”

Jimmy got out a calculator.

Carow angled for a look over Jimmy’s shoulder, nodding.

Jefferson Liu and a few other Council members were edging in.

“Yo Jimmy,” my brother called. “More overtime?”

A couple of people clapped, and then a few more, and by the time Jimmy’s flushed face raised in assent there was a palpable sense of relief at the intersection of Minaret Road and the Bypass.

I caught Lindsay and Phil Dobie at his Survey truck. He had the door open and she was detaining him.

She said, “Are you going to call it or not, Phil?”

I butted in. “Call it?”

“Ask Phil.”

I didn’t want to ask Phil, I wanted to ask her, it’s her volcano. I said, “Call it how, Lindsay?”

“Alert level WATCH,” she said. “Are you going to call it or not, Phil?”

I took in a breath. There is alert level WATCH — intense unrest — which triggers an event response from the Survey. And then there is alert level WARNING — meaning eruption imminent, or underway — and that’s when you pack your bags and go. If you’re still around after that, it’s largely too late.

Phil said, “Actually, Lindsay, we called it just before the meeting. I hunted for you but when I came down from the fissure, what with all this… And, uh, Len Carow was asking, and then I had a call into headquarters, and then I had to meet with…” He swallowed the rest into his beard.

“What?” I said.

“He said Adrian Krom.” Her breath steamed. “He said I’m out of the loop.”

“That’s not precisely it, Lindsay. It’s more that…”

I didn’t hear what more it was. I heard only that Lindsay Nash is out of the loop, and we’re under a volcano watch.