Joe was puzzled.
"Did you bring the Glock?" Nate asked.
"I left it in my room."
"Good," Nate said, rising. "You probably don't want a weapon around afterwards."
13
Joe followed nate through a back door and they crossed a meadow of dry, ankle-deep grass on a well-worn path. Because a curtain of clouds had shut out the stars and moon and there were no overhead lights, the darkness was palpable.It was still and cold. Joe tracked Nate ahead of him by the slight white whisps of Nate's breath in the utter blackness. The lights of the inn receded behind them.
When the path stepped up onto blacktop, Joe knew where he was- crossing the highway toward employee housing, which was hidden away from tourists. There were no cars in either direction.They plunged into the trees on the other side and Joe stumbled into Nate, who had stopped.
"What?"
"There's something in front of us," Nate said. "Something big."
Joe looked over Nate's shoulder. Despite the lack of light, he could see a huge black triangle shape blocking the path. There was a strong odor of fur, dust, and manure. With a guttural snort, the buffalo spooked and crashed ahead through the timber.
"Are there more?" Joe asked.
"I don't think so. He was a loner."
"Like you."
Nate didn't respond. Behind them, far away in the basin, a geyser erupted. The sound was furious, angry, the roar of a boilingwaterfall shooting into the air.
"Nate," Joe asked, "where are we going?"
"Employee housing," Nate said.
"But where specifically?"
"The bar." The zephyr employee bar was hidden in the center of a long barracks-like building that fronted the dark employee dormitories.Steam hissed from a dimly lit laundry facility in one part of the building, and Joe caught a glimpse of several employeesinside folding linen sheets. There were no neon beer signs to mark the bar and no cars outside, just a window leakinglow light through a curtain and two middle-aged women smoking cigarettes on either side of the door. The women stubbed out their smokes as Joe and Nate approached, and started walking heavily toward the dormitories. Joe followed Nate inside.
The place was rough and crude, Joe thought, with the feel of a secret frat house drinking room. It was paneled with cheap laminate, and small bare lightbulbs hung from wires behind the bar. A crooked and stained pool table glowed under a pool of light, battered cues lying on it in a V. An entire wall was covered with curling yellowed Polaroids of Zephyr employees who had graced the place. Two tables were occupied with young employeeswho had been there for most of the night-it was obvious by the collection of empty drinking glasses and pitchers-and only two men were at the bar, one standing and glaring at them with a hand on the counter as if to hold himself back from attacking,the other slumped forward and asleep with his face nestled in his arms.
"Nate Romanowski!" the standing man boomed. "You're back!"
"I said I would be," Nate said.
The bartender, who was washing glasses in a sink behind the bar, looked up and nodded to Nate and Joe.
"Joe," Nate said, "meet Dr. Keaton, or, as he's known around here, Doomsayer."
Joe extended his hand. Keaton was slim, tall, unshaven, and jumpy, with deep-set eyes and a sharp face like an ax blade. He looked to be in his sixties. He had stooped shoulders and a malleablemouth that twitched to its own crackling rhythm. Just beingnext to him made Joe tense up.
"Welcome to hell on earth," Keaton said, and cackled.
"Don't mind him," the bartender said to Joe, "he always says that. What can I get you two?"
Joe shot a glance at Nate, who ordered a pitcher of beer for the three of them.
"Is your partner going to join us?" Nate asked, nodding towardthe man next to Keaton, who appeared to have passed out.
"He's sleeping it off," Keaton said. "He hit it a little hard earlier this evening, but when he awakes I'm sure he'll join right in again. We are both disciples of the Louis Jordan song 'What's the Use of Getting Sober (When You're Gonna Get Drunk Again).' "
Joe noticed the cadence of Keaton's phrasing: effete, affected.Educated. It played against his tramplike appearance.
The pitcher appeared. "Drink up," Keaton said, grabbing it before Nate could and pouring it into the glasses, "for tomorrow we die."
"That's why they call you Doomsayer, huh?" Joe said.
Keaton glared at Nate. "Who is this man, exactly?"
Nate said, "Friend of mine. He's up here investigating the Zone of Death murders."
Joe wondered why Nate blurted it out like that.
"Ah," Keaton said, turning his eyes to Joe and studying him from a new angle by listing his head to the side. "Another one up here to try and solve the great mystery…" He said it with condescension that dripped.
"The amount of time and angst that has gone into this puzzle," Keaton said, sighing, "trying to figure out why the shabby lawyer killed the insolent Minnesotans. It amazes me."
"Why is that?" Joe asked, taking a sip.
Keaton shook his head. "Because it's indicative of a tired mind-set. It's nothing more than mental jerking off: puffed-up officials trying to make order out of random acts when all around them their world is about to explode-but they just don't know it, or care. It's like trying to find the fly shit in the pepper. I mean, who cares?"
Joe had no idea how to respond, and he was angry with Nate for bringing him in here when he should have gone up to bed. Nate's fondness for the otherworldly and mystical grated on his nerves, and this, Joe thought, was a waste of his time.
"He has a Ph.D. in what, geology?" the bartender explained to Joe. "He's one of the founders of EarthGod, the big environmentalactivist group. He came up here twelve years ago to protest snowmobiles and never left."
Joe nodded. He'd heard of EarthGod. Even ardent environmentalistsconsidered the group extreme.
Nate picked up on Joe's discomfort. "He isn't like that anymore," he said.
"Oh?"
"There's no point," Keaton said, "because we're all going to die."
"Maybe I ought to get a good night's sleep then," Joe said, not all that interested anymore.
Keaton jerked back, offended. His eyes narrowed. "You don't seem to understand, Joe," Keaton said, his voice dripping with contempt. "You've misread me entirely. You've made assumptionsthat I'm some crazy old man who is diverting you from your mission. But what you don't seem to understand, Joe, is that your mission doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Your laws don't matter, you don't matter, and neither do I. We're all on borrowed time, and have been for tens of thousands of years."
Over the next twenty minutes, Keaton laid it out. As he talked, his tone swooped while he made his arguments, then descendedinto whispers to drive home the gravity of what he was saying. Joe found himself getting sucked in.
"We are drinking this beer right now in the middle of a massivevolcanic caldera," Keaton said, leaning across Nate to addressJoe directly. "Do you know what a caldera is? It's the center of a dormant volcano. The Yellowstone caldera encompassesmost of this so-called park. The edge of the caldera is all around us; we're in the bowl-in the mouth- of it right now. That's why we have all of our lovely attractions-the geysers, the steam vents, the mud pots. Magma from the center of the earth has pushed through the seams in the crust"-he demonstratedby making a bony fist and shoving it into his other palm, pushing up with the fist-"right here, right below us. It's pushingupward trying to get out. There are only thirty places in the world where the center of the earth is trying to get out, and this is the only one of them on land, not water. When it does, when it finally blows, it will be a super volcano of a magnitude never even contemplated by man. It will be two and a half thousand times more powerful than Mount Saint Helens! And it won't erupt slowly, it will explode!"
To demonstrate, Keaton slammed his fist down on the bar so hard the beer glasses danced.