Ryan took a deep breath, remembering Bellamy’s leg. The geologist was right. What was going on here was off the map and into the weeds. He needed to get his team evacuated even farther back.
He lifted his radio but only got a squelch of static. He spun in a circle, got a brief snatch of words, then lifted the radio to his lips. “This is Major Ryan! Pull back! Pull back now! Get the hell off this mountain!”
A garbled response came through, but he didn’t know if it was acknowledgment or confusion. Did they hear me?
Chin straightened, snapping closed his metal briefcase. “Major, we must get clear of here. Now!”
Punctuating his words, the ground gave a violent shake. Ryan lost his footing and fell to one knee. They both turned to the video feed. On the chasm floor, the remote camera had been knocked over on its side, but the view remained on the pit.
The geyser had returned — but rather than steam and water, a jetting column of boiling mud and fiery rock now bubbled and splashed from the hole, heavily obscured by a churning cloud of smoke and ash.
Underfoot, the ground continued to shake, nonstop now, vibrating through the soles of Ryan’s boots.
“Move out!” Chin yelled.
Together, they fled to the Jeep. Ryan leaped behind the wheel. Chin crashed into the passenger seat. With the keys already in the ignition, Ryan roared the engine to life, tugged the stick into reverse, and pounded the accelerator. With a yank on the wheel, he spun the truck around, throwing Chin against his door.
“You okay?” Ryan asked.
“Go!”
Earlier in the evening, his team had cleared a rough, winding road down the mountainside, but it still required a rugged four-wheel drive to traverse it, and it was best traveled at a snail’s pace.
That wasn’t the case now.
Ryan didn’t slow, especially as the world exploded behind him. A glance at the rearview mirror revealed a brilliant fountain of lava dancing back there, shooting above the rim of the chasm. A glowing black column rose high into the sky, but the valley was not large enough to hold it. The fiery cloud spilled over the edge and rolled like an avalanche toward them.
That wasn’t the only danger.
Red-hot boulders the size of small cars struck the forest and slopes around them, bouncing away, setting fire to trees and shrubs. They hit with the force of mortar rounds. Ryan now understood why they were called lava bombs.
One sailed past overhead, raining flaming ash. Cinders burned his cheeks, his exposed arms, reminding Ryan all too well that his vehicle had no roof.
He ignored the pain and focused on the road ahead. The Jeep bucked and rocked down the steep, rocky trail. His left fender crumpled against an outcropping, shattering the headlamp on that side. The Jeep lifted. For a moment he swore he was driving on a single wheel, like a half-ton ballerina. Then the vehicle crashed back down.
“Hold on!”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Chin had turned around backward, one arm hugging his headrest. “The pyroclastic flow is moving too fast down the mountain. We’ll never make it!”
“I can’t get any more speed. Not in this terrain!”
“Then turn around.”
“What?” He risked taking his eyes off the road to glare at Chin. “Are you nuts?”
Chin pointed along a streambed that bisected their path. “Go that way. Upstream!”
Ryan again heard the raw command in the guy’s voice, confirming his suspicion that the geologist had spent some years in uniform. He responded to that authority.
“Fuck you!” Ryan shouted, furious at the lack of options — still he hauled on the wheel.
Defying every instinct for survival, he made a right turn into the streambed and gunned the engine. He sped uphill, casting a rooster tail of water behind his rear tires.
“I really mean it, Chin. Fuck you! What the hell are we doing?”
The geologist pointed to the right, upslope, toward the peak’s summit, where it overlooked the fiery chasm. “We have to skirt the cloud’s edge and get higher. Pyroclastic flows are fluidized clouds of rock fragments, lava, and gas. Much heavier than air. They’ll hug the mountainside and flow down.”
Despite his pounding heart, Ryan understood. “We have to get above it.”
But even that was chancy. By now, the surrounding woods were glowing with flames, while boulders continued to crash out of the sky, stripping branches, leaving a swath of fire. Worst of all, the world to the right of the Jeep ended at a towering wall of smoky fire, a witch’s cauldron of ash and rock. The cloud rolled toward them, swallowing all in its path as they sped along below it.
The only consolation was that the streambed was wide and shallow, full of packed gravel and sand. Ryan jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Jeep sped higher, gaining ground, skipping around boulders with deft turns of his wrist. But the farther he went, the narrower the course grew. They were running out of stream.
Fifty yards ahead, a boulder hit with the force of a rocket. Water exploded into steam, gravel rained down on them.
End of the road.
“There!” Chin yelled, and pointed beyond the right bank.
Past a few trees, a steep high alpine meadow spread outward, rapidly being eaten away by the flow of fiery smoke.
Ryan hauled sharply on the wheel and sent the Jeep leaping over the bank, catching air, before it hit the meadow. Deep-treaded tires tore into the grassy soil, patched by snow at this altitude.
“We’re not going to make it,” Chin said, staring to the right, to where the world ended.
Like hell we aren’t.
Ryan raced across the meadow as the cloud bore down on them. The heat of the approaching cloud burned like the breath of a dragon. Patches of snow began to melt around them.
At the end of the meadow rose a steep slope of raw granite. He aimed for it, hit it, and shot up its length. He climbed higher and higher, pressed back into his seat as the Jeep tilted precariously toward vertical. In the rearview mirror, he watched the cloud wash below them, erasing the world and replacing it with a roiling black sea.
Heat washed upward, blistering, searing his lungs, but he still cried out in relief. “We did it!”
Then the tires — all four of them — lost traction on the slick stone. The Jeep lurched, slipping sideways, falling backward. He fought against it, but gravity pulled them back toward the flaming sea.
“C’mon, Major!”
A hand balled into the collar of his uniform. He was yanked from his seat. Chin climbed over the windshield, dragging him along. Ryan understood and hit the hood beside Chin. Together, they shoulder-rolled forward as the Jeep slid backward under him.
Ryan hit the granite slope and scrambled to keep from following the Jeep down. Fingers latched onto his wrist and hauled him to a precarious lip of rock, enough for a toehold. Choking, coughing, the pair of them perched there like two little burned birds.
Ryan followed Chin’s gaze over the valley. The fiery cloud continued down the dark mountainside. Closer at hand, the chasm below belched with fire and flowed with ribbons of lava.
“My men…” he mumbled numbly, wondering about their fate
Chin reached and squeezed his elbow, offering sympathy. “Pray they heard you.”