Sweat beads pooled on the forehead of Cascade Volcano Observatory Director Frederick Womack as he scanned topographical position data from ground laser and GPS installations on the Yellowstone plateau just after 6 AM.
“Wow. Wow!”
The lasers were recording ground creep in real time at rates far exceeding anything Womack had ever witnessed. The terrain within the margins of Yellowstone’s caldera was stretching west to east. He went over fresh GPS, laser and tilt-meter data streaming in from the high country. Same thing. Most of the surface terrain in the park was bowing upward at remarkable velocity.
His mind sparked and sputtered, trying to grasp the scope of what was evolving in the geological wink of an eye in the northwest corner of Wyoming. Hair on the back of his neck stood at rigid attention as he watched the numbers scramble.
Turning to the computer, the director sought out real time readouts from instruments monitoring chloride levels in ground water and geyser basin discharge temperatures. He compared the levels with those seven days and thirty days earlier. What he saw sent an electric current through his flesh.
“What in holy hell is going on?” he uttered to the walls of the lab.
He auto-dialed the supervising geologist at the geo office in Yellowstone National Park.
“Hello this is Wesley Crouch. I’ll be out of the office today, May 1, on my way to Washington. If this is….”
Womack dialed Wesley’s private cell phone. It was busy. “Who in the hell is he talking to at this hour?” he fumed in disgust.
The luminous ruby LCD counter on a digital wall clock rolled second by second. Marching time turned Womack’s head. 6:08:23, 6:08:24, 6:08:25.
“Got to get to Yellowstone.” He uttered his words to the clock. He frantically punched at his smartphone to bring up a Northwest Airlines phone app. When the number rang through, he booked a seat on the next flight out of Portland to Salt Lake. Reservation confirmed, the director sprinted from his office, not taking so much as a pen with him.
Chapter Forty
On the bluffs above Big Stone Lake, in the confines of his office at Independency village, Robert ‘Bobcat’ Catten was up at dawn, monitoring the news, as he did every day. Roll out of bed, wrap in a robe, step into rubber boots and plod to the video studio on the second floor in First Day Hall—always the same procedure and always up before anyone else in Independency village.
Bobcat was the news go-to guy, the community’s town crier with a headline addiction. He had to have his wire service fix. Abel couldn’t get through a morning without consulting with the man about state, national and world affairs.
Monitors brightened, audio spilled from the speakers. Bobcat hunkered down to surf television news channels and the worldwide web. The New York Times wouldn’t arrive for half a day.
Among the usual images of U.S. troops on patrol, the White House and crime scenes, stock video of a spouting Yellowstone geyser bobbed into view, background footage behind a talking head. Bobcat brought the volume up on that monitor while he sat back and gave his bearded morning face and shaven head a thorough scratching.
“…out to a fifty-mile radius of the national park boundary. The evacuation order could affect dozens of communities in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.”
“Whoa!” Bobcat switched channels looking for similar content and found it.
“…have closed all entrances to Yellowstone National Park. Public safety officials report elevated hazards due to frequent earthquake activity, dangerous ground and water temperatures and the possible threat of volcanic activity. Evacuation orders have been issued for portions of three states surrounding the park. Citizens, travelers and park employees are being asked to leave an area within fifty miles of the nation’s first national park. Among the nearby communities affected are Cody and Jackson, Wyoming; Rexford and St. Anthony, Idaho, and Livingston, Montana. In Montana, facilities at Montana State University in Bozeman as well as emergency shelters at Billings and Butte are being readied to receive evacuees. In Wyoming, the cities of Worland, Thermopolis and Lander have been designated as safe havens. And in Idaho, officials at Idaho Falls are readying city buildings, schools and other buildings to receive residents fleeing the evacuation zone.”
Bobcat had scratched his neatly trimmed beard more than enough. “I’ll be damned,” he mumbled to the monitors.
Chapter Forty-One
Backtracking from Lewis Lake, Wesley’s truck crested the continental divide on the in-run to Yellowstone Lake. With Liz on her way, he thought he might try his luck getting to the far side of Fishing Bridge and out along the east entrance road.
South of Grant Village, the front end of Wesley’s truck leaped and bounded down, the suspension severely tested by intense seismic tremors heaving under the road. The veteran geologist slammed the brake pedal and brought the rig to a skidding halt, but it was not still. The chassis bounded and rocked as massive shocks from a major quake pummeled the vehicle. The radio leaped from its saddle and cracked against the dash. Beyond the windshield, the straight road rose and fell as if caught in great ocean swells. Wesley sat transfixed by the sight of undulating land, held in the clutches of a seismic monster, behaving like a flapping flag in a stiff breeze.
The rippling pavement broke up into chunks. Lodgepole pine whipsawed back and forth. Birds of every species broke from cover and winged for the safety of the sky.
Suddenly the land stopped its grand mal shaking. Wesley stumbled from his vehicle and stared at it as if it were a venomous snake. He turned away from the truck and hustled out to an open rise above the tourist compound of Grant Village. Below he could see a dozen buildings, all suffering heavy structural damage, and across the expanse of Yellowstone Lake to the majestic Absaroka Mountains, royal blue on the eastern horizon.
Wesley planted his feet and turned an ear out of the breeze to listen. The earth beneath his feet fell quiet, as still as a photograph. Below, cluster flies that had waited all winter for a noontime frolic on the warm south side of the buildings alighted on splintered clapboards, logs and the broken masonry of the Grant Village facilities. They hastily sought out any crack or crevasse to wedge into to try to escape geological torment.
The earth had gone stone deaf. Light currents of air through the valley puffed themselves out. There, now, there was a noise: thump-whoosh, thump-whoosh. The geologist held his breath and listened. He flinched when he realized he was listening to his own circulatory system hammering away.
Audible wavelengths went extinct. Wesley panned his head in darting motions to view the surroundings. The country had become foreign ground, wholly unsuited for human presence. At the east corner of Hamilton store, several people materialized suddenly, huddled together, scanning the environment and keeping clear of the buildings. It was as if the earth had become a moonscape. The moon has no atmosphere. There can be no sound waves transmitted on the moon. The lunar surface was a sound graveyard. Yellowstone was one and the same.
In his cerebral cinema, the image of a Kansas twister rolled. Survivors of tornadoes often spoke of unearthly quiet preceding the approach of a vortex menace. The thought drained into his spinal cord and infected his nervous system. Wesley gritted his teeth. The continental silence filled him with dread, yet he could not venture a step or make a gesture or a shout to the fellow humans below. He was spiked in place, straining to hear anything at all.
Chapter Forty-Two
Beyond the trees low on the horizon, Wesley thought he could detect a hand drum roll, as if a dust-dry cowboy was thumping lightly on a saloon bar, rapping out the rhythm of a jukebox tune. A quiet earth rattle joined the light staccato beat and tickled the soles of his boots. He peered eastward to see where the rapping sound was originating from, squinting into the yellow spring light.