On the horizon, in the direction of Wyoming, a massive turbulent shape cloaked in black sheeting boiled up through the atmosphere. The formation already towered far above the climbing aircraft and filled the skies to the southeast with smudge-pot smoke.
Hands pawed at Liz’s clothing. She stood and twisted, tilted over the seatback, and screamed at a flight attendant racing down the aisle. “Look out the side of the plane. Look outside.”
A hand gripped Liz’s black ponytail and yanked it with brute force. The geophysicist brought an elbow up and rammed it back behind her, catching a man across the bridge of the nose. The fellow fell away to the floor. Others jumped at the woman, but she clawed fingers into the seatback and focused on the approaching stewardess.
“Volcano,” wailed Liz. “Volcanic. Out there, out the window!”
Somewhere in the cabin a voice soared: “Oh, my God.”
The attendant lunged for the scientist. Liz seized and pulled on the woman’s arms. The airline employee’s forward momentum drove her against a seatback. She landed across passengers in the aisle. Liz screamed into her face, dug her fingernails into the woman’s hair, and slammed the attendant’s face into the port. “Look, damn it all. See it! Tell the pilot. We’re in danger here. Tell the pilot. Do it!”
Liz was airborne suddenly, her waist clamped in a muscled vise.
“Let me go, you….”
Bodies tumbled and crashed to the floor of the cabin, Liz beneath. The force of the fall pounded the oxygen from her lungs. A large man sat on her ribs; others held her hands to the floor. With great effort she drew in a lungful of air.
“Aaaa, volcano.”
“Stay still, woman.”
Raging now: “That’s an eruption at Yellowstone. Turn the plane away.”
A commanding female voice splashed across the cabin floor. “Let her up a bit. Let her up.”
Liz was hauled to a sitting position. A woman in uniform, the head cabin attendant, dropped down before her. “What is it you want?”
The two locked eyes. “Did you see it?”
“See what?”
“That’s a volcano…a volcanic eruptive column.”
“How would you know?”
“I’m a scientist. Never mind. Tell the captain.”
“On your say-so? Huh!”
“This jet can’t fly into that or anywhere near it.”
“I understand.”
The head attendant instructed the male passengers holding the disruptive soul to keep a grip on her. The woman disappeared into the galley forward of first class and called into the cockpit.
“Captain.”
“What do you have back there?”
“We have one very distraught passenger.”
“Can your team secure the situation?”
“We have. She….”
“It’s a woman?”
“Yes. She says we’re in danger.”
“Is she threatening people?”
“She said something about a volcano.”
“That’s a volcanic cloud?” gasped the pilot. The first officer and navigator glanced at the professional seated next to them.
“Do you see something?” asked the cabin crew head.
“Yes. Have a look at it yourself. We’ll be on top of it in no time. We’re trying to get a read on the thing from ATC as we speak.”
“How should we precede, captain?”
“Have people in the cabin witnessed your problem passenger?”
“Everyone.”
“I see. Is she restrained now?”
“Yes.”
“Keep her that way until I make an announcement. Then get her into a seat and fastened in. If she refuses, we’ll backtrack to Bozeman and have her taken off the plane.”
The attendant returned to Liz’s side and instructed the male passengers holding her down to continue restraining the woman. The voice of the pilot filled the cabin.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. We will be changing course shortly to move the aircraft away from large cloud formations ahead. Please stay seated and secure in your seats. We may be a little delayed getting to Denver.”
“Are you satisfied?” the airline attendant sneered at Liz.
“No. Tell the captain to stay a hundred miles from those clouds. They’re filled with volcanic ash and debris.”
Liz was escorted to her assigned seat and ordered to buckle up. The passenger in the aisle seat beside her requested a move. He left the row. Up and down the cabin, men and women stared out the plane’s windows at the approaching pillars of darkness.
Still climbing toward cruising altitude on its route to Denver, the Airbus hurtled southeast over south-central Montana on a heading that the pilots determined would take the craft into close proximity to the massive black shapes in the distance. They radioed air traffic control to request a new bearing, telling FAA controllers they were going to execute an evasive maneuver to the north to try to skirt a billowing column of black smoke that was rapidly filling in the horizon directly ahead of the airliner.
In her seat, the geophysicist fidgeted uncontrollably. The wall of darkness ahead was spreading rapidly northward, pushed by high altitude winds. On the far distant plateau, the cloud mass was growing in complexity. Perhaps other vents were opening in the landscape, adding new columns to the mix, thought Liz.
“Come on,” the scientist mumbled aloud. “Turn this plane.”
The flight crew sat mesmerized by the monstrous cloud castles building up ahead. Chains of lightning raked the billowing folds. Writhing snakes of crimson heat coiled through the dark masses. Everywhere opaque drapes hung in the atmosphere and spread rapidly across the horizon.
“Let’s get ourselves the hell out of here,” called the captain to his flight deck professionals.
The wing outside the window where Liz was seated ascended abruptly as the Airbus rolled in a tight turn to a northern heading. An audible sigh of relief escaped from scientist’s lips. She fumbled for her carry-on to find a credit card to use for the seatback in-flight phone. As she rummaged for card plastic, the hiss of friction filled the cabin. The woman’s head jerked upward. The sound electrified her. The metal skin of the aircraft sang as the leading flight surfaces collided with microscopic particles, millions of them.
A second time, Liz bolted from her seat and charged forward toward the attendants strapped into their jump seats affixed to the cockpit bulkhead, screaming at them as she clamored forward.
“That sound, that’s volcanic ash.” The attendant’s eyes flared in disbelief as the woman’s body hurtled at them. “The plane has run into an ash cloud. It has got to get out of it.”
The floor rocked from under the scientist as the plane rolled left in a radically steep turn. The loud whoosh of engines at full thrust rumbled in the cabin. Liz tumbled into a row of empty first class seats. Centrifugal forces kept her pinned down. Alarm bells sounded behind the cockpit door.
The loud whine of the mammoth left wing engine suddenly dropped off while the plane was steeply banked. It flamed out, lost power quickly, and acted as a brake as the left wing dragged in the air stream. The airliner shuddered violently as the pilots frantically executed emergency maneuvers designed to pull out of the steep turn, level out the plane, and set the flaps and rudder to compensate for the sudden loss of power on the left side.
The cabin floor pitched abruptly back to horizontal and stabilized. Opaque clouds clamped down over the windows. Liz righted her sprawling body and turned to the window. She could see nothing except brilliant flashes of lightning in the void and a torrent of white sparks lit by solid particles streaming into the leading edge of the wing. Trembling with fear, she fumbled for the belt in the first class seat she had come down in and fastened it.