“Why not?”
“The jet stream lifts northward every year as the season advances. It’s on its way up into Canada like clockwork.”
Bobcat turned back to the large monitors above the control console and elevated the sound volume. A meteorologist on the Weather Channel was issuing a warning to viewers: “…inside. Close all doors and windows and tape all cracks. Keep volcanic particles from getting into your home and into the air you breath. Do not leave your home. If there is an emergency and you absolutely must go out, cover your face with a wet towel or filter mask. Do not expose infants and children to airborne ash.”
“What’s the latest on the vice president?” Abel wanted to know.
“He was aboard Air Force II on his way to Denver for a fundraiser,” offered the man at the editing board. “Reports say the plane may have encountered volcanic ash on route—flew into it. The jet engines would ingest that garbage. It’s rock fluff and grit, of course. It would ruin turbines in short order. If that happened, the aircraft probably fell right out of the sky.”
“Where was the plane?”
“Somewhere over the Colorado-Kansas line, they say. Nobody can get into the area to search. The high plains are buried under six feet of ash as we speak, and there’s no end in sight.”
“Half a dozen feet?” Abel choked on his words, incredulous.
“It’s one frigging horror story, man,” Bobcat blurted.
Abel focused on the large monitor tuned to the Weather Channel. He could see footage of vehicle headlights and emergency flashers stopped within a torrid black snowfall. A digital display rolled across the bottom of the screen: Live Footage. Kansas City, Missouri.
“Boy, day’s turned to night in greater KC, by god,” muttered Bobcat.
On the monitor, the plains metropolis was being buried alive. Abel sat mesmerized by the images. The ash fall was a black blizzard, the rate of fall just like that of a heavy snow, as if it were a New England winter nor’easter in negative.
Pointing a finger at the screen, Abel turned to Bobcat. “You know that woman who was at the seminars—her name was Winnie Deschaines. She lives in the Kansas City area. What could she possibly do down there with all that ash raining down?”
“Nothing,” Bobcat suggested, throwing his palms up. “There’s not a damn thing she or anyone else can do. People can’t leave. Their cars will fail them in minutes. They can’t drive out, can’t fly out. They can’t even walk out. Ash is falling everywhere around that city for hundreds of miles. All anyone can do is sit tight, inside. They better hope they have roofs overhead with steep pitches on them so the ash slides off. It’s heavy as hell when it falls in that volume. It will crush houses, stores, schools, churches, you name it.”
On another monitor, a news crew camera focused on an elevated train in a station in downtown Chicago. Bobcat pushed a slide lever on his console and the audible came up a bit too loud.
“…transit trains have stopped running. Traffic lights are out. Offices are dark. People in elevators are stranded between floors. Chicago has come to a standstill.”
A stock image of high-tension power lines over table-flat agricultural fields bobbed up on the screen behind the network anchor.
“City power and light officials report that large transformers throughout the electrical grid have been damaged by fine particles of volcanic dust blowing into the metro area from the Great Plains. There is no word when metro and suburban Chicago will have power.
“If you live in the Chicago area,” the news anchor continued, “or in other metropolitan areas that are experiencing similar problems, be advised to stockpile a supply of water in the event that pressure in your supply system fails. Keep at least one three-gallon container full for flushing the toilet. Flush only once a day by pouring the container quickly into bowl. Be sure to….”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Bobcat declared.
“Thought about what?”
“Water. You have to have water.”
“What are they going to do for water when it’s contaminated with ash?” Abel wondered.
“That’s only the half of it,” Bobcat declared. “If there’s no power, there are no pumps, no filters, no purification.”
“Chicago has got to have emergency generators to back up its water system.”
“You would think so. But big generators burn lots of gasoline or diesel. You need air to burn fuel.”
Abel failed to understand Bobcat’s point. “Yeah, of course. So?”
“Ash clogs air filters quickly,” explained Bobcat. “They could have one terrific problem on their hands.”
“How many people in Chicago? Five, six million?”
“Probably. I’m glad I don’t head up their emergency task force.”
The men fell silent and listened to the continuing broadcast, now filled with a series of revolving emergency public service messages.
“You are advised not to use the telephone except in an extreme emergency. Communication capacity has been damaged by the eruption in the Rocky Mountain States and in portions of the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest. Please delay your calls until after 10 p.m.”
“If you suffer from asthma, emphysema or other breathing problems, do not go outside. If you live in the Midwest, Great Plains states, Rocky Mountains region or the Pacific Northwest, stay in your home. Stay indoors.”
“If you are scheduled to take a flight, please check with your airline. Many flights to and from the Midwest and West have been canceled. Please check with your airline.”
The last message seemed to drain much of the vitality from Abel. Bobcat noticed.
“You with us, Abel?”
“I suppose.” He didn’t perk up. “You know, Liz was supposed to fly from Bozeman to Denver, then change planes for Minneapolis.”
“Oh.”
“I haven’t heard from her.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Gaping volcanic vents opened across the parkland on the second day of the Yellowstone eruption. More miles of fissures snaked along the old caldera margins and thrust into new territory to the east. The unhinging of the plateau loosed colossal new lava fountains to dance skyward. From space, infrared-imaging cameras aboard satellites sensed the forging of a rough, broken oval crown dotted with jewels of hot lava. Seething froth, squeezed from the magma chamber below, roared from the ground and fluffed up into ultra-lightweight and fiercely hot pumice stone and fantastic volumes of ash. Erupted far across the Rocky Mountain States, the pumice and ash fell atop the pyroclastic sheet flows generated on the first day. Hundreds of feet thick, the flows buried the landscape over an area the dimensions of the state of Georgia.
Thousands of cubic miles of the ejecta filled in every valley, every mountain fold, every river basin wherever the flows poured, utterly erasing the distinctive typography of the Snake River valley, the Yellowstone River and upper Missouri River valleys as well as the Gallatin and Absaroka ranges and the northern slope country of the Grand Teton chain. Small towns and cities in the river valleys were flicked from the map like flies from a crust of bread.
Undercut by the emptying magma chamber below, the Absaroka summits on the eastern boundary of the park—Mount Langford, Grizzly Peak and Pyramid Peak—lost their footing. The high country, slipping along the great fractures, retreated into the earth. Across seventy miles of parkland, the strata above the magma sea subsided like a slow-moving elevator on its way down into the cellars of purgatory. The descending body of Yellowstone exposed vertical ramparts, mile after mile of them, all blasted red by searing lava forced up from below. Pressures exerted from above by new material falling out of the volcanic cloud columns and settling atop the smothered terrain abetted the Stygian process.