He nodded. Not the type to panic.
I dug in my pack and set up an emergency supply kit beside him: water bottle, flashlight, granola bars, Tylenol. I said, “I’m going to look for Walter.”
“I’m cold.” He jerked his chin, toward the chair. “Parka.” He added, “Please.”
How about pretty please, you shit? But I went over to Lindsay’s chair and picked up his big heavy parka and dropped it on him, then walked out the door before he could demand something more.
I left the building and headed down the road. Nothing was happening, no black column in the sky, just fine ash hanging in the air until it lost wing and idled down.
I walked the town. The Ski Tip. Community center. Hardware store, Von’s, Grumpy’s, hospital, Center Snowmobiles. No snowmobiles to be had. I walked home, got skis, tried Walter’s house again. I skied out of town, along 203, passing that long line of cars — abandoned vehicles of the refugees. I looked; no keys. I found his Explorer, just where Eric said it was. Locked. No keys. Cartons of casework and equipment inside. Wouldn’t he have taken that? He hadn’t. He hadn’t got out. I moved on, all the way to the chasm and in the ashy daylight it looked more savage than it had on TV. Guard trucks parked here. No keys.
How simple, on my skis, to detour the chasm and keep going. Get out.
I worked my way back to town, zigzagging across 203, checking every ditch, every hollow. He was nowhere.
Finally I made my way back to Lindsay’s office. Krom lay flat, arms folded beneath his head. The water bottle was half-empty, the food gone.
He spoke. “Help’s on the way.”
“Help?” I stood dumb. And then I saw Krom’s little emergency radio lying beside him. And I realized why he’d wanted his parka, and why the parka was so heavy — because his radio was in one of the deep pockets. I said, faint, “Who’s coming?”
“Search and Rescue,” he said. “From Bridgeport, where I set up the emergency ops center. It will be hours. Once they hit the ash zone, they’ll have to go slow. They’re worried about ash clogging air filters.”
“Do you realize what you just did?”
“They’re volunteers, Cassie. And once they get here and free me, I will get all of us out safely.”
“You will? Your leg…”
“Does not affect my training or my skills.”
“What about sacrifice, Adrian? What about the tribal elders who sacrificed themselves so the others could live? I thought that’s what you wanted to do but now that it’s real, you don’t want to. You’re willing to have other people do the sacrifice and come into a goddamn eruption zone.”
He regarded me coldly. “No sacrifice will be necessary.”
I returned his icy look. I wondered if that’s what he was thinking when he lay here pinned, alone. Hearing the eruption. I’d bet he was pissed. The volcano’s winning, and he’s lying here in his enemy’s office, on the rug stained with her blood. I bet he sure in hell thought about the sacrificial irony in that. The volcano wins, she gets her revenge.
But then of course I came, and everything changed. I looked at his radio.
He clamped a hand on it. “You can’t call it off, Cassie. You have no authority.”
I knew. I knew how Search and Rescue worked, how volunteers got charged up on adrenaline and bravery and then went with open eyes into whatever lay ahead. If I could get the radio away from Krom, I could go outside and call Bridgeport and say he’d died and I was skiing out on my own, self-rescuing.
But Krom held the radio to his heart.
I shivered. Cold. And, suddenly, afraid. A new species of fear — unlike the fear of the eruption, of another avalanche, which were fears that had made themselves at home. My fear of Krom was specific, at a point I could fix in my solar plexus as accurately as I could plot a coordinate on a map. I was afraid of this man under a bookcase, who likely didn’t have the strength to walk two steps should he be set free to walk. But he still had two good strong hands with which to take me by the neck, should I get too close. He still had the power.
“Of course,” he said, “you’re free to leave right now.”
“No I’m not. Why do you think I came back in the first place? Walter didn’t get out. That’s why I’m staying.”
His eyes closed. The earth shook, hard. He seemed not to notice.
“Call Bridgeport, Adrian. Ask if anyone has located Walter.”
He opened his eyes. “If you like.”
He radioed and a half hour later Bridgeport radioed back. Walter was not in Bridgeport. Nor in Bishop, nor in any other little Sierra town, as far as the emergency operations center could ascertain.
So he had to be in Mammoth.
I went out and looked again. Roamed the town, went up the Bypass until stumbles interrupted my stride, then gave in and went back to Lindsay’s office to wait for rescue.
Krom was asleep. I made myself a place in the corner and curled up. The room was a tomb, dim and cold with stale air that tasted of ash. I’d brought the smell in on my clothes, in my hair, or perhaps it had just seeped in. The pervasive smell of ash. Almost masked the coffee scent coming from the apothecary cupboard. I lacked the strength to go close it. I drank. Ate. Granola bar tasted of ash. I glanced up at the desk. The little Japanese teapot was near the edge; one more quake should send it over. I thought about rescuing it but didn’t. Never love anything that can’t love you back. I aimed my headlamp at the empty wall where the Mexican mask had hung. I played the light around the floor and found the thing amidst the debris, its hideous tongue sticking out at the ceiling.
There were two sharp quakes and the teapot went. Krom’s eyes opened.
I said, “Why are you here?”
He rolled his head to look my way. “Saw the lights on through the window.”
“Really?”
“I don’t leave until everybody’s out.”
“Who was it?”
“Nobody here when I came in.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Forced the lock.”
“Why’d you take off your parka? It’s cold in here.”
“It’s cold everywhere. I decided to put on a thermal undershirt. I’d just got my sweater on over that when the quake hit and the bookcase fell.”
I looked at his pack, lying beside her desk.
“Gloves in there. Gaiters. Wool hat. Help yourself.”
I looked back to him. “How did you get to town?”
“Took a Guard jeep.”
“How’d you get the key?”
“From the driver. And then I had him evac with someone else.”
“Where’s the jeep?”
“In the parking garage around back.”
“Why didn’t you just park on Minaret?”
He turned back to the ceiling and studied it. “Habit,” he said. “I always park in the garage.”
“How long were you in here?”
“Cassie,” he said, “I’m in your debt. For the water. The food. But I won’t put up with this much longer.” He coughed, and cleared his throat. “You want to know why I’m here? Because I waited until everybody was gone and then I came back to town and drove every street to be certain. I almost lost these people, with your damned bears, but I turned it around. And I got them out. And then I came back to be sure. And when I was driving down Minaret I saw the reflection. So I checked. I wasn’t going to leave somebody behind.”
“Like Walter.”
“Walter is out. Everybody is out. There is nobody here but you and me.”
And Lindsay’s ghost. The smell of coffee oils suddenly hit me. I got up and went to shut the doors to the apothecary cabinet, where she stores her beans and paraphernalia. I froze. The shelf was swung aside. The shelf wall was a false wall. Behind that, in the real wall, there was a hole. Rectangular, deep. I scoured it with my light. It was a safe.