“How’d you start it?” I asked. “Every car I saw on 203 was locked and the keys were gone.”
“I broke the window and hotwired it. Something I learned in my undergraduate days. Then I drove up here and settled in. I parked the wagon in the garage by the gondola, where they keep the snowmobiles. Keeps the ash off it. It is, after all, Bill’s property, and I intend to replace the window.”
I gaped. Nothing stops him. He’d survived on vandalism, like me. “How’d you get in here? Break a window?”
“No, I used a credit card to let myself in the service entrance around back — the same way I opened the garage lock.” He squeezed my hand. “A trick Lindsay taught me, the time she locked herself out of her office.” He cocked his head. “By the way, Cassie, I had a thought on my drive up here. Bill could use a nice CD player for the wagon.”
“What?”
“The gift,” Walter said. “For Bill’s birthday.”
I was afraid Walter might crack open.
He lifted his eyebrows. “As I’ve told you all, I don’t intend to die. Thoughts do creep in. Large and small. About this and that. Like Bill’s gift.”
Eric said, finally, “Sure, I’m in. Mike too — right, man?”
Mike said, “I already paid.”
Walter turned a cold look on Krom. “Adrian? Are you in?”
Krom returned the look. “You bet your life.”
The fire popped. Silence fell.
Walter broke it. “And so, my friends, here I am. Yesterday I hiked partway up the mountain and found myself a view. Stupendous.”
And here he was. Here, not in a ditch or her office or the lab or mired in the muck of her half-finished escape route. Now Eric didn’t have to worry about my running off. Now Mike didn’t have to whine. Now Krom had one less thing to use against me. I tensed. No. I’d got that wrong. Now Krom had one more thing to hold over me. He had Walter. Because there was clearly something between them. Something had happened. Maybe something down at the 203 crater during the evac. Maybe something in her office. I considered the open safe. The love letters. I thought over Walter’s story, trying to read it coldly — without the intense rush of relief and worry and anger and pity — and something was off. There was something he wasn’t telling us.
I said, probing his story, “Why’d you have to take Bill’s wagon? Why didn’t you take your Explorer? I saw it out on 203.”
Walter met my look. “I left my car in the expectation that people would assume I had evacuated. I left it hoping to avoid the very thing that occurred. You coming in here after me, dear.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Had there been the slightest indication that the sky was clearing, had the quakes stopped, we would have been content to sit tight at the Inn and wait for choppers.
But it was a grim dawn. Standing on the porch, stamping my cold feet and stirring up ash, I stared up the mountain. Bridgeport reported that USGS remote sensing indicated intermittent eruptions from Red Mountain and the moat, which had reawakened sometime in the night. Still phreatic eruptions. I could not see either eruption — I’d have to climb up to Walter’s viewpoint for that. Mammoth Mountain, which protected us, also blinded us.
Quakes talked, though, loud and clear. Magma’s on the move.
Eric and Mike came out carrying Krom. Walter followed. Walter was no longer in the mood to wait and watch. He wanted out, badly as I did. Walter’s priorities shifted, with me on his hands.
Whatever it takes.
We wore yellow survival suits. Eric’s pack had carried three extras; he’d known he was coming after two survivors when Krom called; he’d also known Walter was missing, so he’d come prepared. His pack held suits, rations, flashlights, ropes — nearly as much stuff as I’d brought — but he’d come equipped for rescue, not arrest. I’d watched him repack his gear. He had no handcuffs, no gun.
We clumped down the front steps to the snowmobiles Eric and Mike had brought around from the garage. Krom, wrapped in one of the Inn’s fine quilts, was lashed onto the sled; the sled was attached to Eric’s snowmobile with ropes. We lashed packs and skis to the vehicles, Walter waving off attempts to help him load his bulging pack.
Eric said “one last check” and went machine to machine.
These were sturdy machines, used by crews to crawl all over this mountain, but I had limited faith in them. They have box filters meant to keep birds from being sucked into the engine but they have no defense against ash. I waited until Eric was squatting to check the front runners of his machine and then I squatted beside him. I leaned in close as I could, bulky suit to bulky suit, and in a whisper told him about Krom. He slid a glance back at the sled then continued fiddling with the drive-chain. He said, to the chassis, “You certain?”
“No proof.”
“But you believe it?”
I nodded.
He rose, passing so close to my ear that I felt his breath same time I heard his words. “Count on me this time.”
By the time I’d got to my feet Eric had his goggles and mask on. I pulled on mine, veiling my face, gamely pretending I did not want to hide in his arms.
The others finished suiting. We all mounted. We were bright tropical creatures with goggle eyes and plastic beaks and neon yellow plumage astride squat metal beasts. We were absurd, but against all logic my hopes rose.
Engines started smoothly. Headlights shone. We passed our lone Guard jeep in the parking lot and took the chute up to the unplowed continuation of Minaret Road. Eric broke trail, slow. We followed in line, at a distance, spacing ourselves so as not to eat each other’s ash.
The road wound through mountain hemlock, burred in ash, the drooping tips like fingers trying to shake themselves clean.
Plan is, we round the north slope for about a mile and then reach Minaret Summit, the low point in the Sierra crest. From there, another five miles as the road drops down into the deep canyon of the San Joaquin River and heads north to the campground of Agnew Meadows. Primitive facilities, but space for a rescue chopper to land when the air clears.
Could be days. Could be weeks.
We crawled. Ash was shallow but Eric’s runners kicked up twin plumes that flanked the sled. There was no apparent movement in there. Krom could have been dead and frozen as Georgia on her litter ride down from the glacier.
Walter followed, as he’d followed Georgia’s sled over two months ago.
I followed Walter, eyeing his pack. Last night, when the two of us went to his room to collect his supplies, I’d asked about the open safe, the love letters. He’d shown surprise; he’d said he didn’t realize I’d known about the letters. He’d agreed that the letters were what drew him to her office, that he’d collected them on the way up the mountain. Her office was empty, he’d said. There was nothing between him and Krom, he’d said. I eyed the bulging pack lashed to his snowmobile and thought, that’s a whole lot of love letters.
We rounded the corner, and Eric and Krom up ahead rounded the next.
Ash worked under the edges of my dust mask and burrowed into my skin. Already, ash was scratching and frosting my goggles. My snowmobile sucked in ash and the particles were surely incising their way through the engine.
I began to worry about avalanches. Not so much here, but over the summit — once we started our descent we’d be at risk. I came around the bend and saw Walter’s and Eric’s snowmobiles and it was a moment before I realized what was wrong. They were not spouting ash. Eric was twisted on his saddle gesturing at Walter. Krom was sitting bolt upright.
Avalanche? I neared them, getting a better view. There were boulders in the road. Maybe a rock avalanche, from quakes. Please be that.
I drew up behind them, and Mike behind me. We left our engines running. Eric and Walter and I left Mike to tend to Krom, and we set out on foot.