The road was strewn with rocks — boulders, stones, chips, gravel, like a mad quarry crew had been at work. I examined the mountain. Where there should have been a scar, some indication of the source of this rockslide, there was nothing. I felt sick.
We picked our way through the field of rocks until the road turned the next bend.
There was devastation, far as we could see. Bigger boulders here, some large as snowmobiles, and the pulverized remains of others, and where the ground showed through it was no longer the familiar coating of ash but a congealed mud, and everywhere there were branches and limbs and stumps of trees, and those trees that had escaped dismembering were dead anyway, killed a decade ago by carbon dioxide, for this was one of the old treekills. Slightly upslope was a crater with fresh rock showing, like a tooth that had lost a filling. Steam issued from the hole.
I fought to get my glove off my bandaged hand and bent to touch rock, mud, splinters of trees. Cold. Walter scooped a handful of rock chips. We looked, heads together. “Old stuff,” I said. He nodded. Quartz latite, basement rock. I eyed the crater, a few tens of meters across. It had spat out old stuff.
We moved around the next bend and it was the same, rock and steam.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Eric said and we all three broke into a run.
Mike was shouting “what, what?” as we hauled up.
Eric pulled down his mask, fighting for air. “Some kind of eruption,” he got out.
“Phreatic,” I gasped.
Walter was bent double.
“What?” Mike’s voice rose.
“Steam blast,” Krom said. He alone breathed easy.
Eric said, “What now, Cassie?”
I shoved aside my mask and wiped my face. I tried to think. What’s setting off steam blasts up here? Compared to the eruptions in the caldera and on Red Mountain, this was a little guy, like someone had set off a charge of dynamite. But you wouldn’t want to get closer than a football field to something like that. Is this puppy going to vent again? Are there others? What’s the alignment? I looked at Walter. He shook his head. Years of Lindsay pouring this stuff in his ear, years of Lindsay drilling it into my head, and she hadn’t made a volcanologist of either one of us. “Let’s go back,” I said, already moving, because we surely could not go forward.
Krom gave a brusque nod. Both of us, momentarily, in alignment.
We retreated two abreast, in double line. I kept looking back, although if that thing vented again we’d feel it before we’d see it. My snowmobile died. I moved my gear to Eric’s machine and doubled up with Mike. Walter’s machine died not an eighth of a mile later. He put on skis and saddled up his pack. We paced Walter, creeping, and then Mike’s machine crapped out and then Eric’s. We all saddled up with gear. We had to abandon one pack. Eric dragged the sled and Mike and I took turns pushing from behind. We ran on adrenaline but that crapped out too. We took forever and a day to cover the last quarter mile.
When the lifts showed above the hemlocks, I let out a sob. We’d made it. And then I sank to the snow. Where to now?
Georgia whispered in my mind. No way out.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
We dragged into the roundabout. We didn’t have the strength to unload Krom and climb the steps to the Inn, so we took shelter beneath the porch overhang and sat in ash. We pulled off goggles and masks. At last, Mike got out a water bottle and passed it around.
The earth shook.
Mike said, “Now what?” He was looking at me.
“Call Bridgeport,” I said.
Eric was already unpacking the field radio. He got a lot of static but he got through. No, they had not been aware of the blast on the north slope. Static. Still activity at the moat and Red Mountain. Bridgeport told us to maintain position while they investigated further.
Eric said, “Okay, people, we need to get indoors and…”
“It’s not o-kigh,” Mike said. His head was bent. He was digging at his thumbnail. “We should go down and take Pika.”
Eric said, “We just got the official word to stay put.”
“I don’t want to.”
We stared at Mike. Whatever happened to his allegiance to the official word? He was caked in ash, he had a two-day stubble, and he humped his stringy frame over his knees and worked furiously at his thumbnail.
Eric said, even, “We asked for advice.”
“Then who’s in charge?”
“Whoever’s in position to call it.”
Mike squared his frame. “You want her.” It was not a question. “If it weren’t for her, we’d be out of here already.” He turned on me and put his hand on my arm, second time he’d ever touched me. “You’ll tell us not to go down, won’t you?”
I hesitated. Waiting, I guessed, for Walter to jump in. Walter clutched his pack, and gave me a nod. You’re doing fine.
“Won’t you?” Mike said.
I licked ash off my lips, and nodded.
“Because? Tell them why.”
“Because the moat’s in eruption. Because Red Mountain might progress. Because nobody survives a pyroclastic flow.”
“What about Pika?” He shot a look at Krom, a plea.
Krom smiled at Mike. You’re doing fine.
“What about it?” I said. “You want to take Adrian by yourself? You can’t handle the sled alone.”
“I know that,” Mike said, “that’s why we all go.”
I said, “Pika’s a trap. Maybe a deathtrap.”
Mike turned to the others. He still gripped my arm: got her, exhibit A. “You all heard that, and that’s just what she said yesterday. Don’t go out Pika, she said, because it’s too slow. We might get stuck. Something terrible might happen.” He lifted my arm, extending it; my jacket sleeve jerked back and exposed my watch. “Ask her how many hours ago that was. Ask her where we’d already be if we’d gone out Pika yesterday when Mr. Krom, who knows about what’s safe, wanted to go. Ask her if we had enough time we could have crawled out on our bellies and still made it. Ask her if she can tell time.”
Eric said, “It was my call on Pika too.”
“Yeah but she made us go up here.” Mike’s voice rose. “To find Walter.”
I fixed on Mike’s hand, on the red angry skin around his thumbnail. He had a killer grip for such a runt, such a little shit. Only a real shit would sit here and say I risked us all to come up here after Walter. I hadn’t. I was surprised as anyone when he appeared. But it was clear enough that if we’d gone out Pika we would not have found him. Everybody had to be thinking it. Nobody said it. I said, tight, “I stand by my call.”
“After what happened up the road?”
Eric said, “Shut up, Mike.”
The words hung in the air. Walter broke the silence. “Cassie couldn’t have predicted that.”
I was rigid. Lindsay might have. I was racking my brain for the old lessons.
Mike muttered, “We should’ve gone out Pika.”
Eric snapped, “Shut up, man.”
“You be quiet, man.”
Eric started to move and I caught his arm. “Let him finish it.”
Mike placed his face inches from mine. He was sweating furiously and his eyes brimmed. “Say we should have gone out Pika.”
“There’s no point.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
“You better say it.”
“We…should…not…have…gone.”
“Say it.”
“Grow up Mike.”
“Say it!” Mike screamed. “Say it’s your fault, you bitch.”
Walter hissed “that’s enough” but Eric already had Mike in a headlock and forced him down into the ash.