121,440 feet below the surface
11:00 a.m.
The orb shuddered once, then disappeared in a nova of light brighter than the sun. Shockwaves lashed out at supersonic speeds, disintegrating the countless support pillars in a billowing burst of evaporated stone. A great rumbling and shaking began as millions of tons of rock, now without support from below, began to settle into the newly created void.
Devastating heat from the blast raced up the deep shaft, melting rock along the way. Within seconds the blast erupted into the Dense Mass Cavern, spurting upward like a geyser in an expanding cloud of destruction. The orb’s cathedral room, which sat in the center of the immortal metal hull, sagged like cheap wax, collapsed in on itself, in seconds going from a magnificent technological monument to a white-hot sea of molten metal. Silverbugs erupted like popcorn, then melted in place to join the boiling pool of metal. Like a ring rippling from a pebble in a pond, the explosive heat reached out from the ship’s center, melting the timeless vessel in a quickly expanding wave.
The shockwaves also traveled downward, winning the battle between the irresistible force and immovable object. Rock simply ceased to exist as starlike temperatures evaporated everything within reach, creating a huge bubble of superheated gas.
The orb didn’t punch a hole through the earth’s mantle. It didn’t have to. The cold, calculated, precise science that once carved out the pillars had placed the shaft’s bottom a geological hair’s width from the swirling mantle. For millennia, the earth’s internal pressure pushed against the shaft floor, obeying the laws of physics and seeking the easiest way out. But the shaft floor’s precise design had held just enough strength to keep that incalculable force at bay, just enough to keep things as they were meant to be.
The orb, however, melted another half mile’s worth of crust, a calculation as fixed and precise as a surgeon’s stroke. At the bottom of that newly created bubble of plasma, the earth’s pressure — so long held in check by the thinnest of margins — finally broke free.
Magma rocketed upward with tidal-wave force, pushed ever higher by the liquid core’s grinding, pulsating pressures. The magma filled the new pocket and continued up the shaft, pushing the ten-thousand-degree gas bubble before it.
11:01 a.m.
O’Doyle and Lybrand crawled on their bellies, urged on by the unmistakable smell of fresh, outside air. The ground shuddered beneath them, pouring fuel on their desperate effort to escape the mountain.
The low rock ceiling scraped at O’Doyle’s back. He grunted as he worked his thick trunk through the narrow opening, jagged limestone tearing his KoolSuit to shreds.
He wiggled past a pumpkin-shaped rock and continued on.
11:02 a.m.
At the waterfall, the temperature soared a thousand degrees. Two thousand. More. The river instantly boiled to superheated steam. The rocktopi clinging to the ancient, tentacled sculpture died quickly, the fluid in their bodies boiling, making them swell like water balloons before erupting with audible pops.
11:03 a.m.
The ground beneath Connell shook and lurched, knocking him about so violently that he couldn’t even stay on his hands and knees. He fell to his chest. Cracks raced up the tunnel walls like bolts of splitting lightning, the sound of grinding rock following like thunder. Thick, swirling storm clouds of dust seeped into the air.
He looked up to see a fist-sized piece of rock fall from the tunnel ceiling, dust trailing behind it like a comet’s tail. The rock bounced off the wildly shaking floor, settled against the tunnel wall.
The entire ceiling gave way.
Boulders crashed down.
11:04 a.m.
Magma exploded up from the shaft floor, a great gushing pillar of molten rock jetting against the tunnel ceiling more than two thousand feet above. There it licked against an artificial sun, which sputtered once and then fell dark. A great rain of magma sprayed across the cavern, rained down to splash into the hellish pool of bubbling, liquefied hull.
Confused silverbugs scattered everywhere, rushing pell-mell in all directions. Some scampered headlong into the boiling pools and melted in a fraction of a second. Some scattered up the walls, only to be peeled off by the torrential cascade of scorching lava. Some fell motionless where they stood, internal mechanics baked to death in heat rivaling that at the earth’s center.
Swirling magma covered the ancient tile floor, forming a hell-spawned lake that rose slowly up the cavern walls. Boiling rock poured like water, flowing into the countless tunnels connected, splashing orange-hot and destroying everything in its path.
The Dense Mass Cavern trembled. A slight shake at first, then harder, then rattling as if held by the fist of a planet-sized giant. The floor cracked and jumped, torn apart by billions of tons of settling rock. The ceiling collapsed, dropping boulders the size of city blocks into the soupy mix of melted ship and liquid rock.
The orb’s burst of energy created a void that nature had to fill. The mountain slowly fell in on itself as the column of magma continued to jet upward, pushed by the pressures of the world itself.
11:05 a.m.
The Land Rover rocked wildly on its shocks, bouncing like some child’s toy as the ground shook and rumbled. He leaned heavily against the hood, trying to keep his balance on a jumping trampoline made of rock and dirt.
The world shuddered. The ground lurched. He wondered if the sky itself might fall.
Sonny McGuiness had never known fear this profound, this all-encompassing. He was down at the base of the mountain, but would that matter? Everything threw itself back and forth so violently the entire state might be breaking up.
And yet, he knew this place of death was, itself, dying, and that knowledge electrified his soul, filled him with joy beyond measure.
He raised a gnarled fist, shook it at the towering mountain.
“Now it’s your funeral, you sonofabitch!”
The peak seemed to fold in on itself, a massive circus tent with the center stake kicked out. Unfathomable mounds of rock dropped backward out of sight — the mountain started collapsing.
It was impossible for the ground on which he stood to move this much, to kick like a mule, to lift the Land Rover and drop it down over and over. Sonny held on against the shockwaves, transfixed as the cursed place tore itself apart.
He held on tight, stared up the path that led to the mesa. If he saw the woman, he’d get in and drive off, earthquake or no earthquake.
But he couldn’t leave, not just yet.
Because Sonny McGuiness wanted to watch a mountain die.
11:06 a.m.
For millennia, the big river had flowed down through the wide tunnel. Now water boiled away as magma flowed into it, flowed up, pushed higher by immeasurable pressure.
Liquid rock shot into the kidney-shaped cavern, pushing a wall of superheated steam ahead of it. Rocktopi died, but a little slower than their brethren in the ship and at the waterfall. These rocktopi had time to feel the temperature spiking. They had time to scream. Some even had time to flee.
Lava flowed across the fields, wiping out crops in a hiss of smoke.
The orange mass flowed into the village, swelling up and over buildings. It flowed inside, submerging dead and dying children.
And with those deaths, the last of the Utah tribe vanished forever.
11:07 a.m.
Pure darkness.
He wasn’t hot anymore.
Cold, actually, his hands and feet growing numb with chill.
Connell coughed. Blood in his mouth, and on the rock pressing down on his chest, pinning him.
Pain everywhere, he was made of the stuff, yet it seemed distant, as if it were a photo, a memory.
Couldn’t move his arms or legs. So much weight on him, trapping him like an insect kept in place by long pins stabbed through limbs and into wax.
Cold body, but the air in his mouth, his lungs, that felt hot. His mask had either come off or was broken. He didn’t know which.
It didn’t matter.
He tried to breathe deep, but the weight on his chest kept him to a shallow sucking, to tiny, rapid gasps.
It was over.
No one left to rescue him. No hope of rescuing himself.
He was dying.
What would it be like?
Kind of sucked, really — he should have died in a car accident so many years ago. He’d wandered through life, awash in selfish misery, spreading that misery to others. And here, miles below ground, when dying would have been the easiest thing to do, he’d rediscovered the primitive need to go on.
If would have been better to die when he didn’t want to live.
Cold all over now.
The ground trembled beneath him.
The boulders on his chest, pressing down, settling, making each breath a tiny bit shallower than the one before.
A faint light flashed through the cracks between the boulders that were his tomb. Lybrand or O’Doyle? Please, no … he’d given his own life so that those two could escape.
Please, don’t let them come back for me … too late for me …
The light, flashing brighter.
Was it rocktopi? Maybe death by blade would be better than this slow, exhausting suffocation, better than lungs compressed until they could draw air no more.
No, that light … no reds or oranges, blues or greens. Just white.
And then, a voice.
“Connell?”
He knew that voice. A voice from his past, from his dreams. A voice that could not be.
He started to speak, coughed blood again. He spat out a mouthful, drew a shallow breath, just enough to say one word.
“Cori?”
“Yes, my love. I’m here with you. Don’t be afraid.”
Blackness, then the light again.
He could smell her.
Was this a vision? Was this real?
He didn’t care. Cori was with him again. Her light filled him, erasing his agony, relaxing his devastated body.
He felt something warm and tender gently lift his crushed hand. He instantly recognized her touch. He didn’t mind the pain, as long as he could feel her again.
Connell’s hand slowly grew cold in hers, and with a tiny smile on his face, his half-lidded eyes faded away into a blank stare of stillness and peace.
11:09 a.m.
Bertha and Patrick stumbled out of the tunnel mouth and onto a small mesa. They clung to each other, had to stay standing upright on stone that bucked beneath them.
A cliff, a sheer drop … was there any way down? Yes, there, between those boulders … a path.
A grinding rumble, louder than anything she’d heard in war. It froze her in place, her and Patrick both.
The mountain, rising up at a slope behind them. Several hundred feet up the rise, the rock simply fell away, a towering sand castle undercut by the coming tide.
A hundred feet of stone, gone.
Then another hundred, crumbling back, out of sight.
Bertha couldn’t move. She clung to Patrick, tried to stay standing as the universe trembled and lurched.
More mountain above them, falling back, the slope vanishing as if some unseen demon was ripping the rock away to get at them.
Another grinding crack … and she saw light coming from inside the tunnel.
The mountain stilled.
No … that wasn’t light coming from inside the tunnel … she saw through the tunnel — fifty feet in, the descending Linus Highway ended, opened to daylight, to air.
And past that new crumbling edge, she could see down into a void that moments ago had been an immortal mountain.
“Sweet mother of God,” Patrick said.
In that void, boiling magma: orange and yellow and white-hot heat blazed with a light of its own, as if the souls of dead rocktopi had flowed together, merged, become a titan ghost rising up to take revenge. Lava swirled, a typhoon of molten rock, bubbles the size of garbage trucks rising and bursting, throwing death into the air.
The very center of that hellish whirlpool lifted, became a glowing dome that lasted all of a second or two, then the top ripped open and a jet of magma tore apart the afternoon sky.
Bertha watched, hypnotized, unable to move, as a shifting column of molten rock shot a thousand feet into the air, until it could rise no more, until it spread, the spray arcing … then began to rain back down.
BACK down …
She grabbed Patrick, drag-shoved him toward the mesa’s edge.
He needed no such urging.
Together, their burns and cuts and breaks and bruises forgotten, they sprinted down the path as lava bombs crashed around them.
The mountain began to shudder anew …
11:10 a.m.
“Well, I’ll be dipped in pig shit.”
The trembling had died down enough for Sonny to stand without bracing himself on the Land Rover. He’d started for the driver’s door, then stopped, remembering his quiet promise to Kirkland.
Sonny had raised his binoculars for one final look.
Coming down the side of the mountain, or what used to be a mountain, he saw two figures in yellow KoolSuits rushing along the very same path he’d taken to reach that mesa where Samuel Anderson, Douglas Nadia and Wilford Igoe Jr. had seen daylight for the last time.
Sonny had laughed at Funeral Mountain’s death, but it wasn’t over. Magma sprayed high into the air, higher than any skyscraper he’d ever seen — the flicking tongue of the devil licking out to suck down souls. Huge, snaking globs of half-cooled molten rock arced down, exploding like shrapnel bombs when they landed.
Whoever those two survivors were, they had no chance. Sonny needed to get in that Land Rover and drive the fuck off, away from the new volcano and its thousand-foot spire of lava — not toward it.
Sonny adjusted the binocs, focused in on the two survivors.
A man … the big security chief, O’Doyle.
And a woman … Bertha Lybrand?
Even at this distance he could see they were in bad shape, limping more than running, faces fixed with grim determination and also etched with fear. God, but they were a mess.
O’Doyle fell, landed hard, rolled for a bit before he stopped. The woman knelt by him. A magma glob hit close by — she shielded his body with her own.
So goddamn brave.
Sonny lowered the binoculars.
Could he get to them in time?
Don’t you wanna know? Don’t ya?
He sighed.
“Well, fuck it. You only live once.”
He gave his bracelet a quick rub, thumb tracing the swastika, then he scrambled into the driver’s seat.
11:11 a.m.
“Get the fuck up, you asshole!”
She kept pulling on his arm, yanking, but he refused to rise.
Artillery raining down around them, each impact launching a horizontal spray of black shards and burning rock. So close to escape, and they were going to die here?
“Get up … GET UP!”
She stepped back, and she kicked him. Right in the ribs.
“Getupgetupgetup!”
She kicked him again. He caught the foot, lifted hard. She stumbled back, fell herself.
The ground shuddered beneath her, so strong it was all she could do to get on her hands and knees and stay there.
A crack/splash beside her — spots of fire on her face, her chest.
Bertha rolled to her side, beat at her burning skin. She smelled her own cooking flesh.
Big hands on her shoulders, yanking her to her feet.
Patrick.
No more words, just movement.
A boulder smashed into the path in front of her, only a few feet away from crushing her to a pulp. She and Patrick skidded, let the rock bounce on down the path, then they followed it.
Lava splashing down around them, killing rocks flying through the air, the two soldiers searched for and found that last bit of primitive need.
They ran downhill.
11:13 a.m.
A rock the size of a boot smacked into the windshield, turning the glass into a web of cracks. Still embedded there, the rock was surrounded by a corona of the sun’s light fractured into a million tiny rainbows.
“Sonofabitch!”
Sonny lowered the window, reached a hand down to brace himself on the outside of the door, leaned out.
Up ahead, Lybrand and O’Doyle.
A crunch on the hood, hot splatters kicking all over. Something burned his cheek. He slapped it away, leaned out the window again. The Land Rover hit a rock, lurched upward — the door drove hard into his armpit, made him bite his tongue.
Blood in his mouth, but he wasn’t stopping.
The geyser of magma continued to spray into the air, only not as high now. Volcanic bombs crashed down, as did rocks that hit and bounced.
A building-sized chunk of rock slammed down, point first, embedded into the trail with a thunderous shudder and stuck there like the spear of a stone giant. Sonny wheeled hard right, off the path. Rocks dug into the Rover’s undercarriage, threw the vehicle left and right.
But he kept on.
He passed the stone spearhead, corrected. The Land Rover caught air as he drove it back onto the path and continued uphill.
11:14 a.m.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” Patrick said. “Sonny McGuiness to the rescue?”
He saw the little man’s body half hanging out the driver’s-side window, black skin framed by the blazing white beard. The old man was screaming … he was laughing.
Patrick jerked his left leg, shook it, a sudden reaction to burning pain.
Ash poured down. The end of the volcano, or just the beginning?
He looked up: the Land Rover skidded to a halt, not even ten feet away.
Bertha ran for the front passenger seat.
Patrick opened the rear driver-side door, fell in more than climbed in, heard the door shut behind him.
“Hold tight,” Sonny said.
Things got blurry. Patrick couldn’t see that well. All the damage, catching up with him, trying to drag him under.
Plinking sounds, like hail hitting the Land Rover.
Lurching forward, then sideways, then pressed hard against the seat cushion. The car, spinning.
Impact from below — he was thrown into the air, so high he hit the roof, then fell back down, off the cushion, onto the floor.
Lybrand, screaming: “Drive, goddammit, DRIVE!”
Sonny, laughing, a cackle straight out of a bad movie.
Bouncing, rocking, thrown about in the tight space, unable to brace himself.
Then, speed.
“Patrick! Are you all right?”
He loved that woman, but damn if that wasn’t the stupidest question he’d ever heard. All right? Hell no. He’d seen enough men die in his day to know he might only be minutes from joining them.
But he pushed himself off the floor, the last of what little strength he had shifting his body back onto the seat.
She was next to him in an instant, pressing against him.
Together, Patrick and Bertha looked out the Land Rover’s rear window.
There, a new volcano bellowed a column of thick ash into a darkening sky. The mountain that had vanished was already growing again — what had once been limestone and granite was now the dark black of volcanic rock, a darkness streaked with steaming, snaking trails of rocktopi orange.
Patrick could barely move, but he managed to lift his left hand up to the window. He made a fist, then extended his middle finger.
“Fuck you,” he said.
Lybrand collapsed against him, chest heaving. She nuzzled her head into his neck.
Sonny McGuiness just kept on laughing.