Salt Lake City
Two days before the day of
Roland pulled the university’s white Ford Econoline van into the parking lot in front of his supervisor’s apartment building at 04:58. Larry’s apartment, number 101, was on the corner of the ground floor of the brick-and-stucco two-story building.
Three long, gray, casket-like metal boxes sat in the back of the van. They contained the Seismology Department’s new ground-penetrating radar equipment and two ultrasensitive seismographs. Roland had also packed his bugout gear, which included a sleeping bag, a nylon pup tent, and a three-day supply of dehydrated food. Experience told him that Larry would bring similar camping equipment and an arsenal of bear spray. He got out of the van, cut across the front lawn to Larry’s apartment door, and rang the bell.
Seconds later, the door opened. Larry stumbled out wearing a backpack and carrying a bugout bag similar to Roland’s.
“You know, Dr. King,” Larry groaned as he tossed his gear through the side door of the van, “there aren’t any state or federal laws that would’ve prohibited us from leaving at, oh, I don’t know, say, nine or ten instead of this unholy time of day. The sun doesn’t come up for at least another hour. Or so I’ve heard. I don’t think I’ve ever been awake this early, at least not on purpose.”
“Yeah, I know. It reminds me of my old army days.” Roland climbed back into the van and settled into the vehicle’s as-cheap-as-could-be-produced bucket seat.
“You’ve never been in the fucking army.” Larry slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door. “You don’t have a social life and wanted to make sure I don’t, either.”
Roland snorted. “Well, excuse me for interrupting your Taylor Swift sleepover with what could very well be one of the most important investigations in the history of vulcanology.”
“You know, that’s a pretty short list, buddy,” Larry shot back. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “At least we get to head back into the wilderness on another research boondoggle and get paid for it. It’s been what? Three months now. Way too long.”
“This isn’t a boondoggle. And it’s only been two months.”
Roland backed the van out of the parking space and headed for the parking lot exit.
“OK, boss man,” he continued. “We’ll take the I-Fifteen to Idaho Falls. From there, we can jump on Highway Twenty and into the west entrance of Yellowstone. Depending on the traffic and construction, it should take us around six hours, assuming we stop for lunch in Idaho Falls.”
“Sounds good,” Larry said. “I’ll set up my phone’s GPS. It’ll warn us if there’s trouble ahead.”
“There’s a thermos of coffee and two travel mugs in my bag if you need a pick-me-up.” Roland glanced at Larry. “That’s a hint to pour me a cup, in case you didn’t notice.”
“You know, Roland, you’ll make someone a great wife someday,” Larry teased. He poured two mugs of the steaming brew, screwed the lid back on, and placed Roland’s mug in the console cup holder. He rubbed his eyes again and yawned. “Well, there is at least one good thing about heading out at this god-awful time of day: there shouldn’t be any traffic coming out of the city, and once we get on I-Fifteen, there won’t be any until, well, ever.” The I-15 was one of the least traveled interstates in the country. “We finally get to do something productive with all the new equipment. Gotta show a return on its investment. And maybe we can cobble up a research paper from whatever we find.”
“Sounds like you’re finally awake,” Roland said dryly.
Once they got past North Salt Lake, Roland set the van’s cruise control to seventy-four miles per hour. They drove all the way past Ogden before he had to put on the brakes when they stopped just south of Willard Bay State Park to relieve themselves of the coffee they’d been sipping.
They stopped at Stockman’s Restaurant, off I-15 just south of Idaho Falls, for lunch. They were both hungry, and neither was in the mood for fast food. Besides, they were on official business and could put their meals on the department’s expense account. After lunch, they topped off the van’s gas tank and turned on US 20, which would take them all the way to West Yellowstone.
As Roland drove, Larry called the office of the Yellowstone Park rangers to confirm their arrival and let them know they would be camping in the area of the caldera on the west side, off Shoshone Lake. He also fired up an app on his iPad that, by connecting to the now nearly ubiquitous cellular network, allowed him to monitor remotely located seismographs as if he were seated in front of the computer in his office.
“Holy shit, Roland. Look at this.” Larry held out the iPad so Roland could see it. An array of seismic measurement lights flashed across a map of Yellowstone. Most were yellow, but as the indicators closed in on the caldera, they changed from yellow to orange, indicating a high level of activity.
“Holy crap. What’s going on in the caldera, Larry? Check the caldera!”
Larry’s thumb and forefinger swept open the display. He held it up for Roland again. The five lights scattered over the actual caldera basin, atop the Yellowstone supervolcano, were bright red and blinked like strobe lights in a seventies disco. Not that Roland had ever seen a disco aside from Staying Alive reruns on TCM.
“Just like you suspected, buddy: this place is jumping.” Larry dropped the iPad back in his lap.
There were several vehicles in a line in front of them as they neared the West Entrance park gate. As they rolled up to the checkpoint after the car in front of them moved, a tremor rocked the van, sloshing out the remains of Larry’s coffee and knocking over two of the equipment crates that were stacked in the cargo bed. It only lasted a couple of seconds, and even though it wasn’t necessary, it reminded them of why they were there.
“I guess you’ve been having a lot of those the last few days,” Roland said to the ranger at the sliding office window.
“Yeah. We normally get some small quakes two or three times a month up here. But lately it’s been five or six times a day. I’ll tell you, it’s a little unnerving, especially when we’re sitting directly on top of the largest volcano in the Northern Hemisphere. I hope you guys can find out what’s going on down there. I want a little warning if that thing decides to blow its top.”
That would have been nice. Nice indeed.
“By the way, Roland,” Larry said, “I did dig up that emergency action plan we discussed. It’s at least as old as you expected, and everyone listed as a contact is long departed. However, I found a number for the Wyoming State Emergency Response Commission and the local office of Homeland Security. They have a reasonably robust website and a more current disaster plan. I downloaded key numbers to my phone just in case.”
“Good.” Roland drove into the park following US 191 along the Madison River. As happened every time he visited Yellowstone, he was struck by two things. One was the sheer, heart-fluttering beauty of the place. The other was the swarm of tourists and associated traffic on the road, or at least this section. Cars on both sides of the way would pull over, park, and then disgorge their cell-phone-packing passengers every time they spied a moose or elk grazing or on the edge of the water. Roland knew this practice would ease up somewhat the farther into the park they got, as the traffic dispersed and the initial novelty of seeing the animals wore off. Still, it was congested and slow going for the first four or five miles.
At the junction with US 89, they turned right, staying on 191, and headed southeast, this time loosely following the Firehole River. They passed through Whiskey Flat and then drove past the Excelsior Geyser crater and the steaming, deep-blue Grand Prismatic Spring. The wind blew from the west, spreading the rotten-egg stench of sulfur bubbling up through the water. Another fringe benefit of being a professional, government-employed seismologist: neither Roland nor Larry reacted to the smell; they had been working around these stink pits so long it barely registered.
A few miles later, they came to the entrance of the parking lot of the tourist complex that surrounded Old Faithful. Roland was starting to feel an early signal from his bladder and said to Larry, “It’s only another ten miles until we turn off One Ninety-One and onto the maintenance trail that takes us into the caldera. But that coffee’s ready to make an exit, if you know what I mean.”
“Well, I could stand one last trip to a flushing toilet before we start sleeping in a tent and crapping in the woods,” Larry replied. “While we’re stopped, we may as well get a burger or something to eat. Ready-to-eat rations and canteen water are fine for about one meal, but after three or four days, I reach my limit. I didn’t fight my way up the food chain to eat sticks and twigs, and that’s what dehydrated stew tastes like after day one.”
Roland turned off the highway and drove into the Old Faithful Inn and Visitor Center parking lot. There were cars and tour buses everywhere. He always felt a little sad every time he visited Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, or any of the other natural wonders that were crawling with tourists. Deep inside, he knew he had no right to feel that way since, at times, he was a tourist too, but he couldn’t shake that initial feeling.
He parked the van about one hundred meters from the Inn. Although his bladder didn’t totally agree, he and Larry didn’t mind walking, and the exercise would wake them up. Just as he turned off the van’s engine, a huge, fire-truck-red F-250 pulled into a parking space across from them. When it stopped, two girls, carbon copies of one another, bounced out, followed by a man he assumed to be their father and a good-looking lady, whom he took to be their mother.
As the loosely assembled group started walking toward the Inn, Larry smiled at the two girls. “You must be twins.”
Grinning back like little spider monkeys, the two looked at each other, and one of them pulled her head back in mock astonishment. “Wow, mister. Are you some kind of genius or something?”
The girls laughed hysterically, and Roland joined in—even though his bladder was throbbing—but the lady stopped dead in her tracks. She wasn’t laughing. At all.
“Fiona, that wasn’t the least bit funny! Apologize right this instant!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the young girl said, her lips trembling. An unmistakable twinkle lit her eyes. “It just jumped out.”
The lady turned to Larry. “Please excuse my pair of smart alecks. They’re having a hormone explosion and practicing to be teenagers.”
All four of the adults laughed. The twins rolled their eyes.
Roland nodded at the F-250’s license plate. “Did you guys come here all the way from Tennessee?”
The girls’ father nodded. “We got here yesterday. We’re camping in our RV over at Colter Bay. Name’s Jeremy Richards.” Jeremy shook hands with both men and introduced Judy, Fiona, and Ellis.
“Been to Yellowstone before?” Larry asked.
“It’s our first trip here,” Jeremy responded. “Actually, it’s our first trip anywhere west of the Mississippi. Old Faithful is our last stop for the day.”
Judy smiled. “We’re going to wait around to watch the next eruption, and then we’re heading back to our campsite for dinner under the stars. We’ve never seen anything like the night sky up here.”
“Tomorrow, we plan to go to the falls and then just wander around the park,” Jeremy added.
“There’s a lot to see here if you enjoy wildlife and nature in general,” Larry said. “But you might also enjoy a side trip to Jackson Hole. It’s about forty miles south of Colter Bay, and the drive is beautiful, especially along the Snake River. The Hole is always packed with tourists, but they have some great restaurants if you want to have lunch. And you pass through the National Elk Refuge—although I’ve been through there about a hundred times and have yet to see a single elk.”
“Speaking of wildlife,” Jeremy said slowly, “we passed through a herd of buffalo this morning on our way up here. They were acting crazy, running back and forth and around in circles. Judy asked one of the rangers about them. The ranger said she’d lived here all her life and had never seen anything like what she had witnessed over the last four or five days. She thinks it has something to do with all the earthquakes and the increased activity around the hot springs.”
Roland shared a slightly worried look with Larry but said nothing. No use in getting anyone stirred up if there wasn’t a verified reason to do so. Jeremy and Judy exchanged glances, too, as if they sensed there was more to the situation than Roland and Larry were willing to admit.
Jeremy cleared his throat. “What about you guys? I noticed the University of Utah markings on your van. Are you here on official business?”
Roland nodded.
“What do you do, mister?” asked Ellis.
“We’re from the Seismology Department,” Roland replied.
“Oh?” Judy asked. “Well, you should have plenty of seismology to evaluate. We’ve felt at least ten pretty violent tremors since we arrived yesterday.”
The twins grinned.
Ellis piped up: “Yeah, right after we got here, there was a big one.”
Fiona jumped in: “And Mom busted her—”
A don’t-even-think-about-saying-it glare from Judy stopped Fiona midsentence. Then Judy slowly shook her head and smiled apologetically. The twins giggled, and the three men hee-hawed as the group headed toward the Old Faithful Inn. They stopped at the front entrance.
“You folks enjoy the rest of your time up here,” Larry said.
As the family headed toward the stone seats encircling Old Faithful, Roland called after the twins, “Young ladies, you will remember this vacation for the rest of your lives.”
At the time, no one could have known how horribly accurate that statement would prove to be.
“They seemed like a nice family,” Larry mused, “but Mom has her hands full with those two.”
“No doubt,” Roland agreed. “But I think she can handle it just fine.” After their preemptive trip to the men’s room, Larry and Roland joined the cafeteria food line. The queue of tourists waiting to place their orders reminded Roland that this was the height of the tourist season.
After they placed their orders and sat down, a teeth-jarring tremor violently shook the chairs beneath them. Screams and expletives in an assortment of languages exploded around them as patrons standing in line or walking to their seats stumbled and grabbed for railings or table edges. More than a few people fell to their knees.
It was only then that Roland noticed the absence of china and glassware. The Old Faithful Lodge Cafeteria was the only eating establishment in the park that used what Roland considered to be real dishes. They usually used Melmac and hard plastic “glasses,” but now they were using paper plates and cups. There were no breakable items anywhere in the room. He also noticed the lack of hanging pictures or other decorations that might fall when the walls started bouncing. An absence of knickknacks was further proof that stronger-than-usual quakes had been going on for several days.
When a waiter finally appeared with their burgers and fries, the feverish buzz of anxious patrons had faded away like the tremor.
Larry lathered his fries in ketchup. “Let’s eat and get out of here. This time of year, the sun doesn’t go down until around twenty-one hundred hours. That should give us plenty of time to get to the caldera site and set up our equipment. I want to see if we can find out what’s causing these tremors. If it’s what we think it is, maybe we can convince someone somewhere to evacuate this area before it ends up being the top story on ABC News.”
Roland removed the top bun and centered the lopsided tomatoes over his burger, then nudged it again, and once more for good measure. “Roger that, mein Kapitän. My anal sphincter is starting to tighten up a little bit. That’s my body’s way of telling me I may be at the wrong place at the wrong time. And it ain’t failed me yet.”