Station KIFI, Idaho Falls, Idaho
22:48 the day of
The KIFI News Team Six driver paused the game of solitaire on his office computer and answered his phone on the second ring. “KIFI Dispatch, Kevin speaking.”
“Kevin, this is Martin. Throw the camera and all your shit in the satellite van. There’s a story breaking in Yellowstone, and it could be huge. We need to go to the West Yellowstone entrance. If we hurry, we might just beat the crew from Bozeman. Pick me up in front of the station. I have to grab a mic. Oh, and don’t forget your badge.”
“I’ve got it around my neck, Scoop. I’ll be out front in thirty seconds.”
Martin hit the “end call” icon on his phone, snatched his mic from its place on the wall, and stuffed them both into a canvas KIFI travel bag he kept under his desk. Moving as if his feet were on fire, he headed for the door leading to the station’s parking lot. He smiled at Kevin’s use of his nickname, “Scoop.” If this thing was anywhere near as big as he thought it was going to be based on what he’d heard on the scanner, it could get his foot in the door with some of the West Coast stations.
Martin knew that he should call Micca Corbin, the station manager, and update her on what was without a doubt the biggest breaking news story since ever. But she’d be sound asleep at this time of night; otherwise, she would have already called him for a sitrep. Knowing her overachieving, type A personality, he suspected her alarm clock would go off between five and five thirty. That meant she would be blissfully unaware that nature had decided to wake up one of the only two supervolcanoes on the planet from its 650 million year nap. And she would be pissed!
On the other hand, if he had called her when he got his first sniff of the story, she would most likely have brought in KIFI’s reporting A team and he would have been relegated to watching the story break from his apartment. No, he would wait until he and Kevin were past the point of no return, when they were far enough up the road that the bitch would have to let them run with the ball.
It was a gamble he was willing to take. The worst case: Corbin would fire him from his dead-end cub-reporter job at a pissant television station, in a one-horse town, in fucking Idaho. But if he pulled this thing off, like he knew he was going to, he could leapfrog straight from being a nobody to the twenty-first century Walter Cronkite.
Martin got to the parking lot just as Kevin pulled in. He jumped in the van, put his bag between his feet, and fastened his seat belt. “Drive it like you stole it, Kevin,” he growled. “For once, we’re gonna be the first on the scene.”
“You got it, Scoop,” Kevin shot back. “Just hang on and don’t scream.”
Kevin screeched out of the lot toward US 20 North. As he slowed without stopping at the first stop sign, Martin switched on the van’s scanner. There was hardly a break in the radio traffic. Having been monitoring KIFI’s scanner for over a year, Martin had learned to identify not only sources of communication, such as the Idaho Falls Police Department, but also many individual dispatchers, at least those on his shift.
At this time of night, there was usually very little chatter. Just the occasional 10-66, suspicious person, or 10-70, prowler, coming from the old female sherrif’s department dispatcher. Martin had never seen her but had formed his own mental image of a chunky, bleached-blonde Marlboro smoker sitting behind a battered old radio with a tall aluminum microphone on a vinyl-covered ledge in front of her.
Probably nothing like that at all. Over time Martin had formed a different mental picture for each of the regulars, and since they never used their own, he had given them names. The third shift operator at the sherrif’s department was Shirley. And she was busy tonight.
There was almost no traffic on US 20 at this time of night, and with every on-duty law enforcement officer glued to their radios, Kevin was able to drive like the NASCAR racer he fantasized of being.
“OK, Kevin, I’m trying not to scream, but damn! You do realize we’re not wearing helmets, and this thing doesn’t have roll bars.”
Not taking his eye off the road, Kevin replied jokingly, “You said we wanted to be first on the scene, we’re gonna be first on the scene. Now quit nagging. If I’d wanted a wife, I would’ve ordered one from Amazon.”
One hour and twenty minutes later, after passing through the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, the pair started seeing grains of ash and pumice falling through the beams of the van’s headlights. Just a smattering at first but getting noticeably thicker the farther north they drove. As they neared the intersection of US Route 20 and Idaho 87, the ashfall grew thick enough to seriously interfere with their visibility, and Kevin had to slow down well below the speed limit.
It was here that they also started seeing the first of what would turn out to be a long string of vehicles heading in the opposite direction, each covered with a thick layer of glittery ash—and each with a shell-shocked look on the driver’s face when it was illuminated by the van’s headlights. Martin assumed they were fleeing the eruption.
By the time they crossed into Montana from Idaho, the visibility was so poor that, despite the road being straight and flat, the van barely managed twenty miles an hour. By now, there was virtually no westbound traffic. Apparently, everyone who could have had evacuated the town of West Yellowstone. A sign just past the state line marker proclaimed, “Yellowstone National Park, 10 miles.”
As they crept east toward the park entrance, Martin saw a red-orange glow on the horizon, even though it was hours before sunrise. Still-smoking boulders appeared every few hundred feet, as well as wrecked and abandoned cars and trucks. One late-model, jacked-up Jeep had managed to run off the road and hit dead center on a sign that read, “Entering Motor Vehicle Restricted Area.” Ironic. If he and Kevin hadn’t been in such a rush to get closer to the volcano, they would have stopped and filmed the wreckage. It would have made a catchy side note on the early-morning news.
Martin looked at his watch. It was 2:48 a.m. He figured they couldn’t be over a couple of miles from the edge of West Yellowstone. Time to call the station manager, wake her ass up, and let her know that her newest star reporter was two miles west of a story that would have KIFI on national—no, international—headline news.
Martin dug his company cell phone out of the travel bag sitting between his feet. “Siri, call Micca Corbin, mobile.” A second later, a familiar robotic voice responded: “Calling Micca Corbin, mobile.”
Four rings later, a surprisingly alert-sounding voice blared, “This is Micca. Go!”
Martin had never had an opportunity to call his boss’s boss before, and for just a second, he was taken aback by the sharp manner in which she answered the phone. But he wasn’t surprised. He got cold chills every time he encountered the woman. He had always thought she was a bitter, calculating shrew with a pot full of dead-daddy money. Oh well, maybe she’d warm up to him now. “Ms. Corbin, this is Martin Driggs, from the station.”
“That’s great, Driggs. Did you butt-dial me, or is the station on fire?”
“No, ma’am, neither of those. I called to tell you that, apparently, the Yellowstone supervolcano blew its top.”
“Well, hang up the phone and get our news team up there immediately. And tell the lead reporter to call me as soon as they’re on the road.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the thing, Ms. Corbin. We is the news team, and we is on the road, and from the looks of things, we is going to be the first and onliest television crew on the scene, at least for a while.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. Martin pictured Micca Corbin scowling as she collected her thoughts.
“OK, smart-ass, but don’t you fuck this up,” she snapped. “Start the satellite uplink as soon as you find something worth looking at. And round up a couple of Skoal-spitting locals to interview. A little hometown color is always fun to watch.”
“Will do, boss lady, but that might be tough. From where we are right now, it looks like the town is deserted. We’ll drive as far as we can toward the volcano and see what we can find on our way.”
“OK, Driggs, and call me every half hour until I can—”
The cellphone connection died. Martin looked at his phone. There were no green signal bars, which meant that the cell towers in this area weren’t working. He made a mental note to dig the satellite phone out of the back of the van as soon as they stopped and raised the communication dish.
Nothing moved as Kevin eased the van into the outskirts of town, crossing Iris Street and rolling past the Rustic RV Campground entrance. Rocks the size of trash cans had peppered the street, creating a driving obstacle course. “They don’t pay me enough to do this shit!” he muttered as he swerved left, then right, trying to miss one bolder after another. “The first couple were kind of fun, but this is fucked up big time!”
Martin paid scarce attention to what was now an endless string of obscenities spewing from his driver.
Even in the almost nonexistent visibility provided by the van’s headlights through the ashfall blizzard, gaping holes appeared in the buildings on the left and right sides of the street. Every window in all the shops and houses had been blown out. Not a single pane of glass remained.
It was 3:27 when they finally reached the corner of Town Park. There, US Route 20 intersected Route 191, which ran north toward Bozeman, Montana. The ashfall was impossibly heavy now. Straining headlights revealed enormous smoking boulders and other forms of debris sprinkled all over the ground. The dash-mounted GPS indicated that they were only three miles from the official park entrance.
Kevin stopped the van. “Looks like we are at the end of the road, Scoop.”
“You’re right, Kev. I’m surprised we made it this far. Since we’ve got what’s left of the road to ourselves, let’s set up here. If you’ll raise the dish pole and make a satellite link, I’ll set up the lights and fire up the generator.”
“Will do.” Kevin unsnapped his seat belt. “But first I’m going to break open the hazmat kit we keep in the back of the van. I know there are some surgical masks in there as well as a few plastic decon suits. We’ll need all the protection we can wrap around us once we go outside.”
Ten minutes later, wearing full-body white plastic coveralls and blue surgical masks, the two men opened the side door of the KIFI News Team van and went outside.