Ring of Fire Axial: A Disaster Thriller, page 8
Graham swallowed hard. He closed his eyes, feeling the room shift a millimeter. “Say that again.”
“The house is standing,” Riddle repeated. “Roof compromised, south and west exposures. Significant ash load, water damage. Lahar deposits at the bluff edge, some slumping near the shed. But, sir, she’s a warrior. The main structure took it and held. Looks like a 1900s build. Old-timer. Those old bones held.”
Graham closed his eyes again and saw Christmas lights on a porch and his mother’s hands tying bows. He saw Reid jumping off the dock into the river. Beau showing off a chin-up on a tree limb. And Sloan with a book on the steps, pretending not to watch them.
Old bones that represented the Mercer family. Holding the line.
“Any access?” he asked.
“Roads are a mess,” Riddle replied. “County crews are cutting single lanes where they can. Power’s out across the district. We’ve got spot looting along the river, nothing organized. I wouldn’t advise—”
“Got it.” His voice sounded like someone more decisive as he cut the caller off abruptly. “Thank you, Captain.”
“Sir,” Riddle added, softer now, “I have kids. I know what a house means. Just, please watch your step. That roof’s got the weight of concrete on her.”
The line clicked dead. In the glass, his reflection looked older than he felt.
On the other side of the blinds, the moment took a cruel turn. The HVO’s feed had spiked, two traces rising together like the breath before a scream.
“Rapid deflation at Iki!” Mara called out, referring to the Kilauea Iki Crater, a smaller pit crater near the summit caldera. “Chadwick’s asking if we’ve got eyes—”
Duke leaned in and cut Mara off. His voice was as steady and calm as a metronome. “If she’s dumping, she’s going somewhere. Saddle is my bet. Flag DHS personnel on location for a potential lava-road interaction and get me—” He caught himself. His hand hovered as his eyes darted to something only he could see on the display. “No, wait. Look at the tilt east of the caldera. There.”
Graham couldn’t hear the rest. His ears had filled with his mother’s voice, melancholy and full of sorrow, from twelve hours ago, in a quiet corner of the covered patio at Belmont Hills. Graham had overheard the conversation his parents had had, daring not to interrupt but unable to walk away from it.
“I keep trying to remember where we put the kids’ drawings,” Betsy had said, barely above a whisper. “Those little stick men Sloan made with the volcano spitting hearts. Do you remember? The ones she taped to the pantry door? It’s so stupid, but—” Her voice had broken on a word he hadn’t heard since he was eight. “Baby books, Duke. Their baby books. If it’s all gone, I don’t, um, I don’t know how we can remember it all.”
“Hey,” Duke had said, the gentlest he could be, a rough hand on her shoulder. “We’re breathing. We’ll promise to never stop talking about our lives together. You know, to keep the memories fresh.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She’d wiped a thumb under one eye as if sneaking the motion past him. “I mean proof we existed.”
Proof we existed.
The words slotted into place now, an equation balancing inside Graham’s chest with a click so clean it hurt. This wasn’t about plates and quilts and the mantel clock. He might not be able to patch a fault or cork a volcano, but he could carry something across a broken world and set it in his mother’s hands and say—I love you, Mom. Here’s a little proof to hold onto.
He stepped back into the ops room, which swallowed him into sensory overload. The disaster unfolding in Hawai’i was reaching a fever pitch. The analysts spoke in short, surgical bursts. Excited conversations back and forth with CalVO and the CVO team, covering topics from hydrophones on Axial to DART buoys breathing in the swell.
Graham snapped out of his musings to approach Duke. “Dad,” he began, but the word got lost under the chatter.
“Dr. Mercer,” Lena Corbett, the CVO geophysicist, said without noticing Graham’s presence, “we’ve got background tremors on the Axial array and a small pressure dump that doesn’t make sense with the BPR calibration. Do you remember if that probe got its post-storm recall last—?”
“Talk to Tim,” Duke quickly replied, not unkindly, eyes never leaving the screen.
Graham’s mouth closed. He stood there long enough to feel foolish and then made himself move. The decision he wrestled with revealed itself. Tension gathered around his choice with the force of the Pacific Rim tearing itself apart.
Ten
April 23
Predawn
Near Popocatépetl
The Sierra Nevada
Central Mexico
THE DEEPEST HOURS OF NIGHT were bright as day after El Popo erupted with a fury that was both magnificent and deadly. Ash began falling in thick curtains, coupled with molten matter that rained down around the mountain.
The heat affected them physically as well as mentally. A vise grip pressing in. The crater’s glow was overexposed even to the naked eye. Reid swung the camera up on instinct, catching lightning that danced in the ash column. Closer to the ground, flowing avalanches slid down the far slope like molten rivers. He’d captured art and atrocity in the same frame.
Miguel raced down the narrow trail that had been designated for all-terrain vehicles and hiking. Mexican park authorities had given Nat Geo the authority to drive the EFP until the trail ended, after the production team signed waivers. The road was not designed for a high-speed escape from the fury of El Popo.
They reached a tree canopy, which exacerbated the dark conditions. Even the massive eruption was shielded from view momentarily. Below the so-called tree line, that imaginary line that marks the elevation on Popocatépetl above which trees could not grow, the forest became denser.
With each gulley and hole in the trail, the headlights of the EFP bounced wildly through the pines. Twice, Miguel had to brake to avoid running over a fleeing gray fox or a bobcat. As they descended, rattled nerves settled. The trail leveled off somewhat as Miguel traversed the mountain, heading into the pass.
Gigi had just finished checking on her wounded warriors when, surprisingly, a text message came through to her phone. It was from their associate producer in Los Angeles, who was supposed to be on the trip but had been pulled at the last minute. She read it aloud.
“Guys, I have a text from LA. It’s from Cara. Here’s what it says,” she began, taking a deep breath first. “Get off the mountain. Get to Santiago airport. We have a charter en route to evac your crew and the Mexico Untamed team. Hurry! Airspace expected to close.”
Reid dropped to his uninjured knee and stuck his head between the front seats. “Did she say what time?”
Gigi frowned. “No. I’ll text her and ask.”
We’re coming off the mountain now. We lost one of our team, Pablo.
Another disappeared. The rest of us are fine. Mostly.
What time is the flight leaving?
NOT DELIVERED!
TRY AGAIN?
“It’s not going out,” Gigi lamented. She pushed her phone to the top of the windshield and attempted to send the text again.
Same result.
“Damn,” she complained. “Why would she not tell us when?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Reid. He patted Miguel on the right shoulder. “Haul ass without wrecking us, my friend. At some point, we’ll catch a signal and let them know we’re coming.”
Miguel gripped the wheel a little tighter, fighting the rough terrain as the EFP, about the size of a thirteen-foot U-Haul moving truck, ambled through the forest.
For ten minutes, they rode in near silence as Miguel navigated the treacherous trail. They were simply following the contour of the mountain. In their frenzied state, cloaked in darkness, they were unable to recall the trail’s exact path. When the tree canopy suddenly disappeared, the trail led into a rock clearing skirting a ridge.
Once again, El Popo revealed itself to them.
Another vent was open on the north face, a blazing wound on the flank, throwing a curtain of molten material toward them. A plume of superheated ash raced outward at ground level, the pyroclastic flow that Reid had feared. The surge of hot volcanic gas and tephra destroyed everything in its path, angling rapidly toward their intended route.
Reid lifted the camera, trying to frame the surge, the falling stars of lava bombs, and the north face, which had come alive with fire and ash. From one knee, he panned through the windshield and then the portal windows in the back of the EFP.
“Reid,” Gigi began, her voice low but edged with urgency, “that thing’s gonna cut us off in under a minute. You gotta get in your seat!”
He kept filming until the viewfinder bloomed white with glare. That was when he hurriedly dropped the camera between his feet and clicked his seatbelt.
Miguel floored it. The EFP lurched forward and fishtailed slightly. He overcorrected before the truck righted itself. They crested a ridge and found themselves facing a lava flow approaching slowly from the right. Miguel kept his speed, eyes shifting between the trail and the lava, racing toward the narrowing gap between them and the next lava river. He hoped his timing was correct.
Ash-laden air funneled into the cab through the air vents, coating their faces with grit. Gigi’s knuckles were white on the dashboard, her eyes narrow slits as she tried to monitor both the trail and the approaching lava.
The EFP barreled toward the gap, a narrow stretch of the trail still free of debris. To the right, the lava ate the earth. Gigi added to the tension by shouting, “It’s almost crossing the road!”
Miguel answered by pressing harder, the diesel’s growl turning feral. “Not yet.”
The ash in the air thickened until the headlights were useless halos. Reid turned in his seat, camera in one hand, the other gripping the door frame. He couldn’t force himself to stop filming. To his creative eye, the surge’s front edge was almost beautiful, a shimmering carpet of silver-gray, adorned with fiery embers. He filmed without thinking, tracking the river of fire as it slid downhill, its flow pushing out shockwaves that began to slap against the truck.
A lava bomb the size of a beach ball slammed into the road ahead and shattered into glowing shards. Miguel yanked the wheel, the EFP swerving just enough to miss the worst of it. The tires spat gravel.
“Miguel!” Gigi called out.
“I know. I know!”
“Thirty seconds,” she added, estimating the surge’s crossing point.
“That’s ten more than I need,” he fired back. He clenched his jaw and fought the wheel. His eyes remained affixed on the road, and they were fully committed to moving forward.
They hit the gap just as the surge approached. The EFP’s suspension hammered as they bounced over the ruts and rocky terrain. Heat slapped the EFP. Reid kept the lens on the lava, capturing the instant when they were mere feet from the flow. He managed a smile as the camera captured the surreal moment when embers drifted through the darkness, surrounding the truck like fireflies from hell.
Then they were through. Behind them, the road disappeared in a seething fog of ash and steam.
No one cheered. It was too soon. There was only the collective whoosh of the passengers exhaling.
Gigi’s jaw worked side to side as she studied her phone’s display. It was a tell Reid had learned about her. She was analyzing, running numbers in her head. Fuel, distance, time to Santiago, and how many more obstacles the mountain could throw at them.
He turned the camera inward, filming the crew. Miguel’s grim determination. Luis’s arm splinted with duct tape and a broken tent pole. He wanted the world to see this. To see what it cost.
“You filming us now?” Gigi didn’t look at him, her eyes locked on the road, but her voice cut through the clamor that surrounded them.
“History doesn’t care if we tell our story,” Reid said. “It cares if we show it.”
Her lips pressed into a line. She wondered when enough was enough. “History won’t care if we don’t make it out alive.”
Reid disagreed, but he sensed her fear and frustration. He set the camera down again.
The EFP climbed onto a higher ridge, an approaching lahar falling away into a side gully. For the first time since they started moving, they weren’t being chased. However, the reprieve was thin. The ash in the air was thicker here, dropped by a wind shift that now drove the plume north.
Miguel flicked on the wipers. Ash smeared into a gray paste across the glass. “Visibility will be bad to Mexico City. But we will have a road soon.”
The EFP crested a rise, and then the paved road appeared. Through the swirling ash, Reid caught a glimpse. It was draped in fresh debris. Smoking hunks of rock. A broken-down car that had crashed into a twisted guardrail. And beyond it, the faint orange shimmer of another advancing surge. He reached for the camera once again, continuing to film because he couldn’t stop. Not for Nat Geo or their viewers.
Because this was their story.
Eleven
April 23
Dawn
California Volcanic Observatory
CVO Annex
Menlo Park, California
LOST IN THOUGHT, GRAHAM stepped into the hall, mindlessly counting the people around him without seeing them. He found a bench by the vending machines where the fluorescent light died into shadow.
Using an inexpensive smartphone Nina and Kana had purchased the day before, he typed with careful hands, like he was arming something. After a moment of searching, he texted Bay Rotor Charter as the website’s Contact Us page requested.
Need emergency lift, two pilots.
Wheels when?
Immediate.
Where and how long?
Destination: Washougal, WA.
River bluff near Cape Horn Rd.
All day.
Out of our range. Requires refuel stops.
Can pay cash.
He watched the little dots dance as if someone on the other end had to think through the moral math of saying yes. Then the phone pinged as a message came through.
We don’t fly into active fire. Will not land if that is present. We will fly through weather.
Off-duty SFPD pilots available. Cash is fine.
Where do I meet them?
Present location?
Menlo Park.
Palo Alto Executive Airport Terminal. One hour.
We’ve got an AStar. You’ll like her.
Two pilots, one bird, minimal load. Six passengers max
Graham rose off the bench and began to scroll to arrange for a car when another ping hit his phone.
Names—Rizzo and Chen. If we don’t like the look, we scrub. Copy?
The next text to Graham was a reminder as to what a fool he was.
Your call to lift. Your call to land. Your life.
Understood. My call. My ass on the line.
Graham slipped back into the ops center, where he found himself eye to eye with an intern by the look of her—fresh-out-of-bed hair trying to be professional and losing the fight. The kid’s badge read Jennings. She was not a part of Duke’s CVO team of refugees.
“You going out?” she asked.
“I’m gonna check on the backup generator my dad asked about,” he answered after a second or two. Graham stared at the kid and wondered what it would be like to believe what strangers said about you. “When a storm is coming, you don’t leave anything to chance.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, indifferent. She disappeared into the school of bodies that made up the CVO operations wing.
Graham took three steps and then stopped. He looked across the room at his dad. Duke had one hand braced on the table, the other tracing a line on the display no one else could envision yet. His mouth moved, and people moved accordingly.
Graham’s mind flashed to the rest of his family. In the living room less than ten miles away, Betsy would be sitting with a mug of coffee stirred to perfection with two tablespoons of sugar and a little Coffee Mate powdered creamer so it didn’t cool. Her mind would wander, ostensibly listening to talking heads talk to talking heads on the cable nets, hoping the coffee made her hands stop shaking.
He thought about walking in, about saying the thing clean—“Dad, I can’t predict volcanoes, but I can bring home proof we existed.” He even pictured Duke’s face, the way the creases would pull like tide lines. There would be his dad’s temptation to forbid the outlandish venture. To hold him like you hold a man who’s already survived one near-death experience and might go be a fool for courting another. He almost welcomed the fight.
Instead, he wrote a note, two sentences on a torn scrap from a printer misfeed, and tucked it under the base of his office phone where Duke’s strong hand touched every hour.
Back this evening. Love you guys.
He knew it was a lie of omission and a truth of intent. He would be back, or he would not. But he would be something other than a ghost. He would be the oldest son—either a returning hero or the dearly departed.
He checked the clock and then toggled to the Uber app he was just forced to download to hail a ride.
After just ten minutes, the Uber driver picked him up. Graham settled in and rolled down the window an inch to clear the fog in his brain. At that hour, the City of Palo Alto was also just waking up. He glanced back at the building with its blue glow and its tracked carpet and its people who told the earth what it was allowed to do, and sometimes the earth listened, and sometimes it laughed.
