Journey, The (29 page)

"Evening, ma'am," the young patrolman said as he reached the Jeep. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to turn around."

"I just have to check my cabin. It's only a few more miles."

"I can't allow it. The road is closed by order of the governor."

"Please. It's very important. I need to reach some people who may be there."

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to come back tomorrow. We'll allow property owners to check their places at ten. That's the best I can do."

"It will be too late. Can you at least send a car to the cabin?"

"I'd like to help, ma'am, but it will have to wait."

Michelle sighed. She had not expected this. The Preston cabin stood more than two miles beyond a red zone that restricted access to the volcano and the lake. There was no logical reason why she should not be allowed to pass. But she was not about to drive through a roadblock and saw no point in debating the matter further. She would not be able to help anyone from a jail cell.

"I understand. I'll be back in the morning."

Michelle backed the Jeep onto the shoulder and then pulled forward to complete a U-turn. She drove around a bend and headed west toward Castle Rock but had no intention of returning to town empty-handed. A half-mile down the highway, beyond the view of the patrolman, she turned north onto a logging road that paralleled Forest Road 41 and switched to four-wheel drive. She would not be denied by red tape.

Ten minutes later she cut across a clearing that led to FR 41. She found the stump-covered meadow much as she had remembered it. She had ridden horses here as a teenager and had hiked often with her parents and siblings. A small pond with big trout occupied a spot just beyond the tree line. Though she could not have taken the same shortcut in her BMW, she had no difficulty crossing the clearing in Robert's Jeep. When she reached FR 41, she turned north, shifted back into two-wheel drive, and drove the remaining distance to the cabin.

She arrived at eight, just as the sun dipped below a ridge to the west, and parked next to an orange Beetle in front of the structure. She got out of the Jeep and gave the lot a quick inspection. The property appeared unoccupied, which raised some questions. If the Prestons were not at their cabin, where were they? Why had Shelly left her car behind? Surely they were not out on a family hike or visiting neighbors. Not at this hour.

Michelle walked to the sturdy, undamaged front door and found a pleasant surprise: a note from the sheriff's office. It contained all of the information she had given the dispatcher. Score one for law enforcement. But the presence of the note only raised new questions. Had the Prestons seen it? If so, why hadn't they taken it? If they hadn't seen it, where had they been all day? Where were they now?

She tried to open the door and found it locked. She knocked twice but got no answer. Unless someone was sleeping very soundly, there was no one inside. Frustrated, confused, and tired from a long day of travel, Michelle walked around the cabin and looked for anything that might bring enlightenment. She saw a badly damaged side door, several broken windows, and graffiti that covered the back, the side that faced the creek. Vandals had indeed violated the cabin during the off-season, but their handiwork offered no useful information.

Michelle tried again to reconcile the empty cabin with Shelly's car. Had the Prestons gone elsewhere for the evening? If so, did they plan to return? Michelle thought of her father. He had grown up in this area and knew dozens of property owners between Castle Rock and Spirit Lake. She would not at all have been surprised to learn that he and the others were at another residence playing poker well into the night. She swore loudly as she again lamented the absence of cell phones or even any phones.

Deciding that she could do no more, Michelle wrote another note and attached it to the door. She informed the Prestons that their house in Unionville had burned to the ground and urged them to contact the police as soon as possible. It was a lie as big as Moby Dick, but it was one that might save their lives. If they returned to the cabin later that night, they would undoubtedly see both notes and act on them. It was all she could do. The rest was in God's hands.

Michelle returned to the Jeep and pondered her options from the front seat. She thought about taking FR 41 all the way to the highway but quickly dismissed the idea. The time she might save was not worth another encounter with the patrolman. He might not arrest her for circumventing the roadblock, but he would almost certainly ask a lot of questions and take up a lot of her time. She could do without that.

So she flipped on her lights and drove the quarter mile to the clearing. The dusk that had followed her to the cabin had now become night. No lights could be seen on the road or in the hills. If any of the property owners on FR 41 had visited their residences, they were long gone. This stretch of road was as empty and dark as the cabin she had left.

Michelle crossed the clearing easily and turned south onto the logging road. In four more miles, she would rejoin the highway, drive another hour to Castle Rock, and resume her search from the motel. Feeling increasingly confident that the Prestons were somewhere safe, she allowed herself to relax for the first time all day. She pushed the Jeep to forty miles per hour and headed down a dirt road that was remarkably smooth for the time of year.

She slowed to round a sharp corner and resumed her speed before noticing that her empty coffee cup had popped out of its holder and landed by her feet, near the accelerator. She looked down just long enough to find the cup and remove it from its problematic position.

The action proved costly. When Michelle returned her attention to the road she saw a fawn in her path. She snapped the steering wheel to the right and went off the road into a large tree. She heard the engine die and a stuck horn blare before her world went black.

CHAPTER 55: MICHELLE

Sunday, May 18, 1980

Michelle awoke to the light of the day and the sound of chirping birds. The obnoxious horn had apparently given up the ghost sometime during the night. She put a hand to her forehead and felt dried blood and matted hair as a pounding headache began to take hold. She felt stiff and sore from head to toe but, as best she could tell, she had no broken bones.

She unbuckled her seat belt and slowly extricated herself from the Jeep. The front of the vehicle flowed almost uniformly around the trunk of the tree. Two tires, one in front and one in back, were completely flat. The Jeep was a lost cause.

Michelle walked slowly to the road and looked to the east. The sun had already cleared the horizon by fifteen, maybe twenty degrees. Even without a watch she knew it was well past seven o'clock and probably close to eight. She had less than an hour to get out of harm's way.

As she put her hands to her head and tried to quell her headache, the girl who never liked math did some grim calculations. She was at least three miles from the highway. Even walking at a brisk clip, she would need thirty to forty-five minutes to reach the pavement and any trappings of civilization. She did not have that kind of time.

So Michelle looked instead to a ridge to the west. Perhaps six hundred feet high with heavily forested slopes, it was imposing but doable. If she could get to the other side, the one facing away from the mountain, she would have a chance.

Michelle did not need a history book to know the score. She knew all about the volcanic eruption that had taken fifty-seven lives, buried her family's cabin, and destroyed hundreds of square miles of pristine forestland, or enough timber to build 300,000 two-bedroom homes. Because the cataclysmic event had wiped out the site of many childhood memories, she had always viewed the eruption as a personal violation. She knew in considerable detail the stories of all the people who had died and many of the stories of those who had survived.

She knew about four loggers who had been taken by surprise on the leeward side of a nearby ridge. All had been rescued, but only one had survived. She knew about the fisherman and his girlfriend who had escaped death by falling into a hole created by uprooted trees and the TV news photographer who had documented his escape from an apocalyptic scene. She knew that all but three of the volcano's victims had occupied places outside of the red zone and that many had not seen the destructive force coming. Because the sound of the explosion had gone up, not out, and had ricocheted off of the atmosphere to points as far away as Canada, they hadn't heard it either. Michelle would have little, if any, warning.

Michelle was about to concede that she had been dealt a losing hand when she saw a well-groomed trail that followed a fairly straight line to the top of the ridge. Instead of a slow trudge through trees and brush, she saw a quick trip to safety. Her spirits soared. She took another glance at the mountain and got to work. Though relatively smooth and obstacle free, the trail was steep. Michelle yearned for the lightweight hiking boots she had left in Unionville but was glad she had at least remembered to bring her jogging shoes. The first hundred yards passed without a sweat.

When she reached a resting point a few minutes later, her luck improved again. She looked into the distance, at a stretch of the logging road about a mile to the north, and saw a vehicle slowly move her way. Michelle didn't waste a second before turning around and racing down the hill. She reached the bottom in two minutes and ran from the trailhead to the road with her arms in the air. But the effort was all for naught. The vehicle, a dilapidated Ford pickup, blew past Michelle like she didn't exist.

Just that fast her hopes took a hit. She could not believe that the driver had not seen her or, if he had, that he hadn't stopped. But Michelle didn't sulk. She headed back up the hill, this time with increased vigor. Missing her ride into town made her even more determined to beat the coming storm and live to tell her adopted children the tale of the century.

As Michelle made progress toward the ridge, she thought about irony and the decisions that had put her in this predicament. She thought about the consequences of saving April, of course, but also about saving the deer. Had she simply plowed through the stupid animal she would have spent the night in Castle Rock and probably known the whereabouts of the Prestons. But plowing into the deer would have meant killing a creature she revered. She could no more do that than she could shoot a deer with a Winchester rifle at age sixteen.

Michelle also thought about the many incentives to do what it took to survive. She had a loving husband, good friends, and an impressive house, a house that would soon be a home for a small family, if not a large one. She had made her second shot at life work and was bound and determined to make it work even better when she got back.

She finally stopped to rest on a log about two-thirds of the way up. When she glanced back at St. Helens she saw a mostly gray but still majestic mountain, America's Fuji. She still had time. She tied one of her shoes and hit the trail again.

Michelle found the home stretch rockier and steeper. Fewer hikers had apparently made it this far and fewer still had maintained the trail. She stepped over rocks and exposed roots with increasing regularity. But she progressed at a steady clip and by the time she reached another log two hundred yards from the top she allowed herself a smile. She was going to make it.

She sat on the log for a second to pull a stick from her shoe and glanced again at the mountain. Nothing had changed. But when she started to tighten the laces on the shoe, she noticed two deer zip by on the clearing below. Squirrels came out of holes and frantically sought new shelter. The quiet tranquility of the trail was suddenly broken by the sound of dozens of birds.

Michelle looked to the north and saw some of these birds leave the tops of trees in droves. Then she turned to the south and saw the plume.

CHAPTER 56: SHELLY

Castle Rock, Washington – Sunday, May 18, 1980

Shelly opened her still sleepy eyes, stared at the ceiling, and wondered what had possessed her to follow her parents to Washington. Then she remembered that Scott had asked her out Friday afternoon and that she had decided that she had not wanted to deal with more of his entreaties and overtures over the weekend.

So she had packed a bag at four and driven to Castle Rock as fast as her Volkswagen could take her. She had always loved the cabin and figured the weekend was as good a time as any to commune with nature and perhaps sort out several matters swirling through her mind.

Leaving town, however, had meant dumping on Michelle. Shelly had wallowed in guilt from Unionville to The Dalles and again from Portland to Castle Rock. Only the breathtaking Columbia River Gorge had given her reason to think of anything else. She vowed to do something special to make amends. Determining what was her homework for the drive back.

She had finally met up with her parents not at the cabin but at the Lucky Duck Motel in Castle Rock. One look at his damaged property Friday afternoon had convinced Fred Preston that two nights in a cheap motel beat two nights in a vandalized cabin. He had left a message for Shelly on the family's answering machine at three.

Shelly had found the working weekend surprisingly therapeutic. She had helped her mother scrub and disinfect the cabin's interior Saturday morning and helped her father remove brush around its exterior that afternoon. Her only recreation had been a midday hike to the top of a ridge just off of a nearby logging road. But even that had been more than enough to clear her head and recharge her batteries. She was determined to graduate with her mind on future possibilities and not past or present problems. From that standpoint alone, the six-hour trip to Mount St. Helens had been worth it.

Shelly conceded that the drive from the motel to Coldwater Creek had left her uneasy. She and her parents had had to pass through a roadblock to reach their destination on Saturday and police didn't put up roadblocks for nothing. She knew that if the mountain ever blew its top, the family cabin would be reduced to Lincoln Logs. For that reason and others, she had been eager to return to the Lucky Duck and its outdoor pool at the end of the day.