Authors: Linda Jacobs
Fire at her fingertips in the shadowy room reminded her of finding Stanton alone in the seismic lab before his stroke. She wondered what he would think if faced with the information they had gathered. The harmonic waves, gas seeps, and heat flow with steam vents popping up like pressure cookers were all signs that historically pointed to eruptions.
Except when they had not.
Back in 1975, an evacuation order was issued the day before a magnitude 7.3 quake struck Haicheng in China. The precursors included changes in land elevation and ground water levels, foreshocks, and reports of strange animal behavior. It was believed that many thousands of people were saved by the evacuation. On the other hand, only a year later, China suffered a magnitude 7.6 in Tangshan. Without any warning, 250,000 people died.
In California, the Parkfield area had suffered large earthquakes in 1857, 1881, 1901, 1922, 1934, and 1966. USGS and other scientists regularly monitored the faults and had made a prediction of a magnitude 6.0 between 1988 and 1992.
It didn’t happen.
At Mount St. Helens, the public had been officially warned that the mountain might erupt within a few months.
It hadn’t taken that long.
Her head spinning with the conflicting stories, she took another drag on the Marlboro. It didn’t please her.
Wyatt appeared in the bunkroom doorway. His feet looked pale against black fleece long johns like hers. His chest was bare. “Can’t sleep?” he asked softly.
“No.” Knowing his aversion to smoke, she stubbed out her cigarette.
He went back into the dark bunkroom. Upon his return, he wore a pullover and carried his sleeping bag that he used to cover them both. In the light of the single candle, his face looked tanned and gaunt while a trace of midnight shadow stubbled his jaw.
“I can’t stop running scenarios.” He ruffled his sleep-tossed hair. “Guess there’s something to be said for surfing with no fear.” He nodded toward the bunkroom. As if on cue, Nick snuffled in his sleep.
“I’ve been thinking about what we should do,” she said.
They sat for a moment in silence.
“Me, too,” Wyatt admitted. “If Nick’s right about magma pushing up the fault or under the peak, this is no ordinary situation where strain will be released. Each larger quake might buy a little time before the next, but who knows?”
“I went out a while ago and detected gas below the cabin. It’s blowing away right now, but…” She envisioned red-hot melted rock pushing its relentless way toward the surface. Upon reaching a narrow conduit like the Saddle Valley fault, it would build heat and pressure until a fissure broke through to release lava …
Or the mountain could explode, blasting down the forest and crushing the cabin walls.
As if the earth could read her thoughts, a jolt shook the cabin.
At the shock, Kyle’s own walls, the ones she had built inside her, broke down. Fragments of memory formed into sharp shards. Incoherent shades of black and gray were accompanied by a shower of sound and earth.
Her fists clenched on the sleeping bag and she closed her eyes. Pain stabbed at her, the awful sense of loss, flashing her back again to memories so ancient they should have been long buried.
“Kyle.” Wyatt’s voice was soft yet intent.
Small sparks of light exploded like fireworks as she lifted her fists and rubbed them against her eyelids. She didn’t want to see, but…
She opened her eyes and took a jagged breath.
From across the length of sofa, Wyatt reassured her with his dark eyes. His free hand shushed across the sleeping bag and settled over her cold fingers. “You going to tell me about it this time?”
She acted on long-established instinct. “Tell you what? That any thinking human being would be scared sitting on this powder keg?”
“I am,” he agreed.
Though no further tremors shook them, a shudder went through her.
“Would it help if I built a fire?” Wyatt asked.
She looked at the hearth and nodded. Not wanting to think, she focused on him bringing in firewood along with a gust of chill.
“This’ll fix you right up,” he promised, laying the kindling with care and piling on a small log.
She had the presence of mind to toss him Nick’s lighter. As the flames caught and shadows brightened, he came back, slid under the sleeping bag and tucked it snugly around them. Sitting thigh to thigh, his warmth seeped into her.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world when he put his arm around her and drew her against him. Together, they watched the flames while his question remained between them.
“Wyatt…”
“Right here.”
Yet, after being alone with her secret for nearly a lifetime, she pressed her lips together.
He squeezed her shoulders. “You’re the strongest woman I know. You can do anything you want.”
“No … no.” Darkness, black water, and a dead moon stifled her.
“Kyle.” Wyatt pulled her head down so her ear rested over his heart. “For God’s sake, talk to me.”
Held warm and solid against him, feeling his pulse, she actually began to consider letting someone into her private nightmare. If she shared her burden, perhaps it might weigh less.
“It’s bad,” she warned.
“We can take it.” He bent his head. Something that might have been his lips brushed her temple.
She took the plunge. “I was in Rock Creek Campground the night the mountain fell. Both my parents died.”
From the back room, Nick’s soft snoring continued.
“My dog Max … he was the sweetest Golden. I’ve never had another dog.” She felt tears rising. “I spent the night in a tree. Climbing higher and higher to keep from drowning. The lantern went out… the moon was covered by dust clouds.”
Once she started, she found she wanted to talk about that long-ago night. About the ground roll, the strange sensation of near weightlessness when the earth lifted, and the constant battering of aftershocks. For a long time, she talked and Wyatt listened.
“When you think about what happened,” he asked, “what scares you the most?”
Was it the first shock that had torn through the earth and dropped the Rambler? The sight of her father seized by the shock wave and tossed like a straw man? Max’s frantic barking silenced by an avalanche of sound?
“When I couldn’t hold on to the tree anymore, I fell into the black water. I managed to make it onto the slide, and I was taken to a hospital. Franny and Zeke drove up from Arizona to get me. Ever since then, what scares me the most is the nightmares I have of finding my family dead … and the fact that I have no idea if they are real.”
“Anything I could say,” Wyatt pressed his cheek to hers, “would be inadequate.” He gestured toward the bunkroom. “Does Nick know?”
She shook her head. “Stanton figured it out, back when I first came to Utah and refused to take a fieldtrip to the slide. I’ve never told anyone else.”
With his free hand, Wyatt smoothed her tousled hair. “I’m the first?”
“I haven’t talked about it because I couldn’t bear to think about it. Even though I’ve worked on Yellowstone, I’d never been back to Earthquake Lake or Madison Canyon … until I met you there. I tried to put it all away in a corner of my mind as dark as that night, and I’ve always kept the lights on.”
Wyatt glanced at her candle lantern.
She looked toward the bunkroom. “I once thought I loved Nick with everything in me, but I could never imagine telling him. He’s such an adrenaline junkie he’d probably tell me to buck up or some other jolly cliché.”
Wyatt touched the purpling skin below his eye that was forming into a real shiner. “Is there anybody really home?”
“He’s in there, all right. He just doesn’t let people get close.”
“A lot of us are like that… me, you …”
Kyle smiled and dashed at the tears on her cheek. “I guess with my secrets, I’m one to talk.” Settling back into the sofa, she ignored a spring pressing her back. “When you asked me to meet you at the Visitor Center, I honestly thought if I went back, I’d see a weathering landslide and be able to tell myself it no longer frightened me.” She scooted down and settled her head on his shoulder. “Since the trouble started up here, I’m like those Vietnam veterans flashing back, or a guy who stormed the beach at Normandy.”
“In the last few weeks, you have been different.” He waved his hand to indicate a progression of ups and downs.
“Crazy?” she asked bitterly.
His face changed to a look of determination. “I’ll fight anybody who says you’re crazy.”
“Well, try this on. We all make fun of Brock Hobart making predictions. Yet, now I wonder if he isn’t on the right track. He’s certainly as serious in his beliefs as I am when I say we need to alert them at Headquarters about more big earthquakes. At the very least.”
Wyatt nodded.
“Better be sure you want in on this,” she advised. “If we put out a warning and nothing happens, for days or weeks or months, everyone will say we’re nuts.”
H
ow domestic.” Nick’s voice startled Kyle awake. He stood in the door of the bunkroom, a cowlick in his hair. Morning light grayed the windows, and his breath steamed.
She was shocked to realize she was still in Wyatt’s arms. A bad taste in her mouth from the cigarette and a crick in her neck warred with the languid sensation of waking up next to someone warm. Wyatt stirred, and when she would have leaped to her feet, he placed a restraining hand on her arm beneath the sleeping bag.
“Oops,” he drawled, not sounding the least sorry. “Must have fallen asleep watching the fire.”
As Kyle got up slowly and took the few steps to the bunkroom to dress, she wasn’t sure she was sorry either. Fairy tale wisdom had it that one cared for one man at a time, the way she’d once wanted Nick with everything in her. In the field, things weren’t that simple.
In one of her late-night talks with Franny, her grandmother had told Kyle of her own experience as a young woman in Wyoming. While she was working at the Jackson Hole ranch, two men had courted her, brothers, and she’d confessed to the very real dilemma of loving them both. In fact, the outcome had been so difficult it had caused a family rift so deep that one branch had moved to Texas.
At least in Kyle’s case, there was no question of having to choose between Nick and Wyatt. Nick’s overtures must have originated in a brandy bottle, and as for Wyatt, he had Alicia.
Yet, as Kyle’s hand mirror revealed her hair to be a rat’s nest over her shoulders, she could still feel the soothing way Wyatt had smoothed it back from her face when she’d confided in him. Had he kissed her temple or had that been her imagination?
Breakfast was a strained affair. Nick set plates with such precision she wished he’d plunk them down. The silence went on so long, she finally couldn’t stand it.
“Last night before we … fell asleep, Wyatt and I were talking about what to do.”
Nick’s head came up sharply and his eyes shifted from her to Wyatt and back. “I daresay.” His voice was edged with the kind of violence that had already led to Wyatt’s black eye.
Kyle slapped her hand on the table. “Oh, for God’s sake! We were talking about the mountain.” With all her heart, she wanted to suggest they go back to civilization, but wasn’t that the coward’s way?
Wyatt spoke. “I think we should leave this morning, before things get any worse.”
She expected anger from Nick, derision at the very least. Instead, he pressed his lips into a line and nodded.
Wyatt cleared the table and started cleaning up. Nick had cooked, and though by their system he was technically exempt from doing dishes, to Kyle’s surprise Wyatt helped with that task as well. They were to leave the patrol cabin as they’d found it: clean, blankets and rations in place, and a fire laid in case someone in need of warmth and food sought shelter there.
“I think we need to send a new message to Radford Bullis,” Kyle suggested as she booted the laptop. “Wyatt and I talked about warning folks about what’s happening up here.”
Nick cast another measuring gaze at both her and Wyatt. “I guess you think I’m opposed to that after what I said about our false alarm at Long Valley Caldera.”
“You’re not?” Wyatt asked.
“Of course not.” Nick dried a coffee mug. “I’m all in favor of keeping people abreast.”
“Then let’s do it.” Wyatt polished a spoon.
Relieved that the two men were willing to accept a truce to discuss the work at hand, Kyle opened a mail file. Fingers poised, she tried to figure out her opening. Short and sweet, or long on jargon?
She began typing.
We are leaving Nez Perce Peak this morning due to high heat flow and the danger of hydrogen sulfide gas seeping up a fault along the north side of the mountain. Fields of new fumaroles have appeared on the summit for which we have no gas analysis. Our seismic readings indicate that the park will probably experience more and possibly stronger earthquakes before this cycle of activity subsides
.
A low whistle came from Nick’s pursed lips as he watched over her shoulder.
She couldn’t read his mood. “What would you say?”
Nick set aside his dishtowel, pulled out a chair and sat down facing her. “You might have thought I was snoring the night away, but sometimes I do my best thinking by not thinking. This morning when I woke, I had a gut instinct something was even more wrong than we’ve thought.” He gestured toward the computer. “Let’s have a look at the GPS data.”
While Kyle accessed the information, Nick went on, “I got to thinking about David Mowry being killed miles from here. We’ve been looking at the local GPS stations, but…”
Wyatt put the last dish into the cabinet and joined them at the table. “You mean what if this thing is bigger than just Nez Perce Peak?”
“Precisely.”
Kyle plotted the differential data showing the elevation changes since the New Moon quake on a map. Staring at the large contoured bull’s-eye that covered a quarter of the park and centered on Nez Perce, she said tersely, “You’re right, Nick.”
He looked at the screen. “About your message to Radford. I think you’d better make it stronger.”