Death Canyon (30 page)

Jake watched her carefully:
She's in shock.

Then another person left the gathered group. This time it was a grown man. He grabbed for his mouth, but was too late. He vomited on the road's shoulder. A few people were clutching at their throats. Jake took a deep inhale through his nose, smelling the air. Something wasn't right.
The air
. The newly formed cracks and fumaroles were releasing poisonous gasses. Jake had read stories of cave explorers who had been killed by this very phenomenon in Yellowstone.

Shit.

“Let's go! Now!” Jake checked the wind direction. “This way!” He motioned to the west. “Fast! Let's go!” The young girl who
first became ill was struggling. Jake ran over and picked her up. “Hurry!” He chased the group across the road and a hundred yards west to the top of a small hill.

“What the hell was that about?” the ranger asked Jake pointedly when he caught his breath from the run.

“Sulfur dioxide, I think. We shouldn't be down there.” The ranger glanced back at the geyser basin. It was still steaming.

“Sorry. I should've known.”

“It's okay.” Jake waved off the apology.

Jake went back to the girl he had carried from the road and asked how she was doing. She still felt woozy, she said, but it was getting better.

“Where's your family?”

“I don't know. I just came with my daddy. He was taking pictures of the geyser when everybody ran.” She looked up at Jake. “Is he okay?”

“I'm sure.” He tousled her hair, and then he had to walk away. When he was out of earshot, Jake cursed out loud. Tears nearly came to his eyes. The group wasn't so big that she wouldn't have found her father; there were only eight or ten remaining. He was the man they had tried to rescue. The man burned alive. Jake went back to the child and sat with her.

The ranger approached them.

“Go for help. I will wait here.” Jake couldn't stand to leave the girl. The ranger jogged to his vehicle and took off north.

Within the hour, paramedics came and set up a battlefield-like triage there in the sage. Park rangers took statements. Jake stayed on and lent a hand to the medics. After a couple of hours, the supervising ranger approached Jake.

“You're set to go whenever you'd like, Mr. Trent.”

Jake looked up at the paramedic. He was sitting with the young girl again. “Can I talk with you for a minute in private?”

The paramedic nodded and they stepped away.

“Where will she go?”

“The girl? Oh, she'll be okay. We've made a phone call. Her mother will be over in West Yellowstone by midnight. Coming in from Massachusetts. We'll have a sheriff with her until then. She lives with her mom, just on vacation with Dad.”

Jake wondered how the man thought this made any difference. “Have you told her yet? About her dad?”

The man shook his head. “Nah, we usually find it better to let the family inform the kid when they're that young. We told her we're still looking for him.” He walked away.

“Thanks again.”

The girl sat alone. Considering the circumstances, she looked like she was doing rather well. Jake knelt down next to her. He put his hand on her back. “Did you find my dad?” she asked him.

“No. We haven't.” Jake changed the subject. “Listen, your mother is coming in to see you. You're gonna be okay.” The girl's expression made Jake shudder.

“One more thing,” the ranger shouted back toward Jake. “Just so you know, they closed the park because of all this business, so you'll find the gate shut. Just give the ranger station there a knock on your way out and someone will come open it for you.”

Jake stood up, nodded at him, and went to the car. He shook off another wave of nausea, started the car, and headed south.

Jake checked his watch; he'd been gone for well over three hours. When he got within range of a cellular tower, he called Noelle. She sounded anxious, and he reassured her that he was okay and asked if they could meet in town. She agreed.

*  *  *

Jake and Noelle met in the town square. She hugged him, feeling around for injuries as if there might actually be holes in his body.

“What the hell happened?”

Jake told her about the man he followed but kept it vague. She wasn't ready for the whole story. Not yet.

Noelle put her hand to her mouth when Jake told her about the man plunging into the boiling water and the young girl. When Jake finished, they both fell silent for a moment, until Noelle suddenly spoke.

“I almost forgot!” Noelle walked quickly across the street to a newspaper stand and grabbed one. She came back waving the paper at him. “Did you see this, Jake? Have you seen this?”

Jake hadn't yet read the paper. “No, what is it?”

“You said they closed the park, right? Look at this!” Noelle held the paper up. Jake took it into his hands so he could read it.

The headline read: “Old? Sure; But Not So Faithful.”

Below the headline was a picture of a park seismologist at a podium. The caption explained further:

Yellowstone park scientist Jarl Hughes explains the reasons for a possible park closure. The proposed shutdown would be temporary until scientists determine what is causing the seismic changes in the region and deem the area safe.

Jake skimmed the remainder of the article. Geothermal features throughout the park were betraying their schedules and habits. Some, like Old Faithful, were not erupting at all. The seismologist quoted in the article attributed this to “a change in the underground anatomy of the geyser.”

Other geysers had grown more intense. In some places, small releases of steam and water, miniature geysers, had seemingly sprouted overnight. The temperatures had changed drastically in many of the park's hot springs and pools. Sulfur dioxide readings were at an all-time high in the region, and fresh elk and bison carcasses indicated extremely high levels of noxious gases in certain localized areas. And of course there were still the earthquakes. There'd been sixty-one documented quakes in the last two days in the Yellowstone area. Ranging from 1.2 to 3.4, most were too subtle to feel.

Jake flipped to the second page. Accompanying the remainder of the article was a small photo of Old Faithful, complete with its crowd of international tourists. The geyser was completely quiet. The caption read: “11:55 a.m. yesterday. The eruption was expected to start at 11:30.”

“Jesus.” Jake looked up at Noelle for a second, and then buried his face in the paper again.

A second article ran below the lead story: “End of Days?” An opinion piece by a staff writer for the
Daily
. The article contained nothing new to Jake. Yes, Yellowstone was a supervolcano. Yes, a complete eruption could send the world into an ice age. Sure, it could be a similar event to that which killed the dinosaurs. Compelling stuff, but it provided no new information that might explain why this all was happening now.

It was all just speculation. Jake knew that it was many times more likely that small change was occurring rather than an impending big eruption. Still, it wasn't every day that the local newspaper predicted the end of the world with your town as the epicenter.

“This is crazy. And printed before this morning's fiasco. They must have made the final call right before or after the boardwalk
failed.” Jake handed the paper back to Noelle. “Have you heard anything through the park service grapevine?”

“Not really. Except to be ready for a big crowd in case Yellowstone closes. Guess I've gotta ‘be ready.' They're expecting a lot of refugee campers in the Tetons if they close Yellowstone. They even designated some temporary campsites.”

“Don't you need to get back up there?” Jake asked.

“No.”

Jake didn't believe her.

“They'll give me a call if they need me,” she reasoned.

“What do we do now?”

“Do you have the license number for the car you followed that we could run?”

“Nope. Never got close enough. I think without that, we just wait and see what happens next.” That thought made both of them uneasy.

Jake put his arm around Noelle. “Let's get something to eat, I'm starving.”

Inside the café, the barista was playing R.E.M.'s “It's the End of the World as We Know It.”

The sun was bright and warm when Makter arrived, bringing a deceitful aura of tranquillity to the structure and its surroundings.

On the way out of the north entrance, the ranger had informed him that the park was going to be shut down for at least a few days. He had to go back now to get his camping supplies if he had been camping in the park.

“Just driving through, thank you,” he told the man in the booth. Makter tried to smile genuinely. Somehow he despised the man in the booth, even though he'd interacted with him for just a moment.

You're losing it, Mak.

Another voice retorted,
You never had it, Mak.
He did his best to block out both.

After a few miles, Makter pulled into the driveway, got out, and rang the bell. Nobody answered. Makter tried again but with the
same result. This wasn't unusual. It was a big house and Jan was usually focused on his work upstairs in the office. Makter tried the doorknob. It was open. He let himself in.

The relationship between Makter and Jan went back more than forty years now. They'd played together as kids and they'd learned to be men together. Both from German families living in Hoboken, their kin got along naturally. Both were raised in broken homes, and this cemented their fate together.

Neither could even remember when they had first met, it was so long ago. In the beginning their respect and adoration for each other was mutual. They were equals in every way—school, sports, popularity. Both outsiders in school at first, they shared an envy and hatred toward the ruling class.

They were inseparable.

But during their freshman year in high school, Jan began to move up in the social strata of Washington and Jefferson High. He still spent time with Makter, but mostly when they were hanging out in the neighborhood. In school, it seemed like Jan wanted nothing to do with him.

Makter was a troublemaker. Family life had led him to become violent and destructive. When he was fourteen he nearly beat a classmate to death with a bat after school, because of a trivial insult. The boy recovered but was too afraid to rat Makter out. The event was empowering. He never forgot that feeling.

As the years passed, Makter saw Jan less and less. At fifteen, he was selling weed to his classmates. By their junior year, it became commonplace for Makter and his gang to drive into the cities, New York or Philadelphia, to buy cocaine and acid to sell in their hometown. Makter bought a car, and this helped him gain some popularity back in school, but he still felt neglected. He didn't care
about the money he made selling drugs, and he spent it freely. He had learned to crave power, respect, and fear.

Meanwhile, Jan was succeeding in a more traditional sense. He was the offensive captain of the football team, a star receiver. His grades were among the best in the class. In the fall of his junior year, he was already talking to Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Virginia. Things came easily for him.

Then he got injured. It was a late-season home game, and they were up by fourteen in the third quarter. The play was a fluke; Jan wasn't even injured by an opposing player. His own tight end fell against his knee, tearing his ACL and MCL. He missed the remainder of the season. As he recovered, Jan also spent a lot of time at home. It was his right leg, so even if he could have borrowed his mom's car, he couldn't drive anywhere.

His friendship with Makter was reestablished. Mak's house had become quite the hangout for those from the wrong side of the tracks. His mother was working two jobs and even if she was home, she didn't bother herself with disciplining her only child. She mostly sat upstairs in her bedroom, watched TV, and drank vodka chased with cheap beer.

At that time, Jan didn't want to be too involved with nefarious characters. He would smoke pot with them, watch a movie, and then limp home on his crutches. The idea stuck in his mind, though:
Sixteen- and seventeen-year-old kids making as much money as their parents make working twenty hours a week. Dumb kids, too. I could make a killing if I were them . . .

After Jan recovered, those thoughts went dormant. He set records in his senior year and went on to Harvard on scholarship. He didn't excel there, but he did better than average. After Jan graduated with a degree in economics, his good looks and charisma
made him a natural in commercial real estate. Entrepreneurial endeavors followed. He always stayed in touch with Makter, who was doing surprisingly well in admittedly darker circles. Jan traveled far and often, but when he was in the area, he always made time for his old friend.

*  *  *

“Jan? Hello?” Makter shouted into the cavernous two-story entryway. There was no response. He tried one more time and then climbed the stairway to the top floor. No sign of life.

Makter turned in to the office with the big picture windows. The monitors were lit up and beeping. There was a half-empty glass of water on the desk and a bottle of scotch with two old-fashioned-style glasses on a serving cart.

Someone left in a hurry.
Makter looked around and then took out his cell phone.
Where is everyone?

Footsteps. The clicking sound of expensive leather soles echoed in the mostly unfurnished building.
A cop? Sounds like a fucking cop.
Makter looked around, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.
Dammit.

The man spoke before he entered the room. “Do you know why you're here, Mak?” His voice betrayed his disappointment.