Death Canyon (34 page)

Could Noelle be right about the quakes? Is it actually possible that they tie into all this somehow? If she's right, this is no minor disturbance where the deer go on grazing. Not a fly left stuck in a streamside bush. This is meddling with a force that no one can predict or understand.

Jake hoped that Keith's friend might be able to answer those questions. This was a matter far beyond his realm of knowledge. Another shudder in the earth. He turned to see Noelle and Keith a ways ahead of him, so he jogged to catch up.

In another basement laboratory, they found Dr. Stevenson. He was tall and skinny and of Asian-American descent. His hair was well groomed and he wore expensive eyeglasses, but there was a childlike quality about him. They shook hands all around.

“So what can I do for you? There's a lot of exciting stuff going on right now!” He sounded giddy.

To Jake, his enthusiasm was off-putting. Despite how interesting the quakes might be from a scientific standpoint, they were destructive already and bound to get worse.

Noelle was on the same page. She inquired into his meaning. “What do you mean, exciting?”

“The earthquakes of course, and the changes in geology, especially in the park—”

“Right. Sorry to stop you, but changes in geology?” Jake asked. “As in, the earth is moving?”

“Yes, of course. Something like this hasn't happened since 1959—the Hebgen Lake quake. It's pretty remarkable.”

“What exactly is changing? Geologically, I mean?” Despite his eccentric bedside manner, it seemed to Jake that Stevenson knew what he was talking about.

“Everything. Well, the earth always moves when there is an earthquake. Around here we have extremely sensitive geothermal features. Any slight movement underground can change them—creating new geysers, eliminating old ones . . .”

“Like Old Faithful?” Noelle asked, thinking of the newspaper article.

“Exactly! In 1959, it was a 7.5 that did it. That quake delayed Old Faithful's eruption time by nearly nine minutes! This time, it seems as if these smaller quakes have had the same effect.”

“But the geyser isn't erupting at all right now.”

“Right! And it may never erupt again. There's a complicated network of tubes and ducts down there, naturally formed, of course. If some get blocked and others open up, it changes the location and intensity of the geyser. It might never return to the state it was in before the quakes.”

The explanation got Keith's attention. “So, if Old Faithful isn't erupting now, does that mean that the energy—the heat—is being stored somewhere and might cause a more massive eruption?”

Stevenson laughed. “No, not at all. The water and steam would likely be escaping elsewhere, through cracks and springs and the formation of new geysers. Another close-by geyser might get bigger or more regular, who knows? Anyway, I don't mean to overwhelm you with my excitement. You were saying, Ms. . . . ?”

“Noelle, please. Our question is a little out there, but we were wondering whether there is any way for a person to start an earthquake?” She paused for a second and then spoke again. “Well, I guess a series of earthquakes.”

Stevenson gave Noelle a grave look. Then he started to laugh. “Sounds like a Superman movie or something.” He looked at Jake and Keith for a laugh but didn't get one. “I mean, no. Impossible. Not on this scale.”

Noelle felt silly and so she fell silent, but Jake spoke. “You say not on this scale, what do you mean by that?”

“I didn't mean to offend you, ma'am,” he said, turning to Noelle. “All I mean is that yes, it is
technically
possible to cause an earthquake, or at least increase the chances of one. That being said, it could never have been done across such a huge area.”

“Has this ever been attempted before?”

“Not attempted, no. It has arguably happened before, but accidentally, of course.” He took a big sip from an oversized soda.

“How? And how would it be done?”

“Just a simple change of conditions. You shift stuff around deep in the earth, and you just might cause some instability that could lead to an occurrence.”

“How do you cause instability?”

“You could do it quite a few ways, really. Explosives would work, I suppose, if you had enough of them.”

“So in theory someone with bad intentions could make this happen?”

“No way. You would need the explosives inventory of a large country and hundreds of millions of dollars of drilling equipment. The operation would be huge.”

“But you said it has happened before, right, just not with explosives?”

“There's a lot of evidence it's happened before, yes. Especially in one specific event in Switzerland. Government experiments caused it. Nothing malicious. Just some miscalculations.”

“What happened?”

“Well, the exact way the quakes were caused never really got out to the public. It's likely only a couple of drilling companies and the Swiss government know exactly how it went down. They would have to be involved to pull something like this off.”

“Could that happen here?”

“Not possible, at least not with these quakes. Again, the scope is too big. If it was even attempted, we'd know about it by now. You couldn't do it on federal land without somebody noticing.”

Noelle raised her hands in defeat. Jake spoke. “I think that's all we've got. I guess we are barking up the wrong tree. Thank you for your time, Doctor.”

Noelle exchanged “thank yous” and “nice to meet yous” with Stevenson. Keith shook his hand and asked one last question.

“Hey, should we be worried about this stuff? All the activity, I mean . . . everybody knows Yellowstone is a supervolcano, does this mean it's getting ready to erupt?”

Stevenson patted Keith on the back. “Nothing to worry about. This sort of activity just comes along from time to time. Nobody really knows why it happens, but there's no reason to think it's an indication that the whole thing is going to blow. Of course someday it will, but we'll never see it coming.”

A lovely thought.

Keith nodded at him and shook his hand again. Jake and Noelle exchanged dubious looks.

The trio walked back to Noelle's truck. It was just after noon.

“Y'all are welcome to stay and hang out. It's a long ride back, and I know a place that makes a mean green-chili stew,” Keith told them as he walked them to the car. “Jake, man, we can BS about fishing, like the good old days.”

Jake and Noelle looked at each other. “Maybe just a quick lunch, then we'd better get back.”

*  *  *

Lunch took longer than Jake or Noelle would've liked. In the two hours they spent at Rio's Café, six small quakes interrupted Keith's animated stories of bears, trout, and general adventure.

As Keith walked them back to the truck, he looked from Noelle to Jake. “Wait, are you guys like . . . you know . . . ?” His voice trailed off into an embarrassed laugh.

“Are we what?” Noelle asked.

“Like an item or whatever, you know, a couple?”

The question made Noelle uncomfortable. Her short fling with Keith was a long time ago, but romance was still a topic she didn't want to discuss with the present company.

Noelle finally responded. “Why would you think that?”

“No reason.” He hugged Noelle and firmly shook Jake's hand, promising to come down to Jackson for some fishing “if the world doesn't end.” He was kidding, but the joke failed in the face of the looming uncertainty.

They got in the truck, Jake in the driver's seat, and waved to Keith. As they headed south, neither of them said a word about Keith's question. Both wondered if a conversation on the matter
was really necessary. If it was, this wasn't the time or place to do it. They sat in silence.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, just a mile from the north entrance, a female grizzly bear was digging furiously at an embankment. Every thirty seconds or so the sow would stick her dish-shaped face into the dirt, huffing, trying to smell for any signs of life. Then she resumed digging more frantically after each break.

Her hackles were up, making her already huge shoulders look all the more impressive. The pile of dirt and rocks behind her was nearly three feet tall already—this is what the animals were built for, using their powerful shoulders and long claws to scrounge for food when conditions were tough.

This mother's urgency stemmed from another primal urge, and when she lowered her heavy head to sniff the earth one last time, she had hope. A small black nose was protruding from the wreckage of the collapsed den.

She started digging again. More carefully this time and only around the outside of the dusty form she had discovered. When all the dirt was cleared away, she grabbed her cub by the scruff of his neck and dragged him a few feet away from their collapsed home.

The cub lay motionless for a moment. Its mother was distraught. Then, without warning, the cub stood up and shook off. The elated mom licked away the remaining dust and dirt from his fur. She curled her lips and huffed at the collapsed den. Then she turned and sauntered off with the cub in tow, looking for safer ground.

*  *  *

Noelle was pumping gas into the truck at a station twenty miles south of Bozeman. It was three fifteen. “Do you want to go through the park or around the long way?”

“Was thinking the long way,” Jake answered. “Unless you have a preference. We're not in a hurry, are we? No reason to risk it.”

“I'm not,” Noelle said, but she was disappointed in his decision. She paused, then spoke again. “Let's just go through the park. If someone stops us, I'll just fess up. It can't be
that
big of a deal.”

He laughed. “Okay, Ranger Klimpton.”

“You mind driving for a bit?”

When they got to the next intersection, Jake turned the vehicle left toward the north entrance of Yellowstone.

Fifteen miles north of the park, another bison jam held them up.

“Weird to see them this far out of the park,” Noelle said.

“Wonder what they're doing?”

“Fleeing, maybe.” The implications of Noelle's statement made them both stay silent for a few minutes. The line of animals crossing the road stretched on for a few hundred yards. They moved at a deliberate pace.

“Still want to go through the park?” Jake gave her a concerned look. He lowered the windows and killed the engine to let the bison pass.

She nodded.

*  *  *

They were about ten miles from the north entrance of Yellowstone when they felt another shiver in the earth. This time the car shook hard, jostling its passengers in their seat belts. CDs fell from the overhead compartment. The tall evergreens that made up the forest swayed at their pinnacles.

Noelle was afraid. She fidgeted with her seat belt, which had become uncomfortably tight.

The quake stopped abruptly like all the others. Noelle bent to pick up her CD collection from the floor of the truck.

Jake looked at her. “You're sure you still wanna go through the park?” he asked one last time.

“We're committed now.” The herd had continued moving in behind the truck after they'd passed. “I don't want to wait for the bison again.”

She shoved the albums back into their storage compartment. Outside, the pine needles and leaves knocked from their roosts were still floating in the wind, descending slowly and playfully.

They went on a few more miles in silence. Small quakes occasionally broke through the landscape's facade of serenity.

Jake was thinking about their visit with the seismologist, trying to decide whether or not there was anything of value in his assessment. “What do you think he meant by government experiments, exactly?”

“Who, Dr. Stevenson? No idea.”

The truck bucked like a bronco and Jake fell silent. He slowed the vehicle to a crawl. Then another bump. Jake cocked his head, trying to feel for the source of the bump.

Is the truck breaking down?

There was a pause in the chaos before the earth roared back to life. It was the strongest one yet. Noelle braced herself by pushing her palms against the roof of the truck. Jake held the steering wheel tight, trying to keep the vehicle on the road.

The earth groaned louder. Jake feared the worst.
The eruption.
Scrambled thoughts cycled through his mind.
I'll never see Noelle again. We were so close to figuring it all out. I'll never know what could have been.

Jake slammed the truck to a complete stop as folds of asphalt were heaved up in front of them. Noelle could see that Jake was afraid, and that frightened her more. She reached over and held his hand on the steering wheel.

Tree branches were falling from the forest. Birds left their perches and hovered in the air, looking for solace. Squirrels scrambled down the tree trunks to the ground.

A hard knock threatened to roll the truck over. Noelle screamed.

“Hold on!” Jake shouted back.

The roadway bucked, releasing steam and water. The tremors intensified. All around them, the earth buckled, hazy smoke pouring forth.

Noelle yelled through the chaos, her voice trembling. “I'm guessing that's not a water main?” She was pointing to a jet of water shooting forty feet in the air.

“Don't think so!”

The shaking was making them dizzy, affecting their vision. Everything was a blur.

Holy shit!

Whole trees fell. First the smaller Engelmann spruce. Then a handful of lodgepoles flopped to the ground, many that had proudly stood seventy-five feet tall. Their branches slapped the earth as they fell and sent clouds of dust up and out.

The steam bursting from the road increased, and the temperature was rising fast in the truck. Noelle yelled at Jake over the rumbling earth and hissing steam. “Get out or stay in?!” Her face was panicked.