Eruption (11 page)

Chase felt a hand on his shoulder and started awake. He turned around. Cindy was standing behind him with her finger to her lips, motioning for him to be quiet. He looked at the Rossis. They were both sound asleep. He stood up. Tomás was not with Cindy, but she wasn't alone. A girl, a few years older than Chase, was standing in the doorway. They walked over to her.

“This is Blanca,” Cindy said. “Tomás's oldest daughter.”

Chase recognized her from one of the photos on Tomás's dashboard. He gave her a smile and she returned it with a smile of her own.

“Guadalupe is down in the kitchen cooking. Tomás is with her. Blanca will watch the Rossis.”

“I don't mind watching them,” Chase said.

“Tomás needs your help with the generator.”

Chase couldn't imagine Tomás needing help with anything mechanical, but he was pleased to be asked.

As they walked down to the first floor, Cindy explained what had happened since they had separated. Her voice got a little shaky when she came to the part about dangling over
the abyss. He knew how she felt. If the pileup had given way when he was crossing it, he would be dead.

Fate
, he thought. “So Nicole and my father are okay,” he said.

“And Mark,” Cindy said.

“Right.” He had completely forgotten about the sixth member of their team.

“As far as I know, they are all good. Like I said, the connection was terrible. From what I gathered, they'd found the circus stranded on the road to Puebla. They can't go forward. They can't go back.”

“Kind of like us,” Chase said.

Cindy nodded. “He said something about elephants and cats getting killed. Apparently, a couple of circus trucks went off the road. I think the drivers died as well. He said
some
of the cats — or
one
of the cats — had escaped. It wasn't clear.”

“What kind of cat?”

“I think he said it was a tiger. Your father was afraid he was going to lose the signal, so he was talking fast. He brushed over it like it was no big deal.”

That's because he's never come face-to-face with a big cat in the dark
, Chase thought.

“Did he say where he thought the tiger was?”

Cindy shook her head. “But just before the signal went dead, he said something about trying to arrange a rescue. I have no idea what he meant by that either.”

“Did you tell him about me getting robbed?”

“Yes, and he was very concerned.”

“Then he's on his way up here to find me,” Chase said.

Cindy looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “I hadn't thought of that, but you're probably right. It's not going to be easy in the dark with essentially no way to get here.”

“The only easy day was yesterday,” Chase said.

Cindy smiled.

 

Mark stumbled and fell. He had been walking behind John and Nicole. They ran back and helped him to his feet. He was more concerned about his camera than he was about broken bones.

“I'm fine,” he insisted, checking the camera. “I was focusing on the pugmarks, not paying attention to where I was stepping.” He turned the camera on and looked through the viewfinder. Satisfied that there was no damage, he turned it off and asked John, “Why are you following the tiger? Aren't we in enough trouble? Things getting a little too dull for you?”

“I'm not following the tiger,” John said. “I'm taking the easiest path across the mountain. Apparently, the tiger is doing the same thing.”

“He's right,” Nicole said. “Cats are generally lazy. This one's taking the path of least resistance.”

“Really,” Mark said. “Then why did he walk
up
the mountain instead of down?”

John laughed and looked at Nicole. “Mark has a good point.”

“I guess,” Nicole conceded.

“Here's the deal,” John said. “We may bump into the tiger or we may not. It doesn't really matter. We don't have
anything to defend ourselves with. We can't outrun it. Therefore the best thing we can do right now is to forget about the tiger. We need to concentrate on getting to Lago. That's our only option.”

Mark looked down at the pugmarks. “Or we could walk in the opposite direction.”

“You mean walk back down to the road?” John asked.

“Yeah.”

“Suit yourself,” John said and continued walking in the direction of the pugmarks.

“Mr. Charm,” Mark muttered.

Nicole smiled. “Are you really okay?”

“I'm fine. You're the cat expert. What do you do when you run into one in the dark during a volcanic eruption?”

“Cats generally go after the weakest or the slowest.”

Mark looked at his camera. “This thing is going to be the death of —”

A lightning bolt struck the ground not twenty feet in front of them. Nicole and Mark were blown off their feet. They landed on their backs with the air knocked out of them.

Nicole raised her head and gulped for breath. The air was filled with the sharp acrid smell of ozone. She wasn't exactly sure what had happened. She sat up.

“Mark?”

“Yeah.”

She could barely hear him. It was as if she had cotton stuffed in her ears. And there was something the matter with
her vision. Flashes of bright light pulsated across her eyes, making it impossible to see more than a few feet away.

“Did we just get struck by lightning?” Her own voice sounded a mile away from her.

“No,” Mark said. “But it was close. Too close. Can you stand up?”

Nicole turned her head, surprised to see that he was right next to her.

“You sound a million miles away.”

“Eardrums,” he said. “We'll be okay in a little bit. Can you stand?”

“I think so.”

She felt him take her hands and pull her to her feet.

“I'm having a hard time seeing,” she said.

“That will come back too,” Mark said, his voice sounding a little less muffled. “The flash was pretty bright. Blinded me too for a minute, but things are beginning to come into focus again.”

“What about —” Nicole began.

“That's my next stop,” Mark said. “I'll run up ahead and see how he's doing. He probably didn't even notice that we nearly got hit.”

Nicole doubted that.

“Wait here,” Mark said.

She wasn't about to wait there. She followed him.

Fifty feet away, they found John Masters lying on the ground. His eyes were closed. He was pale. His right foot was
turned at an unnatural angle. Nicole kneeled down next to him.

“He's not breathing,” she said.

 

As Chase and Cindy reached the first floor, the air went still. They stopped and looked at each other.

“The rumbling is gone,” Chase said.

Cindy nodded. “I hadn't really noticed the noise until now.”

“I wonder what it means,” Chase said.

They walked into the kitchen and saw Tomás standing at the window. He was holding two young children in his arms and looking out at Popocatepetl. Guadalupe stood behind him, stirring a delicious-smelling stew on top of a woodstove.

“The moon,” Tomás said in English, giving Chase and Cindy a rare smile.

They joined him at the window. The full moon shined brightly next to the plume, casting an eerie light down the mountainside.

“Is it over?” Cindy asked.

Tomás nodded. “For now.”

“How do you know?” Chase asked, hoping he was right.

“Experience,” Guadalupe answered in surprisingly better English than Tomás spoke. “The worst is behind us. We will mourn our dead, then we will rebuild.”

Tomás put the two children down and looked at the bump on Chase's head.

“I'm fine,” Chase said.

“Good.” He handed Chase his go bag. “We need to fix the generator.”

Chase pulled his headlamp out and slipped it on.

 

The tiger stood listening in the stillness. He looked up at the moon until the ash cloud hid the light. He drank more water. The people were close. He could hear them talking. He was hungry.

“Breathe!” Nicole shouted. She was on her knees next to John Masters, doing rapid and deep chest compressions with the heels of her hands.

“What can I do?” Mark asked, a look of panic and fear on his face.

“Nothing.” She stopped the compressions, moved to John's head, tilted it back, filled his lungs with two quick breaths, then started the compressions once again.

Mark paced back and forth. John Masters's luck seemed to have run out. “What are the chances of getting struck by lightning twice?” he shouted in angry frustration. He looked up at the plume, expecting to see more lightning, but the flashes had been replaced by moonlight. The plume seemed to be breaking up, the wind blowing the ash cloud to the east.

And it's quiet
, Mark thought. Popocatepetl's roar had stopped. The only thing he could hear was Nicole's rhythmic compressions as she tried to bring Lightning John back to life.

“Breathe!” she shouted again. “Please!”

 

Chase and Cindy followed Tomás out the back door of the orphanage. He led them over to a locked shed. He pulled a key ring out of his pocket and unlocked the double doors. Behind the doors was an impressive collection of tools. Power tools, hand tools, compressors, a portable generator, a welder …

Chase smiled.
He has his own private tool stash. Visiting Lago only once a year, it must have taken him years to accumulate all of this stuff
.

Tomás started picking tools off the wall and shelves and putting them into a heavy-duty canvas bag. He looked at Chase and pointed to the portable generator and the dollied acetylene torch used for cutting metal.

Now Chase knew why Tomás had asked for his help. It wasn't to wield tools, it was to haul them.

“I can carry something,” Cindy said.

Tomás offered her his go bag.

“Not a chance,” she said. She grabbed the dolly with the heavy acetylene and oxygen tanks.

 

“Breathe!”

John Masters did. His mouth opened. He sucked in a loud gulp of air.

“You saved his life!” Mark shouted.

John stared up at them, disoriented and confused. “What happened?”

“Lightning,” Nicole said.

“Again?” John said weakly. He tried to sit up but didn't get very far. He collapsed back onto the ground with a groan.

“I'm afraid I broke, or bruised, some of your ribs giving you CPR.”

“Where'd you learn CPR?” John asked weakly.

“Lifeguard class, but I've never had to do it on a real person.”

“Thanks,” he said hoarsely. “Not for the ribs, but for sav —” He stopped in mid-sentence.

“What's the matter?” Nicole asked, concerned.

“Where's the sound?”

Mark smiled. “While you were taking your catnap, the volcano shut down.”

“Catnap, huh?” John laughed, then winced in pain. “How long was I out?”

“You mean dead,” Mark said.

“How long?”

Nicole looked at her watch in surprise. “Only four minutes or so,” she said. Her arms ached from pushing on his chest.

John tried to sit up again, but it was no good. The pain was too bad.

“Just stay down, for crying out loud,” Mark said. “Four minutes is enough to cause brain damage, but apparently it didn't in your case. You're
still
crazy. And Nicole didn't give you the complete diagnosis. Your right leg is broken, or at least twisted up pretty badly. Since you weren't breathing, we didn't think it was important.”

“Well, I'm breathing now.” John tried to raise his head to see his leg but failed. “Take a look at it.”

Nicole and Mark looked without touching it. His right foot was at a right angle to his leg and swelling out of his boot.

“It's your ankle,” Mark said. “It looks broken.”

“I might be able to set it,” Nicole said. “But I'd have to go back down to the tree line to get wood.”

“Even if you set it, I wouldn't be able to walk.” John laid his head back down and looked up at the sky. He laughed.

“I don't see anything funny about this,” Nicole said.

“I'm laughing at your grandmother.”

Nicole wondered if John Masters
did
have brain damage after all.

“She told me the lightning was going to find me again,” John explained. “I guess she was right.” He looked at Nicole. “She also told your father that if you didn't come, something bad was going to happen. I guess she was right about that too. I'd be dead if it weren't for you two.”

“I didn't do anything,” Mark said.

“I wouldn't say that,” John said. “You kept us smiling. That's worth more than you know.”

There was something different about John Masters. He wasn't the John Masters from half an hour ago, or even from the day before.

“Are you sure you're okay?” Mark asked.

Nicole was about to ask the same thing. He seemed to have lost his intensity. He looked like Chase's dad and sounded like Chase's dad, but he didn't act like him.

“Aside from my ribs and ankle?” John asked.

“Yeah,” Mark said. “You seem … I don't know … cheerful, I guess.”

John thought about it for a moment, then smiled. “I guess you're right. I do feel cheerful. It's been a long time.”

“And you do realize that we are stuck on a mountain?”

John nodded. “If this ash went away, we could make a call and get some help. Tomás, Chase, or Cindy might be at Lago by now. I hope they're there.”

“The moon was out for a minute,” Nicole said. “But the blowing ash has covered it again.”

“Where's my go bag?”

It took a while for Mark to find it. The go bag had ended up twenty feet away from where John lay.

“It's totally hammered,” Mark said. “Struck by lightning. Everything inside is burned or melted.”

“Check your sat phones and see if there's a signal.”

They checked and shook their heads.

“That's it, then,” John said. “You two go ahead without me. Leave me one of your phones and a bottle of water. If you think about it when you get to Lago, send somebody up here to get me.”

“Funny,” Nicole said.

“That lightning bolt must have wiped out your short-term memory,” Mark said. “There's a tiger wandering around. We can't leave you out here like some kind of roadkill.”

“We can't stay here,” John said. “Nobody knows where we are. Lago isn't very far.”

“I don't feel right about leaving you here,” Nicole said. “You're injured.”

“I'll go,” Mark said. “You stay with John.”

“I'll go,” Nicole said. “You stay.”

“Stop!” John said, some of his former intensity returning. “You're not going by yourself, Nicole. And, Mark, you don't speak Spanish.”

“I'm sure someone in Lago speaks enough English for me to make them understand that we need help.”

“You're wasting time. No more debate. Give me your phone, Mark.”

Mark fished his phone out of his go bag and handed it over. Nicole gave him a bottle of water.

“I still don't feel right about this,” Nicole said.

“Just go,” John said.

Mark set something down next to him. “What's that?” John asked.

“It's the camera. Keep an eye on it for me.”

“Will do,” John said.

He listened to them walk away.

Cheerful
, he thought.
It's more than that. Content is more like it. That first bolt of lightning took something away from me. Maybe the second one brought something back. I'm so dense, it took not one but two bolts of lightning to square me away.

He hoped Chase was okay. He was eager to see his son.

 

The tiger saw the lights and walked toward them. The smell of food was in the dusty air. It was time to eat. Time to drink. Time to find a safe place to rest with a full belly. He heard the human voices. Unfamiliar voices. He was nervous, but he didn't care. Hunger drove his fear away, and his paws toward the dancing lights.