In plain sight, p.6
Fallout, page 6
Bas hadn’t even had to come this weekend. He’d done it for Jack, because the dissertation was important to Jack. He dropped his head into his hands. Why did Bas even stay with him?
“Just . . . eat first, before you go off all half-cocked,” said Bailey. “You need fuel for whatever you decide to do. You’ve had a helluva a day. We all have.”
“What time is it?” said Jack.
“A little after four,” said Hank.
Jack slouched in his seat next to Hank, drawing in big block letters. BAS. I’M LOOKING FOR YOU. STAY AT THE DINER. JACK.
“I’ll have to get the car towed,” he said, as he started on the next flyer. He didn’t give a damn about the car, but maybe he could catch a ride with the tow truck driver, head out to the start of the trail in case Bas had returned there. “Who can I call?”
“There’s no garage in town.” said Bailey. “Usually one of the locals could help you out, but there’s more than a few cars off the road. Some guys went out to check stock this morning and haven’t come back home. We picked up a couple, but advised the ones with radios to wait it out till this stops. There’s a fuel distribution place on the highway towards Branson that does repairs and maintenance for farm equipment. They’re probably open, ’cos there’ll be people want gas for their generators. You could try there, but again, transport’s an issue. You got somewhere you can stay for a few days until everything’s back to normal?”
Jack shook his head. Rachel brought the cokes over, and Jack took a grateful, sugary sip. Hank passed his respirator across the table to Bailey. “Look what happened in just a few hours today.”
The Perspex face shield was fogged and cloudy. Bailey pulled her shirt cuff half-down over her hand and wiped at the mask.
“Nah,” said Hank. “It’s scratched or something. You can’t clean it off. It was hard as hell to see anything in it.”
“That’s the damnedest thing,” Bailey said. She ran the tip of her nail down the Perspex with a rough, grating noise.
Jack cleared his throat, finishing another flyer. “It’s not like the ash you get after a bonfire. That stuff falling from the sky out there is billions of tiny volcanic rocks. You ever seen scoria? That red gravel they put in gardens in the lobbies of big firms?”
Hank nodded.
“That’s what the ash looks like when you magnify it. Spiky jagged rocks. Real sharp. That’s what you’re breathing in. That’s what did that to your visor. And the car windshield. It’s like being sandblasted.”
“We’re breathing it?” said Bailey. “Well, that can’t be good.”
“Hey, Bailey?” A heavyset guy with a thick beard scraped a metal-framed chair along the black and white linoleum flooring, and joined them, leaning forward over the end of their table. He pushed his John Deere cap back on his head and scratched his scalp. Specks of ash fell onto the table. “What’s the latest?”
Others craned their necks around at the question, and a middle-aged woman in the booth beside them leant back to interject. Her three kids kept eating, a giant stack of pancakes in front of each of them. “This is volcanic ash. I know the stuff. I grew up in Yakima. When Mount St Helens blew back in the eighties they closed the interstate for a week, and they couldn’t get planes in and out of the airport. It was the strangest thing.”
“Well, then, shouldn’t we be getting the hell out of here?” said Beardy. “How they gonna fly supplies in?”
“Yeah, but what volcano, though?” said the woman. “Where’s it coming from?”
“Screw that,” said Beardy. “What the hell’s it matter?”
“I’m gonna call Ally again. Maybe cell service is back,” said Hank. “If not, I’ll run out to the truck, try Springfield on the radio again.” He scooted out from the booth.
“Well, it would be Taum Sauk, wouldn’t it? That’s a volcano,” said a lanky woman in a county services uniform, coming over and leaning on the edge of the booth.
Jack shook his head before he could stop himself.
The big guy glared at him. “What do you know about it?”
“The Taum Sauk caldera is pre-Cambrian.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s old. Really old. Back when the continents were being made. Before anything even lived on land.”
“Well, where, then?” said Bailey.
Jack shrugged. None of the possible answers were going to be reassuring.
Rachel came back with their drinks. “There’s all kinds of volcano stuff in Nevada,” she said. “I went to Steamboat Springs for my thirtieth.”
The mom in the next booth turned around, kneeling on her seat so she could join in the conversation properly. “The Cascades? Ash wouldn’t get this far, though, would it?”
“What about Yellowstone?” said Beardy. “I heard they had to close one of the roads last summer, ’cos the asphalt was melting into a crater.”
“Well, the wind’s right for Yellowstone,” said Lanky. “It’s northwest, so it’s more likely to be coming from there, or the Cascades, more than Nevada or California. Or New Mexico.”
“In Yakima— “
“Fuck Yakima!” Now the words were out Jack couldn’t keep his tongue in his head. “It’s about 150 miles from Mount St Helens to Yakima. The only strange thing about the ash you got at Yakima is that you guys thought you were somehow safe there! It’s a thousand miles to the closest volcano from here. We’ve got an inch of ash in twelve hours. What do you think it’s like five hundred miles closer? Eight hundred? It’s fifteen hundred miles to Yellowstone. Yellowstone isn’t just a volcano, it’s a hotspot. Last time it erupted it laid ash six hundred feet deep over most of the Continental US.” He was shouting now, the rest of the diner silent and staring. “And you know what? If it was Yellowstone that would actually be a good scenario. What if it’s Hawaii? What if it’s Iceland? What if Iceland turned into a twenty-first century version of the Deccan Traps, and right now it’s spewing lava over two hundred thousand square miles of Europe in a layer six thousand feet thick. What if this is the best it gets anywhere in the world?”
Bailey laid a hand on his arm, pressing against his chilled skin with her fingers. “Jack. There are kids here.”
“You don’t think they deserve to know the truth, too?”
“I think they need to know that we’re safe here. That’s there’s food and water and people who will look after them here. That’s the truth they need right now.”
Jack lowered his head to his hands. His forehead was clammy. The sick roiling in his belly hadn’t stopped since Hank walked into the cell with Bastian’s backpack. When he closed his eyes the grit pricked at his eyelids.
The waitress coughed. “Uh. Your food will be right up.” Jack heard the others turn around and head back to their respective tables.
“Ain’t nothing to worry about,” Bailey said, loudly. “You folks just sit right here and enjoy your food, and help’ll be along real soon.”
Jack huffed.
“You’re not going to make trouble, are you?” said Bailey. She lowered her voice. “You think we’re just a couple of dumbass cops who don’t know what’s going on, huh? But let me tell you, you keep smiling, you keep telling folks it’s all gonna be okay, because when people get scared? That’s when shit goes bad. Panicking everyone will achieve nothing, whether it’s the truth or not. We need to make the best of things for a few days until help gets here.”
Jack stared at her. “What on earth makes you think there’s help coming?”
CHAPTER 5
Jack slid out of the booth, grabbing his backpack and two of his flyers. He swiped the Scotch tape from the cashier’s desk and pasted the first of his signs to the inside of the front door. Jack stalked to the back of the diner to the bathroom. He stuck a second flyer on the wall by the mirror, then wet a pile of paper hand towels and wiped off his face and neck.
Priorities. Keep the programmer safe. Volcanic ash screwed with electronics. Get some batteries. And find Bas. Not necessarily in that order.
Jack checked his wallet, then sighed. He was low on cash. In a couple of days he was going to have trouble paying for food. Maybe Rachel would take a credit card today for a couple of hundred, let him cover his meals until he found Bas. Could they take a credit card with no power? What did stores do when the system went down? He had Bastian’s wallet, too, but he doubted Bas had much cash. And after his little temper tantrum in there he didn’t think anyone would be putting their hands up to offer credit to him.
He bumped into the waitress right outside the bathroom door. “Oh, sorry. Hey, if it’s not too much trouble, can I get some Saran wrap from you?”
“Oh yeah, sure, I’ll check.” She pushed the kitchen door open. A teenage boy, tall and lean, with dark hair and olive skin, washed dishes in a deep sink, and a short, sturdy man was flipping patties on a grill, three plates waiting ready on the bench. “Hey, Morrie, we got enough plastic wrap to sell this guy a roll?”
The cook glanced up. “I guess. But what if the supplier’s late this week? It could be days before we get a new order in. Ortega, go check in the cupboard, would ya?”
The boy wiped his hands on the cloth that hung from his grubby white apron, and pushed past the waitress into the corridor. He looked at Jack, then tilted his head toward the back of the building, picking up another storm lantern by the thin metal handle. “Come on.”
At the end of the corridor a red sign announced ‘Fire Exit: Do Not Block.’ Right above a three-foot pile of boxes of post-mix syrup, stacks of takeaway coffee cups, and cartons of serviette.
“Nice,” said Jack. “What’s the diner motto? Better hope there’s no fire?”
Ortega snorted. “The door’s padlocked anyway. The boss got tired of out-of-towners doing a dine and dash every summer.”
He pulled out a thicket of keys on a pink heart key ring from his back pocket and unlocked a door, gesturing for Jack to go first. The storage cupboard was big enough for two people, if they didn’t mind getting mighty friendly. There were a couple of As Seen on TV stick-on battery-powered lights adhered to the wall. Ortega pressed one, lighting the room with a faint yellow glow, then swung his lantern onto a shelf. “At least we can see. We’re more used to tornados and floods than whatever this is, but the power goes out once a year, minimum, for sure.”
Ortega knelt down and rummaged on a lower shelf, pulling out a long white box printed in blue and green. “It’s not actually Saran brand though, it that okay? It’s a generic version, bulk, for catering. This one’s a thousand meters.” Ortega turned, lifting the box up with two hands and handing it to Jack. “What you gonna use it for, anyway?”
“That’s too much. I don’t want a whole box, just a single piece.” He wrapped his hand around the back of his neck. “I’m kinda short on cash. I was hoping you could just give me some.”
Ortega knelt in front of Jack, grinning up at him. “It makes for lousy condoms, you know that, right?”
Jack snorted. “I don’t think I wanna know how you found that out.”
Ortega sat back on his heels, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket.
“Just rip some off and take it. I’ll tell Morrie we can’t spare one.”
He lowered himself to the floor, sitting cross-legged and leaning against a set of metal shelves. He reached behind himself to grab a box of matches, lighting up before tossing them back on the shelf.
Jack sat down facing Ortega, leaning against the other set of shelves. He pulled Bastian’s programmer out of his backpack, then ripped open the box and tore off a length of the filmy plastic. He wrapped it around the remote.
“What’s the point of that?” said Ortega. He inhaled, then tipped his head back and blew a puff of smoke up to the yellow-stained ceiling.
“Keeps the ash out. Ash is not friends with electronics. Or anything mechanical.” Jack added a second layer for good measure “You were keen, coming into work even with this stuff falling.” Jack tucked the programmer back into his backpack.
Ortega watched him, resting his chin on his hands as he exhaled another nicotine-filled breath. “Yeah, well, I need the money. It’s my last year of high school. I need to get out of this town next year. Get out, and never come back.”
“It’s not so bad here. Your cops are more decent than most.” They could have shot him. Tased him, at the very least. “You don’t see yourself coming back after college?” He rifled through the pack for their map. Where would Bas have gone? Maybe an old friend from middle-school came past, gave him a lift?
“College? There won’t be any college for me. I don’t think it’s worth it, you know? All that debt, and for what? A minimum wage job for the next twenty years anyway?”
“So what’s the plan?”
Ortega shrugged. “Live a little. See the world. I heard you can live in Thailand for like fifty bucks a month. Too bad for all those people on planes this morning, yeah? I hear this stuff is bad for jet engines. I saw that show about the Qantas flight that nearly fell out of the sky when it went through a volcano.”
Jack thrust the map into a side pocket and zipped up the backpack. “Yeah, the ash melts, becomes like rock. Screws props as well, for that matter. And it clogs up air filters, overheats cars and trucks, scores moving parts. It’ll take down houses, churches, office blocks, even, if there’s enough of it.”
“I rode my trail bike into work today. I hope I make it home.”
“Oh, you did? Perfect. Can I use it? Just for an a hour or so?”
Ortega eyed him suspiciously.
“I’ll leave my pack here and everything. And I’ll pay you. I just want to borrow it. I lost my friend. I should go back to the trailhead, make sure Hank didn’t miss him. If he’s still there waiting for me he’ll be so pissed.”
“Wait, back up? The weight of the ash will take down buildings?”
“Oh hell yeah. It’s heavy; four times heavier than snow. Eight, when it’s wet.”
“So it could take down the diner?”
Oh. “Um, technically, if it kept falling. But it would take a lot more; five, six inches.”
Ortega jumped to his feet. “It’s not stopping, though, is it? And it rained earlier. We should get it off now.”
“But can I borrow your bike?”
“Hey, I need this job. And people’s houses? Shouldn’t you be warning them?”
Ortega pulled a broom out from behind the door and rapped the ceiling with the handle, dropping down an attic door and unfurling a set of steps. He lifted his foot on the first step, and Jack sighed.
“Wait, I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ve got a respirator.” He pulled it off the tie-strap on his bag and fitted it over his head, then took the broom from Ortega and started climbing the ladder. “But when I get back down, you’re lending me your bike.”
“Okay. Thanks, man. There’s an access door up there that leads out onto the roof.”
Slivers of light lit the gloom between ceiling and roof, constellations seeping through gaps between poorly fitted ceiling panels. Glimpses of faces, people eating, the waitress bringing food. Jack stepped carefully between barely visible joists, and the brush of cobweb on the back of his neck made him flinch and duck, swearing under his breath.
Acrid sulfur painted the back of his tongue, bitter and dry, even through the respirator filter. Over to the right the quiet gleam of metal exhaust ducting cut through the ceiling space, silent for now.
Jack descended the steps. “I can’t see the door. I need the lantern.”
Ortega was leaning against the door of the storeroom. He glanced up at Jack and put his hand to his lips. Hank’s voice, tight and pitchy, carried through the thin wood. Ortega cracked open the door, and Jack could see Hank and Bailey in the corridor outside.
“Deepak says it’s all over Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma too . . . even Tennessee, which, going by the wind direction, is farther away from this than we are.” Hank wiped a hand over his face. ”But there’s only radio silence from Wyoming and Nebraska. Springfield can’t send us any help, they’ve already got riots bigger than Black Friday at supermarkets and grocery stores, and water shortages from all the people washing the ash off their houses and cars and yards. And St Louis called in the National Guard unit, but planes can’t get into the air so there’s no way to deploy them, and I don’t know where Ally is, and . . . shit. I don’t—shit.” His voice broke in a sob.
Bailey put a hand on his shoulder, but any words she might have spoken were swallowed up by the throaty roar of a four-stroke V-twin engine, the sound throbbing and ripping against Jack’s ears even through the walls of the diner and the dampening ash cloud. The lone bike was joined by another, then another, the wave of sound a physical presence in the storeroom.
Ortega closed the door. “We had some trouble with them yesterday.”
“Who? The bikers?”
“Yeah. They provide . . . uh . . . ‘services’, locally.” Jack heard the scare quotes in Ortega’s words. “If you need hooking up with anything herbal, they’re the people to talk to. Kinda scary, though. Mostly locals. You sound like a local, but your car yesterday had out-of-state plates. You used to live around here?”
“Yeah. Left half-way through high school. My dad moved us away. To Illinois. For work.” And a few other reasons. “And then a year later Bastian’s family moved too, to Michigan. We met up again at college.”
Met up. Spent months texting and talking online, feeding off their parents’ disapproval and disappointment, making plans to both go to Mizzou and to hell with what their parents thought. They’d be adults, and they’d be together in a way they’d never been able to be in Cassville.
“Well, you might know a couple of the guys, then. You remember Brett Stengel? Goes by Slider? He’s got a bucketload of grudges against Hank and Bailey. The guy before Bailey was taking a kickback to turn a blind eye to some of the local growers. Bailey’s not inclined to follow suit.”
