“Sergeant.” Krom straightened, bracing himself. He withdrew his own radio from his parka pocket. “The decision rests with me.”
“I’m afraid not, sir — you’re the victim. You’re in our charge.” Eric held out his hand. “And it’s best I take charge of all comm equipment. Keep the lines of authority straight.”
Krom blinked. He shifted his weight, cautiously, as though testing the hold of the splints, the way an animal might try to extricate itself from a trap. Even now — leg mummified, corduroy pants ripped from cuff to pocket, parka stained red with my blood, ash graying the brown of his hair — even now he seemed as though he might snap his fingers and bring Eric to heel.
But Eric kept his hand out and Krom finally relinquished his radio and then Eric called Bridgeport on the field radio to report our plan of action.
Krom went still.
His eyes, though, were alive on me. It was surely my overtaxed imagination but I thought he inclined his head and made me a little bow.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
We headed in silence out of town.
Eric drove. Mike rode shotgun. I sat in the back seat. Krom remained in the rear, in the baggage area, braced by our gear. He was, after all, cargo.
I watched out the left window toward Red Mountain as Eric nursed the jeep along Minaret. Still not much in terms of pyrotechnics but it was a mighty consistent eruption. I swiveled to look behind, toward the caldera. No fresh plume from the moat. No discernible quakes. Winds continued in their normal direction, to the northeast. We got drifted ash.
I watched the back of Krom’s head a moment, that thick brown pelt. No whimper of pain from him. I turned back to Red Mountain.
We inched along, murderously slow. Even at this speed, the jeep stirred up clouds of ash. I had ample opportunity to brood on the topography of Minaret Road as we turtled along. Going up, just barely. The Red Mountain plume was visible above treetops. Don’t do anything yet, I prayed.
No ghosts appeared, waving down the jeep. Nobody left in town, of that I was convinced. Nobody alive, anyway.
I thought I’d feel at least a twinge of regret, leaving town. Thought I’d feel something but it’s not my town any more. Did feel something. Urgency. Floor it, Eric. Screw the ash. We’ve got spare parts.
We passed the intersection of Minaret and the Lake Mary Road and got a dead-on view of the Lakes Basin peaks and the plume dirtying the dirty sky. Maybe it was our change in position but I could hear the eruption now. Boom boom boom, like a small war being fought on the ridge. Please don’t progress to the next stage. Please don’t go pyro now.
We came, in moments, to the Bypass turnoff. Eric slowed, unnecessarily. Heads turned right. In the back, Krom made a sound, an exhalation. Far as I could see, it still looked navigable. Scuffed in ash, like Minaret. No volcanic bombs raining down, no sign that Inyo had awakened. Looked inviting, this Bypass, but for the fact that it dead-ended a good four miles short of 395, but for the Red Mountain plume, up and to our left. I felt a little dizzy. My ears buzzed, like a helicopter had just flown overhead.
I scanned the Bypass for Walter. It was her route, after all.
Minaret wound lazily toward the mountain. Still Jeffrey pine forest. Bad luck, Jeffrey, you’re too low — downhill from the Red Mountain plume — you’re never in the right place anymore, are you? And right now I wanted lodgepole, red fir, hemlock. I wanted elevation.
Eric stopped the jeep.
I sat forward. “What are you doing?”
“Checking the filters, Cass. Just take a sec.”
I died, as Eric got out and went under the hood. We all die as the Red Mountain vent goes pyro and sends hot rock at us but the incandescent cloud races ahead of the flow and we’re stopped in the road. I did not look back at Krom, Krom whose truck had stalled in ash, who had gotten out to check his engine and seen his driver killed, who’d been hit by a lava bomb, who’d returned to his truck for shelter, where he screamed in pain and forgot fear.
Eric climbed back in and I breathed again. We accelerated to our snail’s pace, but our filters were clean and we were going up.
Lodgepole pine. Red fir.
We climbed. I kept an eye on the Red Mountain plume until the solid hip of Mammoth Mountain came between us and the eruption. Finally, topography was beginning to be in our favor.
The road steepened. I peered down gullies for a wrecked snowmobile. For a body. For a waving ghost.
No ghosts. Skeleton trees, though. No more than last time. Okay, then.
Minaret snaked, and climbed, and at last leveled and delivered us onto the broad flat shoulder of Mammoth Mountain. Eric stopped in the roundabout beside the statue of the woolly mammoth, woolled in ash.
We all peered up at the Tyrolean Lodge, the gabled gondola stations, the venerable Inn. It wasn’t the ash that so transformed the place, for ash had become the benchmark. Sky’s blue, grass is green, snow’s white? Not anymore. What made this place so eerie, so wrong, was the emptiness. On the lousiest ski day of winter, on the most blistering day of summer, there are people here. This is Mammoth Mountain. There’s always somebody here to ski it or board it or bike it or hike it or sit by the fireplace at the Inn and admire it. Not now. Not a car in the lot. Nor a snowmobile. Nor even a pair of skis staked in the snow.
We’re here.
“Gives me the creeps,” Mike said.
Eric shut off the engine. “End of the line.” At the far end of the lot was a wall of snow, beneath which Minaret Road continued unplowed. Too late to go any farther because the dark sky was already grading into night.
Well lady, I thought, you won. You picked the movie. Now sit through it.
Krom said, “I could use a john.”
Mike snapped out of his seat belt. “We’ll get you right into the Lodge, sir.”
“No,” I said, “the Inn.”
“But there’s emergency keys to the Lodge in the box around back of the gondola station, or at least there used to be and I don’t see why anybody would have put them in a different place since I was working here.”
“The Inn’s safer,” I said.
“Why is it safer, I don’t see…” Mike, despite himself, leaned on the dash to get a look up the mountain, up the two thousand feet of vertical world-class drop. The Lodge snuggled at its base. The Inn was across the parking lot, that much farther from an avalanche of Mammoth’s fabled snow. “Oh,” Mike said. “O-kigh, the Inn. Only how do we get inside?”
“Break a window,” I said.
Mike’s street-bum face bloomed in wonder.
Eric and Mike took Krom in a four-handed carry and I found a window. Inside, I followed my flashlight beam through the murk, skirting a fallen housekeeping cart and toppled tables, and let them in the big main doors. As they bore Krom across the colonnaded great room toward the public restrooms I recalled that meeting, that night, when the only question was how we get out. Not whether.
I went back outside and crossed the roundabout to the gondola station and got the keys — Mike was right. I toured the ski barns and the Lodge and then returned to the Inn. They were coming out of the Men’s; I raised a hand in passing, and Eric gave a weary nod. I wandered up and down hallways, keeping an eye out for other lights, listening, shouting now and again.
When I returned they were assembled around the cold mouth of the fireplace, Mike standing before it, Krom laid out on a chaise, Eric straddling a chair with his arms crossed over the back and his forehead on his hands. I collapsed onto an ottoman.
Mike shifted from foot to foot. “It’s cold. Shouldn’t we go find blankets? What about lanterns? Won’t they have propane lanterns around for power outtages? I’m referring to regular outtages. I’ll do blankets and lanterns. What about food? They could have left food. Cassie should go find some food, shouldn’t she? We should bring our packs in, anyway, since we’ve got rations. Oh man, shouldn’t we contact Bridgeport?”