The Year Without Summer: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Read online

  The scared kid looked up at them as they stared down.

  “Found him in the back of the truck under a tarp.”

  “What the hell are you doing, kid?” Billy asked.

  “I should ask you the same thing. I’m pretty sure that isn’t your vehicle.”

  “How the hell would you know?”

  “Because I saw the family who got out of it.”

  Wyatt looked at Billy and then back at the kid.

  “Get up. Head into the cabin.”

  “I’m not going with you. You could be perverts.”

  Billy laughed then pointed his gun at him. “You’re right, we could be. You’re still going inside, Jordan.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Ah, we know a lot, kid.”

  He’d remembered the ranger calling out his name when she was looking for him. Billy figured he must have given the gal the slip again and doubled back to the parking lot. Jordan got up and brushed off grime, gave them a dirty look then trudged on into the cabin.

  Wyatt continued to fish through the belongings in the back while Billy had a heart to heart with the kid. “So what were you doing in the back?”

  “Jerking off. What do you think?”

  Billy’s lip curled up. “Do you know the owner of the vehicle?”

  “Somewhat. Let me tell you he’s going to be super pissed off to find it gone.”

  “I bet he will. So why didn’t you jump out?”

  “Decided to snag a ride out of this shithole,” Jordan said, walking around the inside and taking a seat in the rocking chair. He rocked back and forth looking at Billy through narrowed eyes.

  “Ah, a disgruntled visitor. How old are you, kid?”

  “13, going on 14.”

  “You seem a little young to be doing solo traveling. Where’s your family?”

  “California.”

  Billy leaned against the frame of the door, studying him. He lowered his rifle and pulled a cigarette out.

  “You think I can get one of those?”

  Billy laughed. “Your parents know you smoke?”

  “They don’t know much about me. Too busy fighting.”

  “Ah so that’s how it is.” Billy hesitated for a second but then thought, what the hell. He started when he was eleven. He’d steal cigarettes from his old man after a hard night at the bar. He tossed one over along with a box of matches. He watched the kid light it and take the first puff. It was easy to tell if someone hadn’t smoked, they were usually coughing their lungs out on the first hit. Not this kid.

  He tossed the matches back. “Thanks.”

  “You don’t seem too worried.”

  Jordan shrugged.

  “So how did you end up here?”

  “How does anyone end up here? My mother who doesn’t live with me decided it would be a great idea to go browsing on top of an active volcano.”

  He took a hard pull on his cigarette.

  “Active? It’s dormant, kid.”

  “Not anymore it isn’t.”

  Chapter 16

  “How the hell did this happen?” Catherine yelled over the phone. Logan looked at her as she walked a short distance away trying to make sense of the message.

  “He was with the group and one of the families forgot the keys in their truck and he offered to go back and get them. After thirty minutes he didn’t return so I went searching for him and found him on his phone in the back of another truck. I figured he had the keys and was just wasting time. When I returned him to the group he said he’d forgotten the keys and offered to go back again but the owner said he would head over there after he’d been to the washroom. I turned my back for a few seconds to deal with two unruly teens and he was gone. I headed back to the parking lot and the truck was gone. Dan, the owner, thinks he’s taken it on a joyride.”

  Catherine couldn’t comprehend this. This wasn’t like him. Or was it? Had she been so focused on her new life away from Richard and Jordan that she had overlooked this? Was she to blame? She shook her head. “He wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t know how to drive.”

  “You’d be surprised how easy it is and in a place like this—”

  “Terri, my son doesn’t know how to drive and I think someone would have said something if they saw a thirteen-year-old tearing down the road.”

  “Look, I just called to let you know. We have rangers out looking right now and I’ve contacted search and rescue but it’s going to take them time to get up here.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “But…”

  Before the ranger could finish, Catherine had hung up on her. She updated Logan on what was happening and he said he would go with her. Rebecca acted like she cared but Catherine knew differently. They had to wait another fifteen minutes before the helicopter arrived with the rest of the team and then instead of heading to see what operation NASA was running, they hopped in and headed south.

  Rebecca’s parting words were, “Don’t you worry. Leave this in my hands.”

  Yeah, that’s what worries me, she thought. The trip back to Bridge Bay seemed far longer than when they came. Catherine’s mind churned over at the thought of her son getting lost in the backcountry. Visitors had been mauled by bears and then there were crazy people that often frequented national parks; the rapists, the drunks and… She turned to Logan who was looking out. “Logan, what’s the update on the guy who stabbed Hayden?”

  “No idea. As far as I’m aware they’re still out there looking for them but resources are being stretched right now due to the lake issue and they can’t put one hundred percent into that either because we still have to protect visitors and make sure nothing else happens.”

  “Well how does this work when someone goes missing in the park?”

  “Search and rescue will do an aerial and ground search. Hopefully they can pinpoint the black truck. You can be sure the rangers will all be notified to be on the lookout. The upside, if you can think this way, is we usually don’t have checkpoints throughout the park but because we’re looking for this guy and his buddy, that’s going to make it harder for someone driving that truck to drive out of the park.”

  Catherine nodded as she looked into her hands. Logan placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find him.”

  She nodded and managed to muster a faint smile.

  Wyatt entered the cabin with a cooler in one hand, and a beer in the other. He tossed a beer to Billy, and he caught it before it hit the ground.

  “Do I get one?” Jordan asked.

  “Hell no, kid,” Wyatt said before setting the cooler on the ground and kicking the door closed. “You hungry?” Wyatt asked reaching into the cooler and fishing out some sandwiches and several packets of chips. He tossed some onto Jordan’s lap and gave one to Billy before he unwrapped his own.

  “So what’s your deal?” Wyatt asked him.

  “He’s running away. They didn’t let him ride the pony,” Billy said before cracking up laughing.

  Jordan scowled at him.

  “You don’t like your old man?” Wyatt asked taking a large bite out of a cheese sandwich.

  Jordan scowled. “No, we get along just fine. It’s my mother.”

  “Yeah? What is she, a drug addict? Does she beat you?” Billy asked.

  “No.”

  “So she shows your siblings more attention than you?”

  He frowned. “No.”

  “Then what is it?”

  He stared down at his sandwich then looked at them but dodged the question. “Why did you steal the vehicle?”

  “Because the keys were inside.”

  “That’s kind of dumb, isn’t it?”

  Billy smiled and looked at Wyatt. “I told you it was.”

  Wyatt shook his head and looked out a window. “We didn’t have any other options.”

  “Well how did you get in here?” Jordan asked, tapping his cigarette and acting all calm and collected.

  “Why’s he smoking?” Wyatt asked.

/>   “Like you care?” Billy shot him a glance.

  Wyatt shrugged.

  “So?” Jordan asked, probing for details.

  “We killed a ranger. That’s right, kid. Stuck him like a pig in cold blood.”

  Jordan laughed nervously. “Are you serious?”

  Wyatt looked at Billy knowing he was lying. Billy wanted to see what kind of reaction he could get out of him. “Yeah. And I’ll kill anyone else who comes near us. Even kids.” He burst out laughing and Wyatt rolled his eyes.

  “He didn’t kill him,” Wyatt said settling on the sofa.

  “Oh come on, Wyatt, I had him hook, line and sinker.”

  Jordan waved him off. “You think. I could tell you were lying.”

  “Yeah?” Billy asked taking out his knife and showing him the blood. “Then what’s that?”

  “Could have come from an animal.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “You two are full of shit.”

  “And you’ve got a dirty mouth, kid. I bet that’s it. Your mom caught you jerking off to porn and you got all embarrassed and ran off.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Of course it was. That’s what little dudes like you do.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Ooohh, we’ve got a tough guy here, Wyatt,” Billy said tossing the remainder of his sandwich into the garbage and swigging some beer down. “You know he thinks this volcano is active.”

  Wyatt laughed.

  “It is,” Jordan said. “My mother is a volcanologist. Well she was one until she left the USGS and became an analyst at the University of Utah.”

  Billy glanced at Wyatt then frowned. “She’s here with you?”

  “Does it look like it?” he said in a sarcastic manner.

  “I meant you’re here with her.”

  “Was. Until she decided to head off and work with the USGS. She’s all worried that Yellowstone is about to blow.”

  “Why?” Billy asked.

  “Other than the earthquakes, all the fish are dead in the lake, and the animals are acting strange. Then there is the fissure down in Grand Teton National Park, and the drilling NASA is doing.”

  “NASA?”

  “Yeah, I overheard them last night talking about NASA drilling down to release heat and inject water into the area around the magma. Something about cooling it down. I think it’s all bullshit but my mother sure is fired up about it.”

  Billy looked over at Wyatt and thought about the boulders that had cut off the road through the canyon. He recalled the steam and smoke pouring out of the earth. In all his years of coming to Yellowstone, he’d heard the rumors that it was going to blow. His uncle would talk about it at family reunions. He’d say that tourists were paranoid but it didn’t stop them from showing up every year in droves. When asked what would happen if it did blow, he would take a sip of his whiskey and laugh. “It won’t,” he said. Maybe that’s why he’d never really given it much weight. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t bother him to come back year after year to the park. In his mind there was more chance of being struck by an asteroid than the caldera erupting.

  “So where is your mother now?”

  “She dumped me with a tour group. A bunch of… ‘Oh gee, dad, look at this steam coming out of the rock’ type of people.”

  “Someone’s jaded,” Wyatt said before he laughed.

  “Whatever, man. Anyway, I’m getting out of here,” Jordan said rising to his feet. Billy walked over and pushed him back into the chair.

  “You go when we say you do.”

  “What? You kidnapping me?”

  Billy stared back at him and pursed his lips together. That’s when the idea hit him. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

  “Billy,” Wyatt said. “Can I have a word with you outside?”

  Wyatt got up and headed out to the porch. Billy jabbed a finger at Jordan and sneered. “Stay put or else,” he said shaking his rifle.

  Outside he closed the door behind him. “Yeah?”

  “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

  “What?”

  “First you stab a ranger, now you want to kidnap a kid? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life behind bars?”

  “Relax, dude. Think of him like our insurance policy.” He stepped down off the porch. “To the north the road is blocked. If we go back we will run into roadblocks. That kid in there might be the only way we get out of this park.”

  “That kid has a mother who worked for the USGS, which I might add works with the national park. Don’t you think right now they are looking for him?”

  “Possibly. Kids go missing in this park all the time. They’ll think he walked off.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “More like drove away. You heard what he said. They’ll think he took the truck. Shit!” he yelled and crouched down wrapping both hands over his head as if he was going to rock back and forth like a mental patient.

  “Calm down,” Billy said.

  “Calm down? This shit just keeps getting worse. I should have left you. Why did I come back?”

  “Because you’re my friend.”

  “No, because I’m stupid. I let you drag me around from park to park, jeopardizing my life, ruining my relationship with Rita, all for what? A few lousy bucks from sponsors.”

  “It’s more than we were getting.”

  “Yeah, maybe, but at least then we weren’t having law enforcement chase our ass.”

  “Then what do you want us to do?”

  “Leave him here, let’s just go.”

  “They’ll still be looking for us.”

  “Yeah but at least if we get found without him we won’t get hit with a kidnapping charge.”

  Billy stared back and blew out his cheeks.

  “You think there is any validity to what he’s saying about the park?” Wyatt asked.

  “No. This place hasn’t erupted in thousands of years. A few earthquakes aren’t a big deal. They have them all the time.”

  “Look, Billy, I think we should hang out here for a while at least until it gets dark. We can stash the truck in the forest for now just in case they do any flyovers and then head out this evening. Less chance of being seen.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

  The odds were stacked against them and they weren’t going to get out of the situation any quicker by hitting the road now. The best thing they could do would be to hide the truck and head out under the cover of darkness.

  After touching down in Bridge Bay, Catherine met with two rangers and the family whose truck was missing. While they updated her, she looked out across the lake as fishermen tried to clear the lake and media people filmed segments for the news that night.

  “I’m very sorry, Ms. Shaw. Sometimes there are just too many people to keep track of on these tours, that’s why we usually like to have the parents come along.”

  “So you’re blaming me?”

  “No. No,” Logan said stepping in. “I’ll deal with this,” he said to the ranger.

  He led her away as she looked over her shoulder and scowled. She couldn’t believe the nerve of them. “You hear that?”

  “They’re just doing their job, Catherine.”

  “Obviously not or my son would be here.”

  He lifted his baseball cap and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s a little bit more complicated than that. Like I said earlier. They are already stretched. Usually a group of this size would have a few more rangers helping out but most of them are at checkpoints or out in the backcountry.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” she asked.

  The park was massive. A missing person in Yellowstone National Park was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. It was sixty-three miles from north to south and fifty-four from east to west. It was full of canyons, alpine rivers, dense forest, hot springs and geysers and all manner of wildlife like bears, wolves, bison, elk and antelope. In many ways it was a modern-style jungle. And in the heat of summer it was the closest thing that t
he West could get to roaming the plains of Africa.

  As they made their way back to a ranger’s vehicle, Catherine felt the ground shake. It was subtle then stronger, and before she could turn to Logan, it stopped. They continued on, assuming it was just another tremor, but then heard people yelling. Both of them turned to see a large knot of visitors pointing to the forest on the east side of the lake. Smoke was rising. Logan snagged up his radio and tried to get in contact with one of the rangers.

  “This is Logan Miller, what’s going on?”

  Static came over the radio before someone replied. “It’s a forest fire.”

  Although some might panic, that wasn’t Logan’s first response. “Keep me updated.”

  “You don’t seem too bothered?”

  “Fires happen all the time, Catherine. Especially in the summer. They’re a part of the ecosystem here in Yellowstone. Like earthquakes, we monitor them, sometimes we suppress them if we think they are a threat to human life and property but if there is no danger we often let a wildfire burn itself out. There are multiple ways we deal with natural fires.”

  “You don’t think it’s related to the caldera?”

  “I hope not,” he said opening the passenger side door on the ranger cruiser. Catherine was about to get in when she looked back at the lake. She squinted and cupped a hand over her eyes. Although she couldn’t hear what was being said she could tell that something wasn’t right. All the boats were making their way in and many of the people down at the dock were hurrying to get away from the lake itself.

  Her eyes scanned the horizon and that’s when she saw it.

  A huge bulge forming in the lake. The waters rose sending a tidal wave towards the land, increasing in size with each passing second.

  Chapter 17

  If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wasn’t sure he would have believed it. Logan broke away from Catherine, dashing towards the lake, shouting to those unaware.

  “Move it. Run!” he yelled. His eyes flitted between the crowd and the huge wave heading for shore. As rangers worked together to get people to safety, Logan spotted a tearful mother calling out to her kids. The poor woman was beside herself. He hurried over. “Ma’am, how many kids?”