Supervolcano: Eruption
Read Supervolcano: Eruption Online
Authors: Harry Turtledove
Table of Contents
ALSO BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE
“The Daimon”
in Worlds That Weren’t
in Worlds That Weren’t
Ruled Britannia
In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Days of Infamy
End of the Beginning
Opening Atlantis
The United States of Atlantis
Liberating Atlantis
Atlantis and Other Places
BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE
WRITING AS DAN CHERNENKO
The Chernagor Pirates
The Bastard King
The Scepter’s Return
ROC
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, December 2011
Copyright © Harry Turtledove, 2011
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADALIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Turtledove, Harry.
Supervolcano: eruption/Harry Turtledove.
p. cm.
Supervolcano: eruption/Harry Turtledove.
p. cm.
ISBN : 978-1-101-55220-9
1. Volcanoes—Fiction. 2. Natural disasters—United States—Fiction. 3. Yellowstone National Park—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.U76S87 2011
813’.54—dc23 2011031876
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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I
C
olin Ferguson woke up with a hangover, alone in an unfamiliar double bed.
Not
the best way to start the morning. “Fuck,” he muttered, and sat up. Moving made his headache worse. Even the quiet four-letter word seemed too damn loud, always a bad sign. The inside of his mouth tasted as if something had died in there a week ago.
olin Ferguson woke up with a hangover, alone in an unfamiliar double bed.
Not
the best way to start the morning. “Fuck,” he muttered, and sat up. Moving made his headache worse. Even the quiet four-letter word seemed too damn loud, always a bad sign. The inside of his mouth tasted as if something had died in there a week ago.
Thick maroon curtains kept out most of the daylight. Most, but not enough. He felt like an owl squinting at the sun. Yeah, he’d done a number on himself, all right. Bigtime.
“Fuck,” he said again, not quite so softly this time. Here he was, in a rented room in.... For a second or two, he no-shit couldn’t remember where the hell he was. The hangover just hurt. Not remembering honest to God scared him.
If it hadn’t come back to him, he could have got the answer from the telephone book. The nightstand by the bed was a two-shelf unit attached to the wall. No drawer—using one would have cost an extra seventy-one cents a room, or whatever. Multiply that by a raft of rooms and you knew why Motel 6 never lost money. The top shelf held a phone and his watch, which was
that
close to falling on the uncarpeted floor. On the bottom shelf lay the phone book and a Gideon Bible bound in bilious blue.
that
close to falling on the uncarpeted floor. On the bottom shelf lay the phone book and a Gideon Bible bound in bilious blue.
Motel 6. Jackson, Wyoming. The day after Memorial Day. He
did
remember. “Fuck,” he said one more time. Back when he’d set up this vacation, Jackson, Wyoming, had seemed about as far from the L.A. suburb of San Atanasio as he could get. As far from the fiasco he’d made of his life.
did
remember. “Fuck,” he said one more time. Back when he’d set up this vacation, Jackson, Wyoming, had seemed about as far from the L.A. suburb of San Atanasio as he could get. As far from the fiasco he’d made of his life.
What was supposed to be a laugh came out more like a raven’s croak. That was one of those jokes that would have been funny if only it were funny.
You couldn’t get away that easily. Most of the time, you couldn’t get away at all. Being a cop taught you all kinds of lessons. That one stood pretty high on the list.
He’d slept alone in that not very comfortable double bed because Louise, his wife of close to thirty years, was currently living in sin, as the saying went once upon a time, with her aerobics instructor back in San Atanasio. And he’d slept alone because . . .
“Fuck!” he said yet again, this time in genuine horror. Bits and pieces of the night before came back to him. You always remembered the shit you most wished you could forget. He’d slept alone because he’d tried to pick up a waitress half his age and struck out as gruesomely as some poor, hopeless high-school kid flailing away against Randy Johnson in his prime.
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