Supervolcano: Eruption (26 page)
Read Supervolcano: Eruption Online
Authors: Harry Turtledove
Then he realized why. All the engines were out.
Which meant this wasn’t an airliner any more. It was the world’s most expensive glider. The most expensive, not the best. It was way too heavy to be the best. Someone had once said the space shuttle glided like an aerodynamic brick. The airliner would do better than that. How much better? Bryce didn’t know, but he was about to find out. The hard way.
“This is the captain.” The man still sounded absurdly calm. Maybe that was attitude, maybe training. Whatever it was, Bryce admired it. Still easily, the pilot went on, “Some of you will have noticed our descent is now powerless. The turbulent airflow snuffed out our engines. We have not been able to get a restart. I’m sorry to tell you that we won’t make it to Lincoln.”
He paused. Perhaps he was human after all. “That means I am going to have to find a place to put this aircraft down. The best place we’ve got is dead ahead, a reservoir called Branch Oak Lake. I am going to try and pull a Sully. As he had, I’ve practiced this on the simulator many times. Now I get to do it for real, just like he did.”
Another pause. “All I can do is give it my best shot. If you all stay as calm as you’re able to, it’ll help. I have radioed ahead to Lincoln. They will help us as quick as they can, and so will the folks around the reservoir. We’ll be going in in about a minute and a half. You folks in the exit rows, you’ll have a job to do. Listen to the flight attendants. Good luck to everybody, and God bless you all.”
Seat cushion may be used for flotation
, it said on the back of the seat in front of Bryce’s—and on all the others. At least it didn’t say
floatation
, the way it did on some airlines. For some idiot reason, the idea of going into the drink with a misspelled safety device weirded Bryce out.
, it said on the back of the seat in front of Bryce’s—and on all the others. At least it didn’t say
floatation
, the way it did on some airlines. For some idiot reason, the idea of going into the drink with a misspelled safety device weirded Bryce out.
He was four rows behind the exit.
I’ve got a chance
, he thought—if the plane didn’t smash itself to smithereens hitting the water, if it didn’t sink like a chunk of concrete, if, if, if . . .
I’ve got a chance
, he thought—if the plane didn’t smash itself to smithereens hitting the water, if it didn’t sink like a chunk of concrete, if, if, if . . .
“One more thing,” the captain added from the speakers. “If anybody goes for anything in the overhead bins, clobber the jerk and then step on him. This isn’t the time to worry about your stuff. You’ve got enough other things to worry about, right?”
Both Bryce and the veteran beside him nodded. He looked out the window again. Here came the lake or reservoir or whatever the hell it was. It was mostly quiet in the cabin now. People had gone through panic and, with luck, come out the other side. The plane flashed past a bird, almost as a car might have on the 405. One more look . . . They were over water, closer by the second.
“Here we go,” the captain said. “Take your brace again.”
The airliner’s belly smacked the smooth surface of Branch Oak Lake. The plane skipped like a stone, then almost instantly smacked again. This time, it stayed on the surface. The splash made Bryce’s window useless. He didn’t care. At least he hadn’t got smashed to strawberry jam right away.
“Open the exit doors!” the boss flight attendant shouted, and then, “Passengers, remember your flotation devices!p anyone near you who is injured!” One more afterthought, reminiscent of recess at elementary school: “Take turns!”
And damned if they didn’t. A mad rush would have hopelessly clogged the exits. But the passengers moved toward them in an orderly hurry. Bryce paused at the edge of the aisle to let a woman go up ahead of him. “Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” Bryce answered. He supposed there’d been scenes of such civility aboard the
Titanic
, too. The chilly water streaming in through the exit doors made the comparison much too apt. But it wasn’t even up over his shoetops yet. He had no trouble moving against it.
Titanic
, too. The chilly water streaming in through the exit doors made the comparison much too apt. But it wasn’t even up over his shoetops yet. He had no trouble moving against it.
When he got to the open door, a flight attendant and one of the big men from the exit row were standing on the wing helping people come out. “You all right?” the attendant asked.
“Shit, I’m alive,” Bryce blurted.
She smiled. “There you go. Now off the wing and into the water. Get as far from the plane as you can.”
He put his arms through the straps on the seat cushion and went into the lake. It didn’t feel too cold once he got used to it. He’d been in pools that were worse. What it would feel like come February was bound to be a different question, but it wasn’t February, thank God.
Kicking was awkward in his Adidases. He pulled them off. The plane settled behind him as he moved away from it. He hoped the captain would get out. Damned if the guy
hadn’t
pulled a Sully. If the passengers had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t be short of drinks or anything else he happened to want for the rest of his days.
hadn’t
pulled a Sully. If the passengers had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t be short of drinks or anything else he happened to want for the rest of his days.
“Some fun, huh?” The Afghan vet bobbed in the water a few feet away.
“I’ve had rides I liked better,” Bryce replied. The other guy laughed.
The sky looked a million miles away from down here, even though Bryce had been flying a few minutes before. The ugly black cloud rearing over the western horizon had to be the same thing he’d seen up there.
Buzzing noises swelled from distant mosquitoes to up-close Harleys in a matter of minutes. Everybody who had a boat by Branch Oak Lake must have put it in the water. Corn-fed Corn-huskers started hauling people out of the drink. Bryce waved to make sure they saw him. When a guy in a baseball cap in one of the boats waved back and gave him a thumbs-up, he knew rescue was only a matter of time.
The Nebraskan picked up the veteran first, then put-putted over to Bryce. Strong, sunburned arms helped him out of the lake and into the bottom of the boat, where he lay like a just-caught bluegill—except he lacked the energy to flop around. “You okay, man?” his rescuer asked. “Everything in one piece?”
“I . . . think so,” Bryce answered after taking stock. “Thank you.”
“Yeah!” the Afghan vet said. “Thank you! Amen!” He sounded as if Bryce had reminded him of something important he’d been too rattled to remember on his own. And that was probably what had happened.
“I’m gonna see how many more folks we can get aboard,” the local said, and got the boat going again. Bryce didn’t care. He’d made it . . . so far.
XI
S
quirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles were on I-95, hea
ding north toward Portland, Maine, when the boom from the superano roared over their van. They weren’t taken by surprise; by then, NPR was tracking the progress of the enormous sound wave. “The biggest noise this poor old planet has heard in tens of thousands of years,” one of their correspondents declared.
quirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles were on I-95, hea
ding north toward Portland, Maine, when the boom from the superano roared over their van. They weren’t taken by surprise; by then, NPR was tracking the progress of the enormous sound wave. “The biggest noise this poor old planet has heard in tens of thousands of years,” one of their correspondents declared.
“Yeah—except for Congress,” Rob Ferguson said.
Justin Nachman followed a snort with a reproachful look. “Piss and moan, piss and moan. Five minutes ago, you were bitching about paying the toll before they let us onto this stretch of the Interstate.”
“Well, it sucks,” Rob said.
“It’s how they pay for keeping the road up,” Justin said, as if reasoning with a possibly dangerous lunatic.
The van chose that moment to bounce on a pothole. Rob, who was driving, said, “They do a great job, too. We manage okay back home without this toll-road bullshit.”
The lead guitarist rolled his eyes. “Give me a break, man. How many years in a row is it that the California budget’s been fucked up?”
Rob didn’t know how many consecutive years it had been. He did know he couldn’t remember a year when the budget hadn’t been a disaster area. And he could remember further and further back as he got older: close to twenty-five years now, though he hadn’t cared about the budget when he was a little kid. Twenty-five years seemed a hell of a long time to him. He’d never had the nerve to say anything like that to his father, though. He had what he was all too sure was an accurate suspicion the older man would have laughed in his face.
Since he didn’t have a good comeback for Justin, he concentrated on making miles. Charlie and Biff were in the other van, right behind this one. They were on their own. Snakes and Ladders
had
dissolved in New York City, and they hadn’t booked another opening act.
had
dissolved in New York City, and they hadn’t booked another opening act.
Rob wondered what his bandmates thought of the supervolcano. They knew about it: everybody’d been talking about it when the band stopped at a roadside Hardee’s for lunch. Seeing the star on something called Hardee’s weirded Rob out every time he came East. In his part of the country, the chain that served those same burgers went by Carl’s Jr. Well, Best Foods mayonnaise was Hellman’s back here, too. Bizarre, all right. He wondered if there was a song in it.
“Devastation continues to spread across wide stretches of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana,” the NPR newsman continued gravely. “There are as yet not even the vaguest estimates of lives lost or property damage. Nor is there any way to stop the spreading ash cloud. An astronomer has calculated that the supervolcano eruption might well be observable from the planet Mars.”
“Wow,” Justin said. “Can you imagine the Martians going, ‘Bummer, man! The Earth is screwed big-time!’”
Rob could imagine it. “Write that down,” he said. “We should be able to do something with it.” It sure as hell made a better song idea than artery-cloggers with the wrong names.
The band always took
Write that down
seriously. Stuff that was supposed to stay in people’s heads too often didn’t. Justin produced a notebook and wrote. Better than even money nothing would come from the jotting, but at least it wouldn’t get lost.
Write that down
seriously. Stuff that was supposed to stay in people’s heads too often didn’t. Justin produced a notebook and wrote. Better than even money nothing would come from the jotting, but at least it wouldn’t get lost.
They had reservations at a motel not far from the airport. Rob had spent enough time on the road that he was good at it, which didn’t mean he got off on it. There were times when he’d wake up cold sober, not wasted on anything, but still without the faintesybodyea of where the hell he was. The feeling didn’t always disappear right away, either. Rooms rarely gave a clue. Cable stations were the same everywhere, pretty much. If a paper was shoved under the door or waiting outside, odds were it would be
USA Today
. Hotel management types commonly felt it was better than the local rag. The sad thing was, they’d be right more often than not.
USA Today
. Hotel management types commonly felt it was better than the local rag. The sad thing was, they’d be right more often than not.
By the time he got down to breakfast, he’d usually have things figured out—usually, but not always. He liked playing. He liked performing. He liked the small-scale celebrity status being in a halfway successful band brought. Travel . . . He wasn’t so sure about travel.
There were guys older than his father who’d play a gig, hop in a car, and play at another club five hundred miles away the next night. Some of them had been big once upon a time and were still hanging on. Some had made a career out of being second-stringers. They had their fans—not enough to get rich from, but enough to pay the bills. Most of them. Most of the time.
That seemed to be about what Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles had to look forward to.
Do I want to wake up wondering where I am when I’m fifty?
Rob asked himself that question, and another one, every time he checked in somewhere. The other question was,
Do I want to wake up wondering where I am when I’m seventy?
Do I want to wake up wondering where I am when I’m fifty?
Rob asked himself that question, and another one, every time he checked in somewhere. The other question was,
Do I want to wake up wondering where I am when I’m seventy?
So far, he hadn’t found anything else he wanted to do more. He hadn’t found any place where he wanted to grow roots, either. So tonight here he was in Portland, Maine. He’d played in the other Portland, too.
Justin sometimes got sick of life on the road, the same way he did. As far as Rob could tell, Biff and Charlie didn’t care where they were. For guys in a band that needed to stay on tour—and, in this age of MP3s and iTunes, how many bands didn’t?—that was the right attitude.
After they checked in, Justin asked the desk clerk, “Where can we get some dinner around here? Doesn’t have to be fancy. Just, y’know, food.”
She named a place, adding, “They’ve got the best lobster rolls in Portland, I think.”
“How do we get there?” Rob asked eagerly. He was in favor of lobster and shrimp and crab. If the rest of the guys weren’t, well, the menu was bound to have other stuff on it they could eat.
Directions didn’t sound too complicated. The band kept talking about getting GPS. God knew the systems were cheap these days. But Rob and Justin both liked to navigate. Finding a place on your own made arriving mean something it didn’t when a computer held your hand all the way there. Even getting lost could be interesting. Rob thought so, anyhow. Charlie and Biff thought their bandmates were full of it. But they’d never missed a gig because they’d got lost, so the rhythm guitarist and drummer didn’t grumble. Much.
A roll, split in half. A little mayo, even if under an assumed name. Lobster—lots of lobster. A lobster roll. A Maine specialty. The finest invention since the wheel, as far as Rob was concerned. Maine was one of the few places where lobster didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Rob was happy to pay a mere arm for such concentrated deliciosity.
Justin had a big bowl of clam chowder—creamy, of course, with not a tomato in sight. Tomato chowder was a New York City thing, not a New England one. The divide was as fierce as Yankees and Red Sox. Rob actually liked both kinds, which made him either a neutral or a heretic, depending.
Charlie got a chicken pot pie. You could do that anywhere. Biff ordered the brrito. Rob didn’t think he would have chosen a lobster roll in Phoenix. A burrito in Portland, Maine, struck him as an equally bad idea. But it wasn’t his stomach. Sometimes the less you said to the guys you played with, the better off you were.
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