The Journal: Fault Line (The Journal Book 5) (26 page)

“What about an electric fence?” Christine
asked.

“We could do that, although those are mostly
for animals and there are ways around them for humans. Let’s start
with the camera. That’s the least expensive option since I already
have one. We’ll need an extra VCR though.”

“It might not be for long, so why don’t we
just use the one on the TV? Most of the time we use the DVD player
if we watch a movie,” she suggested.

***

The first few nights showed nothing on the
tape player that was hidden in the garage and wired to the camera
on the other side of the thin wall.

“Are you two sure you didn’t just miss seeing
the beans?” Marty asked. When Marion raised her eyebrows at him, he
said, “Never mind. Maybe there will be something tonight.”

“And that would be logical, since vegetables
are fairly regular in the rate they are ready to pick,” Marion
said.

“Well, if tonight might be a good time to
catch our culprit, I think we should watch the tape real-time from
inside the garage and be ready to apprehend our thief,” Trevor
suggested.

“And I also think we should rig a spotlight.
It might help to detour any further hijinks,” Marty said.

At midnight, when the sky was completely
dark, Marty and Trevor waited silently inside the garage. The
person-door had been left slightly open and the hinges recently
oiled to eliminate any noise. The only light came from the silent
screen that displayed the infrared images coming from the hidden
camera.

Then there was movement. Trevor pointed to
the screen and Marty nodded as they watched a person climb the
fence that separated their yard from the one behind. The person
looked around and went straight to the garden, filling his pockets
with beans and onions.

Marty was out the door and silently moved
into position. After a previously agreed count, Trevor flipped the
switch and flooded the entire garden with light, exposing the armed
chief of police to the invader.

“I think you picked the wrong house to rob,
young man,” Marty said with his gruffest police voice. The culprit
looked at the gun pointed at him.

“They’re only a few vegetables!” he
whined.

“You’ve been stealing my wife’s beans for
over a week now,” Marty replied, “and stealing is stealing.
Besides, in this day and age, raiding someone else’s garden is a
felony!”

“
Your
garden?” the young man said.
“Oh, shit.” He put his hands in the air.

“Our garden,” Trevor corrected. “My wife and
the chief’s wife have been working hard to grow a few things for us
and you’ve been taking that away from them.” He turned to Marty.
“What are we going to do?”

“Since it’s in your yard, Mr. Monroe, it’s up
to you. Do you want to press charges?” the chief asked, giving
Trevor a look that said to follow his lead.

“I think that would be best,” he
answered.

***

“Jail?” the young man went back to whining
while Marty put handcuffs on him and escorted him to the back seat
of the police cruiser, and drove to the police station and jail,
with Trevor following in his car.

“If you will just sign here, Mr. Monroe, that
should take care of it,” Marty said, sliding a sheet of paper
across the desk. Their backs were to the jail cell, and the nervous
young man couldn’t see that the complaint form was blank.

“How long will Mr. Smith be incarcerated,
Chief?” Trevor asked, playing along.

“It will depend on his behavior, but I would
say three or four days. Do you feel that’s sufficient, Mr.
Monroe?”

Trevor turned and looked at the sulking
figure seated on the single bed. “I think that should do it.”

After Trevor left the building, Marty handed
the new prisoner a plastic cup.

“What’s this for?”

“You use the cup to drink water from the tap,
Mr. Smith,” Marty answered.

“Aren’t you going to feed me?”

“Let’s get something straight, kid. Obviously
you know there is a severe food shortage since you were stealing
food. This town is in trouble. Our resources are next to nothing. I
don’t know how or when I can get you anything to eat.” Marty stared
for a bit longer and then said. “Lights will go out when I leave,
and will be back on in the morning. Get yourself comfortable.”

***

At two o’clock in the morning, Marty returned
to pick up his wife.

“How’s our prisoner doing?” Trevor asked,
sipping on a cup of tea.

“Asking for food. That kid is only seventeen,
and hungry. Apparently he’s been snitching things from several
gardens to feed himself since his mother died in the last round of
flu.”

“In the morning I’ll bring you a loaf of
bread,” Trevor said. “A bread and water diet might be more than
he’s been eating lately.”

***

The next morning, as promised, Trevor dropped
off a loaf of bread from the store to feed the new prisoner.

“Marty, I’ve been thinking. What do you think
of a work release program for the kid? By the way, what’s his
name?”

“His name is Max. What did you have in mind
for this work program?”

“He could come to the store one day a week
for a few hours to sweep floors or stock shelves. For that I could
give him another loaf of bread. Once I can feel out his
personality, maybe even suggest he do odd jobs for others, and be
paid in food,” Trevor suggested.

Marty looked at his friend for a long moment.
“You’re a good man, Trevor.”

***

“Just bread?” Max protested feebly.

“And you can thank Mr. Monroe for it. Yeah,
the man you’ve been robbing has donated this food during your stay
in my jail,” Marty turned and left the young man to his six slices
of bread.

***

Two days later, Trevor sat outside of the
jail cell.

“For a couple of hours a week, I’ll give you
a loaf of fresh bread and one can of vegetables. I don’t really
need the help, Max, but I also don’t want you stealing from my
wife’s garden again. What do you say?” Trevor watched the young man
on the other side of the bars.

“Thank you, Mr. Monroe. I accept your offer,”
Max sniffled. “Since my mom died, it’s been… hard. I’m really sorry
for what I did.”

***

That evening for dinner the four friends
enjoyed their first bowl of fresh green beans with thinly sliced
onions and croutons over a bowl of rice.

In the background, the TV news reported the
Caribbean rift had shifted, resulting in a massive tidal wave.

Holly was barking
furiously.

“What’s the matter, girl?” Christine patted
the dog’s silky head, knowing Holly rarely barked at anything.
“What was that?” she said, now alarmed by the movement under her
feet.

Marion stood from where she was weeding in
the vegetable garden and looked around. “I don’t know.”

The tremor rumbled again, stronger. “It’s an
earthquake!” Christine cried. “It feels just like when I was in
that hotel during the New Madrid quake.”

They stood there, silently waiting. When no
other movement came, the two women went back to weeding.

***

“Did you feel the earthquake earlier?” Trevor
asked Christine over their after-dinner tea.

“Yes. I wonder where it was located. When the
New Madrid happened, did you feel it here?”

“Not really. A few bottles rattled together
at the store, but that’s all. Maybe this time it was closer, or
maybe bigger, if we could feel it. I wonder if there will be
anything on the news about it.” He flipped through several channels
before finding a news station.

“…
can tell you folks is that a small
portion of the Yellowstone Caldera has erupted. The shock wave was
felt as far east as West Virginia.”

Trevor skipped to the next channel. The
footage being shown started clear and ended with heavy static and a
blurry picture. After the first quake this morning, Yellowstone
Park had been evacuated of the few visitors. The second quake
prompted the staff to make a hasty exit, but for some of them it
was too late. They did provide enough information to explain what
had happened.

“
I’m standing about a mile from
Yellowstone Lake, up on the rise near Park Point
,” the
disembodied voice stated. A park ranger was using his phone camera
to show the panorama. The multi-acre lake shimmered and sloshed
just as the second quake hit and the camera jiggled when the ranger
lost his footing. Once steady again, the picture cleared. “
Holy,
shit
!
The lake… it’s disappearing! Let’s get out of
here
.” The ranger had spoken to a fellow worker as he sent the
video to the nearest TV station.

A very tired looking young woman came on the
screen. Simone Johnston, a geologist specializing in seismology,
moved a few papers on her desk and looked up. “
From what we’ve
been able to piece together from the readings that come into our
office automatically and this video you just watched from the brave
but foolish park ranger, the second quake, a 9.7 on the Richter
Scale, opened a massive fissure here,”
she said, pointing to a
chart,
“and in a matter of seconds, that fissure emptied
billions of gallons of water down into the molten lava, creating an
explosion that went beyond our instruments. What it did, in short
was waken this simmering subterranean volcano.”
She looked
right at the camera and said,
“It’s no longer subterranean. We
now have an active, make that a
very
active, thirty-mile
wide volcano that continues to grow and continues to spew lava at
an alarming rate. With each belch, it builds the volcanic height,
giving the smoke and ash it produces longer range
.” With that,
the picture cut back to the news room.

“Oh, my…” Christine said in a hushed voice.
“I wonder what that means for us this far east?”

“Let’s find out,” Trevor said and switched
channels again, back to a local one.

“…
evening everyone, it’s July 17, and
we are going right to the breaking news: Yellowstone National
Park has experienced several strong earthquakes today. The latest
one was a 9.7 and it was by far the worse one and the one with the
most possible damage
.” The anchor turned in her seat. “
Matt,
can you tell us what this is going to mean weather-wise for
us
?”

“
That’s going to be difficult, Cynthia,
although I have been poring over the wind charts since this latest
eruption
,” Matt Zika, replied. “
What I can tell you is it’s
not going to be good, no matter what the winds do. We are in the
center of the path for the volcanic plume
,” he moved his hand
to encompass a large area.
“It’s been several hours since the
eruption and we now know that the pyroclastic cloud has reached out
and done its damage.”

“
What is that?
” the anchor asked.

“
A pyroclastic cloud is superheated gas
moving at almost five hundred miles per hour and has sucked out all
the oxygen and replaced it with ungodly heat and gases miles in
front of the actual cloud. Everything living died instantly:
plants, animals, and people, all gone.”

“
Are you serious?
”

“
Very serious, Cynthia, and that’s just
the beginning. As the volcanic cloud pushes its way east it will
bring with it ash and gases. An eruption of this magnitude puts
tons of steam, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, sulfur
dioxide, and pulverized rock and pumice ten to twenty miles up into
the air… and then it comes down. It comes down as acid rain, dust,
and those pulverized fine shards of rock falling that look like
ash, will be like breathing glass.”

The anchor paled.

“
We haven’t experienced anything like this
before, so I’m going out on a limb here and say that it would be
best for everyone to stay indoors for the duration… or risk
dying.”

The screen went blank, and then came back on
with a series of commercials.

Trevor and Christine sat there, stunned
speechless, holding hands.

“What are we going to do?” Trevor said. “You
keep saying this Matt is usually right about the weather.”

“Maybe we should wait until an official
announcement. We could be worrying for nothing,” Christine
replied.

“Or we could spend the time getting ready for
this ash cloud,” Trevor said.

***

Trevor paced in front of the television.

“Christine, what if that meteorologist is
right? Even though none of the other newscasters are talking about
the ash cloud being dangerous, what if it is? What if the
government is lying to us to keep the public from panicking? Or
what if the government doesn’t know or believe we’re all in
danger?”

“That’s a lot of ‘what-if’s’, babe,” she
replied, not wanting to believe the worst case herself. What good
would it do the government to intentionally lie to them?

“Think about this what-if: What if that cloud
is
dangerous, and we do nothing? We could be stuck here in
the house for a couple of
weeks
, with no food - and no dog
food. What then? Do we venture out and perhaps risk dying? Do we
really want to face that possibility?”

“You’re scaring me Trevor,” Christine said
nervously.

“Good!” He took her hands and pulled her up
into a hug. “Let’s take the SUV and the Cruiser to the Main Street
store and load up whatever we think we might need. Oh, and there
are no free giveaways this time! This time it’s for us.”

***

The ash cloud started pushing its way
eastward, black clouds following black clouds, stretching out north
to south, claiming the sky. The new volcano continued to spew more
heated and pulverized rock into the upper atmosphere, adding days
and weeks to the coming bleakness.