Chapter 22: Aftermath

John had called Victor, who had called his friends at the nearby forest service station. Victor had persuaded his friends to loan his son, John, a four door Jeep Cherokee to go up the logging road. Victor had convinced his friends in the forest service by reporting that a five year old was missing on the mountain. A Search and Rescue operation takes time to organize. Victor had urged preemptive action by letting John, Seth, and Udit use the Jeep to start the search on the logging roads.

Seth was driving up the southern logging road when the north side of the mountain exploded. Udit was riding beside him and John was in the back seat. Liz had stayed at the van with Lian. They had already passed the bodies and had only stopped long enough to roll them to the side of the road. Seth and Udit were looking for any clues ahead of the Jeep, as the light grew in the dawn of May 18th, 1980. John was watching to each side of the Jeep, looking for anything Seth or Udit had missed. along the sides of the logging road.

John was the first to notice something was happening on the mountain. The logging road had turned, following a rising ridge line, so wasn't facing directly at the mountain. John was looking towards the side of the road facing the mountain when the mountain began to shake.

The snow cap that covered the top thousand feet of the nine thousand six hundred foot tall mountain disappeared in a flash of light. The light coalesced into a spot as bright as a miniature sun at the very top of the mountain.

"What the hell!" John yelled in astonishment. "Something's happening on the mountain," he said urgently.

Udit leaned forward to look up at the mountain peak. Seth looked up through the side window before stomping on the gas. The Jeep rocketed forward, and rounded a shoulder of the mountain before beginning to climb again. They were driving on a logging road designed for high clearance vehicles moving at very sedate paces. Seth was barely able to keep the rocking, slewing Jeep on the path through the trees as his speed passed thirty and ratcheted higher. Seth focused on the path before him with a desperate intensity. His son was on that mountain and he needed to reach him.

John gasped and Udit started chanting in Apache when they saw the first jet of smoke from the peak of the mountain. The sun like spot of light at the summit dimmed when the smoke appeared, and started moving down the side of the mountain. The spot of light moved slowly at first. Then it started moving faster and faster, as it descended the mountain. The spot of light rapidly traversed over a thousand feet of the mountain. It was clear the spot was careening down the mountain when a space could be seen between the spot and the shoulder of the mountain. The summit disappeared amid smoke, flame, and a brooding red glow. The bright spot seemed to skip and jump on the leading edge of the shock wave that flowed down the mountain.

Udit and John watched in horror as they saw the shock wave move down the mountain and through the forest. Dust and dirt at the leading edge of the shock wave, almost hid the falling giants as pine trees twenty feet thick and hundreds of feet tall, snapped like toothpicks, when that leading edge reached them. The slight decent on the other side of the ridge gave them a better view than they would have ever wanted of an erupting volcano.

Udit peered up through the windshield at the cloud of smoke that towered above them. He flinched when a rock the size of a softball glanced off the windshield, creating expanding cracks around the point of impact on the glass.

"That doesn't look good," Udit yelled.

"Yeah," Seth said through gritted teeth as he fought the steering wheel. "Sean doesn't seem to be able to do anything in half measures."

"That wasn't caused by Sean," Udit said, his voice tense, as he looked up again. "Megan is more impetuous."

"Is she strong enough to do that?" John asked doubtfully from the back seat, while looking up through the side window.

"She's as strong as Sean, but in different ways," Udit answered drily. "She's a lot more dangerous than Sean," he continued. "Sean sometimes shows restraint. Megan seldom does when she's angry."

Seth continued forward, cringing from the hail like sound of rocks hitting the Jeep.

"Left," Udit yelled urgently.

Seth jerked the steering wheel left and a boulder the size of a Volkswagen landed to their right.

"We'd better find them soon," Seth muttered as a pair of larger boulders hit the trees beside the logging road ahead of them. The boulders bounced harmlessly past but the Jeep was pummeled by splintered limbs.

Their view disappeared behind a veil of trees and the bulk of another ridge as they hit the bottom of the dip and started back up the mountain.

Their view of the mountain was blocked by the ridge for the next couple of hundred yards of the logging road. They could still see the trees shaking and swaying from the earthquake accompanying the eruption.

"There they are," John shouted, pointing ahead of them, through the opening the boulders had made in the trees.

Two men, Cory and Brennan, could be seen bouncing down a path through the trees in a bubble of air. The bubble was clearly obvious because of the dirt and debris that surrounded its surface. Rocks could be seen hitting the bubble before bouncing away, too. It looked like the bubble was briefly grabbing at everything it touched in an effort to slow it down.

Cory and Brennan were crouched as if they were on a ski slope. Each bounce and erratic swerve of the bubble was reflected in the way their knees flexed and the way they leaned back and forth. Both men gripped the collar of the large gray dog between them with one hand. If a dog's expression could be quantified, Lightning's expression would have been called terrified.

Cory's other arm was wrapped around Sean, hugging the boy to his chest.

Megan could be seen over Brennan's shoulder focused on the path of their bubble. Her head bobbed to the left, followed by Brennan and Cory leaning that direction. They almost missed the trunk of another tree which caused them to careen out of the forest and across the logging road in a shower of splinters. They hit another tree trunk which sent them careening back in the other direction. It was during this wild bounce that Megan noticed the Jeep, as she bounced about fifty feet lower on the mountain.

"That's like riding inside a pinball," John said, his eyes wide in trepidation.

John had seen many examples of Wizardly talents in the time he had spent with the Flynns. This was the first time that he had seen a real life, practical application of those talents.

Megan slowed the bubble with only two more bounces and stopped about a hundred feet below the Jeep. She released the bubble and the little rescue party settled to the ground. Brennan stumbled and Cory caught himself on a boulder that had beat them down the mountain. Lightning simply stood on stiff legs, trembling.

Gravel and rocks continued to rain down on them as they hurried back towards the Jeep. Megan erected another shield above them to protect them from the rocks.

"We need to get out of here!" Cory yelled as he hurried to the back door of the Jeep. "Lava is coming."

He jerked the back door open, and Lightning jumped in. He climbed over the seat into the back. Cory climbed in as Brennan swung the backpack-carrier off his back. Brennan climbed in and Cory yelled, "Go!"

The force of the explosion from the erupting volcano, even being shielded by the ridgeline, was nearly enough to wreck the Jeep. The shock wave that rolled over the ridge, knocked the Jeep sideways and it took a few moments to get straightened out again. The intensity of the rocks falling from the sky increased.

"Go, go, go," Cory yelled at Seth.

Seth turned, backed, and turned again so he was headed back down the hill. He drove like his life depended on it, which it did, but was only able to go about fifty feet before leaving the shelter of the ridge. He was confronted by an impassible barrier of downed trees.

John looked back and saw a tide of red, molten rock break through the tree line at the top of the ridge behind them.

"Lava," John screamed in warning.

"Water," Sean croaked. "We need water to fight back," he continued in a scratchy voice when Brennan looked at him incredulously. "Megan used all the water in the backpack."

"There's a five gallon can in the back," Udit said.

Sean nodded and ordered, "Megan, Cory, try to redirect the lava or slow it down. I'll try to clear a path through the trees."

Megan nodded and the metal five gallon can of water abruptly crumpled slightly. The flowing line of death behind them changed direction and seemed to flow sideways. A moment later the can crumpled more as the energy was drawn from the sealed metal container. The trees ahead of them began shattering, creating a path for the Jeep. Seth stomped the gas and the Jeep leapt forward towards safety, life and freedom.

23 May, 1980

"I'm sure glad that I opted for full insurance on that van and trailer," Seth said ruefully with a shake of his head as he sat down at the table.

The 'family' was sitting down for dinner on the Friday following their ordeal. They had safely made it back to the ranch, early the day before. It took the help of the Cowlitz tribe and Brett Stevens' contacts to extricate them from the chaos of the aftermath of a major volcanic eruption. And it was chaos.