Trial by Fire

Danni began to cry. Her small frame shook with sobs and Jason felt like a real heel.

"Sorry kid. I shouldn't have sprung it on you like that. I just want you girls to understand that if we don't get out of here pronto it's going to get bad. I mean like now. Tomorrow, at the latest, the ash is going to start falling. We want to be way south when that happens. So let's find your brother quick, get my folks and get out of here."

They pulled into the grocery store parking lot and it was immediately evident that something bad had happened. Six cars were smoking in front of the store and a dozen bodies lay around. The girls identified one of the vehicles as Andy's truck.

Alex jumped out and ran to one of the bodies wearing a green jacket. She screamed and threw herself on the body.

"Stay here," Jason told Danni. He grabbed his gun off the seat and cautiously went to Alex.

"Is that Andy?" he asked as he touched her shoulder.

She couldn't speak through her sobs, but she nodded. "Listen, we can't stay here," Jason looked around nervously. "Whoever did this may still be here or they may come back. We have to get out of here. This store is a big target and armed and angry people are going to come here looking for supplies. Let's put him in the car and find a place to bury him."

Alex let herself be led away and Jason got a blanket out of the car. He wrapped the young man in the blanket and placed the body in the back of the Explorer.

Danni was sitting wide eyed in the back seat. "Is he dead?" she asked.

Jason nodded. "Yes, I'm sorry. He probably got in somebody's way. They were scared and desperate and they just gunned him down. I'm so sorry."

Danni burst into tears and both girls continued to weep as Jason navigated through town and back onto the highway. They buried Andy in a group of trees of the road at the next exit. It was all Jason could do to get the hysterical girls back in the car and start moving again. They sobbed themselves to sleep in the back seat with their arms around each other.

They looked very young as Jason glanced back at them. Of course, Danni was very young. She was a tiny little thing, but cute as a button, Jason noticed. She looked like someone's painting of a high school cheerleader. Alex looked like she must be about 20. Andy must have been somewhere between them. Jason felt his heart melt as he watched them sleep. He felt terrible for them. They had seen a lot of hard times and it was only going to get harder. They would be okay, he decided. He was going to see to that.

Chapter Six

Lanston got up to relieve himself in the bushes. He checked the lines while he was up. One of the rods was bent way over and had a fish on. After a five-minute battle he landed a flathead catfish of about 15 pounds. He strung it up and put it in the river. That would make a couple of good meals. He baited the hook again and cast it back into the river. Away over on the Missouri side he saw lights flashing and heard shots fired.

Somebody was in trouble, he thought. He was glad it wasn't them. It began to snow. It was a pretty warm night and he was very surprised. He reached up and brushed a flake off his nose. It didn't feel cold but sort of gritty. He realized it was ash. A few flakes drifted down and then it stopped. He wondered why, but being a pragmatic kind of guy, he just shrugged and went back to his bed. Soon he was asleep. He dreamed. He was stepping up to the discus ring. He was in first place in the discus, but the Haldane twins hadn't thrown yet. He hadn't beaten either one of them this year. Over on the track he heard the starter's gun. It fired once, then again. False start, he told himself, but the gun kept firing. He awoke and realized it wasn't a dream. He was really hearing gunfire and motors running.

He jumped up and shook the others awake. There were three boats coming closer and closer to the island. Two seemed to be pursuing the third. Whoever was driving the third was trying to get away and Lanston could make out two figures firing at the pursuers from the back of the boat.

"Dad, we've got to help them," he said.

"We can't afford to get involved," Reagan said.

"If we don't, the ones in front are going to be killed," Sara said. "I can't live with that. Help them, Reagan."

Reagan couldn't meet his wife's eyes. "Okay," he said. "Mason, get out that .50 caliber and get down on that rock. Get down flat and set up the tripod. Flat, do you hear me? Don't let them see you. When the first boat is past, sweep the second two with the fifty and then get back up here."

"Got it, Dad," Mason replied as he ran toward the tug. By the time he got it set up the first boat was nearly to the big rock that jutted out over the river. A fire had started in the back of the boat, and the two fighters had put down their guns and were spraying it with a fire extinguisher. Reagan, Lanston and the two girls had taken up positions looking down on the slack water behind the rock.

As the first boat passed the rock they heard the snarl of the big fifty open up. The action was spectacular. The boat closest to Mason erupted in a fireball. Flaming wreckage rained down on the water. The second, nearly cut in half, sunk immediately and two dark forms slipped away down the current, heading for the Illinois shore.

The motor on the fleeing boat coughed and died and the boat drifted in the slack water near the rock. Mason was no longer on the rock. He crawled up behind his father.

"Dude," he said. "Did you see that? That .50 cut them to pieces!"

"Nice job, Son. Now the question is, did we get the right guys?"

"You in the boat," he called. "Come out where I can see you and let me see your hands."

A young man, and what looked like two children, slowly stood up from where they had been crouching with their hands raised.

"Why were they chasing you?" he called.

"I have two women, some weapons and medical supplies," the man answered. "They thought they could take us, we disagreed. Besides," he grinned a little ruefully, "we stole their boat. Who are you and what are you going to do to us? You've obviously got us outgunned."

"Well, we're not going to do anything to you, if you mean like rob you or take you captive," Reagan said. "We can get you off that boat and we might do some things together. But if you try to steal our boat we'll drop you in the river with a rock tied to your leg."

Lanston threw the man a rope and heaved at the line after it was tied off. The man jumped ashore and Lanston lifted one of the girls down. She was a tiny little thing; shaking and obviously terrified, but she looked up at him with wide brown eyes. "I'm Dannielle," she said, "and I'm very glad you rescued us. Those men were going to do terrible things to us."

"Not while I'm around," Lanston growled. He felt like she needed to be protected. He hugged her a little and she clung to him.. The top of her blonde head barely reached his chest. A woman cleared her throat and Lanston looked up to see a slightly older copy of Dannielle looking down at him impatiently.

"Oh, sorry," he said. He helped her onto the shore.

"I'm Alex Brooks, and the guy you met is Jason Kilwreath," She introduced them to the Thayer's. "Danni is my little sister." The resemblance was easy to see.

They stirred up the fire and Kierra put the coffee pot on. Jason sketched the details of how they had happened to be in their predicament.

They had rolled into Jefferson City and Jason's parents were well. They had refused to budge. At 75-years-old, they weren't going to leave their farm. Jason's father had told him they were just too old to make any runs across the country. They had food stored enough to last for years, heated with wood, had a hand pump for water and were well situated to ride it out. They understood what was coming but they just wouldn't consider leaving. They understood why Jason wanted them to go, but they insisted that they weren't going. Jason and the girls would just add more mouths to feed and everyone decided that it was best if they tried to get south.

They made their way down through central Missouri and stole a boat up the river. They really didn't have much of a plan except to get as far south as they could.

"Listen," Reagan said, "You aren't going to make it by yourselves. You don't have enough equipment; you don't have enough firepower and no way off this island except our boat. We'll drop you anywhere you want to go, but don't you think it would be better for all of us if we joined forces? We might have a little trouble with food, but three more guns would help us and five more would help you. You seem like good folks and if we stick together we'll have a better chance at getting out of this alive than we would alone. You interested?"

Jason glanced at the girls. "What do you ladies think?"

"I think this is the best chance we're ever going to get," Alex said.

"Oh yes," Danni glanced at Lanston. "I want to go with them."

"Well," Sara said. "That's settled then. I think we should all try to get some sleep and we'll talk about it more in the morning."

They all lay awake, the adrenaline slowly wearing off. One by one they drifted off. A few ash flakes drifted down. More and more began to fall and soon the sleeping forms were all but covered with a heavy dusting.

Mason awoke with the feeling that he was smothering. He shot upright in his bag. He was covered with a gritty layer of ash. The sun should have been well into the sky by now, but it appeared to be either just before sunrise or just after sunset. A blizzard of ash filtered through the trees.

He brushed the ash off his face. Some got in his eyes and it felt like someone had filled them with sand. He stumbled down to the river and washed his face. He went out to the barge and got a hat. He got out a pack of washcloths and wet them in the river. He walked back to camp and woke Kierra up.

"Don't open your eyes," he said quietly. "You have ash all over your face and it will get in your eyes if you open them. Let me wash it off before you open them."

After helping her, they went around to everyone else and repeated the process.

As the resident volcano expert, Jason explained the situation. "This is only going to get worse," he said. "This is going to continue as long as La Garita is erupting. No one knows how long that is going to be. We are going to have to have shelter. We need to put up tents when we sleep on the shore. We are going to have to cover everything up that the ash will damage. The river is going to be full of it, the air is going to be full of it and it's going to sift into everything we have that isn't airtight. We are going to have to constantly check the air filters on the boat, and it's going to be a mess. You might as well get used to it because this is the way it's going to be for a long time."

The girls all cried a little, but took the news fairly well. Reagan cleaned the catfish and the girls set up a Coleman stove in the cabin of the tug where there was no ash and they ate catfish for breakfast and cast off.

Jason could read the river charts and was elected navigator and Lanston ran the tug. Mason and Reagan began wrapping everything that could be wrapped in tarps to try and keep out the ash while the girls carried the things that needed protection into the portions of the tug that had doors and could be sealed. The armored truck, the tug cabin and storage compartments were going to have to serve for beds while they were on the river so that they could keep out of the ash.

They couldn't run very well at night. It was pitch black and running lights made them a glaring target for anyone that was watching. The channel was open, for now, but it was impossible to see anything in the way, and Lanston and Jason needed to sleep.

They made forty miles the first day. Lanston eased the barge onto a wing dam off the main channel and they tied off for the night. A small creek ran into the river and the water looked fairly clean.

"Hey, Lanston," Danni said. "Let's go swimming. I feel like I've been rolling in dirt all day."

"Okay," he agreed. "Let me grab some soap and we can wash, too."

"I've got a bikini in my bag," she twinkled up at him. "Would you like to see it?"

"Only if you're inside it," he said.

She giggled and jogged off to the truck. Lanston saw movement in the cab and she emerged with a towel wrapped around her.

"That towel is going to look like mud by the time we get there," he said.

She smiled. "You're right." She threw it back inside the cab of the truck.

Lanston whistled softly. She blushed a little but there was a slightly exaggerated sway to her hips as she walked along in front of him in the little black bikini. She looked amazing. She was tiny, but all the right things were in all the right places in the right amounts for her small but full frame.

He helped her down from the tug onto the rocks and they held hands as they crossed to the mouth of the creek. They played in the water for a while and were soon joined by Mason and Kierra.

"Let's have a chicken fight," Mason said.

"What's a chicken fight?" Dannielle asked.

"That's where you get up on Lanston's shoulders and Kierra gets up on mine and we try to push each other over," He told her.

Lanston was amazed at how light she was. They managed to maneuver Mason and Kierra into slightly deeper water as the two girls fought with their hands to push their opponent over. Once Mason's nose got under water, it was over and Kierra shrieked as they toppled into the water.

"We won," Danni crowed.

"To the victor go the spoils," Lanston said.

He pulled Danni around and up close and kissed her. She looked up at him with wide eyes for a minute. She leaned in and kissed him again quickly, then splashed him and swam away like a sleek little otter. She got the soap and made sure Lanston was watching as she lathered herself with the suds.

The others had a quick dip and bath and the group gathered in the wheelhouse.

Mason and Kierra opened some cans, fried the rest of the catfish and everyone began to eat.

"What's your plan?" Jason asked.

"You're the expert. How far south do you think this thing is going to reach?" Reagan asked.

"I don't really know," Jason said. "I can make some educated guesses. The Mount Toba eruption in Indonesia is the one we know the most about. It was about half the size of the first La Garita eruption. When Mount Toba blew it covered about 4% of the surface of the earth in ash. India was completely covered and a good bit of Southeast Asia. We can probably count on twice that now. If that's the case, the ash fall is going to cover at least the entire North American continent."

"What about lava?" Kierra asked.

"We don't have to worry about that," Jason replied. "We'd have to be a lot closer to the volcano than we are. The big problem is going to be this ash. We can't breathe this stuff. It's deadly. It will turn to cement in our lungs and smother us. It will make us sick if it doesn't kill us. Sulfur is the other big problem. I know you've heard of acid rain, but you have no idea how bad this is going to be. It's going to rain sulfuric acid. We can't be out in it and it's going to rain like you've never seen. It's going to be dirty rain that we can't afford to be out in. The sun isn't going to shine for a long time. It's going to look like a cloudy winter day for years.

If the volcano and the San Juan fields stop erupting, it will still take ten years for things to get back to normal. North America is going to be uninhabitable for decades. Global temperatures are going to drop at least 10 degrees for years. We're in trouble. So, what's your plan?"

"We were heading down the river to the gulf," Mason said. "We were thinking Central or South America."

"We were going to head down the coast of Mexico in the tug," Reagan said. "We are towing this fuel barge and it is full. We can refuel anytime we want. We're out here on the river and it's going to be hard for anyone other than a small army to take this away from us. We're heavily armed; we have food and water for months. If we stay healthy and out of trouble, I think we can make it. What do you think?"

"I think that's our only hope," Jason said.

Chapter Seven

A mile down the river the next morning they came past a town on the west bank. It looked like a scene from hell. Danni was setting on Lanston's lap in the wheelhouse steering. His big hands covered her little ones on the wheel. Buildings were burning and they could hear shots fired. A mob outside a building seemed to be attacking whoever was inside.

"That looks like the police station," Danni said. "There are police cars parked outside. Do you think those people are attacking the police or the other way around?"

"I don't know," Lanston said. "I don't want to know. The police are going to have to take care of themselves. We were attacked twice by the police before we got this tug. They're just like everyone else. They're scared and desperate and they will do whatever it takes to live."

Danni shivered a little and leaned back into Lanston. "I'm so glad I'm here with you and not out there," she said as she looked up at him.

"So, I'm better than being shot or burnt," he said.

She smacked him on the chest. "You know what I mean, silly."

"Yeah, I'm glad you're here, too." He squeezed her and she gave a little purr.

"Okay, you two," Jason said. "Get a room, but first the channel swings over to the other side so pay attention to what you're doing or you'll run us aground."

Mason and Kierra sat under a tarp on the bow and watched as they passed the town. Mason had the big fifty set up on its tripod under the tarp on top of an ammunition crate. It was raining, and the rain, mixed with the ash, formed muddy puddles all over the deck.

Mason had spotted something out across the river about ten minutes before. It looked like a boat, but it disappeared behind the curtain of the driving rain.

"Hey, baby," he said. "Put on your rain gear and take a look aft, would you? I get the feeling that boat isn't gone but I don't know where it's at."

"What's aft?" Kierra asked.

"The back of a boat," Mason said, jerking his thumb toward the stern of the tug.

Kierra pulled the green hood of her rain gear over her hair and ran back past the wheelhouse. Just as she came around the corner, she noticed a rope with an anchor attached come flying over the rail near the stern.

"Mason!" she screamed. "There's someone back here!"

Mason rounded the corner just as someone in a dark suit jacket pulled himself over the rail.

"Hold it right there," Mason ordered. The big fifty was still on its tripod back at the bow. He was unarmed, but he hoped the rain would hide that fact as he stretched out one arm toward the intruder as if aiming a gun at him.

"Dad," he shouted. "Someone just came aboard."

"It's okay," the man called. "I'm a Secret Service Agent. I have Senator Stephan Johnson of Kentucky on the boat. We were over in Paducah there when the town went crazy. We were trapped in the Police Station. We managed to get out and commandeer this boat. We're just trying to keep the Senator safe."

Reagan and Sara boiled out of the hatch behind the wheelhouse where they had been organizing their supplies and Alex climbed aboard from the fuel barge. They were all armed and wary.

"What do you want here?" Reagan asked.

The agent was helping another man over the rail. The senator was a tall, middle-aged man with steel gray hair. He spoke with a pronounced southern accent.

"Am I glad to see you all," he said. "This is Agent White and Agent Thomas is still on the boat. Is it okay if he comes aboard?"

"That depends," Reagan said. "What do you want?"

Agent White stepped forward. "What do you mean, 'what does he want?' This man is a United States Senator. We're taking command of this vessel."