Supervolcano: Eruption

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Colin met Gabe Sanchez at a familiar spot: in front of the coffeepot. As Colin loaded up more instant brain cells, Gabe said, “Well, it’s finally gone and happened.”

“What’s gone and happened?” Colin asked, adulterating his java with cream and sugar. He stood aside so Gabe could get at the pot.

“That superwaddayacallit in Yellowstone went kapow,” Sanchez answered. “I just saw it on a news feed from the Net… Hey, where you going, man?”

“To find out what’s going on for myself,” Colin said grimly. “Kelly’s still up there, or she was last night.”

“Oh. Hell. That’s not good,” Gabe said.

“Tell me about it.”

“I hope everything turns out okay.” Sanchez crossed himself.

Raised a hardshell Baptist, Colin had long since lost his religion. Most of the time, he didn’t miss it. Most of the time, in fact, he forgot he’d ever had it. It was easy not to believe in God, especially a merciful God, when you were a cop. Colin often wondered how guys like Gabe managed. Every once in a while, he envied them the solace their faith could bring. This was one of those times.

The first thing he did was check his phone. He breathed again when he saw a text from Kelly: On helicopter. On my way out. “Thank you, Jesus,” he muttered. It was as close to a prayer as he’d come in God knew how long.

One thing the cop shop could boast, and that was fast Internet. When Colin turned to CNN. com, he got live streaming video from a weather satellite. There was a hell of a lot of smoke, and under it patches of fire. The headline was simple: YELLOWSTONE CATASTROPHE! When he noticed the computer-added state boundaries on the video, he realized that was an understatement, but English didn’t come equipped with words to describe anything this big. No language did. No language since the primeval Ook! had ever needed to cope with anything like this.

There was a story under the video. The great collapse had happened only forty minutes earlier. He shook his head in wonder. The world was a connected place these days, all right.

Then he remembered he’d had a coffee cup in his hand when he ran back to his desk. He reached for it… and discovered the world was a connected place in more ways than the information superhighway. That gentle rolling motion under his swivel chair could only be an earthquake. By the way it went on and on, it was one doozy of an earthquake, too. Cops and secretaries started exclaiming-he wasn’t the only one who felt it. But it stayed mild, so it was a long way off.

“Holy crap!” he said. “That’s got to be the supervolcano.”

Back more than a hundred years before, they’d felt the San Francisco earthquake in Los Angeles. But Yellowstone was a lot farther away than San Francisco. Didn’t that argue that the quake that went with the supervolcano eruption was bigger than the one that had flattened the city bythe bay? How much would this one flatten?

He wondered what had happened to Denver. Central Colorado suddenly seemed much too close to northwestern Wyoming. He called Vanessa. He got her voice mail, which might mean anything or nothing. At the beep, he said, “You okay? Give me a call and let me know. ’Bye.” He’d done what he could on that front.

A little fiddling on the computer told him how far from San Atanasio Yellowstone was. It also told him how fast earthquake waves traveled, even if the Wiki article did say they “propagated” (he tried to imagine fornicating earthquake waves, but his mind rebelled). San Atanasio would feel an earthquake in Yellowstone about forty minutes after it happened, assuming it felt such an earthquake at all. Yeah, assuming, he thought.

His cell phone rang. He always answered the landline on his desk with some variation on Ferguson. Here he said, “Hello?”

“Hi, Dad.” It was Vanessa. “I just got home. Could you feel the quake there?”

“Sure could. What’s it like where you are? You just got home, you said?”

“Yeah. The building where I work stayed up, but power’s out. It’s out here, too. I don’t know when it’ll come back.” She hesitated, then added, “I don’t know if it’ll come back. And the sky… Oh, my God, the sky! The cloud’s coming this way. You can tell. Pickles is under the bed, and he won’t come out. He’s scared shitless-I cleaned it off the rug.”

“I believe that. Should you get out now, while the getting’s good?” Colin asked.

“I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. Will you let Mom and the brothers know I’m okay? I don’t want to run my battery any more than I have to-I don’t know when I’ll be able to charge it again.”

“Okay,” Colin said, though he looked forward to calling Louise the way he looked forward to losing a tooth. “Take care.”

“You, too. ’Bye.”

He started to add Good luck, but she’d hung up by then. Sighing, he called Louise’s cell. Maybe he’d luck out. Maybe he’d get her voice mail and not actually have to talk to her.

But no. That familiar voice, once loved, now… not, said, “Hello?” in his ear.

“Hi. It’s me.” His own voice was hard and flat. “I just talked to Vanessa. She’s okay, but it sounds like the quake hit Denver a lot harder than it did here.”

“The same quake?” Louise said incredulously, so she wasn’t with it at all.

Colin filled her in in words of one syllable. “Power’s down in Denver, and the ash cloud is heading that way,” he finished. From what Kelly’d said, the ash might even dust Los Angeles. Louise didn’t need to worry about that right now, though.

“Good God!” she said. “I’d better call the poor baby.”

“Don’t,” Colin said sharply. “She’s trying to save her battery till power comes back, if it does. She told me to call you. She’s being sensible.” For once in her life. He didn’t say that. What good would it do?

What good would anything do? “She talked to you instead of me, Mister High and Mighty? How did that happen?” Louise demanded.

“Because I found out what was going on and called her,” Colin answered. “That’s m…” He was talking to a dead line again.

He powered off his own phone. Chances were Louise would call Vanessa, just to show him. Chances were she’d talk the kid’s ear off, too. Well, Vanessa could tell her to shut up. Vanessa could try, anyway.

He scrolled down the story under the wound in the earth. It said the ash plume would top out at over 100,000 feet. Twenty miles, he thought. None of the Rockies was even three miles high. You couldn’t see the Rockies from L.A. Even imagining you could was silly. But something seven times as high? He didn’t know. He didn’t think he had enough trig left to find out, either. His long-ago high-school math teachers would be pissed off that he didn’t, but that was how the cookie bounced or the ball crumbled. His high-school math teachers had been a bunch of bores.

Rob was on the other side of the country, touring with his band. If anybody was okay, he was. Marshall was up in Santa Barbara, getting ready for a new quarter and another new major. The eruption wouldn’t trash Santa Barbara. Colin didn’t think trashing Santa Barbara was possible. The only thing that convinced him Santa Barbara wasn’t heaven on earth was the real-estate prices there. Heaven wouldn’t have been anywhere near so expensive.

The CNN news feed said the President was urging everyone to stay calm during the present emergency. How calm could you stay when a quake knocked down everything you had or when boulders or ash fell out of the sky on you? Colin routinely despised Democrats in the White House, and Republicans routinely disappointed him. But hadn’t this clown’s advisors briefed him about what a supervolcano eruption would mean?

Or maybe they had. As Kelly’d said, some disasters were just too big to plan for. You hoped they didn’t happen. If they happened all the same, what could you do but duck and cover and roll with the punches and try your best to come out the other side, if there turned out to be any other side to come out to?

Half the country must have felt this punch, maybe more. And the eruption itself was only the first part of the combination the supervolcano would throw at civilization. Under those circumstances, urging calm on people might not be so bad. It wouldn’t hurt, and it might do a tiny bit of good.

Something rumbled outside, and went on rumbling. During the big war, the Germans on the Eastern Front must have heard noise like that when the Russians shelled them before sending in the tanks. Colin knew about naval gunnery, but it was never this continuous. For this, you’d have to line up guns of every caliber hub to hub, shoot them all off at once, and have enough ammo to keep shooting and shooting and shooting.

Or you’d have to have a supervolcano go off eight hundred miles away. This sound had been traveling for more than an hour, and it was still loud enough to shake the building almost as hard as the earthquake had. In another hour or hour and a half, the President would hear it in the Oval Office.

And, three or four hours after that, they might hear it in Europe. They’d heard Krakatoa a couple of thousand miles away, and this thing made Krakatoa look like Vanessa’s Pickles next to a sabertooth.

“Gabe!” Colin said through the rumble that wouldn’t quit.

“Waddaya need?” Sergeant Sanchez answered.

“C’mere a sec,” Colin said. Gabe got up from his own desk and ambled over. Colin went on, “We had better secure a supply of gasoline for the department, and I mean right now. This thing will screw transport like you wouldn’t believe.”

“So why are you telling me? Why aren’t you telling the chief, or else the mayor? Have we got the money in the budget to do anything like that? Can the city get it for us if we don’t?” Gabe was full of reasonable questions.

Or rather, he was full of questions that would have been reasonable a little more than an hour earlier. The chief and the mayor would be full of it, too. Colin had no doubts on that score. The difference was, he could-or he hoped he could-make Gabe see sense. His superiors wouldn’t want to listen… as if they ever did.

“This has to be unofficial,” Colin said. “No refineries in San Atanasio, but there are some over in El Segundo and down in Lomita. Talk to the managers there. Tell ’em we’re gonna have problems. Tell ’em the whole state’s gonna have problems. Do it now-get there ahead of their own cops. Show ’em we’re on the ball. See what you can do to get ’em to lend us a hand.”

“I got you,” Gabe said. “You want ’em to think we know more about what’s going on than their local people do.”

“Uh-huh.” Colin nodded. Thanks to Kelly, he did know more about what was liable to go on than most of the local competition. The problem with that was, the more you knew, the worse things looked. You could tell a refinery manager that California would have problems for a while. You couldn’t tell a guy like that that the world had just walked into a sucker punch. If he didn’t already know it for himself-and chances were he wouldn’t-he wouldn’t believe you.

“Okay. I’ll do it,” Sanchez said. “Better get moving, while those guys’re still shook up by the quake and the boom and shit.”

“Good plan,” Colin agreed. The refinery managers would be shaken-literally and otherwise. They might be more inclined to listen to bulky, imposing Sergeant Sanchez. Colin would have bet his last quarter that things would get worse, not better. But you didn’t want to tell civilians too much too soon. They couldn’t always handle bad news.

And he knew he was a cynical cop, ready to look on the gloomy side both by training and by temperament. He had to put that in the equation, too. Kelly might not understand supervolcanoes as well as she thought she did. It wasn’t as if geologists had ever had a live one to study.

So maybe this wasn’t a catastrophe after all, CNN. com notwithstanding. Maybe it was just a disaster. Colin laughed at himself. Only a cynical cop could have a thought like that and actually find consolation in it.

Bryce Miller had a window seat on the flight from O’Hare back to LAX. He couldn’t stand LAX. He didn’t know anyone who could. O’Hare was even busier. It seemed to run more smoothly, though.

Or maybe that was just his imagination. The conference on the Hellenistic world at the University of Chicago had gone as well as he’d dared hope. He hadn’t given a paper, but he’d critiqued one. He thought his remarks were to the point. The professors who’d listened to him seemed to think so, too.

Something might come of that. No guarantees-there were never any guarantees-but something might. If he could get his thesis done… Or why think small? They did hire people who’d done all but the dissertation. There was even a name for them: ABDs. They got paid less, of course, but after a TA’s money any real salary looked terrific.

The guy in the middle iggled. He wasn’t deliberately annoying, but he was there, right there. And the woman in front of Bryce had reclined her seat as far as it would go. She wasn’t trying to kneecap him, which didn’t mean she wasn’t doing it.

He got out the pastrami on rye and the big chocolate-chip cookie he’d bought in the airport. The bastards weren’t about to feed you. He counted himself lucky the flight attendants had doled out a Coke. Such extravagant generosity had to be bad for the bottom line.

Somebody somewhere in the plane was eating something smellier than airport pastrami. Bryce was forcibly reminded of the modern fable about the Stinky Cheese Man. You’d think whoever was chowing down would have more regard for everyone else trapped in the flying cigar with him. But no.

And even that minimal regard might be too much to hope for. Going with a cop’s daughter and getting to know the cop himself had made Bryce look at his fellow humans with a freshly jaundiced eye. Getting dumped by Vanessa hadn’t done anything to improve his attitude, either.

He took a bite from the sandwich in self-defense. While he chewed, he looked down out the window: about seven miles down. The landscape was flat and green and gold, and laid out in geometric patterns. The Midwest, from on high.

It wasn’t great pastrami. No way you’d find great pastrami at an airport sandwich shop. But it wasn’t lousy pastrami-all fat and peppercorns-either. And the cookie honest to God was pretty good. It made a better lunch than American would have given him once upon a time-but also a more expensive one.

Bryce slammed the tray into place again. Let the bitch who’d shoved her seat way back feel it. After one more look at the fields far below, he leaned against the bulkhead and tried to sleep.

He’d just dozed off when… “This is the captain speaking.” Bryce’s eyes jerked open. He was surprised he didn’t bleed out through them. The airline’s customer-prevention program was going full blast.

Or so he thought till he saw one of the flight attendants. She looked pale and stunned, like the gal he knew who’d flunked her orals.

“This is the captain,” the slightly Southern voice repeated. “We’ve just got word of… an emergency ahead. We are not going to be able to continue to Los Angeles. We will have to turn around and head back towards O’Hare. I am very sorry for the inconvenience, but this is unavoidable. I don’t know yet whether we’ll land in Chicago or somewhere between here and there. When I find out, be assured I will inform you pronto.”

The PA system crackled into silence at the same time as the cabin exploded into noise. An emergency ahead? What the hell was that supposed to mean? What would make them turn around and head for Chicago again? A replay of 9/11? That was the first thing Bryce thought of.

As the plane began to turn, the guy in the seat next to his fired up his iPhone. You weren’t supposed to do that in flight, but Bryce would have bet gold against gallstones his seatmate wasn’t the only one breaking the rules right now. People wanted to know what the hell was going on. If the pilot wouldn’t tell them, they’d find out for themselves.

Not thinking anything of it, Bryce looked out the window again. His eyes started to track across it, but then stopped as if physically seized. They had to be bugging out of their sockets.

He’d flown between anvil-topped thunderheads that towered higher into the sky than his airliner. Not often-most of the time, you stayed well above the weather-but he had. Those had been goddamn bumpy flights, too.

But those clouds’d gone up a little higher than his plane. That black column off in the distance ahead… If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would have been sure it was impossible. Even seeing it, he thought it should have been. Not knowing how far away it was, he couldn’t say how high up it went. He could say, though, that it went one hell of a lot higher than anything he’d ever imagined, let alone seen.

The guy next to him was staring at the iPhone as hard as Bryce was staring out the window. “Supervolcano,” the man muttered to himself. “The fuck is a supervolcano?”

No one could possibly have dropped an icicle down Bryce’s back. But that was how he felt. He knew what a supervolcano was. He might not have if not for Colin’s new lady friend, but he did. Colin had taken Kelly seriously even before Yellowstone started bubbling over. Bryce hadn’t known how seriously to take her, not then, especially since he was hearing her message delivered through Colin. He knew now, by God!

Other people in the window seats on his side of the plane were seeing that colossal-and seemingly expanding, too-cloud. The word supervolcano started rippling through the whole cabin. Not everybody seemed sure what all it meant, but it obviously wasn’t good news.

“Does this mean we won’t get to have dinner with Uncle Louie tonight?” a woman said. Some people were not overburdened with brains.

“This is the captain one more time. If I could have your attention, please…” The man in the cockpit had to know the passengers were seething. “If I could have your attention, please.. ” He waited for them to settle down a little before continuing, “Some of you on the starboard side will have seen a large cloud of ash and dust rising into the upper atmosphere.”

Naturally, all the people who hadn’t seen it craned their necks in that direction, trying to get a glimpse. Bryce admired the pilot’s power of understatement. A lesser man would have been incapable of it.

“That is why we’re turning around,” the pilot went on. “We can’t fly over it, we don’t dare fly through it-grit does bad things to turbine blades-and it doesn’t look like we can go around it. There is some turbulence associated with this eruption. And I’m going to ask all of you who turned on your smart phones to for God’s sake turn ’em off again. Getting our electronics screwed up right now would be the last thing we need. Thanks very much, folks.”

Bryce would have hit the flight-attendant call button if the guy in the middle seat hadn’t turned off the iPhone. Maybe he was worrying about the hazard too much. But if the captain was getting up in arms about it, he figured he was also entitled to.

Up ahead a few rows, somebody didn’t want to squelch his BlackBerry. He loudly and profanely didn’t want to, in fact. Aided by two other passengers, a flight attendant dispossessed him of it. That brought on more profanity.

“You can have it back when we land, sir,” the stewardess said sweetly. Sweetly still, she added, “Then I hope you ram it up your stupid ass.”

That startled the foulmouthed passenger into silence. You didn’t expect someone in a service industry to shoot back at you with your own weapons. Bryce hadn’t expected anything like that, either. Hearing it made him wonder how much trouble the flight might be in. Up till then, he’d worried what the dickens he would do in Chicago once they got back there. He had nowhere to stay, he had a carry-on’s worth of clothes, and he had no more money than any other grad student. Now he wondered whether they’d make it back. If that flight attendant felt she could let fly at a passenger, she was wondering the same thing.

Some turbulence associated with this eruption. The captain’s bloodless phrase came back to Bryce. Suppose you dropped Rhode Island into a frying pan big enough to hold it-a figure of speech Colin liked, since, as Bryce had long known, he couldn’t stand Rhode Island. What kind of shock wave would go through the air after you did that? How fast would it go? What would it do to any old airplane it happened to meet?

Those were all fascinating questions, weren’t they? They sure were, especially that last one. Bryce’s current perspective aboard one of those old airplanes made it even more intriguing.

He could do exactly nothing about it. He’d never felt helpless in this particular way before. The guy sitting next to him must have made the same kind of calculation, because out of the blue he said, “I did two tours in Afghanistan. When the mortars start coming in, you just hope you’re lucky. After I got out of the Army, I didn’t figure I’d ever have to worry about that kind of shit again, y’know?”

“Uh-huh.” Bryce managed a nod. He wanted to freak out, but not in front of a bunch of strangers. How much of what got labeled bravery was really just fear of embarrassment?

He couldn’t see the cloud any more; the airliner’s turn meant it was behind them now. But he could imagine the shock wave tearing through the air and gaining on them every second. A bell chimed in the cabin. The seat-belt warning lights came on. “The captain has directed that everyone should return to their seats and remain there,” the boss flight attendant declared on the PA. “This is due to safety concerns for all on board, and will be enforced as necessary.”

That sounded tougher than airline personnel usually talked. Bryce thought of the Coke he’d had with his sandwich. Sooner or later, it would make itself known again. What was he supposed to do then if he couldn’t get up? Pee in his airsick bag? Maybe. And men had it easier there than women did.

The engines changed note once more. They were working harder. If that meant the plane was going faster, Bryce was all for it. The intercom came back to life: “This is the captain speaking, folks. We have been cleared to land in Lincoln, Nebraska. We will be approaching from the northwest, and I will have you down on the ground just as soon as I possibly can. Do please stay in your seats, with your belts securely fastened. This may not be real pretty, but I will make it work.”

One more piece of news that didn’t sound so good. Bryce looked out the window again. They were coming down like mad bastards. No leisurely landing descent today. When the pilot said he wanted to get down fast, he wasn’t kidding. Bryce’s physical eyes saw farms and ponds and roads swell beneath him. His mind’s eye saw a red needle on an altimeter sliding from right to left. Altimeters probably didn’t look like that these days-everything now was bound to be digital. So his mind’s eye wasn’t as precise as it might have been. So what?

Lincoln. The University of Nebraska was there. What did he know about the University of Nebraska? They had a good football team and a good university press. Who was their ancient historian? What kind of classics department did they have? He’d talked with some of their peoplen Chicago. Now he might try to crash on them for a little while-they were as close to family as he had this side of Youngstown, Ohio.

He didn’t want to think about crashing on right now, or crashing into, or crashing anything. When you analyzed poetry, you always had to remember the difference between literal and figurative language. Bryce was fully aware of it here. He still didn’t want to think about crashing just now.

They weren’t that far off the ground any more. If something went wrong, could they try landing on one of these country roads? They were long and straight, and most of them looked as if they took maybe one car a week. Not ideal runways, but better than nothing.

“Please raise your tray tables and return your seat backs to the fully upright position,” the boss flight attendant said. “We may be a little early with this announcement, or-” She broke off, one word too late.

How many people noticed? The Afghan vet beside Bryce muttered “Fuck” under his breath, so he did. Some passengers still had no clue about how bad things were liable to be. A middle-aged woman-Bryce thought she was the gal who’d miss dinner with Uncle Louie-was indignantly complaining that an attendant had no right to keep her from getting up and going to the bathroom.

“I haven’t got time to argue with you,” the frazzled attendant snapped. “But if you even touch your goddamn seat belt, I’m gonna crown you with my solid-steel coffeepot. You hear me? You better, ’cause I mean it.”

“I’ll get you fired for this!” the passenger said shrilly.

“Now ask me if I care,” the stewardess answered, and hurried to her own seat.

“This is the captain one more time.” The drawl came out of the PA again. “I suggest you take a brace against your seat backs. We have some turbulence coming up behind us, and it may get kind of severe. Once the wind event is past, we’ll take a look around and see where we’re at then. Hang on, folks.”

See where we’re at then could only mean see if we’re still flying. The veteran said “Fuck” again, more sincerely this time. It might have been a prayer. Across the aisle, a Hispanic woman was telling her rosary beads. Bryce Miller, a secular, bacon-scarfing Jew, wondered if she had some consolation he didn’t. Too late for him to start praying now. He knew more about the dead religions of ancient Greece than about the one he’d been born into.

Then something gave the plane a kick in the ass. Bryce said “Fuck!” himself, very loudly. He couldn’t even hear the obscenity through everybody else’s chorus of screams and curses and prayers. He waited for the wings to come off or the skin to peel away from the fuselage. The only thing he hoped for in that moment was that it would all get over with in a hurry.

But the plane didn’t come to pieces, though booms and crashes said carts were going cattywumpus no matter how well they’d been stowed. Oxygen masks deployed from the panels he’d never seen open before. Half the overhead luggage compartments flew open, too. They were stuffed so tight, though, that surprisingly few pieces flew out and clobbered people. It was the first advantage he’d ever found to charging for checked bags.

Someone in the cabin had thrown up and missed the airsick bag. Someone else-maybe more than one someone else-had shit him- or herself. Bryce hadn’t, though he didn’t know why not. In ultimate emergencies, human beings turned back into the animals they were beneath civilizonsolationand intelligence.

It wasn’t quite so bad after the first big boot. The plane kept shaking, but on a lesser level. Watch out for that first step, Bryce thought dazedly. It’s a doozy. In fact, as the screams eased off, it was as quiet as he’d ever known it to be inside a plane in flight.

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.

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…

“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.

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.

“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.