C. Box - Free Fire

“Nate Romanowski!” the standing man boomed. “You’re back!”

“I said I would be,” Nate said.

The bartender, who was washing glasses in a sink behind the bar, looked up and nodded to Nate and Joe.

“Joe,” Nate said, “meet Dr. Keaton, or, as he’s known around here, Doomsayer.”

Joe extended his hand. Keaton was slim, tall, unshaven, and jumpy, with deep-set eyes and a sharp face like an ax blade. He looked to be in his sixties. He had stooped shoulders and a malleablemouth that twitched to its own crackling rhythm. Just beingnext to him made Joe tense up.

“Welcome to hell on earth,” Keaton said, and cackled.

“Don’t mind him,” the bartender said to Joe, “he always says that. What can I get you two?”

Joe shot a glance at Nate, who ordered a pitcher of beer for the three of them.

“Is your partner going to join us?” Nate asked, nodding towardthe man next to Keaton, who appeared to have passed out.

“He’s sleeping it off,” Keaton said. “He hit it a little hard earlier this evening, but when he awakes I’m sure he’ll join right in again. We are both disciples of the Louis Jordan song ‘ What’s the Use of Getting Sober (When You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again).’ ”

Joe noticed the cadence of Keaton’s phrasing: effete, affected.Educated. It played against his tramplike appearance.

The pitcher appeared. “Drink up,” Keaton said, grabbing it before Nate could and pouring it into the glasses, “for tomorrow we die.”

“That’s why they call you Doomsayer, huh?” Joe said.

Keaton glared at Nate. “Who is this man, exactly?”

Nate said, “Friend of mine. He’s up here investigating the Zone of Death murders.”

Joe wondered why Nate blurted it out like that.

“Ah,” Keaton said, turning his eyes to Joe and studying him from a new angle by listing his head to the side. “Another one up here to try and solve the great mystery . .” He said it with condescension that dripped.

“The amount of time and angst that has gone into this puzzle,” Keaton said, sighing, “trying to figure out why the shabby lawyer killed the insolent Minnesotans. It amazes me.”

“Why is that?” Joe asked, taking a sip.

Keaton shook his head. “Because it’s indicative of a tired mind-set. It’s nothing more than mental jerking off: puffed-up officials trying to make order out of random acts when all around them their world is about to explode-but they just don’t know it, or care. It’s like trying to find the fly shit in the pepper. I mean, who cares?”

Joe had no idea how to respond, and he was angry with Nate for bringing him in here when he should have gone up to bed. Nate’s fondness for the otherworldly and mystical grated on his nerves, and this, Joe thought, was a waste of his time.

“He has a Ph.D. in what, geology?” the bartender explained to Joe. “He’s one of the founders of EarthGod, the big environmentalactivist group. He came up here twelve years ago to protest snowmobiles and never left.”

Joe nodded. He’d heard of EarthGod. Even ardent environmentalistsconsidered the group extreme.

Nate picked up on Joe’s discomfort. “He isn’t like that anymore,” he said.

“Oh?”

“There’s no point,” Keaton said, “because we’re all going to die.”

“Maybe I ought to get a good night’s sleep then,” Joe said, not all that interested anymore.

Keaton jerked back, offended. His eyes narrowed. “You don’t seem to understand, Joe ,” Keaton said, his voice dripping with contempt. “You’ve misread me entirely. You’ve made assumptionsthat I’m some crazy old man who is diverting you from your mission. But what you don’t seem to understand, Joe , is that your mission doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Your laws don’t matter, you don’t matter, and neither do I. We’re all on borrowed time, and have been for tens of thousands of years.”

Over the next twenty minutes, Keaton laid it out. As he talked, his tone swooped while he made his arguments, then descendedinto whispers to drive home the gravity of what he was saying. Joe found himself getting sucked in.

“We are drinking this beer right now in the middle of a massivevolcanic caldera,” Keaton said, leaning across Nate to addressJoe directly. “Do you know what a caldera is? It’s the center of a dormant volcano. The Yellowstone caldera encompassesmost of this so-called park. The edge of the caldera is all around us; we’re in the bowl-in the mouth- of it right now. That’s why we have all of our lovely attractions-the geysers, the steam vents, the mud pots. Magma from the center of the earth has pushed through the seams in the crust”-he demonstratedby making a bony fist and shoving it into his other palm, pushing up with the fist-“right here, right below us. It’s pushingupward trying to get out. There are only thirty places in the world where the center of the earth is trying to get out, and this is the only one of them on land, not water. When it does, when it finally blows, it will be a super volcano of a magnitude never even contemplated by man. It will be two and a half thousand times more powerful than Mount Saint Helens! And it won’t erupt slowly, it will explode!”

To demonstrate, Keaton slammed his fist down on the bar so hard the beer glasses danced.

Keaton screwed up his face with menace. “When it goes, when the Yellowstone super volcano goes, it will instantly kill three million people-every human life and all animal life for two hundred miles in every direction. Ash will cover the continent,asphyxiate the wildlife, and clog all the rivers. There’ll be nuclear winter in New York City, and the climate truly will change as the world enters a vicious, sudden ice age. America will be over. Southern Canada, Northern Mexico- wiped out. The continent will resemble a postmodern wasteland, even more than it does now. This time, it will be real and not social.”

Keaton paused to sip his beer, but he was so wound up that most of it dribbled out of his mouth onto his chin whiskers, which didn’t seem to bother him.

“It has happened every six hundred thousand years through geologic history, at least four times we can determine. Each supervolcanic eruption changes the world. The last time it erupted was six hundred forty thousands years ago.” Keaton’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We’re forty thousand years overdue.”

“Then maybe it won’t happen,” Joe said.

Keaton showed his teeth. “Typical,” he spat. “Just ignore it, wish it away. That’s what people do best. But the signs are all around us that it will come sooner instead of later. You have to wake up and look at them!”

Joe now knew that he wouldn’t be going back to the inn and tumbling into a restful sleep.

“In the past decade,” Keaton said, “the ground has risen fourteen centimeters in the Yellowstone caldera. That’s right, the dirt beneath your feet is five inches higher in elevation than it was ten years ago. That’s because the magma has forced it up, putting tremendous pressure on the thin crust. It’s just like fillinga tire with more and more air until it finally ruptures. And do you know, Joe, what is likely to cause the ground to rupture and release all that pressure, to turn the world inside out?”

“No.”

“Earthquakes,” Keaton said. “A tremor that will weaken and part the tectonic plates beneath us. That’s all it will take. . a crack, an opening. And do you know how many earthquakes there were in Yellowstone this past year?”

Joe shook his head.

“Three thousand. Think about it: three thousand . Over five hundred just in the Old Faithful area alone!”

To demonstrate, Keaton made himself tremble and his eyes blinked rapidly: “We’re starting to shake apart.”