Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano :Eruption

He grabbed the Daily Breeze again. Yes, that was what he’d read. Paper will have a lower priority than food and fuel. “What food?” he wondered out loud. America’s breadbasket had just taken one right in the breadbasket. How could you bring in or move the harvest when volcanic ash smothered the fields and blanketed the roads and choked the life out of tractors and harvesters and trucks (to say nothing of farmers)? One more thing that wasn’t gonna happen.

The United States had been the world’s larder since the nineteenth century. That was out the window, too. How was the USA going to feed its own people, let alone the many, many hungry beyond its borders? Who would-who could-take up the slack? Anybody? If no one did, what would happen then? Colin couldn’t see the details, but the broad outlines seemed plain enough. Nothing good would happen-that was what.

How much of the country’s grain was stored in areas suddenly ungetatable on account of the eruption? How many cows and sheep and pigs and chickens were dying right now? He’d read a newspaper squib about a yak farm in the Colorado Rockies. Was anybody saving the poor goddamn yaks?

Yeah, the country was screwed. The part of the world that depended on the USA was screwed, too. And so was everybody else. He was still only on his first cup of coffee. He hadn’t even started worrying about climate change yet. He got up and put some more water in the microwave. If he was going to do that, he’d definitely need more.

The knock on the door was loud and somehow official-sounding, as if the guy doing the knocking had a hell of a lot of practice. Daniel had gone to the university, which left Kelly and Ruth and Larry sitting around his apartment waiting for something to happen. Well, now something had.

Larry went to the door. He was the man. That wasn’t exactly twenty-first-century thinking, but neither Kelly nor Ruth made a move to get there ahead of him. Kelly didn’t even think about it till afterwards.

When Larry opened the door, standing there in front of it was the most cop-looking cop Kelly’d ever seen. Yes, he’d know how to knock on doors, all right. Shoulders. Chin. Khaki shirt with badge. Pistol on hip. Olive-drab pants, sharply creased. Shiny black boots. Gunnery sergeant’s hat. Mirrored sunglasses, even.

“Yes?” Larry said, in a tone that couldn’t mean anything but You’ve got to have the wrong apartment.

But the cop rumbled, “Is Miss Birnbaum here?”

“That’s me,” Kelly squeaked in surprise. About the most nefarious thing she’d done was smoke dope every once in a while, and she hadn’t even done that since she’d started dating Colin. He made no bones about hating it, it was still mildly illegal, and she didn’t get off on it that much anyhow. Quitting hadn’t been hard.

“Miss Birnbaum, I’m Roy Schurz,” the cop said. “I’m chief of police in Orofino, Idaho.”

“Yes?” Kelly said blanklyief ofAnd so?”

“And so I used to be a cop down in San Atanasio, California,” Schurz answered. “Colin Ferguson’s a buddy of mine. He asked me to see what I could do about getting you out of here. Are you ready to go?”

Colin had said he might be able to pull some strings. He must have meant it. Colin, Kelly had discovered, commonly meant what he said. That was so far out of the ordinary, she was still getting used to it. “Am I ready?” she echoed.

“Yes, ma’am,” Chief Schurz said. “I’ve got a Humvee with a desert air filter parked out front. It’s what I came here in.” In case you think I bounced in on a pogo stick or something. The mirrored shades kept his face from showing how big a jerk he thought she was.

“Let me grab my purse,” Kelly said. All at once, she believed. It wasn’t as if she had much more than that here. She hugged Ruth and Larry. “Tell Daniel thanks a couple of million for me.”

“We will.” Ruth Marquez sounded wistful, or more likely jealous.

Kelly followed Roy Schurz out to the Humvee. It was a Humvee, too, not a Hummer: a military vehicle, painted in faded desert camo. It mounted the biggest machine gun Kelly had ever imagined. A soldier sat behind the gun.

“National Guard,” Schurz explained. “I borrowed the vehicle-and Edwards there-from them. Colin, he thinks you’re something special.” He didn’t say Hell with me if I can see why, but it was in his voice.

“I think he’s something special, too,” Kelly managed.

“Good. When him and Louise broke up, he was mighty, well, broke up about it. Now he’s more like his old self again.” Schurz gestured. “Hop on in.”

It was a tall hop; the Humvee had humongous tires. Kelly climbed aboard. The seat was severely functional. Chief Schurz got in on the driver’s side. The engine might boast a desert filter, but it sounded raspy anyway. Of course, it probably had that filter because it had seen action in Iraq or Afghanistan. It wasn’t new, or close to new. It was a Regular Army castoff good enough for the Idaho National Guard. Chances were it had sounded raspy for years.

Roy Schurz put it in gear. It rode as if it had left its shocks near Kandahar, that was for sure. “Do we really need a gunner?” Kelly had to shout to make herself heard.

“Well, you never can tell,” Schurz shouted back. The Humvee kicked up its share of dust and then some. He pulled a surgical-style mask out of his shirt pocket and put it on with one hand. The Smokey Bear hat went into his lap for a second, no more. He extracted another mask and offered it to Kelly. “Your own air filter.”

“Thanks.” She put it on. When she turned around to look at the machine gunner-Edwards-she discovered he’d also donned one. The less volcanic crap you put in your lungs, the better. A lot could kill you pretty fast. Even a little wasn’t good news. Twenty, thirty, fifty years from now, she expected mesothelioma cases to shoot through the roof. Not much of what the supervolcano belched into the air was asbestos fibers, but when you were talking about several hundred cubic miles of material there’d be plenty to go around.

A Missoula policeman with a shotgun stood guard at the edge of town. He was also wearing a mask. He waved to the Humvee as it got on US 12 heading south-Orofino evidently wasn’t on the Interstate. Chief Schurz gravely waved back.

“Well, you never can tell,” Schurz repeated. With the mask and shades, his face was almost completely unreadable. But the way he fidgeted in the hard, uncomfortable bucket seat told Kelly he realized he needed to say more: “People are starting to run low on all kinds of stuff. They’re putting armed escorts on food and fuel convoys. We haven’t had a lot of trouble yet, and nobody wants it to start, y’know?”

“I guess,” Kelly said. How many folks couldn’t get to a Safeway or a Mobil station so easily these days? How many couldn’t get their hands on ground chuck or gasoline even when they did? How many of those folks had guns? In this part of the country, quite a few. And what would they do when they got hungry or otherwise desperate? If you had to take what you needed or starve, who wouldn’t think about turning robber?

“I’ve got some jerrycans of gas in the vehicle here,” Chief Schurz went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. “That’s one of the reasons I brought Edwards along. Nothing like a soldier on a. 50-caliber to keep people honest.”

“God, you sound like Colin!” Kelly blurted, all at once missing him more than ever now that she was actually heading toward him, not stuck in Missoula.

The Orofino (would that be Fine Gold in Spanish?) police chief chuckled. “Wouldn’t be surprised if we rubbed off on each other some. You ride in the same patrol car a few years, that’ll happen. Almost like being married, only without benefits.”