Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano :Eruption

Except the air didn’t completely clear. Oh, the stink went away. But a dust haze remained. It was worst near the Interstate, where tires and the wind of many cars’ passage kept stirring up what the supervolcano had spewed all those miles away.

Sunlight still seemed wan. That wasn’t only the ash in the lower atmosphere; it was also the finer-gauge crap-the particulate matter-the eruption had blasted into the stratosphere. Sunsets kept on being improbably gorgeous, showing every color of the rainbow. Sometimes the hues were splattered together in Jackson Pollock randomness, sometimes stacked as neatly as the layers in a pousse-cafe. They were never the same from one day to the next. Hell, they were never the same from one minute to the next. That ancient Greek who said you could never step into the same river twice knew what he was talking about. You could hardly step into the same river once.

It was chilly. Colin told himself that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Fall didn’t come to California the way it did to most other places. It could be hot or cold or hot and then cold. The only trees that changed colors were a few sycamores, and they didn’t get around to it till Thanksgiving. So chilly weather now didn’t have to mean the supervolcano was doing what Kelly had warned all along it would do.

It didn’t have to mean that, no. But it sure was likely to.

Colin beat the darkness up to Berkeley. That was good. He knew the Bay Area well enough to sortakinda find his way around, but only sortakinda. Trying it at night would have been harder.

He made it to Kelly’s street, and damned if he didn’t find a parking space no more than two lengths away from where he’d snagged one the last time he drove up. It wasn’t much longer than the Taurus, but it didn’t need to be. There were plenty of things he couldn’t do. By God, he could parallel park.

Her building had added a security door since the last time he was here. Nodding in approval, he pressed 274-her apartment number-on the keypad and buzzed. “That you, Colin?” Kelly’s voice came out of the cheap speaker as if it were a tin-can telephone connected by a string that wasn’t taut enough.

“Who else were you expecting?” He had to ask twice; the first time, he forgot to press the ANSWER button.

“You might have been the Thai takeout,” she replied after he did it right. The door’s lock clicked. He opened it, made sure it closed behind him, and hurried up the stairs like somebody half his age. If that wasn’t love, it sure as hell was a reasonable facsimile.

Kelly opened the door while he was still walking towards it. He wished he’d thought to buy flowers. He wished he were the kind of guy who thought to buy flowers before it was too goddamn late. Of course, if he were that kind of guy, he might well still be married to Louise.

He was what he was. He was where he was, too, and damn glad of it. He grabbed Kelly and clung to her as hard as she was clinging to him. He wasn’t usually touchy-feely, either-the opposite, in fact-but holding her was like finding a life ring in the North Atlantic after a torpedo hit your freighter.

“Jesus, it’s good to see you!” he said hoarsely.

By way of reply, she tilted her face up for a kiss. Before he could deliver it, the buzzer in her apartment went off again. She made a face. “Sorry. Wait one,” she said, and ran back inside.

This time, it was the Thai food. The short, skinny man who carried up the two big white paper bags had brown skin and a flat face, which probably made him a Thai. By his English, he hadn’t been here long. Colin paid him. Kelly squawked. He ignored her. She was still squawking when they went back into the apartment. The dinette table was strewn with books and journals and papers, but Kelly shoved them back to make enough space for two people to eat. Colin set the bags down on the wood-grain Formica.

Then he held out his arms and said, “Where were we?” “When we were so rudely interrupted, you mean?” Kelly stepped into the circle that closed around her. “Right about here.”

A few minutes later, they spooned squid salad and larb and other good things onto paper plates. One of the bags also held two Thai iced teas, sweetened with coconut milk, in styrofoam cups. Colin slathered bright red chili sauce from little plastic containers onto everything but his iced tea.

“I’d have to eat flame retardant if I did that,” said Kelly, who stuck to seasoning with soy sauce.

“I like it,” Colin answered, and proceeded to prove as much by making his share disappear. As he took seconds, he said, “Lord, I’m glad to see you. I told you that once already, didn’t I?”

“Uh-huh. But it’s okay. I like to hear it. I’m glad to see you, too.” Kelly’s expression darkened. “I’m glad to see anybody. I was, like, three hundred miles from the supervolcano when it went off. Almost everybody who was-oh, God, I don’t know-say, fifty miles closer is probably dead right now.”

A circle five hundred miles across… Colin centered it on Yellowstone and laid it over a mental map of the United States. Salt Lake City wouldn’t be far from the edge. Denver lay outside, but not far enough outside to suit him.

“Still nothing from Vanessa,” he said, his voice harsh.

“I’m sorry,” Kelly answered. “Still too early to know if it means anything, though. The whole middle of the country is fubar’d.”

He stabbed a blunt, accusing forefinger at her. “That’s what you get for hanging around with an old Navy guy.”

“Why, what ever can you mean, sir?” She batted her eyelashes fit to make Scarlett O’Hara gag. “It stands for fouled up beyond all recognition, right? Or something like that.”

“Yeah. Or something like that.” Colin aimed the forefinger again. “But nobody your age says ‘fubar’d.’ It’s what you get for hanging around with an old Navy guy, like I said. Stuff rubs off.”

“Suppose you let me worry about that,” Kelly said, and a CPO couldn’t have put more bite into it. She snapped the lids back onto the containers they hadn’t emptied and stuck them in the fridge. Forks clattered in the sink. She nodded to herself. “The rest can wait.”

“The trash?” Colin knew he sounded disapproving. Being an old Navy guy helped make him Felix, not Oscar.

But Kelly nodded again. “Yeah, the trash.” For her part, she sounded defiant. “You keep telling me you’re glad to see me. How are you gonna show me?”

After the long drive up and a belly full of Thai food, Colin hoped he could show her. He’d seen that occasional bedroom failures bothered middle-aged men more than their women, but he was a middle-aged man, dammit, and he especially didn’t want to fail now.

He didn’t. For a man, it’s always terrific. Kelly didn’t seem to have any complaints. She rolled over and made as if to go to sleep. “Hey, I’m the one who’s supposed to do that,” Colin protested. What with the drive and the big dinner and the exertions just past, he wasn’t far from it.

She sat up. He put an arm around her. She leaned against him. “Everything works here,” she said in wondering tones. “We had power in Missoula, but the gas went out. Landlines were iffy. So was the Net. My cell was iffier.”

“I know. I wish I could’ve talked to you more,” Colin said.

Kelly nodded, but kept following her own train of thought: “Everything works. I called for Thai takeout, and half an hour later it showed up. There’s no problem with food here, not yet. And we’re on the coast, so it’ll keep coming in by ship. The weather here won’t get too bad. California’s lucky. I don’t know what’ll happen to Missoula once winter settles in.” She bit her lip. “No. I do know. I just don’t want to think about it. There’s a difference.”