“Ah, you’re nutso,” he said-his word for anything out of the ordinary. “That kimchi I ate last night’d do it to anybody.” Pointing to the Taurus, Wes called, “You got gas?” Wes-an aerospace engineer, now retired-and his wife had been neighbors for more than twenty years. Volcanic ash and dust had rained down here, too, but not the way they had closer to the eruption site.Īs he and Kelly walked over to his silver Taurus, Wes Jones waved from across the street. When the supervolcano erupted-for the first time in close to seven hundred thousand years-he’d heard the roar and felt the quake here in San Atanasio, eight hundred and some odd miles away. Most of the Rocky Mountain West and the Great Plains was pretty much screwed, too. For that matter, nothing much was left of Wyoming, or of big chunks of Montana and Idaho. And if the copter that got me out of Yellowstone had taken off fifteen minutes later, chances are I wouldn’t be here for you to complain to,” she replied in at least medium dudgeon. If he and Kelly had been in an interrogation room, it would have done duty for an accusation. basin had got its first all-over snowfall in more than sixty years. This past winter-if winter was past-the L.A. The sun wasn’t supposed to shine palely from a sky more nearly gray than blue. It didn’t get as cold or as hot as downtown L.A., to say nothing of the San Fernando Valley (as far as Colin was concerned, the best thing you could say about the Valley).īut this was June. The nearby Pacific and the good old sea breeze had always moderated its climate. It didn’t exactly go with Colin’s blue wool suit and maroon tie, but she did what she liked while he dressed the way he did more from force of habit than for any other reason. “Brr!” Kelly said, and buttoned her denim jacket. They might get you anyway, but why help ’em along? You didn’t want to make things easy for burglars. There’d been a break-in the next block over last week.
Which, like his earlier woolgathering, was beside the point. After Louise walked out the door on him, after she and the lawyers got through with him, he’d never dreamt he could be this happy this way again. He was happy the way only a man in his early fifties still pretty newly wed to a damned fine-looking woman in her late thirties can be: happier than he figured he had any business being, in other words. “You!” She shook her head, but she was smiling. “I’m the wrong guy for that question, babe,” he said. Patting at her honey-blond hair, she asked, “Do I look okay?” As quickly as she’d promised, she joined him by the front door.
He’d never been the kind of person who always ran fifteen minutes or half an hour behind schedule-unlike one poor sailor a pissed-off CPO finally tagged the late Seaman Kurowski.Īnd, to be fair, neither was Kelly. To be fair, he hadn’t needed much ramming. In his younger days, the Navy’d rammed being on time down his throat. “We need to get going,” he muttered discontentedly. “Just about-not even a minute,” Kelly answered. Series: Supervolcano Supervolcano: All Fall Down Harry TurtledoveĬolin Ferguson called upstairs to his wife: “You ready?”
0 kommentar(er)
