Page 42 of Carmine

Chapter Ten.

Carmine

Alert and eyes peeled, I was following Molly to the pond where I first met her. It was nine-tenths of the way up the east-facing side of Buzzard’s Roost. Molly was setting a fine pace up Buzzard’s Roost Trailhead. Our target was the mountain in front of us. Molly’s entire body vibrated with excitement and trepidation. This was it. The culmination of a decade’s work and three years of sheer misery. Hard to believe that yesterday, we were giving an interview, and now we were chasing a lava flow.

Molly seemed to think the eruption point was our pond and had grabbed some to-go bags, and I guessed she was planning on camping here. The level of acceleration was a huge concern for Susan and Molly, and they’d had their heads together for an hour before Molly left. Molly had confirmed the call on evacuating the at-risk areas, and now search and rescue was doing so. The trails to the Black Hills had been closed, and search and rescue were scouring the area for any hikers.

Against the mayor’s wishes, Chief Howser had alerted the media to keep people away. The RCPD was out in force, helping evacuate and keep the public calm. Molly couldn’t believe the number of people who came to assist. The command centre was also in the process of relocating. If Molly’s predictions were correct, then it was in the path of the flow.

“Carmine!” Molly shouted as we reached the pond.

“What’s up, sweet girl?”

“We’ll set up camp here. It should be safe,” Molly announced, glancing around.

Her eyes caught on something, and her gaze narrowed.

“That wasn’t there before,” Molly muttered.

Before I could call a warning, Molly scrambled down from the rock she’d been standing on and rushed over to the water.

I watched, confused, as Molly started muttering under her breath and came back for a trowel. She scraped at the ground and then leapt away.

“Fuck! Carmine, I was right!” Molly cried. A glow came from the ground she’d just exposed.

“What’s that?” I asked as the pond began to bubble. Damn, I recognised that sign.

“That’s lava,” Molly exclaimed. “The magma has forced a fissure open, like I said. And it’s going to grow.”

Molly grabbed a camera and started snapping pictures. Meanwhile, I kept an eye on the water.

“Molly!” I cried out in warning and tackled her just as water exploded everywhere. I experienced stinging burns on my arms, and Molly let out her own pained cry. Quickly, I rolled us away as a quake hit. This was stronger than any I’d experienced before, and I heard a loud crack. A whistle rent the air, tortured and shrill, and I laid on top of Molly and covered my head.

Booms sounded from the ground as it shook underneath us, and the cracking noise continued. A whoosh that deafened mecame from close by, and I curled around Molly, terrified out of my brain. Several dull bangs echoed. Although they were probably loud, I was deafened by everything else going crazy. Stones and debris hit my body with the force of bullets, and I knew my skin had broken open in some places.

A scream appeared to come from the earth itself, as it seemed like the ground was being ripped in two. Despite the quake coming to an end, there was still a sensation of the ground in motion, accompanied by a ripping sound. Loud noises came from the ground, and I knew deep down Molly’s theory had happened. Aurora’s vision of lava running through the street of RC was coming true.

“Up! Up!” Molly screamed as the shaking stopped, and I wondered what the hell had just broken loose. Molly kept yanking on me, and I raised my head.

In front of us, about half a mile up, a crack had appeared in the rock face. And from that slowly flowed a bright orange glowing stream filled with black rocks that glowed themselves. A dark cloud wafted above it, but nothing like I’d seen above a volcano before.

“Carmine, we have to move! Now!” Molly screamed as she scrambled to her feet. “The flow is heading for us!”

That got my ass in gear. I was up and running in the blink of an eye, tugging Molly with me. Molly yanked me to a stop, grabbed some equipment and her camera, and we ran for our lives. The jeep had been parked half a mile away, but knowing what was behind us had our asses moving quicker than usual.

Frantically, we hit the car, and I jumped into the driver’s seat as Molly swung into the passenger’s side. Molly twisted in her chair as I sped away, my wheels kicking up dirt.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Judging the speed of the flow, it looks to me around ten miles per hour or less. It’s moving slow, which gives us time, I’m also seeing where it’s going,” she called over her shoulder.

Molly pulled a map out and began marking the route the lava was taking. Yanking out her sat phone, Molly punched in a number.

“This is Dr Jones-White,” Susan answered.

“Susan, the laccolith has split open, lava is flowing down Buzzard’s Roost,” Molly babbled.

“We guessed something had happened, and we heard the noise from here. Nobody could have missed it. Do we have a route?”

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