The Yellowstone Event (Book 3): A Nation Gone Crazy Read online

  He dialed it and it went to voicemail.

  “Damn it!”

  His heart alarm went off again, and he tried to relax.

  He tried again and it went to voicemail again.

  This time he left a message.

  “Honey, it’s Wayne. I’m at a hospital in Washington. Hillsborough, I think she said. I don’t know the number, but I’m in the Cardiac ICU. Call me when you can.”

  Julie Hamlin was sitting right next to the phone, but was letting all the calls go to voicemail.

  Once or twice a day she was checking the messages and deleting most of them to keep the mailbox from filling up.

  It would be hours before she got his message.

  Chapter 6

  The United States of America was a nation gone crazy.

  On the streets outside Wayne’s hospital traffic was a nightmare.

  The airlines were making money hand over fist by booking twice the normal number of flights into Washington.

  For several years vehicle traffic has been restricted on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.

  Now it was closed for half a mile on either side of the White House as well, to accommodate an estimated half a million Americans who were coming into the nation’s capitol to protest.

  And to demand that something be done.

  Due south of the White House, all the way to the Washington Monument, was a sea of multi-colored blankets and tents.

  News helicopters were unable to fly over the area because it was a no-fly zone.

  The media resorted to going to the upper floors of the high-rise office buildings in the area and using long-range cameras.

  Rumor was the estimated eighty-thousand people camped out in sleeping bags and on blankets would start rioting at any time.

  All the “man in the street” interviews they’d been conducting for days indicated the citizens were tired of being ignored and were growing increasingly frustrated.

  One of the network anchormen stated rather matter-of-factly, “The Yellowstone Caldera isn’t the only thing getting ready to blow. This city is a powder keg, and it’s going to explode at any time.

  “The only question is how bad is it going to be? Are mass numbers of rioters going to scale the walls in front of the White House?

  “And then what? Are they going to try to force their way in? What will they do once inside?”

  The President hadn’t been seen in public in days.

  Each morning he tweeted, telling the American people they were all in this together, and not to panic or do something which would change their lives forever.

  News pundits pointed out that Yellowstone had already changed everyone’s lives forever.

  Most people believed the President wasn’t even in the White House, despite his press secretary’s assurances he was in his residence and still reporting to the oval office each day.

  The public tours the White House had given for many years, she said, had been canceled just as a precaution.

  Not so a loose-lipped guide or secret service agent could let slip the President had been spirited away to an undisclosed location.

  Although that was, in fact, exactly what had happened.

  East of the Washington Monument, on the National Mall, over one hundred thousand bikers had made a pilgrimage from every corner of the country to make sure Congress did something about Yellowstone.

  Bikers in general get a bad rap in America.

  Many Americans still cling to outdated stereotypes that depict bikers as thugs and outlaws.

  In fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

  Sure, the bikers have their “one-percenters.” The tiny percentage of riders who embrace the outlaw persona and do what they can to perpetuate it.

  But nearly all other bikers are responsible and respectable citizens.

  They were in Washington because, well, they’ve always been first to support a worthy cause.

  And they weren’t going to let Congress off the hook on this one.

  Scientists were saying almost universally there was nothing they could do to stop Yellowstone from erupting.

  And with the exception of the one cable news network which claimed Yellowstone was a hoax everyone accepted the scientists’ view as fact.

  The bikers had their own agenda.

  Unlike many of the other protestors they weren’t there to insist that Congress do something to stop Yellowstone from blowing its top.

  No, they were there to insist that Congress develop a detailed and comprehensive evacuation plan which would relocate about a third of the country.

  And since they recognized Congress was mostly full of clueless and visionless morons, they got together and elected their own team of bikers who developed their own plan.

  They wanted Congress to release all federal lands in the Great State of Alaska and to develop a homesteaders program.

  Their battle cry was “One Family, One Acre.”

  And it was a very simple concept.

  It advocated the federal government give away one acre of land, accessible by a roadway, to any resident within a thousand miles of Yellowstone National Park.

  Jerry Bacon, the bikers’ designated representative, made the rounds of television talk shows hawking their plan.

  “When Yellowstone erupts it will change the American landscape forever. That’s a given.

  “But it doesn’t have to wreck our economy, nor does it have to wipe out a third of our citizens.

  “It will take action on the part of our congressional leaders. Not for themselves or their lobbyists, as is usually the case. But for the American people for a change.

  “This will be the greatest investment program the United States has ever undergone.

  “Bigger than the New Deal. Bigger than Eisenhower’s plan to build the interstate highway systems. But it will provide Yellowstone refugees with a safe place to move, and will create a building boom that will ensure our economy will not collapse.”

  Bacon traveled to Washington ready to pitch his plan to Congress.

  The problem was Congress wasn’t there.

  When told a hundred thousand angry and outspoken bikers were going to park themselves on the National Mall, they all left town.

  Chapter 7

  Bacon was peeved but undeterred.

  He went on the cable news networks and touted his plan.

  “Surely there is one congressman who has the guts to come back to Washington to meet with me and to write and sponsor this bill.

  “Just one. I know you are all listening.

  “I know that you know the nation is watching. And they consider you all sniveling, yellow-bellied cowards because you didn’t have the guts to meet with us. You chose to run away instead.

  “My own people are saying you are all a bunch of thieves. That you’re accepting taxpayer dollars to represent the citizens of this country, and instead you’re hiding in your mansions too frightened to come out and face us.

  “I want one of you… just one, to prove my people wrong. To come back to Washington and listen to our plan. To agree that it makes sense.

  “And then to write this plan into law. Not ten years from now. Not next year, but now. So that we can get the evacuation started.”

  There was no immediate response from the legislators, who stayed holed up in their homes and refused to answer their doors or their telephones to reporters or constituents.

  As one network news anchor put it, “It’s as though every member of the United States Congress, every member of the United States Senate, has disappeared from the face of the earth.

  Bacon continued to make the rounds, from one network to another, touting his plan.

  “Under our plan, any resident in the evacuation zone will be given one acre of accessible land in Alaska. They may use the land itself as collateral to obtain a government-guaranteed home loan, which they will use to pay to have their house built.

  “We believe the American entrepreneurial
spirit will take the ball and run with it.

  “Builders will flock to Alaska in droves. They’ll hire construction workers by the hundreds of thousands. There will be a building boom the likes this nation… make that the world… has never seen before.

  “The refugees will not only have a safe place to move to. They’ll have jobs and a paycheck and a means to build their new homes.

  “And it won’t just be construction workers. New towns will spring up all over Alaska. In ten years it will go from the least populated state in the nation to the most populated state.

  “And everywhere new towns spring up people of all skill sets will be needed. Waitresses, housekeepers, plumbers, electricians. Whatever jobs are available now in the lower forty eight will be needed in the new Alaska.

  “And not just a few jobs. We’re talking millions.

  “Those of you who bemoan the loss of the ‘last frontier’ need not worry.

  “The last frontier will simply move south. The hundreds of millions of acres that encompass the evacuation zone will become federal land. It will be turned back to nature. The structures and roadways on the land which are not destroyed during the eruption will be covered with ash. And they will be slowly turned to dust.

  “The scientists are saying the land in the outer band will start to regenerate within five years. That people who evacuate from the outer band will eventually have the option of going back and clearing the ash from their land and moving back home.

  “They also say the inner band, the area within four hundred miles of Yellowstone, will be covered with ash for decades.

  “What we’re proposing is that the inner band be designated a new national park, to pay tribute to the victims of the Yellowstone eruption.

  “It will remain undeveloped. Eventually it will regain its natural beauty. Trees will grow again. Woodlands will return and for future generations will look like it once did, hundreds of years ago, before man settled there.

  “In essence, our proposal is this: that the United States continues to have a last frontier. A vast piece of land that is undeveloped and there for everyone to enjoy in its natural splendor.

  “All we want to do is shift the last frontier from Alaska to the middle of the lower forty-eight.

  “We’ll save millions of lives, and future generations; our grandchildren and their grandchildren… will reap the reward of a new federal wilderness area that is accessible by many more people.”

  Bacon’s idea was born over beers with a bunch of his biker buddies at a bar in Sturgis, South Dakota.

  Sturgis had become a Mecca for bikers all over the world, and the bikers accepted that the Yellowstone eruption would wipe the small town off the map.

  “We’re gonna need a new Sturgis,” Bacon commented nonchalantly.

  Another offered, “Well, wherever it is, let’s make it far away from Yellowstone.”

  An old biker named Gus, who’d been eating bugs for more years than he could remember, said, “Alaska’s the place to go. Plenty of land, the people are friendly, the sunsets are amazing.”

  And out of that comment a movement was born.

  Bacon’s plan was to have one hundred thousand bikers converge on the National Mall and line their bikes up in nice neat rows.

  He wanted the world to see the bikers were united and a force to be reckoned with. And that they weren’t going to go away until the Congress either accepted their plan or explained why they wouldn’t.

  The problem was, once the call went out, he couldn’t stop it.

  Bikers all over the country were making the journey to the nation’s capitol. The hundred thousand were there within three days.

  And they kept coming.

  Some estimates said the rows of bikes, which now stretched past the Washington Monument and on both sides of the reflecting pool, numbered more than a quarter of a million.

  Other estimates said that twenty percent of street-legal bikes in America were now being ridden up and down the streets of Washington.

  One of the network news anchors summed it up best by saying, “God bless the bikers.”

  Chapter 8

  In Los Angeles a man walked into a local restaurant with two handguns and emptied both magazines.

  Then he reloaded and emptied them again.

  An off-duty cop, watering his lawn a block away, dropped the water hose and ran into his house to grab his duty weapon.

  He ran into the restaurant as the gunman was jamming a third pair of magazines into his weapons and shot him seven times.

  Not counting the gunman, seventeen people were killed and seven were injured.

  And it never made the news.

  Not even the local Los Angeles stations.

  That was because the “Yellowstone Event,” as it became known all over the world, was on every channel, twenty four hours a day.

  All channels except one were interviewing one scientist or geologist after another to explain the size and impact of the coming eruption.

  One outlier channel, the one which for years trumpeted climate change as a commie hoax, claimed the same about Yellowstone. That it wasn’t real. That it was fake news.

  That lasted four days.

  The network’s ratings dropped from a twenty share to five. Nobody believed them anymore.

  Finally, on the fifth day, they joined the fray.

  Jerry Bacon became one of the most recognizable faces in America as more and more people started embracing his plan.

  The phones at every congressman’s office were ringing off the hook.

  Harried staffers were fielding the calls, and patiently explaining the congressmen were busy trying to save the country and couldn’t talk to their constituents.

  In reality, the congressmen weren’t even in their offices.

  They were at home with their families, hiding out from the crowds.

  Or they were scrambling to take care of their own. Those who lived in one of the evacuation zones were shopping for real estate in a safe part of the country.

  Many were already moving their families out.

  The President of the United States went on national TV, which was picked up by every country in the world.

  “We have established two very distinct evacuation zones, based on the recommendations of the best geologists and volcanologists in the country,” the President started.

  “The first encompasses everything within four hundred miles of Yellowstone National Park, in every direction.

  “That area will be under mandatory evacuation. Everyone within that zone must leave.

  “The outer zone, from four hundred to eight hundred miles away from Yellowstone, is considered an extreme danger zone.

  “Evacuation will not be mandatory from the outer zone. It is highly recommended, based on the damage estimates of our best experts, that the occupants of the outer zone relocate. But it will not be mandatory.

  “I should stress that those who remain behind in either zone will do so at their own risk.

  “Our experts estimate than the survival rate of the inner zone will be zero percent. That absolutely no living thing will survive.

  “They estimate the survival rate in the outer zone will be from five percent to seventy percent, depending on the prevailing winds and your location.

  “The majority of the survivors will be on the outer reaches of the zone and upwind of the ash cloud.

  “But make no mistake about it.

  “If you stay in either zone you will almost certainly die. I cannot stress that enough.

  “Now then, I want you to know that your federal government is working on this problem.

  “We’re in this with you.

  “This morning I issued an order to both houses of Congress to report to Washington within forty eight hours and to go into session to work on the issue.

  “I have directed them to take up debate on the merits of a bill proposed by our biker friends.

  “I’ve also directed them to consider several other
things my staff has been working on in recent days.

  “One of them is a new government program that will guarantee low-interest mortgage loans for those people who live in either zone.

  “The program will offer one-percent loans for those who agree to relocate within one year, and who forfeit their property in the danger zones to the federal government.

  “There are other proposals I want the Congress to consider.

  “One of the biggest is authorization to increase the national debt by up to twenty trillion dollars.

  “I understand, and you must understand, that this proposal will not be taken lightly. In essence, it will require our citizens to pay higher taxes for several generations. Essentially, we will share a piece of the burden for what it takes to get all of our people out of the danger zones.

  “It also means our children and their children and grandchildren will share in the burden.

  “But it is essential to the saving of millions of lives.”

  “Today I signed an executive order which cancels forty billion dollars of government contracts for military hardware.

  “What it essentially does is modify contracts for new Air Force airplanes, Navy ships and submarines and Army and Marine tanks and armored personnel carriers.

  “It’ll shift those funds to a massive building project to build apartments on thirty abandoned military bases the Department of Defense still owns.

  “The plan is to immediately start work to build eight hundred thousand apartment units on those bases, and to have them completed within a year. These bases will once again become mini-cities. But for civilians, not for the military. They will be made available exclusively for people in the evacuation zones to relocate.

  “I’ve signed another executive order which activates the National Guard in every state. Each state’s governor will send national guardsmen into the evacuation zones to assist in the relocation efforts.

  “If you’re in one of the zones and have a place to move to outside the zones, contact your governor’s office to find out how you can have guardsmen pick up your belongings and move them for you.

  “The word I want to leave you with, my friends, is to have faith. We are all in this together. And together we will persevere.”