I was sitting right on top of the volcano. “Don’t worry about me, just get everyone out of Denver. I’ll call you when I know more.”
“Kitty—”
I hung up, because I didn’t have anything else to say. What else was there to say? I didn’t want to spend more time going around in circles about whether or not I was crazy.
“We’ll stop it, Kitty,” Sun said gently and with confidence. “I’m sure we’ll stop it in time.”
“Yeah. But … it’ll make me feel better.”
I made the next call. The phone rang once, twice, more, and I thought my head was going to burst until finally he picked up. “Yeah?”
“Ben?”
“Kitty! Holy shit, where are you? What happened? I smelled the brimstone but it was over by the time I got to the back of the building, and—are you okay? Kitty—”
“I’m fine, I’m alive,” I amended. “There’s so much crap going on I don’t even know where to start.”
“Where are you?”
Another deep breath. I was forgetting to breathe. “I’m in Yellowstone.”
“Right, good, okay.”
I blinked. “What do you mean, good okay?”
“That’s where we thought you’d gone. Tina and Grant tracked you. And Anastasia—I guess she found a way to let them know. We’re on the way, somewhere in BFE Wyoming, still a couple hours away. Can you hang on until we get there?”
I started crying, silent, stressed-out tears. “Yeah, I think so. Sun found me here—you remember Sun? Ben, something really terrible is about to happen. I called Cheryl and told her to get the family out of Denver.”
He paused and said, “So it’s happening, for real?”
“I don’t know. I met … is Cormac with you? Tell him I met the Caesar commanding Dux Bellorum.”
“It’s bad, I take it?”
“It’s very bad,” I said.
“Kitty, just hold on. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I didn’t want to hang up, but we had to. I scrubbed tears off my cheeks, and Sun held my hand. By then, the ranger was wat
ching us. She’d listened in on my conversation this time.
She said, “Ms. Norville, what do you think is going to happen?”
The end of the world … “You’ve got a lot of geologists monitoring the park, right? A lot of seismographs. You track earthquakes and stuff pretty carefully, right? Has there been any increase in activity? Has anything changed?”
Her smile was wry and long suffering, like she got asked this question a lot. “I know everyone likes to talk about what would happen if the caldera blew, and I know geologically it has to happen sooner or later. But I really don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
“Okay, yeah, but say it was going to happen, oh, tonight—would there be any warning?”
“This is all just speculation—”
“I know. Tell me.”
“There’d be an increase in seismic activity—earthquakes. There’d be a measurable bulge in the crust, and probably a drastic change in thermal activity.”