The Yellowstone Conundrum (7 page)

BOOK: The Yellowstone Conundrum

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Andy had one little problem. He was claustrophobic.

On Tuesday December 21
st
at 4:45 in the afternoon, freshman Andy Everett, star of the fall freshman cross-country team, was mugged inside Kennewick High School by three football players. This was a time when hazing—although gone for the large majority of high schools—still existed. Andy had finished cleaning out his sports locker and was returning to his book locker. It was the last day before Christmas vacation. The three football players, urged on by who else but two good-looking nine-grade girls, decided to teach the little nerd a lesson in humility. Too many of his ninth-grade classmates looked up to Andy, who didn’t act out, went to class, just wanting to be average.

In the matter of five seconds the three older boys had Andy secured, his head covered with a balaclava turned backwards, which made breathing extremely difficult. His feet never touched the ground. The girls screamed and urged the boys on. They went down two hallways, then up a flight of stairs, and down another hallway. Snap-snap-clank went the book locker lock.

“Hurry up!” one of the football players urged.

“Shut up!” replied another.

“Do it!” urged one of the good-looking girls.

Andy heard a locker being emptied by brute force, imagining books, notes, unwashed gym clothes, a semester’s worth of fruit drink cartons, a book bag, maybe an old iPod being scattered across the hallway floor.

“Get that crap!“ shouted one of the boys. “You could help,” he barked to the girls.

They could, but they were ninth-grade girls; bigger than average titties, short skirts and they all wanted to get naked with seniors. The girls were about to pee in their panties.

Ummmph.
Andy felt his face slammed into the back of the metal locker, his tongue tasted the residue of gym clothes. A metal ear-shaped hanger jammed the left side of his face.

“Stuff it!” shouted one of the boys.

“Let’s get out of here before someone comes!” squealed one of the above average titties.

“Get him in there!” said one of the boys as they stuffed his legs in behind his torso, twisting his knee as they did so. The door slammed behind him. In his subconscious Andy heard them run back down the hallway, tittering and laughing. In the distance a door closed.

He’d been stuffed into a second floor locker, probably outside of 11
th
grade English on the last day before Christmas break. Immediately, he started to struggle to free an arm; but, he was jammed, his arms behind him, encased in a two-foot by two-foot by five-foot locker. He was bent over, face against the back of the locker, his head hard against the upper storage area of the locker, his arms stuffed wall-to-wall. His fingers were free behind him, but there was nothing else he could move.

The noise in the hallway was gone, silly stuff clattering down the steps to the first floor.

Andy’s chest heaved with the exertion; in-out-in-out, in-and-out, heavy breathing.

Oh God I’m trapped I can’t get out I’m in a coffin please let me out.

His legs had never cramped before in his 15 years but both calf muscles ripped at the same time, sending two shots of pain through his body, enough to make him cry out loud, a long low angry cry. Holding his breath the pain rippled through him please stop please stop please stop; then gradually his calf muscles began to relax, to a point where it only felt like someone was poking him with a hot stick in both legs.

Then anger, twisting and turning, he began to rock in violent motions inside the confined space. He could feel the entire row of locker move slightly. Dude, no! You’ll pull the whole set down onto the floor, then the door will be on the floor and no air can get inside. Relax. Try to relax.

But, he couldn’t. His breath came in spurts. He was about to pass out. The confinement hurt his every muscle. A second long cry, this time less in anger but more in abject horror of what would happen to him. He felt the walls of the locker getting tighter, like he was the trash in a compactor.

“Let me out let me out let me out help help heeeeellllpppppppp!” his cry now a sob.

How long would it be before someone would come? Would the titties come back?

Andy’s tears of anger changed to tears of desperation, his voice croaking out please help me please help me please help me.

Mercifully, Andy passed out.

Eighteen hours later LeRoy Atkins, maintenance custodian, was polishing the second floor hallway; guiding the large polisher back and forth in a practiced sweep, one to guarantee an even finish to be proud of. The familiar white in-ear-headphones dangled to the iPod in his pocket; the selection of music made any day a better day. Fifty-eight years old and balding, LeRoy rocked with his polisher like he was jamming on Saturday night.

What’s that smell? “Oh, man!” The odor got worse the further down the hallway he went. Reluctantly, LeRoy triggered the polisher off before it had a chance to dance by itself. The smell was terrible. A groan came from locker 248. Some kid had been stuffed inside.

Using his universal locker key, LeRoy opened the lock, then the door. A small boy was jammed face first into the locker. He’d shit and wet his pants; stuck in the locker for eighteen hours.

To his credit, even at urging of his parents, the police and school administrators; Andy didn’t give up the names of the three football players and two ninth grade titties that had nearly killed him. When he came to in the emergency room he was still counting; “Sixty-four thousand eight hundred…sixty four thousand eight hundred and five.”

Bonneville Power Administration

Portland, Oregon

Early travelers in Portland on the I-405 and I-5 bridges, many being commuters from Washington State cities north of town, were unpleasantly surprised as the foundations of the Freemont and Marquam bridges crossing the Willamette River failed as if choreographed by a maestro.

Marq
uam Bridge I-5, Jason “cacophony”

(2007)
Wikipedia

Freemon
t Bridge I-405, by Jason “cacophony”

Wikipedia
(10/23/07)

The Marquam Bridge carried traffic across the Willamette River in South Portland on I-5. It was a double-decked bridge, carrying 135,900 vehicles a day, the busiest in the state. The concrete and steel pilings wobbled this way and that, and collapsed, sending five hundred eighty-two cars into the river. Further north, the newer Freemont Bridge allowed I-405 traffic to enter North Portland after crossing the river. It was the second longest tied-arch bridge in the world after the Caiyuanba Bridge spanning the Yangtze River in China. While the bridge withstood the double quake, the elevated dual-deck concrete run-up lanes on both the east and west sides of the bridge collapsed into the industrial areas below, blocking all train traffic on the west side and access to the shipping ports on the east.

“Andy!” shouted Jake Beatty. “Answer! Hello!” No answer. The phone line was dead. Jake smacked the plastic phone hard on the receiver. Nothing, dead line. He punched out #3 on his phone.

beep beep beep

Then repeated:

beep beep beep.

No cell phone. No land line.
No land line, no Federal telephone system. He tried the 88 prefix to see if he could get out through the FTS. No luck.

fucking beep beep beep
.

“God damn it!” Jake shouted, turning to his Power Control Panel, a supersized wall map of the power grid in the Northwest US and Canada. “Paul, what do we have?” he asked his fellow senior Power Administrator Paul Griswold, who slid across the paneled floor of the computer room to a console on the left side of the room. Griswold banged a keyboard, which in response simply went blank.

I
n front of the men the lights of Clackamas and Washington counties, Multnomah County and surrounding counties across the Columbia in Washington State; King (Seattle), Cowlitz, Clark, Wahkiakum, Skamania, Lewis, Thurston all began to blink rapidly, each red light indicating a substation that was in trouble due to overloading and/or transmission tower failure.

Located one hundred miles upstream on the Columbia River was the Columbia Generating Plant just north of Richland, Washington; where 29-year old Andy Everett and 42-year old Leon Holt were breathing heavily inside a locked room, inside a nuclear plant shutting itself down without their help. The CGP had a larger red light on the big map than did the other facilities. It was blinking.

“Hanford’s going off line in minutes,” Jake said plainly, belying the fact that his heart was in his throat.

To the east along the Snake River the lights representing dams at Jackson Lake, Wyoming and the Idaho dams at Pallisades, Ririe, Blackfoot, American Falls, Minidoka, Millner, C.J. Strike, Swan Falls, Brownlee, and Oxbow were all blinking; all were located within three hundred miles of Yellowstone.

“Oh, man! No!” pleaded Paul Griswold. Both Paul and Jake were senior control specialists, both in their early 50s; Paul having a scruffy grey beard, Paul having a full mane of grey hair, with intentions to eventually turn it into a ponytail.

“Jackson Lake is off line!” Both power control specialist knew that either the dam had failed or God was playing a really nasty trick with light bulbs on the large map.

“So are Henry’s Lake and Island Park,” both dams were on the Henry’s Fork branch of the Snake River, closest to the epicenter.