Page 124 of Eruption

Last man out.

He heard the ring of his phone, picked it up. One of his cops, Mike Palakilu, was calling from somewhere up ahead; he toldhim that a finger of lava had split off and completely blocked Route 11 on the outskirts of town.

“I’m running for the water!” Mike yelled. “Only chance I’ve got, Sam!”

Sam Aukai pulled his car onto the shoulder of the road. He didn’t want to take another look back, but he did, saw the orange and red of the blocky ‘a‘alava burning Na‘alehu and drowning it at the same time.

The air was thick with heat and gas and the smell of a burning town, making it difficult for him to breathe.

Two more bodies floated past him, their hideous red faces already unrecognizable. Maybe Sam had known them. No way to tell.

People ahead of him were abandoning their cars and running toward the water, not knowing that the water wasn’t safe either, that it was part of the hot zone.

Sam ran hard for the water anyway. Sam Aukai, once the star running back at Ka‘u High, imagining he was sprinting for daylight one last time.

Too late.

He was swept up by the lava and carried along by it, helpless. His lungs were burning up and his skin was on fire as he rode on top of the lava.

He thought of his daughter.

CHAPTER 93

Mauna Loa, Hawai‘i

In Hawaiian,Mauna Loameans “Long Mountain,” a fact Mac could not get out of his head as the lava continued to chase them down the trail.

It did not slow; it just kept coming.

They knew they risked falling if they ran too fast, but they had no choice; they had to stay ahead of the ropy pahoehoe lava or die. Some of it had begun to spill off the trail and down the fields of old lava from previous eruptions.

They ran harder, trying to ignore the thin air and the burning in their legs, spurred on by adrenaline and fear.

Mac thought it was too risky to move across the mountain and down the lava fields. He was unsure of the sturdiness of the open stretches, knowing that there were places on fields like this that could crack like eggshells and swallow them up, maybe into magma flowing below the surface.

There was no cell service, no way to call for help. He’d slowed long enough to check his phone with its dying battery. Cell towers were probably down all over the island.

Mac wondered what else on the island was down and where and how fast the rest of the lava was headed.

The observatory finally came into view, but it looked impossibly far away. Mac allowed himself a quick look back.

Shit.

As the trail got steeper, the lava came faster.

“We’ve got to get off the trail now!” Mac yelled at Rebecca. “We’re going to have to risk cutting across the lava field.”

“Is that safe?” she asked.

“As long as the quakes and tremors haven’t weakened the old lava too much,” he said. “But at this point, we’ve got no choice. The lava’s not going to get tired. We are.”

They hooked a sharp turn off the trail. The lava flows closest to them kept going, passing them, at least for now. Rebecca slipped and went down. Mac pulled her up, then he removed a tool from his utility belt, an infrared thermometer, and held it toward the rocky mass directly ahead of them, which was clear of lava for the moment. He found a long stick that had fallen from a koa tree and tapped it on the surface, checking for hollow tubes where lava might be pooling underneath.

“Feels solid,” Mac said, “but the mountain’s interior temperature is rising. It’s about six hundred degrees now. Our boots won’t melt until it’s about eight hundred, so we can keep making our way down.”

Rebecca, who had looked more surefooted than Mac initially, took the lead and nimbly began to weave around masses of lava rock.

Mac thought:The ground is too weak. Right fucking here.“Rebecca! Stop!”