Page 74 of Eruption

“It was contained,” Rivers said.

He told Mac and Jenny they could leave and let the army finish up here and added that he was about to leave himself.

Seconds after Mac and Jenny left, a soldier in a hazmat suit came running down the hill toward Rivers. “You need to come with me, sir,” the soldier said. “But first you need to put on one of these suits.” Rivers got his protective yellow suit out of the back of the cargo truck and quickly put it on. Colonel Briggs, also in a hazmat suit, was waiting for Rivers with three other soldiers inside the Ice Tube.

The body at their feet was also in a yellow suit. The suit was ripped along the right arm. His gloves were gone.

The right hand was already turning black.

One of the soldiers said, “He must have torn it on a jagged part of the wall.” The man paused, then added, “He was one of the first ones in here.”

Rivers said, “It happens this fast.”

“Not always, sir,” Briggs said. “But it can. And it did.”

Rivers said, “What’s his name?”

“Sergeant Lalakuni,” Briggs said. “Tommy.”

Rivers stared at the exposed hand. “Family?”

“According to the men, his wife died last year in an automobile accident in Honolulu,” Briggs said. “Parents, both from here, are deceased.”

Rivers took a step closer to the body.

“Don’t touch anything, sir,” Briggs said.

“Who took the glove off?” Rivers asked.

One of the soldiers said, “He did. He said he felt like he was burning up.”

The lights were bright enough that they could see Lalakuni’s face beginning to turn black behind his mask.

No one said anything for a few seconds, all of them staring at the body. “Sergeant Lalakuni died in a lava accident,” Rivers said.

He waited, moving his eyes from one face to another.

“Is that understood?” he said.

They all seemed relieved to be looking at anything that wasn’t the body. They nodded.

There was another silence, longer than before, in the eerie quiet of the cave.

Finally, one of the soldiers asked, “What are we going to do with him?”

General Mark Rivers didn’t hesitate.

“I saw shovels in the back of that truck,” he said. “Go get them.”

“Where do you plan to bury him, sir?”

“In here,” Rivers said.

CHAPTER 51

U.S. Military Reserve, Hawai‘i

Sunday, April 27, 2025