Lapse Rate
A short while later, another engineer showed up carrying a radiation meter. He took the frozen salmon and the coffee mix Frank held out, then stared at both like he couldn't quite believe they were real.
"Hey. This actually salmon? Not canned?"
"Pulled fresh out of Lake Tahoe and flash-frozen on the spot. Purity right up there with that shale gas you boys have been drilling."
The engineer hugged the fish to his chest like treasure and glanced around. Frank didn't waste the opening.
"So, about those guys collecting tolls you mentioned. Where exactly are they dug in? We've got to push through toward Denver ourselves."
Maybe it was the goods warming him up. Maybe it was just Frank's way with people. The middle-aged engineer dropped his voice and started talking freely.
"Glenwood Canyon. That's the mouth of hell. You want east on I-70, you have to run that gorge, and the rumor mill is screaming that they've wired the cliff face above the tunnel mouth with explosives."
"Explosives?"
"That's right. Don't pay the toll, they drop the tunnel on your head and bury you alive. A few state supply trucks tried to tough it out not long ago and… they paid up in the end. Funny old world, isn't it? The state government paying taxes to a gang."
I couldn't help a dry laugh of my own. In the end it was the same everywhere. Whoever held the leash got to take their cut, no matter what they called themselves.
The deal wrapped and the engineer had barely faded into the crowd when another bunch drifted up to the stall, as if they'd been waiting their turn. Men in worn work clothes dug crude instruments out of pockets and bags and set them on the table.
"Heard the rumor and came on over. You buying these, that right?"
"Long as they work. We've got cash, ammo, fuel, food, smokes — you name it."
"Keep the fuel. You got painkillers?"
"Sure do. Hahaha."
Frank worked them with that old salesman's touch of his. Gunner and I hung back and listened, picking the conversation for anything useful.
"Grand Junction's an island now. Fuel coming out our ears, and you can't find a slice of bread. Utah to the west isn't worth hoping on, and the Denver supply isn't amounting to much either."
"If you're headed east, wouldn't you be better off swinging south onto Route 50?"
Frank floated it casual. The man selling the gear shook his head.
"Monarch Pass, you mean? That's high country. Weather's one thing, but word is a bunch calling themselves the Mountain Reapers are working that stretch. What's the name… Black Bear? Anyway, that's the one they say is running the show."
Our stall did a roaring business the rest of the afternoon. Piece by piece, from every scrap they tossed us, I redrew the map of Colorado in my head.
By the time the sun was sliding west, Frank finished his last deal and came over. His hands were full of battered, heavy Geiger counters.
"Chan. Look at this. That's seven."
"Good work. Mr. Frank comes through again."
"I don't know, man. Weirdly enough, I feel alive. Heh heh heh."
"What are you talking about? You feel alive in the middle of all this?"
"I used to be a truck dealer, remember."
"Yeah."
"See, no matter how good I was, I was always the little guy. Always on the short end. You especially — you were the biggest headache I ever had. These days, though, I sit down to a deal and I don't feel like the little guy anymore. That's what I'm saying."
"That's rich. I'm still the boss, though. Doesn't that still make me the one holding the cards? Hahaha."
"Aigoo. I'll take you as a boss over you as a customer a hundred times over."
"Was I that bad?"
"You're seriously asking me that? Nagging and hanging on until you got what you wanted — then again, I guess that's why we're still standing in the middle of all this. Anyway. Yeah."
"Haha. Either way, I'm glad I've got you, Frank."
"Appreciate it."
"Add these to the meters we already had and we can put one with every platoon and every echelon. Thanks."
"Please. This is nothing. But what's with the face?"
We'd gotten the gear we needed. We'd gotten the intelligence. My gut still wouldn't settle.
"It's nothing. Just thinking too much."
"Fair enough. You put together what people were saying and every road east is either a trap or a cliff. I'd be chewing on it too."
Gunner cut in.
"We still can't sit still. This place isn't going to stay safe much longer either."
He caught Anderson's eye and gave the signal to pack it up.
"We're pulling out. Hang around any longer and we'll just draw more eyes. Too many people already wondering who we are."
We broke down the stall in a hurry and climbed into the trucks. Carlos's F-550 and my Kenworth rolled out of the Walmart lot with a heavy growl of diesel.
Frank's radio crackled from the truck ahead.
Grand Junction's barren landscape slid past the window. On the surface the place looked energetic, even peaceful. The truth was it was an island, slowly withering in isolation.
And from the west, the wind of death was drawing closer with every passing hour.
My hands tightened on the wheel. The road into eastern Colorado was going to be a different animal from anything we'd faced crossing Nevada or Utah. That much was already clear.
I put my foot down, chasing the lights of the main body waiting for us on a road already sinking into dark.
The laager the convoy had thrown up on a wide open stretch beside US Route 50, just short of Delta, was already swallowed by night. Hundreds of red marker lamps and the flood towers spotted through the camp still gave the whole thing a presence you couldn't miss, even in the dark.
I rolled in and, out of habit, checked the meter clipped to my plate carrier.
Still well above the normal range. Compared to the surge that had climbed by the minute and squeezed my chest on the way out of Nevada, I would take it. At least that death-wind charging at us seemed to have paused.
"Good work, everyone. Let's eat first."
We put away a late dinner of MREs and stew with the others, then I called the key people into my trailer. Frank, Dave, Gunner, Mike, Bill, plus Matthews and Ryker from the Division, and Anderson and Smith, who'd been gathering intelligence. The little trailer was packed wall to wall.
Once everyone had found a spot, I started.
"This is about the Rocky Mountains we have to cross, and the situation in eastern Colorado."
At my nod, Frank stepped up and put a finger on the map.
"This whole region is an island, basically. Shale gas means they've got energy to burn, but food and medicine are locked down tight."
"…"
"The roads out east are in the fist of a bunch calling themselves the Mountain Reapers."
Anderson and Smith, who'd been out with us, picked up where Frank left off.
"According to the traders we talked to at the Walmart market, these people are the worst kind. Depending on the day, they'll take a third of whatever you're carrying and call it a toll."
"A few state trucks were made an example of. After that, even the Colorado state government and the local authorities started negotiating the toll in advance."
Smith's addendum left a heavy silence in the trailer. Matthews had been staring a hole through the map. He looked up with a grim face.
"Sir, if you look at the map you'll see there are two main ways from here to Denver or Colorado Springs. Interstate 70 to the north, and US Route 50 to the south."
He traced the winding run of I-70 with a finger.
"The Glenwood Canyon stretch in particular leaves you no options. Cliff on one side, river on the other. One rock rolled down from above and the road is dead. The terrain is extremely vulnerable to ambush."
Ryker nodded beside him.
"He's right. A nightmare if you're trying to fight through it. Heaven if you're the one attacking."
It wasn't just a matter of punching a hole and driving through. Behind us were unarmed trucks and dozens of vehicles packed with families. If a fight started, they would be the first ones in the blast radius.
The room was drifting toward how ugly a forced breakthrough would be when Mike, who'd been listening with his arms folded, spoke up.
"A fight is the last resort. If what they want is supplies, we should sound them out first and see if we can negotiate a passage. Show them the firepower we've got, hand over a reasonable toll, and they might just open the road."
"We'll take a little time and look at every option."
Mike's voice dropped as he studied the map.
"But Chan — there's a bigger problem than the bandits."
Frank's eyes went wide.
"What? Something worse than bandits? Don't tell me it's the radiation again."
"No. The mountain itself."
Mike ran a thick finger along the contour lines of the Rocky Mountains.
"Whichever road we take, we still have to cross high country over ten thousand feet. That's the problem."
"Come on, Mike. It's August. Middle of summer."
Dave waved it off. Mike shook his head.
"It's summer on the flats. Three thousand meters up is a different world. We're already dropping below minus fifteen down here. Climb into those mountains and the temperature is going to fall off a cliff. Wind chill of minus thirty — maybe worse."
He looked around the trailer, dead serious.
"Thin air and that kind of cold don't just wear people down. Engine output falls off. Fuel lines freeze up like it's nothing."
"…"
"We've got more than a hundred vehicles in a line. One truck — just one — dies in the middle of a narrow mountain road, and the whole column is stranded in those peaks."
Even imagining it was ugly. Locked in a prison of snowbound mountains, with nowhere to go. That was a worse scenario than any firefight.
Anderson spoke up carefully.
"Still… isn't Route 50, the one we're aiming for, a little lower than I-70?"
Mike gave a bitter smile and shook his head.
"Six of one. Both roads crest at eleven thousand feet. I-70 at least has the Eisenhower Tunnel. Monarch Pass on Route 50, you take the wind right in the teeth the whole way over."
"Jesus…"
Frank let the word out like air from a tire.
Honestly, I hadn't thought that far. Chased by radiation, watching for raiders, I had let the Great Winter and the actual shape of the Rockies slip to the back of my mind. The options were narrowing. The difficulty kept climbing.
I looked at Jed, the former wind-turbine engineer.
"Jed. If the elevation jumps that high, how much colder are we talking?"
He narrowed his eyes, running the numbers in his head, then spoke with a sober face.
"Generally, temperature drops about six and a half degrees for every thousand meters you climb. That's the standard atmospheric lapse rate."
"So then…"
"Delta here sits around fifteen hundred meters, and we're at minus fifteen. Up on a pass over thirty-four hundred meters, you'd lose another twelve or thirteen degrees. Even on a straight calculation, you're looking at below minus thirty."
Dave cut in, looking almost relieved.
"Ah, come on. Minus thirty? That's nothing. Bundle up, crank the heaters, we'll be fine. We saw colder than that back in Canada. We've already got winter fronts on all the radiators."
Jed's face didn't ease at all. If anything, he shook his head at Dave and looked worse.
"No. What I just gave you is the ordinary case — clouds, some moisture in the air. Assuming no special weather."
"What's different?"
"Any of you seen a real snowfall on the way here?"
We looked at each other. Thinking back, we'd had the kind of cold that cut to the bone all the way across Nevada — but we hadn't hit a proper blizzard.
"That's the Great Winter for you. The ash eats the moisture right out of the air, so the atmosphere right now is bone-dry. Dry air like that sheds heat a lot faster the higher you go."
He let that hang a moment, then went on in a heavier voice.
"In conditions like these, you don't use the moist rate. You apply the Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate. That's nearly ten degrees for every thousand meters."
The trailer went cold. Frank swallowed hard beside me.
"Skip the headache theory. What's the bottom line? How much colder are we talking?"
Jed looked at each of us in turn, slow and deliberate, and then he said it straight.
For clarity, metric units are used in certain scenes. All temperatures in the story are Celsius. (Even in the U.S. military, certain branches and engineers work comfortably in metric.)