THE WARNING

Wyatt Morris was a grizzled veteran of the guard detail at Soledad. The thirty eight year old man had spent six years in the regularly Army, and used his money to take a community college degree and become an employee of the Department of Corrections. And now he was a long way from humping a full pack and an M-16A2 with the 4th Infantry, as the M1s roared towards the Iraqi border.

His nephew Charlie was on his way over there now, to patrol through the streets of Baghdad with the infantry.. He was a good kid, and after his second year with the high school basketball team, he'd switched to focus on computers and the debate team. That was the year after the tragedy in New York.And Wyatt had known what he was thinking and tried to talk him out of it. Even introduced him to some guys in uniform.Charlie'd listened long and hard to guys who'd already come home from being over there. Some of them had come home minus arms, legs or freinds.
But the kid had graduated high school, and signed oon the dotted line. He'd promised his mother he'd be carefuyl, but more than anything, he'd promised someone somewhere that he'd take care fo "the guys" and that was what he was doing.

Changed days indeed. Wyatt had gotten in shape thanks to Wade Sanders, whose wife was a fitness instructor in town. She'd given him a lot of encouragement on diet and exercise, and he had lost so much weight and muscled up that he had to go to Wal Mart and buy a whole new wardrobe! But he looked and felt better, and only last week Jeannie's sister Hailey had asked him out to the movies.

Wade nudged him, as the forty-four year old sat down in the chair beside him, and let out a sigh. After five years in the Marines, he'd gone almost the same route. He'd been at Soledad for almost two years before Wyatt, and three years at county lockups before that.

"I think it's starting again. Poor Miguel's starting to toss and turn just like last night. The poor kid doesn't deserve this. He makes all the right moves in a bad neighbourhood. He joins up to make a difference and earn some money to send home to his Mom. Then he goes home on leave.When his mother asks him to talk some sense into a cousin who was probably only dealing a little grass, and he loses his temper with some sheriff's department patrolman who got too rough, he gets sent to the worst hellhole in the state.

You know what those guys are like. Sit in a car and gulp down coffee and doughnuts and don't keep fit enough and take it out on some kid. My uncle used to be the same. Cost him three kids and a wife.They live in Barstowe now.

Yeah. Here he goes again. The thrashing and the moaning. He really should be strapped down.My dad's aunt shuld have been strapped down, but she was so quiet most of the time, untill she fell out of bed."

"i'll go and check on him. Thank God your wife pushed me, or I'd be another porker flopping around."

And Wyatt turned his key in the lock and then locked the door behind him before he walked down the corridor past guys who'd been stabbed with shivs, slashed with broken glass and in one case, kicked all over the floor of the prison. The riot of ten days ago had truly scared Wyatt. He'd never had to shoot anyone when he had been in the Army, and now he was guarding a bunch of cons who'd been beaten up by the biker inmates when they'd heard about the government freezing some accounts worth fifty milion dollars, and arresting more than twenty people.

They had cut loose on a bunch of guys, and one prison guard had been badly cut, and a nurse had been grabbed. Wyatt had been on the floor that day, and Miguel had suddenly landed hard against him, and shouted. Then Wyatt had been thrown forward.

He'd rolled over and seen J.J Axeman Dunwoody swinging a mop with a bunch of nails embedded in the handle.The nails had embedded in Miguel's chest, and then Dunwoody had pulled the mop handle up again and shoved the end, so that it slammed into Miguel's temple.

Wyatt had ripped the Glock out of his nylon holster and chambered a round, firing into Axeman's chest. hed dropped and Wyatt had been able to drag Miguel into one of the cells. The riot had ended with one guard in hospital and another getting four stitches. Miguel had, it turned, shoved Wyatt out of the way as Willie The Wire Benton had thrown a coffee mug at Wyatt. It could have flattenmed him, enabling Dunwoody to get a hold of him.

Miguel, who'd been home on leave with the 4th Infantry Division's Second Battalion, when he was arrested along with six others at his cousin Hernando's house, was already receiving threats from the bikers. His cousin had been part of a gang of guys that had dealt grass in high school untill Miguel threatened to rip his arm out of it's socket. And then they heard from one of the guys that the bikers had a grow op near a house they were rebuilding and painting.

In the evening they'd gone in with a couple of baseball bats and shovels and knocked out three bikers, including a woman who was supposed to be watching out instead of smoking on the back porch. They'd taken three bags of cash and some grass that had already been rolled. One of the bikers had died right there cause they hit him too hard.

Now Miguel was in hospital with a bad concussion and stitches and possible nerve damage. And he was thrashing about in bed every night. It was starting to scare the other guards.

As Wyatt approached his dor, he'd looked around and seen the other wounded cons lying still. But then Miguel's legs hit the wall, and a former crack and crystal meth dealer named Thomas Barnes woke up, but he knew Wyatt was all business and he lay there.

"Just lay still Barnes. you got more stitches than most of the walking wounded in Baghdad. Just try and relax."

And then he looked in at Miguel. And the kid was lying there, like he had a catlle prod inserted in his backside. His legs and arms were stiff and under those closed eyelids, it was like the man was paralysed with fear.

"The lights! We are all in blackness with no lights and no heat! We are in the dark again! The world is without light! We are all doomed!"

"Come on Miguel. You gotta stop this doomsayer crap. it's starting to sound like an acid flashback. And you told everyone you don't do that crap."

And then Miguel began a hissing sound, and then he trembled again.

"The fire has begun! The fires are burning around the world! The mountains are burning and we will all be covered in fire and ash! We will be smothered in fire and ash unles we stop the madness now! He has sent us His warning! We must turn away from the hate and heed His word!"

And Wyatt sucked in his breath through his teeth. He'd been with the guys in New Orleans on leave after he'd been rotated back from Kuwait in ninety one. And there had been an old woman sitting outside who was supposed to be a real voodoo priestess. She had smelt awful and she had dealt the tarot cards fopr him just like she did for everyone. And she had told him the storm was coming that would engulf the cities with walls of water, and that it would be followed by screams of pain and fear, and then another storm that would blanket his home in ice and snow.

Only last year, Wyatt had been talking with his parents, who were laughing as they described how his old house had been buried in snow. Wyatt had chuckled because he thought that they were talking about the old house in Pasadena which he'd lived in for most of his childhood. They had been good years. They he'd realised that they meant the house he'd first lived in for the first four years in Chicago. He couldn't remember it all that well.

Now as he saw Miguel thrashing about, with saliva flecks all over his face, and making that sound, he shivered, and wondered if Miguel had been cursed with some terrible gift of prophetic visions.

"The mountains are on fire! It will throw a blanket of ash everywhere and block out the light! We will all be in darkness and we will all live in ice and cold!"

And Wyatt looked around at the white walls, and the dark green floor, and the sun shining in through the thick glass windows and the wire cage across the windows. and he shivered in spite of himself. This was getting way too weird. Even for a hospital full of convicts.

...................

In the United States Geological Survey Offices, Joseph Kamegusha was finishing up a report when his protege, Tony Marques knocked on the window. And the Philipino-American didn't look at all happy.

"There's been another series of vibratins from underneath Mount Pinatubo, and now another peak in the Kamchatka region. This is only a day after that tremor in Afghanistan. It isn't looking better here. We've had two tremors already this month in Alaska and California. Not major ones, but enouh to indicate a patern of new activity."

"Contact the governments in Manila, Jakarta, Tokyo and tell them to begin to prepare for anything. Don't alarm them too much, just make it clear that we have concerns and that they should perhaps start arranging blood donor clinics and stockpiling supplies for an emergency. Remember Tony, his is the ring of Fire. Anything could happen, or nothing at all."

"We've seen major earthquakes in Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia and volcanic activity in the Philipines. It's too much of a risk. I'd like to take Trina Van Arden and Simon Kensington and a couple of others to Manila and some equipment. I've got some new portable units that can supply us with electricity in an emergency."

"Okay, but check our handbook and the new phone book beforeyou go. And take one of the World Phones. Just in case."

.................


The thunderstorm that had lashed California was dying down when Wyatt came pounding back down the hallway and yelled through the windows. Brett Wormsley almost jumped out ofhis skin at the noise, and then he looked over at his monitor. Miguel was rolling around, clawing at his throat and his eyes were bugging out of his skull.

Brent leaned forward and smashed the button as hard as he dared.

"Operations Center? We've got an emergency in the hospital wing. It looks like Vargas is going into some kind of major seizure. We need paramedics and back up right away."

"He's crashing Brent! I've never seen anything like this! He was quiet tonight and lal of a sudden he's grabbing his head and rolling all over the bed!"

"Must be a stroke or something. "

"Yeah okay. We're just watching CNN. Heckuva eruption going on in Japan, and there are majoraftershocks in Afghanistan and a minor quake in Caslifornia. Flks at the USGS are in a real tizzy. Folks are saying it could be another tsunami."

And Wyatt gasped and then looked down at Miguel, whose seizure seemed to be subsiding.

"What was it you were saying? We'd all be consumed by fire and then blanketed in snow? Like a nuclear winter? Is that what's coming our way pal? Okay. Well I can do something about that."

And three weeks later, with Reserve and National Guard units helping with disaster reliefe in Japan and California and clearing roads and streets and seting up tent hospitals in Vietnam and South Koprea for over half a million refugees, Wyatt was on the move. He'd gone to the garden center he'd been told was thought to be supplying the grow ops with seed, and he found it. They had garbage bins full of cash and marijuana seedlings and bags of seed all over the place. He'd unloaded his own Remington 1100 shotgun into five of them, and driven out of there with six garbage bins and eight bags fullof cash, weapons and flashlights. he'd bought up about a hundred of those new flashlights with an internal dynamo and boxes of sleeping bags, tents, warm winter clothing, canned milk, bottled water, butane stoves, and other supplies. And he'd joing a bunch of poeple in Fresno.