"Several years ago a crowd was gathered around Crystal Pool. One of the many families had brought their dog to the Park along with them. Upon seeing the clear blue water, the animal became excited and broke free of its owner and leapt into the pool.
"Upon seeing this, one of the crowd, a young man, jumped after the dog to rescue the poor animal from the hot chemical springs. After a minute, they had to pull him out as most of his skin had been dissolved away.
"Two hours later, in the hospital just before he died, the young man remarked that, "'It was the stupidest thing I ever did.'"
Paraphrased from a brochure warning tourists of the hazards of Yellow Stone National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Shard looked up nervously from the national park pamphlet in her hand. She sat with her legs crossed and with an elbow propping up her chin. She was still sweating, but she had stopped feeling the urge to vomit. She had spent twenty minutes in one of the rest rooms attempting to put her long hair up into a tight bun. Her sweater and baseball cap had been dumped into the nearest bin.
Now she was sitting on a bench as the crowd churned around in front of her and concentrated on not thinking. Trying desperately not to match any description they may have put out on her.
She was near one of the less popular geysers; the main crowds were milling about Old Faithful, which was twenty minutes late as usual. She could feel the mist on the breeze as her geyser started to spout off. People began to "oohh" and "ahh," gathering around her, snapping pictures, smiling and sweating.
Shard put a hand to her forehead to cover her eyes, miming a sore brow. She got up and began to walk slowly down one of the paved paths, her head down, watching her feet. Her thoughts kept returning to Bryce, but she kept forcing them to the back of her mind. She was getting hungry, which helped to distract her from those other thoughts.
It was as she turned back around to head towards the convenience stalls near Old Faithful that she saw them.
As she began to sprint along the pathway away from them, it struck her how ludicrous they seemed. Decked out in Black Suits and ties while the rest of the tourist world consisted of tour groups and loud Americans, all glaring brightly in summer colors.
It was as if these men wanted people to notice them, to wonder at who they were.
To fear them.
Shard's boots thudded along the path. She could feel the wetness at her heels as her ankle scabs, relicts from her old pumps, ripped free. She could feel the stares of the tourists as she pushed past them.
The stroller came out of nowhere, wheeled out from the middle of a crowd. Her toe caught one of the front wheels but somehow she turned the momentum of the fall into a stumble and kept running. Her half-gasped mumble of an apology was drowned out by curses from the child's mother.
This part of the park was pretty flat and there was nowhere that she could hide. But a quick glance over her shoulder told her that her pursuers were following her. When she looked ahead again, Shard saw that she was running straight at two more of them.
Shard skidded to her right and shot straight off of the path, heading towards the tree line, across the geyser laden ground. There were shouts of concern from the visitors and a strangled yelp from the tour guide. As she sped along, she felt a stitch of pain flare up in her side and her steps became more and more uneven as fatigue slowly began to set in.
As she heard the footsteps close in behind her, she took a quick, deep breath and pushed her legs to go faster, just a little faster. The line of trees ahead were so close. She had just transferred all her weight from her left to her right foot when she felt herself lurch forward.
The crust of ground beneath her foot crumbled.
And her foot broke through, into the boiling acid waters. The force of her run pushed her forward, sending her splayed out upon the sandy ground.
Shard jerked her leg back sharply in revulsion as she felt hot, scalding water seep into her boot through the lace holes.
She looked up in time to see one of the men in black that was chasing her stumble as one of his Italian leather shoes poked through the hidden geothermal pool. She could see the look of surprise on his face, could see his mouth open, a clear transparent mask fall to the ground. She could see the look of fear on his face as he fell upon the ground.
And fall through.
Shard was already up and running as the screams began to fill the air.
And deep beneath them all an upwelling of rhyolitic magma pulsed upward, rising upon a convection current 400 kilometers from beneath the crust, crested towards the surface. As the pressure wave entered the main chamber, seismometers all over the park shuddered and frantically waved their little heat pens with excitement upon their white sheets.
Old Faithful spluttered and died.