“What the fuck was that?” he demanded, braking the military wag to a fast halt amid the young green plants.
Sitting beside the obese norm, the Lady Deirdra Kinnison looked up in terror, every fiber of her being jarring in warning. Without a word, she scrambled from the vehicle and started running toward the nearby ocean.
Utterly confused by the strange behavior, Kinnison scowled at the woman when another quake shook the mountain range and the dormant volcano erupted.
Hot ash and smoke thundered from the ragged peak, the noise so loud it became silence to ruptured ears. Fiery balls of burning sulfur spewed from the mountain, then the side of the range cracked open wide and out poured a river of molten lava.
Spitting curses, Kinnison started the wag and twisted the wheel to escape even as a soft gray snowfall of pumice ash fell to blanket the ground. The Hummer traversed only a few yards before the tires slipped in the loose material. Baron Kinnison stomped on the gas pedal, pushing it to the floor, but the engine rattled and died, the air intake completely clogged by the thick ash.
The bandages around his face acting as a natural mask, the fat man struggled from the wag and waddled hastily away, his heart pounding savagely in his laboring chest. Again and again his boots slipped in the swirling ash, and he finally went sprawling as a sulfur ball crashed nearby and the explosion tossed him away, a broken, bleeding lump of flesh. His smashed body racked with agony, Kinnison could only lie there weeping as the ash slowly covered him. Another tremor shook the island, and then the ground beneath the man yawned open wide. Helpless, the baron fell into the crevice and landed on a sluggish river of lava. Instantly, his hair vanished, his bandages caught fire, as the heat seared into his cracking bones. Saturated with jolt, the baron stayed alive for long seconds, his body sizzling until the intense heat boiled his blood and the fat man burst apart in a gory spray.
Ripping off her new dress, Deirdra continued to sprint for her life, the terrible heat of the lava flow announcing its arrival right behind her. The mutie could feel her hair singe off, the very clothes on her back beginning to smolder. But icy adrenaline poured into her veins and the woman dashed forward with renewed strength, her velvet slippers pounding against the hot soil. The killing heat diminished slightly as she pelted across the grasslands, leaping over small bushes and a dry creek. Yes! She was going to make it! She was going to live!
Reaching the cliff, Deirdra simply threw herself over the edge and arched her body into a diving position as she knifed for the life-saving water below.
She was still falling when a vent from the volcano vomited red hot lava into the sea and the shoreline began to furiously bubble from the stygian geological exhaust.
She barely had time to cry out before she plunged into the boiling ocean, her death scream overwhelmed by the roiling fury of the erupting volcano.