"Let the Fire Fall!": A Black Budget City

"IF THE SAN ANDREAS FAULT UNZIPS, WE CAN HAVE VOLCANOES ACTIVATE ALL THE WAY FROM MEXICO TO ALASKA." Anthony W. Soule, Volcanologist During WWII security shelters were built several floors beneath government buildings. Airplanes shattered our world on September 11, 2001 necessitating an immediate update. To this end an underground city is built in Mt. Eisenhower, near Banff, Canada. This emergency safe haven, built with Black Budget funds, is being inspected by Drs. Acel Parker and Tony Soule, both USGS volcanologists, when a Southern California volcano erupts. Construction nearly complete, this emergency forces the shelter to be opened immediately. Sensors, alarms and cameras focused from all angles, did not alert personnel in time to warn the public. No, it wasn't Mt. Saint Helens. Nor Yellowstone. It was Mammoth Mountain, the long smoldering 11,000 foot peak that drew 1.5 million skiers in the 2005-2006 season in Yosemite National Park. The deadly carbon dioxide gas would be pushed thousands of miles by the jet stream. What extreme anger made computer mastermind Harper Holbrook disable the eruption alert sensors? Panic rages from California to Canada when word is broadcast by television and radio that carbon dioxide gas is spreading across the United States. A search to apprehend the non-descript villain leads to a nuclear waste repository in the Yucca Valley, Nevada wilderness.

This is Audrey Mathewson's first fiction novel. She enjoyed writing classes in high school. After graduation she joined the U.S. Navy, hoping to train as a Journalist. As often happens, instead she did yeoman duties for U.S. Naval Schools Command, including the Atomic Defense School in 1952 at Treasure Island, San Francisco, California. She has written newsletters for a Navy Women's group and for corporations where she was employed. Now, retired, she is making her fiction writing debut with "Let the Fire Fall!" Author's Inside Note Over thirty-five years I have studied psychic awareness and related subjects. I wondered if I could do a psychic reading of a character I created. So I tried it! The results surprised me! Two parts are viewed through a psychic reading done by a fictional character, Lillian. The second is very real in how it 'tunes' into a scene from 200 years ago which, in a way, is unrelated. This often happens as my mind, at that level, doesn't use a time factor. The title of the book is taken from an evening tradition in Yosemite Park at Glacier Point when a man's voice would call to the 3,000 foot top of the mountain, "Let the Fire Fall!" Within seconds, a cascade of red embers would be pushed over the edge of the mountain, resulting in a glorious Fire Fall. The hundreds of visitors in the valley floor were thrilled at the sight! The tradition lasted almost 100 years and was seen by many thousands of people. It was stopped in 1968.