At their current location just east of the fog like curtain, Michelle successfully flagged a west bound trucker who after hearing her story, radioed the Utah State Police warning of a woman reporting fatal collisions due to a dangerous obstruction in the roadway some five miles east of Sulphurdale..Neither Nick's nor Michelle's phone provided so much as a dial tone when they attempted to call 911, both of them coming to the conclusion some form of electromagnetic disruption within the quarter mile field must be the cause..

Fearing others would soon fall victim to it's fickle fate, Nick had some fifteen minutes ago, slid over the outside guard rail of the highway skirting his way westward along an outer face of sheer limestone cliff that swept into a steep gorge just below the road bed, in an attempt to circumvent the anomaly's borders, and warn approaching traffic at the opposite end.

Michelle insisted the truck driver advise the police not to attempt to drive through the obstruction should they arrive via the side he was currently risking his neck to secure.

The toes of Nick's boots scraped along a slight six inch outcropping transferring a standing saddle of red rock that was so steeply upright his body's natural reaction in finding balance was to lean away from it's face to a fifty foot drop of six foot outcropping that's outer edge promised another three hundred feet of nothing but free fall before meeting the floor of the gorge below.

"Fucking wind!" He swore at what was no more than a slight intermittent breeze at best two miles an hour, but which in his current position seemed to conspire a buffer of expanding air between his chest and the rock face teasing at his balance as one walking a tight wire..If not for the faith of grabbing what so far had been sturdy rooted scrub brush growing from cracks in the cliff, he felt he would have surely perished sweeping to his death like a splattered watermelon against the distant floor below.

"What the fuck was I thinking?..His voice choked in his throat fighting back tears.."Even fucking Tarzan would freak out on this shit!"

It occurred to him that at one time, a year or so ago, he'd tried roofing for employment as a subsidiary income when money earned from music was slow coming..He'd given up the prospect however almost immediately, finding within his make up a kind of natural aversion to heights that caused his head to spin and his belly to flip flop even at the fifteen or twenty foot elevation standard to single level family homes...Much to the amusement of his fellow workers who appeared to Nick to be more ape like than human in their agility and dexterity working nonchalantly inches from the eave overhang at the lower edge of a roof.

He whispered to himself seething though his clenched teeth.."Don't you look down motherfucker..Don't you dare look down."

Within ten minutes of the trucker's call a Utah Highway Patrol trooper pulled up in a white ford crown victoria displaying a gold honeycomb insignia on the doors..Michelle described to the male trooper her's and Nick's experience..The officer then radioed dispatch of his need for further assistance advising of Michelle's frantic concern that any subsequent vehicles entering the cloudy mass wedged between the surrounding cliffs might meet a fatal end.

Nick's precarious travel continued a few more yards where upon passing what proved to be the summit of the rock's saddle, the slope began to recline several degrees in his favor toward the direction of the highway allowing him much more stable conditions..The previously slight trail of outcropping improved as well widening his footing as it began a graceful descent eventually merging with the six foot shelf still some fifty feet below him..He continued along this same line of travel gaining what he valued to be precious seconds when perhaps ten minutes later he passed in front of a weathered hollow that formed a shallow cave in the cliff side..He stood there about four feet below it's opening viewing a flurry of wild birds that had been resting in the surrounding forest, all suddenly taking flight in a unison manner, as if rushing from an advancing predator.

She couldn't blame anyone for doubting her claim..She'd lived through the shedding of past lives experience first hand, and saw with her own eyes both the molten and frozen states of the vehicles inside the foggy tunnel..Yet her own intellect had difficulty adapting a coherency of solidified reality to the experience..The memory of it all kept re-surfacing in a fluid like quality that eroded her footprints of solid resolve like a incoming tide might wash away the hard evidence of one who'd previously walked across a wet beach...The ordeal brought to her mind the Charles Dickens' character Ebenezer Scrooge who rationalized the appearance of his dead partner by the logical means of a dream state set off by something he ate...Michelle's own subjective concerns regarding the sanity of her experience where however immediately dismissed..Shelved somewhere in the recesses of her mind, awaiting further consideration. Replaced by what was the apparent recollection in the eyes of her male companions a collective acknowledgement that the ground beneath their feet had begun to rumble in response to an earthquake..The northern end of the Sevier fault line ran directly through the terrain here, and in recent years seismic activity had increased dramatically. So much was the case, that local's to the area had come to associate it's behavior somewhat second hand..

It began akin to a bouncing more than a side to side motion. Liken to a vibration that rippled across the ground causing pebbles and small rocks to bounce straight up off the roadside like oil from a hot frying pan..Building on it's self so that within a few seconds both Harley's were rattling about on their kickstands as if mimicking a couple on a outdoor picnic after discovering they'd mistakenly sat down for some time on a nest of red ants. The heavier patrol car and semi-truck and tractor parked in the roadway tested their suspensions looking much like a stadium crowd doing the 'wave' in response to the performing motorcycles careening somewhat astray from their original locations. Michelle's Dyna Glide flipped on it's left side first being the slightly lighter of the two bikes. Then as if following it's lead, the Soft Tail's front tire broke loose from the shoulder in a series of harsher bounces teetering to it's right and meeting the macadam with the crunching sound of shattering signal lenses..

She heard one of the men scream "earthquake!" and turned her head toward the trooper who came at her with his arm stretch out moving like a comic drunk seeking balance in a awkward wide stance liken to a komo wrestler..He grabbed the underside of her forearm pulling her with him to the right hand side of the patrol car, and what seemed the closest protection as a rain of chunky red rocks began pelting the roadway. They pasted the windshield and left side windows of the crown victoria in a series of dull thuds appearing to Michelle as spiders squatting in the middle of their webs embedded in the splintered glass. She turned her head to the side seeking the where-a-bouts of the truck driver and found him squaring under the tractor trailer with both hands over his head gripping an angle of it's metal support..From her view point he appeared to be as strong as the 'Hulk' involved in a series of weight lifting maneuvers that lift the trailer again and again from the roadbed breaking new ground in the charts of Guinness world records...The roadway itself heading back into the foggy anomaly began to twist and buckle as if some giant unseen Mamu Lopez were tossing a fresh bed cover over the crisply laundered sheets of a queen bed with professional confidence..What immediately followed were a series of deafening explosions generated from what appeared high above them coupled with ear splitting pops and cracks of splitting towers of rock formation that's peaks leaned over the quarter mile section of highway immersed within the anomaly..With it came a terrible low ripping sound escaping beneath the depths of the highway as a chasm of ever widening void began to expose itself down the center of the blacktop snaking it's way into the foggy curtain..It cut the macadam like a chainsaw through butter hurling sections of roadbed twenty feet into the air, and swallowed them as they fell like a gigantic hungry mouth..

She screamed his name over and over but the word "Nick" only registered as mute even within her inner voice as the violence of sound that ensued was of such proportions it seemed to fill every microcosm of space lending no quarter to any additional sound waves..

Like a virtual vacuum cleaner the widening chasm now fully engulfed the width of highway sucking it down into the void, and along with it the swirling mass of fog seemed to turn upright as the funnel of a tornado. It's long descending tail twitched like an angry cat as if seeking an escape from the suction below...Then to the onlookers shocked perception, the weathered sculptured peaks crowing the bordering cliffs began to tumble like broken bowling pins. Some free falling others sliding or crashing against the cliff walls into smaller sections before disappearing into the mouth of the chasm..And with them the anomaly, slowly sinking as if in desperate measure treading water against a rip tide it was swept into the void.

At first response, Nick associated the nature of the earthquake to the vibrating metallic football field inherent to an electric toy he'd been given at holiday time as a child. Like one of the tiny players perched upon thin plastic runners, his boots skidded over the footing of rock ledge threatening his fall..He reached up grasping to the cave head's smooth rocky lip and hoist himself onto it's ledge hanging there by his elbows and forearms..Chunks of rock the size of basketballs began to descend above him as he twisted forward using elbows as leverage until he was able to roll into the mouth of the cave...The vibration grew quickly in such intensity he had to force his feet and back against the opposite walls of the cave or risk being tossed back out over the side of the entrance..What pursued was a violent rocking of the surrounding walls coupled with deafening sounds and debris falling past the opening so thick the interior of the hollow was suddenly void of light..Covering his ears with both hands, he lost some sense of direction and saw nothing other than shooting stars before his eyes as the back of his head intermittently met with the curvature of rock surface directly behind him..

He felt as might an astronaut shut tight in a speeding capsule just re-entering the earth's atmosphere..Singularly alone, and with no control as to the outcome of his fate..Somewhere to his right beyond the mass of cliff that host his tiny abode, he could hear what came to him a high pitched torturous scream..Inhuman in it's nature, yet full of what communicated itself to be both terror and loathing..As if some previously hidden life force had unnerving exposed itself to a long feared reckoning.

After what felt like half an hour, but in actual time may have only been two or three minutes, the event suddenly ended leaving him in a state of swirling vertigo that slowly began to right itself as might a ship regaining it's keel in the aftermath of a storm...The mouth of the cave continued to shed various evidence of falling rock and dirt but now with less volume, so that the ambient light inside the hollow exposed ancient petroglyph rock carvings to his upturned eyes...People had lived here long ago and had left depictions of the sun, horses, and armed men in the heat of a hunt, a testament to the accounting of their lives...Pulling his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans he found a dial tone and punched in Michelle's number.

In the hours and days to come, many varied walks of life would come here to visit this place..First the authorities of public safety..Police, and emergency personnel, followed closely by news casters rushing to beat their deadlines..And with them the general public. Some with legitimate concerns, their communities affected, travel plans detoured, adding an unwelcome frustration of added time to their already hectic lives..On their heels construction crews would shake their heads to the probing likes of scientists in the fields of geology, seismology, archeology, and anthropology interrupting the progress of their work..In the end however, naturalists would explain the incident as a build up of hot and cold gases escaping the earth's crust in a prelude to the 6.5 earthquake that's epicenter lay directly below the surrounding devastation. Only later, after a much larger and infinitely higher cost of human life reflected in the aftermath of an incident in Denver Colorado, would the prying eyes of tabloid investigators associate police statements of the couple who claimed to eye witness the entire scope of the event.