Klickitat — Mark Jenkins

Klickitat and other stories (K.A.O.S) features four thriller tales about ordinary mountaineers in the Pacific Northwest thrust into extraordinary circumstances. This debut collection from author Mark Jenkins folds modern day mountain climbing into the speculative wilderness of fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction.K.A.O.S. begins with the novelette Heavywater, which follows a vulcanologist trying to find his way home after a glacier fall in the central Alaskan wilds drops him in unfamiliar territory, without GPS.In the short story Klickitat, a husband and wife climbing team are confronted by a long dormant stratovolcano waking under their feet, and something else; deeper.Protectors, is a tale about a solo-climber's life-changing discovery of a powerful artifact at the site of a decades old plane crash in the Olympic Mountains.K.A.O.S. ends with the novelette Signals: an unlikely pair discover they are the only people in the remote town of Whittier, Alaska not mysteriously put to sleep during a dark winter storm—and must team up if they hope to outwit an armed group of marauders prowling into town.