Bobby Akart - Armageddon

“I see them,” said Owen, who began to slow the truck. “Find the binoculars.”

“Here ya go.” Tucker’s sleepy voice spoke from the back seat. He handed the binoculars to his mother.

“It’s some kind of mining operation,” she observed as he pulled to a complete stop. “There appears to be a mountain of sand and those giant earth-moving dump trucks. I also see two large water towers erected on steel supports.” She lowered the binoculars and shrugged.

“Let’s find a way in. Hopefully, nobody’s there.”

Owen eased forward and drove another mile around a long curve until he reached the intersection of State Road 278. A simple wooden sign was affixed to wooden poles in the dirt. Lacey read it aloud.

“Ruby Hill Mine. Private property.”

“I say we go for it,” said Tucker. He leaned forward in the seat, holding one of the handguns they’d found. The other one was in the Bronco’s glove box. Lacey noticed he was holding it loosely in his right hand.

“Put that thing down,” she ordered her son.

“Mom, we might need it. I carried it all night, remember?”

“Yes. Still, put it down until we get there.”

Lacey was still uncomfortable around the guns, mainly because neither her son nor her husband had trained with them. She could handle a weapon thanks to the excellent training from her uncle Mike. She just wasn’t sure if she could take someone’s life with one. What concerned her more was Tucker’s cavalier attitude toward guns and his apparent insensitivity toward the two men who’d been killed by them on that bridge.

Tucker grumbled but obliged as Owen drove the Bronco deeper into the mining operation. The Ruby Hill mine was located west of the small Nevada town of Eureka. Part of the Battle Mountain seam of gold, it had been producing millions of dollars’ worth of gold for decades. Today, much to the relief of Owen as he eased toward the administration buildings, it appeared to be deserted.

“It looks like a roller coaster,” observed Tucker as he pointed to the two sets of conveyor belts that stretched from one side of the mining operation to the other.

At one end of the roller coaster, as Tucker called it, was a dredging machine deep underground in the middle of a gold seam. Formed in an earthquake-powered flash, when rocks were pulled apart deep below the Earth’s surface, the high-pressure fluids they contained instantly vaporized, leaving behind residues rich in minerals, including gold.

This gold-infused rock and soil was pulled up from the mine through an excavation process. Then, using steel buckets, the material was run through an extraction process known as a bucketline that ran in a continuous circular motion in which everything but the gold was eliminated.

For the McDowells’ purposes, while a bucketful of gold would be nice, gasoline would be a nice alternative in terms of value. They drove along the packed dirt road, winding their way around the dredging machinery and past the simple block administration building. Eventually they struck paydirt.

A rectangular, corrugated steel building stood off to the side near several parked pickup trucks. Fifty-five-gallon drums marked oil were stacked along the side of the building. There were also dozens of truck tires for equipment much larger than the pickups parked next to them.

“Let’s try there first,” said Owen as he pulled in front of the building’s double doors. Lacey was the first to notice a potential obstacle.

“It’s padlocked and chained. Let’s see if there’s a side entrance.”

“No worries, Mom. I’ve got this.”

Tucker turned in his seat and began to move duffel bags and clothing out of the way as he dug through the contents of the Bronco’s rear storage compartment. Seconds later, he found what he was looking for.

“Yeet!” He pulled his arm back and revealed a set of long-handled bolt cutters. “Check these out. I found them in one of the trucks last night. A burglar’s dream, right?”

Lacey studied her son disapprovingly. He seemed to be embracing this whole apocalypse thing a little too exuberantly.

Owen shut off the truck, and the three exited the vehicle. Lacey glanced at the glove box and debated whether to bring her gun. She looked around at the open space surrounding them. It was midday, and she was certain they would’ve been approached if a guard was present. She opened the glove box and immediately shut it, leaving the gun behind.

Tucker was the first to make it to the door and quickly got to work on the heavy-duty padlock. He used all his effort to cut through the shackle of the lock but had no success. He turned his attention to the chain. Within seconds, he’d cut open one side of a link. He tried to twist it free of the rest of the chain but couldn’t, so he cut open the other side of the link. The chain fell against the corrugated steel door with a crash, causing all three of them to nervously look around to determine if it had raised anyone’s attention.

“Good job, Tuck,” said Owen as he patted his son the rookie burglar on the back. Owen had accepted the fact that in the apocalypse, the normal rules of fatherly guidance didn’t apply. “Let’s see what we can find.”

He and Tucker pulled the heavy doors open and revealed a mechanic’s paradise that would put Harbor Freight Tools to shame.

Unlike the exterior of the building, which was surrounded by dust, dirt, and debris, the interior of the storage building was in pristine condition. Whoever was in charge of the mine’s operations ran a tight ship. Every tool had a place on a pegboard and was outlined with white paint as if it had been a victim in a homicide. Next to every tool was a chit, a round piece of cardboard with a number on it as well as the name of the tool. When an employee needed a tool, they exchanged one of their employee-identifying chits for the tool chit. Chit for chit, which allowed the person responsible for maintaining the storage building to keep the tools from walking off the property at the end of the day.

“This is amazing,” mumbled Lacey as she looked around. She recalled her father’s maintenance shed at home. You’d be lucky to find a place to stand much less a chit system to borrow a tool for the day.

“Back here, guys!” shouted Tucker from the darkest side of the building. “I’m talking mother lode!” An ironic use of the term meaning the discovery of a vein of a precious mineral like gold.

Owen and Lacey jogged into the building to join him. On a steel rack near a back door sat a dozen gas cans made by Midwest. Owen pulled his flashlight out of his pocket and studied the hard plastic containers.

“These are six gallons each. Not five. I’ve never seen that before.”

“Works for me!” Lacey exclaimed cheerily. “Let’s take them all.”

Tuesday, October 29

Driftwood Key

It was late afternoon, and for the first time since the nuclear warheads struck the U.S., the power in the Florida Keys appeared to be out permanently due to a cascading failure of the nation’s electrical grid. Hank was beginning to understand why the aftermath of a nuclear war had troubled Secretary Erin Bergman so much. Certainly, those lives lost instantaneously from the blasts were tragic. However, for the rest of America, who had to find a way to survive in a powerless world, the struggle was more than they’d ever imagined.

Many things had changed on that Tuesday for Hank and the rest of his extended family on Driftwood Key. Last night’s gun battle with a group of men who had intentions of stealing the fuel of Hank’s boat had resulted in three dead bodies and a heightened level of anxiety for everyone. Now, in addition to managing their food and fuel resources, they would have to patrol their twenty-eight-acre island at all times.