“No,” Singer said. “We’ve got one fatality. That’s it. I’ll put in a call to the trucking company and see what we learn about the driver.”
“Okay,” West replied. “For now, I’d advise that you keep your crew a safe distance away and make sure everyone outside has on a respirator. We’ll be there soon.”
“Will do,” Singer said.
Twenty minutes later, the first emergency trucks from Clean Air Environmental Services arrived on the scene. Singer led the Winston FD on evacuations. A team leader from CAE greeted Captain Singer with a quick, perfunctory hello. They had work to do. The first task was absorption, and for that, Clean Air had brought along their tanker truck. Clad in yellow protective suits, five workers set to the task of applying a mix of vermiculite, sodium carbonate, and other dry noncombustible adsorbents. Soon enough, the scene was swarming with workers in bright yellow chemical suits. They worked efficiently and without direction from the Winston Fire Department, even though Captain Singer remained in command of the entire operation.
Captain Singer checked in with Ellie Barnes to make sure the roads were still blocked.
“Hey, I just heard on the radio that somebody over at Pepperell Academy called the station to report an ammonia smell in the air,” Ellie said.
Shit.
Singer got West on the phone and told him the bad news.
“We’re going to have to expand the evacuation radius,” West said. “I’d say two miles, just to be safe.”
Winston checked his map. “That includes another three businesses, a whole bunch of residences, and Pepperell Academy.”
“I guess the prevailing winds decided not to cooperate,” West said.
Singer sighed loudly. He didn’t have enough manpower to manage something this large, and West knew it.
“Don’t worry, Steve,” West continued. “We’ll help you out with the evacuations. I can even get buses there if you’d like us to deal with the school.”
“That would be great,” Singer said. “We can transport the students and faculty to Winston Regional High School until this gets sorted out.”
“Might want to have the Red Cross help with shelter.”
“Can you take care of that, too?”
“Of course,” West said. “I’ll dispatch a crew over to the school right now. I bet we can get buses there in about twenty minutes.”
“Sounds pricey,” Singer said.
“I’m sure your taxpayers aren’t going to love it, but what can you do? You’ll be able to recoup some of the cost from the trucking company, I’m sure.”
Singer chuckled. He could already imagine who at the upcoming town-budget meeting would be most vocal about the bill.
Singer agreed with West’s plan and dispatched police and fire to Pepperell Academy. Hopefully, with CAE’s help, the chaos would be kept to a minimum.
Hidden in the trees on a hilly rise overlooking the school, Fausto Garza waited in a parked white cargo van until he saw the blue and red strobe lights of the emergency responders racing down the access road before he radioed his crew. He took a moment to check his phone again. The photo Carlos had sent him was perfect. He had followed Fausto’s instructions to the letter. The image showed four large oil drums each linked together by thick wires. The wires terminated into a brass box affixed to the side of a fifty-five-gallon lime-green metal drum. Lining the top of the lime-green drum was a special seal that was secured in place with a five-inch bolt. A metal tag bolted onto the drum beneath that seal would mean something very significant to the right people. He was glad to have the photo, even though Fausto hoped he would not have to use it. If he did, it would mean their mission here had been compromised. This operation had many variables, many moving parts, and Soto who understood the necessity for such a contingency plan arranged with Carlos to have the contraption created, photographed, and sent to Fausto without delay.
Through high-powered binoculars, Fausto studied the unfolding emergency response. Sanchez had been right. The evacuation-zone radius would not initially include the school. This gave his team time to get into position. The members of the police and fire departments scurried about like ants on a chaotic but controlled march.
Patience… patience…
He had waited until the hazmat crew had shown up at the tanker crash before phoning the police to report an ammonia smell at the school. He could wait a little bit longer before he blended his crew in with the actual emergency responders.
CHAPTER 17
Trust in God, but have a deep larder.
Prepping wasn’t about having a supply of food to last a few days. It was about how to survive for the rest of your life. Jake believed that when The Day came, society would cease to function, and he’d have to hunker down for the long haul. It was as simple as that. The larder in his bug-out location, and the other provisions he stockpiled, were the means by which he would endure the coming collapse.
Now Andy wanted it gone, and Jake had to give this serious consideration. He made a promise. Jake was prepared for everything, except to say good-bye to this part of his life. It was like ripping a security blanket from the hands of a young child or taking a teenager’s cell phone. He’d feel naked without it, lost, alone-and, worst of all, vulnerable.
Jake slumped down on a stack of bags filled with brown rice. He had come down here not just to check on his supplies, but also to connect with the space, to think. He’d built this from nothing, and the sweat equity made this more than just a storage area.
When Jake first discovered this underground room, it was filthy, in complete disrepair, covered in cobwebs and infested with rodents, as were most of the abandoned tunnels. It took hours of work to clean it up, and countless lost weekends to get the rooms suitable for storing his supplies.
The rooms and tunnels were still connected to the school’s power supply, so getting light down here was as simple as replacing and reconnecting lots of forgotten wiring. Jake thoughtfully selected natural daylight fluorescent bulbs to bring a bit of artificial sunshine down below. Now the space was lit, clean, and organized as any general store. It was massive like a store, too: almost seven hundred square feet with eight-foot-high ceilings. Thick, concrete brick walls and a lack of windows made the room a bit dungeon-like, but posters of the outdoors-mountains, lakes, and forests-lightened the dreariness.
Jake looked at the freestanding shelves and could recall loading and stocking each item there. The twenty pounds of salt, bags of brown sugar, and raw honey would give the food some needed flavoring. He’d thought about keeping flour down here, anticipating that Andy would want his famed pancakes, but the grain stored poorly and rotating it was more than a bit cumbersome. Andy would get used to wheat berries, and it was a more nutritious breakfast anyway.
In addition to other grains, like buckwheat, dry corn, and quinoa, he had plenty of canned fruit and vegetables, beans (stored, like the grains, in pails certified for food), peanut butter, coffee, tea, powdered milk (nitrogen-packed from Walton Feed), as well as tins of olive oil. He had cans of meat and tuna and other supplies such as toilet paper, soaps, lighter fluid, and bottled water.
The temperature never got much above sixty-five degrees in the summer, and Jake siphoned off heat from the preexisting ductwork so nothing ever froze in the winter. In the event of a power failure, kerosene heaters would keep the larder and sleeping quarters toasty warm. Jake kept careful records of his inventory, and any food item close to expiring would be moved from the larder and brought to his home so nothing went to waste.
How to dismantle it all?
If it came to it, most of the equipment could be sold, Jake supposed. Items like his hand-cranked grain mill, home dehydrator, and the vacuum-packing machine (great for sealing plastic bags and evacuating the air from mason jars) would probably sell for close to what he paid on sites like craigslist.