head.
“Well, thanks,” I add.
“My pleasure, sir.”
Finishing, we stick the wrappers in our pockets and brush the crumbs from our fingers on our pants. Hating to ruin the moment, I return our attention to the situation.
“Well, it seems the general consensus is to push on so let’s mount up and see where the path leads. If we find some four-wheel vehicles, we’ll stop and see if we can start them up,” I say.
“What about the post office?” Robert asks. “Don’t they normally drive Jeeps to deliver the mail?”
Most in the group exhibit that ‘duh’ face when something obvious that we missed is presented — mine included. We backtrack to the post office and, sure enough, there are a few older Jeeps parked in a lot surrounded by a chain link fence. The Stryker makes short work of getting inside. The keys to the vehicles are on the visors and the first ones we try give the clicking sound of an almost dead battery. There’s a little juice left, but not enough to turn the motor over. And thus, we use the push-to-start method. I would use the Stryker if it wouldn’t absolutely cave in the vehicles while trying to push them and setting the Jeeps up to tow would take longer than just pushing them.
Red Team gathers around the Jeep and pushes while Greg’s team keeps a watch and we manage to get both of them started. The fuel tanks are both about three-quarters full. I don’t imagine we’ll be going that far in them, so it should be enough. We now have a Stryker and two white Jeeps. What a sight we must be. Most of Red Team piles into the Jeeps and follows behind the Stryker as we set out once again.
The path through town is an easy one to follow. We pass stores, churches, banks, government buildings, and several more hotels/resorts. The occasional building has the same spray-painted ‘Golddiggers’ on them. The graffiti gives the appearance of some gang marking its territory. Some of the places have broken windows while others hide what’s inside behind grime-covered glass. It really looks much the same as Sturgis with the exception that there isn’t as much dust and, well, signs of habitation.
The road we’re on intersects another main road. Tracks lead in both directions but the majority of them lead to the right and out of town. We decide to follow the larger set. I notice another set of tracks cutting across the road and halt our little convoy. On closer inspection, the other set turns out to be foot prints and from the distance between each individual print, it appears that whoever made them was running. On the side of the road, where the prints deepen, I confirm this by the fact that the toes are dug in deeper than the heel. The prints are larger than the ones found at the station and are mostly bare ones. It’s apparent that night runners crossed here recently.
Climbing back onboard the Stryker, we leave the town behind. The transition between the town and the surrounding countryside is abrupt. The road circumvents the mine and we soon find ourselves on the other side. Trees line the road making it impossible to see the actual mine or the town. The tracks branch off the highway and onto a dirt road.
Taking the exit, we begin a steep descent along a winding dirt path that is surrounded by trees on both sides. Even though we proceed slowly, we still kick up a small cloud of dust which adds to that already covering the trees alongside us. Eventually, we make our way down and emerge from the trees onto a larger plain. The road begins to level off. The beginning of the mine opens up and the central pit, which we observed from town, is ahead. To the left lies a previously hidden, terraced valley.
The mesa we observed rises from the plateau to the right. From this vantage point, the steep, nearly impossible to climb sides only encompass three sides. On the western side, a tree-covered slope rises gently from the floor.
We edge down the road toward the rise, passing a derelict aluminum-sided building with old machinery rusting in a dirt lot. Here, the dirt road splits with one path heading upward toward the western side of the butte while the other descends toward the deep pit. Tracks show on both paths. We halt.
“What do you think? Up or down?” Greg asks as we gather.
“You’re really not my type,” I reply.
“You know the saying, once you’ve gone—”
“Please don’t finish that,” I interrupt.
After swallowing the half of a Twinkie for a second time from the image Greg was about to paint, I look through the binoculars toward the mesa. I can’t see the top, but I don’t observe anything that would indicate that something is up there.
“Well, we might as well visit this pit you’re so interested in. Maybe the smoldering pile will give us a clue as to what we’re dealing with,” I say, glassing over the rest of the area and finding no sign of inhabitants — human ones that is.
Saddling up once again, we proceed around the base of the hill, driving between two large ponds before coming to another fork. We turn right, following the tracks, and begin a descent into the pit. The “road” is more of a washout at this point and it seems more like we are traveling along a runoff area — the rocky debris takes the Jeeps to their limit. The Stryker, however, takes it in stride.
The road leads along the side of a tiered hill and follows a deep, wide, and torn up valley that leads to the mine proper. Large rock slides sweep down into the gorge from the steep walls across the valley. The wall beside us rises steeply upward as we continue our descent into to the pit. The road is marginally passable until we arrive at a point where the deep cut gorge reaches the mouth of the open pit. Here, the path narrows and descends at a steeper angle. We halt and exit.
From this vantage point, being partially in the pit itself, both its ugliness and its marvel is revealed to a greater extent. The slides and oozing seepage become more apparent from this closer viewpoint. The narrow road, if it can even be called that, is filled with cuts and debris. It’s really more of a path at this point. This is as far as the Stryker will go. Its weight might bring the entire road crashing down into the depths. While it may get us to the bottom quicker, it’s not the best way to get there. Getting out would be fun as well.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Greg asks.
“No,” I answer, looking downward through the binoculars. “There’s something in the pile, but I can’t quite see what it is from here.”
“We could just bug out and call it good,” he says.
“Eh. We’re here and might as well try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I reply.
“What happened to the not wanting to die?”
“Oh, there’s still that…and I don’t plan on it today.”
“You know that if you get stuck on that road, you won’t be able to turn around,” Greg says.
“Yeah. I guess if that happens it will be a long walk back,” I reply, looking at the time. “We still have plenty of time before dark to make it back.”
“You’re pretty determined to go down.”
“Seems so. I’ll take most of Red Team leaving Henderson and Denton here with their long guns. We’ll be back shortly,” I say.
With me driving one of the Jeeps and Gonzalez the second one, we begin our descent into the pit. It appears in some places that the road was purposely cratered and filled to prevent anyone from coming down. We bump and slide as we navigate our way over the rubble. I’ve never been fond of driving next to steep gullies and this is no exception. Each skid or bump makes it feel like we’re going to slip over the edge. After a couple of switchbacks, we arrive at the bottom, most of which is filled with a murky lake.
Near the edge of the water is the ash pile we observed from above. It’s much larger than it looked before, standing nearly as tall as I am and close to twenty feet in diameter. Plumes of whitish-gray smoke drift lazily upward. A little distance away from the smoldering pile and circling it, skulls are set on top of sticks. The objects within the heap that I couldn’t identify from higher up are, in fact, human skeletal remains. Yeah, this gives me a comfy feeling.
“What in the fuck?” Robert says from the passenger seat.
“Yeah, right?!” I respond.
We get out for a closer look. An acrid smell fills the pit bottom and the damp soil is filled with foot prints of the same size I saw at the station — some fresh and others older. I look for any larger prints but don’t find a single one. Investigating the remains, I notice that some have obvious injuries while others are seemingly whole. The most disturbing part is that some of the skulls have wounds that are clearly gunshots to the back of the head.
