One small taste of Hell

A real, true hell-on-Earth can be a much more inviting place than most folks realize. Heck: many of us would beat down the doors trying to get in after just a glimpse inside the entry way. For real hell seems a lot like what most would expect of heaven-- until the bill comes due.

This is a story about me and my best friend Steve's own escape from one such beguiling hell, found in my own home county in the 1970s.

Douglas Cedric Evans (or D.C.) could be a most charming fellow, capable of dazzling folks with his quick wit and anecdotes suitable for every occasion.

He was also surprisingly knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects. Almost as if he'd successfully memorized entire libraries worth of material, and could call it up at a moment's notice.

Being so formidably armed, D.C. never lost an argument. Well, except for his last one, I guess (as described in this tale).

But for all his charm and humor, D.C. was also moody-- sometimes to the extreme. There were at least a couple times my best friend Steve and I showed up unexpectedly at his place, and he chased us off while brandishing a gun of some kind. Once even shooting it over our heads for emphasis. And we were likely his two best friends in the world at the time!

As Steve and I were young (teenagers), growing up in a wild and dangerous region of east Tennessee, and almost daily encountering folks of seemingly far worse quality and greater imminent threat than D.C., we'd just considered him a bit touchy or strange at times, and didn't let his behavior drive us off permanently, like we should have.

Plus, it wasn't unusual for even our own family members to warn us off with shotguns on occasion. For instance, Steve's grandmother Roberts, who loved Steve dearly I'm sure-- plus knew me too-- more than once acted similarly to D.C. when we showed up unexpectedly at her house, like after dark. For granny Roberts was pretty old when I knew her, and apparently half-blind and half-deaf too. As well as living alone, relatively deep in the mountain woods of Traveler's Bend.

Why didn't we call ahead to announce ourselves to Steve's granny those times? She had no phone. Partly because she likely couldn't hear well enough to use one anyway, I guess.

And we didn't usually call ahead to D.C. simply because we were impulsive teenage boys, and naturally taking lots of things for granted.

In the end though, it may have been for the best that Steve and I weren't so easily put off by D.C.'s shenanigans.

D.C. had had some past brushes with the law, and thereby come into contact with my uncle the judge. In fact, that's how I came to meet D.C. in the first place: my uncle repeatedly urged me to meet with D.C. to discuss our shared interests in cars and comics, among other things.

I was so impressed by my first visit to D.C.'s, that I just had to bring Steve along too for the next. Though of course that annoyed D.C., at first. D.C. soon got over it though, due partly to Steve's ability to make himself welcome just about anywhere. Plus, D.C. probably sensed that Steve had more potential for wild and dangerous behavior than me, too.

Looking back on it now I believe my uncle was using me to keep an eye on D.C., and hoping that the more time I spent with D.C. the less trouble either D.C. (or I) would get into.

My best friend Steve's elders seemed to have a similar notion as my uncle: that the more time Steve spent with me, the less trouble he was likely to get into.

Too, my uncle was more aware of me and Steve's teen adventures than our own parents, due to his vantage point in the local legal system. He couldn't help but occasionally hear second or third or fourth-hand accounts about Steve and/or I being involved in various hair-raising adventures: like our attempt to save a drowning boy during a local flood; our risky repossession of a stolen race car for a well-known local mechanic friend; our involvement in foiling more than one case of attempted kidnapping or worse-- and others. He'd apparently gleaned from those that we were basically good kids, plus could take care of ourselves. And yet were still wild enough so as not to make guys like D.C. put up their guard.

D.C. could be quite appealing and entertaining.

On the other hand, nobody in those parts back then would have much cared if something happened to D.C. Because for all D.C.'s potential charm, he still managed to anger, confuse-- or scare-- those who encountered him, about as often as he won them over instead.

D.C. had inherited a huge tract of countryside either right up against the National Park, or very near it. His property included a wonderful old Tudor mansion and other buildings. At least I thought of it as a mansion. For it was large enough to get lost in. And I personally found at least five different full bathrooms in the place, during various visits. And two entirely separate kitchens (one considerably smaller than the other).

D.C. also had servants. An old married couple. The man seemed to be a combination gardener, butler, and part-time chauffeur, while his wife was both cook and housekeeper. On occasion I believe they had a bit of help from some grandchildren or child nieces and nephews with the chores. But they had to keep the kids out of D.C.'s sight and hearing, or catch hell for it.

For D.C. definitely didn't like little kids.

I got the impression the servant couple had helped D.C.'s parents raise him, to some extent. But that didn't mean D.C. was necessarily nice to them. He often berated them and threatened them with immediate firing in our presence. Often for no discernible reason. In the beginning I thought he was just blowing off steam, or joking. But eventually I came around to the opposite view.

D.C. had also inherited a lot of money. Or else enough excess property that he could live comfortably by selling off a piece now and then.

My uncle the judge seemed to think the inheritance had possibly unhinged D.C. a bit, by freeing him from the necessity to deal with other people as much as poorer folks had to. But my uncle wouldn't share that notion with me until after I'd already figured it out for myself.

Anyway, D.C. could be a veritable fountain of neat ideas and opportunities for recreation and entertainment-- at least when it suited him.

For instance, D.C. had a huge and exotic arsenal of firearms. Even some stuff he claimed was illegal for civilians to possess. There were several occasions when D.C., Steve, and I played with his weapons on D.C.'s private firing range. It was immense fun, but awfully loud, and sometimes scary.

None of us wore hearing protection during those live fire sessions, and so possibly permanently deafened ourselves a bit there. Ouch! But that's just one of the negligent things the young and unwise are apt to do to themselves for no good reason.

D.C. also had his own space port (as he liked to call it). Actually it was just a spot from which he practiced model rocketry. But that too was fun to fool around with.

Once Steve and I discovered the fun to be had at D.C.'s, we began hanging out there almost every spare day we could for a while. Except for those times D.C. simply refused to have anything to do with us, of course.

The weapons arsenal and mini-Cape Kennedy were just a small sampling of D.C's mouth-watering array of goodies (Cape Canaveral was renamed Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, and was synonymous with spacecraft launches during the Kennedy span). There was also D.C.'s jaw-dropping comics collection. It was enormous, and enthralling.

Another of the things we loved about D.C. was he was always full of surprises. Surprises like the day he announced he was giving his entire comics collection to me. I couldn't believe it, but it was true!

The collection was so vast it required several trips to transport it all from his house to mine.

Having a more active social life than me, Steve of course didn't make as many trips to D.C.'s as I did. That day may be the main one from that time for which Steve regretted not having come too! Ha, ha.

But Steve got his own gift from D.C. sometime later. What was it? Something Steve liked about as much as I did comics: honest-to-God Indian arrowheads. Well, in the 21^st century I guess they'd be called native-American artifacts. But in the 1970s we young hill-billies thought of them as Indian arrowheads.

Steve already possessed before that a small collection consisting of shaped stones he and his dad had painstakingly gathered over years. But the collection D.C. gave him amounted to maybe ten or twenty times as many items as Steve's original stash. So Steve too enjoyed some windfall profits there.

One night D.C. surprised me when I got off work, when he turned out to be waiting for me in the parking lot.

At that time I was still working at a combination hotel/restaurant, washing dishes, usually on night shift, around 3 PM to 11 PM (when business was heavy, I might not get out until twelve or one AM).

That night I think I got free at eleven or near it. I heard D.C. call my name as I was walking to my car.

D.C. had just bought a gorgeous light blue 1971 Plymouth 'Cuda with black stripes, a slick-looking hood with muscular-looking embedded scoops, 340 engine and automatic transmission.

He invited me for a ride to see what it'd do, and I heartily accepted.

I was surprised to see D.C. drive us to the vicinity of the same quarter-mile straight-away where Steve had raced a guy in a black Plymouth Road Runner with his 1971 351 Boss Mustang, maybe the very first day he'd been able to drive his newly acquired pony car.

D.C. stopped dead in the road a gentle hill or two away from the straightaway, though. The spot he stopped was almost exactly where a mysterious old but fast car had passed me in mine, some weeks before-- then lost me when I tried to catch it afterwards.

Although it was night time, you could see quite a ways ahead and behind, plus this road didn't get much regular traffic.

"What are you doing?" I asked him, somewhat uneasy about being stopped in the middle of the road like this, even under these conditions. Plus, we were still in my home county. Presently situated in a pretty isolated spot, and late at night. Being unmoving like that in such a place could be very bad indeed if any villains happened to be around at the time.

D.C. just smiled (I could see him by the glow of his dash lights; it seems to have been greenish or bluish) and told me "watch this".

Then D.C. moved his console shifter to Park, revved his motor insanely high-- and abruptly shoved the shifter into Drive.

Or maybe into First; I'm fuzzy on the details so many years after the fact.

The 'Cuda did its best to burn off its rear tires in response, squealing loudly enough to probably annoy anyone living in the surrounding hills for quite a distance.

I was aghast that he'd treat his new car that way when he didn't have to. But was also amazed to see the drive train take it, seemingly in stride. For he repeated this several times while I was with him. With the car responding like it was actually equipped with a manual transmission rather than automatic, and he was popping the clutch.

I think Torqueflite was the brand name for his automatic transmission.

D.C. loved doing this; I thought he'd never stop. Finally though he did, and returned me to my workplace parking lot, where I got into Shadow and went home. Contemplating on the way how rich folk could afford to do such stuff on a whim.

After that one ride in the 'Cuda, I never personally saw D.C. drive it ever again. I guess it wasn't his favorite of his personal fleet.

(D.C. had so many cars he'd had a massive garage built for them all-- and then that garage had overflowed, so that lots of newer ones ended up sitting parked in the large paved lot in front of his big garage)

One evening while at D.C.'s, Steve and I were surprised to hear a knock at his front door. We'd already had some hint of something different in the air, as D.C. had taken pains to keep us all sitting or standing around in his large foyer just inside the front door; usually we all immediately went elsewhere on the estate after arrival.

D.C.'s foyer was basically the same as poorer people's living rooms: and furnished in a similar way. But it was rare indeed for anyone to actually stick around there like we were.

D.C. smiled as he moved to answer his door, and we realized he'd been expecting company.

And what company it was! Three vivacious women were revealed by the opened door. Two brunettes and a blonde. One brunette was average girl height, the other a bit taller. The blonde was average height too.

The women were all dressed somewhat provocatively for the occasion.

As teenage boys, Steve and I were very impressed by the sight.

"Steve and Jerry, meet Amy, Sandra, and Joan. Girls, Steve and Jerry," D.C. pointed us all out to one another.

Steve and I shook the girls' hands while speaking the expected pleasantries.

I believe Steve was nearly as flabbergasted as me at first (this was a very young Steve, still learning his winning ways with the fairer sex, and these ladies were at least a few years older than us). The women however seemed much easier to talk to than girls our own age. And they seemed easily entertained by our nervous banter and bad jokes, too.

After the women arrived, D.C. ushered us all to his true living room, complete with wet bar, not too far from the foyer.

Soon D.C. was handing out drinks to everyone, and I took one I thought to be a dark soft drink, despite its odd taste. I figured maybe it was the ice giving it the unusual bite, and thought no more of it for a while.

Pretty soon though the world seemed to be tilting and spinning a little, and I felt oddly happy and brave around the women. Not long after that though, things tilted the other way, and I began to feel a bit sick. When I managed to get a private word with Steve over the loud music and increasingly bawdy conversation, he informed me I was all right: that our drinks had alcohol in them; and that was why I felt strange.

This was the first time I'd had enough hard liquor to get tipsy.

This was also decades ago. Long before people became so acutely conscious of the dangers of drinking and driving.

Once enlightened by Steve, I began treating my inebriation as a new toy to be played with, and sort of went with it. For being now aware of what was happening, I had a model to go by: all the drunken antics I'd seen on TV and in films.

To my mind I became the life of the party for a while after that. Basically ignoring my queasiness for a while-- as I didn't realize it was a warning sign of worse to come.

I also drank freely from the tainted soda supply.

I soon got a little too wild though, and Steve took me aside to calm me a bit. However, my nausea quickly worsened, and Steve decided it best that we leave.

Young as he was, Steve still had a bit more experience and savvy than me relating to alcohol, and had moderated his own dosage, I think.

Of course Steve could also drink almost anyone else under the table, as I'd learn in years to come. So he enjoyed a better than average stamina where alcohol was concerned, too (in the early days related here though, he may not yet have been aware he possessed such a capacity).

Steve drove Shadow back; one of the very few times he ever took the wheel of my Mustang. We returned to my parents' house, where Steve stayed the night (as I was unable to take him home). We (or mainly Steve I guess) managed to prevent my parents from learning the true situation, so I was never caught in my first drinking bout.

Steve had had to pull over for me to throw up maybe three times on the way home. The last two may have been mostly dry heaving, though.

The next day I was extremely disappointed with myself, for having had to leave the party early. For there'd been so much lustful promise in the trio of women there. They'd seemed to like Steve and me an awful lot...

Of course Steve quickly burst my bubble on that. Informing me that they'd all been prostitutes in D.C.'s employ. Apparently to show all we men there a good time that evening.

Being a teenage boy, I was torn by the new knowledge. On the one hand hating I'd missed out on such an opportunity, while on the other being relieved that I had. It was an odd feeling. But likely typical of the sort of conflicted angst many teens endure on a regular basis.

I missed sex very much, now that Dana and I had been split up by her parents. I missed her for more than that too, of course. But sex was still very new and exciting to me. Plus, being a teenage boy, it was constantly on my mind. So I regretted missing an opportunity like that. Sort of. Like I said before, I was somewhat torn about the matter.

Steve though assured me that we were better off not partaking of those particular women's charms. For lots of reasons. He didn't elaborate much on his opinion. I basically just accepted his judgment on the matter (being that I had little relevant knowledge or experience to dispute it).

For a while during the time we hung out with him, D.C. had a house dog. The dog's name was Virgil.

D.C. had other dogs too. But we wouldn't find out about them until later. For D.C. kept them penned up outside and hidden away during the day, and tried mightily not to let them see any daytime visitors. For at night D.C. wanted those dogs to treat virtually everyone but himself and his servants as dangerous trespassers.

Virgil the house dog was strange. Sometimes docile, sometimes vicious. Moody, much like D.C. himself.

Virgil was a female dog, with a male name. Either Steve or I (not sure which) asked why once, but D.C. ignored the question, and we never asked again. When not growling or snapping at you, Virgil was cute and fairly small, with a body about two feet long and a tail a bit less than a foot in length. Her legs were a little less than a foot in height too I think. I don't know what breed Virgil was, but its head and face reminded me of a large furry Chihuahua, and Virgil was covered in almost pure white spiky fur over six or seven inches deep, with a slight yellowish tinge in spots.

So you could almost mistake Virgil for a dingy furry throw pillow at times.

One day we arrived to find D.C. burying Virgil. We asked him what happened, and he told us Virgil had pissed him off, so he'd killed her. He told us if we ever mentioned Virgil again, he'd kill us too.

Steve and I didn't take the threat seriously, of course. Heck: barely a day went by in high school when someone didn't threaten us like that. It tended to take actual violence or the pulling of a weapon for us to pay more attention to such words.

In regards to disturbing incidents witnessed while in the company of D.C., there's another which comes to mind. A very racist incident. I believe this one happened only days before D.C. revealed to us his master plan.

Steve wasn't there to witness it, and so was skeptical when I later described it to him. Steve suggested that even if I was being accurate in my recall, D.C. might have staged it all, paying off the apparent victim before-hand.

I did have to admit D.C. had pulled some startling pranks and surprises on us while we'd known him. So maybe it really had been all an act.

In this case Steve's great natural persuasive power helped convince me I might have been tricked.

But Steve was wrong. So in that case his power to talk others into things backfired on him. Plus, helped me realize later that I had to watch out myself for Steve's silver tongue.

For believing the incident to possibly be merely a bad joke led to us making perhaps one more trip to D.C.'s than we should have.

As described before, D.C. owned lots of different vehicles. D.C. liked to switch between these things regularly, in order to make it harder for the law to track him, he told us.

As he didn't often leave his estate though, that statement seemed a bit ludicrous.

One night I was a passenger in D.C.'s Volkswagen Beetle. We'd spent the day on the road checking out various swap meets and other events happening near the interstate to the north.

We were now back in New Forge, and D.C. seemed to be stalling about dropping me off at my parents' place for some reason.

He said he wanted to show me something first.

D.C. drove us to the black section of town. Right smack to the heart of it.

He slowed the bug to maybe 15-20 mph, due to the more cramped streets of the residential area we were now traversing. Or so I thought.

Here the way was relatively narrow, as the street was lined with cars parked end to end on both sides. Beyond the cars were lots of modest houses.

If there'd been sufficient room left for two cars to pass one another on that street, it would have been a squeaker, to be sure!

D.C. spied a solitary black man walking ahead of us. I believe he was traveling in the same direction as us. In the street, as there were no sidewalks here.

The black guy was young: my age, or maybe slightly older. He glanced back at us for caution's sake, and gave us plenty of room to get by safely.

D.C. though laughed and said "watch this". Then he pushed in the clutch so he could rev his motor to get the guy's attention. After re-engaging, he combination surged and swerved right at him.

Suddenly alarmed-- and trapped in the street by the closely parked cars to either side-- the guy began running.

D.C. laughed and kept alternately surging forward and slowing again, occasionally free-wheeling the engine to rev it threateningly at the poor guy once more.

I was aghast. I urged D.C. to stop his harassment of the young man-- but I had to be careful. I was sure if I said or did the wrong thing, D.C. would suddenly run over the fellow. Or try to, anyway. I figured I'd have to try wresting away control of the car if it appeared D.C.'s target no longer had any other options.

It was horrifying. So awful, that at first I'd simply been stunned: couldn't believe such a thing was truly happening; couldn't grasp that any one would do such a thing at all.

But there it was. Raw racism and hatred in action.

Thankfully, D.C. didn't run him over before the guy found a large enough gap between parked cars to get off the street and away from us.

And I didn't have to struggle over the steering wheel to save him.

Just think what could have happened if I'd had to seize the wheel from D.C.: we could have immediately crashed into the parked cars, bringing quite a few neighborhood folks out into the street; D.C.'s target might have told what happened; and D.C. and I both might have been up one hell of a creek!

It wouldn't matter that I'd personally been against D.C.'s actions, and even physically opposed them, causing our crash. Surely the black folks there in that instance would have reacted much the same as white folks in a similar situation in my hometown would have: and at least beaten us both up good-- before calling the police to come get us. Yikes!

It was starting to dawn on me that D.C. might have misplaced a few marbles somewhere...

But as I said before, when I told Steve about it he thought either I was exaggerating the incident, or D.C. had simply staged it to frighten me.

So while I definitely felt more uneasy about D.C. after that, I guess I decided to reserve final judgment on his character for just a little bit longer.

A few days later, D.C. decided to show us something new (by that point he'd known us both for several months).

He led us to what appeared to be the ugliest and worst maintained vehicle in his collection-- a badly battered and barely running Volkswagen Thing (sort of a light duty German-made military car)-- and we climbed in. It was already late afternoon.

D.C. then proceeded to drive us quite a ways over his property, to a corner far removed from the main estate. A place he'd never taken us before.

After a series of gently rolling wooded hills we reached a surprisingly long and absolutely straight road which seemed to disappear into the center of an enormous, flat field of grass.

Once we finally arrived at our destination, we saw a very large barn of relatively recent construction. But there were no farm animals evident anywhere in the vicinity.

The barn's location itself was odd. As it sat centered atop a great shallow, dome-like, grassy hill. D.C.'s car actually had to climb a bit from the hill's base to reach the barn.

The squashed hill beneath the barn looked unnatural to me, and I said so.

"That's because it is unnatural," D.C. replied.

"What do you mean it's unnatural?" Steve asked.

"Just that. It's man-made. By my dad, in the early sixties. During the nuclear war scare days. It's a bunker."

"A bunker?" I asked.

"Yep. A really good one. Certified good enough to be a regional US government contingency bunker for a few years. Until they got enough built of their own. They liked having a few of these within a hundred miles of Oak Ridge."

We exited D.C.'s vehicle and (after D.C. unlocked them) entered the barn's large main doors. D.C. flicked a switch inside, the barn's dark interior suddenly blazed with light, and we beheld towering stacks of crates and boxes almost filling the space. Some of the stacks had to be thirty or forty feet tall.

An examination of the roughly stenciled lettering on some containers-- and glued-on paper labels of others-- indicated some of the supplies were food stuffs specially made for long-term storage. Or miscellaneous other essentials, like toilet paper, soap, etc.

But much of the stuff turned out to be ammunition. For various military armaments like in D.C.'s weapons collection.

The biggest chunk of all though was comprised of several different sorts of explosives. Which immediately made me nervous.

D.C. sported a wry smile when Steve and I commented about the large amount of explosives on the premises.

"Hell, this is nothing. Come with me," D.C. instructed.

We then followed D.C. around the stacked crates to a small, out-of-place looking flimsy metal shed which stood with its left wall directly against the wooden interior wall of the barn. The metal shed looked somewhat weathered, and I would learn later it had existed here before the barn had been built around it.

The shed door too was locked. D.C. opened it, and we began descending a long flight of stairs down into the earth.

From the look of the great bulbous rise in the ground underneath the barn outside, I fully expected the bunker to be roomy.

I was both right and wrong. It was spacious all right. But crammed full of more supplies. So overflowing with more stacks of boxes and crates we could barely make our way single-file in-between them. Apparently the explosives in the barn above were just those that wouldn't fit in the bunker. Unlike the situation in the above-ground structure, here we saw nothing but boxes marked high explosives and danger.

"How come your dad put so many explosives in here?" Steve asked.

"He didn't. I did," was D.C.'s reply.

"Heck D.C., you planning to start a war?" Steve followed up his first question.

"No. I plan to end one."

"End one?"

"Yes."

"Um-- what war would that be?"

"My war," D.C. told us. Neither Steve or I asked any more questions at that point. I guess we had an inkling we wouldn't like the answer.

But D.C. didn't stop talking. Instead, he went on to reveal the true darkness in his soul...relating how easily our small hometown could disappear from the face of the Earth.

Steve and I sort of took that as our cue to nervously humor him.

"The whole place could be wiped off the map in a couple seconds," D.C. told us.

"No way!" Steve replied.

"Oh no? Then let me tell you how..."

D.C. then began laying out his entire plan before us-- and it was chilling.

The very center of our hometown sat in something like a quarter-mile long trough. There was a steep rise on the backside (near vertical in spots), and a much smaller ridge on the other. The smaller ridge in the front separated the town from a river running on the other side of the raised ground. Both ends of the trough were book-cased by somewhat gentler rises in the terrain. As might be expected, the gentler slopes were where the main thoroughfares passed through. A single bridge connected the town to the other side of the river. And a railroad track ran atop the shallow ridge separating the town from the river.

The main seat of town sat so low it often flooded when we got too much rain, or the river rose too far.

D.C. soon produced papers showing train schedules and info on the loads they were carrying.

D.C. explained to us how a couple small explosions at either end of town could strand a train there-- maybe even wreck it too-- and cut off one of the main three escape routes out of the city at the same time (For when a train was present on the tracks in mid-town, no one could access the river bridge).

That left the major exits on either end of the town's geological trough.

D.C. figured to use another small explosion at the eastern end to cause a landslide from the steep road-side wall there, effectively blocking the highway.

To close the much more difficult western exit, D.C. would use the distraction of setting afire the huge landmark building there-- the city's own gymnasium-like auditorium, where occasionally wrestling or boxing matches and other public events were held. People also voted there in elections. It was one of the more impressive structures of our small town.

D.C. figured he'd set it afire, and the resulting convergence of emergency vehicles would clog the major intersection there, effectively closing off the western exit out of town.

Of course the fire and all these explosions had to happen in a particular order to work as D.C. wanted. With the timing of everything dependent upon the train schedule itself.

"I can see how that would close off the town. But not how it'd wipe it out," Steve told D.C.

D.C. smiled. Then explained a bit more.

"Yeah. The grand finale. That's where my fireworks come in."

"How's that?" Steve prodded him.

"Well, I got these four semis, you know? Filled to the brim with stuff from the barn and bunker. All timed to go off at once, after the whole town's closed off and nobody can get in or out."

"Where? The trucks, I mean." Steve prompted D.C. once more. I think Steve meant where were those trucks right then, but D.C. misunderstood and gave us their deployments in his plan.

"Different places. Two of them near the center of town, right up against the bottom of the incline-- you know, the intersection where all three banks sit?"

"Yeah."

"The other two would be more spread out. Each one near to one end of town. I figure setting them all off in those spots will flatten the whole place, with the surrounding high ground holding the fire and blast together in the middle. When it's over there shouldn't be anything left but a smoking hole where New Forge used to be."

Although Steve and I had been getting increasingly anxious with all D.C.'s talk about doing away with the town, still, we'd heard similar bluster before, from lots of folks. Maybe not quite so well thought out or detailed-- or on such a scale-- but still some pretty mean stuff.

D.C.'s plans too were surely just hot air. At least that's what we kept telling ourselves.

"So-- you two up for it?" D.C. asked.

"What do you mean?" Steve responded.

"Helping me blow up New Forge."

When we didn't immediately respond, D.C. sweetened the deal.

"I'll pay each of you $10,000 after it's done. I just need one of you to drive in one of the trucks, and the other to bring a car so we can all get out before it goes off. I'm talking me and one of you positioning the last two trucks. The others will already be set by then. We'll park the last two trucks, jump in the car, and get out the east way before it's blocked.

"$10,000 apiece. What do you say?" D.C. finished his proposal.

Steve broke the tension first, by laughing out loud.

"D.C., you bastard! You really had us going there for a minute! But you ain't got no semi-trucks!"

"Want to bet?" D.C. challenged Steve.

"Where are they then? We've never seen them!" Steve responded. And it was true. Over past months we'd surely seen much of D.C.'s spread, by way of his tours to his firing range, around his house, his enormous garage, his rocketry pad, and more. We'd never seen any semi-trucks anywhere.

Of course, we hadn't seen the barn and bunker either, until just now.

D.C. stood up (we'd all been sitting in a small bunker office to peruse his maps and papers). "Come with me," he told us.

We followed him once again, this time out of the bunker and barn, back to his ramshackle Volkswagen Thing, climbed in, and left the underground complex behind.

This time we made a right turn off the straight shot road some distance from the barn, then proceeded seemingly into nowhere. The turn put us onto a dirt road so rarely used it was almost indistinguishable from the vast grassy field through which it ran.

But there turned out to be a sunken driveway with large and impressive concrete sidewalls at the road's end. With massive garage doors at the bottom of a great concrete ramp.

Garage doors plenty big enough to hide semi-trucks, I was alarmed to realize.

Neither Steve or I spoke a word as D.C. stopped the vehicle, we all disembarked, and D.C. walked over to a small padlocked electrical box, illuminated by the VW Thing's headlights (it was beginning to get dark outside).

He used a key on it to gain access, then threw a switch.

One of the massive doors began to rumble open to reveal...darkness. An impenetrable blackness.

D.C. strode into the dark near one side of the opening, and apparently flipped another switch there. The whole sunken garage ramp was suddenly ablaze in bright illumination from inside the structure.

And in that great dazzling pool of light sat four very real semi-truck tractors, complete with trailers.

"They're not loaded yet of course," D.C. informed us. "But that'll only require a couple days after I bring in the crew."

"Crew?" Steve asked.

"Yeah. Foreigners. Mexicans mostly. A bunch I use all the time for some of my farms. Their supervisors can speak English, but not the rest of them. I made sure of that."

While D.C. was admiring the sight of his trucks, Steve bumped my elbow and whispered to me.

"We best play along," he urged.

I shot him a glance back, but said nothing.

Steve winked. A wink without the usual accompanying smile.

I realized he was warning me we better play along, else D.C. might try to kill us. Because we already knew too much about his plans.

I honestly don't know what the real stats were. But at that age I was under the strong impression that-- on average-- at least one person a day was murdered in my home county. Usually for reasons far more trivial than what Steve and I now knew. And the whole population might have only been between 10,000 and 15,000 back then.

Something else seemingly implied by Steve's words and gesture was that maybe by playing along a little we'd get the chance to put the kibosh on all this crazy shit.

Steve and I usually collaborated for reasons no more serious than pranks or other fun. But we did on occasion entertain more dangerous behavior.

We'd already met and grappled with our own and the other's dark sides, in previous adventures. We'd emerged from those with a pretty good understanding of who we were.

We weren't saints, by any means. Or even necessarily law-abiding citizens, depending upon our circumstances. But we were definitely good guys when compared to someone like D.C.

We'd alert the town to D.C.'s plans if we could. And if that wasn't possible, we'd try stopping him on our own.

Yeah, I really did get all that from Steve's brief comment and wink.

I sure was glad Steve was with me that day!

So after that we began acting. Pretending like we were really into D.C.'s crazy plot-- or at least willing to entertain the notion. Especially for the money.

We even haggled a bit with D.C. to get higher pay. Just to make it more realistic. We got him up to $15,000 each!

Yeah, we'd sure have loved the money! Heck: according to some calculations, $15,000 back then would have been the same as over $77,000 in 2007!

But there was no way we were going to blow up New Forge and kill maybe a thousand folks like that for it. Screw that!

Steve's immediate family and mine would likely not be at direct risk from D.C.'s attack, as neither lived in the city trough, or near enough to it for the blast to hurt them.

And even if it happened on a school day, our high school and fellow students wouldn't be affected by the explosion either. Again, not directly, that is.

No, we had few close friends or family likely to be caught in such a calamity. My uncle the judge might have been though-- as he worked in the court house near the center of the trough. I had an aunt whose family ran a dry cleaner in the trough. But that was about it. I barely knew the aunt and her family, and at that time barely had more contact with my uncle than the aunt.

Heck: I'd spent more time with Leonard the jeweler at the furniture store Ben and I used to frequent-- and who fixed Dana's necklace for me before-- than I had with the relatives previously mentioned.

Poor Leonard's furniture store was located only maybe 100-200 yards away from where D.C. planned to close off the east end of town with a bomb, before the true massacre.

Depending on exactly when D.C. set things off, Leonard might end up just inside the kill zone.

But that pretty much summed up my own acquaintances at risk there.

And Steve had even fewer such concerns in the trough of death-- barring the unexpected and unlikely in terms of schedule and coincidence.

But none of that mattered. D.C.'s little plan would go nowhere if we could help it. Practically all the folks at risk might have been total strangers to us, but they were people, none-the-less. Steve and I wouldn't allow them to come to harm, if we could help it. Not even the cops and mostly crooked politicians whose offices stood pretty much at ground zero in the kill zone. We didn't like those folks at all: but they didn't deserve this. Or at least most of them didn't.

However, now that D.C. had revealed himself to us, he wasn't going to give us the chance to spill the beans or double-cross him.

It soon became obvious D.C. had no intention of letting us leave before the deed was done. He planned to blow up the town only a few days from then, and for us to stay at his place until the task was completed.

D.C. had covered all his bases in regards to his revelations. Including the contingencies that we might not be all that enthusiastic about his plans, and merely fake it until we could get away to warn the town-- or maybe even overpower D.C. on the spot, no matter his usually armed status. Just in case things didn't go exactly the way he wanted, he had backup on-hand at the garage. Two armed men, who didn't make their presence known to us until around the very end of the plot's explanation. That dashed any hope of me and Steve hog-tying D.C., throwing him into the back seat of the Thing, and toting his ass back to New Forge to explain himself to certain of his potential victims.

D.C. seemed utterly unconcerned about what our parents might do when we didn't return.

And, truth be told, he did have little to worry about there. For Steve and mine's parents didn't know where we were, really. Why not? Well, the answer to that's somewhat complicated. But the short version is we were teenage boys who didn't like telling folks what we were up to most of the time.

We were also too inexperienced to realize that sometimes no one knowing your whereabouts or intentions can be fatal. Like when you're hiking in the wilderness, or spelunking (cave exploring). There's many, many scenarios where something unexpected can happen, leaving you wishing mightily that you'd told someone where you were going or what you would be doing, beforehand.

We learned that D.C. had sent his old servant couple away for all this, for maybe their first vacation in years. Besides keeping me and Steve in line, D.C.'s brutish new hires were also meant to help with positioning the trucks in town.

D.C. informed us his men basically had orders to shoot us if we did anything remotely smacking of backing out of or wrecking the plan.

So we were essentially promised $15,000 each to help destroy the town; and threatened with death if we didn't.

D.C. also released his Dobermans onto his estate, just in case we tried to split, and somehow made it past the goons.

He said he'd gladly let us go after the town was gone, and we were paid. For then we'd be just as guilty as him, and wouldn't dare tell anyone anything.

In the very last stage of blast preparations, he'd also have one of us being closely watched, and vulnerable to being shot, if the other one tried anything other than ordered. He said the one being watched wouldn't know it-- until and unless their shooting proved necessary.

Yeah, that last may have been a bluff on D.C.'s part. But it sure seemed risky to dismiss the threat. For we knew he had the money to hire as many guys as he wanted. And our home county surely had plenty who'd oblige. Plus, he'd already surprised us with the two at the seemingly deserted garage. The latest warning was also devilishly two-edged: for not only would it have us both concerned that disobedience might result in our best friend's death; it also included the possibility of our own demise (if we personally happened to be the one under watch).

It seemed that D.C. had spent quite some time working out the details. And he'd gotten to know us both well enough to understand that neither Steve or I would casually allow the other to be killed in our stead, if we could help it.

D.C. told us he thought the first bombing would be our hardest. He had plans for more afterwards. D.C. was sure after we 'got our feet wet' and had gotten to enjoy some of our money, we'd gladly blow up more little towns with him.

I never did understand why, but for some reason D.C.'s targets were all small towns. My best guess nowadays is that he wanted targets he could destroy completely, as if they'd been nuked. He wanted visitors to the aftermath to be shocked at the level of devastation, and for the TV news to marvel at the scope of damage, for years to come.

D.C.'s house had some rooms in the attic (third floor). So that's where he parked Steve and me until the big day. With the thugs taking shifts in the hall of the floor below, where the attic's access door was situated. D.C. let us stay in the same room together. I think maybe he figured if one of us got a crazy idea for trying to escape, the other would talk him out of it.

As D.C. and his minions were not only bigger and stronger than us, but heavily armed as well, it was suicide to try to escape through the house itself.

I mean, a baseball bat or a table leg salvaged from items to be found in the attic rooms might have qualified as weapons, but they were no match for firearms, expertly wielded.

Our windows weren't locked or barred, but they only allowed access to the sloped roof outside-- a roof two stories high at bottom edge, three at top, with very little in the way of suitable climbing venues down to ground level.

We did at least have the benefit of darkness outside by which to explore our options-- with night already well fallen.

In an attempt to seek out new options, we cautiously clambered about the entire roof, and found only one spot which looked like a possibly survivable escape route from roof to ground. One freaking scary spot.

We basically had to start from the very crown of the roof and run as fast as we could down the slope, then jump for all we were worth from the bottom edge, into a large tree with substantial branches which reached in our direction.

Believe me, we considered all other possible alternatives. Including what the next leg of the escape plan would have to be, assuming we survived the jump.

I wished I had a spare set of car keys with me that night, so Steve could carry some too. For we agreed that the stakes were so high here even if only one could make it out, he had to go and leave the other behind, in order to go alert the authorities.

But if Steve was the one, he'd have to waste precious seconds getting the keys off of me. I didn't dare keep them in hand for him, as I'd need my hands free to try catching myself in the tree.

At least being atop the roof allowed us a great bird's eye view of the estate, and was enormously helpful to us planning a course past the dogs.

The rooftop vantage point also allowed us to set up our distraction for the canines, to occur just a minute or so before our mad jumps.

Naturally we would have liked to attract the dogs to the whole opposite side of the house from where we planned our ground run. But circumstances prevented that.

For one thing, we figured if the distraction wasn't at least as near as the closest house corner to the majority of dogs, either too few of them would notice it, or maybe none at all.

We actually had to use two separate distractions: one to clear any dogs from the vicinity of the tree itself for our jump, and another to draw them still farther away from our desperate course on-foot afterwards.

If we made it through the jump O.K., we'd have to run along the foot of the house wall maybe near 150 feet, then strike out for the estate wall some 100-150 yards away.

For that was the shortest route we could see between house and perimeter wall; out in the open, and fully exposed to dogs and anything else.

D.C. had had the thugs bring us some hamburgers and fries for supper. That's what we'd asked for. Though we sure were hungry, we didn't eat the meat patties. Instead, we saved them for the second dog distraction.

Both distractions had to make sufficient ruckus to attract the dogs' attention, and hopefully be considerably bigger than any racket me and Steve were doing around that time jumping or preparing to jump, too.

We couldn't figure out any better way to time the second distraction, so Steve volunteered to make the second jump, after throwing the patties plus some other stuff off the roof at the spot deemed most likely to aid our escape.

That meant Steve would have to then run a considerable ways over the roof to even get to the spot where he could begin his own jump prep.

The fact that Steve was a member of our high school track team had a bit to do with our decision there.

I hoped Steve's insistence weeks before that his team uniform be tagged with the number thirteen wouldn't cause us bad luck here.

(Steve had decided to declare thirteen his lucky number after surviving the wreck of his Boss 351 Mustang, during which he claimed to have rolled over thirteen times; plus, he'd pointed out there'd been thirteen original American colonies during the successful American Revolution. And lastly, Steve just plain liked defying everyone's expectations and fears by claiming the supposedly unlucky number for his own)

Steve and I dumped the first distraction bundle together (noisy junk from the attic, bundled in a knotted sheet). And were gratified to hear the dogs began howling and converging towards its vicinity. Then we split up, with Steve moving to where we'd stashed the second bundle on the roof, and me up to the crown spot best suited for the run down and off the roof.

There simply wasn't any time to think about it after that. In an effort to push away my fear, I tried to pretend I was a kid again, playing in the woods surrounding the house I lived in during elementary school. Once, me and several other guys had ran across this fantastic spot in the woods with tons of huge native grape vines. Or at least that's what I thought they were. They were fabulous for swinging on among the trees, just like in the Tarzan movies we watched on Saturday mornings.

As I ran down the roof as fast as I could and took my crazy leap, I kept mentally telling myself 'I'm a kid! I'm a kid!' like somehow that might save me from getting badly injured or killed.

Decades later I'd find out I was onto something there. For it turns out children are somewhat more protected than adults from injuries due to falls and such, simply by their lesser height and weight.

The phrase "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" is literally true!

Unfortunately, I was near my adult height for this particular fall-- and probably around 125 pounds in weight. Both figures nowhere near the optimum child size to protect me from injury.

I frantically clawed at the tree as I fell through its branches, pretty much blinded by the foliage, the darkness, and the speed of my plunge. Several times I gripped something just to feel it rip through my hands and away again. But somehow I managed to slow myself down enough to survive the fall.

I landed on the ground beneath the tree flat on my back, hard. The breath completely knocked out of me.

Immediately after hitting the ground, it felt like I was dying. I couldn't catch a breath to save my life. I still had the presence of mind to roll over out of the way in case Steve landed in the same spot (thank goodness!). Plus my inability to breathe compelled me to move, in an effort to do something-- anything-- to try to get my lungs working again. It was excruciating! And recall I faced the terror of the Dobermans possibly converging on my position at any moment too, if our second distraction didn't work.

Mostly though, I could barely do anything but roll out of the way for Steve's landing, as I struggled to catch my breath again.

It's amazing how difficult it is to get your breathing function back again after such a slam. Years later I could compare it somewhat to the boot strapping procedure of a computer switching on. For the fruits of your titanic struggle to regain normal breathing again consists of ever so tiny strained puffs of inhalations and exhalations, that you gradually nurture into slightly bigger ones, until finally you can get a full gulp of air again.

And the whole time you're working through this process, you are literally suffocating to death.

Very, very not pleasant!

But at least no Doberman showed up while I was wheezing so, and pretty much helpless.

As I struggled for air, I became vaguely aware of thrashing above, mixed with maybe a quiet curse word or two, as Steve found his own way down to Earth. I hoped I hadn't messed up the vertical foliage chute so much that it'd ruin his own shot, braking-wise.

Then there was a combination smack and crunch, and there he was on the ground with me, around ten feet to my left.

Steve seemed to have done a better job than me in his fall (avoiding my own breathing predicament), but he did wrench his right shoulder and wrist some.

"You O.K. man?" Steve asked me as quietly as he could, even as he scanned the estate around us with a wary look.

"I'm-- having-- trouble-- catching my breath--" I managed to get out to him in words so soft as to be almost inaudible, even at point blank range.

That made Steve look worried.

"Come on man. You can make it," he told me, helping me get to my feet.

"We've got to get out of here Jerry," Steve reminded me.

"I-- know. Go ahead-- I'm right-- behind you," I gasped.

"You sure?" Steve let go of me as a test, and I managed to stay upright-- though my lungs felt like they were on fire.

"Yeah-- I'm getting better-- now," I told him, while I was actually wondering if I should hand him my car keys right then. I was truly scared I might not make it. Terrified that I might soon be dog food. With my remains buried by D.C. close to Virgil's. If he didn't just let his Dobermans bury my bones themselves after their meal, that is.

"O.K., man," Steve told me, and began tentatively heading for the wall, repeatedly glancing back to see how I was faring.

I did my best to walk really fast, even as my chest was heaving mightily in an effort to get a complete breath back inside of me.

That seemed to satisfy Steve for the moment, and he sprinted a ways before slowing to check on me again.

My breathing was still ragged as hell, but I making headway. Managing to actually break into a full-fledged broken jog now.

Steve sprinted a ways farther, while also motioning at me to speed it up all I could.

Yes: I knew the dire nature of our predicament. But the more movement you make the more air you need. And I was still awfully short on the stuff.

Then we heard the dogs approaching.

Even with our distraction, the dogs had rapidly sensed our escape attempt, and come running after us. Three ahead of all the others.

When Steve realized I wasn't going to make the wall before the closest dog would reach me, he backtracked to get behind me.

"Get over the wall, man. I'm right behind you," he told me.

I glanced back at Steve as I began climbing up the vine-covered brick wall, and saw him kick the closest Doberman so hard the dog was sent whining in pain at least six foot to one side of Steve. That made the second leading dog modify its course to come at him more indirectly.

By then though Steve was able to turn and join me on the wall.

The other two dogs came damn close to catching Steve as he leaped up the wall himself.

But compared to the events of the minutes just past, scaling the wall was nothing. Almost effortless. At least with the encouragement of the Dobermans making our adrenalin flow.

In a jiffy we were on the other side, and running for the combination horse stables and garage area where Shadow was parked. And hoping like mad there wasn't an opening in the wall nearby which would allow the dogs to threaten us here, too. Or even a whole other pack of dogs we were unaware of.

We finally managed to get into Shadow and moving with no further problem. By then I was thankfully breathing close to normally again.

However, there was a downside: now that I was finally breathing easier again, my attention was free to focus on the pain of the bloody gashes in my palms and fingers, where they'd been ripped open during my panicky grasping for small limbs and branches in the awful plunge through the tree.

I had scratches elsewhere too. But my hands were by far the most damaged. So I was hurting still.

Steve had suffered similar strains hand-wise. But hadn't been bloodied nearly as bad. For working years of construction with his dad (maybe since age ten!) had toughened him up compared to me. And Steve's family stock just seemed a bit stronger physically than my own in general, in several ways.

I also suffered the handicap of having a full-time job washing dishes in a restaurant during this period. Having your hands softening in water eight hours a day most days is not the best preparation around for enduring rough and sharp tree limbs slicing through them at high speed and pressure. Ouch!

"Jerry, we can't leave without doing something about D.C.'s bomb stuff," Steve told me as we headed away from the estate's garage.

"The cops will know what to do," I responded, in between hiccups.

Somehow the intense effort of recovering from having the breath knocked out of me had led to a painful bout of hiccups in the aftermath. Each hiccup was surprisingly agonizing: almost like a mini-heart attack, pain-wise. I could only hope this too would soon subside.

At least the horrific hiccups were better than being unable to draw a breath. Kind of. Maybe. OUCH!

Steve responded to my last comment.

"If they believe us. If D.C. hasn't already paid them off. If they come to check things out before D.C. has it all packed up and shipped somewhere else," Steve speculated.

Uh oh. I realized Steve was right. There was a whole lot of ifs involved there.

Hellfire! It seemed very plausible for D.C. to simply go ahead with the plan anyway-- and succeed. For he could conceivably move within hours, while our local cops might not get out here for days. If they came at all.

Sheesh!

Steve was right! We did have to do something! But what?

I slowed Shadow to a complete stop some distance out from D.C.'s garage. As it seemed no one was in pursuit of us just yet. And Steve and I quickly brainstormed up a plan.

We basically decided to try to blow up D.C.'s ammo dump before he could use it, and thereby stymie his immediate plan while at the same time hopefully alerting the authorities that D.C. needed to be looked at-- hard.

We also had to hurry things along. Before D.C. found out we'd escaped. And before he could take counter-measures to our own possible moves against him.

I turned Shadow around, and we headed for D.C.'s bunker.

Once we got there, we used a mini-crow bar from my trunk to rip off the padlock from the big main barn doors. Then we rummaged around inside for some sort of suitable fuse by which we could trigger a slightly delayed explosion, thereby allowing us time to escape.

Unfortunately, we could find nothing we deemed useful for such a thing.

Damn! It seemed impossible to have so many explosives sitting in one spot without a single handy fuse by which to set them off!

I mean, in the movies there was always a fuse nearby! Or some loose gunpowder or flammable liquid to pour into a trail for a makeshift fuse. But here there was neither!

There was of course the option of siphoning gas from Shadow for such an act. But we weren't sure we had that much time. In addition, the distance we'd want the fuel to form a fuse would run up the great earthen dome the barn sat upon, and so we feared gravity would drain it away downhill and into the ground itself-- plus it'd evaporate into the air-- all much too fast to work in this instance.

Then Steve remembered a particular type of item D.C. had pointed out to us there before: a bright orange marine style single-shot flare gun with attached ammo supply (three or four rounds). D.C. had quite a few of them in the barn for some reason.

We figured a flare would make a perfect aerial fuse! Well, except for the awfully short delay it might give us.

We quickly located such a gun, once it occurred to us.

Then we opened the big barn doors as wide as they'd go, and returned to Shadow. Steve loaded the flare gun as I drove Shadow around the barn to build up some speed for our attempt (for a fast getaway seemed essential here!).

The injuries Steve had sustained to his right arm and shoulder from our roof jump hampered him a bit: I observed him wincing with pain and gritting his teeth as he prepped the gun.

Shadow's rear tires were now squealing near-continuously as we completed one huge doughnut around the great barn, trying to build up some speed without spinning out, as we wound back around to the open doors again.

We'd only have the one shot. After that we'd have to skedaddle, whether the shot made it in to touch off the pile or not. For D.C. and his hired guns would surely be after us soon. And if we did succeed at igniting the arsenal, we had to get as far away as we could before it blew.

We figured there'd be at least two explosions: one of the topside barn contents, and another of the hidden bunker below. We were sure any explosion in the barn would easily blast its way down the poorly protected bunker stairway and into the main dump.

My only experience with explosions up to that point was what I'd seen on the news or in films, plus first-hand observation of fireworks.

Steve had the edge on me here, having seen a little more while working with his dad in construction. Some of it involving mountain sculpting by demolition (his dad had had a contract for providing lighting for the construction night-shifts, plus a bit with lamp poles, for the interstate highway sections running through the eastern mountains of our county).

"Here it comes!" I unnecessarily warned Steve as we approached the big double doors again.

I did my best to get him as good an opportunity as I could right down the barn gate's throat, before abruptly swerving away and towards the long straight outbound road.

I heard the pop and sizzling whisk of the flare as it launched.

I realized it sounded a lot like some of D.C.'s amateur rockets taking off.

"Hit it man!" Steve urged me, just as I was making my left turn.

We were now headed away as fast as Shadow could take us. I was simultaneously worried about the lack of blast cover offered by the huge open field around us, and yet wondering if anything at all would happen as a result of the flare.

After all, I'd often seen various items be more difficult to ignite than expected in practice. And our flare could have harmlessly careened into one of the many food boxes inside and fizzled out rather than detonated anything, I figured.

Of course, I was forgetting what an excellent shot Steve was. His Korean war veteran father had made sure all of his sons could well handle firearms of all sorts; and Steve was likely his star pupil.

"Do you think this'll work?" I asked Steve, who was peering backwards out his open passenger side window at the barn, now fast receding into the distance.

"I don't know. But I'm sure I sent the flare into a good spot. Just keep the pedal to the metal, man. Because if it blows, we better not be here."

At that precise moment the whole inside of the car lit up and the scene reflected in my near three foot long 180 degree rear view mirror almost blinded me before I could close my eyes against it.

A split second later I was forced to re-open my eyes as I struggled to regain control of the car.

Although I had yet to enjoy the level of physical rapport I would later on with Shadowfast, I still realized instantly even with my eyes closed that something damned unusual was happening with my car.

When I re-opened my eyes everything was awash in intense bright light, and we seemed to be falling towards the ground from the sky, maybe twenty feet up in the air.

It took me a moment to grasp what had happened: the blast wave had caught us and flung us up off the road and into the air. Our lighter tail was now considerably higher than the motor heavy front end. The steel rear spoiler maybe even helped catch the air blast like a sail, to add to the lift-- being that the spoiler was designed to fight lift from the opposite direction it now faced.

Shadow's engine revved obscenely high before I realized I had to let off the gas because we were airborne-- our wheels no longer in contact with the road.

I'd also instinctively hit the brakes with my left foot in all the confusion, thereby locking up all four wheels in mid-air (but for the motor spinning the rears against the resistance in something like an airborne drag strip power braking maneuver).

It may be that wholly by accident I saved Shadow's motor from blowing from over-revving by way of my instinctive braking in the air. For during those seconds he surely needed some resistance to keep his revs from going beyond what his design specs could handle (I'd had him floored when the blast wave struck us, remember).

I struggled to adapt to the strange situation as best I could, but things were happening faster than I could deal with them.

For instance, now we were coming in for a hard landing.

And just as I was attempting to figure out how to handle our touch down, the mother of all thunderclaps blasted through the car, threatening to bust our ear drums and making me involuntarily close my eyes again in a wince. We shook massively all over, feeling the vibrations deep in our bones. Our teeth rattled in our skulls. Intense pain emanated from our ear drums. I'm sure Steve and I both yelled in pain, but couldn't even hear ourselves, much less one another.

Then my jaw and backbone were suddenly jarred by an impact with the pavement. My head was thrown forward, with my nose painfully striking the hard upper rim of my steering wheel.

(At this time Shadow still possessed his factory Ford wheel; later on I would replace that with a custom wheel boasting a well padded rim: partly due to this very incident!)

I opened my eyes again, even as I tried to re-secure my grip on the wheel.

I was now officially shaken up.

Thankfully I'd taken my foot off the brake pedal, but our larger-than-spec wheels now rotating very slowly if at all weren't well-suited for a high speed aircraft-like landing. Maybe the stiffened suspension helped though.

I realized then I needed to avoid hitting the brake again if at all possible. For one thing, it could interfere with my control of the car. For another, we were needing every extra bit of distance we could get from the bunker before the second blast-- if there was a second blast.

I was beginning to think everything must have went up in the one explosion, as it was just so damn big and powerful. Or hoping that was the case, anyway. We'd probably been about two hundred yards or farther from it when it blew, and were still being thrown around like a child's toy.

I yelled something to Steve about it to see what he thought, but neither of us could hear anything new; our ears were ringing from the blast. Steve was motioning frantically with one hand to keep going at maximum speed.

As we landed we briefly had only the front wheels on the road, and I was surprised to learn how much tougher it was to get the car back on a straight path again without the help of a four point stance. It was like I was directing a double unicycle. A really heavy double unicycle.

Then the rear wheels touched down-- and promptly killed the engine! Argh!

I should have been giving Shadow some throttle to compensate for the fresh spin up the drive train transferred to the motor upon landing. But hey! I wasn't trained for flying! Sheesh!

One thing spun to the front in my mind: how the blast had caught us from the wrong end aerodynamically speaking, and thereby caused us to go airborne.

If we'd been facing towards it, I doubted we'd been flung that way.

But I pushed the thought from my mind, thinking it was something to ponder later-- right now we had to get the hell out of here!

I nudged the shifter into neutral to disengage the motor from the rear wheels, and immediately released the drag the dead engine was now exerting on our continued forward motion. While running at diminished RPM (revolutions per minute), the engine had acted like a brake as we touched down. Due to its throttle speed in that instant being too low to swallow the sudden new drive train spin up initiated by the rear wheels upon landing. Agh!

So we'd slowed down considerably upon landing, by way of me killing my motor to do so. But we still had considerable forward momentum. So in a moment of inspiration I exploited our remaining inertia via a relatively new trick from my recent self-tutoring in driving skills: pulling a 180 degree turn with an emergency brake and steering wheel combination. We barely managed it, almost slowing to a complete stop by the end. But that was OK, as I needed to re-crank Shadow anyway.

I could perceive Steve yelling at me but couldn't make out what he was saying.

We were now facing a huge fiery inferno only maybe 300 yards away.

It was a spectacular sight.

Out of habit I stopped us dead and shoved the shifter into park and cranked away on the motor. Being presently deaf, my burning idiot lights in the dash were my main indication as to whether the engine had ignited or not.

When it didn't immediately start I pushed the pedal to the floor.

Shadow spun back to life again (with me more feeling than hearing the starter grind on the flywheel as I cranked the starter too long), and I put us into reverse, and resumed our escape, only this time doing it backwards.

I had only a vague conscious notion of why I now wanted to be in the much slower reverse than forward gears: my gut instincts had taken command.

It was much harder to steer backwards, but luckily we had this private road all to ourselves, and it was absolutely straight, with very forgiving flat grasslands on both sides, and only a very shallow hint of a ditch lining the asphalt to left and right.

Of course, running off the road through here wouldn't help us put the distance we wanted between us and the conflagration.

We maybe added another hundred yards between us and ground zero by the time the second eruption took place-- my transmission likely winding loudly in reverse this way, but me unable to hear it.

By this point my brain was running in high gear, furiously searching for out-of-the-box tactics by which to handle the situation. I hoped I already had half of it figured out, with the turn to face the beast. But I felt there was something else I should do...

Then I thought I got it-- just as the next flash lit us up.

And it was at that moment that I saw him: D.C!

He was in his slow, sputtering, chugging Volkswagen Thing, all alone, traveling the grassy trail which had taken us to the hidden semi-truck garage not long before. He was approaching the intersection where the dirt road met the paved main bunker access road. Facing my side of Shadowfast, in our new orientation.

He wasn't fifty feet away from us as I met his eyes with mine, as Shadow passed the intersection moving backwards, and the second explosion suddenly lit up everything around us brighter than noon-time on a cloudless summer day.

I'd never seen D.C. so enraged.

But we moved past him, and I had to carry out every trick I could for what was happening in that instant.

I let off the gas and pulled the shifter back into neutral again. And continued utilizing my mirrors and the side and rear windows to steer by. I desperately wanted to roll down my manual-crank door window so I could stick my head out to look back, and thereby maybe drive backwards at a faster clip. But I just hadn't so far had the free time (or hand!) to do that.

Ironically, Steve did have his passenger side window rolled down-- for he'd needed it open to shoot the flare.

But it turned out good for me (and bad for Steve) that our windows were in such states.

Just as expected, the second blast was even more murderous than the first. Once again, my ear drums hurt so bad they brought tears to my eyes. I struggled to see through bleary and nearly closed eyes as I continued to steer us backwards. I realized repeated swallowing seemed to help for some reason-- I'd been instinctively doing it ever since the initial blast (the swallowing helped equalize pressures inside me-- something like airplane passengers experience. But I didn't know the mechanics involved back then).

Shadow shuddered all over again, but not nearly so violently as the first time. For in this round we were facing forward into the storm. We were designed for high speed buffeting from this angle!

I felt Shadow hunker down low to the ground as the blast wave broke over us. The exact opposite of what had happened when we'd been caught from behind.

I thought I felt Shadow's pushed down body slightly scrape against his rolling tires. But maybe I imagined that.

Just as I thought it might, the second blast actually served to propel us on our way a bit-- though not so forcefully as to cause me any significant additional steering problem from before.

I'd pulled the shifter into neutral just in case the blast was strong enough to outdo the motor's push or my reverse gearing-- for I was afraid of causing Shadow's engine to die again while still on D.C.'s property. And our reverse gear was a relatively low and slow one, after all, compared to the forwards.

One really scary surprise was how far the flames stretched from the blast this time. They came all the way out to and past us, for a brief, terrifying moment. Making me think I'd miscalculated after all-- and we were going to be burnt to a cinder. Or Shadow's own gas supply explode from the sudden, intense heat.

But this far out the flames vanished again almost as fast as they'd appeared, with the fiery threat receding back away from us at an astonishing pace-- to our overwhelming relief.

Yes, we were completely doused in boiling, angry flame for probably only a second or two-- maybe less-- but believe me, it seemed like forever when it was happening. We literally could see nothing but churning fire all around us.

You know those tales of people's hair turning instantly white from a great fright? Well, all flat black Shadowfast instantly turned a shiny silvery gray over most of his front end and roof from this incident. Due to the paint being burnt off. This made the exposed sheet metal almost as brightly reflective as his suddenly newly revealed front chrome trim, causing me more unexpected blinding problems in the wake of the fiery wash. The paint simply turned to ash in a flash and was subsequently blown off his metal skin.

Yes, this also exposed the bodywork seams around the custom front fender flares and where the air dam attached to the front fenders, with the combinations of fiberglass and bondo in those spots showing up as a bluish green against the almost sparkly naked steel.

Similar spots appeared around where the steel hood louvers had been pop riveted into the sheet metal, then bondo or fiberglass used to make them blend in better, contour-wise.

The very front of the lower rubber air dam got denuded of paint too, exposing a wide swath of sickly-looking gray-- the true color of the factory conveyor belt material from which the component had been fashioned.

Some of the fine paint ash of course got deposited on my windshield and other windows-- but it took me a while to realize what it was.

The thin rubber strips in my windshield wipers were completely cooked, and would have to be replaced, as afterwards they just crumbled to the touch.

My custom fiberglass mesh grill got burnt completely away and would have to be replaced as well. And a few wires of the electrical system situated immediately behind the grill with no other protection got their insulation badly singed. But all that (plus a burned wiring odor which would cling to us stubbornly for weeks) was pretty much it for Shadow's battle damage. Even the momentary hard skidding endured by the tires didn't spur any replacement rubber there.

Thankfully neither Steve or I suffered burst ear drums-- but it was surely a close thing. I accidentally bit my tongue pretty hard when we landed after the first blast. But it would heal up O.K. without treatment.

Unfortunately for Steve, his side window had still been down during the flash-over, allowing for us both to feel for a split second the searing heat of the flames as they'd passed.

Steve wasn't permanently injured or anything. But he did get singed on his right side. His hair on the right side of his upper body, from his head to the light sprinkling on his forearm, was partially burned off like Shadow's paint. A big patch of his shirt on his right shoulder disintegrated. The burned edges of the cloth actually had a consistency like burned paper afterwards. And Steve suffered something like an intense sunburn in a few spots (with blisters). Some of his right eye brow and eyelashes disappeared, giving him a funny off-kilter look for a while (that his mom would help him fix with cosmetics until they grew back). But he'd return to his normal handsome self again in just a few weeks.

Neither Steve or I saw D.C. or his VW Thing after the second explosion, and the fiery tidal wave. I figured the blast had surely lifted his vehicle and thrown him somewhere off the road-- for it had to have hit him broadside. And his Thing was about as un-aerodynamic as a land vehicle could be.

I suppose D.C.'s car hadn't been dispatched from the field road by the first explosion because he'd still been sufficiently (if barely) out of range, or else the force of the first blast had been stronger in some directions than others. I guess D.C. happened to be there at that particular moment because he'd returned to his truck garage for some reason after imprisoning us at his house with his henchman. But whatever the case, the second blast sure seemed to have taken care of him.

D.C.'s Thing had been a soft-top convertible. I'm not sure the canvas top would have held up in the firestorm, or against the blast waves. But the issue was moot: for D.C. had had the top down when I saw him there at the last.

He'd surely gotten badly burned-- at the least!

If I'd known then I'd be writing about this someday, I might have made sure to snap a photo of Shadow in this state for posterity. But at the time all I could think about was NOT letting anyone see my car like this, if I could help it. It seemed awful embarrassing on several levels. Not to mention the other potential problems.

Fortunately, several cans of flat black spray paint and an hour or two would be all that'd be required to take care of the worst aspect of Shadow's half-naked metal state, later on. I think I drove with no grill mesh for a week or so afterwards, however.

The isolated nature of the bunker helped contain the fire's spread. But the explosions had been heard over a big chunk of the county-- and felt too, for miles around.

For a while some thought we'd had a local earthquake.

When I finally got around to divulging all this to her years later, my friend Dana would tell me she'd felt it as a momentary vibration in the chair she was sitting in, and heard a rattling of loose house wares (apparently she'd been up fairly late that night).

No trace of D.C. was ever found by the authorities. I believe he was eventually declared dead.

I've always been highly skeptical of the idea that D.C. and his Thing were utterly destroyed in the second explosion. That's right: his car was never found either.

Yes, I've always been sure D.C. got badly burned, but escaped.

Severe burns can kill you too, of course, within just minutes or hours. Plus, he might have been further injured if his Thing rolled over or otherwise got thrown around in the blast (although apparently if it rolled, it ended up right side up again, somehow; if it got stuck on its side, it may be D.C. could have pushed it over to get the wheels on the ground again).

So it's possible D.C. fled for some isolated place-- perhaps even another, better-hidden bunker-- and died there. And no one happened to accidentally run across his remains in the following year or so that I was likely paying the most attention to such reports. If someone found him after that, I might have missed it. Steve too.

The investigation by the authorities ended up being fairly short and sweet. The incident was declared an unfortunate accident brought about by a mentally disturbed man stockpiling dangerous amounts of illegal explosives in an unsafe manner.

I never heard or saw anything about anyone learning of D.C.'s plot to destroy the town.

Quite a few years later, Steve and I would get a reminder of those days when we heard unidentified bodies had been discovered buried in unmarked graves on D.C.'s old property (someone else owned it by then).

Two bodies were discovered. One male, one female. I can't recall further details. It may be other bodies were eventually found too, but I just wasn't around to hear about it.

And no: Steve and I didn't step forward when those bodies were discovered. For we literally knew nothing about them! So far as we personally knew, D.C. never in fact killed anyone: he just wanted to pretty badly.

This episode made for one of Steve and mine's closest calls yet, where the law was concerned. We were sure we'd get into all kinds of trouble if we tried to explain what had happened and why, and figured it was best just to let sleeping dogs lie, if we could.

Our hometown was safe and still in one piece. And there was one less lunatic in the world to threaten it. That seemed the most important thing by far.

Yes, we had some delicate matters to attend to in regards to alibis and clean up here. And little time to do it, in the hours immediately following the blasts.

Steve of course was a master of alibi-construction. But this particular case taxed his talents a bit more than usual. What with his one-sided sunburn, missing eyebrow, hurt shoulder, etc., etc.

Steve decided to literally fight fire with fire there. We first of all called his parents that evening from a payphone to tell them we were installing some new gear on Shadow at Steve's garage in town, and so Steve was stuck there for the night.

We did call them fairly late: but that was relatively normal for us. And spending time at the garage wasn't anything unusual for us to do, either. Since Steve had begun renting that garage, we'd done car work and just generally hung out there quite a bit.

It also helped that we'd told no one of our plans to go to D.C.'s that day. Indeed, most of our friends had no idea how much time we spent there. Partly because D.C. had always told us to keep it that way, and partly because we didn't necessarily want to share D.C. with our other pals. For one thing, they might want to accompany us to D.C.'s on a visit; and Steve and I both knew D.C. would likely be angered by that. But using that excuse with our buddies might only get them mad at us too. So it seemed best to keep our chumming around with D.C. and the rest of our buddies somewhat compartmentalized, one from the other.

Another reason for compartmentalization was greed: if we introduced D.C. to our other pals and he liked them after all, Steve and I might have missed out on some of D.C.'s generosity.

Yes: we were being selfish there. Partly due to being unaccustomed to such largess as we experienced around D.C., as well as being unable to understand D.C. had enough wealth so that he wouldn't run out if a few more people were added to the equation.

Yeah: we'd been keeping D.C. to ourselves.

We also didn't know what our parents would think about us hanging out with D.C. Me, because of all the firearms, firecrackers, and rocket play involved (and some of the wilder things I witnessed D.C. say or do), and Steve, because his parents had never liked D.C.'s parents, or their influence on the county (I think Steve's dad might have had some sour business dealings with them at some point).

We also had some regular rounds we often made prior to visiting D.C. Like hanging out at the hot rod shop in town, and passing friends like Red on the main thoroughfares. Plus, stopping in at a particular fast food joint in the afternoon. All that served us well come alibi-time for this caper. Our comings and goings and sightings were scrambled enough that we were never singled out from anyone else who saw D.C. on occasion.

Sure, we were asked to stop in at a police office at our convenience to answer a few questions, maybe a week or two after the explosions (between our jobs and school and other activities, it was tough for the cops to catch Steve or me at home). But few of the officer's questions caused us much problem. We basically just answered them as we would have if we'd never been there that particular night, and had never learned of D.C.'s sinister plans for New Forge. All that was left after that was pretty much the same the cops likely heard from others of D.C.'s acquaintance.

Yeah: we lied there. Mostly by lies of omission. But still lies. Like not mentioning the lavish gift collections of comics and arrowheads (heck: we figured the cops might seize them for 'evidence', then keep them for themselves; stuff like that happened a lot in our county). Somehow we managed to get by acting no more nervous than any other teenage boy might in front of a uniformed officer.

One thing that bolstered me personally was the knowledge we'd likely saved all those officers' lives with our actions. As their station was only about two blocks from D.C.'s planned epicenter. Plus, at that time I was pretty sure D.C. was still alive and in hiding: so to my mind no one had been killed. Heck: even D.C.'s house was still O.K., as it was so far from the bunker!

An expensive underground bunker and maybe many thousands of dollars worth of explosives had been destroyed. But that was a have-to case! So I simply wasn't that worried about it: if we did get discovered, they might give us a medal. Or at least that's what I told myself during the interview to stay confident and relaxed about it all, as advised by Steve.

Steve of course was a much slicker liar than me, and probably had even less problem with their questions.

Like I say, they didn't single us out from anyone else of D.C.'s acquaintance-- and that helped a lot!

As for D.C.'s hired thugs, I never saw or heard of them again. I figured they just ran for it once they realized the jig was up. Or maybe they saw D.C. after the blasts, and he warned them away.

If the police ever did question those two guys, they apparently got nothing from them about me and Steve. And even if they had, the truth was we'd been held by them against our will in D.C.'s house, until we'd escaped.

As it had been well into the night upon our return to town after the explosions, there'd been very few possible witnesses to Shadow's denuded sheet metal. We also timed things the next day so Steve could sneak in back home and purposely blow up a little three-wheeled postal carrier vehicle his family used exclusively for getting around their large wooded property (I don't know if it was street legal anymore). Yep, Steve actually set the three-wheeler afire, to pretend he'd been tinkering with it and it accidentally flared up. And his parents naturally assumed that's how he got injured.

How'd Steve get back home to arrange his little bit of cover up arson? Via Shadow. After Shadow had been redressed in his trademark flat black again, of course.

I'd had to park my car overnight at Steve's rented garage, walk more than a half mile (passing my parents' house on the way) to reach the regionally famous 24 hour open store located at the foot of the hill atop which I lived, and pay roughly 300% more for several cans of flat black spray paint and first aid supplies for Steve and myself than it would have cost me at Big K the next day (Big K was our main local discount store in the 1970s).

In those days most local businesses shut down after around 3 or 5 PM in the evening during weekdays. And even large discount stores like Big K quit by 8 or 9 PM. Plus, Big K was a bit farther from Steve's garage than I was willing to walk that night-- even if it had still been open. For Steve and I were suffering quite a bit from our injuries.

I then had to return to Steve's garage to put Shadow back into proper order again. As well as attend to Steve.

Steve needed the first aid treatments worse than me, due to his burns. But I too had sliced up my hands pretty badly while falling through the tree.

(And yes, we had to remove various overt signs of wound treatment from Steve before letting his parents see him the next morning)

So anyway, virtually no one that mattered ever saw Shadow's steely half-naked form in the hours after the blasts. And no one ever had reason to suspect Steve's burns had anything to do with maybe the largest explosions ever to occur in our home county.

And (until now) few folks ever knew what really happened to D.C. Evans that day. Or why. Or how close our hometown came to annihilation (at least if D.C. had carried out his threats: which Steve and I were sure he would have).

Yeah, Steve and I might not have been prosecuted for our actions. But why take the chance? We surely had enough problems as it was, back then. And we were still minors too, remember. Under the jurisdiction of our respective parents. Even if we'd gotten acclaimed as heroes, we most likely would have been grounded-- and banned from driving or doing just about anything else remotely interesting-- until we reached eighteen (or maybe more). No way we wanted to risk that happening!

These events also helped me decide to begin carrying a flare pistol in Shadow's onboard armament. I was surprised to learn how little they cost when I eventually bought additional stuff of this nature: just a tiny fraction of true firearms.

Of course, I'd acquired my very first flare gun and its initial rounds for free: from D.C.'s own bunker. The very gun Steve used to save our hometown became part of Shadow's onboard equipment after that. And sort of a trophy too, I guess you could say.

I figured you could never know when a small taste of Hell might come in handy as a deterrent...and so self-propelled mini-fireballs became a staple of Shadow's equipment store after this.

And boy, did that stuff serve me well in the treks to follow!

In the months following D.C.'s Big Bang, my comics collection-- of which 95+% consisted of the stacks given me by D.C.-- nagged at my conscience. I mean, I didn't feel guilty for how I'd dealt with D.C. and his mad scheme. I just began to feel that somehow it was wrong for me to enjoy the collection, for how it'd come to me-- and from whom.

People could have died. Lots of them. Increasingly, I could almost taste blood in my mouth when I flipped through the pages of one of the comics after that. Damn it!

Eventually these feelings built up so much that I practically gave the entire collection away to someone. For just $50, I think. Even then it was probably worth several thousands on the retail collection market. Today, that collection might be worth a million bucks. Ouch!

But you feel what you feel. Plus, keep in mind I was awful young to be dealing with such weighty matters-- let alone high finance. And I truly wasn't aware of the collector value of those comics then. Years later, yes. Then, no.

I think Steve ended up doing much the same with the arrowheads.

We both wanted to forget the whole D.C.-related part of our lives. And ridding ourselves of his gifts definitely helped.

Once, when we'd been ruminating with D.C. over famous bad guys of fact and fiction, he'd steered the conversation to their escapes from justice-- or failures to escape.

D.C. had spoken at great length that day about how anyone with big plans had to have backup plans. Especially for getaways from any adverse consequences to their actions.

D.C. had given us the distinct impression he had such plans himself.

And that-- plus his vanishing act after the blasts-- is why Steve and I stayed wary of him possibly showing up again somewhere later, for quite a while after.

Another good reason we stayed on the lookout for D.C. was that he'd also told us over and over again that the best revenge was like a fine wine: it required aging. Enough time passed so that the victim would never see it coming.

In the years since, lots of people have accused me of being paranoid, what with all the security precautions I take on a daily basis.

But none of them ever met D.C. Or saw his face, when Steve and I turned his dream of incinerating others against him.

Even Steve didn't see him then; for he was too busy watching the explosion unfolding before us. And the window of opportunity to see D.C. in that moment had been very brief. So brief that Steve never seemed positive that I'd actually seen D.C. then at all. I wouldn't be surprised if to this day he'd tell you that-- in his opinion-- I'd just imagined it.

I still though sometimes see D.C. glaring at me, in nightmares. His face fiercely contorted with hate, and illuminated by that seething sea of flame, which seemed to be reaching out from hell itself to engulf Steve and me and Shadowfast...

D.C.'s 'Cuda resembled this one.

D.C. owned a nice VW bug, that looked a lot like this.

The VW Thing pictured above looks a lot better than D.C.'s ever did.