Algorithm - Book 1 - The Medallion

Chapter 7

"Only a few locals like me know about this road. And there are back ways to get outta here besides this road."

Adam agreed. "Not a bad idea, Hedda. That bunch will likely be scouring the side streets in town, and if they are the police, they'll send out a description of our car along with the license plate number. In a small town like this, we wouldn’t have a chance. At least this way we could stay here for a while, maybe until nightfall, and slip out some other way."

"In the meantime, ya might want to go on into the mine. There'll be somethin' there you'll need to see."

Both Adam and Linda raised their eyebrows in a nearly comical synchrony while staring at the locked gate. Hedda got out of the car, walked over to the gate, and pulled it open waving them inside.

"Go ahead. Drive on in, and I'll close it behind us."

Once Hedda was back in the car, Adam again checked for anyone following them.  She directed him along a few more minutes of the bumpy road which wound its way alongside the river until they reached a wider expanse, a clearing made up of tall outcroppings of grass sprouting through holes in cracked tarmac. It looked as if the area was once used as a parking lot. Surrounding the clearing was more of the rusty chain-link fencing, with several dilapidated one- and two-story colliery buildings grouped together at one end. Adam noticed a tall, angular, dark and ominous structure just beyond them.

"What's that?" He recalled the model in the museum's window, and asked, "Is that the breaker building?"

Hedda looked to where Adam was pointing. "Sure is. Ten stories high." It was a corrugated metal structure punctuated with a seemingly random array of square window openings. "It's where the raw coal was broken into smaller chunks, stones removed, and such. The stuff would move along conveyor belts to the top." 

Hedda pointed to the summit of the nearly triangular building where a chute emerged. "Up there, the coal would come out and slide down into the waitin' railroad cars."

Adam followed her pointing hand to the road below, where the vague outline of a set of rails was barely visible. At Hedda's urging, they headed toward the smaller building just ahead and arrived at yet another gate. Huge patches of brown rust covered most of their dull gray metallic walls, and most windows were intact.

When they stopped by the gate, Hedda once again scurried out of the car and directed the pair.  "Go on through to the back of the office."

Only then did Adam notice the 'Office' sign over the door of the nearest one-story building. As he rounded its corner, he saw a pale white VW Beetle nearly as rusty as the building parked alongside the office.

That looks familiar.

He stopped his car next to it just as Hedda rejoined the group and pointed to the back door. "Ya can go on inside. I'll be with ya in a couple o' minutes."

Without offering another word, Hedda walked away in the opposite direction, toward what looked like several footpaths branching out to the old mine shafts in the rear of the complex. They watched her disappear into the overgrowth.