A chunk of the current fiction project.
The Barrens might be uninhabited, but people live near enough to hear when some damn fool gets their hands on dynamite and goes out for informal fireworks. The staties always ignored the first two calls, but when a third person called they’d dispatch someone to take a look. Not that they’d catch anyone. The officer might notice a blown-up boulder or two, with or without accompanying crushed beer cans. The deposit law’s nothing but government overreach after all. Freedom costs five cents a can.
This time, they got eleven calls from three different sides of the Barrens, even crazy old Lucas in his survivalist cabin atop Mount Screwitall. The officer found molten and shattered outcroppings still casting columns of dust into the breeze. He called the ATF asking about large explosive thefts. Correlated with a weird Air Traffic Control report, that call got a black Cadillac dispatched from LA.
I want to rename that mountain. But maybe not.