PREVIEW

THE SWELTERING HUMIDITY, unseasonable this time of year in the south-central Texas farming community of Agnew, made the scorched air feel close to a hundred degrees. For the overflow crowd in the aged gymnasium, it was stifling. The community-wide pep rally was a welcome respite between harvesting soybeans and pulling cotton bolls. Everyone hoped their undefeated, six-man football team could do what had not been done in two decades: win tomorrow’s game and play for the state championship. 

Signs and hand-painted banners urging the team to victory hung on every surface in town, from storefronts to churches, the co-op grain elevator, even the fire station.  Nine-year-old Emma Bergsten and her classmates sat atop the foldaway bleachers, screaming cheers and singing songs. Her older brothers were team stars, her sister the head cheerleader, and three cousins played in the band.

Hearing the whistle of the train on its way through town, Emma glanced out the gym’s gaping double doors just as the landscape of Agnew and the lives of everyone she knew changed forever. 

The colossal explosion from its payload ammonium nitrate bomb obliterated a box truck near the railroad crossing. In an instant, the first of five engines pulling the hundred-car Union Pacific Eagle Ford Shale crude carrier plunged into chaos as the eruption thundered all around.

Screaming at supersonic speeds in every direction away from the explosion’s core, the shockwave freed its unbalanced energy in a microsecond. Driven by molecular nitrate collisions at the nanoscale, the invisible, vibrating force smashed tsunami-like through massive concrete cylinders at the grain elevator, destroying the cotton gin, sheriff’s office, and volunteer fire station in seconds. Intense wind followed, sweeping the debris into a destructive wake. The concussion shattered the cafeteria windows. It triggered such biological havoc in the bodies of the three cooks, they died before the glass hit the floor. 

Jolting through the adjacent gymnasium, the devastation continued, windows shattered, and shards of concrete from the elevator scythed the roof. Survivors scrambled over tubas, trombones, ceiling fragments, and each other in their efforts to escape. Find Mommy, Emma thought as she fell from the top of the foldaway bleachers.

The old building shuddered and collapsed. As the explosion subsided and the smoke cleared, only a portion of the south wall remained.  

* * *

Maria Valdez’s four-year-old screamed, “Look out, Mama! Look out!” as the blue car crossed the centerline. Tires screeched as the driver pulled back into his lane, over-corrected, slid off the shoulder, and jerked back onto the road. The oncoming car swerved again, missing them by the narrowest of margins. Maria jammed the accelerator of her old pickup to the floor and pulled off to the shoulder. 

Her entire body trembled. Sitting on the edge of her seat, she gripped the steering wheel with both hands. She took several steadying breaths, then looked at her daughter, who sat quivering beside her. “You okay, Pumpkin?” 

Her sobbing daughter freed her booster seat belt, scooted closer, and burrowed like a puppy into her mother’s arms. “He about hit us!”

Holding her close, her mother kissed her forehead and whispered, “Honey, he came close, but we’re okay.” 

“Why was he driving like that? Was he mad at us?” 

“Maybe he’s going to the hospital. I’m sure he was not mad, just in a big hurry.” Trying to distract her daughter, she said, “Tell you what, after the pep rally I’ll invite Shelly and her Mommy for lunch. We’ll have cookies and ice cream for dessert. I bet you’ll feel better!”

Calmer now, the little girl nodded. “I’d like that.”  

They held their embrace as Maria scolded herself for letting her mind wander on this isolated road. She thought then about the pep rally, and the team uniforms she’d picked up at her sister’s cleaners in Pearsall. Before the near collision, she’d considered speeding to the rail crossing in town to make it to the pep rally in time for the team to wear their jerseys. Now, she took her time, looked both ways before pulling back on the road, knowing they wouldn’t arrive on time.

She made a mental note about the vehicle: Dark blue Toyota Camry, like Mary’s new car. Green license plate with a white number six and the letter T in the middle. It had to be going a hundred miles an hour. Who’d be so irresponsible on this narrow two-lane Farm to Market road? Not even that wild Jenkins kid from over in Karnes City would drive so recklessly. 

Whoever it was, isn’t a local, she decided.

* * *

Tank car after tank car buckled like an accordion stretching a half mile back through town, some upright, most on their sides. Oil gushed from fissures in car walls. Sparks emitted from the wreckage ignited the low flashpoint crude. Rapidly growing pools generated a huge fireball twice the height of the grain elevator. The first of five explosions registered 4.8 on seismographs in Austin, Houston, and Albuquerque, shaking every structure in town and alerting the residents in a twenty-mile radius to what many believed to have been an earthquake.

 
The initial concussion from the blast shattered businesses and most of the homes closest to the tracks, while others crumpled and ignited. Menacing flames destroyed everything in their wake. Those trapped in their homes died as their skin melted. The town burned in a sea of red, yellow, and orange.

Flames erupting from ever-deepening fuel lakes the length of the train created giant curtains of fire. Fire begat fire. Fresh combustion-devoured oxygen twisted and danced skyward to a pounding rhythm of its own making, belching mounds of ugly, black, boiling smoke, which obliterated the midday sun’s brightest rays.

The stench of burned hydrocarbons, cars, houses, businesses, and human flesh, combined with the heat and the roar of the fire, made the remains of the community of Agnew unbearable. The penetrating heat ignited the combustible wheat dust inside a grain elevator silo. A yellow-orange fireball leapt into the sky, blowing several large holes in the silo’s cylindrical concrete sides and those of two adjoining silos, killing the work crew of four. The process repeated in an adjacent silo where tens of thousands of bushels of wheat provided ready tinder, which, when combined with the trapped air in the confined space, exploded. 

Most of the eighty-three derailed cars suffered a breach, releasing more than two-and-a-half million gallons of crude into an ever-increasing firestorm. The somewhat viscous fluid found its way into the storm sewer and emerged as exploding manhole covers and fireballs erupting in the streets throughout the village. Craters large enough to consume half a city block appeared on several streets where, moments earlier, the town’s sole focus had been on winning tomorrow’s football game. Oil and vapor infiltrated the wastewater system as explosions lifted commodes off their fittings and fire emanated from residence sinks throughout town. The city pumping station was demolished as the blaze expanded. 
In just minutes, the town of Agnew was gone.

* * *

Four miles west of Agnew, mere moments earlier, the engineer had throttled back the big diesel engines, slowing the train as he discovered the air compressor had failed. “No brakes!” Looking at his on-board conductor, he ordered, “Radio dispatch. Makes no sense. I checked them before we left. Nobody better be screwing with our equipment. We’re ridin’ a damn powder keg, gotta be able to stop!” Trying the brakes again, he throttled back even more, reducing his speed to within accepted limits, but still faster than he wanted with school letting out for lunch. 

“Dispatch says to pull on the siding east of Gonzales and roll to a stop. They’re sending a crew to meet us,” said his companion.  

Agnew, southeast of San Antonio and two hundred and fourteen rail miles from his destination at the Royal Dutch Shell refinery on the Houston ship channel, differed from other hamlets along his route by a long northern turn east of town. He knew every inch of this route, estimating he’d hauled half a billion gallons of Eagle Ford Shale crude in the year of making this run. 

A half mile from the rail crossing, the engineer spotted a box truck. What’s it doing so close to the track? he wondered. He pulled long and hard on his whistle, hoping to rouse the driver.

“Check out those homemade signs. Community pride’s a great thing, big school or small, everybody wants to be number one!” He laughed as the town slid by on their right.

* * *

Resigned to waiting for the train at the crossing, Maria caught the last tanker cars when the shockwave struck her pickup, shoving it as if hit by a crosswind, cracking her windshield, breaking out her windows. “God help us! What’s happening?” 

Huge explosions, fire, and billowing black smoke terrified her daughter, who again clutched at her mother. Tank cars derailed. A twenty-foot wall of fire engulfed the train. She slowed, u-turned and sped away to escape the firestorm. Smoke hot enough to scorch her skin invaded the pickup’s cab. The reek of sulfur overwhelmed her nostrils, dominating her every breath. Bitter bile burned her throat, wracking her chest into a coughing fit. Tears streamed down her cheeks from her burning eyes. The roar of the flames resembled the sound of an aircraft engine. “It’s okay, Pumpkin. A terrible accident happened.” She struggled for calm. “We’re safe! We’ll find daddy and the girls, then try to help everybody.”

“Mama, I can’t breathe,” her daughter cried.  

“Keep your head down, put your dress in front of your face and breathe through your mouth. It’ll help. I’m going as fast as I dare.”

Grabbing her phone, she videoed the bedlam, narrating as she went. “Train cars jackknifed . . . Oil’s everywhere! Fire thirty feet high as far as I can see. Driving upwind to the Bergsten place. Whole town’s on fire . . . Can’t breathe . . . Call 911! San Antonio Fire Department. Find help!” she screamed before sending it to her sister.