Heart Of Coal (Hearts Through Time #1)
Prologue BOOM!
The smog pollution in the sky keeps any natural midday light from filtering in brightly, even on top of Mount Washington, the home of the Pittsburgh Coal Mining Company, one of the most active and profitable mines in all of the country.
The six-hundred foot mountain which is located along a sharp ridge beside the river below, looks dead and barren itself.
It acts as an outer border, encasing the city on one side, where miners are chiseling away in caverns to scrape together a living.
Multiple inclines built along the side of the mountain for easy transportation to the bottom to get to the trolley station, that can then transport passengers into the city or into a tunnel under the mountain whisking you away.
The railroad is also alongside it, the tracks that reside just along the river’s edge and with the city beyond.
Coal is being extracted from the Adit, an opening in the side of the mountain and the tipple that extends high above over the railway, like a bridge that goes nowhere to dump coal into rail cars or to be shipped off either up or down river by barge.
The white tunnel concrete entry that leads to the shaft and the lift that carries workers about four-hundred feet down into the mountain is deserted until the end of shift when the men return to the surface by the cage, and switch out with the night crew arriving to work.
The company town in the surrounding area is leisurely with workers that are off shift and their families that can’t afford to live off property, going about their day like any other.
BOOM!
Everything rattles like the earth is about to open up.
Glass windows shatter in buildings, homes, and the church that sits on the edge of the property, the mountain edge and surrounding patch town.
The cliff begins to slide with rocks, dirt, and coal falling to the tracks, road, and the river below.
The tunnel entry and its shaft is spewing thick black smoke making it look like the entrance to Hell itself coughing up toxic breath.
The Adit and the Tipple falls in and collapses on itself and on to the railroad below, being buried in the process.
A blaring alarm sounds with men running to the company office, dressed in their jumpers. Not far behind them, women and children start to arrive in a panic with kids crying and screaming, being held back by a man in a panic himself, for the love of his life is down in the heart of the mountain.
And there is nothing he can do about it.