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“Roses do well with manure, right?” he smiled.
“They do, brother. They absolutely do.”
Hopping the fence of the enclosure, they snuck into the keeper’s cottage and donned two zoo jackets. Seeing the massive pile of manure in the corner, Mo took the backhoe and began digging above the tunnel. When the earth collapsed into the tunnel, revealing the long open space, he had his opening.
Tons of elephant shit were piled into the tunnel, allowing no one to pass through from either side. When the hole was completely filled, he lifted the rest into his bucket and made his way to the rose gardens, where Tanner had dug a hole below them.
“Your hole awaits,” he smiled.
“I wish I could be there to see their faces,” smirked Mo. He dumped a few more tons of manure below the rose garden.
“Those are gonna be some beautiful roses,” laughed Tanner. “Come on. Let’s see if we can find anymore.”
It took them a while, but when they located another offshoot of the tunnels near the lake, they knew they had to flood it. This time, it only took a few well-placed charges to make the tunnel collapse and the wall of the lake to flood into it. Someone would be questioning why the lake was down a few feet, but that wasn’t his problem.
Picking up the drones again, they made several passes over the area before they finally saw one more tunnel beneath a gas station.
“That’s dangerous,” frowned Tanner. “I mean, who would be silly enough to put a tunnel beneath thousands of pounds of fuel? Dangerous, brother. Seriously dangerous. Anything could happen.”
“It is if there are people in there,” said Mo. “Do you see any heat signatures?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing. What are you thinking? We can’t blow the whole gas station.”
“Why not?” smirked Mo. “Miller would love this job. I think we should make him proud. The tunnel runs beneath the pad, between the store and the pumps. If I blow the pumps, everything will collapse into the tunnels.”
“What about the people in the store?” frowned Tanner.
“Tell them it’s a gas leak,” he smirked.
Pulling his cap over his eyes, he parked the truck across the street and gathered what he needed from his backpack. Tanner ran across the street, telling the people at the pumps to move quickly. When the cars were cleared away, he ran inside.
“Hey! Are you the manager?” he asked. It was a kid of about twenty who looked barely old enough to drive.
“I’m the assistant manager. The manager won’t be here until later.”
“Okay, well, you gotta clear out. Gas leak.”
“Gas?”
“Yes, like natural gas. The whole place could blow. Lock up the building and get across the street.”
The kid didn’t even argue with Tanner. He locked the doors and ran across the street, watching as another man placed ‘out of order’ signs on the pumps.
What he couldn’t see was that the back of the signs was lined with explosives, lying directly against the pumps. As he placed the last one, he took off running, screaming for cars to stop and people to back up.
The glass of the store shattered, the building shaking, and then a thunderous mushroom cloud of flames and fumes filled the air. The young assistant manager dropped to the ground, covering his head.
“Fire department is on their way,” said Tanner, looking back at the burning building. “Hey, what’s that? It looks like there was a tunnel beneath your building. Strange, don’t you think?”
“I guess,” said the young man. “That explains all the people that would suddenly appear in the early morning hours outside the store. They were pretty ratty looking. Everyone was hungry and tired, didn’t know which was which.”
Mo looked at Tanner, frowning.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It was just that when I would come in for my shift, there was no one around the place, then suddenly there would be like twenty or thirty people. A few men, but mostly women and kids.”
“What do you mean suddenly? Like they appeared out of thin air?”
