Centralia: Epicenter by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-30T20:00:00+00:00

The Valley of the Yunwi Tsunsdi

Brian Keene; Centralia, WV

Location of Centralia, West Virginia (community in Braxton County)

Coordinates: 38°37′23″N 80°34′4″W

CountryUnited States

StateWest Virginia

CountyBraxton

Population:

• Total14,523 (Braxton County)

First Epicenter Sighting

• January 1966

Percent Burn

• 58%

Don Bloom peered through the binoculars and resisted smacking the mosquito incessantly tickling the back of his neck. Although he was concealed amidst the forest’s greenery, he couldn’t risk moving and being discovered. Seven armed men lingered down in the valley below, and if Bloom gave his position away now, he’d never get what he came for. His legs and feet tingled with numbness, but he remained still. Barros was down there somewhere, inside one of the ramshackle buildings that made up this backwoods methamphetamine compound.

And if Barros was there, then so was Kandara.

“Tricky,” Bloom whispered.

Bloom had tracked his quarry across the country, starting in El Paso, where he’d first learned that Barros—a mid-level stooge for a Mexican drug cartel—was no longer simply controlling Kandara, but had become a host for the entity instead. The trail had led him across the southern United States before veering north. Bloom had almost caught up with him in Chicago but arrived too late, finding only a massacre inside a crumbling tenement building where human beings lay strewn about, horrifically tortured and then butchered like livestock. Bloom had seen similar atrocities before, in places like Iraq, Cape Town, Mexico and elsewhere. He’d even been the cause of some of them.

He’d followed the trail of slaughter east, finally arriving in Braxton County, West Virginia. He’d followed Route 17, passing through something called the Elk River Wildlife Management Area, and along the shores of Sutton Lake. Along the way, he saw plenty of campgrounds, RV parks, public game lands, and other facilities for public recreation. What he didn’t see was the rest of America. There were no McDonalds or Wal-Marts. No Pier 1 stores or trendy coffee shops. None of the endless, soulless doppelgangers that pockmarked every other place in the country. None of the things that made it all feel the same, as if each town in America was nothing more than a picture cut out of a magazine, with no history or personality of its own. He didn’t see many places of employment, either. A few logging trucks rolled past, trundling down the road, but there were no factories or mills or mining facilities. He did pass a number of small farms, and a few auto repair garages, and a big red barn that had been turned into a flea market, but that was it. Bloom suspected that this part of the state relied on tourism from hunters, fishermen, boaters, campers and hikers for its economy.

At the far end of Sutton Lake, the road crossed Laurel Creek and led into the unincorporated little town of Centralia. A historic marker sign on the outskirts of the village indicated that it was the geographic center of West Virginia, and thus its name.

In Bloom’s mind, that marker was about the only notable thing in the town. Other than

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