Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon Read Online Free PDF

is to lunch. I’m starved. Then we’re taking a road trip.”
         The pair stopped at a Pizza Hut on the south side of San Angelo. While waiting for their pepperoni calzones to bake, he asked if she remembered a temporary job he took when they were juniors at Baylor University.
         “Of course I remember,” she said. “You spent practically all of Christmas break working, just so you could buy me that pendant. What a sweetheart you used to be. Whatever happened to that guy, anyway?”
         She smiled the mischievous smile that always reminded him why he fell in love with her.
         “That was somewhere around here, wasn’t it?”
         He said “Yes, about seventy miles southeast of us.
         “The job was in an old salt mine they were closing down because it was mostly played out and no longer produced enough salt to make it cost effective. They needed someone to dismantle their old security system and inventory it and package it up to be shipped back to their storage facility in Pennsylvania. I bid for the job and got it, and it took sixteen days to get it all done.”
         “So, what does that have to do with us?”
         “I don’t know if you remember, but it was very cold that winter. Bitterly cold. The area set records for coldest temperatures almost every day. But inside that mine I, and all of the other workers who were doing various things to shut it down, all worked in short sleeves. A couple of the guys even worked in shorts. One of the mine’s supervisors told me that the mine always maintained a constant temperature of 62 degrees, because the salt and limestone insulated it from the outside temperature above it. And the earth’s core helped heat it from below.”
         The light came on in Hannah’s eyes. “Yes, I’ve heard of that phenomenon. Deep caves are the same way. No matter how hot or cold it is outside, they maintain a steady temperature on the inside.”
         He looked into Hannah’s eyes. “Honey, this might be the key to our survival. And the survival of the people we love.”
         Their next stop was to a local realtor who specialized in commercial properties. Mark had called them and told them he was interested in purchasing the old mine and reopening it. He said he had some potential investors and the means to pay cash for it, but first he wanted to evaluate the mine to see if there was the potential to make some money there.
         He told the realtor that the mine didn’t have enough output to satisfy that big corporation back east, but that he and his investors thought it would produce enough to keep a few dozen workers going on a smaller, local scale.
         The realtor, of course, had jumped at the chance to show the property. It had been abandoned for nearly four years now, without even a nibble of interest. And it was a huge piece of land. Over a thousand acres, and much of it was developed with outbuildings. The commission would be substantial if he could sell it.
         Mark told the realtor that all they wanted to do was walk through the place to make sure it was safe before they brought the investors in to take a look at it.
         He and Hannah each signed a “Hold Harmless Agreement” to protect the realtor from lawsuits if they were to get hurt in the mine. The realtor loaned them two hardhats with miner’s lights on them, and additional battery packs in case their lights went dead deep in the mine. And he signed out the key and told them to be careful.
         Mark told him they’d return the key within a few hours.
         Mark and Hannah drove south from San Angelo to the small city of Eden, then turned west onto highway 83. Another 61 miles, then a mile north on an unmarked two lane road, and they pulled up to the south end of a 300-foot tall mountain.
         The south face of the mountain had been blasted away to create a smooth wall a hundred feet high. On the face of the wall was a