Day One/Tuesday AM - The Trainwreck
The clocks of Kenmare, North Dakota silently tick onward to the early hours of Tuesday morning, it is early Spring and a good deal of the earth still lays covered in slowly-melting drifts of snow deposited over the turbulent and frigid winter months.
As the citizens of this little town begin to shake themselves from the embrace of sleep, unbeknownst to them, a train on a southeastern heading has recently departed from the stockyards of Portal, ND, its final destination unknown.
Kenmare’s clocks roll past nine as an ear-splitting screech blasts through the hamlet; the gut-twisting sound of warping steel accompanies a myriad of pops set in quick succession as rivets rend themselves free from their moorings.
Mere moments tick by before the whirl of sirens pierce the deafened silence, those citizens who have left the warmth of their homes to determine the source of the cacophonous noise can make out two faint plumes of white smoke gently billowing skyward as the firefighters blow past, their lights flashing, Lt. James Kurtz follows behind in the department’s car.
