Black Ooze
Sapphire Creek Mine, Littleton, Colorado
The barrel slipped from their grip, crashing to the ground and splitting the metal seal meant to hold the black liquid now seeping out. The two men reeled backward, and the dangerous substance poured from the barrel and into the dirt. Both men hesitated to get anywhere near the black ooze.
Frankie, the shorter of the two men, noticed the liquid had splashed across the barrel and onto the boot of his partner’s stark-white hazmat suit. The darkness of the substance was amplified when contrasted against the bright-white hazmat suit and the fluorescent-yellow barrel. It reminded him of a combination of used motor oil and syrup.
“You idiots!” snapped a third man who jumped from the truck’s cab when he heard the barrel fall. He was the only one not wearing a protective suit, as he hadn’t expected to get anywhere near the barrels or their dangerous contents.
“Sorry, Rocco. These gloves just don’t have much grip to them,” Frankie said, cringing in anticipation that Rocco might hit him again. That’s what Rocco did the last time he and Tiny dropped a barrel, and he still has the bruise to remind him.
Rocco walked up to the two men, and instead of smacking Frankie, he angrily kicked some loose dirt onto the black substance that pooled, trying to cover it up as best he could.
“Just get that last barrel into the mine,” Rocco said, gesturing to the old mine entrance thirty feet away. “We have to get back soon if we’re going to make it into town to meet Jimmy and settle up.”
Frankie and Tiny flipped the barrel so the broken seal was on top, halting the leak. They started rolling the heavy barrel toward the mine entrance, careful not to touch the black ooze now dripping down its side.
“How does Jimmy account for these missing barrels, Rocco?” asked Tiny, the tallest of the three men.
Rocco and Frankie thought it was funny when they started calling him Tiny because he was the furthest thing from small. Tiny was almost seven feet tall and a musclehead who was able to dead-lift 450 pounds easily.
That’s why Frankie knew Rocco would never hit Tiny. It’s also why he was sure he would receive any punishment instead.
“It’s a nice little side hustle for us. The Air Force pays companies like mine a thousand dollars for each barrel that I take to the hazardous waste storage facility. I just need to show the Air Force a receipt to prove how many barrels we dropped off. As luck would have it, my cousin, Jimmy, got the job as receiving manager at the waste facility.
“So here’s the racket—I only deliver seven of the ten barrels to the waste facility, which Jimmy marks in his company ledger. But he makes a fake receipt showing that I delivered and paid for ALL TEN barrels to be stored there. I show that receipt to the Air Force and get reimbursed for all ten. We pocket the money for the difference. I store those extra three barrels in my warehouse until we have a full load to bring up here. You each get a fair share of the money after I pay all of my expenses.”
“This is the easiest three hundred dollars I’ve ever made, I have to admit,” said Frankie. He had decided that the money was worth getting hit upside the head by Rocco on occasion.
“Well, as long as you two keep your mouths shut, we can keep this up forever,” Rocco said gruffly. “There’s plenty more barrels coming from that waste pit and enough space in these old mines to store hundreds of them. We’ll fill this shaft with one more load and then use a stick of dynamite to cover the entrance and move on to another shaft. No one will ever return to these mines since they’ve been dry of gold for a hundred years. And the way I look at it, these mines are just as safe as the storage facility, so what’s the harm? A man’s got to earn a living, right?”
“What’s in these barrels, anyway?” Frankie was almost afraid to ask.
“I don’t know what that black crap is, exactly. I just know a company used to test missiles at the plant during the Cold War, and I can only assume whatever fuels, oils, and other chemicals they were testing got dumped into that sludge pit we’ve been clearing out,” Rocco replied. “The Air Force took it over in the ’50s and now uses the land to test Titan IV launch vehicles. Oddly enough, the Skyline Hunting and Fishing Club now manages some of the land, and the Jefferson County police and local Boy Scouts use some for training. I don’t think they have any idea this black sludge is seeping into the ground right next to them.”
Frankie and Tiny shook their heads as they moved the barrel closer to the mine entrance. They seemed ashamed that their government had the nerve to spoil the earth like that. Ironically, they expressed this disgust while rolling the barrel of toxic liquid into the mine entrance, which would almost certainly leach into the soil and groundwater.
