Kenny down shifted the big truck to bring it to a stop. He pulled ahead slowly into line behind a big Kenworth tractor pulling a bunker trailer. He would have to wait his turn to get into the plant and it looked like he was along way from the security gate. Every truck in front of him was fully loaded with shell corn that would eventually be turned into road grade ethanol. Kenny had always thought that it was a terrible waste to turn good shell corn into fuel, his father on the other had always sold there corn to the highest bidder. The plant was close to the farm so if they payed the price they got the corn.
As Kenny waited and watched the progress of the trucks getting through the gate, he knew the drill. Fill out the paper work first and then drive around back and get in line to dump your load in the grain elevator. While he waited to unload in back he would simply walk away, or that was the plan.This time however, before the guard had gotten to him with the forms he could see something was wrong. It seemed like a lot of movement inside of the gates, and it looked like some smoke rising from the back of the plant. One of the guys Kenny recognized as security came running out of the guard shack yelling at each driver in turn ahead of Kenny. When he got close to Kenny he yelled up into the truck, “you got to get turned around and get the hell out of here, we have a situation in the plant, they just announced for everyone to evacuate.”
Kenny slammed the truck into gear hard and released the clutch almost too quickly. The big truck shuddered, lurched, and almost killing the engine but then started to move. He turned the wheel hard to the left after the truck started to roll more freely, he did not want to snuff the engine, the truck was loaded heavy. Within a minute he was slowly making his way west behind many other loaded trucks on the feeder road away from the ethanol plant.
He looked into his side mirror to see a giant fireball billowing above the facility. Lately he had been studying about the Oklahoma City bombing back in 1995 and wondered if the people there when it happened felt the way he does. Kenny thought what the hell am I going to do now, going to prison for a crime I committed was one thing but going to jail for a conspiracy when an accident had done same thing only minutes earlier was not in my plans. What to do with a full semi-trailer of explosives.