The gun complex—complete with its natural gas cracker (a sort of mini-refinery), its cooling tower, its tank farm, and its plant for loading and prepping the huge sulfur-filled bullets—was at one end of the valley. "Bunkhouse," a miniature town, was at the other end. Between was a no-man’s-land, mostly open space, perhaps amounting to a square kilometer of broken ground. It seemed to be used for any purposes that didn’t fit neatly into one end or the other. There was a track around its perimeter scoured by ATVs. Piles of coal that had been heaped up a hundred years ago and scantly colonized by weeds and cactus. A makeshift shooting range, with bullet-ridden pieces of junk strewn along the base of a slope. Huddles of heavy equipment parked out in the open. And a picnic area consisting of a few aluminum tables sheltered from the sun’s fury by canopies and linked to Bunkhouse by a faint trail in the dirt. Though even in dim light you’d be able to follow it just by using bright red BEWARE OF RATTLESNAKES signs as a bread crumb trail. Canopies and picnic tables alike were lashed to massive concrete blocks or bolted directly to the stony ground.