and the dry air was warmer than the humid murk along the coast; though
the moon had set, the stars were bright, and the night was ideal for
sightseeing. To thoroughly explore even this one land in the theme
park that is Wyvern, however, You need to devote a week to the task.
I was not aware of being watched. After what I’d learned in the past
few hours, I knew that I must have been monitored at least
intermittently on my previous visits.
Beyond the borders of Dead Town lie numerous barracks and other
buildings. A once-fine commissary, a barber shop, a dry cleaner, a
florist, a bakery, a bank: their signs peeling and caked with dust. A
day-care center. High-school-age military brats attended classes in
Moonlight Bay; but there are a kindergarten and an elementary school
here. In the base library, the cobwebbed shelves are stripped of books
except for one overlooked copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Dental and
medical clinics. A movie theater with nothing on its flat marquee
except a single enigmatic word: wHo. A bowling alley. An Olympic-size
pool now drained and cracked and blown full of debris. A fitness
center. In the rows of stables, which no longer shelter horses, the
unlatched stall doors swing with an ominous chorus of rasping and
creaking each time the wind stiffens. The softball field is choked
with weeds, and the rotting carcass of a mountain lion that lay for
more than a year in the batter’s cage is at last only a skeleton.
I was not interested in any of these destinations, either. I cycled
past them to the hangarlike building that stands over the warren of
subterranean chambers in which I found the Mystery Train cap last
autumn.
Clipped to the back rack of my bicycle is a police flashlight with a
switch that allows the beam to be adjusted to three degrees of
brightness. I parked at the hangar and unsnapped the flashlight from
the rack.
Orson finds Fort Wyvern alternately frightening and fascinating, but
regardless of his reaction on any particular night, he stays at my
side, uncomplaining. This time, he was clearly spooked, but he didn’t
hesitate or whine.
The smaller man-size door in one of the larger hangar doors was
unlocked. Switching on the flashlight, I went inside with Orson at my
heels.
This hangar isn’t adjacent to the airfield, and it’s unlikely that
aircraft were stored or serviced here. Overhead are the tracks on
which a mobile crane, now gone, once moved from end to end of the
structure.
judging by the sheer mass and complexity of the steel supports for
these elaborate rails, the crane lifted objects of great weight. Steel
bracing plates, still bolted to the concrete, once must have been
surmounted by substantial machinery. Elsewhere, curiously shaped wells
in the floor, now empty, appear to have housed hydraulic mechanisms of
unknowable purpose.
In the passing beam of my flashlight, geometric patterns of shadow and
light leaped off the crane tracks. Like the ideograms of an unknown
language, they stenciled the walls and the Quonsetcurve of the ceiling,
revealing that half the panes the high clerestory windows were
broken.
Unnervin ly, the impression wasn’t of a vacated machine shop or
maintenance center, but of an abandoned church. The oil and chemical
stains on the floor gave forth an incenselike aroma. The penetrating
cold was not solely a physical sensation but affected the spirit as
well, as if this were a deconsecrated place.
A vestibule in one corner of the hangar houses a set of stairs and a
large elevator shaft from which the lift mechanism and the cab have
been removed. I can’t be sure, but judging from the aftermath left by
those who had gutted the building, access to the vestibule once must
have been through another chamber; and I suspect that the existence of
the stairs and elevator were kept secret from most of the personnel who
had worked in the hangar or who’d had occasion to pass through it.
A formidable steel frame and threshold remain at the top of the
stairwell, but the door is gone. With the flashlight beam, I chased
spiders and pill bugs from the steps and led Orson downward through a