Desperate By Dusk

by Alexander Salkin

  He didn’t bother with the former cheerleaders anymore. A lot of his jock buddies he lost contact with. For all pretensive purposes, he seemed happy enough to seek out simpler days, away from that otherwise satisfying prior phase of his life. The haunted weekend outings, in particular, were among some of the glue that got him involved in hanging out again on a more consistent basis. That and, well, he liked showing off whatever ride he had at a given time. Fortunately, this meant Ramone was also more than happy to drive everywhere. He was born to be behind the steering wheel, Simon thought.

  Throwing his camouflage print hooded coat on and sustaining one impatient honk of a Ford Fairlane later, Simon hustled outside and hopped in the passenger side of Ramone’s classic car. The storm had not abated at all. Again, it was a grand thing that Ramone was willing to drive them all around. Jessie and Simon would be hard pressed to know anyone better for the task.

  The inside of the car had a full blast of engine heat pumping through the dashboard's vents, as well as the heavy metal that Ramone so frequently played. Simon, still groggy, guessed it to be Megadeth. Ramone, with his typical black leather jacket and matching denim jeans grinned coolly at Simon from the driver’s side. Jessie sat in the backseat by some dirty automotive equipment, going over crinkled lined paper notes with an LED pocket light.

  "Thought you’d never get out here, man," Ramone teased. "We ready for coffee now?"

  In the back seat, Jessie boredly assented with a wave of his stubby hand. Simon nodded wearily, not able to do much more than murmur without some java. The wet cold was eating away at him.

  The Fairlane backed out of Simon’s lot and squealed with a kick of Dresden Port mud from the back tires. "Woo!" Ramone exclaimed for the sheer hell of it. How was he always this energetic? "So Professor," he said back to Jessie. "What’s the Scooby gang going to do tonight?" The Professor. Jessie usually offered him a sneer when referred to like that. This time was no different.

  Complete in contrast to Ramone, Jessie was neither attractive nor athletic. He was rather stoutly set with a Buddha belly, walked with a limp from some childhood injury to his right leg, and had the shape of face that could unfortunately be likened to an autumn squash with neatly cropped brown hair. He was also the shortest in stature amongst the three. Jessie moved into the area during their freshmen year and it was Simon, perhaps only with his relatively unimposing quiet disposition, that managed to get him to associate with another human soul. For his own sake, Jessie was not social. At all. Even Simon could barely ever get the guy to come out of his little burrow except for these weekend runs, for which Jessie was the strategist.

  He was a private person living in a basement apartment along the main drag of Dresden Port's less boondockish interior. They’d only been in his basement a few times but it looked more like some cluttered workshop. There were tools of all sorts of vocations scattered around. A thick wooden work bench. An old fashioned radio collection on a shelf. Racks of VCR tapes. And dust everywhere. If Simon was negligent about clearing the old grout and rust stains from his bathroom sink, Jessie made him seem immaculate and tidy by comparison. He didn’t care to have guests over, usually.

  Jessie worked for Mister Chang’s Fix-It Shop downtown most hours out of the day and he probably took his work home with him, as he conveniently rented the apartment beneath the store. Jeffery Chang, a long time benevolent face in Dresden Port, sponsored a technology fair at Dresden High one year and when Jessie submitted a working model clock composed of old fashioned dental equipment he got at a yard sale, Mr. Chang took an instant liking to the boy. Jessie was hired that very summer and the rest was history. Unfortunately, Mr. Chang took increasingly ill in recent years, so he wound up entrusting the entire gadget and appliance repair shop to Jessie. It was a perfect match. Jessie was not the friendliest person, but he was studious, skilled, and had a quiet passion to him that Simon admired. Ramone was more likely to bust his chops, however.

  "I wish you wouldn’t call us the Scooby Gang," Jessie sighed, finding the appellation to be more than a little cliché. "Besides, I’ve never seen you wearing your ascot, FRED." Ramone chuckled, almost impervious to taking any personal insult from such things. Simon wondered idly which one of the Scooby group he was supposed to be. Jessie was probably Velma.

  "ANYWAY. Tonight, we’re going to hit up the old Green Military base. I drove by the other day and saw a lifted gap in the southern fence line by a watchtower." Simon suddenly felt more awake. Even Ramone settled down after hearing about what Jessie organized for tonight’s outing.

  The Green Military was an initiative set up several years ago by former President Carver to keep an actual homeland force fully present for national disasters, whereas all the recent overseas wars in the Middle East over the last decade or so largely removed the National Guard from this purpose. When there was no emergency to be had, the Green Military functioned to beautify the landscape by planting trees, similar to Teddy Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. Hence the name, Green Military. People joked about them as an army of hippies in the beginning but the GM provided many jobs across the States. People were quicker to defend their own territory than exchange bullets on someone else's soil or sand, too. However, with defense cutbacks being as they were, some bases such as Dresden Port’s had gone inactive or were otherwise abandoned.

  "Little dangerous, don’t you think?" Ramone said. "There’s probably some security still out there. I thought we were going to check out the old mill tonight? You know? Ghosts don’t arrest people for trespassing."

  "We were going to do the old mill. Until I read online that there’s been some word of clandestine meetings taking place out here at the base. People in black Lincolns in the middle of the night. Briefcases being exchanged. That sort of thing."

  They pulled up at Shuck’s 24-Hour Convenience for coffee as they continued their conversation. There was nothing special about the place. Two sleepy men of Indian descent at the counter spoke to themselves indecipherably while they waited for the boys to get their coffee fix.

  "So... we’re checking out mobsters?" Simon asked Jessie, finally starting to wake up at the smell of hot coffee in a waxy paper cup, with some unnecessary clumped ground cinnamon. "Why would they meet in an old military base?"

  "I don’t know that they are mobsters. Could be something darker. Like Men In Black. As for why? Despite what Ra thinks, the place is pretty damn empty. I’m confident on this." Jessie said, pouring his sugar by the seconds instead of scoops. He stopped at five this time.

  "More conspiracy stuff, eh?" Ramone mumbled, grabbing a sugary but foul tasting energy drink along with the coffee. "Whatever the case, we’ll have to park off the road. A vintage light blue Fairlane isn’t exactly inconspicuous."

  "Mm-hmm. Mr. Peterson put a gun to your head and demanded you take his prized Ford on a trip to an abandoned mill. You definitely didn't have a choice in the matter, I'm sure. But so what? Tonight is the same as its always been. Why are you being such a wet blanket all of the sudden?" Jessie questioned of Ramone with some sarcasm, chased with low key irritation. "Usually, Simon’s the one riding the brakes."

  "Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for it. But I am driving in Old Man Peterson’s set of wheels tonight. If it gets towed, he’s going to have my ass. He loves this car." Ahh, another circular argument that didn't need to exist, reflected their quieter third friend.

  Simon grinned to himself as he plunked down a scrabble of change for some black coffee in a white cup. Those two were like an old married couple, he thought. Each made arguments with the other destined for nowhere. One liked to provoke a reaction while the other one would sling verbal acid almost indiscriminately.

  CHAPTER 2

  A good twenty five minutes later, as they were passing through the northern back fields of Dresden Port, Ramone parked the Fairlane off the road by a scraggly copse of trees that were a frequent sight, breaking up the even more desolate look of the place. "Game time, gentlemen," Ramone announc
ed with his usual churlish grin. He packed along a flashlight and an engraved hip flask. Jessie had the same plus a tape recorder, but minus the concealed container of aged scotch. Simon ambivalently carried his coffee and continued wearing his shades as he more or less always did, despite the unlit night and rain. All three of them had similarly dim shaded raincoats over their coats and jackets.

  Following Jessie’s lead, the trio discreetly walked along the southern fence line of the old base. Although they had flashlights, the idea was to not use them until absolutely necessary, or at least when it seemed safe. Nothing said obvious like flashlights in a non-trespassing area at night, after all. In the meantime, they would make the best they could of the smoky darkness. Still, not one of them wanted to be the first to ask "Why, again, are we doing this tonight of all nights?"

  "There. Right there!" Jessie exclaimed while stifling his voice, pointing out a lifted section of metal fence line. It wasn’t clear how it got that way. Maybe a sizable animal forced its way through by low crawling or it just wasn’t secured right. Or perhaps it was simply neglected and nature was taking due course with the static piece of security. Either way, the three ducked inside the old military base with little effort. No wall or defense was perfect without eternal vigilance.

  They stuck together, keeping their voices low and the idle chatter non-existent. Rather than run off on impulse to look over every detail like a crow finding something shiny, it made more sense to do things as a group. It was a good precaution. At many sites like these, it wasn’t unheard of for some of Dresden Port‘s less than friendly homeless people to dwell. The town was already filled with odd cases, but that was another story entirely.

  Inside the suggestion that was the fencing surrounding the base, they took brief cover underneath a guard’s perimeter watchtower to get their bearings. The old rotting wooden supports made the structure look ready to fall in the next gentle breeze, let alone by the gusts of a storm. It swayed and bowed with each surge of rain.

  "The rain’s going to eff this thing up pretty good, but even if someone happened to be around here tonight, they’re not likely to see us," Jessie said, self-censoring. "All the more reason I had us spring for these grey raincoats. Tonight, we’ll be like the ghosts out here."

  "Gold star for you, Jess," Ramone cooed. "So, you want to see if people in black suits and cars are doing shady business out here? We’re not that much more likely to see them either, especially if their lights are off."

  "And they probably would be. Why advertise? No, I don’t think they’ll just be standing around in the rain for the hell of it. Frankly, I don’t think they will be here tonight- or at least, not right now. I want to check for tire tracks before the rain destroys them, though. Figure out if there’s some specific entrance they’re coming in or-"

  "Or if those rumors you read about on your crackpot conspiracy sites are full of B.S. for the millionth time?" Ramone stated flatly. It would not have been the first time they went off on a wild goose chase following an anonymous paranoid delusional’s suspicion. Proof was usually a shaky concept with the forums Jessie tended to follow.

  Jessie stifled the need to roll his eyes. "Yes, that. Look, it’s entirely possible we won’t even be able to find good tracks if there even are any. Or that they mean anything other than the town deputies did a patrol through here. But I’m telling you, there’s no Green Military personnel stationed here. And if we can’t see any tire tracks worth a damn at this point, then we check the stoops to every building. There should be around thirty of ‘em at the most. It’s not the biggest GM base. All the personnel quarters should have an overhanging porch roof. Someone walks into one of them, they’d leave muddy foot prints that wouldn’t get washed out in the rain."

  "Hang on. Couldn’t that just mean those same theoretical deputies from the earlier example showed up to check an alarm or something?" Ramone asked.

  "Probably, if Feds and State actually worked together like good little boys. But they don’t. The GM base is still Federal property. If Dresden Port is like Mayberry, then Barney Fife might be able to patrol it once in a while, but he sure is hell isn’t allowed too far inside without their clearance. They don’t trust him to do anything."

  "That... doesn’t make much sense," Ramone said with a furrow of his brow.

  "Good. You’re starting to see the bigger picture," dryly chuckled Jessie. "Want to get started here, champ? Let’s start by checking the gates. If my source is credible, there are three gated entrances."

  They followed Jessie since he seemed to have a mental imprint of the area, probably having studied some landscaping scheme he dug out from using a public satellite map program. None of them made so much as a sound beyond the sloshing of boots in the notoriously muddy (and now more so) Dresden Port soil. The air was cold, dank, and miserable. Good for sitting on a hooded porch reading a book with one’s coffee, perhaps. Simon was glad he had the latter item still in hand.

  The first gate revealed nothing of interest, let alone any use. The ground was just a muddy pool from years' worth of overuse when the base was running full time. Nothing would ever grow there from the amount of leaked fluids of vehicles past.

  The second gate seemed a little more worthy of debate. Tracks, but nothing too recent. At least as much as the storm would allow one to determine. Dug tire lines in the ground showed someone did go through here but the tracks wound up breaking off rather quickly, leading to nothing too distinctive.

  It was the third gate that commanded the evening. Not only was it open, unlike the others, but Simon happened to notice the particularly fresh tire tracks leading further inside the base itself. There were several of them and they didn't double back in this direction. Maybe they went through the last gate? Those were more unclear, however. What’s more, the chains and lock were draped on it to make it seem as though it were still genuinely shut, when even a modest push would knock them off. They stood there, reflecting on this.

  "I’ll state the obvious. Deputy?" Ramone asked with uncertainty.

  Jessie rubbed his chin, tilting his head. "No... no, I don’t think so. Why would they be out here right now, in the middle of the night? During a rainstorm. And why try to disguise the fact the lock is opened? Maybe someone looking to leave in a hurry, just in case? Besides, we’re looking at about three cars here from what I can tell. There’s not but two deputies in all of the DPPD, pretty sure. The Chief isn't likely to run out here at this hour either. It looks like we’re not alone here," Jessie ascertained. "May as well find out what’s going on here. Let’s follow the tracks in."

  Simon had been tagging along this entire time largely on autopilot, partially from the damp cold and the general exhaustion of the day. Tonight’s trip had been a bit dull outside the initial proposition of scoping out something as high profile as an abandoned military base, but maybe that was about to change. He felt a strange prickling rising from the hairs of his back and neck. It was something he recalled in under a handful of previous encounters, when he felt certain things were not quite right. He wasn't a self-proclaimed precognitive, however, so he kept it to himself, knowing it could be his nerves.

  Still, those moments weren’t something he could easily put to words. Sure, there was that first time when they visited an eighteenth century graveyard in the middle of the night, but he was new to the whole ghost hunting activity then. They didn’t even find anything on that outing but their own racing pulses. After which, that sensation would only arise when he’d run into something more outlandish. Something he couldn’t explain or wasn’t quite ready for. Things that made him feel alive by the wonderment of what they truly were or could be. That delicious taste of the unknown being close at hand that never quite got forgotten- as if an old painless scar telling stories when gazed upon.

  Simon wasn’t sure why he felt it now. Nothing had happened yet. Was it just hopeful anticipation after a lengthy series of less than engaging outings? Or perhaps it was just the coffee kicking in? In either event, he
felt particularly focused.

  The boys followed the tire hewn path in the mud past the many rows of barracks, when Jessie raised his hand silently. They weren't organized to military discipline, but they knew this meant to pause in place. Not but twenty yards before them, sitting silently, and illuminated as an outline only by the flicker of rain dancing off the metal shell... a jet black Ford Lincoln. Additionally, they soon noticed there were two more not much further away from it. None of them possessed license plates.

  They stood without sound or motion upon witnessing that Jessie’s conspiracy rumors may very well have been founded. Whoever mentioned this one might not have been off his meds, Simon thought. But why? Who was here in the middle of the night with a set of three black Lincolns?

  "Let’s approach this very quietly. If someone sees us, just run for it back to the car," Jessie whispered. "No telling who’s here."