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Ahead, shimmering like a mirage, was a low building that reminded Sam of the kind of “temporary” building schools sometimes resorted to. There were few windows and these showed the horizontal slats of ancient blinds. Air-conditioning units poked out of the walls in several places.
In a parking area there were more sand-colored camouflaged trucks. A couple of civilian cars. All neatly squared away between white lines.
A tall antenna stabbed at the sky. And beyond the building a tumbled mess of huge rust- and ochre- and dust-colored blocks.
“Hey, that’s a train!” Jack said.
Sam checked the map. Only now did he notice the cross-hatched line indicating a railroad track. He hadn’t known what it was before.
Sam wished he’d thought to bring binoculars. There was something off about the building. It was too isolated. Although, Sam reminded himself, there might be a whole bunch of buildings just beyond the FAYZ wall. So maybe this one building was just at the edge of a big compound.
But it didn’t feel that way. It felt like this place was deliberately far from anything else. He doubted it would even be noticeable from a satellite photo. Everything except the few cars were painted the same ochre color as the surrounding emptiness.
“Let’s check the building first.”
The door was unlocked. Sam opened it cautiously. Dirt and dust had filtered onto the polished linoleum floor. A main room, two hallways leading away, and two private offices behind glass partitions. There were half a dozen gray-painted metal desks in the main room and old-style rolling office chairs, some with mismatched cushions. The computers on the desks were blank. Lights off. Air-conditioning obviously off, too; the room was stifling.
Sam glanced at framed photos on a desk: someone’s family, two kids, a wife, and either a mother or a grandmother. He spotted a stress ball on another desk. There were official-looking binders and racks of ancient floppy disks.
Everything was dusty. Flowers in a tiny vase were just sticks. Papers had flowed from desks onto the floor.
It was eerie. But they had all seen plenty of eerie: abandoned cars, empty homes, empty businesses.
One thing they had not seen in a very long time: a jar of Nutella was open on one desk, lid nowhere to be seen, and a spoon standing inside.
The three of them leaped as one.
“There’s some left!” Jack cried with the kind of pure joy that should have signaled the discovery of something far more important.
Sam and Dekka both grinned. It was a large jar, and it was at least half full.
Jack lifted the spoon. The Nutella dripped languidly.
Jack closed his eyes and stuck the spoon in his mouth. Without a word he handed the spoon to Dekka.
It was like a religious ritual, like communion. The three of them taking spoonfuls, one after the other, each silent, each awed by the wonder of intense flavor, of sweetness after so much fish and cabbage.
“It’s been, like, how long?” Dekka asked. “It’s sweet.”
“Sweet and creamy and chocolaty,” Jack said dreamily.
“Why is it still creamy?” Sam asked.
Jack had the spoon. He froze. “Why is it still creamy?” he echoed.
“This jar had to have been opened months ago, back before FAYZ fall,” Sam said. “It would be all dried out. All crusty and stiff.”
“I’d still eat it,” Dekka said defiantly.
“This wasn’t opened months ago. This hasn’t been open for even a few days,” Sam said. He put the jar down. “There’s someone here.”
Jack had started reading some of the papers strewn carelessly about. “This was a research station.”
Dekka was tense, looking around for intruders, enemies. “Research on what? Weapons? Aliens?”
“‘Project Cassandra,’” Jack read. “That’s the header on most of the memos and stuff. I wish I could get into these computers.”
“Someone is here,” Sam said, sticking to the most important fact. “Someone who can unscrew a jar of Nutella and eat it with a spoon. Which makes it not a coyote. There’s a person here.”
