Seize the Night

their wives—and then gone off to bloody deaths in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, and lesser skirmishes. The lights still dangle from rafter to rafter, unplugged and sheathed in dust, and often it seems that if you squint your eyes just slightly on moonlit nights like this, you can see the ghosts of martyrs to democracy dancing with the spirits of their widows.
    As I strode through the tall grass, past the community swimming pool, where the chain-link fence sagged around the entire perimeter and was completely broken down in a few spots, I increased my pace, not solely because I was anxious to get to the movie house. Nothing has happened here to make me fearful of the place, but instinct tells me not to linger near this concrete-walled swamp. The pool is nearly two hundred feet long and eighty feet wide, with a lifeguard platform in the center.
    Currently, it was two-thirds full of collected rain. The black water would be black in daylight, too, because it was thickened with rotting oak leaves and other debris. In this fetid sludge, even the moon lost its silver purity, leaving a distorted, bile-yellow reflection like the face of a goblin in a dream.
    Although I remained at a distance, I could smell the reeking slough.
    The stench wasn't as bad as that in the bungalow kitchen, but it was pretty close.
    Worse than the odor was the aura of the pool, which could not be perceived by the usual five senses but which was readily apparent to an indescribable sixth. No, my overactive imagination wasn't overacting.
    This is, at all times, an undeniably real quality of the pool, a subtle but cold squirming energy from which your mind shrinks, an evil mojo that slithers across the surface of your soul with all the tactility of a ball of worms writhing in your hand.
    I thought I heard a splash, something breaking the surface of the sludge, followed by an oily churning, as if a swimmer were doing laps.
    I assumed these noises were the products of my imagination, but nevertheless, as the swimmer stroked closer to my end of the pool, I broke into a run.
    Beyond the park lies Commissary Way, along the north side of which stand the enterprises and institutions that, in addition to those in Moonlight Bay, once served Wyvern's thirty-six thousand active-duty personnel and thirteen thousand of their dependents. The commissary and the movie theater anchor opposite ends of the long street. Between them are a barbershop, a dry cleaner, a florist, a bakery, a bank, the enlisted men's club, the officers' club, a library, a game arcade, a kindergarten, an elementary school, a fitness center, and additional shops all empty, their painted signs faded and weathered.
    These one- and two-story buildings are plain but, precisely because of their simplicity, pleasing to the eye, white clapboard, painted concrete blocks, stucco. The utilitarian nature of military construction combined with Depression-era frugality—which guided every project in 1939, when the base was commissioned—could have resulted in an ugly industrial look.
    But the army architects and construction crews had made an effort to create buildings with some grace, relying on only such fundamentals as harmonious lines and angles, rhythmic window placement, and varying but complementary roof lines.
    The movie theater is as humble as the other buildings, and its marquee rests flat against the front wall, above the entrance. I don't know what film last played here or the names of the actors who appeared in it.
    Only three black plastic letters remain in the tracks where titles and cast were announced, forming a single word, WHO.
    In spite of the absence of concluding punctuation, I read this enigmatic message as a desperate question referring to the genetic terror spawned in hidden laboratories somewhere on these grounds. Who am I? Who are you? Who are we becoming? Who did this to us? Who can save us?
    Who? Who?
    Bobby's black Jeep was parked in front of the theater. The vinyl roof and walls were not attached to the frame and roll bars, so the vehicle was open to the night.
    As I approached the Jeep, the moon sank behind the clouds in the west, so close to the horizon now that it was unlikely to reappear, but even from a block away, I could clearly see Bobby sitting behind the steering wheel.
    We are the same height and weight. Although my hair is blond and his is dark brown, although my eyes are pale blue and his are so raven black they have blue highlights, we can pass for