Seize the Night

broken if she had to suffer this second and even more terrible loss so soon after the first.
    Although she and I had long ago ceased to be lovers, I still loved her as a friend. I prayed that I'd be able to bring her son back to her, smiling and unharmed, and see the anguish vanish from her face.
    Orson's whine was filled with worry. He was quivering, eager to give pursuit.
    After tucking the small flashlight under my belt once more, I peeled up the flap of fence. A soft twang of protest sang through the steel links.
    I promised, “Frankfurters for the brave of heart,” and Orson shot through the gap.

3
    As I followed the dog into the forbidden zone, the ragged edge of one of the cut fence links snared my cap and pulled it from my head. I snatched it off the ground, dusted it against my jeans, and put it on again.
    This navy-blue, billed cap has been in my possession about eight months.
    I found it in a strange concrete chamber, three stories underground, deep in the abandoned warrens of Fort Wyvern.
    Above the visor, embroidered in red, were the words Mystery Train . I had no idea to whom the cap once belonged, and I didn't know the meaning of the ruby-red needlework.
    This simple headgear had little intrinsic value, but of all my material possessions, it was in some ways the most precious. I had no proof that it was related to my mother's work as a scientist, to any project of which she was a part—at Fort Wyvern or elsewhere—but I remained convinced that it was. Though I already knew some of Wyvern's terrible secrets, I also believed that if I were able to discover the meaning of the embroidered words, more astonishing truths would be revealed.
    I had vested a lot of faith in this cap. When I wasn't wearing it, I kept it close, because it reminded me of my mother and, therefore, comforted me.
    Except for the cleared area immediately beyond the breach in the chain-link, driftwood and tumbleweed and trash were piled against the sifting fence. Otherwise, the bed of the Santa Rosita was as well made on the Wyvern side as it was on the other.
    Again the only footprints were those of the kidnapper. He had resumed carrying the boy from this point.
    Orson raced along the trail, and I ran close behind him. Soon we came to another access road that sloped up the north wall of the river, and Orson ascended without hesitation.
    I was breathing harder than the dog when I reached the top of the levee, even though, in canine years, fur face was pretty much my age.
    How fortunate I've been to live long enough to recognize the subtle but undeniable fading of my youthful stamina and spryness. To hell with those poets who celebrate the beauty and the purity of dying young, all powers intact. In spite of xeroderma pigmentosum, I'd be grateful to survive to relish the sweet decrepitude of my eightieth year, or even the delicious weakness of one whose birthday cake is ablaze with a hundred dangerous candles. We are the most alive and the closest to the meaning of our existence when we are most vulnerable, when experience has humbled us and has cured the arrogance which, like a form of deafness, prevents us from hearing the lessons that this world teaches.
    As the moon hid its face behind a veil of clouds, I looked both directions along the north bank of the Santa Rosita. Jimmy and his abductor were not in sight.
    Nor did I see a hunched gargoyle moving on the riverbed below or along either side of the channel. Whatever it had been, the figure from the highway embankment was not interested in me.
    Without hesitation, Orson trotted toward a group of massive warehouses fifty yards from the levee. These dark structures appeared mysterious in spite of their mundane purpose and in spite of the fact that I was somewhat familiar with them.
    Although enormous, these are not the only warehouses on the base, and although they would cover a few square blocks in any city, they represent an insignificant percentage of the buildings within these fenced grounds. At its peak of activity, Fort Wyvern was staffed by 36,400 active duty personnel. Nearly thirteen thousand dependents and more than four thousand civilian personnel were also associated with the facility. On-base housing alone consisted of three thousand single-family cottages and bungalows, all of which remain standing though in disrepair.
    In a moment we were among the warehouses, and Orson's nose guided him swiftly through a maze of service ways to the largest structure in the cluster.