“Why don’t you come up and let me open the base?” Marty’s voice echoed back. “I need Bern to hold my video camera, though, for my father’s tape.”
“Lower the bucket.” Mercer would have loved the honor to be the first one in Camp Decade, but it was right that Marty had the privilege. His father had been stationed here and he was paying the bills.
Snow blew in a constant sheet in the narrow ribbon of sky above the trench, howling just above the Sno-Cat. Yet when Mercer got out of the empty barrel they used as an elevator, the cut protected him from the shrieking fury. Ira handed him a silver flask, still warm from where it had rested against his body. Mercer took a pull of the Scotch, gasping at its smooth burn.
“Good job down there,” Ira said.
“Thanks.” Mercer took one more snort before returning the liquor to Ira. “Marty should be able to use the chain saw to cut through the ice in ten, fifteen minutes.”
The whine of the saw was amplified as it reverberated up the shaft, sending shivers down Mercer’s spine as its blade chewed into the ice. It was worse than a dentist’s drill. When the chain saw finally cut off, Ira hollered down, “Can you open the door?”
“Yeah, just a second. I’m recording the sign on it.”
“What’s it say?” Mercer asked.
“ ‘Camp Decade, United States Air Force.’ Below it some joker hand-painted ‘Give up hope all ye who enter here.’ Once we get the outer door open, you guys can come on down.”
“Just say the word.”
Mercer could hear Marty talking below him and guessed he was saying something he had prepared for the video, some words for his father. A minute later, he heard a screech of protest, a sound of metal tearing against metal.
“We’re in!” Marty whooped. “It’s a vestibule of some kind. There’s another set of doors about ten feet in front of us. The walls all look good. Just a little buckling.”
“How about the floors?”
“They’re a little uneven and there’s ice in places, but they look good. None of the wood has rotted.”
“Can we come down?” Ira demanded.
“Yeah, Bern’s on his way back up. Don’t forget the flashlights.”
Once Bern Hoffmann reached the surface, Mercer used the crane’s remote controls to lower himself and Ira back down the pipe. Light spilling down the shaft barely reached the vestibule’s far doors, so they each turned on the four-cell Maglites.
Coat pegs lined both walls of the passage and below them grates had been placed to help melted snow drain off boots. This had been a staging area for the crew before venturing onto the glacier. A sign on the wall warned the men to make sure their socks were dry before stepping outside. Beyond the far door would be the camp proper.
“Go ahead, Marty,” Ira prompted, his breath clouding in front of his mouth. “Let’s do it.”
“Just a second.” Bishop faced his crew, his Minicam shut off. “You know, it’s funny. I didn’t want to come here at all. I thought my dad was being a pain in the ass for asking me. But now that we’re here, about to enter the base, I’m really glad I did this.” His voice was thick with emotion. “I want to thank all of you for doing this with me. Ira, I know you’re getting paid for this, but you’ve already done more than your share. And, Mercer,” he said with a smile, “without you we’d still be on the surface trying to dig our way down here with snow shovels.”
The second door opened as if it had been oiled just the day before. Their flashlights cut puny slashes through the gloom. Marty had a powerful lamp attached to his camera but there was still more shadow than light. The thin crust of ice on the floor was frozen condensation, the icy legacy of the men who had breathed here all those decades ago. It was so silent, they could hear every footfall they made.
Each of them was subdued by what they were doing, and their chills were not entirely caused by the freezing temperature. It was eerie inside the base. Everything felt muted, as though it was happening at a slower pace than reality. Time had forgotten Camp Decade, and yet they half expected to hear voices or see someone approach from the shadows and demand to know what they were doing here. It was a place for ghosts.
Beyond the entrance lay a short hall that branched at a T-juncture. The camp’s entrance had been in the center of the administration area. To the left would be the garage, storage, and reactor room. To the right would be the dorms and laboratories. Without the need to take a vote, the party turned right. The walls were painted plywood backed with a layer of insulation and corrugated metal. In the few places where they had been torn by ice, piles of snow had accumulated on the floor. There were also a few areas where the roof had given way slightly, allowing ice and snow to form solid mounds that nearly blocked the hallway. Many of the blockages were small and could be easily stepped over, but one nearly choked the entire hallway, forcing the men to clamber over on their bellies.
They stopped at each of the doors they came across and flashed their lights around the offices they found. “Time warp,” Ira commented once. The Air Force had left a lot of equipment behind like old manual typewriters, a mechanical mimeograph machine, and furniture that dated to World War II.
“My dad told me it was cheaper for them to leave this stuff here than fly it back to the States. All they took was their personal effects, the reactor, and the five Sno-Cats kept in the garage,” Marty clarified.
“You’re sure about the reactor?” Ira asked, half joking.
“Of course,” Mercer said sarcastically. “This is the government we’re talking about.”
They reached the juncture that bisected one leg of the base. Turning left, Marty led the trio toward the dormitories. There were eight of them on each side of a central hallway; each was an identical room about thirty feet by thirty feet with rows of matching bunk beds. The soldiers who were stationed here had taken their footlockers but there were still a great many personal articles left behind. Near a few of the beds were pinups of women who today would be considered plump and whose bathing suits showed less skin than the average cocktail dress.
The men passed through a mess hall and another space that had been the enlisted men’s rec room, which included several pool tables and card tables. Beyond the rec room, the door at the end of the hallway ended in a tiled bathroom large enough to provide for the needs of a few hundred men.
“The officers must have been stationed in another part of the base.” Ira stated the obvious.
“That’s right,” Marty said, chiding himself with a shake of his head. “We passed a door where we turned onto this corridor. That’s where they had their quarters. My father lived in room twelve.”
Mentally, Mercer adjusted his map of the base. Where the center of the letter H met the right leg, there would be an additional line extending outward.
Backtracking, Marty rushed to the first juncture. “Check it out.” He pointed to the sign on a door they had passed but ignored. “Officers Only.” He led them down the corridor, reading numbers off the doors on each side as he went.
Mercer lagged behind. He understood that Marty wanted to see the room his father had occupied, but it went against his instinct to rush headlong. He continuously trained his light on the ceiling and walls to make sure they were solid and took a moment to peer into any of the open rooms they came across. The officers’ rooms were luxurious compared to the enlisted men’s dorms, but still they were small. Each had a single bed, a desk, and a freestanding closet. As Marty paused in front of room twelve to address the camera for posterity, Mercer craned his head into room ten.