Chapter Five
Five
Aurelio turned out to be a skinny, small-framed young man with a mouth full of orthodontia gear that kept him from speaking clearly. Or perhaps he was simply shy. Whatever the reason, he didn’t say much.
Blanca and Jenny more than made up for his silence, chatting nonstop as the four of them walked the mile to the abandoned barracks, which were surrounded by a sagging cyclone fence. Large holes cut in the fencing suggested the “off-limits” barracks were frequently breached.
Inside the fenced perimeter were several blocky, two-story buildings that had obviously been abandoned.
Numerous windows had been shattered, the walls sprayed with graffiti, and old metal doors stood wide open.
The grounds were scattered with items that had been dumped—a broken-down, brown La-Z-Boy lounge chair, a rusty camp stove, a puzzle with its pieces spread in all directions, an old car seat—while foam to-go cups and ketchup-smeared fast-food wrappers were blown about by the ocean breeze.
“You come here a lot?” Harper asked.
“All the time,” said Jenny as she led the way through a breach in the fence. “It’s just something to do. We’re kind of far from things, out here on campus. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah, nothing to worry about,” repeated Blanca. “You’ll see.”
The students hadn’t lied: Harper saw no signs warning away trespassers. Of course, the cyclone fence was probably all the signage one needed. A large banner draped between two wooden stilts that had been pounded into the ground read: Future Site of a Philips Seaside Development.
Harper ducked carefully as she followed the students through the opening in the fence.
The concrete-block buildings and aluminum windows were strictly utilitarian, the dirt hard-packed and barren of plant life except for a few mangy shrubs.
Fort Ord did not hold a candle to San Francisco’s elegant Presidio, which she had toured when she first arrived in the Bay Area.
It was hard to imagine what this place must have been like when it was in use: young soldiers rushing this way and that, hurrying to mess hall and training, goofing around in the common room, calling home to loved ones.
“This way,” Aurelio mumbled, heading into one of four identical barrack blocks.
A long corridor was lined with doors, the beige linoleum floor covered with dirt, trash, and more broken furniture.
Chunks of insulation, no doubt asbestos, dangled from holes in the ceiling, and graffiti was everywhere.
Beige curtains circa 1960 still hung in some of the windows, and cheap plywood dressers and armoires slumped against the walls.
Though shards of glass and fallen plaster crunched underfoot, there were no broken beer bottles or crushed cans, no cigarette butts. No signs of life at all, or even partying, apart from an occasional scorch mark from an attempted bonfire.
Harper snapped a few photos with her phone, intrigued despite her misgivings. Some of the graffiti was crude, but other tags were downright philosophical, and one or two quoted local hero John Steinbeck, including one of her favorites from East of Eden:
And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good
“Why hasn’t anything been done with these buildings?” Harper wondered aloud.
“I heard it’s because the army plans to tear it all down soon,” Blanca said. “My mom says they gave up trying to do anything with it. I think there’s a rich developer making plans, though.”
“Like we said,” Jenny added. “Nobody cares.”
“Not even an attempt to salvage anything?” Harper asked. Not that there was much of value to salvage. Someone—the military, or vandals—had already stripped out some wiring and probably whatever copper piping might have been present behind the walls.
The students shrugged.
“Down here,” Aurelio said, leading them farther along the dark corridor. Grime on the windows blocked the bright afternoon sunshine, making it difficult to see clearly to the end of the shadowy hall.
“Be careful where you step,” said Harper, wincing at the sound of her “mom” voice.
“It’s over h—”
“Stop!” yelled a male voice behind them. “Police!”
Jenny, Blanca, and Aurelio took off down the hallway and were soon swallowed up by darkness. Harper was tempted to follow them, but decided the odds were decent she would wind up tripping and breaking an ankle. Besides, she was a grown-ass woman.
She turned to face the music.
Two men in uniforms sported MP armbands, indicating they were military police.
One was young and blond and looked as nervous as Aurelio.
The older fellow had a shiny bald head and was extremely muscular, as if he spent his free time doing CrossFit.
A name tag on his right shoulder indicated he was “Sgt. Emerson.”
He demanded: “What are you doing here, ma’am? This place is off-limits.”
“Sorry,” said Harper. “I was just looking around. Curiosity got the better of me.”
“Name?”
“Harper Grae.”
“Names of your friends?”
“I…” She glanced down the dark corridor. The students were long gone, so Harper decided to be discreet. “…don’t really know. We were sort of…trespassers together, I guess you could say. Although I didn’t see any ‘No Trespassing’ signs.”
Emerson sighed. “We post them, and the kids tear them down. This whole place is scheduled to be demolished soon, so it’s sort of beside the point.”
“One of them was curious about a box with some odd symbols…” Harper trailed off, realizing how ridiculous that sounded. “Probably a Halloween thing.”
“Prob’ly.” His eyes passed over her outfit. “Kinda dressed up to be exploring abandoned buildings, don’t you think, ma’am? You from around here?”
“I’m a professor at Monterey College,” she said, taking a card from her messenger bag and handing it to him.
“Grown woman like you, and a professor to boot, should know better than to trespass in abandoned buildings, don’t you think?”
“I apologize. I am totally in the wrong. Won’t happen again.”
Emerson nodded. “Best see that it doesn’t. Could be dangerous. The kids are young and real nimble, bounce back quickly, if you know what I mean.” Harper got the distinct impression her body did not, in fact, appear to be nimble in any way. “But you could break your neck in here.”
“Fair point. I had that thought, myself. You mentioned the buildings are scheduled to be demolished. What comes next?”
“A housing development.”
“On this site? I thought there was an issue with contamination at Fort Ord.”
“There is. But the military base was a darned big place, and the contamination is mainly around the old infantry training areas,” Emerson said with a shrug. “Also unexploded ordnance, that sort of thing.”
“Ah yes, that would be a problem. I guess they weren’t thinking ahead to future housing developments, back in the day,” Harper said to lighten the mood.
“No, ma’am, I don’t suppose they were,” the younger MP replied in a serious tone.
“Okay, then. Well, I have learned my lesson. I’ll just be on my way.”
“And, ma’am? I don’t wanna see you back here,” Emerson warned.
“Gotcha,” Harper said.
“We’ll see you out,” Emerson said.
Flanked by the two MPs, Harper crunched her way back down the hall to where she had entered the building, skirted the brown vinyl La-Z-Boy recliner and the old camp stove, waved goodbye to her armed escort as she climbed carefully back through the hole in the cyclone fence, and headed to her office.
The trio of trespassing students caught up with her halfway back to campus.
“Are you okay, Professor?” Jenny asked, breathless.
“Yeah,” said Aurelio. “You okay?”
“You didn’t get arrested or anything, did you?” Blanca asked, sounding worried.
“Or get a ticket?” Jenny asked.
“I’m fine.” In fact, Harper felt bizarrely pleased with herself. When was the last time she had been caught being naughty? “No arrest, no ticket, just a stern warning. Which, by the way, I intend to heed. I suggest you do the same.”
“Did you ask them about the weird box?” asked Jenny.
“I mentioned it, but they hadn’t seen it.”
“Probably it was just for Halloween, right?” said Jenny.
“Maybe?” said Blanca, scrolling through the photos on her phone. “I wish you could see it, though. It’s so weird, I took pictures but none of them came out. We’ll go back and take some more to show you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Harper, realizing as she spoke that she had virtually no influence over the private lives of her students.
“We have to go back for the podcast anyway. We’ll take Aurelio with us.”
“Sorry we left you, Professor,” said Blanca. “We, like, didn’t mean to? But we didn’t want to get caught.”
“No harm, no foul,” Harper said. “But do me a favor and don’t go snooping around on the old military base, okay?
The MP confirmed there are sections there riddled with contamination and unexploded ordnance.
Which, I might point out, is one reason studying history is so important: If nothing else, it tells you where your unexploded ordnance is. ”