engine ticked as it cooled. I got out and bit the air.
It was a smaller place than you might’ve guessed. Part of it had been repurposed, part of it hadn’t. A couple of places almost looked like a public park, and a couple of others were pure urban blight. Piles of trash. Industrial remnants. Burned-out cars and waterlogged furniture. There were acres of empty buildings and spray-painted concrete blocks that had been torn loose by salvage crews but never hauled away. I saw a few gaps in the fence where a person could drive in, but I didn’t. I ducked through one of them and went in by foot. Nature had started to reclaim the land. What used to be roads for baggage trucks and flash pits for runway lights were now dirt paths and concrete sinkholes. The landing strip had become a field again, and the paint had cracked long ago. I guessed that there were periodic patrols, but I saw no signs of recent activity. The No Trespassing signs were worn and painted over with indecipherable street tags. It was like an unclaimed junkyard. I walked through it until I got close to the center, where there was a cluster of abandoned buildings. Two empty red dumpsters and a soccer goal post, left inexplicably on their sides in the dirt, sat sentry over the far runway.
The first building, which I supposed had once been a hangar, was locked from the outside with a chain that had withstood many hoodlums. It was held together by a combination lock with four tumblers, connecting two brown-tinted links. The lock and the chain had rusted together.
The second hangar looked much the same. There was a pile of garbage in between, and I could smell rotting waste and animal feces.
I started off toward the third hangar.
But then I heard it.
It was a sharp chirp, somewhere between the sound of metal hitting metal and the chime of a bell. It was faint enough that I barely caught it over the breeze.
For a soft moment I waited, listening, but heard only my heartbeat. Then the wind picked up and the stench of the garbage hit me even harder. I looked around, in case there was someone there. I moved slowly, very slowly, toward where I thought the sound had come from. I turned the corner, back toward hangar two. This one had double barnstyle doors designed to slide open from the center. In the airport’s heyday, this building would have protected a half dozen private planes from the elements. Now it smelled like any other rusted warehouse. I looked closer at the chain holding the door segments together.
It had been snapped in two places.
The doors were cracked just a few inches. The inside of the hangar was pitch-black. Two sets of tread marks led into it. I stepped carefully around them. Car prints. Fresh. At that moment, my breath stopped.
Blood.
Caked on the hangar’s right door handle was a small red splotch in the shape of a thumbprint. The blood was smeared unevenly over the handle, hanging in thick clots where it had dried and was beginning to flake off.
I slid the hangar doors open.
15
Inside was the getaway car.
It was a ’92 white Dodge Spirit—or at least it had been white, before it was crashed a few times and shot up with a rifle. There were spider-vein cracks in the windshield, where bullets had passed through the glass and left perfect small circles. The rust stains on the body were so deep that the paint had started to peel, and all four tires were as flat as strips of paper wrapped around the hubs.
The old hangar felt like a cavern. Back when the airport still ran flights, a hangar this size could have housed four prop planes front to back, or a single five-window Cessna half the size of Marcus’s Sovereign. Now the steel floor was thick with grime and broken glass, and the thin insulation on the walls was rotting from the inside out. Stagnant water had pooled under the empty skylights. When the field had closed its gates, the city must have salvaged anything of value. Even the Plexiglas. This would’ve been the perfect place
It was a smaller place than you might’ve guessed. Part of it had been repurposed, part of it hadn’t. A couple of places almost looked like a public park, and a couple of others were pure urban blight. Piles of trash. Industrial remnants. Burned-out cars and waterlogged furniture. There were acres of empty buildings and spray-painted concrete blocks that had been torn loose by salvage crews but never hauled away. I saw a few gaps in the fence where a person could drive in, but I didn’t. I ducked through one of them and went in by foot. Nature had started to reclaim the land. What used to be roads for baggage trucks and flash pits for runway lights were now dirt paths and concrete sinkholes. The landing strip had become a field again, and the paint had cracked long ago. I guessed that there were periodic patrols, but I saw no signs of recent activity. The No Trespassing signs were worn and painted over with indecipherable street tags. It was like an unclaimed junkyard. I walked through it until I got close to the center, where there was a cluster of abandoned buildings. Two empty red dumpsters and a soccer goal post, left inexplicably on their sides in the dirt, sat sentry over the far runway.
The first building, which I supposed had once been a hangar, was locked from the outside with a chain that had withstood many hoodlums. It was held together by a combination lock with four tumblers, connecting two brown-tinted links. The lock and the chain had rusted together.
The second hangar looked much the same. There was a pile of garbage in between, and I could smell rotting waste and animal feces.
I started off toward the third hangar.
But then I heard it.
It was a sharp chirp, somewhere between the sound of metal hitting metal and the chime of a bell. It was faint enough that I barely caught it over the breeze.
For a soft moment I waited, listening, but heard only my heartbeat. Then the wind picked up and the stench of the garbage hit me even harder. I looked around, in case there was someone there. I moved slowly, very slowly, toward where I thought the sound had come from. I turned the corner, back toward hangar two. This one had double barnstyle doors designed to slide open from the center. In the airport’s heyday, this building would have protected a half dozen private planes from the elements. Now it smelled like any other rusted warehouse. I looked closer at the chain holding the door segments together.
It had been snapped in two places.
The doors were cracked just a few inches. The inside of the hangar was pitch-black. Two sets of tread marks led into it. I stepped carefully around them. Car prints. Fresh. At that moment, my breath stopped.
Blood.
Caked on the hangar’s right door handle was a small red splotch in the shape of a thumbprint. The blood was smeared unevenly over the handle, hanging in thick clots where it had dried and was beginning to flake off.
I slid the hangar doors open.
15
Inside was the getaway car.
It was a ’92 white Dodge Spirit—or at least it had been white, before it was crashed a few times and shot up with a rifle. There were spider-vein cracks in the windshield, where bullets had passed through the glass and left perfect small circles. The rust stains on the body were so deep that the paint had started to peel, and all four tires were as flat as strips of paper wrapped around the hubs.
The old hangar felt like a cavern. Back when the airport still ran flights, a hangar this size could have housed four prop planes front to back, or a single five-window Cessna half the size of Marcus’s Sovereign. Now the steel floor was thick with grime and broken glass, and the thin insulation on the walls was rotting from the inside out. Stagnant water had pooled under the empty skylights. When the field had closed its gates, the city must have salvaged anything of value. Even the Plexiglas. This would’ve been the perfect place
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