A second later he was standing on a flat surface, right beside her. She let go of his arm.

“Don’t turn on your light yet,” she said.

Then he heard a click, and her own flashlight came on, though very dimly. She had her hand clamped over its lens, so all that shone out was a pink glow through the skin of her fingers. She moved the light forward and Sam saw a door right in front of where they stood. There was no knob—just a heavy steel handle, spotted with rust. The door was painted black, but it, too, was rusted, and the paint was coming off in flakes. Above the handle was a keypad with twelve buttons laid out like those on a touch-tone telephone. Ten numbers, along with an asterisk and a pound sign.

“Don’t tell me you know the code,” Sam said.

“Five sevens in a row. Same as all the other abandoned stations.”

“The what?”

“I’ll explain it all in a minute.”

With her free hand she pressed the number seven five times, and Sam heard a thud as the lock disengaged. Dani took hold of the handle and pushed, and the door swung inward heavily. Sam helped her, and together they shoved it open enough to slip around it and inside. As they did, Sam saw in the glow of Dani’s light that the metal door was three inches thick, like that of a bank vault. It fell shut behind them with another thud and a click.

The darkness was absolute beyond the clamped lens of Dani’s light. Then she took her hand off of it, and the beam entirely lit up the space they’d entered.

They were in a short corridor of some kind. Its floor, walls, and ceiling were lined with grey ceramic tiles. It was four feet wide and maybe ten feet long. They were standing at one end of it, with the heavy door at their backs. The hallway was featureless except for another door capping the far end, and a huge block of text that had been stencil-painted, in black, onto one of the side walls. It read:

UNITED STATES D.O.D.

ASHLAND-STATION 14

LIMA 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED

BEYOND THIS POINT

“You do have Lima four clearance, right?” Dani asked. She laughed softly.

“What the hell is this place?” Sam said.

“You haven’t seen anything yet. Trust me.”

“But are there people here? Are we going to get caught?”

Dani shook her head. “It’s abandoned. Probably for decades.”

Sam started to ask more, but stopped. His gaze went back to the writing on the wall. He watched as Dani trailed her flashlight over the letters D.O.D.

“Department of Defense,” she said.

“Is this what I had to see to believe?” Sam asked. “That this town is full of these abandoned places? Whatever this is.”