“Didn’t people pack their shit when they left?” Lionel said.

“Oh, there’s treasure to be found here,” Herzog said. “Living units for eighteen hundred employees. Movie theater, post office, grocery store, community center. Swimming pool. The whole kit and caboodle. The camp shut down overnight. Residents had hours to pack valuables and scram. Bosses promised everyone could return later. Didn’t happen. This gate closed and that was that.”

I envisioned him slinking house to house, picking through abandoned “treasure” like a two-legged coyote.

“One hour means one hour,” he said.

Bellow checked the rearview after we passed through the gate.

“He’s adamant about that one-hour business. What do you suppose happens if we’re late?”

“We turn into pumpkins.” I estimated how many laws we were breaking and the mandatory minimum sentence range for trespassing on a defunct government facility. It comforted me to have a Fed in the car, for once. Should trouble descend, I’d let Bellow do the fast-talking.

There’s a threshold upon which artificial ecosystems begin to collapse. The colony had exceeded this demarcation and proceeded to an accelerated state of decay. At a remove, the modular structures presented a sturdy façade. Closer inspection revealed algae stains, water-streaked windows, and bubbled paint. Rust bled through everywhere. Windows were boarded. Herzog diligently mowed the grass and trimmed the juniper hedges. He’d hastily and incompletely scrubbed graffiti from the post office windows—perversions of the Redlick logo. Stick figures were impaled upon the barbed wheel; stick figures roasted in crimson flames. The graffiti was similar to the artwork at the Nameless Field on Vulture Bluff.

Some street lamps were smashed. Birds decomposed in the gutters. The broken glass and graffiti merely accented the ongoing hostile reclamation of this patch of land. Herzog was fighting a rearguard action that barely tamed the camp’s devolution and reversal into primeval darkness. Yeah, the old Beat writer William Burroughs had been onto something: Nature does not want for evil in the absence of humanity. Organized wickedness is exchanged for the insensate craving of a much greater and no less ruthless organism.

“Good grief, look at this vandalism,” Bellow said. “Kids? Disaffected locals who were kicked off the job? That had to be an economic mess.”

I thought of sullen locals scaling the fence, brandishing cans of spray paint. Then I thought of the group dressed in high school uniforms at the Nameless Field.

“Not kids.” I slowed the vehicle to walking speed. The sense of being observed came in waves. “It’s a tumor. This camp. The construction zone. The tunnel. Mother Earth is pushing back hard.”

“There’s a site in the interior of Alaska,” Bellow said. “Macintyre Hill. Similar setup for a mining operation. Abandoned and gone to seed. Heard of it?”

“No.”

“I’m surprised.”

“Alaska is a graveyard of abandoned towns and radar installations. World War Two bunkers honeycomb the Aleutians. I poked around inside one on a hill overlooking Dutch Harbor. Haven’t seen it all.” The late second act of my life was convincing me of that.