“That’s the real issue,” Carl agreed.
They walked slowly through the dark toward the commissary, guided by the crunching of gravel underfoot.
“We better look up some flashlights,” Verne said.
Barbara lit a match. They were very close to the commissary building. The front door was boarded over.
“Well,” Carl said. “I guess we’re going to need tools just to get in. Where can we find a hammer?”
“Aren’t there any workmen left?” Barbara said.
“They’re gone. It’s just us three.”
“It certainly didn’t take them long to get off.”
“There’s no use standing around here,” Verne said. “Carl, go back to the office and look around for some tools. Look in the closet and around the washroom.”
“I’ll go with him,” Barbara said. “I’ll light the way for him.”
“Go ahead,” Verne said. “I don’t need any light to stand here. Anyhow, I’m getting used to the dark.”
They went off. He watched the glow of her match until it winked out, disappearing in the gloom.
For a time he stood listening to the faint sounds of night. Then he became restless. He searched his pockets and finally found his lighter. By its light he made his way up to the commissary door. He pulled aimlessly on the wood boards, but they were too tightly nailed. He walked around the side of the building. It was a long low structure, with a narrow path leading from the main entrance back to the kitchen.
He found the kitchen unlocked. They had not boarded it up. He entered the building and snapped on the lights.
Everything was neat and orderly. The dishes were stacked up and put away on the shelves. The floor was swept. The garbage cans were empty and washed out. He approached the row of refrigerators. They were still turned on. He opened the first. It was full of food; sides of meat, packs of vegetables and fruits, cartons of ice cream and milk.
He opened the hatch to the huge storage rooms. And gaped in amazement. Piled high to the ceiling were hundreds of drums of food; fruits, vegetables, preserved meats, juices, everything imaginable. Sacks of grain, wheat and rice. Flour. Nuts, dried raisins and apricots. All left, all forgotten.
“Good God,” he murmured. “They left everything.”
The yuks were getting the works. They were getting everything. The Company had given up and gone off. It was no longer interested; it was tired. It did not care any more. Once, it had guarded these things carefully. Men had counted each can, each package, each ounce of food. Countless forms and records had been made out for the bookkeepers. Armed guards had patrolled the periphery of the grounds. Wire had been strung up, complex burglar alarms and bells.
The Company had protected its land and property with jealous cunning. Through centuries its craft and power had grown, breeding and multiplying. But now it no longer cared. It had gone off, turned everything over to someone else. Someone to come, who was not tired. Who was not exhausted.
The Company had been failing. For a long time it had been going downhill, secretly, quietly. Deep in its heart it was losing, dying. And in this last great fatigue, this final moment when the last threads of energy ran out of the withering Stations, those few men who stayed behind, who remained after the others had left, were rich. They had everything; men for centuries had dreamed of owning what these three now had. It was all theirs. The land, the buildings, the stores, the records— This whole Station belonged to them.
They had inherited it, the work of previous generations of workers, men behind desks, men in the mines, in factories. The work and the wealth from the work. The three who remained owned this, this heap that was the total remains of the Company Station. They had not built it, or done much to help produce it; but it was theirs all the same. They were the only ones left to have it, in the dim short days that remained before the new owners arrived. Before it became a part of that new world, that world which just a little while before had not even been entered on the Company’s list of potential competitors.
Verne gazed at the food, and he thought of the other buildings, the stores and property abandoned to them, left behind. He could hardly believe it. The Company had worked so long to acquire all this; could it really leave it behind for others to find? For strangers to take?
But meanwhile, it was a stroke of luck for the three of them. After they had eaten all they could, after they had slept in all the beds, bathed in all the tubs, listened to all the radios, taken out of boxes and crates anything they desired, they would disappear, too, like the others. After a little while there would be nothing left of them, either. They would join the others.
But right now there was at least a week ahead of them. Later, the yuks would come with crowbars and hammers and open up the doors and windows. Maybe they would tear down the buildings. Maybe they would make them even bigger, or change them so that no one would recognize them. They might do many things.
But right now he was not thinking of this. He was thinking of the week ahead.
Presently he heard the sound of footsteps. Carl and Barbara came into the kitchen, carrying a hammer. They stopped short when they saw all the food.
MI guess that answers that question.” Barbara went into the store room; they heard her moving cans and drums around. “What do you think of these for dinner?” She came out, loaded down with canned chicken, canned peas, cranberry sauce, and a rum pudding.
“There’s milk in the refrigerator,” Verne said. “And frozen vegetables and meat. Tons of it.”
“Put the cans back!” Carl exclaimed, looking into the first refrigerator compartment. “Forget them. Look at all this frozen stuff! Let’s have that, instead.”
“What a break,” Barbara murmured. “It’s strange. I’ve worked for the Company two years and I’ve never seen food like this. They must have held it back.”
Carl rummaged through the drawers under the great sink. “Look!” He held up two long flashlights, snapping them on. They worked perfectly. “What do you say?”
“Let’s take a look around outside before we eat,” Barbara said. “Let’s make sure there’s no one else here.”
“Come on!” Carl handed Verne one of the flashlights. “We’ll go and explore. We can eat afterwards.”
Verne accepted the flashlight silently.
“I’ll go along with Barbara one way, and you go the other. We’ll make a complete circuit of the property and meet back here.”
“What a waste of time,” Verne murmured.
“We ought to know for sure. There might be somebody left. Some old workman, some old Swede, working away in a deserted building.”
“Okay.” Verne wandered toward the door.
“Shout if you find anything,” Carl said.
Verne made his way along the gravel path, flashing his light listlessly from side to side. The light caught a tree, then a row of shrubs, then finally a great granite building, one of the administration buildings. The windows were nailed over. The door was chained. In the fog it seemed forlorn and dismal.
He went on. Now he was coming to abandoned piles of machinery. Massive columns reared up into the fog and were lost. In the darkness it seemed as if they had been thrown there in no particular order, left behind, emptied out of some vast, cosmic bag. Or perhaps they were the beginnings of some new, never finished structures that had been given up, left to rust and corrode in the mists.
But more, these columns seemed like the ruins of some very ancient city. Verne stood at the foot of one of the towers, gazing up. Perhaps it had supported the corner of some Coliseum, or a long-forgotten Parthenon. Would tourists come later to look? Would the new owners stand and stare and wonder what his world had been like, what the people who had left these hulks might have been?