Chapter 21

The explorers left the church grounds and drove northward along the avenue that ran along the west side of the northeastern portion of the city. The road was in oddly good condition, and Melissa got the van up to 40 mph, just 5 mph shy of the original speed limit.

Billy was changing out his SD card when he felt the van suddenly slow. ‘Oh, no!” he yelled, nearly dropping the card. His camera swung so far, it came within two inches of hitting the dash. He hurriedly changed the card and looked up.

Instead of the landslide he’d been expecting, he found a power pole fallen across the road.

“Wait a minute, why was there a power line here? Wouldn’t the one at the north side of town be enough?” asked Billy.

“It was a backup power line. We had the same mayor for the last 40 years before the volcano, and he was a real stickler for making sure that everything had a backup, that nothing ever broke.” said Melissa.

“I guess something broke here.” said Billy.

“Well, 33 years without maintenance will do that.” said David.

“I guess that would explain why Mr. Virgo always drove Mercedes. Precision engineering.” said Billy.

“Wait, how do you know what the mayor drove?” asked Megan.

“My dad’s been in his car. Two of them I think, back in the ‘80s, I want to say ’81 and the mid-80s. I know he was 20 the first time.” said Billy.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” asked Melissa.

“We have to meet your dad.” said David.

As Billy called his dad to meet them at the hotel, Melissa turned the van onto the road a block over and drove at about 15 mph. Billy put the phone on speaker so that the explorers could say things to his dad, but they didn’t even get past the hellos before the explorers reached their next destination: what appeared to be a heavily decayed car factory. All agreed to let Billy’s dad go and explore the factory first; after all, they’d see him in person in a couple of hours.

Melissa drove the van onto the grounds of the 50,000 square foot abandoned building, which, if viewed from above, would be shaped like a “V” with about a 30-degree difference between the angle of the legs. The smokestacks on the roof had an ever-so-slight lean to them, and a few bricks were missing from the façade. Ivy and overgrowth hid some of the brick building, but the roof, which was about 20 feet high, peeked over the overgrowth, revealing a section of missing roof about the size of a small home near the rightmost section of the building. There were a few smaller holes in the roof, concentrated on the right side of the building. About 80% of the windows were broken in the sections the explorers could see on the right side, but only about 30% on the left.

The explorers walked up to the building’s entrance, finding a Yugo still parked in a spot near the entrance. The red Yugo was in oddly good condition; the paint job had been destroyed by pollen and dust, and the tires were deflated, but the vehicle itself was mostly intact, with the windows all still in place and the interior undamaged.

“Wow, a YuuY! I’ve never seen one of those before in person.” said Billy.

“Did they build the Yugo locally here? Because it’s parked awfully close – wait a minute, YuuY?” asked David.

“Yeah, it’s a meme on this YouTube channel called Less Doug DeMuro. It’s hilarious, but not for kids because the humor is R-rated. Anyway, what kinds of cars did they build here?” asked Billy.

“Haha, YuuY, I like it. And they built stuff here that you wouldn’t want to drive, mostly microcars, stuff that would have been even smaller than the original Volkswagen Bug. They were mostly super-cheap cars for export and little Jeep-like vehicles. They got their start in World War 2 building military vehicles, then once the war was over, they kept building them under the name “Izzy Buggy”. They also built a few other little cars, most of them went to foreign countries as cheap transportation for people who may not have had a car before. I want to say a lot of these cars went to Europe between the end of World War 2 and about 1960, then they started to focus more on the Izzy Buggies. Anyway, Mr. Virgo was none too happy to have dirty industries in town, so he really pushed education and taxed the heck out of dirty smokestack industries even back in the 1940s. Eventually, all the dirty industries left. Factories that met pollution standards, like this one, could stay, but those in charge gave low taxes and all the benefits to the high-tech industries like electronics and biotech. Most of the factories left, like this one, which moved out around 1973.” said Melissa.

“Wow, so this place has been abandoned even longer than everything else?” asked David.

“Nope. Something else moved in.” said Melissa, as the explorers finished walking toward the entrance doors.

“Petrone Pharmaceutical Research” read Billy, on the still-intact glass doors to the building.

Although the lobby looked largely intact, the doors were locked. Melissa started walking to the right; the rest of the explorers followed her. They tried one door about 30 feet down. Locked. They found the next door, about 30 feet down from the last, but overgrowth blocked access to it. The explorers could see no more doors and lost a little hope. They reached the section with a missing roof, but the walls were still in place.

“I guess we’re going to have to miss this one. I wanted to see it too.” said Melissa.

“Look.” said Billy.

A 15-foot-wide section of the side wall, previously obscured by trees and plant growth, was gone. Getting in, between all the overgrowth and fallen bricks, would be a challenge. The explorers peered into a wrecked conference room; a tree grew where a water cooler had once been.

Megan decided to stay out. “When you get to the left side of the building, I might go in.” she said.

The remaining explorers carefully started walking through the maze of trees, thorny plants, and fallen bricks to get into the building, hard hats on. Billy tripped on a brick, instinctively putting his arms out as he began to fall forward just five feet from the threshold of the floor, before he felt something yank his arm.

“Melissa?” asked Billy.

“No, it’s me, David.”

Billy dusted himself off. “Thank you, Dave.”

The explorers continued into the building, arriving in the destroyed conference room. An analog clock on the wall was permanently frozen at 5:21. The roof over the front half of the room had collapsed, and sun blanketed the moldy white front wall and dark wood conference table with brown leather business chairs trimmed with brass. The entire room looked like it would have had a sterile, minimalist look.

“This reminds me of, like an old financial company office or something.” said Billy.

“Yeah, I remember a few rooms that looked like this in my financial days.” said Melissa.

The explorers went through a door and found themselves in what felt like a completely different building. The floors and walls looked clean enough to eat off of in the corridor, which was pitch-black; flashlights revealed it to have tan walls, a tan ceiling, and gold carpet. The lobby, with a few fake plants and couches, was visible in the distance; blue doors led to rooms.

“I’ve never seen a building look this bad in some sections and this good in others. Look.” said Billy, opening a door labeled “Mixing Tanks”. Inside the room, there were six stainless steel tanks each about the size of a house water heater. A poster with instructions and warnings stuck to the wall beneath a section of collapsed roof. Despite the fact that the paint and drywall was stripped to the bare walls and the room looked like a terrarium, complete with a 5-foot-tall tree, the tanks were still shiny.

Back in the corridor, two ceiling tiles were missing. David looked up. A couple feet above the ceiling level, there was a strange looking rail.

“Didn’t you say this used to be a car factory?” asked David.

“Yes. A fairly small one.” said Melissa.

“I found something that might have been part of it.” said David.

Billy looked up at the rail. “Judging by the position of this rail in the building, I’d say that was a conveyor rail for cars.”

“I think it might have been, they only made about 1,000 cars here per year.” said Melissa.

The explorers turned to go in a room labeled “Research and Development”. The first thing they found in there was a whiteboard that had detached on the left side and fallen to the floor; beside some chemical formulas, there was a chart that said “Myocarditis Deaths, 1984-1986”, and beside it “Myocarditis Deaths on Drug MC-83, 6/2/86 – 1/30/87”. The data suggested that the drug was effective, reducing deaths by about 25 percent.

“I wonder what a Z-score of -4.06 means.” said David, to himself.

“It means that, statistically, this drug has been found to be effective with near certainty. Typically, when the Z-score is more than about 2, that means that there’s a statistically significant difference between two data sets. Melissa, do you know if this drug ever came to market?” asked Billy.

“If it’s the drug I’m thinking of, it was called Zyboost and came out in probably 1989. Development was set back a few months, if I remember correctly. My grandfather on my mom’s side took it for 27 years and it helped him make it to 100.” said Melissa.

“100? That’s a long life. I hope you make it to 120.” said Billy.

“Thank you! I hope you do too! I’d like to live as long as I can, because I just adopted a 2-year-old whose parents died in a car crash.” said Melissa.

“Oh, wow, that’s awesome of you.” said Billy.

The explorers noticed that it was getting darker inside the room as the light from a broken window at the back of the room faded.

“Should we call it a day?” asked Melissa.

“Yeah, let’s call it a day. My flashlight just died.” said David.

Melissa lead the way for the explorers out of the building; David and Billy stuck close by. They walked back to the van and met up with Megan.

“My back hurts.” said David.