On a beautiful spring morning, two days after judging and releasing a million or more ghosts, Teina and Jimox blinked and stretched as they lay in their sleeping bags and gazed up at the ornate ceiling, a good ten meters above them, of the grand old train station. With morning light angling through doors on the east side of the building, Teina rolled onto her belly and grabbed the city map. Jimox wiggled close to look at it with her.
“Let’s see . . .” she began, “in the last two weeks, we’ve explored downtown Westron ‘til we’re sick of it . . .”
Jimox chuckled and nodded.
“. . . unless you can think of any other places there might be . . . you know
. . . information.”
“Hmm . . .” he pondered with a wrinkled brow. “We’ve read all the memos on the mayor’s desk, the police chief’s office, the fire chief, and spent an entire day in Emergency Services . . .”
“And hardly learned anything we didn’t already know.”
He rolled onto his back. “I’m still trying to put all the pieces together. If Emergency Services knew the plague had gotten into the refugee camps in the desert, why didn’t they tell the local leaders, so they could announce it and people would quit going there?”
“Mmmmm . . . probably because that would look bad? Who was it who told people to go there in the first place?”
Jimox laughed. “Okay, I get it. Saving face was more important than
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saving people.”
Teina shrugged, then grabbed the thick stack of tourist pamphlets and gave half to Jimox. “Some of these are a long ways away.”
“Okay, this pile is for those. And we need a pile for things that might be dangerous, like the zoo.”
“I hope someone opened the cages before Burning Day,” she said with sympathy. “Well, part of me hopes so.”
Jimox nodded. “And a bunch of places are just little things, like famous houses.”
Teina added several to that pile. “I’d like to see some of those, you know, when we’re in the neighborhood.”
“Things on islands go in the far-away pile,” Jimox said.
“Those might as well be on another planet. And we’ve seen everything in downtown Westron,” Teina said, starting a new pile.
A few minutes later, they had them all sorted, and only one pamphlet didn’t fit anywhere. Teina looked at it with sparkling eyes.
Jimox, who had a faint memory of it from childhood, looked at his younger friend, who had never had the experience. “Shall we . . . say good-bye to our beautiful train station and wander down toward Similand?”
Teina grinned and wiggled with excitement.
After instant cereal and dried fruit, they packed all their extra food into buckets, stacked them on tables mice couldn’t climb, and made sure all the windows and doors would keep out birds and dogs.
The handful of resident ghosts, who had reasons of their own for lingering in the old station, watched the pair of visitors prepare to depart, and sometimes let themselves be seen.
When the pair was ready, Jimox faced the ghosts who were hovering near the ticket counter. “Thank you for letting us stay in your beautiful train station. Like we said before, you are free and innocent, but it is not for us to say whether you stay or go.”
Teina nodded and waved to them.
The ghostly forms dashed into their favorite hiding places.
Giona danced on the handle bars of Teina’s bicycle.
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Although summer was not far off, a cool breeze from the ocean met the pair as they pushed their bicycles through the heavy doors, letting them close and latch.
Teina looked back at the century-old building. “Nice to know we have a good stash in a safe place.”
Jimox checked the pistol in his handle-bar basket, mounted, and began pedaling toward the street. “Wasn’t there a motorway entrance just down the street?”
Teina mounted. “Yeah. We have to go east a little, then south.”
The breeze died down and the day became warm, compared to what they were used to in the far north, even though the clouds remained thick and threatened rain.
The motorway had three or four lanes on each side, so even when the travelers came to tangles of rusting cars, they seldom had to stop.
Bleached bones, monkey mammal or dog, sometimes made them walk their bicycles a short distance, with guns handy and eyes and ears wide open for danger.
About noon, a pack of scrawny brown dogs blocked the road, but they were weak and skittish, and one warning shot sent them away, whining.
The miles passed slowly. The motorway, and the burned or crumbing buildings beyond, were most often ugly and uninviting. Somewhere just past Exit 117, a large black dog refused to give way. After a well-aimed shot, Jimox and Teina hurried on before other dogs came for the fresh meat.
As the pair waited under a bridge during a rain shower, Teina looked at the map. “About two more miles.”
Jimox finished reloading. “This city seems to go on forever. Can you imagine what it was like with everyone setting fires?”
Teina thought for a moment. “No. Very glad I wasn’t here.”
Jimox
nodded.
They first beheld the World Tree after pedaling under another bridge, the Tree’s great limbs of steel and concrete, and leaves of plastic, reaching for the
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sky. Stairs, ramps, climbing ropes, slides, water flumes, and roller coaster tracks laced themselves from branch to branch, giving the impression that a giant spider had spun webs all over the massive tree. Little else of the world’s largest amusement park could be seen from outside.
Teina coasted to a stop and stared in amazement.
Jimox knew it was her first glimpse of Similand, so he took watch and scanned for dangers.
“It’s . . . wonderful,” she began, “but very eerie because it’s so quiet and still. You just can’t have a tree like that without every kid for a hundred miles begging to play on it, day and night.”
Jimox, whose expertise consisted of one visit at age eight, nodded. “It was open ‘til midnight, and people would linger in the souvenir shops and restaurants ‘til one or two.”
“How do we . . . get in?”
“This is the back side. We have to take the next motorway exit, then we’ll come to the front. I guess . . . tickets are free today.”
Teina grinned at him.
The huge parking lot contained only weeds busy enlarging the cracks.
The entry plaza was ringed by silent ticket booths, dark snack bars, locked gift shops, empty pet kennels, and unattended information desks.
In the west, the sun prepared to set, casting orange light over everything and giving the place a little bit of the magical glow it had once possessed.
The pair cautiously walked their bicycles, scanning for two things at once
— all the usual dangers, and anything that might still be fun even without the music, lights, motorized movement, and costumed employees that once filled the theme park.
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Jimox had been right. No one stopped him from hopping over a turnstile and unlatching the exit gate so they could roll their bicycles in.
Shadows rapidly became longer all around them.
“We need to find somewhere safe very soon,” Teina said. “Those turnstiles won’t keep anything out.”
The last time Jimox had been here, his mind had been on other matters.
Now he looked around with a new purpose. The first visible ride was the Olde Towne station of the Kid’s Motorway, a sturdy brick building on the small hill that encircled the park. “Up there! We’ll have a good view, the station looks intact, and there’s a second floor even if the ground level isn’t secure.”
Teina quickly spotted a ramp marked with a stroller symbol, and pushed her bicycle in that direction, all the while peering with sharp eyes into the lengthening shadows.
Jimox came behind, handle bars in one hand, pistol in the other.
The station was locked, but Jimox was able to spring the latch without breaking it. They rolled their bicycles in, looked at each other, and slapped hands.
With enough evening light in the sky to allow the pair to see any approaching danger on the little hill, they stepped back outside.
On the Olde Towne side of the station, ramps and stairs once held excited children standing in line. Jimox spotted one small ghost lingering near a drinking fountain, jumping up and down as if trying to get a drink, seemingly unaware that water no longer flowed there.
Below, the idyllic small town of about a hundred years before once offered every possible vintage service and period entertainment. Now, weeds filled
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every planter, and more were slowly working on the pavement. No lights twinkled in shop windows, and no music came from the bandstands. Teina noticed a couple of ghosts moving along a wooden sidewalk together, as if strolling hand in hand toward their favorite ice cream parlor. “Wow, this place is fantastic! Nothing’s burned!”
Looking above the Olde Towne rooftops, the pair of travelers could see the World Tree in the center of the park, a couple of roller coasters off to one side, and glimpses of medieval castles beyond.
At that moment, the sun sank below the western horizon, the magical orange glow disappeared from walls, signs, decorations, and trees, and all the shadows deepened.
Jimox spotted a dog lurking under the tables of a sidewalk restaurant below. He pointed, Teina nodded, and they quickly slipped into the safety of the Kid’s Motorway station.
