26/02
Okay, so now we’re talking about Fort Deitrich.
Fort Deitrich is a now-disused military base situated In Northern California (if you want to know where just Google it, I’ve got too much stuff to get written down here to give you directions. Suffice to say, it’s between Sacramento and the border with Oregon). It was named after some famous general or other, it’s not really something I’m too interested in. When operational, it was one of the largest facilities in the United States, and featured attached services such as an extensive air complex, artillery range, and a large piece of land set aside for unspecified testing.
At its height (which was just before its closure fifteen years ago) Deitrich was home to nearly 35,000 military personnel (with half that number again in dependants) and an unspecified number of civilian contractors, many of whom were brought in on a weekly or monthly basis.
In short, it’s *vast*.
Deitrich’s notable points included:
1) Multiple barrack complexes for new recruits and non-cohabiting soldiers.
2) An extensive armory with a small number of armored vehicles, mostly used for training purposes.
3) A separate township (complete with community centre, church, strip mall and three bars) designed for dependants to inhabit- there are over 10,000 homes in a typical suburbanite configuration there, fairly close to the southern edge.
4) A command and control module, featuring state-of-the-art radar coverage and underground communications with, well, pretty much everybody, as far as I can understand.
5) A classified testing facility. What they did here was never revealed, but you can guarantee that whatever it was, it would make Bill Birnes pee a little.
And here’s what I’ve seen of it. The place looks a little out of shape in parts, although not as much as you might think. The northern half of the base, where Command and R&D were situated, look somewhat battered, but the more southerly areas, like the Village, seem to have been spared the worst of the weather.
As for the people? Well, of course, there aren’t any people, what with the place being disused. Except sometimes you see some. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Alex, even abandoned bases like these have *some* kind of security, just to stop people coming in and taking the place apart for scrap.” Well, truth be told, it *hasn’t*. At least none that I’ve ever seen. Nobody ever goes in there to loot. Don’t ask me why, but it just doesn’t happen.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t people there though. There are *definitely* people that visit, and there are *definitely* people that just come in. Here are some of the ones I’ve seen so far. Oh yeah, some of them might know about me too because, unlike Buddy, I’m really not that stealthy. But none of them has ever tried to approach me.
1) The News Crew: I see these guys more often than any of the others. They seem to be some kind of ghost-watcher gang, rolling up through the southern end in a beat-up old van with a crappy satellite dish on top (it looks a little like the Mystery Machine, if truth be told) before wandering off with a bunch of handheld camcorders and stuff. There are never more than three or four of them, but I believe there might be more, because I don’t think that they’re all the same people each time.
2) The Biker: This is one guy that I never want to mess with. As far as I can tell, he comes in every Monday and Thursday, and he is armed to the teeth. His bike looks like a piece of junk, but it runs really quiet and can put on some serious speed, and *he* looks like he could put on some serious hurt. I only ever see him heading towards R&D. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing down there. Maybe checking that nothing’s come through?
3) Crazy Annie: Annie always struck me as a little tragic. She’s an old woman, about my grandparents age, and more than a little unhinged. I see her quite often in the Village, just wandering around knocking on doors. Every so often, she starts screaming at thin air, telling it that she is somebody *important*, that they should get out of her life, that kind of thing. I once walked around the corner of Main Street in the Village and straight into Annie. She kind of gathered herself up and looked me straight in the eye before saying, and I quote, *“A man like you should not be walking the streets of Little Deitrich at night,”* before walking right past me, which I have to say was pretty disconcerting. Since then, I’ve tried to keep away from her. There’s one other thing i need to mention about Annie though: Buddy is usually very protective of me, especially around new people. When he caught sight of Annie, he tried to hide.
4) Lucy: I’ve only ever seen Lucy three times. She’s a kid, maybe six or eight (having never had children myself, I find it difficult to tell a kids age, and it’s not something I’d like to research on how to do, for obvious reasons). Lucy has, on the first two of the occasions I’ve seen her, been wandering the scrub outside of the Village. Both times I tried to catch up with her, to tell her that she shouldn’t be out there, but both times she seemed to just kind of melt into the bushes before I could reach her Even buddy couldn’t find her. The third time? Well, that’s a story for another day, but let’s just say that I think I might owe little Lucy my life.
5) The Creep: So, when I say the words *child molester* to you, that’s what this guy looks like. Battered face, indeterminate age, dirty trench coat, something that looks like a bottle of liquor wrapped in brown paper stuffed into his pocket. That’s him. *Furtive* is how I’d describe his behaviour. He always seems to be on the move, I never see him in the same place two nights in a row. God alone knows what he does in there. Eat people, maybe? He always has a strange, kind of hungry look in his eyes.
6) The Others: Yeah, there are other people. These ones walk in as if they’re asleep. They kind of shamble in that way, you know, the way that people do when they’ve had an exceptionally long sleep after a serious night on the booze. Usually they look like they’ve just put on the first clothes that came to hand, and didn’t take much care when they did it. They always, and I mean *always* head towards R&D. And I never see them coming back out again. I guess these guys are the missing people of Burkettsville. And before any of you ask: yes, I have tried to stop them. Twice. On both occasions they turned so savage that Buddy had to pull them off of me before we made a run for it. After that, they went back to their pilgrimage. I don’t think I’ll be trying to stop any of them again.
So, that’s Fort Deitrich. Next time, I’ll tell you something about my time there.