Her gaze goes toward the windowsill, where the paperweight rests on the pile of cards. “No blood relatives. I have a son-in-law. He’s remarried. We haven’t spoken in years,” she says. “When you’re old like me, you know more dead people than alive ones.” She nods at my map. “So. Have you settled on your route?”
I swallow another bite of buttery scone. “I’ll wait until tonight, when it’s dark, and leave my car outside the fence that surrounds the OEZ,” I say. “It’ll take me a little while to hike down to the park, but as long as I avoid any lights, I shouldn’t get picked up by any surveillance cameras.” I lean over the table and turn my map in her direction, so she can see where I’m pointing. “I’m thinking I’ll go in here, by the main entrance, if I can.”
“There are probably lights there,” she says. “Ideally, I’d like you to put one of my cameras here, overlooking the turnstiles and this little road for emergency vehicles. The second one should go here, facing the Keep of Ages.”
“I’ll try.”
“Then what?” she says.
“I need a way down to the Negative One level. I know the dreamers are in a big room, and it seems most likely that would be underground,” I say. “I was thinking of going down this first ramp.”
She shakes her head. “That’s too open. No place for cover.” She taps a finger on my map farther along, up the Main Drag. “There’s a VIP portal here, by a gift shop. That’ll take you directly down to the greenroom on Negative One.”
I don’t have it marked on my map. “Where?”
“I can show you in the closet.” She shifts her finger. “Or here, by the Bottomless Pit. There’s another VIP portal here. That might be even better. It leads down to the grand assembly area.” She sits back. “Supposing you do find the vault, what then?”
I don’t want to tell her how nervous I am about this whole thing. There are so many unknowns. I’ll have to trust to my wits once I’m there.
“I’ll look for my family until I find them,” I say. “I’ll break them out if I have to, and then we’ll get back to the car and drive away. That’s the best that I’ve got.”
“You’ll come back here afterward,” she says, frowning. “Do you have any weapons?”
Not really. The only thing I have is a couple vials of sleep meds left over from my time in the dean’s tower with Berg, and the pills from Ian.
“For Pete’s sake,” Lavinia says at my hesitation. She reaches behind her, opens a drawer, and slams a sheathed dagger on the table.
Startled, I slide it out to find a sharp, ragged blade, as long as my hand.
“I don’t know how to use this,” I say, turning it in the light.
“When you’re scared enough, you’ll figure it out,” Lavinia says.
I take a surreptitious look at her thin arms in her sleeves, wondering how strong she’d be in a fight. Hard to know.
“Thanks,” I say. “Does this knife have a name?”
“Please. This isn’t an elf kingdom.”
I laugh, and she smiles archly back at me. I slip the knife back in its sheath.
After breakfast, she sets me up in the closet again. I practice moving around the lower level of Grisly Valley, in and out of the dressing rooms, the cafeteria, the tech station, and the parking lot. Lavinia has me practice taking the VIP portals and routes, first by following the green lines, and then without them. I make special note of the portals by the Main Drag gift shop and the Bottomless Pit.
When I finally take off the goggles and step out of the closet, the world swims around me for a sec until I get my land legs again. The grandfather clock ticks loudly. Outside, evening has come again and the shadows are long. Lavinia’s hunched at the table in the kitchen, tinkering with a small solar panel and a camera.
“When do you want to go?” she asks.
“Soon,” I say. “Now.”
*
An hour later, I park near the outermost fence of the OEZ and get my first look at the evacuated area. As I step out of my car, a dragonfly whizzes past me with a sudden whir. The air smells of dust and a musky, not unpleasant rot of vegetation.
I half expected the OEZ to be blackened and twisted, like a bomb went off, but instead, the landscape is lush with ashy-green coastal trees and scrub. Under the last light of a streaky sunset, the lines of decaying roads and buildings are softened by the encroaching shadows of the forest. Where the roof of a distant church has collapsed, its pink walls stand hollow to the sky.
The Grisly Valley Theme Park lies in a shallow valley, half a mile inside the OEZ. A dusky wasteland of parking lots, dotted with bushes, expands for acres around the main gates. Inside another layer of fences, the theme park itself is a village of shops, restaurants, and rides. It has far more trees than I expected from Lavinia’s map. A scattering of security lights cast thin, half-hearted pools of illumination against the twilight, as if they’re only on by habit. The swelling roller coaster of Bubbles’ Clown World stands rickety but intact against the fading light of the sky, and the Keep of Ages looms with eerie majesty. It gives me a kick of nervous excitement.
I pocket my keys, sling my backpack over one shoulder, and check my knife, which honestly feels more awkward on my belt than reassuring. My phone has one bar. In my jeans and a brown shirt, I hope I’m blending in. I start hiking along the fence where a faint trail dips in the grass, until I find a place where trespassers have wedged an opening between two tilting poles. Sucking in my gut, I squeeze through and pull my backpack after me. Then I descend an uneven, washed-out path toward the parking lots. The evening sky darkens with surprising speed, and a salting of stars appears over my shoulder. I have to crawl through a gap in another fence, and then I start across the cracked tarmac of the parking lots, winding my way past the bushes, old beer cans, and fallen, rusted streetlamps.
My sneakers make a flat, unnatural sound that’s eerily absorbed into the distance, and I instinctively try to tread softly. Once, I look back the way I came so I’ll be able to find my way out, and that’s when I fully realize how dark it has become. Already, the nearest fence is barely visible. I note an upside-down exit sign for a landmark, and then I keep walking until I reach the main entrance, where “Grisly Valley” arches over the gated turnstiles. Four flagless poles stretch upward, standing sentinel, and a floodlight glares across the plaza to illuminate the dearth of visitors. The only movement is a plastic bag flapping in the fence.
I don’t like it. The place is too quiet. As if in defiance of the cameras that are posted on poles and corners, the old ticket booth is tagged with graffiti. To the right, the narrow road for emergency vehicles is blocked by a heavy gate. This is where Lavinia wants one of her cameras.