What Came Out of Warehouse 36
The old Ford truck rattled down the dirt road in western Massachusetts.
Clatter! Clatter! Clatter! Clatter! Rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-
The tires ground over the gravel with a noisy crunch. Victor, gripping his seat belt tightly in the passenger seat, asked, “Sanha, when exactly did you learn to drive a truck like this? Don’t you need a different kind of license for something this big?”
“I picked one up whenever I had time.”
I had built up the experience before the regression, and for the road test I’d lined up outside the DMV before dawn. America’s Department of Motor Vehicles was infamous for its brutal wait times; if you didn’t show up in the early morning, you could forget about taking the test at all. The license I’d gotten was a CDL, a Commercial Driver’s License, and specifically a Class B rating, which allowed me to drive heavy trucks over 26,000 pounds.
Victor clicked his tongue beside me. “I thought Grace was a monster for taking more than twenty credits at Harvard, but you’re just a different species of monster.”
“My legal career never included late-night off-road expeditions like this. Thanks to you, I’m getting to try all kinds of new experiences.”
At that, Vito, crammed into the narrow back seat, tugged his coat collar tighter and cut in. He muttered something under his breath, but I ignored it. At last, the truck rolled to a stop at the entrance to Wishville.
Creak-
The abandoned warehouse district was silent in the night.
Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled.
Step— step— step— step—
The circular beams cast by our three flashlights sliced restlessly through the darkness. The air carried the heavy stink of rust, old oil, and damp earth.
Before long, we stood in front of the first warehouse.
Its peeling exterior exposed a raw, rust-red underlayer. The U-shaped door handle had chains wound tight around it, and a heavy padlock dangled below.
I lifted the bolt cutters.
Snap!
With a dull crack, the rusted chains dropped to the ground.
Skreee- Keee-
The awful scrape of iron on iron rang out as the dark interior was revealed. My flashlight swept inside.
“......Damn.”
Maybe it had once been flooded by rainwater; swollen cardboard boxes were piled everywhere, reduced to rotting masses of pulp. What had once been magazines and ledgers was now garbage with no recognizable shape.
We searched every corner, but most of it was ruined, warped by water and then baked dry again. A few boxes wrapped in plastic were intact, but all that remained inside them was old, stale flour.
The next warehouse.
Thunk!
Once the lock was broken, the loose door swung open by itself.
Inside the second warehouse was a mountain of metal parts, all slicked over with grease. In the flashlight beam I could see engine blocks, rusted exhaust pipes, and heaps of iron so mangled they had lost any identity at all.
The sour, stale stench of oxidizing oil stabbed at my nose.
The third warehouse’s lock was already half-destroyed. When I pulled hard, the rusted fragments crumbled away and fell.
Inside, moldy old furniture and mattresses were stacked high: bed frames with springs sticking out, chairs with broken backs, bedside tables with drawers missing. Somewhere between them sat a little rocking horse that must once have belonged to a child.
The fourth warehouse.
Clank! Thud!
This lock was especially thick, and even with the bolt cutters I had to strain against it. When the shutter finally came up, I saw mountains of vinyl sacks.
SEED.
It must have been a seed storage warehouse. I ripped one sack open, and blackened, rotten grains spilled out in a rush. In the corner, the skeletal remains of mice rolled across the floor.
Fifth warehouse. The moment I cut the lock and put my hand to the shutter—
Crash! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Suddenly, chaos exploded from inside.
The door opened, and a chest of drawers on the other side tipped over, smashing a dozen glass bottles to pieces. The lower section of the chest had rotted through and collapsed.
Glass shards lay under a layer of dust, glinting sharp and dangerous. Some unknown, foul liquid was seeping out from inside.
“Did they store alcohol or pickles or something in here? We can’t even go in.”
Vito muttered as he swept his flashlight over the glass fragments by our feet.
The sixth.
This warehouse had been left with the shutter half open. Looking inside, I could see traces of someone’s life still lingering there: a torn blanket, filthy plastic containers, graffiti scrawled across the wall, a can of dried-up waste. It looked like a homeless person had been living here.
After that, the process was roughly the same.
Trash, trash, trash, trash, trash, trash, trash, more trash.
Victor finally bent forward, looking exhausted. “Sanha. How long are we doing this? There’s still a ton left.”
“Let’s just finish this section for today. We’ve only got a few left.”
I headed toward the twenty-fourth warehouse.
Thunk!
The rusted chains snapped apart.
Rrrrumble-
The shutter rolled upward.
Vito’s flashlight stopped on something.
“Huh? Wait a second, what’s that......?”
There, leaning against the wall, was a red neon sign. In elegant cursive it read Coca-Cola.
Vito let out a shout of admiration. “Wow! That’s a 1950s vintage neon sign! They used these as decoration in diners and bars. If you auction that off, it could easily fetch two thousand dollars!”
I stepped closer and shone my light over it.
Under the bright beam, I could see fine spiderweb cracks in the glass tubes, a transformer corroded a vivid red with rust, and wiring so decayed the copper strands were showing through.
“I doubt that figure applies if it’s been stored cleanly and properly.”
“Ah...... right. The condition is awful.”
Which, of course, meant everything. For antiques, storage condition was life itself. Take the 1955 Double Die Lincoln Cent, for example—a rare coin with a minting error that doubled the word LIBERTY. In uncirculated condition, sealed in plastic right after it was minted, it could fetch more than $2,500; but a worn example found years later in a change jar was worth only about $300.
We kept searching the warehouse.
Victor found an old jukebox in the middle of one of them.
“My father collects things like this. Maybe I should ask him about it.”
“All the lights on the bottom are smashed. What are those marks on the record section? Mouse droppings?”
Vito waved his hand dismissively. “I’ve got enough auction experience to know a thing or two. This is a model called a Bubbler. If it’s in good shape, it can go for as much as thirty thousand dollars at auction. But this one would cost more to restore than it’s worth. And it’s missing original parts too. At this point, it’s—”
I found an old typewriter at the far end of the warehouse.
It was a Smith-Corona early model, apparently made in the 1940s, and because it had been kept in its original box as a new item, its condition was excellent.
“This should get at least a grand! Best haul of the day!”
Vito clapped his hands.
After that, a few more old items turned up in the warehouse: a 1930s fire truck model, a vintage audio set, an abstract painting by some unknown artist, old movie posters...... Most of them were things I didn’t recognize, and I had no way of guessing their value. I’d have to bring in an expert later for proper appraisal.
If only something from my memory would show up......
Before I knew it, dawn had arrived. The flashlight batteries were running low, their beams fading to a sickly yellow.
We stood in front of the last warehouse in this section: number 36.
The door number itself had already faded with age.
Crack!
I smashed the lock with the bolt cutters and went inside.
Victor and Vito lifted the final shutter of the day.
Skreeeeeee-
This warehouse felt a little different.
The floor was relatively clean, and the surrounding space was neat and orderly. Several bulky shapes were covered with thick tarps. The dust on top of each tarp was the same thickness, which told me everything here had been covered at the same time and untouched ever since.
I walked up to the nearest one and grabbed a corner of the cloth.
Whoosh-
When I pulled it back, four chrome tire wheels were revealed. A light layer of dust coated them, so I blew it away with a sharp huff, and their shine came faintly back to life.
“Huh? Look at that! Those are brand new!”
Vito’s eyes widened, sensing that something unusual was happening.
Victor pulled the tarp off the one beside it.
Flap-
Beneath it were a streamlined car bumper, a distinctively shaped grille, and headlight components laid out in perfect order. Under the third cloth came a classically designed instrument panel, a wood-finished steering wheel, and an unfamiliar emblem.
I walked toward the deepest part of the warehouse, where the largest and broadest tarp was waiting.
Victor and Vito came up beside me.
Together, we grabbed both ends and whipped the cloth away.
Fwoosh!
Dust that had been sitting for decades rose in a gray cloud.
My flashlight cut through it and revealed the shape beneath: a low, wide silhouette, with a massive engine visible under the hood. The body was a deep red that seemed to swallow the light, and two vivid white racing stripes ran straight across it. Along the sides of the broad fenders stretched silver side-pipe exhausts. And at the front, a cobra emblem raised its head.
The fanged snake glinted under the flashlight, as if waking from a sleep of decades.
In the next instant, Vito screamed, “T-This is a Shelby Cobra 427......!?”
Now that he mentioned it, I thought I had heard about it once before, back at the café—when Vito had introduced himself as an old-car fanatic.
“And it’s the S/C model too!? This is insane!”
He thrust out trembling hands, then pulled them back before he could actually touch the body.
Victor, standing beside him, asked, “Hyung, is it really that expensive?”
“You have to ask? This is a legend among American classic cars! It was the old car most loved and most dreamed about by Americans in the 1960s! Only 350 regular Shelby Cobra 427s were ever produced, and among those, only 31 of the semi-competition models were made! There are only thirty-one of these in all of America, and one of them is right in front of us! And in this perfect a condition, no less!”
Vito’s words matched the knowledge in my own memory closely enough.
From my past life, I could recall a page from a Sotheby’s auction catalog. It had been a lot that, in a 2025 auction, sold for twenty million dollars and shattered the all-time price record for an American classic car.
What if I sold this now?
Even accounting for the prices of the time...... it would still be worth at least four million dollars, no question.
This one old car alone would more than pay back everything I’d spent acquiring the abandoned warehouse site—and then some.
Before long, the Victor-and-Vito brothers were snorting with excitement, rolling up their sleeves.
“More! Let’s open more!”
“But morning’s almost here now.”
“Who cares about morning! We don’t know how many more things like this are still in here!”
Before I could stop them, the two of them ran outside.
I didn’t bother trying to hold them back. If my memory was correct, there were still plenty of things left to be mined from this abandoned warehouse district.