The Sacrifice Area

by Peter Idone

  She was originally his parents’ dog, as was the house, which he’d inherited after his father died two years ago and his mother a year and a half before him. His mother had died of breast cancer, an unusually common ailment among women in the greater Essex area. Studies done a number of years ago linked the cancer to the Triumph nuclear plant and the toxins in the water. Nothing conclusive, though. It never was. His father’s illness was linked to grief, drinking, and finally influenza. He was sixty-seven. Logan got the house only because his sister, Bridgett, who was married and lived out of state, didn’t want to live anywhere near Essex and end up like their mother.

  That was also one of Jill’s excuses when she left town and thus Logan. His ex-wife claimed to want to spare herself the potential fate of having parts of her body surgically removed piecemeal, only to succumb to the inevitable fate of incurable cancer. That was more of an excuse than a reason, Logan had always believed. Jill wanted out of more than just Essex; she wanted out of their marriage as well. She detested the forlorn aspect of Essex Station and the old house they had moved into because of finances and to look after his father. She hated the marginal neighborhood wedged between small, defunct industries and the railroad tracks. Not that the rest of Essex was any better, but the Station had a reputation of belonging “on the other side of the tracks,” and the residents were considered in the same vein. What inflamed Jill was Logan’s obstinacy, his willingness to adhere to a dying place as if it were some kind of crusade. But where the hell else would he go? There was hardly any money; the house, if he could even sell it, would have brought only a pittance, half of which would be divided with his sister. Besides, he was born here; his history, his memories were here. The mortgage was free and clear; he only had to pay the high taxes for town services that were practically nonexistent and the even higher utilities. He swore to himself that someday, when he pulled the finances together, he would opt for an alternate energy source and eventually get off the power grid. The most he could do now was keep the house dark and the thermostat lower than either he or Tara liked.

  After he’d hustled the toolbox and milk crate containing the camping gear down to the basement, he locked the side door and pulled the truck partway into the garage. It was more of a carport now that the garage doors had rotted and been removed. He didn’t keep anything by way of expensive tools inside as he had a prefab tool shed set up in the backyard, just a couple of rusty garden tools and the snowplow blade were under a tarp at the rear. If somebody wanted to give themselves a hernia trying to steal it, then let them have at it, was Logan’s attitude.

  Tara followed him inside through the back porch door. It was Thursday, and he would have finished the week camped out in his pickup at the job site had he not been laid off. A layoff he should not have been included in. Tara’s dishes of dry food and her water bowl were still full from when he had set them out before he left for work at four o’clock that morning. The radio in the den was on, playing soft music—not his taste, but soothingly innocuous, and the dog seemed to appreciate it. It was some company for when he was gone overnight. As he peeled off his damp clothes and tossed them down the basement stairs for the laundry, he said, “We’re going out for a walk later, you and me. Not too far, but you could use the exercise.” It would be getting colder soon, and then it would be impossible to get her out and moving. She was old and preferred to lay coiled by a heat vent in the kitchen and snooze.

  Since Tara was all set for chow, all he had to think of was himself. The refrigerator was not exactly spilling over with choices. He found a bratwurst in the freezer and a large can of baked beans in the cupboard, which he threw together in a pot on a low flame, and one bottle of lager to wash it down with. He went upstairs to shower. The bathroom was the only part of the second floor he’d used since Jill had left. The eight-month anniversary was coming up at the end of November, right after Thanksgiving. After moving into his parents’ house, Jill had turned his room and his sister’s into guest rooms, and she’d redecorated his parents’ bedroom for them. He no longer slept there, preferring to bivouac in the den on a bedroll and sleeping bag. Their bedroom still retained a strong trace of her scent. Pleasant, alluring, full of memories that were mostly erotic. An imprint of her body remained on the bed from the last time she had laid on it, the pillow indented and the coverlet wrinkled. Logan remembered her last moments at the house, lying down, bags packed, waiting for her two sisters to pick her up and drive her out of his life forever. He kept the vents closed, curtains drawn. The upstairs had been left dark, cold, and gathering dust.

  After his shower, Logan found a pair of black jeans, a sweatshirt, and fleece-lined moccasins for lounging around the house. He ate, knocked down the beer, and wondered what to do with himself for the rest of the evening. The payroll stub lay on the kitchen table where he had left it when he got home, and he tried not to fret over how short a distance he could run on the small amount in his bank account. By the end of December, the second half of the property taxes would be due. He could only hope the employment brokers could get him something relatively decent for the next few weeks. When jobs—which were few and far between—were available, the brokers could offer hideously stupid, nasty work and have the pick of every able-bodied, employable man and woman throughout the entire county who would be willing to do it for cheap.

  His mind turned to the incident earlier that evening when he was stopped at the Lennox Farms checkpoint. He fired up the laptop and did a little research on hoof-and-mouth disease. Actually, it was called foot-and-mouth. Except for Asia, the Middle East, parts of Northern Europe, and New Zealand, there hadn’t been any outbreaks since the twenties. Mostly, the information he found was technical and dry. The morbidity rate was high, but the disease was largely eradicated from some regions, especially North America. Control strategy consisted of a one-kilometer-radius slaughter zone around the infected farm and a three-kilometer surveillance zone. A slaughter zone: now that had a significant ring to it, he thought. Tomorrow he would call the county extension and try to find out what kind of outbreak existed. Not that there was any concern for human health, but he was interested. Why would Tactical Response Team personnel be involved in a Department of Agriculture concern? Even considering the distance from Pine Haven’s new border to the exclusion zone where Logan had been stopped, it was another two miles to the fence line. This reminded him that he wanted to research anything available on the Pine Haven perimeter expansion.

  He noticed Tara pacing about the den, to the kitchen, to the front windows that faced Hamilton Road, and back again. At one point, her ears stood up sharp, as though the sound she heard could hurt. She trembled slightly. He called her over. “What’s the matter, old girl? We’ll take that walk pretty soon, OK?” He stroked her gently until she tired of it and returned to the front window, front paws leaning on the sill.

  When he searched for Pine Haven on the computer he found a paucity of information. Even when the accident occurred, there had been little coverage in the local papers and on TV news. The big news media like the Times had mere blurbs, only mentioning it. With the ongoing conflict with North Korea and Iran and all the players involved on both sides, emergency powers had been put into effect and all media had become worse than anything seen before. Every incident, byte, rumor, projection, editorial was subject to the concerns of homeland or national security. The government had established a clampdown shortly after 9/11, and its grip only tightened during the ensuing years. Now, as long as there was an entrenched national security state, it would never let go.

  With the little Logan could find on the Internet, he managed to fill in some details from memory. The USAF facility retained the old title of the estate, as had the Christian school that had taken over the property back in the 1980s. The original owner, August Fergusson, had been something of a local well-to-do industrialist whose family had garnered a fortune in manufacturing and pharmaceuticals since before the turn of the twentieth century. After the stock market crash i
n 1929, Fergusson’s fortune went the way of most. The estate of Pine Haven would never be called home again.

  During the 1940s and ‘50s, Pine Haven was used by the government as a psychiatric hospital or special convalescence home for high-ranking military and government officials. It was low-key even back then, with a security detail that had no tolerance for trespassers. It lay fallow for years; Mohawk County attempted to turn the place into some kind of park, and a preservation committee attempted to keep the manor house from falling into disrepair. By 1986 the Pine Haven Christian middle school opened for both day students and boarders. It lasted until the late ‘90s, when the estate went fallow again. Sometime during the war on terror the Air Force became interested in the property, and by 2010 or ‘11, renovations were in full swing. It was not a base, no weapons would be stored there, nor would there be an airstrip, as some had rumored. At most a helicopter pad would be employed. As to what type of generic research, the Air Force was quite vague, but from the beginning security was very tight, with armed Air Force security patrols guarding the perimeter and more fencing erected. Whatever the Air Force was involved in, they were funneling millions of volts of electricity into the building. There were rumors of an underground lab.

  The property was quite extensive. The original estate claimed nearly three thousand acres, with a working farm on one section of the property and ample pasture and stables for its horse-enthusiast owner, August Fergusson. A state forest bordered the property to the north and east, as did several small family-owned dairy farms at the western edge of the property. Pine Haven and its immediate surroundings were rural, quiet, and to a degree well hidden. During the early months of Air Force ownership, convoys of trucks entered the property from the interstate, and the helicopter pad certainly got quite a work out. More than one Bell or Sikorski was seen flying in and out of the estate grounds at all hours of the day and night. When the facility was up and running, all fell silent and Pine Haven eventually faded from awareness. Whatever “theoretical” work was being done on the premises, it had commenced.

  For nearly two years, until the accident, the facility remained active. Days before, locals had witnessed some strange glowing lights coming from the direction of Pine Haven, a nimbus of blue or green, very subtle. Those who lived closest—the farmers and homeowners who had property in the dense wooded lots—complained of harassing noises and shadowy forms lurking around their houses at night. People were frightened, or at best anxious, and they couldn’t put a finger on why. One family complained of poltergeistlike activity at their house. The police were summoned on numerous occasions during the several weeks before the accident occurred. Reports were filed, but very little could be done. The Essex Police Department was a small local unit augmented by county police when time and funds permitted. Even the police had to admit that “something” was in the air over by Pine Haven, but they couldn’t accurately say what. Just a feeling. Unpleasant. Unnatural.

  The big issue about Pine Haven was what caused the accident. There had been plenty of eyewitness accounts the night it occurred. There was even the rumor that a release of radioactive material had spread a mantle, although isolated, over the estate. This scenario was allowed to fester for several days until even Air Force officials stated publicly that there was no nuclear technology whatsoever on-site, and both NRC and state Department of the Environment personnel were allowed within the immediate vicinity to conduct tests. What caused that brilliant “concussion” of light and the ear-splitting thunderclap that followed? There was definitely an electromagnetic pulse that destroyed the function of just about every piece of electronics in more than a mile radius. Plenty was written on the Internet about that night and the days afterward, some of it quite spurious. There were scant details from the large media outlets. While skirmishes continued with Iranian forces on the Afghan border and with the conflict between North and South Korea going critical, all interest and dread was focused on that. The most Pine Haven received was a paragraph or two buried on page six.

  Logan then read a description of the accident on the night it had occurred. The witness lived several miles away. “It was a mad wind that howled for only several minutes. Maybe five at the most. The dry leaves were blown from the trees and swirled around thick, like a swarm of locusts. That’s exactly what it looked like. Around and around the leaves blew like a tornado, and to the west you could see the light. It was in the direction of Pine Haven. Thick veins of light flashing continuously like lightning, and dense blue-black clouds. And then it stopped and became still. The wind, this tornadolike wind, just ended as quick as it had begun. But the aura of light remained throughout the night and faded in brightness over the subsequent nights that followed. I never did hear a loud bang or explosion as other folks had. Maybe it was what woke me up, but I don’t remember hearing it. Only the wind and the leaves hitting the windows and sides of the house. You can imagine I was afraid like it was the end of the world or something. I just knew something bad had happened. Something…unnatural.”

  On the night of the accident, Joe hadn’t heard or seen anything. He had slept through it, although he did recall sirens that night. They woke him up repeatedly, but not urgently enough to get out of bed and go find out what was going on. He and Jill were living in Whitfield, a town fifteen miles northeast, in a house they had rented. Jill was working late at the all-night restaurant in downtown Essex. Something serious was going on, but nobody knew what. Several hours later toward the end of her shift, a customer said a fire had broken out at the Pine Haven base and a lot of roads were closed to traffic except for emergency vehicles. What was strange was that Air Force personnel weren’t allowing local fire departments inside the perimeter, only some Army units from the nearest National Guard headquarters. Essex, Putnam, and Hadleyville fire departments were standing by, poised to go in and help. Air Force security and Army military police were in control. Trucks and helicopters were just starting to converge on the site.

  Joe’s father had heard the blast’s concussion as it slammed against the side of the house. He could see the strange glow of light coming from the direction of Pine Haven to the west. What followed were days of much activity and very little information. A big community meeting was held with a representative from the Air Force and some honcho from the NRC to quell rumors about a release of radioactive material. Pine Haven was a secure facility; that’s why only the government and its personnel were allowed on-site. It was an industrial accident that posed no threat to the outlying communities. At no time was the health of Essex residents compromised. The accident was contained within the building, and that was all.

  Joe had paid some attention to the excitement but had his own worries, mainly how to pay the rent and the beginnings of his mother’s deteriorating health.

  The dog was becoming downright irritating as she trotted back and forth from the rear of the house to the front window, pressing her nose to the window pane. “Let’s do it, girl,” Logan said, exasperated, and shut off the computer. He got his coat from the front closet, grabbed his cigarettes and the leash. While affixing the short chain to Tara’s collar, he squeezed into a pair of running shoes. Then he had to tug her out of the house. She whimpered.

  “What’s your problem? I thought you wanted out,” he said, trying not to sound annoyed. He remembered that the garbage went out tonight for early morning pickup—or maybe not at all, considering how things weren’t dealt with in the Station. He looped the leash, with plenty of slack, to the handrail at the back porch and went inside to collect the kitchen trash. Back outside he saw Tara straining at the leash, legs splayed, rigid, her ears up. She was shivering, and an odd noise emanated from deep within her throat. Logan plopped the garbage into a dented metal trash can at the side of garage. He cleaned up some beer bottles and cans littering the ground next the recycle bin. The recycling hadn’t been picked up for several weeks, but he would try again. He heard Tara yelp a couple of times, and the last sound she made was wet and guttural. That
’s it, he thought, I’m taking the trash to the curb, have a smoke, and then back inside with her. Obviously she didn’t want a walk. But neither did he want her to take a dump on the cellar stair landing, which she had been doing in the middle of the night as of late. As he lifted the recycling bin with both hands, it felt like it weighed a ton. Logan waddled only a few steps when something materialized out of the darkness and brushed by him. He felt mass, substance, and weight rub against his leg, and he lost all coordination. He was spun around by some force that almost seemed electric, losing the bin, which landed noisily, cans and bottles crashing to the ground, and him following, hitting the ground ass-first. A face, dark and leathery, an almost-human face that was inches from his own and with eyes that glowed orange, stared intensely into his own. A collar or harness was attached to the thing’s neck and shoulders and blinked with dull amber and clear LEDs. The animal was enormous, the size of a mastiff. No, it was larger, with a short spiked coat of mottled patterned hair. Muscular, but the neck and belly showed rolls of fat. It was the most hideous animal Logan had ever seen in his life, and he was frozen with fear.

  The creature or dog or whatever it was took only cursory interest in him. It was as though Logan could sense what it felt about him, that he was irrelevant. The thing turned away and ambled off deeper into the backyard, its heavy testicles swaying insolently between well-muscled hindquarters. That such an animal existed was an obscenity, Logan thought. It stopped at the old, dilapidated wood fence a few feet from the garage, stood poised, and then hopped over to the other side in one strange, unnatural movement.