The Sacrifice Area

by Peter Idone

  “We are aware of the risks.”

  “Who is we, Natalie? Is Glass going to infiltrate along with you?” When Natalie didn’t respond, he said, “I didn’t think so. You will be shouldering all the risk.”

  “Not quite all the risk, Joe. I have something of a trump card. A surefire way in and out.”

  “Would you care to enlighten me?”

  “Remember that guy at the fuel depot, Creech, the guy the Tacticals picked up? He’s been my contact for weeks now.”

  “So that was what you were doing there. You really seemed out of place. Is Frenchy in on it, too?”

  “No, of course not! What makes you say that?”

  “He has a history of nefarious doings over the years. I figured that with the depot so close to the border of the estate, it would be the perfect jump-off point. How did you meet Creech?”

  “While I was surveying the perimeter of the exclusion zone. I’ve expended a lot of time and energy over the months studying the movements of patrols, what’s been going in and out of there by road and by air. There was a lot of helicopter activity in the beginning, but it has slacked off considerably. I was close to the fence one time this past summer. Creech was painting symbols on tree trunks with paint spray cans and a stencil. Some I recognized, of course. Skull and crossbones. The other symbols were runes denoting danger or death, I think he said. We got to talking. I could tell he wasn’t too happy about working with the Tacticals. He described them as a very mean bunch. They made fun of him.”

  “Why did they make fun of him?”

  “Creech is a ‘glow boy.’ That’s an old term used for nuclear-materials handlers in the industry. But he is something more. He volunteered, for more pay of course, to undergo special treatments that would allow him to withstand a higher REM count. He could operate in hotter radioactive environments for longer periods of time.”

  “How is that achieved?”

  “They call it a splicing operation. Not like gene splicing, but certain strands of insect DNA is injected into the marrow, the chitinous genetic material, specifically from cockroaches, that can withstand high doses of radiation without succumbing to illness, damage, or mutation. Maybe some mutation, I’m not really sure.”

  “They can do that? It’s sick. I mean, that’s insane. Who would ever want to mutilate themselves that way? No matter how much money was being offered.”

  “It’s experimental. Besides, there are some side effects. They could be emotional and psychological. Creech was doing a lot of work in the cooling pond at the Triumph reactor. There are a lot of spent fuel rods that have to be recycled, removed, and put into casks. That place has been operating for forty years, and it’s been granted another extension now with the upgrade. Creech was becoming too difficult to work with, so he was sent over to Pine Haven to help with the burial and check on the electronic security systems in place around the perimeter.”

  “Difficult in what way?”

  “All I could glean was that he was very argumentative and hostile. He was evaluated, and it was decided for a time to separate him from the pressures of retrofitting the plant. He would be called over for a short time to do some particular task that was considered too hot and time-consuming for the regular technicians, but would then be ferried back to Pine Haven. The Tacticals call him Creech the Creature, Bug, Cockroach, Silverfish, or whatever comes to mind and amuses them at the moment. But he knows the place thoroughly. There are several access points that he can get in and out of. He’s promised to show me.”

  “Didn’t do him much good the day he was picked up, now did it?”

  “He wanted to see me, a little too desperately I think, and he forced the issue.”

  “So now the Tacticals know what he knows.”

  “Maybe, but I’m going to try and contact him again. We have a secret meeting place and not always on the other side of the fence. I’ve talked to Creech, and he says that a lot of the electronic surveillance systems work intermittently. They are trying to attempt an integrated three-sixty total awareness, and the systems aren’t up and running yet. Not to a full hundred percent. There are major glitches. Except for the new sections of fencing, there are motion detectors that are still attached from when the Air Force had the place. It’s old tech, and a lot of the stuff no longer functions. They’re still waiting for aerial drones, basic stuff that flies up, hovers, and then lands. There are financial issues, too. Creech says there is a lot of electromagnetic interference in places that causes damage or doesn’t even record anything on the infrared CCTVs. Most of his time is checking up on equipment that won’t work or seems not to register what it’s supposed to. There are blind spots. Why do you think there are so many manned patrols?”

  “What about that tower erected over by the state park?”

  “Creech does admit that the tower has the highest success rate, but its main focus is radiation monitoring and surveillance of the state forestland on that side of the estate grounds. That’s an enormous area to keep under observation. The difficulties the Tacticals are having with the surveillance technology is the reason why the boundaries have been extended and some of the nearby roads closed to through traffic. Creech says—”

  “Creech says! Do you think he might be telling you stuff you want to hear? By your account, the guy’s a mutant. There’s no telling what psychological state he’s in.”

  “He’s harmless. He’s just lonely, that’s all. He considers me a friend. I’m going to do this, Joe. You said to me the other night that if I needed a network, you would be available. Did you mean it, or was it only talk? When the time comes, will you help me do this? Will you come with me? Will you watch my back? I’ll do it alone if I have to, but it would be nice if you went along. I’d feel a whole lot safer. I’m telling you, it won’t be as hard as you might think.”

  “Why me, Natalie? You hardly know me. Why choose me?”

  “I suppose that’s a reasonable question to ask. I feel that you’re trustworthy. Capable. I’m operating on instinct, and my instincts tell me that if anyone could be relied on in a difficult situation, it’s you.”

  It would have been real easy for Logan to say yes then and there for no other reason than to solidify some kind of bond with the young, attractive woman, to feel needed by her. He was also astute enough not to volunteer himself. “I think you should reconsider. Think through the mission. Every possible variable. Every foreseeable danger. Whenever you devise a plan of this magnitude, think very hard about what can go wrong—and believe me, something will. No matter how many bases you try to cover, something will go wrong, and have you the imagination and skill to make it right on the spot? And if you…if we are detected, how much danger are we willing to expose ourselves to in order to avoid capture? A lot of those Tacticals have fought in wars. They are trained to pull a trigger very easily.”

  “It won’t come to that.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’ve done my homework and feel very confident, doing the exact same things you’ve mentioned. Creech will help me. He’s my way inside. With or without you, I’m going.”

  “And supposing I do go along, will you tell Glass?”

  “I haven’t thought about it. Would it make a difference?”

  “Not to me, but it would to him. I can only wonder why Glass would be willing to send you into danger. It’s a lot to ask from a research assistant and a friend.”

  “I’m as committed to Glass’s research as he is. I want to know what secrets Pine Haven holds, as much or even more than he does.”

  “I think more. Glass only looks at pornography, remember.”

  Natalie flushed and Logan could see the anger in her face. “That’s not funny, Joe, and it’s unfair.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be funny and it is fair. You obviously need help with this, Natalie. You’re desperate for it—why else would you come to me? You’ve got some serious anxiety about what you’re about to embark on.”

  “I’ll get
over it. I just asked for some help. If you don’t want to, fine, just let me know, but don’t try to talk me out of it, because it’s a done deal.”

  “I’ll want to see the plan.”

  “No. You can contribute to the plan, but not see it and then decide if you will or you won’t. You’re either in or out, Joe.”

  “Fair enough. Let me mull it over.”

  “For how long?”

  “How long does it take anybody to talk themselves into something risky?”

  “About the same amount of time it would take to talk themselves out of it.”

  “The whole idea is to get me on your side, remember?”

  Logan didn’t know how it happened, but after a while they ended up in the den. Natalie had turned on the TV and before he knew it, they were involved in a make-out session on the couch. It wasn’t long before his jeans were strangling him. Natalie sensed this and undid the button and unzipped the fly. Her face looked even better than he had originally fantasized as she went down on him. They undressed quickly and Logan unfurled the bedroll on the floor. Natalie produced a condom, slid it on, and climbed aboard, settling on him gently. She lay astride him, gently rocking her hips; Logan was up deep. Her face was buried in the crook of his neck. Her breathing sounded loud that close to his ear, and her hair smelled sweet. This went on for what seemed the longest time, raising and lowering her pelvis. Slow, fast, and then slow again. After a while Logan thought he could as well have been a downed tree trunk with a good sized nub that she rocked on. He didn’t care, though. It felt terrific. Eventually she gasped and came and so did he. She lay on top of him in a postcoital snooze. About thirty minutes had passed. She climbed off, removed the condom, and blew him. It was the best afternoon Logan had had in nearly a year.

  Without much being said, Natalie dressed. Logan suggested dinner, but it was time for her to be getting back. There were things that needed to be done. “You’ll let me know soon?” she said, getting into her coat.

  “I’m in. When you’re ready, let me see what you have by way of a plan.”

  She flashed a quick smile. “Thanks, Joe. I know with the two of us we can pull this off.”

  “That’s the whole idea. Anything short of that, and I don’t want to consider.”

  Logan climbed into his jeans and threw on a T-shirt. Ready to leave, Natalie preferred to go out the back door. Before he opened it, he kissed her. It seemed a little clumsy. She said good-night, and Logan watched out the window over the kitchen sink as she walked up the driveway.

  He felt great. It was exactly what he wanted from Natalie, at least sexually. The woman was gorgeous. He could get a lot of erotic mileage with thinking about every curve and hump of her body. It had been January, February since he last made love. It was the very last time with Jill. She had left town for Vermont by May, and things had been really tense between the two of them. With Natalie it was nothing short of wonderful. He felt totally relaxed, whole.

  Still, something about the experience was missing, and he knew what it was even while they feasted on each other: nothing cold or mechanical, but it lacked affection on Natalie’s end. And affection had come to mean a lot more to him now, maybe because he was older or had been without for so long. He couldn’t help but wonder how much was premeditated on her part. Not that he minded, she could premeditate all she wanted. But Natalie sensed he was hurting, he even felt self-conscious most of the time about just how much of an open wound his life was at the moment. He would commit to the mission, but that didn’t mean they were going steady. Logan chuckled at the thought. And he thought of something else that was more sobering. There was a very good chance that this little session would be the first and last time they would be like this with one another.

  14

  Logan had guessed right. His time with Natalie was strictly business, and they dealt solely with the matter at hand—penetrating the fence line at the Pine Haven exclusion zone. He made a workspace for them in the basement by hanging a large corkboard on the drywall and clearing a space on the workbench. Logan brought out the maps Henry Bock had given him, and tacked up prints he had scanned from the digital photos of the surveillance tower and its surroundings.

  Natalie studied the maps very carefully and was impressed by the detail. Surprisingly, she brought very little with her by way of documentation, only some generic maps of Essex and its environs that could be found in the side-door pocket in any vehicle. She had discovered early on that satellite imagery of the estate, even parts of the outer perimeter property, had been blurred out when zooming in for closer detail, so she hadn’t bothered with any printouts. What Natalie did possess was a small, leather-bound notebook, like a journal or diary. It contained handwritten notes in a peculiar code understood only by her that detailed patrols on different roads nearby— Raven’s Perch, Maplewood Road, state route 23—and the times when the patrols would pass.

  Natalie had been very busy the past several months. Glass usually drove her to a spot where she would bail out; this was when Glass was still leaving the house. Hiding in the woods or in the cover of some drainage ditch in a farm field with a pair of binoculars, she would time the drive-bys of Tactical vehicles, noting their passing with a wristwatch. She had observed the convoys of trucks loaded with the allegedly low-level waste traveling slowly down the highway from the Triumph reactor between eleven thirty at night and three in the morning: enormous, slow-moving container trucks with Tactical armored patrol carriers front and back, sometimes even a black helicopter flying overhead. Usually there were ten trucks per convoy, and this had continued until early fall. “A lot of poison has been dumped in that ground,” she commented.

  She was curious about the photographs he had taken of the observation tower. “You’ve been busy. When did you take these?”

  “Around the time I met you. After Tara was killed. It seemed that everyone I talked to, Pine Haven always came up. I had this feeling that the dog-man, the chimera, was somehow related. I don’t know if I was acting out of gut instinct or grief.”

  “There could very well be a connection. As for what happened last Sunday afternoon, the animal could have already been captured or killed.”

  Logan didn’t think so. Up until yesterday, the odd, intermittent patrol had still been in the neighborhood. Nothing like the animal had been seen since last Sunday, but precautions were still being taken just in case it reared its ugly, human-like head. Never had he truly wanted to kill something as much as he wanted to kill that creature. He believed that once the act was done, his sense of loss would dissipate. He would have done something, righted a wrong.

  “We will want to stay as far away from that tower as possible. We won’t be entering or leaving the grounds by way of the state forest,” Natalie said.

  “I know, but you will have to familiarize yourself with some of the trails as a contingency. We could be forced in that direction should we be discovered. Best to know the area and not have to use it than be caught by surprise.”

  Natalie studied one of the maps. “Henry gave you this?” she asked.

  Logan nodded. The map Natalie was looking at was from the town surveyor’s office. It was large, taking up most of the surface of the workbench, and detailed with color shadings denoting state, county, and private land ownership, as well as Department of Resources holdings. Interestingly enough, about the time this map was printed, Pine Haven fell under the category of military reservation. What the map didn’t specify was acreage that had since fallen within the boundary of the exclusion zone or the closure established on the northwestern border of the state forest. The legends in the margins denoted paved, gravel, improved, and primitive roads, as well as railroad and transmission lines, which fell more to the north and south respectively. The top of the map, due north, extended close to the bank of the river; only a little section of blue was visible in one particular quadrant. The bottom of the map, south, ended at a section of the main highway. Pine Haven was located almost dead center. It was conta
ined, roughly, within the boundaries of Maplewood Road to the west, Stag’s Path and state route 23 to the north, Orchard Park to the east, and finally Raven’s Perch and the highway to the south. The exit to Pine Haven, now closed from the highway, led to Estate Road, which was basically the main entrance road that eventually reached the main house on the property. It had been years since Logan had been on that stretch of asphalt, which wove through the forest and finally narrowed to a two-lane drive bordered by pine sentinels, tall and evenly spaced. The grounds of the estate exceeded well over three thousand acres, and with the state forest considered, nearly five thousand. It was a lot of property for one man, August Fergusson, to possess at one time.

  “This is a very good map,” Natalie said. “Impressive. I want you to stay away from Henry Bock. Have you seen him lately?”

  “No, why? What’s wrong with Henry?”

  “He’s trouble and he talks too much. He’s managed to get the people he works for very upset.”

  “The Department of the Environment? What’s he done?”

  “It’s rumored he has absconded with department funds to help finance his investigation. He has even sold his car, a vehicle belonging to the state, not his own, so he can afford to remain active in the field.”

  “I guess he never made it out to Lennox Farms to check out that outbreak of cysts.”

  “What cysts?”

  “The cysts growing on cattle and being destroyed in all likelihood by Response Team officials. I mentioned it to you at the X on the night we met.”

  “Yes, of course, poor things.”

  Logan wasn’t convinced that she did remember. “You had been to his house. The lady he’s renting from, Mrs. Pryce, and her son, Derek. You left quite an impression.”

  “Quite a household. I probably gave Henry a lift.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “I really can’t remember offhand. Maybe at the Hotel X. You meet just about everyone there. Does it make a difference?”