The Sacrifice Area — Peter Idone

In the very near future Joe Logan lives in a time commonly referred to as the ‘Dislocation'. The price of gasoline is frightfully expensive, unemployment is in the double digits, and Essex, his home town, is as marginal and defunct as is most of the country and the planet at large. On the same evening when Logan is laid off from his job his dog, Tara, is brutally mauled by a large, hideously ugly creature Logan can only describe as a ‘dog-man'. Its body is canine but the face is all too human in appearance. Strangely enough, Tara's remains are stolen in the middle of the night by figures dressed in protective gear and speed away in a large van. The local police are of little help and seem reticent about giving some indication as to what sort of animal killed Logan's dog. This sets him on a path to find out for himself and is soon brought into contact with Natalie Schneider, a research assistant for a self styled internet journalist and UFO investigator named Chris Glass. The couple had moved to Essex recently in an effort to discover the cause of an accident that had occurred at the old Pine Haven estate right outside of town. The USAF had taken over the property several years earlier to conduct ‘generic' research experiments and there was little to no involvement with the local community. At the time of the accident there were fatalities to some of the scientific and technical staff and a shroud of silenced encompassed the estate for nearly five years. Air Force security had maintained a presence up until recently when it was replaced by a private military contractor, Tactical Response Team Management and Control, to guard the estate grounds. The acreage surrounding Pine Haven has since expanded and the fence line beefed up with the latest security technology. A policy of ‘nobody in - nobody out' is strictly enforced. Anomalies of a paranormal nature have occurred since before the accident and still continue and Logan has come to believe that Pine Haven holds a key to the death of his dog and the creature that killed her. Logan doesn't believe most of the stories generated over the years about the ‘Pine Haven Project', such as interdimensional teleportation and contact with aliens. It was all so much folklore; nonetheless, Natalie Schneider entices Logan to assist her in breaking into the estate grounds in an effort to retrieve an artifact that might give some indication as to what kind of experiments the Air Force was involved in and why it its failure was so catastrophic. Their efforts lead to some rather disastrous results.