Alex stood silent by the roadbed, Samantha beside him. There was a light rain coming down from the heavy, dark sky, the promise of more severe weather hanging on the breeze like a tattered flag on a rusted flagpole. There were other people here as well, of course, looking out at the road and the gathering of civil servants and road construction crew, glaring at the huge yellow machines sitting bloated and silent, just waiting for the order to start, waiting for the fire to be lit in their monstrous metal bellies so they could lurch forward on treads and wheels and rollers and devour and crush and create.
Nobody was smiling. Nobody was even looking at one another. Eyes panned across the scene like robotic security cameras, viewing the scene flatly but not actually seeing it. Not registering it. Alex could tell which of the others were there for the same reason he and Sam were there. It was the look in their eyes. That glassy, dead look. The look he now saw reflected in the mirror every morning, the look he saw in Samantha’s eyes in the all too brief moments when they actually met each other’s gaze now.
It was a massive project, the new road bypass. It promised to bring more traffic and much-needed business in the small township. And safety, of course. Highest safety rating, that’s what had been promised. That was the big selling point on the ballot, after all – you can’t bring all those new drivers, all those speeding, careless drivers through the heart of their township if you couldn’t ensure safety. Safety was paramount.
Alex thought back to the municipal ballot, the big black ‘X’ he had written next to ‘Approve’. Sam had done the same, of course. It was clearly a boon for their flagging township, a boon for his small hardware business, definitely a boon for the café Sam worked at. More traffic, better access, and of course the safety. Alex cursed under his breath and spat onto the ground.
It wasn’t like they had gone into the project ignorant though. They knew what was needed for road work of this magnitude, they knew what kind of resources projects like this took. They knew how long the projects could drag on. They just didn’t see how it could impact them – nobody ever thought of that part when they voted on the municipal ballot. Everyone thought of the benefits, but nobody thought of the costs. Nobody ever thought about the costs for all that safety, for all that security.
The white, unmarked panel van pulled up to the construction site, followed by a boxy midnight blue van that Alex knew contained a full complement of S.W.A.T. police in full riot gear. They poured out of the back of the dark van silently, only the thuds of their heavy leather boots cutting through the dismal rain to reach Alex where he stood motionless, wet hair now plastered to his head. He watched them as they began forming a formidable protective perimeter around the white vehicle, their eyes keen and constantly scanning the sparse crowd. Alex didn’t have to wonder why. Violence wasn’t common, but it had happened. People didn’t like losing the things they held most dear. It made them desperate.
The ballot measure passed by a wide margin, as it had been expected to. It barely made the news, Alex remembered, because there was some controversy in one of the town council races that the local press had fixated on, as usual. Anything the least bit controversial and it made headlines. A new bypass – that wasn’t news. At least not news that anyone wanted to dwell on, in any case. Alex remembered after the election was over and the results all tallied, there was a kind of group melancholy that had gripped the township, like waking up from the morning after a night of heavy drinking and, in the harsh light of day, being forced to face what you had done, facing the consequences of your actions.
The back doors of the white van finally opened and Alex heard a cry, like a low, crushing moan as the first figure appeared and was helped down out of the vehicle. Alex could see the short, cropped red hair of a young boy, dressed in the traditional white linen robes. He tried not to think the word ‘shroud’ but he couldn’t stop himself.
The scattered weeping grew in intensity as more white-clad figures left the truck. Samantha moaned and shook against Alex when they saw Jen walk out of the truck, her shoulder-length black hair now cropped short to her head. She didn’t look up, her eyes didn’t scan the crowd to find her parents. She just walked along as if dazed, being led by one of the red-robed civil servants. Alex found that his eyes were hot with tears and he was shaking, his hands clenched into tight balls, knuckles white. He couldn’t look away.
It was his civic duty. He kept repeating it like an all-encompassing mantra in his head, over and over. It was his civic duty. He dared not think anything else.
The thirteen children, ages ranging from nine to twelve as was the requirement, stood in a circle on the roadbed, all holding hands, facing one another. Red clad apostates and civil servants circled around them, waving heavy brass censers trailing blue smoke, or else reading from thick old leather books in a bizarre and incomprehensible tongue, the syllables carrying over the area in unnatural intonations. This continued for some time, though by this time Alex wasn’t recognizing the passage of time as a normal person might. For Alex, it was like he was trapped in amber, this one terrible, horrifying moment stretching out into a seeming eternity. He could hear other parents crying, sobbing, moaning. Nobody screamed, though. No one cried out. Alex was sure someone would, before it was over. Someone always did.
The rain being to pour down more violently as the ritual wound to a close. The white linen robes the children wore had gone mostly transparent and Alex could see they wore nothing underneath. He seethed to think of his beloved, beautiful Jen out there, wet-t-shirt naked in front of these people as if she were on display. He began to weep – it was an insult and an injustice and Alex simply couldn’t bear it, just one more horror upon all the others he had been witness to over the past six weeks. Fists clenched, he made the decision that he would put a stop to this, that he would run in a grab Jen and take her home and dry her off and make sure nothing ever hurt her, just like he promised her that wonderful day she was born almost eleven years earlier.
He stood there, though. He couldn’t stop it, he knew that. He looked down at the muddy ground, feeling shame. Felling helpless.
It was his civic duty, after all.
A masked civil servant took each child in turn, starting with the youngest, and led them each to a shallow hole dug into the roadbed at regular, precisely calculated intervals. The holes were muddy now and filling with rainwater, but the children didn’t complain, they didn’t cry out. They lay down, hands across their chests, and they waited. Alex didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see, but he couldn’t look away as Jen was taken to her shallow hole and helped into it. Once she lay down he could barely see her hands and toes and forehead from his vantage point. He was shaking more, and Sam was crying and gasping and trembling all over. Still they stood there. Still they waited.
Alex jumped as the huge yellow road machines finally began to start. He hadn’t realized that all the children were in position. All the sacrifices were ready. As the first of the machines began to move forward he finally did avert his eyes, looking down into the pooling puddle around his feet as the first of the road machines roared to life and rolled ponderously forward on its huge tracks.
There was no screaming, at least none that could be heard as the machines rolled down the roadbed doing their work. Alex never looked up, unable to bring himself to do it. Sam had fallen at some point, collapsed on the wet earth sobbing violently. Alex just stood, numb in the rain, smelling the sick petroleum smell of asphalt as the road crew went about their work.
Copyright – Chad Anctil 2010
Visions of a Dark Horizon 
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