I Was a Law Enforcement Ranger for a Secret National Park.

A former Everglades law enforcement ranger, laid off during federal job cuts, is recruited by his old supervisor Bruce for a contract position at a remote wildlife preserve called McNeely Pines. The pay is triple what he made before, the work sounds easy, and the location is classified until he signs a non-disclosure agreement. What he finds there is not a toxic waste cleanup site but something far darker—a cover story for a secret facility where the government has been conducting horrific experiments, and where the line between prisoner and monster has become disturbingly thin.

The Quarantine and the Quiet Anomalies

McNeely Pines is a ten-thousand-acre forest in Northern California, surrounded by a fifteen-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Bruce tells the ranger that a freight train derailed five years earlier, spilling over two hundred tons of toxic chemicals, and that the EPA ordered a twenty-year quarantine. Their job is simple: patrol the perimeter, monitor hundreds of trail cameras, and make sure no one enters or leaves. The ranger moves into a repurposed hunting lodge, and the two men settle into a monotonous routine of ATV patrols, whiskey, and old DVDs.