The Burning

had it been meant for him?

-and he stepped back as the old man began whaling on the spindly arm. 'Fuck you!' the man said vehemently, his face turning red, his breath growing harsher and raspier. 'Get back in there!'

The force with which the hand and arm were being assaulted would have shattered a normal limb, but the wrinkled skeletal appendage remained unfazed, the clawlike fingers trying to grab the attacking staff. Then the pole hit sideways, hard against the wrist, and Dennis heard something crack, saw the wizened hand flop forward, limp, even as the arm continued to stretch upward from the boiling mud.

He was reminded of his dream on the first night of his trip, where he'd been beaten by that man in the steel yard yelling crazily at him in incomprehensible English. There were echoes of that fury here, and with a shout of glee, the old man renewed his efforts, spurred on by his success, seemingly getting his second wind as he two- handedly swung the long stick like a baseball bat.

Feeling scared and more than a little sickened, Dennis hurried up the path toward the exit, the trail sloping down the small ridge and past a deadfall of old trees and brush before reaching the wooden fence separating The Keep from the parking lot. The path followed the fence past the series of buildings until it reached a previously unnoticed gate. Dennis pushed the gate open-and he was out.

The parking lot was still empty save for his car and the red pickup, and he ran across the gravel-strewn asphalt until he reached the Tempo. Pulling out his keys as he ran, he unlocked the door and gratefully got inside. Minutes later, he was back on the road, heading west, The Keep in his rearview mirror.

What was that arm that had popped out of the mud pit? Was it some mechanical device used to trick tourists? He didn't think so, but he didn't dare think beyond that, didn't really want to know the truth, and he pushed the image from his mind as he accelerated past the speed limit and drove as fast as he could away from The Keep.

The Tempo died half an hour out of Selby, a nondescript town on the border between forest and farmland. There was a series of bumps; then suddenly the car had no power. Dennis pushed down on the gas pedal, flooring it, but instead of accelerating, the car lost speed at an alarming rate. In a matter of seconds, he was stopped in the middle of the road. There were no other cars coming from either direction, and he hadn't seen another vehicle for the past forty-five minutes, but he moved the car to the side of the road just in case, pushing on the doorframe while trying to steer. The Tempo slid onto the dirt shoulder, and Dennis slammed the door shut.

'Damn it!'

He pulled out his wallet, found his AAA card, flipped open his cell phone and tried to call, but he was out of range. It was not until he'd walked a mile or so down the road that he was finally able to get through, and it was forty minutes after he returned to his car, his head full of Deliverance daymares-

Niggers and Kikes

-that a tow truck came and towed him back to the Ford dealer in Selby.

He expected to be given the runaround because he was an outsider with Pennsylvania plates, and he was not disappointed. The service manager was dressed in a blue blazer and greeted him with a used-car dealer's smile, but when Dennis pressed for a time estimate, the man's Joe Friendly routine disappeared. 'We're very busy right now,' he said flatly, though Dennis could see only two vehicles in the dealership's service bays. 'It'll be a day or two before we can take a look at it. Depending on the problem and what you decide to do, we can have work completed maybe two days after that.'

Four days!

Dennis wanted to assert his customer's rights, wanted to speak to someone higher up, the manager or owner of the dealership, but he sensed that that would only add time to the estimate, so he said nothing. He tried the polite route. 'I'm just passing through and I'm in kind of a hurry, so any help you could give me would be great.'

The service manager's smile was back. 'We'll do what we can,' he promised insincerely.

His insurance covered the price of a loaner car, but since he was from out of town and out of state, the dealership made him put the rental on his Visa card and said he could get the insurance company to reimburse him once he got back home. He drove out with a car even older and crappier than his own, and the first thing he did was hunt down a place to stay.

Sclby must have gotten more through traffic than lie thought bci;ui( farther along the highway was an entire motel row and alter getting a rate card from each of the six motor inns, he decided to stay at the

Budget Arms, the last and cheapest lodge in town.

There was a sign in the office window: help wanted. Out of curiosity, he asked the clerk behind the counter what the job was while the man ran his credit card.

'Uh, kind of ... my job.' The clerk grinned sheepishly. 'I'm bailing tomorrow for the Ramada Inn down the block. Why? You interested?'

Dennis shrugged noncommittally.

'Well, it's yours for the taking. The misers who own this place don't pay much, but they don't ask questions either. And they're under a deadline here.' He motioned toward Dennis' loaded car. 'If you're just looking for a quick buck, want to make a little gas money so you can keep on truckin', this is a good gig. Long-term, though? I wouldn't recommend it.'

'Thanks,' Dennis said. He finished checking in, then took the key and walked over to his room. He looked inside. Bed, TV, window air conditioner. It wasn't the best place he'd stayed ... but it wasn't the worst either.

He unpacked the car, put his suitcases into the room, took the boxes and bags off the roof-he was becoming an old hand at this-then locked everything up and headed back to the motel office. The bell above the door jingled as he stepped inside. Before the clerk could ask what he needed, Dennis took the help wanted sign from the window and carried it over to the desk. He looked at the man.

'I'll take it,' he said.

Eight

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

'Jesus.'

Henry glanced up at the surface of the cliff in front of him. Overnight, someone had defaced the petro-glyphs that had been etched and painted onto these walls over nine centuries ago and had withstood rain and wind, heat and cold, conquering Spaniards, westward-migrating pioneers and the National Park Service. He had been here only yesterday afternoon, stationed at this very spot to answer tourists' questions, and everything had been the same as it had always been.

Now, though ...

Now lizards had been changed into boats, spirals into squares, horses into cars. People had been crossed out and scribbled over, and geometric symbols had been obliterated entirely, leaving only indented sections of chiseled rock. He'd never seen anything like this before and had no idea how such a feat could be completed in a single night. Even with a team of vandals driving cherry pickers and wielding power tools, there was virtually no way such a massive and wholesale destruction of historically significant rock art could be accomplished.

His gaze moved from the lowest pictographs, at eye level, to the weathered etchings at the top, nearly two stories above his head. For some reason he imagined those naked Oriental twins crawling up the precipitous face of the cliff, stone implements in hand, chipping away at the ancient Indian drawings and purposefully disfiguring them, the two sisters working throughout the night, moonlight shining on their bare flesh as they scurried over the sheer stone wall.

He pressed down on the erection that was growing in his pants, grateful there was no one else here.

He needed to report this. Nothing of this nature had ever occurred in the park to his knowledge, at least not to this extent, and it was incumbent upon him to inform the superintendent and to set the wheels in motion for the investigation that would hopefully catch the perpetrators so they could not do it again. What had been lost here could never be regained, and the most important thing now was to make sure that it did not happen again.

He was about to radio in a report when he suddenly

thought of another nearby site with hundreds of Anasazi petroglyphs and pictographs. It was more secluded, not on the park maps given out to visitors, but still accessible by Jeep. Quickly, he made the call to the superintendent, explaining what had happened, giving the exact location, then said that he wanted to check another