The Burning

the deaths were random and unconnected? It was impossible to tell, but it was a moot point anyway. The trains had not progressed to the next level.

They'd been sent back to hell or wherever it was they belonged.

Henry looked down. The tracks were glowing beneath his feet, glowing, not white, yellow, blue, green or any of the other colors associated with luminescence, but black, the gray steel rails radiating a jet darker than obsidian and somehow sharper than any hue was meant to be. He wondered if, from above, the tracks formed some sort of pattern. He looked up.

And saw a face.

It was a terrible visage that looked down upon the scene below it with a mixture of approval and disgust.

The spirit of the land, he thought instantly, but it was such a stupid cliche that he pushed it out of his mind.

His shoe felt hot, as though the section of railroad tie touching it were made of lava, and he jumped aside, finding sandy ground, trying not to touch any of the tracks. Other men were hotfooting it, too, some of them crying out in pain.

The tracks disappeared the same way they'd come in, sinking back into the ground; only this time, Henry noticed, they seemed to disintegrate as they submerged, not going under the dirt but becoming part of it, as though they had been conjured forth from native elements and were reverting to their natural state.

Henry looked up again at the face in the sky and saw that it was more than just a face. There was a body as well, although its components were parts of the surrounding landscape, which made it difficult to see. It was a creature of some sort. A monster, he wanted to say, but that was not right. This was something to which he felt connected, and he found himself thinking of all of those spirits and desert gods the old tribes had worshipped and to whom they had often appealed for assistance. He'd always assumed such stories were the way a primitive people would explain natural phenomena they did not understand, but for the first time he found himself wondering if there were not more things under heaven and earth . . .

Wes clapped him on the shoulder, grinned at him. 'It's over, man. I think that's it.'

'I think so, too,' Henry said. He pointed up at the sky, intending to show Wes the creature towering above them, to ask whether he knew what it was, whether it was some sort of native deity or earth spirit that had been conjured by their chanting. He had the feeling that it was something else entirely, that they had not conjured it but rather that it had brought them to this place. 'What do you think-?' he began. But the figure was gone.

By the time Rossiter arrived, it was ending. He saw only the thing in the sky and the black tracks sinking into the ground and those nearly made him turn tail and run like a pussy. He was thankful to have missed the action this time, and he could tell from the body language of the agents surrounding him that they felt the same. They stood on the hillock next to their cars, and tried to make sense of the chaos in front of them. No one said a word, and Rossiter realized that the other men were afraid to do so. They were silent out of deference. He was the expert here, he was the boss, and the knowledge made him stand taller.

He looked out at the tremendous gathering, doing his level best not to glance upward and see that moonlit monster face. It was impossible to judge the size of the crowd in the darkness, but there was a sea of bodies out there. It looked like one of those marches on Washington. Many of the men seemed to have been holding hands, and that seemed odd. Was there some sort of religious element here?

He didn't know, but he'd find out soon enough.

Rossiter breathed deeply, thought he smelled smoke beneath the dust. And mildew.

What the hell was Saldana doing? he wondered. The other agent hadn't checked in at the appointed time, and that had already been-Rossiter consulted his watch-a half hour ago. He wanted to believe that it was because the man had forgotten, a lapse for which Rossiter would happily chew out his ass, but until that point, Saldana had been as regular as clockwork.

Something had happened in Bear Flats.

Maybe it had and maybe it hadn't. He didn't want to think about that right now. All he knew at this moment was that out here at Promontory Point it was finished. And it looked like the good guys had won.

His mind was already concocting cover stories, bland explanations that would mollify the press and satisfy the public. A train crash, he was thinking. An accident involving two locomotives. Once he and his men conducted a few queries, took some photos and video and got a handle on what had happened, he would report back to Horn and the president.

He smiled to himself.

This time he wouldn't be pushed back into the closet.

This time he would get his promotion.

Epilogue

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

The seasons changed, the crowds returned, and it was easy to forget sometimes that any of it had ever happened.

Henry gave ranger talks, guided visitors to some of the more popular sites, narrated occasional evening slide shows in the campground, caught up on paperwork in the back office of the visitors' center. In short, he went back to his normal life.

For the most part.

But the nights were long, and on cold late evenings he sometimes found himself glancing nervously around his cabin, unnerved by the number of shadows gathered in the corners of the primitive space, half expecting one of them to move. And whenever he looked west, past Ray's cabin, and remembered the train they had seen there, it was as if it had happened just yesterday. The feelings returned full force, and he was engulfed by a fear so profound that he could not stop shaking.

Raul and Stuart were gone. Raul had transferred to Bandolier, while Stuart had quit the park service entirely. Healey had taken an early retirement, and while Henry couldn't say he was sad to see the supervisor go, he had to admit that he missed the freedom | he'd had under the man. The new guy was far more efficient and much better qualified, but he was also a stickler for procedure and kept a far tighter rein on the rangers than they were used to. Healey had always acted like a hard-ass, but he was so incompetent that his orders could be safely ignored. Not so with the new guy. But maybe time would change that.

If he'd expected to become more spiritual after what he'd experienced-or even more Indian-well, that hadn't happened. He was too old and set in his ways, Henry supposed. He was what he was, and events that no doubt would have been life altering had he been twenty or thirty years younger now left him battered and bruised but essentially unchanged.

Life went on.

In February, before the start of the spring rush, when one could travel for days through the park without encountering another soul even on the most popular roads and trails, Henry found himself alone in a secluded canyon while patrolling the northeast quadrant. A box canyon. It bore no resemblance really to the canyon with the petroglyphs where he'd encountered the twins, but he stopped his Jeep nevertheless and got out, searching the rock walls and the narrowing expanse of

sand before him. It was late afternoon, the sky hidden behind shifting layers of dark overlapping clouds, small traces of sunlight penetrating periodically from the west. He hadn't expected to find anything, but on the cliff face to the side of the Jeep, he saw what looked like the shadow of a voluptuous woman. It was a random confluende of shapes that together happened to resemble a persons and he could even spot the individual sources that contributed to the head, the breasts, the legs, but he pulled his pants down anyway and tried to masturbate.

He stroked slow, then fast, but it wasn't happening. He couldn't get even the slightest bit hard, and after a minute or two, he began to feel ridiculous.

He pulled his pants back up.

It really was over.

After work, he headed into Moab, to the Boy Howdy. Ector was supposed to meet him at the bar, but his friend hadn't shown up yet, so Henry ordered a beer and staked out a small table along the east wall. At the end of the counter next to him, two men, one overweight, one underweight, both wearing painter's overalls, were talking