The Totem

Slaughter shot one, then another. As his rifle clicked on empty for the last time, he drew his handgun, aiming, shooting, aiming. Other flaming bottles burst before him. Men screamed as they fought hand-to-hand with the figures. Friends around him fell back. Those behind him tried to regroup. Half the town up here was burning, cryptic symbols gone forever, as Slaughter's handgun clicked on empty as well, and while he lurched back, attempting to reload, something struck him. It was big and solid, hairy. It was foul with stench and rot, and it was on him, slashing with its teeth and claws. He tried to push it off him, but its teeth sank into his wrist, and he was screaming.

"Jesus, no, don't bite me!"

But the thing braced its teeth and twisted, grinding, and the pain, the shock of fear was so intense that Slaughter didn't realize what he was doing. When he regained awareness, he saw how he had clubbed his handgun at the figure until fluid oozed from the figure's skull, and it was motionless on the ground beside him. Slaughter gasped, staring at his shredded wrist.

"I've got it!" he screamed. "I'm like them now! Christ, I've got it!"

That would be his most heroic moment, what in memory would be the apex of his life, the quick consideration that would save him. Thinking of the foulness creeping up his arm to reach his shoulder and his brain, thinking of the monster he would shortly be, he struck out with his handgun toward another monstrous figure, turned, saw Parsons, and ran. Parsons noticed him, Parsons who suddenly became rigid, the fear in his eyes more fierce than any emotion he'd ever displayed, for Parsons must have thought of Slaughter's anger toward him, must have assumed that Slaughter was already maddened and changed. Parsons raised his shotgun, firing blindly. Slaughter faltered as the pellets struck his side. But the image of the two kids in that grocery store returned to him, and he mustered the strength to keep ru

ELEVEN

Dunlap huddled in the blackness of the tu

This at last was his great truth, the story he had worked for, and he couldn't bear to watch it. He was a loser, not because he drank too much so often or because he had that trouble with his wife or because the big investigations never came his way. He was a loser simply because he wasn't the man he thought he was. He had run in panic with the other men toward the cliff. He had been the first man to climb in a frenzy up the trestle. He had known reporters who in Vietnam had stood with soldiers in the shriek of battle. He had known other reporters, who had clambered into burning buildings or had waded into flooding rivers or had argued with a gunman holding hostages.

Not him, though. He had always said that he just never had the chance, but now he knew he didn't want the chance. When the opportunity occurred, he'd persistently avoided the chance. Now he saw the battle raging closer to the tu

From the change in sound, he realized that he was in a chamber, and he had a flashlight in the pack that Slaughter had lent him. Bringing out the light, switching it on, he sca

He moaned.

No! He didn't want this. He didn't want to see it. Dear God, he had fled for sanctuary to their secret place of burial. On wooden pallets along the floor, he saw their bodies, fetid, ugly, lined in neat rows, clubs beside them, rotted meat, their arms crossed gently on their fur-ski

Dunlap screamed as the creature turned toward him. It was frowning. In a moment, it was gri

Dunlap wept. He sank to the floor and sobbed until he thought his mind would crack. Hitting the creature, he'd broken his flashlight. He was trapped in the darkness. From outside, he heard the battle, heard the shooting and the screaming. He was torn between his need to flee this room and his determination to avoid the battle.

But he couldn't stay here in the darkness. He heard noises. Another figure rising? He groped to his knees, then his feet, and fumbled toward the tu

But the tu

"No!" he told himself. "No!" He needed light, and then he thought about the camera. Slaughter had retrieved it from the helicopter. It dangled from a sling on Dunlap's neck. Desperate, he raised the camera and triggered its flash. At once, although briefly, he saw more paintings. A bear. An antelope. A deer. The bear who seemed to die in the winter and come back to life in the spring. The antelope and deer who, when the cu

Symbols of a death cult, and as Dunlap triggered the camera's flash again, his edge of vision showed him something high on the wall that both terrified and attracted him. He knew what it was. He didn't want to see it. But he had to, and he aimed the camera. He pressed the button. The flash went off. A second's brightness, and a charcoal drawing of his nightmare appeared before him, crouched sideways, part man, part cat, part wide-andered elk, with paws and a tail, its deep eyes turning past its shoulder, glaring at him.

Dunlap was stu