The Furies

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Under a brilliant Milky Way, the figures are puny. Bent double, they might be crabs scuttling over rocks, and the whump-whump filling the air around them the wing beats of some giant mythical bird. But as the big Chinook soars up and away, its navigation lights off, the creek returns to a silence broken only by the gurgling river.

Dressed like astronauts, they work swiftly, using subdued flashlights to set up trestle tables, microscopes, and flasks. The heavy gloves turn this into a clumsy operation. Only then do they begin to explore the creek, and it is fifteen minutes before they find Joe Wupatki at the edge of the river. His cell phone is clutched tightly in his hand. His face is black and blistered, his eyes are staring, and his facial muscles are still contorted by his last efforts to breathe.

It was never established just what Joe Wupatki was doing in Fossil Creek at two o'clock in the morning, and it had been hard to take his flying saucer call seriously. Nevertheless he was a respected elder of the Tonto Apache reservation, and if Old Joe said he'd seen a UFO crashing in the creek, then so be it. This was the logic that sent the first patrol car out from Payson.

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