William unplugged the phone and stepped out, opening the back of the Humvee to find carefully mounted rifles. Beside them rested two service pistols. Preferring the idea of concealing a weapon more than approaching obviously armed, he slid one into the back of his jeans.

The heat blasted him as he squinted, looking up at the blinding blue sky above. In the near distance, he could hear the whirling of the drone.

If he didn’t know what to look for, it could have been easily missed. It was, after all, further up into the sky than insects should be. Yet the swarm was unmistakable. Whatever diseases killed below somehow did not wipe out the creatures above.

He watched the swarm change and twist. For a moment, he saw it take shape, right before it broke apart again.

“My grandmother was right,” William said into the phone. “Tell her she was right. I see it. I see the strand.”

“OK. Careful now. Keep talking.”

“I’m walking up.”

The dream had shown him the crevices left behind by erosion, the redness of the scoria. Around it, nothing grew. Nothing thrived.

How could a child be inside?

“Any sign of the girl? You might have to walk around.”

“Nothing yet.”

The fissures scattered across the rock appeared to deepen as the outcroppings began casting lengthy shadows as the sun dropped.

“Something’s happening,” William said.

“What is it? Talk to us.”

He took a suddenly step back as he realized he was not seeing a darkening contour, but a widening division splitting the rock before him. It made no sound, no cracking of the earth. Fluidly it parted, not offering a formal passageway, but wide enough to step into.

“It’s opening.”

“The rock? Opening? OK, back away. We’re flying the drone closer—”

The phone suddenly went dead. The buzzing of the drone ceased as well, and seconds later William flinched and whirled around as it came crashing to the earth.

“General?” William said.

The phone’s screen was black. He pressed the power button, but it failed to respond.

He looked from the dead device to the rock.

His heart thudded in his chest, thinking of the online material he’d furiously read while flying to the disaster site in an effort to educate himself about the terrain on which he would ultimately travel.

The nation’s twenty-sixth president, for whom the park was named, had loved the Badlands, describing the rocks as characters that were fantastically broken. Roosevelt’s quote was repeated on most websites.

“… so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth.”

He reached out for Lily’s sister. He could feel her, less than a yard or two away.

All he had to do was touch her. Touch her and it would be over.