Free Burial by Graham Masterton

slowly forced against another, fender to fender. Paint scratching, wheel-arches buckling, trim bending back, drip-railsbeing wrenched away, stud by stud. He shielded his eyes with his hand, trying to see if any of the pick-ups parked against the workshop wall were occupied. But they all appeared to be empty; and none of their motors was running.
    He jumped up and down a few times, so that he could see way across the lot. But as far as he could make out, not a single car had anybody in it. It was just him, the cars, and the desert.
    â€˜Shit,’ he said. Then, ‘Shit.’
    He stopped jumping, because he was out of condition, and in any case he felt like he was shaking his brains up and down. He listened, his eyes tightly closed, trying to pick up the faintest sound of a footstep or a quietly opened automobile door or a furtive whisper. Papago Joe had always taught him that you could hear much more clearly with your eyes closed.
    Again, he heard that buckling, scraping noise; and then the distinctive hollow crunching of collapsing panels.
    He opened his eyes. A small boy of about eight was standing by the gate, watching him solemnly. He looked like a half-caste, half-Apache and half-white. He wore a baseball cap with a picture of Michelangelo the Ninja Turtle on it, and a grubby white T-shirt that asked Who Knows What Evil Lurks In The Hearts of Men?
    The small boy said, in a really snide nasal voice, ‘You’re wearing girl’s panties.’
    E.C. Dude looked down. He had worn out his last pair of boxer shorts months ago, and he had been wearing Cybille’s panties ever since. He just hadn’t been bothered to go to K-Mart and buy himself some more.
    â€˜So I’m wearing girl’s panties?’ he demanded. ‘What’s it to you? At least I’m not wearing a stupid Ninja Turtle hat.’
    â€˜Only fairies wear girl’s panties.’
    â€˜What do you know about fairies?’
    â€˜I know they wear girl’s panties.’
    E.C. Dude had seen this boy before, kicking a ball around the back of the Sun Devil Bar & Grill. He probably belonged to that new waitress of theirs, the one with the short blonde hair and the rusty green Caprice. E.C. Dude didn’t socialize or gossip too much, so people came and went and most of the time he never even found out their names. He always reckoned that rootless people were entitled to their privacy, just like he was.
    He climbed back into the trailer and took his jeans off the back of the chair. The boy came to the foot of the steps and stared at him while he buckled up his belt. The boy crunched up one eye against the dazzling reflections from the Airstream’s polished aluminum body.
    â€˜What’s your name?’ the boy asked him.
    â€˜E.C. Dude,’ said E.C. Dude.
    â€˜That’s a dumb name. What kind of a name is that?’
    â€˜It’s my name. What’s yours?’
    â€˜Stanley.’
    â€˜Your parents called you
Stanley
?’
    â€˜My mom called me Stanley, after my dad. My dad died.’
    â€˜Oh, I’m sorry.’
    â€˜I don’t remember him. Mom said he had it coming.’
    â€˜Oh, yeah?’
    E.C. Dude took off his sunglasses and peered out over the lot. It seemed to be quiet now, but he thought he ought to go and look at those cars parked close to the workshop wall. They seemed to be undisturbed, in spite of all that crunching and scraping. Maybe he’d just been hearing freak echoes from Johnny Manzanera’s scrapyard across the highway.
    He might as well have a beer, too. Now that he had been thoroughly disturbed from his preferred position on the orange couch, E.C. Dude decided to go over to the bar and have a beer. He went to the far end of the trailer, to the kitchen, where there was a clutter of empty soup cans andinstant noodle pots and half-eaten Hungry Man dinners. On the counter next to the toaster stood a smeary glass terrarium. Inside it, dry and motionless,