The Walking

by Bentley Little

  Nothing like that happened, however, and by the time he was out of breath and had to stop, choking and wheezing next to a paloverde tree, there was no sign of anything unusual either before or behind him.

  Even the lantern seemed to illuminate a larger area of ground, and the night seemed neither as black nor as cold as it had by the marsh.

  He stood there for a moment waiting, looking back, expecting to see at any moment his horse emerge from the gloom, but there was no sign of the animal, no sound, and it occurred to him that the steed had been a sacrifice.

  He started toward town, as quickly as his sore muscles and tired lungs would allow. This was it, Letand decided. He might be his father's son, but he was not his father, and home or no home, he was going to go back, get Hattie and Robert, pack their things, and as soon as the sun came up, get the hell out of Wolf Canyon as quickly as he could. Forever. He never wanted to see this place again.

  Miles had flown to the East Coast and the Midwest, but he had never before been in this part of the country. He was surprised at how cinematic the Southwest was, how closely it resembled those magnificent vistas of western movies. He liked driving through this country, he found, and despite the sparse vegetation and almost complete absence of human habitation, he could see himself retiring here, buying a couple of acres and building a little house.

  The ride was long, and they were awkward with each other at first, but when the radio faded out they were forced to talk, and somewhere between Kanab and Page their conversation grew comfortable.

  "Who's your favorite Beatle?" Janet asked as they drove through the eroded, Georgia O'Keeffe-like hills that were a prelude to Lake Powell.

  "What?"

  "That's supposed to be the best Rorschach test around.

  You can learn everything you need to know about a person by finding out who their favorite Beatle is. Isn't that what they say?"

  "John," he told her.

  She smiled. "Good choice."

  "Yours?"

  "Paul. But I like men who like John."

  He glanced over at her. "I'm seeing someone, you know. That's who I

  called from your apartment." 20"I'm not hitting on you. I'm just saying that, as a general role, I get along better with men who like Lennon. And since we have a long trip in front of us, that's probably a

  She laughed.

  They talked of trivialities, kept the conversation light. By unspoken consent they avoided discussing what they were doing. It would have made the trip too long, put on them an undue pressure that might dissuade them from completing their journey. They needed to get away from that for a while, and they let the talk drift from movies to television to other equally innocuous topics.

  By late afternoon they reached the turnoff. A small brown road sign announced: WOLF CANYON LAKE--22 MILES.

  They had not seen another car for the past hour, had not seen a town since Willis, the little city in Arizona's Central Mountains where they'd gassed up, gone to the bathroom, and gotten oversized drinks from a surprisingly modern Jackin-the-Box.

  He felt uneasy being this far away from civilization-from help

  --and he wished he had brought his cell phone, but who knew if it would even work in a godforsaken area like this?

  They grew silent. The road to the lake was two lanes, like the highway, but the lanes were smaller and the lines more faded. The asphalt itself seemed washed out, and huge holes in the pavement that had to have been years in the making made Miles swerve from side to side.

  They came out of a series of small sandy hills into a flat barren floodplain, and far ahead, on the side of the road, black against the pale sand, he could see a man walking toward some low cliffs. He recognized that walk, even from this far away, the unnatural rhythm, the unvarying speed, and his heart lurched in his chest .... Janet saw the figure, too. "Is that She did not finish the sentence and he did not answer. They were coming up fast now on the figure.

  This close, his eyes confmned what his gut already knew.

  It was Bob.

  His father was striding purposefully along the gravel shoulder, not trying to attract attention to himself but not trying to hide, either.

  He was simply walking forward, head fixed, arms unmoving. Miles did not know what to do, whether to stop or slow down, and in a panic he ended up speeding past. The wind from their passage blew Bob's hair and caused the clothes to flap about on his frame.

  Miles slowed the car afterward but did not stop, and he looked over at Janet, who was white-faced and staring at him. He knew she was thinking of her uncle. He was remembering the alien ness of his dad's movements, the complete influence inability his actions, to communicate with his father or in any way

  He did not want to stop the car, he realized. He couldn't do anything for Bob, and the best tack would be to either follow alongside him, or wait for him at the lake to see what he would do next.

  Miles chose waiting at the lake. He did hot relish the idea of slowly accompanying his father down the road. Why was his father walking to the lake? What was going to happen when he got there?

  He kept driving, glancing at his father in the rearview mirror until they were off the plain and into the far bluffs and the ragged walking figure could no longer be seen.

  They passed others on the road, six of them, men and women, scattered over a stretch of miles. All dead. All walking.

  Janet's voice was low, subdued. "It's like in New Mexico," she said, .,There's this little church outside Santa Fe

  that's supposed to cure people. It's built on what they call 'miracle dirt," and every Easter, Catholics from all over make a pilgrimage there. You can see them walking up the highway from Albuquerque. They walk hundreds of miles just to touch the dirt and pray at the church."

  She looked out the car window, shuddered. 'that's what they remind me of. People making a pilgrimage."

  "Dead people making a pilgrimage." ...... "To Wolf Canyon." .::..

  They looked at each other, and Miles felt an unfamiliar tingling in his midsection. It was a strange sensation, and he thought for a second that he was having a heart attack, since there seemed to be a strange sort of flutter beneath his breastbone. But then it was gone, and he put it down to fear and stress. Perhaps this was considered a "panic attack." Hell, if anyone deserved to panic, it was him.

  The land sloped down, and ahead they could see the lake, shimmering in the sun. The pavement ended, the road devolving into a narrow dirt trail defined by twin tire ruts that zigged and zagged for no discernible reason through the sparse desert vegetation toward the water. Aside from the occasional saguaro or paloverde tree, all of the plants here were low and pale gray, and the rental car bounced along between them on insufficient shock absorbers before finally reaching a dirt parking lot that abutted the northernmost cove of the lake.

  To his surprise, an old Jeep was pulled next to a long wooden rail made to look like a hitching post. Miles parked several car lengths away, then shut off the ignition and looked over at Janet. "We're here."

  "What do we do now?"

  "I don't know," he admitted.

  Janet unlocked and opened her door. "I guess we should get out and look around." She glanced over at Miles. "Before they come.

  The two of them got out of the car and walked around the front of the vehicle to the railing. Stretched out before them, Wolf Canyon Lake continued almost to the horizon, bounded on the sides by a series of high rocky hills and sandstone bluffs. It had been overcast in Cedar City when they left, and Janet had not brought sunglasses. She stood squinting against the reflected glare on the water. Somewhere under there, Miles thought, was a ghost town, and he found himself wondering if there were still bodies down there, if not all of the corpses had been retrieved.

  Maybe the bodies at the bottom were walking, too. Like his father.

  Maybe that's where his father was headed. But why? She's here.

  He looked south toward the far end of the lake. He could not see it from this spot,
but he assumed that was where the dam was.

  She's going after the dam builders, too.

  Nothing quite made sense. There were huge gaps in his knowledge, and if he could fill in those gaps he might reach some understanding of what was going on, but until then he was in the dark, able to guess at some of the more obivous elements of what was happening but completely unable to see the larger picture.

  "Let's walk down," Miles said. He stepped over the low railing and held Janet's hand to help her across. The two of them started down a barely discernible, gently sloping path that led to the water's edge.

  They were at the end of the path, standing on the sandy lake shore, when Miles discovered they were not alone. He saw movement in his peripheral vision, and when he looked to the right he saw a young man sitting on a rock next to the water--a satchel, rolled-up sleeping bag, and scuba gear spread out on the sand beside him. This was clearly the

  As the man stood up and looked at him walked

  "Hey, Miles said. How is it going? "

  "All right."

  This close, he didn't look all that young. He had short hair and was clean-shaven, which gave his face a youthful appearance, but there were bags under his eyes and a haunted look in his features. Miles estimated that he could be anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five.

  "You here to do some diving?" Miles asked, gesturing down at the scuba gear. "Water looks kind of dirty to me." "You can see once you get down there."

  "Oh, I'm sorry." Miles motioned toward Janet. 'his is Janet Engstrom.

  I'm Miles Huerdeen."

  "My name's Garden. Garden Hawks." The young man qooked from Janet to Miles. Their thoughts must have registered on their faces because he said: "You know, don't you? That's why you're here." "Know what?"

  Miles asked. "About the Walkers."

  Walkers.

  Even the word sent a shiver down his spine temporary bubble of unreality that had surrounded him, that had allowed him to keep the truth of why they were here at bay, popped. Next to him, Janet drew in her breath, her eyes

  Garden nodded. I -thought so." He smiled wryly. "It's good to know that I'm not the only one. I thought I might be going crazy."

  "What... ?" Janet stammered. "How did you know?"

  "My gram pa down there."

  "My father's on the way," Miles said. "We passed him on the road in." group of them have arrived since I got here this morning. I sat in my Jeep and watched them."

  "What did they do?"

  Garden shrugged. "They walked into the water."

  "That's where your grandpa is?"

  "Yep. He's down there walking." The young man looked at Janet. "What about you? Are you just here with him, or... ?" He left the sentence unfinished.

  "It's my uncle," she said. "He died and kept walking."

  "Is he here?"

  "We don't know," Miles answered for her. "We didn't see him on the way, and he was supposedly cremated, but..."

  He shrugged. "We don't know."

  "I see."

  An awkward pause followed.

  Garden looked down at his scuba gear, looked up at them. "Do, uh, you guys have a plan?"

  Mile shook his head slowly. "You?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.

  "No. I was just going to play it by ear."

  It was Janet who asked the question they were all wondering: Does any of us actually know What's going on?" There another awkward silence

  "Well, let's start with what we do know," Miles said. He glanced at Janet, then turned toward Garden. He told his story. Afterward, Janet told hers.

  When they were finished, Garden nodded. He looked down at his scuba gear, out at the lake, then took a deep breath. "My gram pa went down twenty years ago. It was pretty much like your situations. He got sick from fever, started walking, died, then went into the water. We lived nearby here, in a side canyon, and he kept walking around and around the house--for weeks, wind, sun, rain, didn't matter. There was only me, my daddy and my uncle, and we didn't know what to do. My uncle and my daddy, I think, took turns watching him, but this went on for weeks. He

  wasn't dead yet, but then he did die, sometime while he was walking, and I remember being so afraid of him. I didn't think he was going to kill me or anything, I was just... scared. Can't really say why.

  Anyway, I went to bed, and I beard my daddy and my uncle talking aboutmjust like you said--a box of my gram pa magic powders and potions and stuff. I never saw it, though.

  "When I woke up in the morning, he was gone. We followed his trail to the lake and got here just in time to see him walk into the water. My daddy yelled at him, but he couldn't hear, and he just kept walking into the water until he was gone.

  "We never came back to the lake, pretended like it didn't even exist, but I never forgot about it, and when I grew up and went to college, I took a diving class. I think you can guess why. I came back on my break, told my daddy what I wanted to do, but both he and my uncle were against it.

  "I went diving down there anyway." Garden licked his lips, obviously unsettled by the memory even all these years later. The water was dirty, muddy, but I saw him. My gram pa was walking. And he wasn't alone. There were several people walking. Through that ghost town down there at the bottom." He shivered. "I guess they lived there."

  Miles shook his head, impressed with the boy's bravery. "You've never been back since?"

  "Nope." Garden looked down at his diving gear. "Not yet."

  "Where're your dad and uncle now?" Janet asked.

  "My uncle died a few years back. My daddy lives over in Apache Junction, but I didn't want him to know I was coming here, so I didn't tell him anything. I lied and said I was going hunting over at San Carlos for the weekend."

  "All these years you never told anyone? None of you?"

  Garden shook his head. "Who would we tell? What would we tell them?

  There was an old witch woman who lived here back then. Mother Lizabeth we called her. We were going to tell her originally, but for some reason we never did. I tried to look her up when I first got here this morning, but her shack's gone and I didn't see any sign of her." He scanned the surrounding land. "Everyone seems to be gone." Who else?

  "No one in particular. Here used to be little pockets of people living around here in the canyons, on the hills. Maybe this is a recreation area or something now and they kicked them all out, but it just seems strange, like the place is abandoned."

  "Like it's cursed," Janet whispered.

  Again the wry smile. "I didn't want to be the first to say it, but, yeah, like that."

  "What made you come back now?" Miles wondered. "Today? The same time as us?"

  Garden shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. 'l'here wasn't anything calling to me, if that's what you're asking. I didn't see any omens or anything. I guess, well, I guess it's because this is the twentieth anniversary of my gram pa of his going down there. Not to the day maybe, but almost." He looked out at the lake. "I've also been dreaming about this place lately, about the water, and probably that had something to do with it, too."

  Miles thought about his father's dream. In the nightmare, his dad had been rooted to the floor of the kitchen while a tidal wave crashed over the house. Was that what it had been like for the last residents of Wolf Canyon? Had they stood there, frozen in place, as a wall of water released from the upper dam bore down upon them?

  Miles looked around. Where was the upper dam? To the left of their cove, a river snaked away from the lake, up into the hills, and he supposed that the other dam and its attendant lake where somewhere in there.

  "We've had dreams, too," Janet said. z95

  Miles nodded.

  "About water and drowning."

  Garden's voice was quiet. "I drowned in my dream." "What does that mean?" Janet asked. "Are these premonitions? Does that mean we're going to drown here?" She looked fearfully toward the water. "I don't think so," Miles said. "But you don't know."

  "Not for sure. But that's
not what this feels like to me. My father's dream was almost like a recollection of the past, like the flooding of Wolf Canyon as seen through the eyes of someone that was there---even though it took place in our house. But my dreams are different.

  They're not that literal, not that realistic, and I don't think they have anything to do with a specific event. It's more like a coded message, like something I'm supposed to interpret, only I don't know how."

  Janet nodded, apparently understanding, though his meaning was far from clear even to himself. She faced Garden. "Do you really think your grandpa's still down there? You don't think he's rotted by now?"

  Garden met her eyes. "No," he said. "He's there. And I'd put money on that."

  Miles had no doubt that he' was right, but the idea frightened him. He looked over the water. He did not like the lake. Even now, even on a warm weekend, it was deserted. Unlike Powell, Roosevelt, and the other lakes they'd passed, Wolf Canyon boasted no sunbathers, no swimmers, no skiers, no boaters, no jet skiers. Water in the desert usually attracted people, but Wolf Canyon seemed to repel them. The bank opposite, instead of featuring cottonwood and jojoba and the usual desert fauna, was barren, sporting only occasional clumps of dead orangish-brown weeds.

  Apparently, the only other creatures at the lake were the

  "Walkers," as Garden called them, the witches who had returned to the underwater town.

  Like And hisSeVeralfather miles behind them, the new Walkers. How close was Bob? Miles wondered. He excused himself and quickly dashed up to the parking lot. There was no sign of his dad, but two of the other Walkers had arrived. He could see them striding purposefully through the low brush. One, a woman, bumped into a saguaro but did not seem to notice the cactus' spines and continued walking, though at a slightly different angle, toward the lake.

  Miles hurried back down to the others. there are two of them coming.

  They're almost to the parking lot."

  Janet put a hand on Garden's arm. "Do you really think you should be going into the wa terT She motioned toward his scuba gear. "Who knows how many of them are down there?"