The Walking

by Bentley Little

  She picked out a large covered jar, a porcelain doll with painted breasts and pubic hair, a kerosene lamp.

  He'd dreamed about all these things, and he felt a cold coil of fear wrap around his heart. Sure, the spoon had come from his father's batch of items, and he might have dreamed about it because he had seen it. But that did not explain the jar or the doll or the lamp. Those things had belonged to Janet's uncle. There was no way he could have known about them.

  May set those items aside, then begn sorting through the things he did remember. She drew out the necklace of teeth, the plastic bag containing the dried, flattened frog.

  "Wear these for protection," she said. She ran her hands above the necklace, tracing patterns in the air in a manner that seemed oddly sensual and that, in some strange way, spoke to him, though he had never seen such a thing before. She held the necklace out and he took it gingerly. He had no intention of ever wearing such a thing, but she held his gaze and refused to continue until he put it on. Shivering with revulsion, he obliged.

  She performed similar hand movements over the frog, took it out of the bag, and handed it to Garden. "Keep this in the left front pocket of your pants."

  Garden looked like he wanted to object, but he did not and pocketed the frog.

  Janet received a ring of bone, Hal a carved wood fetish, Claire a bracelet made out of some type of dried weed. May herself opened one of the bottles and ingested a pinch of some foul-scented powder.

  "Now--" May began. But she never finished. From the dark, swirling sky came a bright yellow lightning bolt that was not accompanied by thunder and did not flash instantly to earth but descended slowly and deliberately through the charged atmosphere and struck May atop the head. She watched it come for her, made no effort to move out of the way. When it touched her hair she fell, the features of her face hardening into an agonized rigidity. She collapsed forward onto the gravel, her arms flailing spastically, her legs jerking in furious counter movement even as the muscles of her face froze.

  "Somebody do something," Claire said, but no one moved forward, and Miles grabbed her around the waist and held tightly to keep her from approaching May's electrically charged form.

  The lightning retreated as leisurely as it had arrived, heading back up into the roiling sky like a fishing line being reeled in. Claire broke free from his grasp and knelt next to

  the now still old woman, putting her hand on May's neck to feel for a pulse. She is dead." '"Miles pulled Claire back. "No mouth-to-mouth."

  She didn't object, and Miles understood just how frightened she was.

  Claire was a congenital do-gooder, always helping people, always giving of her time and money, doing anything she could to assist someone in trouble. She was also well trained in CPR. If Claire was so easily dissuaded from trying to help May, Miles knew that she had to be truly terrified.

  Hal looked from May to Rossiter on top of the slope.

  "Iwo down, five to go," he said. "Not funny," Miles told him.

  "Asshole," Garden mumbled.

  Claire suddenly jerked backward, and Miles was nearly knocked over, thrown off balance by the surprise movement.

  "What? he started to say. Then he saw. May.

  The homeless woman was vibrating, a uniform shiver that passed through her form yet did not bring life to any part of her body. Her arms and legs remained frozen at oddly cocked angles, and the wide-eyed agony on her face stayed unchanged.

  A powerful shudder passed through her.

  She stood.

  And started walking.

  He knew what was happening, knew where she was going. There were only seconds to decide on a course of action, and Miles took charge. "Grab your stuff! We're going with her!" He scrambled about for the spoon and the jar and kerosene lamp, leaving the doll on the sand, unable to carry it. "Water!" he called out. "Bring water if you have it! It's the desert!"

  Garden dashed back up the slope to the parking lot, followed by Hal.

  May was striding away, her head tilted up toward the sky, while her feet followed the path that had been taken by Isabella and the other Walkers. In his mind was the image of that slow lightning coming down to strike May, Agent

  Rossiter reappearing from his chase with a red head and a dead brain, the physical proof of the power they were up against, but Miles knew he was doing the right thing and, running on instinct, he kept his eyes on the dead woman, ready to hurry after her if she got out of his sight..

  Garden and Hal came sprinting down to the shore, Gar den strapped with two canteens, Hal carrying a six-pack of

  Dr. Pepper.

  "Let's go!" Miles shouted. "Follow her!

  "Get help," he told Claire, kissing her quickly. "Drive back to a town, bring the police, sheriff, whatever you can fred."

  "Oh, no, you don't." She grabbed Miles' arm, holding

  " " " ' " him tight.

  "I'll go for help," Janet said. "Or I'll stay. Or..." She closed her eyes. "I just don't want to chase after her. Them. I don't want to go with you."

  Miles understood. Her uncle was not here, any personal connection she might have had was gone, and she was too emotionally on edge to continue on. He thought she should go with them, thought the fact that her family had come from Wolf Canyon might have a bearing on the situation, but there was no time to discuss the subject, no time to argue or convince her, and he knew that without major reassurances she would not be able to make it.

  Miles handed Claire the lamp, fumbled in his pocket. "Here's the car keys," he said, tossing them to Janet. "Get some help. Tell them about the FBI guy. That should bring someone over here pretty quick."

  Janet said something in response, but he didn't have time to listen.

  May was disappearing behind a big paloverde, and Miles took off after her, pulling Claire with him, yelling at the others to hurry up.

  They followed her into the desert.

  They stayed several yards behind---just in case. May unerringly took the route left by the other Walkers, maneuvering closely around bushes and cacti with the precision of an amusement park ride on a track.

  After leaving the shoreline, Isabella had headed between two low hills and then through a narrow eroded canyon. Though the way was easy at first, it became increasingly harder to walk as the sand became deeper and looser, more dune like

  It was also hot. The sky was still dark, but the absence Of sun had no bearing on the heat, seemed to make things more humid and oppressive, in fact. Garden shifted the canteens on his shoulders, taking off his sweat-soaked shirt and tucking it into his waistband. Hal followed suit. Miles would have liked to do the same, but May was moving much too quickly, and he would not have had time to stop, put down the jar, and take off his shirt. He would have lost her. Next to him Claire, still clutching the lamp, used a handkerchief to wipe her brow.

  They tromped deeper into the wilderness.

  This was a perfect opportunity for them to talk things out, discuss what was happening, settle on a unified approach. But they did none of that.

  The noiseless ness of May in front of them and the unnatural quiet of the desert all around made speech seem sacrilegious, intimidated them all into silence, and the only sound accompanying their steps was the heavy breathing of out-of-shape exertion.

  Twenty minutes in, Hal passed back a can of warm Dr. Pepper, which Miles and Claire shared gratefully. She finished the last little bit of soft drink, hded Miles the empty can, and he dropped it on the sand to his left. He had no idea where they were or in which direction they were headed, but he had the feeling it might be difficult to find their way back, and he thought they might need a HansclandGretel trail to follow for the return trip.

  If there was a return trip.

  They passed through what looked like a saguaro forest, an especially dense stand of the tall cacti, and then through a narrow valley so thick with ocotillo that they were forced to walk directly behind May in order to keep her in sight. Around them the land was rising up, gently slopin
g hills giving way to harsher, higher cliffs.

  Miles' legs were hurting, and he could tell that Claire was tiring as well. The Walkers were dead--they would never tire outmand he hoped that they were not planning to march indefinitely, because there was no way the rest of them could keep up.

  He had no plan, no idea of what he would do when and if they finally caught up with Isabella. He hadn't even taken along Rossiter's gun, had only some half-assed witchcraft items that May had picked out for protection. Assuming those things worked, what then? Should he jump Isabella? Wrestle her to the ground?

  He was suddenly conscious of the necklace against his skin, the coldness of the teeth, and he wondered whose teeth they were, what the purpose of the necklace was, why his father had saved it. And where his father had gotten it in the first place. Had he made the necklace himself?. Had he taken the teeth from corpses or from people that he'd killed?

  Despite everything that had happened, he still could not reconcile the father he knew with this underground horror show society, with spells and potions and curses and murders. He saw his father more as a victim than a participant, and though Bob had obviously been in possession of witch . craft paraphernalia and had taken pains to hide this aspect of his life from the rest of the world, it was also clear that he was not particularly familiar with his heritage.

  Hell, his dad had had to go to the library to find out the meaning of his recurrent dream. Which made Miles question May's story. She claimed to have known his father, said that the two of them, along with Garden's grandfather, had been born in Wolf Canyon and had known about Isabella and her curse. Maybe so. But there were details that didn't add up.

  It happened without warning.

  They were following behind, once again at a discreet distance, since the terrain had become more hospitable and the vegetation sparser, when the dead woman stopped walking in the flat sandy bottom of a dry wash.

  Abruptly, she flopped onto her stomach, arms suddenly straight at her sides, legs and feet together. Without a second's pause she began burrowing head first into the ground.

  Miles, stunned, could not believe what he was seeing. May's mouth was open, and it appeared as though she was eating the sand, using her jaws like a shovel to dig into the soft earth. It was inhuman and should not have been physically possible, but in a matter of seconds, May's face and head disappeared into the ground, followed by her neck, her shoulders, her upper torso, her midsection.

  And then she stopped.

  He looked over at Hal and Garden, saw expressions of fear and disbelief on their faces that no doubt mirrored his own. Claire's fingers found his free hand, and he squeezed back a reassurance he did not feel.

  They waited, watching, holding their breath, but there was no sound, no movement, no indication that May would ever move again. It was as if whatever force had been animating her form had suddenly withdrawn, leaving behind only a dead, discarded body as lifeless as a normal corpse.

  Miles approached cautiously, prepared for a sudden resumption of activity, the type of explosive furious movement that always occurred at this point in horror movies. But this was not a movie and nothing happened. He reached May without incident. Her legs were sticking straight up in the air, and he touched one of her rough dirty feet, feeling cold skin, spongy dead flesh. Her filthy skirt had fallen over her legs, and when he looked down he could see her overly hairy crotch.

  He looked up at the sky, looked all around. Was this something May had done on her own, some sort of rebellion to kill herself completely, once and for all, to terminate Isabella's hold over her? Or had Isabella compelled May to dig into the sand for a reason, only to have the old woman's body give out at the last minute? He didn't know, but either way May's unmoving form reminded him of nothing so much as a broken piece of farm equipment left to rot in the ground where it had stopped.

  Maybe the spell had simply worn off. Or maybe magic had geographical parameters. Maybe Isabella had pulled so far ahead that May was now beyond the reach of her influence.

  Maybe.

  The tightness in his chest was gone, but the tingling in his midsection was back, and Miles found himself wondering if these were actual physiological responses to the sort of power to which he'd been exposed. He turned to Garden. "Do you feel anything? In your body, I mean. Any unusual physical sensalaons.

  Hal butted in. "Aside from the fact that my balls have shrunk to the size of grapes and retracted into my abdomen with fear?"

  '"l'hank you for that," Claire said dryly.

  "Sorry."

  Garden shook his head. "I don't know what you mean."

  "Is there, like, a tingling in your gut? Or a tightening in your chest?"

  'Tightening of the chest?" He heard the worry in Claire's voice.

  "That's the sign of a heart attack."

  "I'm not having a heart attack."

  "There's no way we could get you to a hospital in time---"

  "I'm not having a heart attack!"

  "I'm concerned! Is that all right with you?"

  They were glaring at each other, but beneath the anger in her expression he could see her concern, and he moved forward to give Claire a quick kiss. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."

  "I'm just worried about you."

  "I know."

  "I'm not feeling anything weird," Garden said.

  Miles nodded. He accepted that no one else was experiencing the same responses he was, but he still could not shake the feeling that these symptoms meant something. For the first time he wondered if--since witch blood apparently flowed through his veins--he himself possessed some sort of extrasensory abilities. It would explain his newly acquired sensitivity, would account for the recent veracity of his gut reactions.

  They did not linger in the sandy wash, and there was no discussion about stopping, quitting, turning back. They silently picked up where May had left off, following the trail of footprints, heading out of the wash toward a long low hill in the distance, Garden taking the lead.

  They were on their own now, but no wind or rain had yet arrived to disturb the tracks in the sand where the Walkers had passed, and it was easy to follow the trail of Isabella and her zombies. Hal passed back another can of Dr. Pepper.

  This is the last for a while," Miles said. "We don't know how far we have to go, and we need to save some supplies for the trip back."

  They reached the hill, walked around it. The sand turned to rock, and they were forced to scramble over and between huge boulders. Finally, the ground leveled out and they were confronted with a massive arroyo that blocked their way and spread like a vine through the flatland beyond.

  Miles walked up to the edge and looked down. It was a good two stories to the bottom of the gulch, and the footprints of the Walkers went up to the precipice and disappeared. From where he stood, he could see no path leading to the arroyo floor, and he could only assume that they had continued walking and fallen straight down. There were no bodies, of course, and he looked across the gulch, then into it, both north and south, trying to determine in which direction they had gone, but it was impossible to tell from here.

  "What are we going to do now?" Garden asked.

  "Well, we only have two choices: down or back. It etty dear that they didn't go back." Hal was walking along the edge, and he waved them over. They

  "What?" Miles called.

  "I think I found a way down!"

  He had indeed: a narrow but not particularly steep trail that switch backed down a sloping side crevasse and led them directly into the arroyo. Miles offered Claire his help, but she was more coordinated and in better shape than he was and beat him to the bottom.

  There was no sand here, only rock, and it was impossible to tell in which direction Isabella had driven her herd. South felt right to him, though, and Miles motioned for the others to follow. "his way!" he said.

  Claire was next to him, and Hal sidled up on the other side. "You know I'm carrying, don't you?"

  Miles shook his head. "
No, I didn't."

  "Well, I am. Just in case. Thought I'd let you know."

  It didn't make Miles. feel any more secure that Hal had a gun--he had the feeling that such things had no power here--but if it made the detective feel better and gave him the confidence he needed, Miles was all for it.

  Hal, he reflected, was a true friend, and he regretted not opening up to him earlier. Sometimes two heads were better than one, and perhaps they could have avoided this if they'd figured things out before.

  Perhaps May would still be alive.

  He turned toward Claire. "Are you okay?" he asked. She smiled gamely. "I'm fine."

  The arroyo twisted and turned. This was flash flood territory, and he hoped to God it didn't rain while they were stuck down here. The sky was still dark with clouds, and if a rain shower---either natural or unnatural--hit suddenly, they would have very little time to find a way up and out before the floodwaters washed them away. The thought occurred to him that they had been lured down here, that this was a trap, but though he remained on edge, nothing occurred.

  An hour or so later, the arroyo opened out onto a flat plain. The land behind them, Miles saw now, was a raised plateau. Before them, on the same level as the arroyo floor, stretched a desert markedly different than the one through which they had passed. There were no cacti here, no bushes, no trees, no grasses. There was only rock. And sand. In the distance, hidden beyond haze and waves of heat, loomed jutting buttes and tall, strangely shaped mesas that made the landscape look like a Dali-esque Monument Valley. Just in front of that, the ground was broken up into what appeared to be a series of tan canyons sunk deep into the earth.

  "I think we went the wrong way," Garden said. "I don't think Isabella came this direction."

  "No," Hal said quietly. "She was here." He pointed. To their left, bordering what looked like a trail across the flat empty land, were the legs of the dead Walkers, sticking up in the air in V-shaped pairs like a line of huge fleshy scissors. As with May, the men and women were embedded in the ground upside down, and only the bottom portions of their bodies protruded from the hard-packed dirt.