The Walking

by Bentley Little

  When the chest had been opened and Hovarth began removing organs, weighing them and bagging them, those restless limb muscles mindlessly continued to exert themselves. The sight caused chills to surf down Dan's arms. It was the most unnatural thing he had ever seen, and even in this lighted room, surrounded by state of-the-art medical equipment and two other doctors, he was frightened.

  "We're going to amputate the legs," Hovarth said finally, after the cranium had been opened, and the brain tagged and bagged. The body was little more than an exposed empty husk, but still the legs worked.

  They had a quick discussion as to what would be done with the limbs, who would get to study them. As per procedure, samples of the organs would be taken by both Hovarth and Brigham while the organs themselves would remain frozen in the custody of the coroner's office until such time as all three agencies agreed on disposal, but the legs were different, and Clan quickly made it clear that he thought the best idea would be for the CDC to take one for examination and for the FBI to take the other. After a short back and-forth, Hovarth and Brigham agreed, and Clan found in the supply closet two plastic airtight receptacles big enough to hold Engstrom's legs from femur to phalanges.

  Here, finally, the other two doctors exhibited some trepidation.

  Hovarth's hand as he installed a new blade on the ' roto-saw was not quite as steady as it should have been, and as Brigham examined the legs and drew cut lines on the tensing skin, he looked uneasy.

  Amp rag left leg at groin," Hovarth said into the recorder before starting up the whining saw and drowning out all hope of hearing anything else.

  The saw sliced through skin and flesh, muscle and bone. Clan haft expected to hear screaming, to see Engstrom start thrashing around beneath the restraints, or to perhaps break the restraints like Frankenstein and lurch to his feet, but nothing like that happened, and the unwired jaw and un sewn eyes both remained open and dead.

  The left leg was severed, Hovarth trimming off the last of the bottom skin.

  The leg was still moving.

  It was the freakiest thing he'd ever seen, and Dan's first impulse was to cut the amputated limb up into little pieces or burn it in the incinerator. But in his mind he saw little cut-up leg pieces moving independently of each other, still informed by some strange sentience, saw a charred bit of bone wiggling amid ashes.

  Unattached to a body, the leg slid out from under its restraints and fell to the floor, where it lay on its side, bending and unbending at the knee, moving itself in a circle on the linoleum as it vainly attempted to walk.

  It was his responsibility to place the leg in the receptacle but it took all three of them to subdue the limb, pick it up, and finally lock it in the plastic box. Clan placed the container in the freezer along with the other organs. The leg was still kicking against the side of the plastic, and he hoped to God that freezing would at least slow it down, if not stop it entirely.

  He walked back to the autopsy table.

  Then they did it all over again.

  It was nearly three o'clock, six hours after Hovarth and Brigham had first arrived, that everything was finished, the table scrubbed down, the camera and recorders turned off. Dupes were made of the video and audio cassettes as the three of them retired to Dan's office, had a drink, exchanged paperwork, and discussed the autopsy. Hovarth admitted that he had never seen anything like this before and that he was at a loss as to how to explain the postmortem activity. It was the repetitive nature of the animation, the fact that it was so focused and precise, that Brigham found most intriguing. He had no clue as to how it was occurring, but that specificity implied a reason, a purpose.

  Neither man expressed any doubts as to the cause of Engstrom's death-the cancerous tumors were so far advanced and metastasized that they all agreed it was a miracle he had lasted as long as he had--but the cause of his afterlife was beyond speculation. They left having resolved nothing, Hovarth and Brigham both promising to bring to bear the extensive resources of their respective organizations and to schedule a conference call within the week.

  The CDC took one leg, the FBI the other. The remainder of the body was his, and it was really and truly dead. As simply as that his problem was solved. Clan typed up an autopsy report and released what was left of John Engstrom to the mortuary specified by the family.

  He watched the mortuary attendants wheel out the bagged body-or what was left of it---on a gurney. He recalled the feel of the moving muscles under his palm. He had laughed at the sensation this morning, alone in the exam room, but he could not recall now why he had done so.

  He shivered. It wasn't funny.

  There was nothing funny about it at all.

  It was on his desk Monday morning. Ddivered anonymously, as these things always were.

  The name printed on the file sticker was WOLF CANYON, roN. McCormack stared for several moments at the manila folder before opening it. The last time he had received one of these, two years back, it had been to inform him that Todd Goldman, his right-hand man and liaison with local law enforcement on Wolf Canyon, had killed himself.

  Wolf Canyon.

  He was the one who'd been in charge of the investigation. Or what was officially referred to as the "investigation." For there'd been no real effort to determine what had happened. No one was interested in finding out why the residents of the town had not been evacuated or, indeed, who was responsible. The priority had been to maintain secrecy, to keep the existence of the community quiet and to make damn sure that no one outside---particularly no one from the press---got wind of the fact that the United States government had been not only harboring but actively supporting a community of witches.

  The phrase "plausible deniability" had not yet been coined, but the reasoning behind it had been in place for quite some time, and that was their goal: to ensure that if word somehow did leak out about Wolf Canyon, everyone above a certain level in the chain of command could plead ignorance. The fact was, in those early days of the Cold War, a sitting president could not afford to be seen as the patron of a band of godless witches. The heathen commies were bad enough, but supporting a secret society of spell casters here at home, with tax dollars, in the Grand Canyon State no less, would have been grounds for impeachment.

  The operation had been a complete success. Not only had no one found out about the witches--not even the men from

  the dam project--but neither the press nor the general public had ever learned about the drownings. No one connected with Wolf Canyon had ever spoken publicly, had even leaked enough to bring about congressional hearings, closed door or otherwise. This dam had held.

  He himself still had questions. Despite the fact that he'd led the investigation, he had never fully satisfied himself as to whether the drownings had been accidental or intentional. Their true mission had been to hush everything up, not ferret out the truth, and they had followed their assignment to the letter: they had seen the site, examined the bodies, spoken with the workers, and quietly closed the books. It was not inconceivable that someone somewhere within the bowels of the Eisenhower administration had learned of the existence of Wolf Canyon, judged it a political liability, and determined that the town had to be destroyed, its people silenced. It was rather unusual to have two dams built so closely together, and though the reasoning sounded plausible, he could also believe that there had been an ulterior motive, that the decision had been made to neutralize what could have been a political atomic bomb in those Red-baiting times.

  Hell, maybe Tricky Dick had even been involved.

  So, over the years, he'd put out unofficial feelers, curiosity taking the place of circumspection as he rose through the ranks, letting it be known to trustworthy individuals in the various agencies involved that he was interested in any news related to Wolf Canyon. ,

  Now another folder had been delivered, and McCormack sorted through the document copies provided. His mood darkened as he scanned the material. As before, there was nothing concrete, everything was circumstantial
, but the connections to Wolf Canyon lent it all an ominousness that would not otherwise be there.

  He read one death certificate and autopsy report.

  The truth was, he had never really believed in witches. Oh, he had believed that they believed they were witches, but as far as magical powers and mystical potions and all of that hocus-pocus mumbo jumbo, he'd thought it was a load of crap. It was a remnant of the seventeenth century, not something that anyone would take seriously here in the latter half of the twentieth.

  At least that was what he'd thought until now.

  He was not so sure anymore.

  Several weeks ago, Russ Winston, one of the undersecretaries at Interior, had been killed here in D.C." in his own garage, in what had been characterized for the press as an "unusual" manner. In reality, it was far more than that. He had been torn apart, and both his son and grandson had told investigators that the perpetrator was a small creature, a hairy toothy thing that had lain in wait for Winston and had disappeared immediately afterward.

  A monster.

  Monsters and witches. These were the elements of children's fairy tales, not things that should be taken seriously by a government agency. But the government was taking them seriously and once again was doing everything within its power to shield the public from information that it felt its citizens would not be able to handle.

  He had known Russ Winston from Wolf Canyon. He'd interviewed him as part of the investigation. Russ had been one of the shift supervisors, and he'd been sharper than most of the others, more helpful, more observant, which explained why he'd made something of himself in Washington. Over the years they had kept in touch in that superficial way casual acquaintances do, but neither of them had ever talked about Wolf Canyon again, and McCormack now wished that they had. He'd always been under the impression that Russ felt guilty about the drownings, that he'd blamed himself and never really gotten over it. That was one of the reasons

  McCormack had never brought it up on the rare occasions that the two of them spoke. But he wondered now if the undersecretary had known more than he'd let on and if his guilt was based on knowledge rather than misplaced blame.

  The other casualty was a man from Utah, an accountant who had died of cancer. There was nothing connecting the accountant to Wolf Canyon, but a local coroner had brought in the CDC and the FBI because the man had continued walking even after his death.

  Apparently, whoever had left him the folder thought there might be a connection.

  He did too, and McCormack perused the provided information, ncluding two newspaper articles, one from a local Utah paper and one from a tabloid. There was a leg, apparently, that was still animate. The Bureau's top men were examining it now. Southern Utah was not that far from Arizona and Wolf Canyon, and it wasn't much of a stretch to think that there might be a relation.

  Was this Stuff real?

  The Soviets had always been rumored to be studying ESP and psychokinesis and Kirlian photography and all that. If there was any troth to psychic phenomena, perhaps the United States should have followed suit. Maybe they should have let the Pentagon have a crack at Wolf Canyon, used those witches as a resource, instead of just burying all trace of their existence beneath a man-made lake.

  But whether as a result of accident or policy, it was. too late now.

  He called Greg Rossiter, over at the Bureau. Rossiter had some experience with this paranormal shit, and whether it was true or not, he'd set himself up as an expert. He'd recently obtained black-budget funding to install a new database, cataloging unsolved cases by possible supernatural explanation, which would have made him the laughingstock of the FBI if not for the fact that Rossiter had actually put

  to rest a host of unsolved murders dating back decades, proving fairly conclusively that they had all been performed by the same murderer and that that murderer was a vampire who had been hiding out in the Arizona desert. He had been part of the party that had dispatched the monster, and while there'd been no body, there'd been enough circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimony to substantiate his claims. Not everyone believed Rossiter's vampire story, but enough of the higher-ups did that he had been promoted out of Phoenix and was now working here in Washington. McCormack knew him from countless seminars and workshops, and though Rossiter was not one of the people to whom he'd put out feelers regarding Wolf Canyon, McCormack thought that it might be time to bring the agent in on this.

  Rossiter arrived after lunch, and after a quick informal greeting, McCormack handed over the folder and asked for his take on the information presented. Rossiter sat down and sorted through the documents. He looked up. "I know that area," he said. "Arizona. My old stomping grounds."

  "Keep reading."

  McCormack stared out the window at the traffic on the street below. The only sound in the office was the muted rush of the ventilation system pumping in heated air and the occasional sound of pages turning as the agent read through the folder.

  When Rossiter finally finished, he stood up, and McCormack could tell from the way he began pacing around the room that he was excited.

  "What's the background on this? And what's your interest? There are Bureau papers here, so you obviously have some contact feeding you information, but why? And why call me in?" :

  McCormack gave him an abbreviated rundown of the "Wolf Canyon Disaster," as they'd been prepared to call it if any information leaked to the press. He explained how the town had been set aside as a community where witches

  could avoid persecution, and how, when the town was flooded after completion of the Wolf Canyon Dam, it had not been completely evacuated and sixty-three people had been killed. He'd been with the Justice Department and had been assigned to head the investigation by the Attorney General himself. No news of what occurred had ever leaked out, and he'd closed the investigation after two weeks, ruling what had happened an accident, but there'd been more to that situation than met the eye, and he had retained an interest in it ever since, keeping tabs on Wolf Canyon news for all these years.

  "Let me guess," Rossiter said. "You're still curious because you were never allowed to reach any real conclusions. Your job wasn't to investigate, it was to deny complicity, to prepare a report that would exonerate all branches of government from any wrongdoing in connection with those deaths."

  McCormack looked at him, said nothing.

  "I understand that you can't talk. "that's okay by me. It's probably what's gotten you where you are today. But let me tell you that from what you've told me and from what I read in that folder, that wasn't just some town populated by wackos who thought they could ride broomsticks and consort with the devil. There was something powerful at that place, and it's still viable and it's reaching out." He shook his head. "I know what a lot of the brass thinks of me, I know I'm not exactly everyone's idea of a model agent. But I also know what I' we seen, what I've experienced firsthand. I know what kind of things are out there. It's not a black and-white world we live in, and if the Bureau doesn't get with the program, we're going to find ourselves falling even more behind than we are already. We need to actively investigate incidents like this, not just sweep them under the rug and invent some bullshit explanation that will appease

  the powers-that-be. We need to start coming up with strategies to deal with these situations."

  "What are you saying?"

  "I want to go out there. I know the local law enforcement, and I know the area. As you may or may not know, I made my bones in that part of Arizona, and let me tell you, there are some strange things going on out there. I think I could find out what you want to know."

  "That's an excellent idea. In fact, to be honest, it's what

  I hoped you'd say. It's why I called you in. I wanted you to look into it."

  Rossiter looked at him skeptically. "I need your help, you

  "My help? Why?"

  "Because you can authorize this. Make a call to the Bureau chief and specifically request that I head a task force or an investigat
ive team.

  With someone from Justice asking for it, it'll happen."

  McCormack balked. "Why can't you just go on your own? The Bureau's already studying the leg from that accountant. It's an open case. Get yourself assigned to it."

  "First of all, I can't just assign myself to cases. They have to be assigned to me. Second of all, I'm not exactly the most respected member of the FBI team at this point. In case you hadn't noticed, despite my documented success, despite what I was told and what I was promised, I am on a very short leash here. I can't exactly write my own ticket." He leaned forward, and McCormack saw excitement mixed with ambition on the younger man's features. 'l'hat's where you come in. I need legitimacy. I need someone who'll go to bat for me.

  Someone above reproach. Someone respected and powerful and influential who'll back me on this."

  "I don't..."

  "You don't what? You don't want to get involved? You are involved.

  And if you ever want to find out what really

  happened--what's really happening--you'll sponsor me. This is a rare opportunity. In your position, this isn't going to make or break you.

  Win, lose, or draw, you'll come out of it the same. You're so close to this that your perceptions arc skewed, but believe me, this isn't the Oklahoma City bombing. This is not a major case. It's a forty-year-old closed investigation in which some of the peripheral participants have recently died. No one'll give a damn if you quietly authorize a new investigation into events after the fact."

  " McCormack licked his lips, which were suddenly dry. "I don't know."

  "What's not to know? You called me in to ask me about this, and I'm giving you my opinion. You should use your authority to open a new investigation, concurrent with the