The Walking

by Bentley Little

  One pair of legs doubtlessly belonged to Garden's uncle, another his grandfather. "

  One belonged to Bob. "

  A stinging burnt smell hovered in the air, though there was no sign of smoke or haze. Sulfur, Miles thought, but he didn't want to think about what that meant.

  "Let's get out of here," Claire said. Her voice was subdued "We need to get help. Police, National Guard... some body. We can't handle something like this on our own, just the four of us."

  "I'm with Claire," Hal admitted.

  Miles said nothing. He began walking across the dirt to where the witches' legs stuck up from the ground. There was room enough between the double rows for him to pass, and he proceeded down the gruesome aisle, looking from left to right, trying to determine which pair of legs belonged to his father--and which to Isabella.

  He had the feeling she wasn't here

  Indeed, looking ahead, he saw a single pair of footprints heading out across the hard ground.

  Only they weren't exactly footprints.

  There were far too many toes, and the tips produced small round holes in the dirt--like claws or talons.

  She was in the canyons, he thought, looking into the distance. She was waiting for them there.

  She wanted them to come.

  The thought frightened him. He didn't know why a creature with her obviously awesome power would wait around, playing hide-and-seek with a small ragtag group of ill equipped ill-prepared pursuers when she clearly had much bigger plans in mind. But nothing about any of this made sense, it had been irrational and crazy from the start, and he had no trouble accepting that she was doing exactly that.

  The others had followed him and caught up. Hal tentatively touched the sole of one Walker's foot. Claire had refused to pass between the twin rows of dead witches and had circled around the aisle to the opposite end.

  '2 vote that we ball," Hal said. There was no mistaking the trepidation in his voice.

  "Go if you want," Garden said. "We don't need you." 'fflae hell you don't. I'm the only one here who's armed."

  "You think that's going to make one damn bit of difference?"

  "Look, I'm not going to leave you here. We're all going. There's no reason for this insanity."

  = "Fuck you!" Garden said. "Who are you? You just show up here and start giving orders, you self-important asshole." "Knock it off!"

  Miles roared, glaring at them both. Garden glared back, though it looked like he was about to cry. "I came here on my own, and I'm going forward on my own. I don't need any of you--"

  "My dad's here, too," Miles reminded him.

  That shut him up.

  No one said anything for a while, and they stood between the protruding legs, looking for signs of positive identification.

  Miles saw a slender feminine foot and ankle, a hairy leg with webbed toes. He saw dark skin, freckled skin His father's foot.

  He didn't know how he recognized it, but he did, and though it was ragged and water-damaged, he recognized the

  pant leg as well. It was the pair Bob had bought at Sears and that he'd helped to pick out. Looking down, he saw his father's waist disappearing into the dirt.

  Anger was what he felt most strongly. Hatred. His father should not have been subjected to such outrageous indignity after death. He should have been allowed to rest in peace. Such a callous exploitation of Bob's body made Miles furious and all the more commit tod to catching up with Isabella. Sadness and horror were mixed in as well, but it was anger that motivated him, hatred that spurred him on.

  They must have all burrowed in at the same time, he reasoned. May probably crawled into the ground at the exact moment all of the other Walkers had done the same. Which meant that Isabella was probably an hour and a half to two hours ahead of them.

  She was moving fast, increasing the distance between them while they dawdled and argued among themselves.

  He put down the jar, glanced at his wrist. His watch had stopped. He tapped it, shook it, but the second hand remained stationary, and when he held it to his ear' he heard no tick. It occurred to him that though they had been traveling now for several hours, there'd been no change in the position of the sun shining opaquely through the clouds.

  He cleared his throat. "What time is it?" he asked.

  Hal looked at his watch. "I don't know. My battery seems to have run down."

  "Mine, too," Claire said.

  All four of them shared a glance of understanding that negated the need for words.

  "We'd better get going," Miles said.

  Garden nodded.

  Like himself, the young man was probably torn, not wanting to leave his uncle and grandfather half buried in the desert like this, wanting to either bury them completely or bring them back to civilization for proper treatment. But

  there was really nothing they could do for the dead right now, and at this point it was more important that they continue their pursuit of Isabella.

  Isabella.

  The vision hit as before, instantly, totally, placing him in the precise center of the action.

  Dams were bursting one after the other, in Arizona, in Utah, in Colorado. He saw them from above, from her point of view, and in serial sequence nearly identical walls of water flooded towns and drowned families in what was the first strike in a massive retaliatory effort.

  And then he was in a cave, looking out. He knew this spot. He had seen it before, only then it had been through the eyes of a younger Isabella in an earlier time, and it had been from the doorway of a hut.

  The area had changed over the millennia, but there was no mistatdng the peculiar appearance of the rock formations, no disguising the fact that the country outside the cave was the same unique landscape he had viewed from this same vantage point in an unknown era that predated recorded history.

  Above the cloud cover, he heard the roar of a military jet.

  And then it was over, he was out, he was once again himself. He was facing the horizon, that surreal version of Monument Valley, and he recognized that this was the area he had just seen in the vision. The angle from which he had viewed it could only have originated in the canyons up ahead.

  From that direction came the fading sound of a jet above the clouds.

  Once again Miles wondered why he was being shown this. As much as he tiled to tell himself that it was coincidental, that he was accidentally tapping into some psychic wavelength like an antenna catching television signals, he could not help feeling that specific knowledge was being provided to him intentionally.

  Claire touched his cheek, looked at him with concern. "Are you all right? It looked like you were..." She trailed off, not knowing how to describe what he'd been like for those brief seconds he'd been out.

  "I'm free," he assured her. He turned toward Garden and Hal, tried to ignore the legs of his father scissored into the air next to him. "I know where she went," he said. "I know where she is."

  Hal's gaze followed the claw-foot tracks into the distance. "How far is it?"

  'l'hose canyons up ahead." "You think we'll be able to get there before it gets dark?"

  Miles glanced up at the filtered light of the unchanging sun. "Even if it takes all day."

  They were all silent.

  "What do we do when we get there?" Garden asked finally.

  Miles picked up the jar, Started walking. "Don't worry. We'll think of something."

  -The land here seemed wrong. The geologic formations of the earth itself were odd and disturbing, containing angles and shapes that appeared nowhere else in nature, and even the consistency of the air seemed different the closer they came to the canyons. The cliffs and crags, the mesas and bluffs, all looked similar to what he had seen from the entryway of the cave, and Miles knew they were approaching their destination.

  Isabella's tracks--if that was indeed what they were-had disappeared almost immediately, fading into the increasingly soft sand, but Miles knew the direction in which she'd been headed, and he had no trouble stayin
g on course. They'd been hiking for what felt like the entire afternoon,

  but with no working watches and no visual confirmation from the position of the sun, he couldn't tell how long it had actually been.

  They had finished up Hal's Dr. Peppers, leaving the cans as a trail, and now only the water in Garden's canteens was left to slake their thirst.

  Well before they reached the big canyon, a massive gorge visible from miles away that, in Miles' mind at least, compared favorably to the Grand Canyon, they came across the dry bed of an obviously seasonal river. The river apparently emptied into the canyon or one of its offshoots, and Miles looked down the sloping length of the sandy bed and decided that they probably would not be able to find an easier entry into the canyon lands than this. After a quick discussion, they decided to follow the empty riverbed down.

  Around them, the desert grew tall, with marbled white and red sandstone giving way to grayer granite as they descended into the earth. The riverbed grew smaller, forking off, eventually disappearing entirely in a maze of high, narrow flash-flood canyons that merged into each other and spoked off and wound around in a confusing convoluted labyrinth.

  They could no longer be sure in which direction they were traveling--the sky above was only an unhelpful slit at the top of the rounded cliffs--but Miles trusted his gut and the rest of them trusted Miles, and holding tightly to the dream jar May had given him, he led them forward.

  Eventually, the ravine they were following opened out into a wider canyon. Miles had the sense that they were being watched by something unseen, and he suddenly felt uncomfortable being out in the open like this. The others must have felt the same because no one dared speak, and they walked around tangled washed-out branches and the trunks of dead leafless trees that had been swept here by water and trapped between boulders.

  Around a curve of the canyon, indentations in the rock face were home to crumbling rock walls with small window

  holes. He'd seen pictures of Canyon de Chelly, with its famous Indian rains, and that was what this reminded him of. Only... Only he wasn't sure that these walls had been built by

  Indians.

  Or anything human.

  The canyon widened, spread out, then narrowed unexpectedly just beyond a nearly ninety-degree turn. Here, in front of the cliffs, a low stone wall was broken up, differentiated into hoodoos and stand-alone columns. The rocks, he thought, looked almost like people. Whether they were eroded naturally by the elements into these shapes or whether they had been deliberately carved and then weathered by the rain and sand and sun Until the edges that granted them sharpness of definition had been blunted and smoothed, he could not tell, but the sight was unnerving. He was reminded of that terra-cotta army that had been found in China-"I dug this hole. It leads to China."

  --and the sensation that they were walking through a crowd of people who'd been solidified into stone could not be shaken. He quickened his pace, aware of the fact that for the first time since they'd started walking he was breathing heavily, straining for oxygen. He heard Claire breathing next to him, and he announced, "We're almost there."

  No one responded.

  He thought of the dream he'd had last night. The tingling in his midsection had returned, and once again it occurred to him that by dint of his heritage he was a part of this. He had been purposefully drawn into this situation because of who and what he was. N o, thing was an accident and subtle as it might seem, his dad s death and Marina walking into the agency office looking for help with her father were all part of some unseen plan.

  The jar in his hand suddenly seemed heavier, the shape of the spoon in his front pocket pronounced against the skin

  of his thigh. The necklace of teeth felt cold on his skin, but strangely enough, it also felt reassuring, and he was glad he had it with him.

  Soon afterward they came to a confluence of canyons. The sky was still overcast, and Miles could not detelmine the position of the sun from this angle, but it seemed darker all of a sudden, as though evening had held off until their arrival. The sulfur smell was back, too, strongly, and next to him Claire placed her free hand over her nose to block the stench. Miles stopped, not sure in which direction to proceed. On one rock wall was the shadow of a woman that looked remarkably like his mother, but he turned away, not wanting to see, sensing somehow that to gaze upon the form would... what? Turn him to salt? Turn him to stone? Render him mad?

  He had no idea, but looking upon the shadow figure was dangerous, he knew that much.

  "Hey," Hal said. "That's my morn."

  "Don't look at that!" Miles ordered, whirling to face his friend. "All of you! Don't look!"

  Garden seemed to understand instinctively, and when he spoke his voice was hushed. "What is it?" he asked.

  "I don't know. But there are probably going to be a lot of things like it coming up. We need to be careful from here on in. Stay close together, and if there's anything unusual, give out a shout. We have to be on our toes."

  'Then, I assume we're going that way," Hal said dryly.

  Miles followed his pointing finger. The other canyons spoking off from this hub were typically barren, but the one at which Hal was pointing was different. There were... things growing here. Objects which must have been plant life but from this perspective could have been statues or could have been creatures, black-gray forms that dotted the alluvial fans adjoining the cliff sides and were scattered along

  the floor of the gorge, giving the entire canyon a creepily dark and ragged appearance. The stench of sulfur issued from this direction as well, and Miles nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "That's where we're going."

  Hal took out his revolver, opened the magazine, checked it, snapped it back into place. He did not put the weapon back into his shoulder holster but kept it in his hand. "All right, then. Let's do it."

  Miles wished Claire had not come along, wished Janet were here instead, not only because he was afraid for Claire but because Janet was supposed to be here, because Janet was one of them, because she had witch blood.

  Claire looked over at him, smiled wanly, as if she could read his thoughts. "At least we'll die together," she said.

  "No one's dying," he told her.

  But he could not make himself believe it.

  The canyon was strewn with black rocks and unknown bones. Ugly weeds sprouted here and there, and stunted trees grew in strange disturbing shapes. There was no easy path, and they were forced to pick their way through what seemed to be an obstacle course placed purposely before them. The sulfur smell grew ever stronger. He could hardly breathe, Claire was gagging, but just when it seemed they would have to stop or turn around, the stench disappeared completely. It was as if they had passed through some sort of unseen barrier, and the air in his lungs was suddenly clear and very cold.

  There were dead dogs in the trees, hanging by their necks from bare root branches. Beetles scuttled across the sand below, swarms of them circling the trees in a manner that was frighteningly deliberate. In the recesses of the rock wall were carvings, half obscured and only partially observed, that Miles almost recognized and that caused shivers to race down his arms.

  Claire let out a small shocked cry and grabbed his arm

  with her free hand. Next to her foot, a small stationary creature grew out of the crevice in a rock. Looking like a cross between an albino frog and an unshelled oyster, it stared up at them with slitted eyes and let out a gurgling cry that sounded like laughter.

  They walked far around the creature, giving it a wide

  Miles took the lead with Claire, and after a while he turned to check on the others. Hal was right behind them-But that was it.

  Miles' heart lurched in his chest. "Garden?"

  No answer.

  He shouted it out: "Garden!"

  All three of them stopped walking, looking around, calling, but there was no sign of their companion.

  He was gone.

  "Garden."

  It was his daddy's voice, his daddy was
here, and Garden stopped walking, turned, and looked into a long, high crack in the cliff side.

  "Garden."

  The voice was weak, barely above a whisper, as though his old man was trapped or had been here some time without food or water. It made no logical sense--he had left his daddy yesterday in Apache Junction--but he would recognize that voice anywhere. He stepped over the jagged rocks and into the cleft, angling sideways for several minutes until the fissure opened out.

  "Garden."

  It occurred to him that he was being intentionally led away from the others, and he wondered why he didn't call out, let them know where he was going was his mind being clouded?

  --but these thoughts occurred to him at a remove, as if from afar, and the thought that was in the forefront of his mind was that he needed to find his daddy and get him the hell out of here. His daddy had probably followed him from Apache Junction, wanting to warn him away from Isabella, but he'd been too late, and he'd somehow ended up here, trapped.

  Or captured.

  Garden slowed his pace, suddenly wary of what might lie ahead. For the first time he thought seriously about going back, getting the others, doing a proper search, but then he heard his daddy's voice again.

  "Garden."

  And he pushed forward between the high dank walls until he was face-to-face wit ha dummy.

  The figure propped in a sitting position against the step like rock ahead had obviously been intended to look like his daddy, but the resemblance was not even close. The head was the right shape but made of stuffed cheesecloth. The eyes were buttons and the rest of the face was painted on: a piggish nose, a goofy gap-toothed smile. The clothes on the dummy were of a style his daddy had once worn but had not owned for decades. There were no hands or feet.

  This, however, was where the voice originated, and as he stood there, staring at it, a slight breeze whistled through the 'narrow chasm and, filtered through the unseen contents of the cheesecloth head, again whispered his name.