The Walking (40 page)

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 sloping 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.

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.