Bentley Little - The Walking

Maybe there'd been a blackout.

A blackout. It made sense, but but it didn't feel right

He didn't understand why, but in the same way that he knew he was destined to die today, he knew that this darkness had been brought about for his benefit.

In fact, the two were related.

Yes, they were. How he didn't know, but he did know that the lights were off because of him, for him, and that his death would take place in the darkness.

For the first time he felt fear. He was afraid to die, he realized. He did not want to die. Not this way.

He pressed the buzzer next to his bed to call an attendant. He waited for what seemed like forever, pressing the buzzer several more times in the interim, but no attendant came. He did not even hear the sound of anyone in the hallway. The entire rest home was silent, and the lack of noise seemed ominous to him. Maybe death had come for them all tonight. Maybe everyone else in the building had been killed, and he was the last one left. Maybe the murderer was playing with him, toying with him, before coming in to slit his throat.

Derek sat up painfully. His muscles always seemed to be at their lowest ebb in the middle of the night. As usual, he'd laid his walker against the side of the bed, and he reached for it, bending awkwardly, trying to grab hold of the cold metal top bar. It took him several moments to find it, and by the time he did he was sweating--not just from exertion but from fear. Something was definitely wrong here, something was fundamentally off. There was no sound in the room, in the building, save his own labored breathing, and there was still no light either inside or outside the rest home.

He'd changed his mind. He was positive he did not want to die. And while there might be no pleasant way to go, some ways were definitely worse than others. Much, much worse.

He could still see nothing, but there was a sense of movement in the blackness, and he knew with a certainty he could

not explain that he was not alone in the room, that there was something in here with him.

Something not human.

There was another sound now besides his breathing--the hiss of piss as he peed his pants in terror. He threw himself out of bed, the walker clutched tightly, and headed toward where he knew the door had to be.

He expected at any moment to feel a clawed hand on his shoulder, but he concentrated on moving, walking, getting out of here, not allowing himself to dwell on the other possible outcomes of this situation. He wanted to cry out for help, but he was not sure there was any help to be had, and he was hoping that this darkness was just as disorienting to whatever was after him.

His walker hit a barrier, the wall, and Derek reached out to touch, feeling to the left and to the right until he found a crack, a hinge, and, finally, a knob. He grasped the knob, turned it. Or tried to.

The door was locked.

From the outside.

Was that something that was done every night? He didn't think so, but he wasn't sure. The only thing he was sure of was that he was now trapped in here with whatever was trying to kill him.

There was a... a slumping sound, the noise of something large moving forward through the room, forcing its weight across the floor toward him.

He wished to God the room had remained silent. He didn't want to think about what kind of form went with that sound. He wanted only to find a way to escape, a way to get out of here before The bathroom!

Yes! If he could make it to the bathroom without being caught, he could lock himself in until morning. Maybe the

monster could break down the door, but his chances were better in there than they were out here.

The monster?

He had no problem with that word.

The bathroom was to the right, and he started toward it. He did not have to face forward as he moved--his walker met obstructions before he did--so he kept swiveling his head around, looking from one section of the room to the other. The darkness was still almost total, but his eyes seemed to be adjusting to the lack of light because there was an area now less black than the room around it, a rounded, shapeless mass that drew ever closer to him and looked somehow as though it was made out of ice.

His heart was pounding loud enough to drown out that horrible slumping sound. He tried to hurry but Damn this walker, was not able to move any faster than he did ordinarily. His old bones and feeble muscles were unwilling to grant him any favors even in this time of crisis.

His walker hit the wall. He looked forward, and was promptly grabbed from behind.

This is it, he thought. The hand that covered his mouth was cold, freezing cold, and hard.

Ice. "

He thought of Wolf Canyon.

Ice, it occurred to him, was made of water. And then the cold hand forced itself into his mouth and down his throat.

Then

These were bad times, especially for his kind.

It was almost as if the old days had returned.

William talked to the wolves as he traveled, and the ravens. They told him of burnings and hangings that were occurring on an almost regular basis in the scattered settlements of the territories. The stories chilled him. He would have been better off having been born into one of the Indian tribes, where his powers and abilities would be, if not understood, at least respected and appreciated. But he was white-skinned, and as such was fated to live within the world of the fair, that irrationally rational culture that believed only in one unseen, uninvolved God and attributed anything, even remotely supernatural to the work of Satan.

He traveled by day, slept at night, and tried to ignore the horrible sounds he heard in the darkness, the moans and wails that came from no man, no animal, no wind but seemed to emanate from the land itself.

There were Bad Places in the territories, places where neither white man nor Indian had settled, where even animals would not live. He passed through these on his way from one temporary home to another, and there was a voice in the Bad Places that spoke to him, a uniform voice that was the same in the Dakotas as it was in Wyoming, a voice he found at once tempting and terrifying, a seductive presence that pleaded with him to give up his sense of self,

to abandon his small meaningless life and become one with the land.

He did not stay long inrie place, not after what he'd done to Jane Stevens' father back in Sycamore. He thought of his mother and remembered how difficult life had been for him as a child, but if anything, settlements in the West were less tolerant than the more sophisticated and civilized cities of the East. The people here were less modern, less educated, filled with the superstitious dread that had afflicted their forefathers, indiscriminately afraid of anything they did not understand.

So he kept moving, living in Deadwood, in Cheyenne, in Colorado Springs, staying just long enough to make some money and load up on supplies, not long enough to arouse suspicion. He tried to stick to trading and trapping and other respectable ways of making a living, but somehow someone would always find out who he was, what he could do, and he'd end up helping them out.

These days he always left immediately after

He was by nature and necessity a solitary man, used to being alone. He was also, like his mother before him, familiar with forces unseen. But often, as he traveled across the great expanses, he was afraid. Moving through this vast country, he realized how small and insignificant he was, how puny and limited was his power, his gift. A heavy, brooding untapped energy lay beneath the surface of this rugged country. It ran in continuous currents beneath his feet, in veins the size of rivers.

It hung thick in the oppressive silence of the windless air. He could sense it in the huge dark mountains that hunkered waiting on the horizon, in the thick stands of ancient trees, which were home to far more than animals. And the Bad Places... They scared him.