Bentley Little - The Walking

God. The master bathroom too was empty, and he at least had the satisfaction of knowing that Audra had escaped the house. Leaving the lights on, walked back to his father's room, standing there for a second, watching. He could still feel the cold sponginess of that skin against his hands, and he realized that though this body was moving, animated, he did not consider it his father. It was a shell, energized but empty, and whatever spark or essence had been Bob, it was gone.

He returned to the living room, turned on the television to provide some noise and give the house some sense of life and waited. Ralph and two other men from the coroner's office arrived first, around twenty minutes later, and Graham arrived soon after. Both of his friends, and the coroner's

e assistants, were visibly shaken by the sight of Bob pacing the periphery of his room. Ralph asked a series of rapid-fire questions as he put on gloves and a surgical mask: When did he have the stroke? What was the extent of the brain damage? Was he sure Bob was dead?

Miles gave a quick rundown of his father's recent medical history, described the way he had come home and found the barricaded door and the abandoned house.

Covered and protected, Ralph and his assistants walked into the bedroom. The two men held his father while Ralph injected the body with some sort of drug, sticking the needle in his upper arm because that portion of his body showed no attempt at movement. The moment he was through, he backed away. The two men continued to hold him, visibly straining against the forward motion of Bob's still moving feet.

A few seconds later, his father slumped forward. Ralph took over from one of the men, a young husky intern named Murdock, and held Bob up until the assistant returned with a gurney. Ralph helped lay the body down, then let the other two men strap it in.

"What was that you gave him?" Miles asked. "It's a very powerful muscle relaxant." "Is he... dead?"

Ralph nodded, the expression on his face one of extreme weariness. "Oh, yes. He's dead."

"What do you think happened?"

His friend shrugged. "I don't know."

"You ever seen anything like this?"

Ralph shook his head. "I have to admit, I haven't."

Miles looked back at Graham. "Keep this out of the Weekly World News."

"Tell it to your doctor friend. If there are any leaks, they'll come from the coroner's office, not me."

He faced Ralph. "Can we keep this quiet?"

"Definitely. At least until we figure out what it is. We don't want people panicking." He took off his gloves. "You know, I should be doing cartwheels over this. Something this rare doesn't come along in... well, it never comes along, to be honest about it. This is a coroner wet dream: something that's never been encountered before, a chance to get in all the journals. And as deputy assistant coroner, hell, this is a career maker."

"But..." Miles prodded.

"But I'm not happy. I'm not excited."

He looked at Miles. "I'm scared."

Miles shivered, looked over at Graham. Ordinarily, this would be the lawyer's cue to make some cynical, wiseass remark. But Graham merely looked pensive.

"What are you going to do?" Miles asked.

"I don't know. We'll take him in, but obviously I'm not going to do an autopsy if he's still moving. I'll call Bill and the chief, let them in on it, see what they come up with. For now, I guess we'll bring your father to the morgue, give him a private room, keep him strapped down and see what happens when the drugs wear off. You want to come along? You're welcome to ride in the wagon." Miles looked back at Graham.

The lawyer tried to smile, only partially pulled it off. "I think we'll follow in my car," he said.

Miles awoke from a nightmare in which he was being chased through a maze by a jogging mummy with the rot ring face of Liam Connor. He sat up, blinked. It was light outside, and one look at the clock told him that he was supposed to have been at work two hours ago. He had not called the office or anyone from it, and he quickly reached across the bed, grabbed the phone, and called Naomi. He explained that his dad died and asked her to patch him through to either Perkins or Miller, but she told him she'd take care of it, just do what he had to do, call in when he could, all their prayers were with him. "Thanks," he said gratefully.

The next call was to the coroner's office. Ralph was still there, sounding dead tired, and he said there'd been no change. His father was still deceased.

And there was still muscle movement in the legs:

Miles asked what he'd been afraid to ask the night before. "So does this mean he's a zombie.

"I don't know what it means," Ralph admitted. "None of us here do."

Miles got up, took a shower, made himself some coffee. He was at loose ends and had no idea what he was supposed to do next. Ordinarily, he'd contact a mortuary, call friends and family, but right now everything was up in the air. He should definitely call his sister, he knew, but he didn't want to worry her, and decided to wait until their father was really and truly dead.

Really and truly dead.

He shook his head. He had the feeling that he was supposed to understand what was happening here. On some level perhaps he did, but any connections between his father's un-death and any related information in his own brain remained stubbornly buffed. He found himself thinking about his dad's recurring dream, about the occult books he'd checked out of the library. Had Bob known what was going to happen? Had he somehow been preparing himself?. And, if so, why hadn't he let Miles in on the secret?

His fathiwas--had been?--nothing if not organized, and a copy of his will, the title to his car, a breakdown of all his assets, and a key to a safety deposit box were in the desk folder marked DEATrt that he had shown Miles long before the stroke.

The safety deposit box, Miles assumed, contained the

original will and assorted other documents, perhaps some family photos or heirlooms. Valuables. Checking it out would at least give him something to do, so he drove down to the bank. He was led into a vault by an elderly female teller who removed a long metal box from its niche in the wall and set it down on a table. Both he and the teller inserted their keys to unlock the box, then he thanked the woman, waiting until she had left the room before pulling up the lid.

Miles blinked in confusion. The box was filled with phials of powders and strange-looking roots floating in small bottles of clear liquid.

There were branches and leaves in sealed plastic bags, a necklace of teeth, what looked like a dried, flattened frog.

He stared, unmoving, thrown off balance by the sheer unanticipated lunacy of it all. Where were the documents he'd been expecting? The insurance policies? The letters? The family heirlooms?

And what the hell was all this crap?

None of the bags or bottles were labeled, but there was about them the aura of the occult, something that under the present circumstances did not exactly fill him with joy. The necklace of teeth was particularly disturbing, and he tried to think of why his father had such a thing, where he could have gotten it.

Gingerly, he took the items out of the box, spreading them out on the fake wood of the table. The teeth rattled in his shaking hand. He dropped the rough dusty frog. The materials looked like magic paraphernalia to him, the sort of stuff that was used to cast spells and concoct potions.

A chain of thoughts passed through his head. Magic. Voodoo.

Zombies.

He thought of his dead dad, walking around the disrupted bedroom, and he stared down at the bizarre paraphernalia on the table. His eyes were drawn once again to the necklace of teeth. He didn't like this.

He didn't like this at all.

And he sat alone in the vault, feeling very empty and very, very cold.