Bentley Little - The Walking

The noises were spooky, though, particularly under these circumstances, and somehow he doubted that either Garden or Janet would blame him for wanting company.

He stared into the night sky. The whispers were all around

him, coming from behind the tree, up on the rocks, from the black surface of the lake itself. As before, he thought he could make out words, names: "May. Lizabeth."

He was lying atop the picnic table, Garden's jacket wadded up under his head for a pillow, a dirty blanket from the back of the Jeep wrapped around him, mummy-like, against the surprisingly cold night chill.

"May." ..... What could it be? He didn't know and he didn't want to know. It was what he'd come here for, the reason they'd all been drawn to Wolf Canyon, but now that he was here, now that the answers for which he'd been searching were making themselves known, he realized that he didn't really want them.

"May," the whispers said, and there were other unintelligible words mixed in, backing it up. "May... Lizabeth... Lizabeth May..."

He would be less afraid if Garden or Janet were awake, but he still would not allow himself to cave in and rouse them. Instead, he closed his eyes, rolled onto his side, pulled e dirty blanket above his ears and softly hummed to himself in order to shut out the sounds.

It took awhile, but focusing on not hearing the whispers eventually tired him out. He fell asleep. He dreamed.

He'was back in Los Angeles, at Dodger Stadium, in the middle of the night. The place was empty, all halogens turned off, only the muted glow of city lights under orange-tinged smog offering any illumination whatsoever.

In the parking lot of the stadium was a small plywood shack, a makeshift home made from discarded construction materials. A man stood in the darkness of the shack's open doorway, an old man dressed in chaps and the dusty clothes of a western pioneer. He was smoking silently, and there

was something ominous about the way only his arm moved to bring the cigarette to and from his lips while the rest of his body remained as immobile as a marble statue.

The old man tossed his cigarette into the parking lot, turned, and walked into the gloom. Miles understood that he was to follow. He did not want to do so, was afraid of the man and the shack and the darkness, but he had no willpower of his own, and he obediently fell in step behind the retreating figure.

Inside, the shack was big, much larger than was possible given the confines of its outer structure. The old man led him through a debris-filled room to a table atop which was a lit kerosene lamp and a woman's head in a clear cookie jar. Sliced fruit lay at the bottom of the glass container-oranges, peaches, pears-and the head rested upon the slices, bloodless tendons and string-like veins hanging over the clean edges of the skinless fruit. The man picked up an old rusty spoon and used it to sprinkle sugar into the jar from one of two small saucers on the table. He put in another spoonful of mint leaves from the other saucer, and turned to Miles. "It keeps the head fresh," he explained. His voice was high and cracked, not at all what Miles would have expected. Miles nodded, not knowing how else to respond.

The man picked up the kerosene lamp, walking through another open doorway into a room that looked nearly as big as Dodger Stadium itself.

The flickering light illuminated only the small area immediately surrounding them. Strewn about the dirt floor were naked porcelain dolls with painted breasts and pubic hair. Miles followed the old cowboy past the dolls, stopping before a massive opening in the earth.

Wide enough to fit a car in lengthwise, the pit descended into an inky blackness deeper than any he had ever seen.

"I dug this hole," the old man confided. "It leads to China.

"What did you dig it with?" Miles asked him.

"My mint spoon." Where did you get the spoon? "A dwarf gave it to me."

The conversation seemed nonsensical to him, but there seemed to be real significance beneath its lack of literal meaning. Miles nodded sagely as if this was what he'd expected to hear.

The old man put a cold hand on Miles' shoulder. He pressed his face close, and Miles could smell tobacco and coffee and something else, something sweet and not at all pleasant.

'that's where I put her body," the man said. "When the head's ready, it'll go in, too."

Miles awoke with the dawn, and he sat up, the chill of night already dissipating before the warm rays of the rising sun. Janet and Garden were still asleep, and he quietly pulled off his blanket, sat up, and stepped off the picnic table onto the hard ground

The desert was beautiful in the morning. The monochromatic flatness that would overtake the surrounding land later in the day had not yet arrived, and the rocky hills and cliffs were bathed in sunrise orange, their clefts and indentations shadowed. Tall saguaros, arms upraised and outstretched, stood like surrendering soldiers between the boulders. The sky was cloudless and deep, its gradation of colors spanning the spectrum from orange in the east to purple in the west.

Above the top of the nearest butte, a lone hawk circled lazily in the sky.

The lake itself was black.

It was a trick of the light--it had to be--but the effect was nonetheless disturbing, and Miles was grateful to hear the sound of the car door open behind him as Janet got out and stretched.

Garden emerged from his sleeping bag, awakened by the

slamming of the door, and the three of them looked awkwardly at one another, not sure what to say.

"Anyone bring any food?" Miles asked.

Garden nodded. "I have some Pop-Tarts in the Jeep. Blueberry. Hope you all like them, because it's a long drive to the nearest Denny's."

Miles and Janet waited while he dug through the jumbled mess in the back of his vehicle and pulled out a Pop Tarts box.

The three of them stared out at the lake as they ate. "Any--" Janet cleared her throat. "Any new ones come in the middle of the night?

Walkers?"

Garden shook his head. "Not that I heard."

"If they did," Miles agreed, "we all slept. Silence.

They finished eating. "So what do we do?" Janet asked finally, robbing the crumbs off her hands.

"I don't know," Miles admitted. The problem is, we don't even know what's really wrong. I mean, maybe nothing'll even come of this.

Obviously, people have been homing back here for years, decades even.

Who's to say that it means anything, that something bad's going to come of it?"

"Because," Garden said, squinting at him, "I feel it. And I'll bet you do, too."

He did, and Miles nodded reluctantly. There was a feeling here, an unnamed sense of foreboding that was like a great weight pressing against him. He had not examined it closely, but it was something he'd experienced ever since arriving at the lake, and he realized finally that he did have a plan: wait for something to happen and then react to it.

But what made him think that he--that, any of them could react effectively? Nothing.

All he knew was that they had to try.

"Miles?" Janet said, and he heard a hint of worry in her

voice. He looked over at her, then followed the line of her gaze. A man was walking along the shoreline, an inappropriately dressed man wearing what looked like the black slacks and white shirt of a standard-issue business suit. The dark shades he had on gave him the appearance of a Secret Service agent, and the incongruity of his appearance set off a red flag in Miles' mind. Something about the stranger's bearing bespoke law enforcement, and with a sinking feeling in his gut he thought that they were going to be kicked out, that this area was being closed and evacuated.

The man saw them, apparently catching movement in his peripheral vision, then immediately changed his direction and headed up the slope toward where they stood, looking down at him.