Bentley Little - The Walking

He reached the top fairly quickly and held out a sheathed badge. "Agent Rossiter," he said, identifying himself. "FBI." "Yeah?" Garden said.

"May I ask what you're doing here at the lake?"

"You can ask, but I don't have to tell you. Unless I'm under arrest or something."

The agent turned toward Janet, who looked furtively over at Miles.

Miles sighed as Rossiter's attention shifted to him. He didn't understand Garden's unprovoked belligerence, but Janet's nervousness was a common reaction to authority. Miles stepped in to speak for them. He nodded politely. "Agent Rossiter? I'm Miles Huerdeen."

"Mr. Huerdeen. May I ask why you're here?"

Miles was about to answer, to give some false, harmlessly generic reason, when the sky changed. Shapeless clouds did not move in but simply appeared without preamble, blotting out all trace of blue, filtering the sunlight to a small white lightening above the suddenly dark desert mountains.

There was a ripple in the water, movement that began in the middle of the lake, moved south, then disappeared, like

some Loch Ness Monster surfacing for a moment before diving. They all saw it, and the look on the agent's unintentionally expressive face told Miles everything he needed. "I think we all know why we're here," he said. Rossiter's eyes narrowed. "What do you know?" he asked.

"You first. He'd expected him to get nervous, but to his surprise the FBI agent stated matter-of-factly that he was here to investigate a series of mysterious deaths that had been tracked in Washington and seemed to have as their only connection strong ties to Wolf Canyon, the former government-sponsored colony of witches that was now buried under this lake.

Colony of witches.

That explained a lot, and in his mind pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. He understood now the existence of magic paraphernalia, the supernatural aspects of the deaths. Still, it did not explain the source of all the recent activity. Witches had been killed when the town was flooded, and now retribution was being sought.

But by whom? Were witches living today or were they coming after those who had wronged them from beyond the grave?

He thought of his father, and found it impossible to believe that Bob was involved in all this, that his dad was a witch.

Rossiter nodded. "Your turn," he said, finished.

Miles spoke for all three of them, describing the situation with his father, Janet's uncle, Garden's grandpa. He explained to the agent that he was a private investigator and told him about Liam Connor's list.

"You have a copy of that?" Rossiter interrupted.

"In the car."

"I'd like to see it."

Miles nodded. The sky had darkened further. The ceiling of strange clouds kept thickening. The black water of the lake was un naturally still, undisturbed by wind or bird or fish. The desert warming had not lessened with the disappearance of the sun, however, and the juxtapositon of the Nordic sky and the Arizona temperatures perfectly complemented the goose bumps that thrived on the hot sweaty skin of Miles' back.

"So what's your plan?" Rossiter asked. "What were you intending to do? Why are you here?"

Miles looked from Janet to Garden, unsure of what to say. "I don't know," he admitted. "We were sort of trying to figure that out when you showed up.,

"It's--" the agent began, when suddenly there was a disturbance in the lake, a bubbling of the water accompanied by a high keening sound. They all turned to look, and Miles found himself instinctively moving back, away from the slope.

The water parted, not spectacularly like the cinematic Red Sea but cheesily, like Universal Studios' recreation of the event for its tourist tram ride, the section of the lake nearest them opening in a narrow wedge. Two by two, they walked out of the water, all of the dead who had walked in. The most recent emerged first, including his father, staring sightlessly forward, moving in a march that was somehow more deliberate and controlled than the gait that had brought them here. It was as if the urgency was gone, as though they were no longer striving to reach a destination but had found it and were now operating under different orders. They seemed like slaves, cowed and beaten into submission, and what Miles felt looking at his father was not fear but pity.

The Walkers in front were wearing wet, raggedy clothes, but the clothes were gone on those who came after, and they stepped nude onto the sand, marching not up the slope toward the parking lot but along the shoreline, away.

"I don't see my uncle," Janet kept repeating, her voice a little-girl whisper. "I don't see my uncle."

"I see my uncle," Garden said. "And I see my gram pa There was dread in his voice.

Rossiter said nothing, but Miles noticed that the agent's revolver was now drawn, and though he didn't think that would help, it somehow made him feel better.

More dead men and women emerged from the parted water.

And she appeared. She's here.

He knew instantly that this was who his father and Janet's uncle had been talking about. This was the person the homeless woman in the mall had been trying to warn him about.

She walked out of the water, naked. Her head was streaked with mud, her tangled, stringy hair green with algae, but like the others, her skin had not been eaten away, and she looked remarkably well preserved for being so long in the lake. Her head was tilted at an odd angle, as though her neck had been broken. While she was inarguably beautiful, there was something terribly off about her face, a wildness, an alien ness in her expression that filled him with fear. He did not know who she was, but she had an undeniable aura of power. Isabella.

The name came to him, from where he did not know, but he understood that it was hers. His feeling that she was somehow behind everything solidified.

She turned her tilted head, looked at him And he was at a crossroads in the moonlight, watching through Isabella's eyes as she approached the hanging body of a witch. The woman, a hag with a wild mane of gray hair, had been stripped naked and was dangling from a frayed rope attached to a lightning-struck oak. There was a faint glow about the witch, the remnants of power that were no doubt invisible to ordinary eyes, and this was what Isabella desired. There were no people anywhere near this cursed place, and even the lights of far-off villages had been

extinguished, so late was the hour. She crawled, unhampered and unseen, up the tree to cut down the body, and when it fell, she jumped on top of it. Her lips closed over the corpse's open mouth, and she began drawing in the extant power, at the same time sucking out blood and bile and bits of half digested food. It was the energy Isabella needed, desired, and he felt the strenghtening within her as her body absorbed the witch's dark force, extracting it from the dead body in the only way possible.

And then he was in an Anasazi village, Isabella taking the community's shaman in front of the shaman's brethren as part of a ceremony, draining the body through the palms of the old man's hands, wanting only the energy, but taking the blood as well in order to support the preconceived notions of the audience. Isabella was nude and moaning, allowing the blood to spatter her breasts, her stomach, her hairy crotch. The people watching prayed and chanted, giving thanks, and as she ingested the last of the man's essence, the shivers of orgasm passed through her loins.

Then the village was gone, and he was in a dark hut in which a man of power practiced his arts. The man was kneeling before a statue he had carved, the statue of a god in the shape of an asparagus. On the floor beside him lay dead women, nude and with their legs spread, stalks of asparagus protruding from their private parts. It was late spring, asparagus season, and outside men harvested the vegetables as their wives and daughters, caged in bamboo boxes, squirmed and screamed and begged to be released.