Bentley Little: The Walking

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.

Anger was what he felt most strongly. Hatred. His father should not have been subjected to such outrageous indignity after death. He should have been allowed to rest in peace. Such a callous exploitation of Bob's body made Miles furious and all the more commit tod to catching up with Isabella. Sadness and horror were mixed in as well, but it was anger that motivated him, hatred that spurred him on.

They must have all burrowed in at the same time, he reasoned. May probably crawled into the ground at the exact moment all of the other Walkers had done the same. Which meant that Isabella was probably an hour and a half to two hours ahead of them.

She was moving fast, increasing the distance between them while they dawdled and argued among themselves.

He put down the jar, glanced at his wrist. His watch had stopped. He tapped it, shook it, but the second hand remained stationary, and when he held it to his ear' he heard no tick. It occurred to him that though they had been traveling now for several hours, there'd been no change in the position of the sun shining opaquely through the clouds.

He cleared his throat. "What time is it?" he asked.

Hal looked at his watch. "I don't know. My battery seems to have run down."

"Mine, too," Claire said.

All four of them shared a glance of understanding that negated the need for words.

"We'd better get going," Miles said.

Garden nodded.

Like himself, the young man was probably torn, not wanting to leave his uncle and grandfather half buried in the desert like this, wanting to either bury them completely or bring them back to civilization for proper treatment. But

there was really nothing they could do for the dead right now, and at this point it was more important that they continue their pursuit of Isabella.

Isabella.

The vision hit as before, instantly, totally, placing him in the precise center of the action.

Dams were bursting one after the other, in Arizona, in Utah, in Colorado. He saw them from above, from her point of view, and in serial sequence nearly identical walls of water flooded towns and drowned families in what was the first strike in a massive retaliatory effort.