Bentley Little - The Walking

Miles and Hal walked back to where she was standing. Hal motioned toward the jar Claire had placed on the ground. "What about that? I guess we don't need it any more, huh? ..... Miles looked over at the shattered glass of the lantern he had tossed and was about to say no, they didn't need it, when a high keening sound issued from between the lips of Isabella's head. Claire jumped back, crowded next to Miles.

Hal's eyes widened.

The head lay on the smoldering rock, and there were no bones or veins or blood in the neck. There was not even an open wound. There was only a smooth bright green gelatinous substance that looked like liquid plant flesh encased in a roll of skin.

Still, the features were moving, eyes blinking, eyebrows raising, lips parting. The keening sound grew lower, separated into words. Isabella began speaking, cursing them, spewing forth a litany of foul promises and invectives that made Miles' skin crawl. He moved forward. He suddenly knew what he had to do. Reaching down distastefully, he picked the head up by the green algae hair, holding it at arm's length.

"Your children will be born deformed," Isabella said, and her voice was neither male nor female, was not even human. 'hey will be burned and dismembered by tribes of unbelievers, their entrails scattered to the four winds..."

"Open the jar," Miles said. 'he lid."

Hal hurried over, pulled off the jar's top.

Miles lowered the head, placed it in the jar. Hal quickly replaced the lid, and Miles took the rested spoon from his pants pocket, the mint vine from his shirt. He took a deep breath, gathered his strength, then pulled open the lid and used the spoon to sprinkle mint leaves on top of Isabella's upward tilted face. He closed the top again.

With a scream of rage and agony, Isabella's features melted, devolving into separate elements, as though they were unrelated objects that had been held together by glue into a coherent whole What remained resembled nothing so much as sliced fruit: cherries and pears and peaches.

Miles felt drained. He didn't know what type of witchcraft he had performed, where it had come from, or how it had worked. All he knew was that whatever he had done, it had succeeded. Isabella was no more.

And, hopefully, she was the last of her kind.

This entire odyssey had been a series of vague impulses and half-understood events, things that made no logical sense but fit together on some subliminal level and were granted meaning. He thought of May.

"Sometimes there just isn't an explanation."

He stared up into the dark sky, breathing deeply, his muscles shaking.

He had changed, he realized. This experience had altered him in a very profound and fundamental way. His entire outlook and approach was different than it had been. No longer was he a captive to logic, a head-over-heart guy. He was more like his father, and he wished Bob were here so he could tell the old man that he was happy to be like him, that he was proud.

Hal still seemed somewhat jittery as he stared at the closed jar. "What now? Do we dump it in the hole?"

"No," Miles said. "Just leave it here."

"What if?"

"Nothing will happen. \020"How do you know?" Claire asked.

He looked into her eyes, took her hands in his. He didn't.

It just felt right.

And for him that was enough.

" EPILOGUE

They were still in the canyons when the rescue helicopter found them.

Janet had gone for help, and from the town of Rio Verde, the sheriff had contacted the FBI office in Phoenix, which had immediately marshaled the manpower to assist one of its own.

Night had finally fallen, and the strange storm clouds had, if not disappeared, at least reverted to something resembling an ordinary weather phenomenon.

Base camp for the rescue effort was the Rio Verde sheriff's office.

Rossiter, still alive but condition unchanged, had been flown back to a Phoenix hospital. The rest of them were questioned in separate rooms in the local lockup about what exactly had happened, and though Miles was tempted to lie and say he knew nothing, they had not gone over a plan in advance and he did not want to contradict anything

Hal, Claire, or Janet might say.

So he told the truth

He had no idea how much of his story would be given credence, but the man talking to him nodded solemnly at the appropriate places and showed no outward sign of amusement. Miles wanted to believe that his story would be routinely filed away and attributed to the effects of heatstroke, but he knew from overheard conversations in the hallway that the half-buffed bodies of the Walkers had been found, as had May's. Their stories would be harder to dismiss with corroboration.

And a part of him could not help thinking that someone, somewhere in the government, already knew about Isabella and that weird land beyond Wolf Canyon.

By the time it was all finished and they had each provided their phone numbers and addresses for follow-up interviews, dawn had nearly arrived. The FBI offered to put them up for a day in a local motel, and Janet took them up on that, saying that she was too fired to do anything but sleep. The rest of them decided to get out of Arizona as quickly as possible. Janet promised Miles that she would return the rental car to Cedar City the next day and sign off on it.

"You'd better," he told her. "I know where you live." She laughed, thanked him, gave him a quick awkward hug. They had explained to her what had gone on after they'd followed May, and though she still seemed disturbed by Garden's disappearance and the fact that he had not yet been found, she seemed less troubled than at any time since Miles had met her, and he had the feeling that she would be okay. He promised to call as soon as he got back to California.

Hal intended to drive Miles and Claire back to Los Angeles, but the FBI offered to pay for a rental car, and Miles decided to take advantage of that. The three of them ate at a Denny's, compliments of the Bureau, and when the local Avis opened, an Agent Madison accompanied Miles, filled out the paperwork, and told Miles that he could drop the car off at any Avis in Southern California.

The agent shook his hand. "We'll be in touch."

Before they parted ways, when Claire was out of earshot, Hal took Miles aside. "Would you rather meet up with Isabella again or have a broom handle shoved up your ass?" he asked. "And death is not an option."

"Broom handle up the ass," Miles replied without hesitation.

Hal patted his shoulder. "Me, too, bud. Me, too."

Miles thought of his father, thought of Bob. The FBI and the other law enforcement agencies involved were going to autopsy the bodies, then, using dental and fingerprint identification, attempt to contact the decedents' families. Miles had already specified his father's approximate location in the lineup and had described the ragged clothes Bob had been wearing. He'd also given them the name of Ralph Barger at the L.A. County Coroner's office, and they'd promised to ship over the body.

His dad would finally get a proper burial.

He didn't want to think about his father right now, didn't want to get caught up in those sorts of considerations. He would do that later, when he was alone when he had time to think things over and grieve.

Rio Verde was located at the juncture of two state highways, and Miles consulted a road map before choosing to take the route that led northeast across the state. Hal was heading the other way, through Phoenix, and they said their good-byes in the parking lot.

"I'm going in tomorrow," Hal said. "I'll tell everyone you're taking a few days."

Miles hadn't yet decided whether he would take any more days off work, but he thanked his friend. "I appreciate it." "And I'm telling Tran.

Everything." Miles smiled. "Go right ahead."