The Walking

'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.

And then he was in a cave, looking out. He knew this spot. He had seen it before, only then it had been through the eyes of a younger Isabella in an earlier time, and it had been from the doorway of a hut.

The area had changed over the millennia, but there was no mistatdng the peculiar appearance of the rock formations, no disguising the fact that the country outside the cave was the same unique landscape he had viewed from this same vantage point in an unknown era that predated recorded history.

Above the cloud cover, he heard the roar of a military jet.

And then it was over, he was out, he was once again himself. He was facing the horizon, that surreal version of Monument Valley, and he recognized that this was the area he had just seen in the vision. The angle from which he had viewed it could only have originated in the canyons up ahead.

From that direction came the fading sound of a jet above the clouds.

Once again Miles wondered why he was being shown this. As much as he tiled to tell himself that it was coincidental, that he was accidentally tapping into some psychic wavelength like an antenna catching television signals, he could not help feeling that specific knowledge was being provided to him intentionally.

Claire touched his cheek, looked at him with concern. "Are you all right? It looked like you were..." She trailed off, not knowing how to describe what he'd been like for those brief seconds he'd been out.

"I'm free," he assured her. He turned toward Garden and Hal, tried to ignore the legs of his father scissored into the air next to him. "I know where she went," he said. "I know where she is."

Hal's gaze followed the claw-foot tracks into the distance. "How far is it?"

'l'hose canyons up ahead." "You think we'll be able to get there before it gets dark?"

Miles glanced up at the filtered light of the unchanging sun. "Even if it takes all day."

They were all silent.

"What do we do when we get there?" Garden asked finally.

Miles picked up the jar, Started walking. "Don't worry. We'll think of something."

-The land here seemed wrong. The geologic formations of the earth itself were odd and disturbing, containing angles and shapes that appeared nowhere else in nature, and even the consistency of the air seemed different the closer they came to the canyons. The cliffs and crags, the mesas and bluffs, all looked similar to what he had seen from the entryway of the cave, and Miles knew they were approaching their destination.

Isabella's tracks--if that was indeed what they were-had disappeared almost immediately, fading into the increasingly soft sand, but Miles knew the direction in which she'd been headed, and he had no trouble staying on course. They'd been hiking for what felt like the entire afternoon,

but with no working watches and no visual confirmation from the position of the sun, he couldn't tell how long it had actually been.

They had finished up Hal's Dr. Peppers, leaving the cans as a trail, and now only the water in Garden's canteens was left to slake their thirst.

Well before they reached the big canyon, a massive gorge visible from miles away that, in Miles' mind at least, compared favorably to the Grand Canyon, they came across the dry bed of an obviously seasonal river. The river apparently emptied into the canyon or one of its offshoots, and Miles looked down the sloping length of the sandy bed and decided that they probably would not be able to find an easier entry into the canyon lands than this. After a quick discussion, they decided to follow the empty riverbed down.

Around them, the desert grew tall, with marbled white and red sandstone giving way to grayer granite as they descended into the earth. The riverbed grew smaller, forking off, eventually disappearing entirely in a maze of high, narrow flash-flood canyons that merged into each other and spoked off and wound around in a confusing convoluted labyrinth.

They could no longer be sure in which direction they were traveling--the sky above was only an unhelpful slit at the top of the rounded cliffs--but Miles trusted his gut and the rest of them trusted Miles, and holding tightly to the dream jar May had given him, he led them forward.

Eventually, the ravine they were following opened out into a wider canyon. Miles had the sense that they were being watched by something unseen, and he suddenly felt uncomfortable being out in the open like this. The others must have felt the same because no one dared speak, and they walked around tangled washed-out branches and the trunks of dead leafless trees that had been swept here by water and trapped between boulders.

Around a curve of the canyon, indentations in the rock face were home to crumbling rock walls with small window

holes. He'd seen pictures of Canyon de Chelly, with its famous Indian rains, and that was what this reminded him of. Only... Only he wasn't sure that these walls had been built by

Indians.

Or anything human.

The canyon widened, spread out, then narrowed unexpectedly just beyond a nearly ninety-degree turn. Here, in front of the cliffs, a low stone wall was broken up, differentiated into hoodoos and stand-alone columns. The rocks, he thought, looked almost like people. Whether they were eroded naturally by the elements into these shapes or whether they had been deliberately carved and then weathered by the rain and sand and sun Until the edges that granted them sharpness of definition had been blunted and smoothed, he could not tell, but the sight was unnerving. He was reminded of that terra-cotta army that had been found in China-"I dug this hole. It leads to China."

--and the sensation that they were walking through a crowd of people who'd been solidified into stone could not be shaken. He quickened his pace, aware of the fact that for the first time since they'd started walking he was breathing heavily, straining for oxygen. He heard Claire breathing next to him, and he announced, "We're almost there."

No one responded.

He thought of the dream he'd had last night. The tingling in his midsection had returned, and once again it occurred to him that by dint of his heritage he was a part of this. He had been purposefully drawn into this situation because of who and what he was. N o, thing was an accident and subtle as it might seem, his dad s death and Marina walking into the agency office looking for help with her father were all part of some unseen plan.

The jar in his hand suddenly seemed heavier, the shape of the spoon in his front pocket pronounced against the skin

of his thigh. The necklace of teeth felt cold on his skin, but strangely enough, it also felt reassuring, and he was glad he had it with him.

Soon afterward they came to a confluence of canyons. The sky was still overcast, and Miles could not detelmine the position of the sun from this angle, but it seemed darker all of a sudden, as though evening had held off until their arrival. The sulfur smell was back, too, strongly, and next to him Claire placed her free hand over her nose to block the stench. Miles stopped, not sure in which direction to proceed. On one rock wall was the shadow of a woman that looked remarkably like his mother, but he turned away, not wanting to see, sensing somehow that to gaze upon the form would... what? Turn him to salt? Turn him to stone? Render him mad?

He had no idea, but looking upon the shadow figure was dangerous, he knew that much.

"Hey," Hal said. "That's my morn."

"Don't look at that!" Miles ordered, whirling to face his friend. "All of you! Don't look!"

Garden seemed to understand instinctively, and when he spoke his voice was hushed. "What is it?" he asked.

"I don't know. But there are probably going to be a lot of things like it coming up. We need to be careful from here on in. Stay close together, and if there's anything unusual, give out a shout. We have to be on our toes."

'Then, I assume we're going that way," Hal said dryly.

Miles followed his pointing finger. The other canyons spoking off from this hub were typically barren, but the one at which Hal was pointing was different. There were... things growing here. Objects which must have been plant life but from this perspective could have been statues or could have been creatures, black-gray forms that dotted the alluvial fans adjoining the cliff sides and were scattered along

the floor of the gorge, giving the entire canyon a creepily dark and ragged appearance. The stench of sulfur issued from this direction as well, and Miles nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "That's where we're going."

Hal took out his revolver, opened the magazine, checked it, snapped it back into place. He did not put the weapon back into his shoulder holster but kept it in his hand. "All right, then. Let's do it."

Miles wished Claire had not come along, wished Janet were here instead, not only because he was afraid for Claire but because Janet was supposed to be here, because Janet was one of them, because she had witch blood.

Claire looked over at him, smiled wanly, as if she could read his thoughts. "At least we'll die together," she said.

"No one's dying," he told her.

But he could not make himself believe it.

The canyon was strewn with black rocks and unknown bones. Ugly weeds sprouted here and there, and stunted trees grew in strange disturbing shapes. There was no easy path, and they were forced to pick their way through what seemed to be an obstacle course placed purposely before them. The sulfur smell grew ever stronger. He could hardly breathe, Claire was gagging, but just when it seemed they would have to stop or turn around, the stench disappeared completely. It was as if they had passed through some sort of unseen barrier, and the air in his lungs was suddenly clear and very cold.

There were dead dogs in the trees, hanging by their necks from bare root branches. Beetles scuttled across the sand below, swarms of them circling the trees in a manner that was frighteningly deliberate. In the recesses of the rock wall were carvings, half obscured and only partially observed, that Miles almost recognized and that caused shivers to race down his arms.

Claire let out a small shocked cry and grabbed his arm

with her free hand. Next to her foot, a small stationary creature grew out of the crevice in a rock. Looking like a cross between an albino frog and an unshelled oyster, it stared up at them with slitted eyes and let out a gurgling cry that sounded like laughter.

They walked far around the creature, giving it a wide

Miles took the lead with Claire, and after a while he turned to check on the others. Hal was right behind them-But that was it.

Miles' heart lurched in his chest. "Garden?"

No answer.

He shouted it out: "Garden!"

All three of them stopped walking, looking around, calling, but there was no sign of their companion.

He was gone.

"Garden."

It was his daddy's voice, his daddy was here, and Garden stopped walking, turned, and looked into a long, high crack in the cliff side.

"Garden."

The voice was weak, barely above a whisper, as though his old man was trapped or had been here some time without food or water. It made no logical sense--he had left his daddy yesterday in Apache Junction--but he would recognize that voice anywhere. He stepped over the jagged rocks and into the cleft, angling sideways for several minutes until the fissure opened out.

"Garden."

It occurred to him that he was being intentionally led away from the others, and he wondered why he didn't call out, let them know where he was going was his mind being clouded?

--but these thoughts occurred to him at a remove, as if from afar, and the thought that was in the forefront of his mind was that he needed to find his daddy and get him the hell out of here. His daddy had probably followed him from Apache Junction, wanting to warn him away from Isabella, but he'd been too late, and he'd somehow ended up here, trapped.

Or captured.

Garden slowed his pace, suddenly wary of what might lie ahead. For the first time he thought seriously about going back, getting the others, doing a proper search, but then he heard his daddy's voice again.

"Garden."

And he pushed forward between the high dank walls until he was face-to-face wit ha dummy.

The figure propped in a sitting position against the step like rock ahead had obviously been intended to look like his daddy, but the resemblance was not even close. The head was the right shape but made of stuffed cheesecloth. The eyes were buttons and the rest of the face was painted on: a piggish nose, a goofy gap-toothed smile. The clothes on the dummy were of a style his daddy had once worn but had not owned for decades. There were no hands or feet.

This, however, was where the voice originated, and as he stood there, staring at it, a slight breeze whistled through the 'narrow chasm and, filtered through the unseen contents of the cheesecloth head, again whispered his name.

"Garden."

A chill passed through him. This was not right. Everything suddenly shifted into clear focus, and though he felt pressure on his mind, a strange insistent pulse that promised him everything was okay, this was the way it was meant to

be, he knew that he had been tricked to get him away from Miles and the others.

He reached into his left front pocket, feeling for the flattened frog that the old woman had given him for protection, but the pocket was empty. There was no hole in the material, and he checked his right pocket, but it was empty, too.

The frog had disappeared somehow, pushed up perhaps through the friction of movement to fall out of his pants unseen as he'd walked. He was filled with a dizzying sensation of panic.

Miles. he screamed. "Miles!"

He yelled at the top of his lungs, and the repeated word seemed to echo up the narrow space to the canyon rim, but he was not sure how far in he'd come, and didn't know if they could hear him at all. Because another sound was competing with him, a low guttural rumbling that came out of the earth itself, a sound he recognized but could not quite place.

Water.

He knew it now: the roar of a flood, the rush of a wave. The cleft began to fill with black brackish water. It seeped up from the rock beneath his feet at first, but almost instantly it began pouring in from both directions--the way he'd come and the way ahead. He was alone in this space with that hideous dummy, and it floated up on the tide toward him even as he attempted to find a handhold, a foothold, something that would enable him to climb out of this space before he drowned.

"Garden."

The dummy was still speaking his name, and when he looked down at the painted face, its smile seemed more malevolent than goofy. The right button eye, hanging by a thread, began flipping up and back, propelled by the streaming water, in chilling approximation of a wink.

There was no way to climb oat, no way to get up the ,-:-.

352 narrow cliff, and the water was now flooding in fast. The black liquid smelled strongly of sulfur, and he gagged, keeping his mouth closed, trying not to swallow any of it.

Maybe he could just tread water, float on the rising tide, wait until the chasm filled up completely and then exit through the top. : ....... "Garden."

The winking dummy now looked nothing like his daddy. Even the shape of the head was distorted. The dark water had stained the cheesecloth, and it looked more like a figure out of a nightmare. The dummy pressed against him, bobbed up, then sank and disappeared.

A second later, handless arms wrapped around his legs, feeling soft and spongy and frighteningly alive.

"Help!" he screamed.

And was pulled down into the water.

Garden was gone.

They backtracked, looked behind boulders, looked into offshoot ravines, calling out his name, but he was nowhere to be seen, and finally Miles said, "She got him."

"Maybe he just pussied out," Hal suggested.

Miles looked at him.

"All right, it's not that plausible. But it's possible."

"He disappeared," Claire said. "One minute he was there, then I turned around and he was gone." She looked at Miles. "So what do we do now?"

His head hurt. If there was anything to his witch blood theory, they were up shit creek because he was the only one left. While Isabella may not have been aware that he'd been granted insight into her motives and intentions, she obviously knew they were here, and she was playing with them, slowly and deliberately picking them off, one by one.

"Do you still have the things May gave you?" he asked.

Claire held up her hand to show the bracelet of weeds. Hal withdrew the small fetish from his pocket.

"Good. Keep them with you. They've protected us this far, maybe they'll see us through this." He took a deep breath. "We're going on.

We're almost there."

"Whatever Garden had didn't protect him," Hal pointed out.

Miles looked at him. "It can't hurt."

Hal hefted his revolver. "Excuse me if I place more of my faith in this."

"If you really think that'll do any good against a dead hundred-year-old monster who's been resurrecting witches and killing people all over the damn country, be my guest." Hal raised an eyebrow, Spock-like. "You have a point."

Miles smiled--and it felt good. His face had been tense, and this brief touch of gallows humor loosened it up. "Come on," he said. "Let's try to move quickly.

"And stay close," he warned. "We need to keep each other in sight at all times."

He started forward, moving over so that Claire was walking in the middle, he and Hal on the outside flanks to protect her, all three of them rubbing shoulders. The jar in his hands felt warm, slippery, and he held it tightly, not wanting it to slide from his grasp and shatter on the rocky ground. Claire, too, was clutching the kerosene lamp tightly, and he considered asking Hal to hold it instead, but the truth was that Hal was clumsier than Claire and more likely to drop it.

Rising all around them were screeches and cracks and hums and whistles, the scuttling of claws and the quiet cacklings of madness. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement off to the sides, between the boulders and the trees, a darting of shadows that instantly stopped each time he looked at one of the spots full on.

He stepped on something wet and squishy that gurgled in a way which sounded both liquid and alive, but he did not look down to see what it was.

The canyon flattened out in front of them, high cliff sides trailing off into low black ridges that faded into sand dunes. The odd-shaped buttes they'd seen from afar were now front and center, and lightning danced in the clouds over dark distant mountains. It was the scene from his vision. Miles felt almost incapacitated by fear. The cave from which he'd viewed this landscape was somewhere close by, off to the right, and he began scanning the dwindling cliffs, looking for an opening in the rock.

He found it.

The cave was much lower than he'd expected, on a small ridge just above the sloping hill of alluvial dirt. It would be easy to walk up there, despite the lack of a path, the shards of stone, and the peculiar spiky cacti, but he didn't want to go. The will and determination that had led him this far seemed suddenly to have deserted him, and he was filled with cold dread as he looked up at that small black entrance in the cliff side.

He tried to speak, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat, tried again. His heart was pounding crazily. "That's it," he said. "Up there. That's where she is." And Isabella emerged from the cave..

"Look!" Claire cried out.

Isabella, her head still held at a noticeably awkward angle, strode forth from the cave entrance and over the edge of the ridge, continuing several feet until she was hovering in the air above the sloping ground. She stared at them, speaking in some strange unintelligible tongue and making elaborate motions with her hands. The look on her face was one of rage and hatred, and out of the corner of his eye Miles saw that the bracelet on Claire's arm was glowing greenly, brightening then dimming, as if it were being bombarded with energy.., and absorbing it.

Claire noticed his necklace at the same time, pointing, and though he couldn't see it, he felt the heat on his skin and that area of his neck seemed suffused with a greenish glow. Hal reached into his pocket, and his wood carving was glowing, too. He quickly put it back.

"I guess we're protected," Claire said.

Hal looked toward Isabella. "Let's get her."

That provided the impetus Miles needed, and the paralysis that had temporarily overcome him disappeared as he grabbed Claire's free hand and pulled her up the sloping ground toward the cave entrance.

Both of them jumped as Hal fired his revolver, the sound of the report absurdly, outrageously loud, triggering a small landslide and inducing a muffled ringing in Miles' ears. He thought at first that his friend had fired at Isabella but almost immediately saw the gray-green spiderlike crab creature that Hal had shot. Off-center eyes stared into nothingness while clear viscous goo spilled from a well-placed bullet hole.

"It was coming after me," Hal said.

Miles nodded. "Just make sure you don't waste your shots," he suggested. l'hat might be what she wants."

Isabella was no longer in the air, she was on the ridge, looking down at them, and when Miles' eyes met hers, she pulled away, moved back.

Was she afraid?

It didn't make any sense, but it seemed that way, and the three of them pressed on, moving up the slope, over the rough, obstacle-laden ground until they ran across the remnants of an ancient trail that led them directly on to the lip of the ridge.

A flash of flesh disappeared into the blackness of the cave entrance.

Had they chased her back into the cave? Or was she luring them on? He wasn't sure, but they were going in. He moved forward, peering into the dimness but seeing nothing. What little light there was in this overcast world died instantly upon entering the cave. They should have brought flashlights. What they needed was... a lamp.

He turned to Claire, handed her the jar, took the kerosene lantern from her.

"Good idea," Hal said.

"Let's hope it works." Hal had matches, and Miles used them to light the lamp before shoving it into the opening in the wall before him.

Just inside the entrance, Isabella screeched at the sight of the light, a horrible sound like the cawing of crows and the breaking of glass.

She retreated deeper into the cave, scut fling backward on legs that were impossibly formed and far too agile. Within seconds she was past the perimeter of the lamp's light. Though the screeching had stopped, Miles heard the clattering sound of hard claws on stone receding into the darkness. "Whatever you do," he told Claire, "don't drop that jar." "Don't worry. I won't."

They walked into the cave. Claire's bracelet and his own necklace were glowing, giving off a greenish illumination that would enable them to find each other in the blackness but that shed no usable light on their surroundings. They were entirely dependent on the flame of the lamp.

Claire latched on to his belt, holding tight as he moved slowly forward.

There were no stalactites or stalagmites, no columns or rock formations. The walls were smooth, black and glassy. Ancient symbols had been painted on the roof of the cave, pictographs in faded white that shifted and changed with the flickering of the lamp and seemed somehow hideous.

The cave narrowed, and they found themselves in a downward-sloping tunnel, a passageway not wide enough for them to walk two abreast.

"Maybe I should get in the front," Hal suggested. "I have the gun."

"I'll stay in the front," Miles told him. "You protect the

They passed alcoves and indentations, offshoot passages, but this was clearly the main tunnel, and Miles moved slowly forward, keeping an eye out for any sign of movement, any An arm shot out of the darkness to his right, clawed fingers grabbing his shoulder. He screamed, squirmed, lashed out, but the hand retreated immediately, as if scalded by something hot, and Miles knew it was the necklace that had protected him. The grunting commotion behind him was Hal laying to shove his way around and past Claire, but Miles said, "It's nothing. It's over."

"What happened?" Claire demanded.

"Something tried to grab me."

He lifted the lamp and shone it toward the area from which the hand had come, but there was only a shallow alcove, empty.

"Let me in front," Hal demanded. "I'm not letting you be a target.

You're the one who needs to stay in the mid die You're the one who needs to be protected."

Miles did not even bother to answer but, with Claire's fingers grabbing his belt, started forward again, holding the lamp out and clutching it tightly, hyper aware of the fact that if it slipped from his grip or was knocked from his hands, they would be trapped here in total darkness.

He saw more symbols carved on the walls, shapes that he did not recognize but that spoke to him somehow and filled him with dread. The tunnel curved to the left

--and Miles was looking into a room. Not a cave or

a chamber or a tunnel but a large square room with slatted wooden walls and wooden ceiling. A single candle the size of a tree stump, placed next to an open black doorway in the opposite right corner, provided sickly illumination.

"Jesus," Hal breathed.

The room was filled with dolls. Dolls that looked like clumps of asparagus, dolls that looked like scarecrows and kachinas, dolls that looked like a selection of children's toys ranging from the Victorian era until now. They were made from a variety of materials and appeared to be of all ages, the newest a genderless factory-pressed piece of plastic, the oldest a carved piece of driftwood with an oversize male organ. They were arranged upon the floor, placed together on shelves and ledges, suspended by hooks from the walls. Vines grew over and between the figures, impossibly green for having grown in the darkness.

In the center of all this stood the corpse of a dwarf, an eyeless, mummified creature with brown skin and rotted clothes and barely discernible features. The corpse held forth one outstretched hand, palm up.

Claire let go of his belt, grabbed his arm. Her hand was cold and sweaty, and he could feel the tension in her fingers as she painfully squeezed his ann muscles. "Let's get out of here," she whispered, afraid even to speak aloud. Her whisper echoed, grew, became other words, other sounds in the strange acoustics of this room. "I don't like it." She breathed deeply. "I'm afraid."

Hal nodded, whispering himself. "She's right, Miles. This is out of our league."

"Stay there," Miles told them.

He pulled away from Claire and, holding the lamp in front of him for additional light, walked slowly forward, careful not to step on any of the dolls. Glass eyes stared blankly up at him as he passed. The flickering flame of

This close, he could see that a vine had wound around the dwarf's feet and disappeared up the faded, rotted mated al that had once been clothes. The vine emerged once again on the underside of the arm and ended in the dried, outstretched hand. The vine was mint, he saw now, though mint did not ordinarily grow in a vine, and the way it came to an end just beyond the tip of the mummified fingers made it appear as though the small dead man was offering him a branch of newly picked mint leaves.

He remembered his dream last night, the old man with the mint spoon.

"A dwarf gave it to me."

Not knowing if it was the right thing or not, Miles picked the end of the vine, the branch of mint leaves, from the dead dry hand, and put it in the pocket of his shirt. "It keeps the head fresh."

Cool, clean air beckoned him from the dark doorway in the corner, and Miles turned back toward Claire and Hal. "Come on," he said, and his voice had no echo but died dully. "We're going out that way. Make sure you don't step on any of the dolls."

He needed to say no more. Claire came first, and she stepped gingerly between the figurines, following almost the same path he himself had taken. Hal gave her a moment's head start before doing the same. Miles waited for both of them to reach him then, single-file, they crossed the rest of the room to the doorway.

Once past the massive candle, darkness closed in again. They entered another rock tunnel, only this time the wails were rounded, as if bored by machine. There were no alcoves or side passages, just this one straight tunnel. Holding his lamp high, Miles led them forward. The ground began to slope upward almost immediately, and soon he

was being forced to take smaller steps just to maintain his balance.

The passageway continued upward, as steep as stairs. They were all breathing heavily, and Miles was about to suggest that they stop and take a break when he saw the sky up ahead.

Storm clouds.

He hurried forward, coming finally to the end of the rock.

They were out.

Logically, they had to be at the top of the canyon, but when they emerged from between two boulders embedded in a hillside, he saw no trace of any canyon, only those strangely formed buttes, jutting upward not from a flat sandy desert but from a huge marsh filled with water weeds and cattails. It was an incongruous sight, like modern buildings positioned next to the pyramids or a luxury resort in the middle of the rain forest, and that only served to heighten the sense of surrealism.

There was a strange shapeless glow above the marsh, not green like the phosphorescence of their talismans but red, like blood, and it winked on and off several times, as though trying to attract their attention.

Then it coalesced into something resembling a ball and began floating slowly away, toward the nearest, tallest butte. Beneath the glowing orb, he saw, was a stone walkway, slightly raised, that bisected the swampy overgrown ground. "Let's go," Miles said. Hal groaned. "Not again."

But Claire was already moving, and Hal followed behind. Isabella was leading them someplace, purposefully luring thatthemweret sOme not yet! cati nc lear of her own choosing, for purposes

When she had emerged from the lake, when he'd shared her visions, when he'd seen the destruction of New York and Los Angeles and dries all across the nation, Miles had believed her to be at peak power. He hadn't understood why she had not immediately embarked upon her mission but had instead waited around for them. He knew now, though. She needed them.

Or, rather, she needed him.

It didn't make any sense, but he guessed it had something to do with his father, with his heritage. Maybe she needed to absorb the power of all of the witches in order to carry out her plan.." and he was the last. Whatever the reason, she was provoking a confrontation, and there was nothing he could do but see this through to the end.

They moved into the shadow of the butte, and what little sunlight had been filtering through the dark heavy clouds was cut off completely.

Around them in the marsh they could hear the rustling, slithering noises of unseen creature so The red glow faded into nothingness and only the lamp lit their way, but the marsh was not as large as it looked and the butte was not as tall as it looked, and ten minutes later they were there.

She was waiting for them.

It was a vision of hell. The marsh ended and the ground was smoldering rock. A fence made of burned stakes surrounded a patch of brown tufted weeds and the decomposing corpse of what looked like a deformed elephant. There was a massive hole in the ground' That where I put her body."

--so black it seemed to suck up all available light, and hideous stone carvings lay tipped over and broken all the way to the foot of the butte.

Isabella stood upon a pile of ill-formed bones. Smiling at them. Hal shot at her.

He didn't wait for Miles' okay but simply drew his weapon and fired. As Miles expected, the bullets had no impact. They

cent rock. You couldn't kill what was already dead.

She floated toward them, her eyes locked on Miles'. They were the coldest eyes he'd ever seen, embedded in a face that was.." beautiful.

Yes, she was beautiful. He'd noticed it'at the lake, but it seemed more pronounced now. She was in her element. This environment flattered her, brought out her best features. She was dead, but he had never seen anyone look more alive. Her beauty was of a type he had never beheld before, a strange exquisite wildness. The only thing that marred the illusifias that odd tilt of the head, the weird angle at which her neck seemed permanently cocked.

Her eyes were working on him, trying to seduce him perhaps but either the necklace protected him, or his own feelings were so true and solid that nothing could dislodge them.

He hated her.

She stopped, stood before him, flat on the ground. "Miles," she said. "Miles Huerdeen. I knew you would come." Her voice was soft, musical, but had an edge to it, too. He had the feeling that, like her eyes, her voice was trying to work on him.

"What did you do to my father?" he demanded.

"I was helping your father," she said. "I want to help you, too. We must stick together, our kind. They all want us dead..."

She didn't know he was aware of her plans. She didn't know that he knew what she was.

He still had that advantage, at least, and Miles watched her while she spoke, trying to figure out what he should do.

He was not sure what he'd expected. A magic sword to appear? A spell?

May had provided them with fetishes of protection, he'd been given visions. Up until now he'd been

supplied with whatever he needed, and he'd expected that to continue..

But there was no sword, no magic spell, nothing. He wak alone with Isabella, and it appeared now as though he would have to physically attack her if he hoped to stop her an put an end to her plans of mass destruction. ;

He dropped the lantern and punched her hard in the gut. Isabella was caught unawares, but she was not hurt. How could she be ? She was dead. Her astonishment lasted only a few seconds. She spun away from him, out of his reach, causing him to stumble on his follow-up. His chance to use the element of surprise to his advantage had failed. Now they both knew where the other stood.

"You wanted to know about your father, she said softly. "Bob's in hell. I put him there. He was evil, one of the devil's disciples, and I sent him where he belonged." Her gaze held him. "Do you know why your parents split up, Miles? Do you know the real reason? Do you know why your sister never comes around?"

"Don't listen to her," Claire ordered, grabbing his arm. "Do what you have to do." What he had to do? He didn't even know what that was.

Isabella smiled. "How many guys do you think Claire fucked while you two were apart? How many huge dripping cocks do you think she sucked and sat on? More than five? More than ten? More than twenty?"

Images accompanied the words: his father taking his mother an ally against her will, sticking his huge hairy hands up Bonnie's nightdress when she was still a child; Claire bobbing up and down between a mustached man's legs, stopping suddenly, her eyes widening as the man ejaculated what was clearly an unexpectedly large amount of semen into her willing mouth.

The scenes cut straight through to his gut, but he could not let himself be swayed or lose focus. He rushed her, hands

out, pushing her hard onto the ground and falling on top of her, punching her midsection.

She was wiry. And much stronger than he would have even thought! not been used to enhance simple physical prowess. She withstood his blows and with one knee to the stomach sent him off her, falling sideways, trying desperately to draw breath.

Their positions were suddenly reversed. In one fluid motion she was on top of him. She kneed him again, this time in the crotch, then reached for his necklace, clearly not believing that she would be able to even touch it. But apparently the necklace's power was restricted to witchcraft, and though it could repel spells and conjurings, it could not fend off a direct assault. Her fingers curled around it, and the string yanked free of his neck, coming apart in her hands, the green glow winking out of existence as individual teeth clattered onto the rocky ground.

He saw a look of triumph in her eyes, felt the crackle of power in the air.

Then she was knocked sideways, off him.

And Hal and Claire were upon her.

Both were still protected, Claire's bracelet shining brightly, a glow emerging from the top of Hal's pocket, where he kept his talisman, and they were attacking wildly, like a team of predatory animals, not giving her an opportunity to right back. Once again, she was not being hurt She was dead

---but, not being able to use her powers, she was forced to fend them off. A harsh growl escaped from her lips, a tremendously deep noise that sounded as though it had come from a much larger creature.

Hal held down her arms, head-butted her in the chest.

Claire had grabbed a rock and was sitting on Isabella's legs, bashing in her knees.

Mile still felt the crackle of energy about him, and he had no doubt that she was about to finish him off, to kill him and absorb his life force or whatever the hell it was that ii she did; but before that happened, he leaped up, ran over, and grabbed her head with both hands.

She screamed, began thrashing wildly.

And he pulled off her head.

The break was clean, and he realized her head had not been reattached properly to begin with. That was why it had been held at such an odd angle. :::

He dropped the head, feeling dirty and disgusted by the sensation of it in his hands: the sliminess of the skin, the coldness of the flesh. Her body had stopped moving instantly, going limp, the thrashing ceasing upon disconnection with the head.

He helped Claire up, grabbing her hand and pulling her to her feet, though she would have had no trouble getting up on her own, and gave her a warm hard hug, kissing her full on the lips, grateful that she was alive, grateful to be alive himself.

Jesus, Al breathed, standing and rubbing an obviously hurt knee.

Miles glanced back toward the black hole in the ground.

He thought of his dream, the old cowboy.

"That's where I put her body."

Whatever useful knowledge he possessed had come from that dream, and he quickly grabbed Isabella's slack arms.

"Pick her up," he told Hal. "We'll throw her in the hole."

There was no argument, no hesitation. Hal grabbed her legs, and the two of them lifted the unnaturally heavy form and staggered over to the edge of the massive pit.

"On three," Hal said.

They began swinging the body back and forth to gain momentum.

"One... Two... Three!"

They let go, and Isabella's body fell into the hole, disappearing instantly, swallowed by the deep lightless black. They looked down, waited, but there was no flash of light as she was consumed, no sound of thump or splash as she reached the bottom.

She was simply gone.

Or rather her body was

The head was sOil there, lying on the smoking ground at Claire's feet.

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."

Claire gave Hal a hug. 'thank you," she said. "For believing me, for coming with me, for all of it. I don't know what would've happened if you hadn't been here."

"Or you, either," he told her.

Miles put an arm around her. "Thanks both of you." "What are friends for?"

They got into their respective cars, and Miles and Claire waved to Hal as he started off in the opposite direction.

They hit the highway themselves. It seemed suddenly silent, with just him and Claire---it was amazing how quickly

one got used to being part of a group---and Miles turned on the radio as they headed over the bridge that traversed the [ river and headed into the desert. The radio dial was white [. noise save for a Mexican station, a right-wing talk program out of Albuquerque, and an all-news station from Las Vegas.

Miles kept it on the Las Vegas station. According to the weather report, a storm system was covering most of the four corners states and heading west, toward Nevada and

California. Whether that was from the same dark cloud cover [ that had started over Wolf Canyon, he did not know, but it would not surprise him.

He glanced over at Claire. He remembered when they'd gotten married.

Or when they were supposed to have gotten married. For the wedding had been postponed a day. There'd been a huge thunderstorm, a freakishly out-of season El Nifio downpour, that triggered a mud slide which engulfed the -p, ark where the ceremony was to take place. Although they d been able to laugh about it later, it had been hell at the time and they'd rushed around all morning phoning friends and relatives, telling them about the postponement, while desperately searching for some inside location to host the wedding.

Miles cleared his throat. "How about we get married?" She looked at him. "What?" "Will you marry me?" "No."

"No?" : "Are you crazy?" "I'm dead serious."

"This isn't a movie, where two people fall in love just because they're thrown together under extreme circumstances. It's us. Me. You.

We're together again, yes, but we still have to give this thing time.

Who knows where this is -going to lead?"

"I do."

'there still a lot of water under the bridge, a lot of things we haven't talked about, and and it's just too soon, Miles." She put a light hand on his arm.

"What do you say we go to Las Vegas and just play it from there?"

"Why not?"

"I'm not into those quicky chapel things, if that's your scheme. It's not cute or kitschy or any of that stuff to me."

"I thought you didn't want to get married. If you're not even going to be tempted, then, why not go?"

She smiled at him. "Okay, smarty pants. Las Vegas it is." He grinned. "Las Vegas it is."

She reached over, shut off the radio, then snuggled close to him on the seat. He put his arm around her as he drove and casually pressed down on the gas, accelerating. He wanted to reach Las Vegas before the storm.

The forecast was for heavy rain by nightfall.