They passed others on the road, six of them, men and women, scattered over a stretch of miles. All dead. All walking.
Janet's voice was low, subdued. "It's like in New Mexico," she said, .,There's this little church outside Santa Fe
that's supposed to cure people. It's built on what they call 'miracle dirt," and every Easter, Catholics from all over make a pilgrimage there. You can see them walking up the highway from Albuquerque. They walk hundreds of miles just to touch the dirt and pray at the church."
She looked out the car window, shuddered. 'that's what they remind me of. People making a pilgrimage."
"Dead people making a pilgrimage." ...... "To Wolf Canyon." .::..
They looked at each other, and Miles felt an unfamiliar tingling in his midsection. It was a strange sensation, and he thought for a second that he was having a heart attack, since there seemed to be a strange sort of flutter beneath his breastbone. But then it was gone, and he put it down to fear and stress. Perhaps this was considered a "panic attack." Hell, if anyone deserved to panic, it was him.
The land sloped down, and ahead they could see the lake, shimmering in the sun. The pavement ended, the road devolving into a narrow dirt trail defined by twin tire ruts that zigged and zagged for no discernible reason through the sparse desert vegetation toward the water. Aside from the occasional saguaro or paloverde tree, all of the plants here were low and pale gray, and the rental car bounced along between them on insufficient shock absorbers before finally reaching a dirt parking lot that abutted the northernmost cove of the lake.
To his surprise, an old Jeep was pulled next to a long wooden rail made to look like a hitching post. Miles parked several car lengths away, then shut off the ignition and looked over at Janet. "We're here."
"What do we do now?"
"I don't know," he admitted.
Janet unlocked and opened her door. "I guess we should get out and look around." She glanced over at Miles. "Before they come.
The two of them got out of the car and walked around the front of the vehicle to the railing. Stretched out before them, Wolf Canyon Lake continued almost to the horizon, bounded on the sides by a series of high rocky hills and sandstone bluffs. It had been overcast in Cedar City when they left, and Janet had not brought sunglasses. She stood squinting against the reflected glare on the water. Somewhere under there, Miles thought, was a ghost town, and he found himself wondering if there were still bodies down there, if not all of the corpses had been retrieved.
Maybe the bodies at the bottom were walking, too. Like his father.
Maybe that's where his father was headed. But why? She's here.
He looked south toward the far end of the lake. He could not see it from this spot, but he assumed that was where the dam was.
She's going after the dam builders, too.
Nothing quite made sense. There were huge gaps in his knowledge, and if he could fill in those gaps he might reach some understanding of what was going on, but until then he was in the dark, able to guess at some of the more obivous elements of what was happening but completely unable to see the larger picture.
"Let's walk down," Miles said. He stepped over the low railing and held Janet's hand to help her across. The two of them started down a barely discernible, gently sloping path that led to the water's edge.
They were at the end of the path, standing on the sandy lake shore, when Miles discovered they were not alone. He saw movement in his peripheral vision, and when he looked to the right he saw a young man sitting on a rock next to the water--a satchel, rolled-up sleeping bag, and scuba gear spread out on the sand beside him. This was clearly the
As the man stood up and looked at him walked
"Hey, Miles said. How is it going? "
"All right."
This close, he didn't look all that young. He had short hair and was clean-shaven, which gave his face a youthful appearance, but there were bags under his eyes and a haunted look in his features. Miles estimated that he could be anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five.
"You here to do some diving?" Miles asked, gesturing down at the scuba gear. "Water looks kind of dirty to me." "You can see once you get down there."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Miles motioned toward Janet. 'his is Janet Engstrom.
I'm Miles Huerdeen."
"My name's Garden. Garden Hawks." The young man qooked from Janet to Miles. Their thoughts must have registered on their faces because he said: "You know, don't you? That's why you're here." "Know what?"
Miles asked. "About the Walkers."
Walkers.
Even the word sent a shiver down his spine temporary bubble of unreality that had surrounded him, that had allowed him to keep the truth of why they were here at bay, popped. Next to him, Janet drew in her breath, her eyes
Garden nodded. I -thought so." He smiled wryly. "It's good to know that I'm not the only one. I thought I might be going crazy."
"What... ?" Janet stammered. "How did you know?"
"My gram pa down there."
"My father's on the way," Miles said. "We passed him on the road in." group of them have arrived since I got here this morning. I sat in my Jeep and watched them."
"What did they do?"
Garden shrugged. "They walked into the water."
"That's where your grandpa is?"
"Yep. He's down there walking." The young man looked at Janet. "What about you? Are you just here with him, or... ?" He left the sentence unfinished.
"It's my uncle," she said. "He died and kept walking."
"Is he here?"
"We don't know," Miles answered for her. "We didn't see him on the way, and he was supposedly cremated, but..."
He shrugged. "We don't know."
"I see."
An awkward pause followed.
Garden looked down at his scuba gear, looked up at them. "Do, uh, you guys have a plan?"
Mile shook his head slowly. "You?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.
"No. I was just going to play it by ear."
It was Janet who asked the question they were all wondering: Does any of us actually know What's going on?" There another awkward silence
"Well, let's start with what we do know," Miles said. He glanced at Janet, then turned toward Garden. He told his story. Afterward, Janet told hers.
When they were finished, Garden nodded. He looked down at his scuba gear, out at the lake, then took a deep breath. "My gram pa went down twenty years ago. It was pretty much like your situations. He got sick from fever, started walking, died, then went into the water. We lived nearby here, in a side canyon, and he kept walking around and around the house--for weeks, wind, sun, rain, didn't matter. There was only me, my daddy and my uncle, and we didn't know what to do. My uncle and my daddy, I think, took turns watching him, but this went on for weeks. He
wasn't dead yet, but then he did die, sometime while he was walking, and I remember being so afraid of him. I didn't think he was going to kill me or anything, I was just... scared. Can't really say why.
Anyway, I went to bed, and I beard my daddy and my uncle talking aboutmjust like you said--a box of my gram pa magic powders and potions and stuff. I never saw it, though.
"When I woke up in the morning, he was gone. We followed his trail to the lake and got here just in time to see him walk into the water. My daddy yelled at him, but he couldn't hear, and he just kept walking into the water until he was gone.
"We never came back to the lake, pretended like it didn't even exist, but I never forgot about it, and when I grew up and went to college, I took a diving class. I think you can guess why. I came back on my break, told my daddy what I wanted to do, but both he and my uncle were against it.
"I went diving down there anyway." Garden licked his lips, obviously unsettled by the memory even all these years later. The water was dirty, muddy, but I saw him. My gram pa was walking. And he wasn't alone. There were several people walking. Through that ghost town down there at the bottom." He shivered. "I guess they lived there."