Now he understood. Finally he'd discovered a focal point to the evil that had spread out from this spot, that had reached across the country to kill all those people, that had some to do like his father, and 'the relatives and had finally brought them here. i
Isabella.
She wanted nothing less than complete revenge. Her power would grow with each loss of life, until she was unstoppable.
The end of the world would not result of Divine intervention or cosmic accident but from the small bitter hatred of an angry witch.
Miles was shaking. With fear, yes, but also from sensory overload, overwhelmed by the intensity of what he had experienced.
He had felt her anger, the white-hot core of hate that fueled her rage, but what remained with him most was the loneliness she felt, and moral imperatives were as nothing before it, minor distractions to be ignored or tossed aside. He remembered, as a kid, watching the Apollo space shots on TV, and what he recalled most clearly was Apollo 8, when American astronauts circled for the first time around the dark side of the moon. For the entire preceding week, he had attempted to imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes, to visualize what they were seeing, to experience what they felt. Loneliness was what he came up with. Everything they had ever known--water, sky, clouds, dirt, plants, animals, mountains, people, buildings, bugs--was a million miles away, encapsulated on a sphere they saw floating far off in the blackness of space while they were crammed into a small metal room surrounded by absolute nothingness. And when they circled around the dark side of the moon, when their radio transmission was cut off until they orbited back around, they were denied even that, stuck with only each other and the silence of space without so much as a glimpse of their blue globe world in the distance. They were alone, completely alone. i What he had felt when seeing through Isabella's eyes was
a comparable loneliness, a similar estrangement from the currents of life. Only it was somehow worse because it was something he could not understand. Her emotions and thought processes were so profoundly alien to him that he could deduce nothing from them, could make no predictions regarding past or future actions. The only thing he knew was that she could not be dissuaded from the course which she had chosen, that she was unalterably set upon her path and that there was nothing he or anyone else could do to change that.
Isabella looked past them, through them, and kept walking, following the others along the edge of the lake.
She didn't know that he'd seen!
His hart began racing. On the edge of despair only a second before, cowed and intimidated by her awesome power, he now saw a ray of hope.
Whatever connection had been established between them, she was unaware of it. Somehow, he had tapped into her intentions without her knowledge.
It was not much of an advantage, but it was something. The fact that she did not know he had gained access to her thoughts meant that she wasn't perfect, wasn't all-powerful. She'd looked in their direction after coming out of the water, but if she'd seen them or noticed them at all, she'd thought of them as little more than bugs or plants, totally irrelevant.
The constant tingling in his midsection faded as she moved between the paloverde trees away from them, angling inland from the shoreline. The other Walkers now seemed to Miles to be driven before her like cattle.
He knew that if anything was going to be done to stop her, they would have to be the ones to do it. How they would accomplish this was another matter. He looked over at the others, wanting to tell them what he'd experienced, but there was no way to convey the scope of it all. Rossiter was still holding his drawn weapon, but he had not fired a shot, and Miles could tell from the expression
on his face that the agent had been stunned into inaction. Janet was staring blankly out at the water.
Garden spoke first. "What the hell was that?"
"I don't know," Rossiter said.
Miles finally found his voice. "Isabella."
They all looked at him. "She's a witch who was here when the town was flooded, and somehow she survived. She's behind everything. She's old, older than we can imagine, and she's angry at what was done to her. I don't know if she was killed and struggled back from the dead or if she was just weakened and put out of commission for a while, but it's taken her until now to build up her strength. She reached out and killed the people responsible for the dam, the people who built it, the people who oversaw it, and she's gathered to her the people from Wolf Canyon, the other victims." He nodded at Gar den. "Like your grandfather." He took a deep. breath. "And my dad. I think they're, like, her army, and she's going to use them to help her--".
What? Destroy the world?
It sounded so stupid and childish and melodramatic.
"--take revenge," he said lamely, vaguely.
Rossiter nodded, but that was the only response. No one questioned him, and the irrationality of that made him realize just how crazy things had gotten. There were plenty of questions to ask. Why were Isabella and the Walkers leaving the lake after all these years? Where were they going from here? Perhaps the others didn't want to know more. Perhaps they understood on some instinctive level that what he'd told them was true, and that was enough for them.
Janet shook her head uncomprehendingly. "Did you see your father?" she asked Miles.
He nodded. "Yeah."
She turned to Garden. "Your grandfather?"
"And my uncle."
"Uncle John wasn't there." Her voice was filled with something like relief. "Maybe we did bury him. Maybe he is back in Cedar City and he's not involved in all this."
"Maybe," Miles agreed. He wasn't at all sure that Uncle
John's fate was so benign, but he wanted to ease her suffering. She did not deserve this. He was sorry he'd brought her along, but he knew that the only reason he could say that was because Garden and Rossiter were here. The truth was, he had had her come along solely because he hadn't wanted to be alone. Now he wished that he had left Janet back in Utah.
Garden was staring at the spot where they had last seen the Walkers heading into the desert, toward the hills. The track of disturbed sand that marked their passing was clearly visible. "What do you think we should do?"
"Follow them," Rossiter said, but his voice lacked conviction and his face betrayed a complete lack of desire to do any such thing.
Miles shook his head. Logically, that should be their plan, but something about it seemed wrong. It didn't feel right, although that seemed like a nebulous objection. "No," he said.
His authority challenged, Rossiter's spine stiffened.
'"they'll get away. If you're right, they need to be stopped.
And we're the only ones who've seen them. We're the only ones who know where they are."
"It's too dangerous," Miles said, and though he didn't know why he thought that, he did
"You coming?" the agent asked Garden.
The young man looked confused, ttmaed from Rossiter to
Miles, licking his lips.
"Fine." Rossiter started off on his own. "I'm not letting them out of my sight." He started down the slope, jogging to maintain his balance until he reached the beach at the bottom.
"Don't!" Miles called after him, and he was surprised by the power of his own voice.
"I have to! They'll get away!"
"Let them. We'll go after them later. We need to talk about this. We need to plan--"
"Nothing to talk about. Nothing to plan. You pussies stay here. I'm going." He was already moving away from shore and was past the first paloverde, heading around the column-like bulk of a saguaro.