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  The Walking

  Bentley Little

  It begins in a small Southwestern town. Then it spreads. Across the country a series of strange deaths have overtaken the living. And a stranger compulsion has overtaken the dead.

  In a travesty of life they drift with bizarre purpose toward an unknown destination. The walkers have become an obsession for investigator Miles Huerdeen. His father is one of them.

  Now, lured into the shadow of the restless dead, Miles is a step closer to a secret as old as time ... to a reality as dark as hell. For Miles is following them into the deep end of an unfathomable nightmare.

  From Publishers Weekly

  The overwhelming sense of doom with which Little (The Revelation) imbues his newest novel is so palpable it seems to rise from the book like mist. Flowing seamlessly between time and place (from the present-day hassles of HMOs to the once-uncharted territory of the American West), the Bram Stoker Award- winning author's ability to transfix his audience while relinquishing scant details about the foreboding evil is superb. Private investigator Miles Huerdeen is on a mission to find a link between the victims in a bizarre nationwide string of deaths dating back decades, his own recurring nightmares and an elderly client's prophetic handwritten list of dead men's names. Miles's world is suddenly turned upside down when he discovers his own father - who suffered a fatal stroke - purposefully striding around his bedroom, naked except for a pair of cowboy boots, having scared off his "God-Fearing Christian" nurse. Miles's obsession with his father's transformation into a zombie leads him to the families of other dead "walkers" and on a supernatural journey into the Arizona desert. Readers will gladly suspend disbelief for Little's deft touch for the terrifying, as he slowly reveals a shocking connection between the mindless army of reanimated corpses and their ultimate destination, Wolf Canyon, formerly a government-sponsored witch colony, where a vengeful resident's evil powers have yet to be fully unleashed. If booksellers are on their toes, they'll tell readers that Stephen King, a big fan of Little's work, was reading another book by this author at the time of his infamous accident. This novel has the potential to be a major sleeper in the horror category.

  The Walking

  By Bentley Little

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Putnam Inc." 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Copyright ©Bentley Little, 2000

  All rights reserved

  For Don Cannon, the only bookseller who matters (better late than never).

  John Hawks died and kept walking.

  They had not expected it, but neither did it take them totally by surprise. Garden was the first to notice, and he ran breathlessly into the kitchen to tell his father and his uncle. "I think Grampa's dead!" he called.

  His father sucked in his breath. "Has he? Is he? "He's still walking." They went outside to see, standing together on the porch, letting the old screen door slam loudly against its frame behind them.

  Sure enough, John Hawks was walking purposefully through the desert around the house, maneuvering through the obstacle course of saguaro and cholla and ocotillo just as he had for the past two weeks. From this vantage point, it was impossible to tell whether he was dead or not.

  Robert Hawks put his arms protectively around his son's shoulders and turned toward his brother. "Cabe, check it out."

  Cabe shook his head. "I ain't--"

  "Check it out."

  The two brothers looked at each other for a moment, then Cabe glanced away. "All right." He took a few tentative steps down the porch steps as their father disappeared behind the back of the house. He wiped his hands nervously on his jeans, then hurried across the dirt to where a slight groove had been worn into the ground.

  Garden watched his uncle plant his feet right in the center of the narrow track and face the direction from which the old man would come.

  He was afraid, and he could tell from the way his father's fingers gripped his shoulders that his father was afraid, too.

  John Hawks had started walking the night after his fever broke. At first they'd thought that the sickness had passed. When they heard the creak of his bedsprings, heard his footsteps on the hardwood floor, they assumed that he'd gotten up and out of bed because he was all right. But when he strode straight through the kitchen and outside without so much as a word, when they saw the almost complete lack of expression on his skeletal face, the glassy stare of his pale eyes, they knew something was wrong. Robert and Cabe had run out after him, trying to find out what was going on, but the old man had begun circling around the house, bumping into the cottonwood tree, stepping through jojoba bushes, apparently oblivious to his surroundings. They had followed him around the house once, twice, three times, yelling at him, demanding his attention, but it was clear that he was not going to talk to them. They were not even sure he understood the words they screamed. The only thing they were sure of was that he was still sick.

  And that, for some reason, he could not stop walking.

  They hadn't tried to talk to him since, and they had not tried to stop him. There was something so terrifying about the way he endlessly circled the house, something so utterly wrong and beyond their understanding, that they had thought it best to wait it out. Robert had assigned each of them watches, and for the first couple of days they stuck faithfully to the schedule, although Cabe's nighttime vigil had since been abandoned.

  They hadn't expected the old man to last long. He was sick, he was old, he was frail, and he hadn't eaten since before his fever broke.

  But he'd continued to walk. Three days.

  Five days. A week. Two weeks. They'd expected him to die--had hoped, had prayed, for him to die---but he had not. His condition worsened. He grew thinner, sicklier. But he continued to walk.

  Now he had died.

  And he continued to walk.

  The old man strode back around the corner of the house toward them, and Garden felt his father's grip tighten as Cabe moved forward. His uncle put both hands out in front of him, and Garden saw him reach out and grab the old man's arms, then jump immediately away, uttering a frightened yelp.

  John Hawks continued to walk.

  "What was it?" Robert demanded.

  "His skin's cold," Cabe said. His voice was high and frightened. "It's cold and dry."

  "Grampa's dead," Garden repeated.

  Cabe hurried back onto the porch and stood next to them. "What're we going to do?" he asked. He sounded as though he was about to cry.

  "Exactly what we been doin'. Nuthin'

  "But we gotta do something! We gotta tell someone! We can't--"

  "We can't what? You got any ideas. Robert glared at his brother.

  "Huhg"

  Cabe didn't answer.

  "Nuthin' we can do." ..... "But he's dead! Daddy's dead["

  "Yeah," Robert said quietly. 'hat he is."

  Garden went to bed early that night, and he lay awake in the darkness, listening. In the front room, his father and his uncle were sorting through Grampa's stuff. He'd helped them clean out the old man's room earlier, taking out the boxes of dried roots and twigs and branches, the bottles of powder the small stuffed animals, the pages of drawings, every thing. Now he stared up at the open beams of the low bedroom ceiling, at the gossamer layers of cobweb stretching across the black corners, silver white in the refracted moonlight. He could hear his father and uncle arguing, his uncle saying that they should have called on Lizabeth weeks ago to find out what was going on, his father replying that the last thing that would help them out with this problem would be calling in a witch woman

  "What is all this stuff? Cabe asked. Garden heard him pick up something heavy wra
pped in crinkly paper and drop it on the table.

  "You know damn well what it is."

  There was a pause. "But we don't know nuthin' about this."

  "It's our fault. We should've listened to him."

  Garden sat up in bed and pulled aside the blue cloth curtain that covered his window. There was a strong wind outside, and from the look of the sky in the nerth there was a sandstorm coming. Already he could hear the hissing rustle of small grains hitting the glass. He squinted his eyes, trying to see through the dust.

  Grampa walked by, his clothes blowing in the wind billowing outward, his head moving neither to the right nor to the left but staring fixedly ahead.

  Garden let the curtain fall. He could hear the wind growing stronger, its rhythms more insistent. He didn't know what was happening, but he was scared. He didn't think Grampa was going to kill him or hurt him in any way, didn't think he'd attack him or his father or his uncle, didn't think Grampa was going to do anything except walk forever in endless circles around the house. But somehow that was more frightening "What if he's there for years?" Cabe asked. "what if he

  keeps doing this until there's nuthin' left of him and he's just a skeleton or something?"

  Garden didn't hear his father's answer. He didn't want to hear. He pulled the blanket over his head. He fell asleep listening to the drone of their voices in. the front room as they discussed what to do.

  He dreamed about skeletons walking in sandstorms.

  He dreamed about Grampa.

  In the morning he was gone.

  As simple as that.

  He had continued walking purposefully around the house until at least after midnight, when Robert and Cabe finally went to bed, impervious to the sandstorm, his torn clothes whipping around him in ragged tatters, but when the sun came up he was no longer there.

  They searched their property, walked through the gullies and washes of the surrounding desert, but found no trace of John Hawks. Cabe had wanted to call it a day before noon, thankful that his dead father had disappeared, and Robert would have been inclined to follow his brother's wishes on this one, but Garden insisted that they keep looking.

  Several hours later, they found a torn piece of blue shirt cloth on the spiny arm of a saguaro. The sandstorm had wiped out all traces of footprints, but judging by the direction in which the cactus stood in relation to the house, they assumed that the dead man was walking toward the lake. Cabe went back for the truck while Garden and his father waited in place, in the dubious shade of the cactus, and soon the three of them were speeding across the unpaved road that led to the lake.

  They arrived just as John Hawks stepped into the water.

  Cabe opened his door and jumped out of the driver's seat, while Robert scrambled out of the passenger side. Garden

  followed his father, leaving the door open behind them. They ran to the edge of the lake.

  "Daddy!" Robert called.

  But the dead man did not turn around. Neck stiff, head unmoving, proceeding forward at the same indefatigable pace in which he had circled the house for so long, he walked into the lake until just his head and then just his hair were above water. And then he was gone.

  They stood there for a while, waiting to see if he came out again, waiting to see if perhaps the lake was just another barrier he had to pass through and if he would emerge on the other shore, but he did not reappear. The sun dipped low in the west, and it was almost dark when they finally decided to head for home. Garden was not sure how his father and uncle felt--both of them seemed more sad than scared now, and more relieved than sad--but he himself was still worried.

  He did not think it was over yet

  After graduating from high school, Garden went on to the junior college in Globe. It was a two-hour-drive from home, but he had purposely scheduled all of his classes for Tuesdays and Thursdays, so it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. For an elective his second semester, he decided to take a scuba diving course, and he received an A for his pool work, a B for his solo dive in Apache Lake, and got an A-minus out of the course.

  That summer he told his father that he wanted to dive in Wolf Canyon.

  "The lake?" Robert said, frowning.

  "I want to see what happened to Grampa."

  They had not talked of John Hawks since the day he had disappeared.

  They had not reminisced about either the good times or the bad times, had avoided completely the subject of the walking. Robert d Cabe had not even finished going

  through all of his old things. They had thrown away boxes unopened, tossed all loose items without looking at them.

  None of them had ever gone back to the lake.

  Robert stared at his son. "No," he said flatly.

  "I'm going with you or without you." "You can't!" "I will."

  Cabe walked into the kitchen from outside. what down tiredly in the chair opposite his brother. "What's all this about?"

  "Garden wants to scuba dive in the lake. He wants to look-for Daddy."

  Cabe sighed. "We all want to know," he said. "You do, too. Admit it." He looked at Garden. "I'm coming with you."

  "Cabe--" "It's time."

  'The water's muddy," Robert said. "You won't be able to see nuthin'."

  Garden licked his lips. "I'll be able to see."

  They went out on a Saturday, borrowing a boat from Jim Holman, Garden bringing equipment from school. They were all nervous, and though the night before they had spent hours going over plans for the dive, discussing each possibility, mapping out a strict timetable, they were now almost silent, talking only to ask for equipment or instructions.

  Garden went over the side at ten o'clock sharp.

  The orders were strict. Since neither his father nor his uncle knew anything about scuba diving, he was on a line, the line connected to a winch. If he did not check in every five. minutes with the prearranged signals, if he did not surface five minutes before the hour limit of his air supply, they were to haul him up.

  The two men waited, silently pacing the deck of the boat. The first signal arrived on time. As did the second and the third.

  Then he was up. :

  Garden pulled himself onto the boat, flipping over the low side wall of the craft, tearing off his face mask and spit ring water out of his mouth. He was breathing heavily, his face was white, and he appeared to be panicked.

  "What is it?" Robert demanded, crouching next to his son. "What did you see?"

  Garden caught his breath. He looked from his uncle to his father and back again.

  "What's happening?" Cabe asked.

  Garden closed his eyes. "He's still down there," he said. "And he's walking."

  "I knew it." Sanderson kept repeating the words like a litany. "I knew it."

  Miles Huerdeen did not look at his client's face. Instead, he focused his attention on the contents of the folder spread out over the top of the desk: photos of Sanderson's wife walking arm in arm with the purchasing agent of his company, credit card carbons from the hotel, a copy of a dinner bill, a list of phone charges for the past two months.

  "I knew it."

  This was the part of the job Miles hated the most. The investigation itself was always fun, and as long as he didn't think about the consequences, he enjoyed his work. But he did not like to see the pain that was caused his clients by the information he gathered. He hated even being the messenger of that hurt. It was one of the paradoxes of this job that the work which was most rewarding was that which was most devastating to the people who hired him.

  He glanced up at Sanderson. He always felt as though he should say something to comfort his clients, to somehow apologize for the facts he presented to them. But instead, he stood the poker-faced, feigning an objectivity he did not feel. " .

  Sanders6n looked at him with eyes that were a memory away from tears.

  "I knew it."

  Miles said nothing, looked down embarrassedly at the desk.

  He was relieved when Sanderson finally left.


  The detective business was nothing like the way it was portrayed in movies. Miles hadn't really expected it to be, but he hadn't known what to expect when he made the decision to become a private investigator, when he'd forsaken his business classes and enrolled in his first criminology course. He'd known it wasn't going to be Phillip Marlowe time--glamorously seedy office, shady clientele, fast and loose women--but he'd half expected Jim Rockford. Instead, he'd ended up working in an environment not very far removed from the one in which he would have found himself had he continued to major in business.

  Only he now made a bell of a lot less money.

  At least he was working for a real detective agency, and not an insurance company, as so many of his fellow graduates were doing. He might be entrenched amid the trappings of a corporate world--desk cubicle in a high-rise office, quotas and timetables he had to meet--but sometimes he was allowed to go out in the field, follow people around, take clandestine photos. Sometimes he could pretend he was Phillip Marlowe.

  Phillip Marlowe-with medical insurance and a good dental plan.

  He filled out the form for billable hours, and sent it in an interoffice envelope along with a labor distribution time sheet to the bookkeeper. There was nothing more he could do here this afternoon, so he decided to leave a little early. He had to stop by the library tonight anyway, which would make up for any work-hour discrepancy.

  He waved to Naomi the receptionist as he waited for the elevator. "I'm out of here," he said.

  She smiled at him. "You're dust in the wind?"

  "I'm a puff of smoke. I'm history. I'm gone."

  The elevator arrived, and he gave her a James Dean low sign as the metal doors closed

  Outside, the air was cold, or as cold as it got in Southern California. Miles put his hands in the pockets of his jacket. As he walked next door to the parking lot, his breath blew out in puffs of white steam before dissipating in the breeze. It had rained sometime since lunch. He hadn't noticed it while in the office, but now he saw that the streets were slick and cinematically reflective. The water and rain puddles made it seem more Christmassy to him, made the tinsel trees on the lampposts and the small blinking multicolored lights outlining the doors and windows of the buildings seem not quite so inappropriate, lending the entire street a festive holiday air.