Mystery Walk

It was the most beautiful light he'd ever seen. It was all the sunrises and sunsets he'd ever witnessed, all the golden sunny summer days of his childhood, all the colors of sunlight streaming through the multicolored leaves of an autumn forest. He'd soon reach that light, if he hurried; he desperately wanted to get there, to feel that warmth on his body, to bask in it and just let everything go. He was able to turn his head—or he thought he turned his head, but he wasn't sure—and looked back along the tunnel at what he was leaving behind. There was something back there on fire.

The door was opening wider, flooding the tunnel with that wonderful glow. He had to reach it, he knew, before it closed again. His forward progress seemed to be slowing . . . slowing .. .

The door was wide open, the light so bright it stung his eyes. Beyond the doorway was a suggestion of blazing blue sky, green fields, and hills and forest stretching on as far as he could see. There were wonders over there, a beautiful place of peace and rest. There would be new paths to explore, new secret places, new journeys to be made. Joy surged through him, and he stretched out his arm to reach the opening.

A figure stepped into the threshold. A woman, with long russet hair that flowed over her shoulders. He knew instantly who it was, and she looked at him with an expression of sadness and compassion.

'No,' she said softly. 'You can't give it up yet. It's too soon.' And the door began closing.

'Please!' Billy said. 'Help me . . . let me stay!'

'Not yet,' she replied.

He shouted, 'No!' but he was already falling away from it, falling faster and faster as the door closed and the light faded. He sobbed and fought as he tumbled along the tunnel, returning to the place where pain waited to grip into him again. Memory ripped through him: Wayne at the controls, Krepsin screaming, the jet skidding along the ground while flames chewed at the cabin, a shriek of metal as the wings tore away, the final violent thrashing of the fuselage. ...

He moaned and opened his eyes. Two dark forms that had been poised near his head spread their wings, making startled cries as they flew away. They circled overhead in the graying sky, then dropped down onto something about a hundred yards away.

I'm not dead, Billy thought. But the memory of the golden light and the beautiful landscape almost cracked his heart; his mother had been there, waiting for him, but had turned him away instead. Why? Because his Mystery Walk wasn't yet finished?

He braced himself with his right arm and tried to sit up. Pain pounded through his head, broken bones grinding in his jaw where his head had struck the table. Then he had forced himself into a sitting position, and he looked across the desert.

The first orange rays of the sun were slicing the sky over a line of purple mountains to the east. Small fires still flickered everywhere; a large section of the jet—the rear of the cabin and the tail—had burned itself out into a black mass of tangled metal. Debris was scattered for more than a mile. Billy watched sunlight explode over the mountains. The heat was already stifling; in another hour or so it would be unbearable, and there wasn't a scrap of shelter.

He heard a soft, shuddered moan behind him. With an effort, he turned his head and saw Wayne Falconer— his face swollen, his hair scorched, his clothes ripped and burned—lying about ten feet away, his back supported by part of a seat that had been blown out of the aircraft. There was crusted blood all over Wayne's face, and one eye was swollen shut. The other was deep-sunken, bright blue, and was fixed on the Challenger's strewn wreckage. The eye moved and came to rest on Billy.

Wayne whispered, 'The beautiful eagle. It's dead. It's all torn up and dead.' A tear glittered in his eye, overflowed, and ran down his blood-streaked cheek.

Billy watched the vultures circle and swoop. A few of them were fighting over something that lay about thirty yards or so away—something twisted and charred black. 'Do you know where we are?' he asked Wayne.

'No. What does it matter? Krepsin's dead; they're all dead . . . except you.'

'Can you move?'

'My head hurts. And so does my side. But I landed her, didn't I? We were on fire, and I put her right down. What did we hit?'

'One of those, I think.' Billy motioned toward the peaks with his right hand. 'Somebody'll help us. They'll see the smoke.'

Wayne watched the smoke rising. The sun painted his bruised face bright orange. 'I wanted them all dead . . . but you, most of all. I wanted to die, too. I don't remember much after we hit the ground; but I remember somebody pulling me out of the flight deck.' He turned his head, the single eye unblinking. 'Why didn't you leave me there to burn?'

'I don't hate you,' Billy said. 'No matter what you think, I'm not your enemy. Krepsin was, because he wanted to own you— and he wanted to own me, too. They brought me here from Chicago, to make me do . . . awful things. If you hate me, it's because J.J. Falconer owned you, and he taught you how to hate.'

'Daddy . . .' Wayne said softly. 'He used to visit me, all the time. Late at night, just before I slept. But ... he lied to me, didn't he? No, no; it wasn't my daddy. It was . . . something else, something that . . . looked like an animal. I saw it, in the flight deck, just before we went down. It was lying to me, all the time, making me think my ... my daddy was still alive. And it told me to trust Mr Krepsin, to stay with him and do whatever he wanted. They hurt Henry Bragg. They hurt him bad, and I had to heal him.' Wayne lifted his hands and looked at them. 'I just wanted to do good,' he said. 'That's all. Why was it always so hard?' There was pleading in his voice.

Billy slowly rose to his feet. He was still wearing the cotton slippers that had been issued to him at Krepsin's hacienda. The ground was a pavement of rough pebbles, interrupted here and there by gnarled growths of cactus and spikes of palmetto. 'We've got to find some shade,' he told Wayne. 'Can you walk?'

'I don't want to move.'

'The sun's still low. In a couple of hours it's going to be over a hundred degrees out here. Maybe we can find a village. Maybe ...' His gaze passed across the rise of mountains that stood to the north, and he squinted in the fierce, hot glare. The mountains seemed to be only a mile or so away, shimmering in the heat waves. There were rippled outcrops of rock that might throw enough shade to keep them alive. 'Up there,' he said, and pointed. 'It's not too far. We can make it.'

Wayne balked for another moment, then stood up. He grasped Billy's shoulder for support, and something like a charge of electricity passed between them, stunning and energizing both of them. The pain seemed to drain out of Billy's body; Wayne's head was cleared as if he'd inhaled pure oxygen. Startled, Wayne drew his hand back.

'We can make it,' Billy said firmly. 'We have to.'

'I don't understand you. Why don't you just leave me and walk away? Whenever I saw you and your mother, whenever I heard your names, I was afraid; and I was ashamed, too, because I liked the power I had.' His face was agonized. 'But I had to start lying about the healing, because I couldn't heal everybody. I had to make them think I could, or they wouldn't listen to me anymore. I wouldn't have the power anymore. Even when I was a child, I was lying about it . . . and I knew it. And somehow, you and she knew it too, right from the start. You could see right through me. I ... I hated both of you, and I wanted to see you dead.' He squinted up toward the sun. 'But maybe it was because I hated what I was, and I wanted to die . . .1 still want to die. Just leave me here. Let me rest.'

'No. I don't know what Krepsin did to you, but you can get help. Now let's start walking.' He took the first step, then the next and the next. The pebbles felt like glass under his feet. When he looked back, he saw that Wayne was following, but at a dazed, unsteady pace.

They passed through the wreckage. Puddles of jet fuel still burned. Cocktail napkins with Ten High, Inc. printed on them fluttered past on a hot breath of wind. There was a litter of burned cables, shredded seats, broken glass, and razor-edged sheets of metal. A headless body in a scorched suit lay draped over the crisp remnant of a black leather sofa. The vultures were at work, stopping only to eye Billy and Wayne as they passed.

They found Krepsin's a few minutes later. The massive body was still strapped in its seat, lying on its side in a thatch of sharp palmettos, which had kept most of the vultures away. Krepsin, the clothes almost all ripped away from his body, was covered with mottled bluish black bruises. The tongue lolled from his head, and his eyes protruded as if they were about to explode. The body was already swelling, the face, neck, and arms grown to even more freakish proportions.