Free The Walking by Bentley Little

walking, getting out of here, not allowing himself to dwell on the other possible outcomes of this situation. He wanted to cry out for help, but he was not sure there was any help to be had, and he was hoping that this darkness was just as disorienting to whatever was after him.
    His walker hit a barrier, the wall, and Derek reached out to touch, feeling to the left and to the right until he found a crack, a hinge, and, finally, a knob. He grasped the knob, turned it. Or tried to.
    The door was locked.
    From the outside.
    Was that something that was done every night? He didn't think so, but he wasn't sure. The only thing he was sure of was that he was now trapped in here with whatever was trying to kill him.
    There was a... a slumping sound, the noise of something large moving forward through the room, forcing its weight across the floor toward him.
    He wished to God the room had remained silent. He didn't want to think about what kind of form went with that sound. He wanted only to find a way to escape, a way to get out of here before The bathroom!
    Yes! If he could make it to the bathroom without being caught, he could lock himself in until morning. Maybe the
    monster could break down the door, but his chances were better in there than they were out here.
    The monster?
    He had no problem with that word.
    The bathroom was to the right, and he started toward it. He did not have to face forward as he moved--his walker met obstructions before he did--so he kept swiveling his head around, looking from one section of the room to the other. The darkness was still almost total, but his eyes seemed to be adjusting to the lack of light because there was an area now less black than the room around it, a rounded, shapeless mass that drew ever closer to him and looked somehow as though it was made out of ice.
    His heart was pounding loud enough to drown out that horrible slumping sound. He tried to hurry but Damn this walker, was not able to move any faster than he did ordinarily. His old bones and feeble muscles were unwilling to grant him any favors even in this time of crisis.
    His walker hit the wall. He looked forward, and was promptly grabbed from behind.
    This is it, he thought. The hand that covered his mouth was cold, freezing cold, and hard.
    Ice. "
    He thought of Wolf Canyon.
    Ice, it occurred to him, was made of water. And then the cold hand forced itself into his mouth and down his throat.
    Then
    These were bad times, especially for his kind.
    It was almost as if the old days had returned.
    William talked to the wolves as he traveled, and the ravens. They told him of burnings and hangings that were occurring on an almost regular basis in the scattered settlements of the territories. The stories chilled him. He would have been better off having been born into one of the Indian tribes, where his powers and abilities would be, if not understood, at least respected and appreciated. But he was white-skinned, and as such was fated to live within the world of the fair, that irrationally rational culture that believed only in one unseen, uninvolved God and attributed anything, even remotely supernatural to the work of Satan.
    He traveled by day, slept at night, and tried to ignore the horrible sounds he heard in the darkness, the moans and wails that came from no man, no animal, no wind but seemed to emanate from the land itself.
    There were Bad Places in the territories, places where neither white man nor Indian had settled, where even animals would not live. He passed through these on his way from one temporary home to another, and there was a voice in the Bad Places that spoke to him, a uniform voice that was the same in the Dakotas as it was in Wyoming, a voice he found at once tempting and terrifying, a seductive presence that pleaded with him to give up his sense of self,
    to abandon his small meaningless life and become one with the land.
    He did not stay long inrie place, not after what he'd done to Jane Stevens' father back