Levi, being much larger than Lottie, swung her around and pushed her face down on the bed.
Lottie began to moan fiercely, swinging her arms and legs as she twisted her head around at an unnatural angle as she attempted to bite Levi.
Tears were now flowing freely down Levi’s face as his heart broke.
He pinned Lottie’s body against the bed.
The cold from Lottie’s body radiated through Levi, making chills run through his body.
He quickly lowered his ear to Lottie’s back and listened.
His ear grew cold as he listened for a heartbeat or to hear Lottie breathing, but all he could hear was the growl that was coming from deep down inside of Lottie.
Other than her struggling, Levi could not find anything that indicated that Lottie should even be alive.
Levi knew he couldn’t let Lottie get back up. He couldn’t bear to think about what Lottie wanted to do.
He made a fast decision and quickly pulled off his belt.
He tied Lottie’s hands behind her back.
He pulled the pillow case off the pillow and tore it in half.
Levi turned and quickly tied Lottie’s feet together.
Then he stood and sadly looked down at Lottie as her hateful eyes glared up at him and she struggled to get free.
“I’m sorry Lottie,” Levi said as he looked down at the daughter that wanted to rip his face off. “I don’t know how to help you. I would change places with you if I could, but I don’t know how to do that either. I can’t even call anyone that might be able to help. If you can hear me, I love you and I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I am going to try and get you some help. Just hang on, please.”
Lottie looked up at Levi and growled.
Her teeth, now covered in blood, snapped viciously as blood splattered across her body.
Levi picked up the candle off the night stand, opened the door and went out to the couch.
He sat the candle back on the mantle before dropping down on the couch.
“It’s about time,” Jamie complained. “It’s dark out here and what they hell is wrong with that girl.”
“She’s sick, Jamie,” Levi whispered. “She is very sick.”
“Sick?” Jamie asked.
“That guy that bit her,” Levi said. “I think Lottie has what all those people at the reception had.”
“What can we do?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t know if there is anything we can do,” Levi replied as he stared at the floor. Right now, I honestly don’t know what to do about anything.”
Levi looked at Jamie. She could see the moisture on his face.
Jamie began to sob, “What the hell is happening to us?”
“I wish I knew,” Levi replied.
Chapter 21
Ken Anderson sat in his dirty cell.
He had been brought to this facility early this morning.
Where he was, he didn’t know, he just knew he wasn’t in Texas any longer.
He had been on death row in San Antonio, Texas for the last six months.
The date of his execution was fast arriving and he had resigned himself to his fate.
In Texas, no one ever got off death row. The last time a stay of execution was issued in Texas, Abraham Lincoln had been president.
Ken didn’t know if it was way back during Lincoln’s time, but it was long before his time.
All he knew was that his time was finally up.
He had a good run. Probably better than most people, despite the fact he was on death row.
He had been married and had two beautiful girls, Beth and Tammy. He had been so proud of his girls. They had both been popular all through high school and college.
Tammy was an ER doctor the last time he had seen her.
Beth had married some computer geek from Silicon Valley. She was living the good life; she, her husband and their two children - Ken’s grandchildren.
Yes, life had been good. He had two beautiful children and had lived to see them both grow up and have a happy life.
He had also been married, happily in fact, for twenty-five years before it had happened.
According to statistics, he had been married ten years longer than the average American managed to stay married.
By all standards, Ken had lived a happier, longer and a more fulfilled life than the majority of American men would have.
He had been looking forward to many more years, retirement years with his grandkids, fishing and traveling to all the places he and his wife had wanted to go but never had the time or the money to go.
Ken had been a social worker in Amarillo, Texas.
It didn’t pay a whole lot, but he had made enough money to pay the bills and send the girls to the University of Texas.
Beth had been too attractive for her own good, and had dropped out of college in her junior year to have her first child. But the guy ended up being a decent guy and all had ended well. Probably better than if Beth had graduated college and found a job in her chosen field, medieval poetry. Ken never knew there was such a major as medieval poetry, but hey, things all worked out.
Ken’s long range plans ended when one of the people he had been assigned was found dead.
Unfortunately, he and his client had a disagreement the day before his client had been found dead in his apartment.
The neighbors had heard the loud disagreement and brought it to the police’s attention after the body had been discovered.
Of course, Ken’s prints had been found in the man’s apartment. He had been to the guy’s apartment for a meeting. There wasn’t anything unusual about that.
The man had made Ken a sandwich and Ken had used a knife to spread mustard on his sandwich.
Unfortunately for Ken, it was the same knife that was found sticking out of the man’s back.
He didn’t have anything to do with the man’s death, but the evidence said otherwise.
Ken was an innocent man, but twelve jurors didn’t agree.
In a flash, Ken’s life was over.
On death row, Ken could only look back at the good years and the good life he had.
He consoled himself with the fact he lived a more fulfilled life in his time than most American’s ever would.
But he was saddened by what he knew he would miss.
That and having his girls think he was a murderer.
They said they believed him that he was innocent, but he knew they would always have some doubt.
But, unfortunately, there wasn’t anything he could do about that.
All he could do was be grateful for what had during his life.
He would go out peacefully, like a man, the man he had been all his life.
That was until one day a man, representing himself as a member of the U.S. Military, made him a deal he couldn’t refuse.
Ken was suspicious, the deal sounded too good to be true.
And Ken had learned many years ago, anything too good to be true was always something bad in disguise.
Especially when the government was involved.
Ken felt he could trust the men on death row more than anyone from the government.
But Ken was on death row, how much worse could it get.
He had nothing to lose, so he agreed.
He was willing to do anything that might one day lead him back to his girls.
But he would keep his eyes open and watch for the catch.
There would be a catch, there was always a catch. But if he played his cards right, maybe he could find a way out.
Now, Ken found himself here, “Where ever this is,” Ken thought as he looked around his new cell.
He looked at his white jump suit, then around at the old cobwebs hanging from the ceiling.
“This is not a normal cell,” Ken thought as he looked around, “the other shoe should drop anytime now.”
First the unbelievable deal, then the guy he had passed in cell one when he came here this morning. The guy was l
aying on his cot and appeared to be in agony. His skin was gray and he looked like he had been dead for a week. He was still moving around, the situation looked very suspicious.
He also had never been in a place that smelled this bad.
Now this cell, it was a phony cell if he had ever seen one.
The moaning from that guy in cell one had kept Ken awake most of last night.
Ken pulled the bed slat out from under his mattress.
The bed slat was another thing that made Ken suspicious, real jails didn’t have bed slats.
Prisoners could use the bed slats to make weapons, any prison guard worth his salt would know that.
Ken worked making a sharp point on the end of his bed slat.
Technically, Ken was dead.
When the guard came to take him for his unbelievable deal, Ken had decided that would be the time he would act.
He was going to get out of this phony jail and go as far away as he could get.
He didn’t want to hurt the guard if he could help it, but if he did, he was already dead, and he would do whatever it took to escape.
Ken wasn’t a desperate man, but he had picked up a few things in his time on death row.
The guards had called him, “dead man walking”. Now they could call him “dead man running” or “dead man missing”, but it was his intention to be the “dead man gone”.
Charlie walked back to the holding cells.
He and Eric had worked nonstop for the last twenty-four hours analyzing what had happened with their experiment on the Evan’s subject.
They both agreed that for a second injection to work, the original injection needed to mutate from its original configuration or the second injection would not have any effect on the biological agent that was first injected.
If the second injection was given after all the subject’s cells had been infected, the second injection would either do nothing at all or it would kill the subject.
Neither option was acceptable.
The reason for the experiment was to find a way to save a person that had been recently exposed to the agent.
Eric said they needed more time, but the military had informed he and Eric that the infection was spreading faster than they had expected.
They had been informed that if they didn’t come up with something fast, the infection could get out of control and thousands could die.
Eric and Charlie talked it over. They agonized over what to do.
Eric argued that they hadn’t progressed far enough yet to do more than they had done.
They needed to learn more about how the biological agent defended itself before more progress could be made in finding a way to stop the agent before it began to be absorbed by the host’s healthy cells.
Eric felt the key to defeating the agent was to learn how to stop it before it began to infect a subject.
Stop it before it started, not try to figure out how to limit its damage.
When you tried to focus on doing damage control, in most cases you had already lost the battle.
Eric had argued against repeating the Evan’s experiment.
With what they knew, the only thing they could possibly try different was to repeat the Evan’s experiment, but this time they had to hope for a better result by administering the second injection later in the subject’s infection progression.
If the second injection was administered later, possibly the second injection would attack the mutating agent, kill the mutation and leave enough normal cells behind that the subject could possibly survive.
However, Eric felt continuing this approach would be useless.
Eric said he didn’t even know if obtaining the desired results with this approach was even possible. He felt the second injection of the raw biological agent would first attack the good cells. He expected the result would be the same as the first test. Evans was infected and became like the three men before him, a member of the walking dead.
Under pressure from the military, Eric finally agreed to do one final test using the last subject the military had sent over this morning.
If the experiment ended in failure, as he expected, Eric said they should just inform the military how he had discovered that a possible second injection could be used to kill the infected.
Hopefully it would be enough to make the military happy enough to leave them alone.
It could take months or years to discover more about this complex biological creation.
Time and a lot of luck was the only way this substance could be forced to reveal more of its makeup and information needed to create an antidote.
Eric expressed doubts about the possibility of ever making a breakthrough in his life time, but it would not happen with the kind of interference they had been subjected to by the military.
Charlie walked back towards the cell of Mr. Anderson.
He wasn’t any happier about what they were about to do than Eric, but as they saw it, they had little choice at this point.
Ken heard the footsteps echoing down the corridor, coming closer to his cell.
He quietly slid the bed slat out from under his mattress.
He put it behind him and moved his pillow to hide the slat.
Ken then sat on his cot and watched to see who was coming to pay him a visit.
He was surprised when he saw Charlie.
He was expecting to see a huge burley prison guard, not a skinny guy in a lab coat.
“This could be easier than I expected,” Ken thought as he watched Ken insert the key into the lock and open his cell door.
Ken looked at Charlie from his seated position on his cot, “What does the man have in store for me today?”
“Nothing too much,” Charlie replied. “I just need to give you a few shots to get you ready.”
“They are going to inject me with something?” Ken thought. He had wondered what type of mission they were planning for him ever since that guy from the military came to his cell to offer him a deal.
Ken had heard stories about the government infecting people with malaria or syphilis just so they could study the effects on human subjects.
He also had never heard any stories about there being any survivors from these human experiments.
Everyone knew these experiments existed, but of course the government would never confirm or deny their involvement in these illegal activities.
Ken wondered how many other death row inmates had been acquired for the government’s illegal activities.
“They said they would make me disappear,” Ken thought, “probably the only truthful thing that guy said to me.”
“Please roll up your right sleeve and make yourself comfortable,” Charlie instructed.
“Sure thing, Doc,” Ken replied.
Ken slowly reached his hand behind his back.
When Charlie turned to prepare the needle, Ken brought the bed slat from behind his back and smacked Charlie over the head.
Charlie’s body slumped forward then crumbled to the floor of the cell.
“That went well,” Ken smiled.
He leaned forward and unhooked the key ring from Charlie’s belt.
Ken looked at Charlie’s body as it lay unconscious on the floor.
He then reached down and pulled Charlie’s lab coat down over his arms.
Ken pulled the lab coat on over his white jump suit.
“A little tight,” Ken thought, “but unless anyone looks real close, I think I could pass for a mad scientist.”
Ken slipped the key ring in his pocket and started to leave the cell, but stopped when he saw the carton on the floor next to Charlie’s body.
The carton contained six syringes, each with a red label on the side.
“All the better for my disguise,” Ken smiled. “Besides, whatever these things are, they may come in handy. At least they won’t be injecting some unsuspecting slob with whatever is in them.”
Ken stood staring at the carton of syringes.
�
�So, you were going to stick one of these needles in me,” Ken thought. “Well I did promise the military a volunteer, and since I am a man of my word.”
Ken smiled as he pulled one of the syringes from the carton in his hand.
“You are doing your country a valuable service,” Ken smiled, remembering the man’s words that had come to death row to make him a deal he couldn’t refuse, as he plunged the needle into Charlie’s butt.
When all the fluid had been injected into Charlie, Ken put the syringe back in the carton.
“They were going to surprise me with this shit,” he thought. “I’ll just take this with me. Now the surprise will be on them.”
Ken walked down the corridor that led to a door.
When Ken opened the door, he saw an empty reception room.
After quickly walking through the reception room and opening the door on the other side of the room, Ken was greeted with a breath of fresh air and a view of the parking lot.
Both were things he hadn’t seen in a long time.
The parking lot contained only three cars.
Ken grinned as he closed the door and walked across the parking lot, then he disappeared into the woods.
Chapter 22
Levi sat and listened to the muffled sounds coming from the spare bedroom where he had left Lottie.
The despair Levi felt was magnified by the eerier flickering light given off by the candle sitting on the mantle.
The dark dancing shadows felt like evil demons dancing all around him, celebrating the victory of evil over good.
“Levi,” Jamie whispered, “I hear something.”
“That’s Lottie,” Levi replied. Even saying her name made Levi’s body sting with pain.
“No, I think it is coming from outside,” Jamie whispered.
Dead Man Walking Page 17