Dead Man Walking

by Gary M. Chesla

  Levi got down on his hands and knees and looked under the bed.

  “Damn it George,” Levi swore, “Jamie is going to kill you and me both when she sees her shoe.”

  Levi reached under the bed and grabbed the shoe.

  George had latched on to the shoe and was pulled out from under the bed along with the shoe.

  When Levi picked him up, George finally let go of the shoe.

  “What’s the matter with you George?” Levi whispered. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to be scared shitless like the rest of us. Look at this shoe!”

  Levi as gently as he could, slid the shoe back onto Jamie’s foot.

  “Maybe she won’t notice,” Levi grinned as he looked at George, “She didn’t need that heel anyhow.”

  Levi picked up George and held him in the crook of his arm, against his side.

  He walked over to look out the window.

  The windows gave a good view of the road that went by the side of the office and led back to the cabins and the main road that passed the front of the office on its way to Lake Arrowhead.

  Unfortunately, it also gave a great view of the traffic that moved by the office.

  The hundreds of passersby today were not driving cars.

  They were walking, if you could call their staggering, shuffling and dragging limbs, walking.

  Some were crawling, dragging mangled legs along on the pavement behind them, leaving bloody streaks of flesh and blood on the road.

  Levi stared at the sight.

  Last night, the bodies of the walking dead had been terrifying, but the low lighting and the dark of night had hidden the realities of their true appearance.

  This morning in the sunlight, the sun brought out all the gory details.

  Last night the bodies of the dead looked like they were dirty and covered in mud. Their clothes were torn and their bodies were covered with cuts and scrapes.

  This morning was like changing from looking at black and white pictures to pictures that were printed in full high definition color.

  The bodies weren’t dirty and covered in mud, they were saturated in bright red blood. Their clothes were more than torn, they had been ripped away savagely.

  The large missing sections of clothing revealed that large chunks of flesh were missing.

  Missing flesh that revealed the underlying bone and muscle, intestines, stomachs, lungs and more than Levi cared to see.

  The bodies were walking road kill.

  If Levi had any doubts about whether the people he saw last night were dead or just sick, all his doubts were now gone.

  As confused as he was last night, today he was even more confused and horrified.

  Last night was a nightmare, today was worse because he knew what he was seeing was real.

  In the light of day, Levi had to admit to himself and accept that what he was seeing wasn’t just a bad dream.

  Levi gasped when he saw a woman staggering by the office. She was on the road that came from the cabins.

  She had long blood stained blonde hair. The left side of her face was gone, her teeth protruded through the missing flesh. Most of her white evening gown had been torn away, the part that remained was ragged and blood covered.

  She wasn’t wearing any shoes and her right foot had been worn down to the bone.

  Levi stared in disbelief, but was jolted out of his thoughts when George started to bark. George either recognized the woman or he finally stopped staring at Jamie’s shoes and saw the people out on the street for the first time.

  Levi put his hand over George’s mouth to keep him quiet so he wouldn’t wake up the others, but it didn’t help much.

  George’s head was like a furry bowling ball with ears.

  With Buddy, he could hold his nose shut to keep him quiet, but that didn’t work with George, since George didn’t really have a nose, just a wet spot in the middle of his face.

  George thought it was a game and started to growl happily.

  Levi finally pushed his fingers into the dog’s mouth.

  George stopped growling but instead, now he started to gag.

  Levi didn’t know which was worse.

  Jamie sat up on the bed, awakened by George’s snorts and growls.

  “Levi?” Jamie started to say.

  Levi quickly took his fingers out of George’s mouth and motioned for Jamie to be quiet.

  Jamie looked puzzled as she sat up and put her feet on the floor.

  She had only taken two steps towards Levi when she noticed there was something wrong with her shoes as she seemed to be leaning to her right side.

  When she looked down at her right shoe and saw all the bite marks covering the top of the shoe and then the missing heel, she looked up angrily.

  Levi quickly held his finger over his lips and waved for her to come over next to him.

  “I’m going to kill him, Levi,” Jamie whispered angrily.

  Levi just continued to motion for her to be quiet.

  When Jamie was beside him, he pointed out the window.

  “Oh my God,” Jamie exclaimed.

  She stared out the window, dumbfounded by what she saw.

  As she began to scan the gruesome sight, her eyes stopped when she saw the woman Levi had been looking at before George started to bark again.

  “Is that Jean?” she asked.

  Levi looked over at the bed where Logan’s Jamie was still sleeping.

  “Yeah, that’s Jamie’s mother,” Levi replied.

  Jamie also turned and looked over at the bed.

  “What are you looking at?” Logan asked walking up behind them and taking them by surprise.

  Levi quickly held his hand up to his mouth and whispered, “We just saw Jamie’s mother.”

  Logan pushed in closer and stared out the window.

  “We’re trying to stay quiet until she moves on,” Levi whispered. “We don’t want Jamie to see her.”

  Logan glanced over at the bed, his eyes were misty.

  He looked back out the window, “I don’t want her to see her mother like this either. It was bad enough she had to see her brother. I thought things looked bad yesterday. What is happening to everyone?”

  “How are we going to get back to Huntington Beach?” Jamie whispered. “There are so many of those people out there.”

  “I don’t think we are going anywhere until they go away,” Levi replied. “So far I haven’t seen any indication that they know we are up here.”

  Levi pushed George into Logan’s arms.

  “No thanks to George,” Levi said. “Try to keep him quiet or we may never get out of here.”

  “Keep him away from my shoes, too!” Jamie whispered, “Look what he did to my shoe.”

  Logan grinned sheepishly and replied, “At least you have shoes.”

  Jamie looked down at Logan’s feet. His stripped socks were muddy and torn.

  “I wouldn’t take those off and leave them laying around if you don’t want them to disappear,” Jamie said.

  Everyone took a worried glance out the window when they heard Jamie moving around on the bed.

  A sad sense of relief eased the tension when they saw that Jamie’s mother had moved on and could no longer be seen from the window.

  Jamie sat up on the bed, “Is everyone up? Sorry I slept so long, I guess I was really beat.”

  Logan walked over and sat down on the bed next to Jamie. He leaned over and gave her a kiss.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Frick,” Logan smiled.

  Jamie returned the smile, “What’s it like outside this morning?”

  “Not Good,” Logan replied. “If you’re still tired, why don’t you try to get some more rest?”

  “I don’t think I could go back to sleep,” Jamie said as she slid off the bed, “I can’t believe I was able to sleep at all after yesterday.”

  Levi moved over next to his wife, “Why don’t you see if there is anything in that refrigerator for breakfast?”

  Jamie loo
ked at the refrigerator.

  “If we get stuck up here for very long and that refrigerator is empty,” she grinned, “I say we should eat George. It would solve a lot of our problems.”

  The refrigerator had a gallon of milk, a package of cheese and a pound of lunch meat.

  They didn’t feel much like eating, between worrying and the disgusting smell that filled the air.

  After they ate a little, they explored the small attic room.

  Jamie gave Logan back his shirt and shoes.

  They found a pullover shirt and a pair of shorts more her size in the small closet.

  The rest of the day they just sat and waited and watched.

  The sun was beginning to set.

  Levi and Jamie sat together looking out the window.

  Logan got up off the bed where he and his new bride had been taking a nap and walked over to join his mom and dad.

  He pulled up a chair and sat next to his dad.

  Logan looked out the window then down at his dad who was putting check marks in the margin of a newspaper.

  The margins were practically filled.

  “How many?” Logan asked.

  “Two thousand four hundred and sixty-seven,” Levi replied then added, “I think. They are all starting to look alike. I can’t be sure they aren’t walking in some big circle and have been walking past the office, over and over again.”

  “Either way that’s a lot,” Logan replied.

  Logan thought the only good thing about there being that many bodies passing by out front was at least whatever had happened, it wasn’t just at his wedding.

  “How were you planning on us all getting out of here when things are clear?” Logan asked.

  “I thought we would run back down to the car and drive as far as we could,” Levi replied.

  “But I thought your car died,” Logan said.

  “It did,” Levi smiled, “Actually it just over heated. The radiator is shot. But it should start and run for maybe ten or fifteen miles before it overheats again. We’ll get as far as we can.”

  “Why don’t we take another car?” Logan asked.

  “We will when my car gives out. I just think we need to get away from here as fast as we can,” Levi answered. “I don’t want to waste any time looking for a car around here. When we have the opportunity, I want to leave as fast as possible and get away from this madness before any more of us get killed.”

  “Think we might get out of here tonight?” Logan asked.

  “No way,” Levi replied, “Even if the streets became perfectly clear, it’s too dangerous to leave at night. I want to see what’s out there and it’s too hard to find a car in the dark.”

  Logan nodded as he continued to look out the window.

  “Twenty-nine hundred and four,” Levi said as he tossed the newspaper on the floor. “Where are they all coming from?”

  Chapter 29

  Miles Davis walked into Doctor Michael’s office.

  “I was just down to our lab,” Miles said looking confused. “All of your test subjects are dead. I mean they have all collapsed and are lying on the floor in their holding rooms.”

  Michaels smiled, “Right on time.”

  “Right on time?” Miles asked. “I thought you said the biological agent would take nine days to run its course before this would happen?”

  “I thought it best to keep the actual length of time to myself until the test had been completed,” Michaels replied.

  Miles smiled, “It would also be a way to determine if there were any leaks in the ranks.”

  Michaels smiled but didn’t say anything.

  “So, the infection actually self-destructs in four days instead of nine?” Miles asked.

  “I can program the biological agent to destruct in anywhere from one to ten days,” Michaels replied, “I chose four days for this test since it was my first live test. There were too many unknowns I needed to resolve, like the local’s reaction to the infection and a chance that it might find a way to spread beyond the area accidentally, that I decided to limit the test to four days. Maybe on the next test I will chose a longer duration, but for now, four days seemed to be enough. I encoded the agent we supplied to Davis Bio Enterprises for a longer duration to allow them more time so I could determine if anyone else could possibly discover anything about the agent. Obviously, it was too much for them to handle.”

  “When should your live test be completed?” Miles asked.

  “The hosts should all begin to destruct tomorrow afternoon, depending on when they became infected,” Michaels replied. “In fact, my superiors have already begun to make plans for five crews to go out tomorrow afternoon to begin the work of collecting the bodies and stack them in designated areas to be burned.”

  “I for one will feel better when this is done and over with,” Miles said.

  “The test has gone very well,” Michaels added. “I can now predict with a high degree of accuracy how fast the agent will spread and based on population density, how many days would be required to take out say a city the size of Las Angeles or Moscow. It actually spreads much faster than I originally thought possible.”

  “That’s kind of scary,” Miles said.

  “It is meant to be,” Michaels said, “I could take out the entire city of Los Angeles in three days. The population density there makes the infection spread faster than it did here. The faster the infection spreads the shorter time I would encode the self-destruct sequence. That would make it easier to control the spread of the infection. For Los Angeles, I would probably set the time to only one day. Any longer than that in an area with such a high population density and it would quickly get out of control. I’m afraid the entire country would be infected within a week. The test we did here was extremely helpful and successful.”

  “This guy is mad,” Miles thought. “Whoever approved this test is even crazier than Michaels.”

  “Oh, by the way I arranged for you and Cooper to go out with team five tomorrow,” Michaels said, “They leave here at 0900 for the Pine Rose area.”

  “Do you need me to help tend to the survivors?” Miles asked.

  No, I just want you to observe,” Michaels said. “You were very helpful during this test. I want to continue your education for a bigger part in our next test. Call it a promotion.”

  “So, the locals will handle any medical care needed by the survivors?” Miles asked.

  Michaels seemed to carefully think out his answer to Mile’s question.

  “Miles, this was a top-secret project,” Michaels replied, “There cannot be any survivors. You understand what that means?”

  “That’s harsh,” Miles said, “Those people out there, they are our own people. We can’t do that to them. It was bad enough to unleash this biological agent on them, but then to eliminate anyone that was lucky enough to survive, that’s not right.”

  “Miles, I understand what you are saying,” Michaels replied, “but this is how this works. If you knew how often this happens, you wouldn’t be so surprised. The Zika virus for an example, do you really think that it is a naturally occurring epidemic? The number of old people that die from the flu each year, especially after they go out and get their flu shots so they won’t get the flu. This is only a fraction of the secret projects going on at any one time. They are all conducted for the benefit of mankind, your country and the world. There is so much more going on out there than you could possibly know about.

  The loss of a few people is a small price to pay for the good of the country.”

  “If you say so,” Miles replied, “Thank God those decisions are above my paygrade. I would have a hard time making those decisions.”

  “For those people, I guess you could say they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Michaels smiled, “It could happen to any of us.”

  Miles left Michaels’ office.

  He had a bad feeling about this.

  “There can be no survivors, Michaels said,” Miles thought. �
��I wonder what their policy is on witnesses?”

  Miles was conflicted. He only had a few months to go until retirement.

  His gut was telling him to run, but his sense of duty told him to just do what he was told, like he had been trained. He decided to roll the dice and do his job.

  All he had to do was hang on for a few more months.

  Chapter 30

  Levi was awake, sitting in the old wooden kitchen chair and staring out the window.

  A place where he had found himself a lot the last two days.

  The sun was coming up after a long, but fortunately, quiet night in the small room above the office.

  The only difference now was the noise his stomach was making. His stomach had been growling for the last two days.

  The glass of milk, piece of cheese and few slices of lunchmeat was all he had to eat in the last three days.

  That was also counting the day of the wedding.

  Levi hadn’t eaten anything the day of the wedding, hoping to make sure his new suit pants wouldn’t be too tight for the big event.

  The big feast planned for the wedding reception never materialized for obvious reasons.

  Jamie got up and walked over to Levi and sat down on the chair next to him.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can just lay around before I go crazy,” Jamie whispered. “I can’t sleep any longer either, my stomach is keeping me awake. How much longer do we have to stay here?”

  “Hey, it could be a lot worse,” Levi smiled, we could be out there.” Levi nodded his head towards the window.

  “Or, they could be in here,” Jamie added.

  “I know, I’m getting edgy too,” Levi said. “But I don’t know what would be worse, staying here or making a run for it. On one hand, if we wait here too long we may never be able to get out. However if we try to leave too soon…..”