Epidemic of the Living Dead

by John Russo

  Pete got Dr. Traeger on his secure line and told her about the theft of the dead bodies, then asked her, “Do you think an old fart like Carnes could become some kind of guru for the special children?”

  “You mean like that Heaven’s Gate cult leader who got all his followers to suffocate themselves so they could be transported to an alternate universe ruled by Jesus?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “I think our special children really are special intellectually and psychologically. They’re too aloof and independent to blindly follow anyone.”

  “You don’t think they’d steal dead bodies? Or help Carnes spike and burn them?”

  “Absolutely not. What would be the point? My studies of them have not shown them to be cannibalistic in any way. Their mothers weren’t either. They didn’t get a chance to be, even though they were attacked and bitten by carriers of the disease.”

  “That makes sense,” Pete said.

  But after he got off the phone he wondered if the special children really might be behind the theft and disposal of the dead bodies, and if so, might it not be a good sign instead of a bad one? It might indicate that they must have a normal revulsion toward death, instead of an affinity for it, even though what they were doing was foolish and unnecessary.

  CHAPTER 25

  For the first three days after Kelly Ann’s “execution,” Dr. Traeger followed the institute’s policy concerning the handling of death row inmates who were sent to her. A nurse and an orderly were delegated to take care of all of the murderess’s needs and get her adjusted to her new surroundings. They understood that they were to give vague answers to any of Kelly Ann’s questions about where she was, how she got there, and why she was not dead. She was allowed to think that she was in an ordinary hospital. She was told that her death by lethal injection had failed and she had been reprieved—which was a semblance of the truth. Her reprieve would not last very long, but she did not need to know that.

  At her bedside in a hospital-like recovery room at the institute, Dr. Traeger took notes on her laptop while also digitally recording Kelly Ann’s initial diagnostic interview. She wanted to learn all she could about the patient’s psychological complexities and how they had evolved. She needed to understand how past history and behavior might affect a person’s transformation into one of the undead. Would a poor wounded soul like Kelly Ann, who had already killed two human beings in a horrible fit of passion, carry some of her deadly inclinations forward into the strange, flesh-hungry “new life” she would live after she became transformed? In other words, would she be harboring a powerful innate urge to utterly destroy, not just devour, those whose living flesh she was bound to crave?

  Kelly Ann was wearing the institute’s standard white hospital gown, a blandly baggy garment that made her look petite, almost childlike. The skin of her face, arms, and lower legs still retained prison pallor, yet there was a freshness and even, surprisingly, a wholesomeness about her. Her dark brown hair was worn in bangs cropped above a clear, smooth forehead, and the pigtails on either side of her head were tied with red ribbons, one of the braids longer than the other by an inch or so, probably due to a shaggily chopped institutional haircut.

  In this first interview, Dr. Traeger pretended that she knew nothing about the crimes that had caused Kelly Ann to be condemned. She wanted candidness, not reticence. She made it clear that no matter what thoughts or secrets might be divulged to her, she would never be judgmental. She didn’t want to make Kelly Ann feel like a specimen under the prying lens of a microscope.

  Dr. Traeger had a medical degree; her focus was on psychiatry. She had honed her penetrating knowledge of the human psyche on the condemned prisoners who had previously been delivered into her custody. She needed to be perceived by Kelly Ann as a compassionate medical doctor, not as an interrogator, and she was relieved when Kelly Ann soon seemed greatly comforted and put at ease by that deftly contrived misperception. She opened up in much the same way as she had done with the many others who had been swayed by her when she was on death row, and she talked freely and without overt malice about her cruel upbringing, her sexual exploitation by her stepfather with her mother’s collusion, her abandonment by those two cretins, the sordid relationships that followed, including two failed marriages, and her descent into drugs, alcohol, and prostitution. She spoke with what seemed to be unblemished honesty, and Dr. Traeger was prone to conclude that her anger over what had been done to her, and her drive for vengeance, must have been softened by the gradual self-awareness that had come over her during her long, torturous years of incarceration.

  Kelly Ann asked, rather timidly, in her soft Southern accent, “So, Dr. Traeger, now that you know all about me, does it make you hate me?”

  “No, no, quite the opposite,” she replied gently.

  She couldn’t help thinking that in spite of her previous skepticism, perhaps she should not have been so cynical about Kelly Ann’s conversion and her motives. It seemed that she actually believed that she had “found God.” Dr. Traeger knew that her belief was delusional, brought on by her desperation and intense fear of the death chamber, yet Traeger could see that these terrifying factors had probably instigated a true epiphany. The young woman had a beatific glow about her. It was the sort of glow that lights up the faces of saints, martyrs, and charismatic cult leaders.

  Still, Dr. Traeger was aware that she must preserve scientific detachment. The evil rages that Kelly Ann had been capable of in her wretched past, coupled with the transcendence of her conversion, contributed to an aura, a mystique, that made her seem not only mysterious but enthralling. But Dr. Traeger knew that she must retain her objectivity. She could not permit herself to be charmed in the way that Kelly Ann had charmed the movie stars, the clergymen, the pro bono lawyers, the smitten mass of supporters who had advocated for her, fervently believing that she should not have gotten the death penalty. While her case was intriguing and even fascinating, perhaps motivating Dr. Traeger to keep her alive longer than she had most others, still the final outcome would be unpleasant.

  In a tremulous voice, as the interview was nearly ended, Kelly Ann asked, “Will my reprieve last? I hope so, but God’s will be done. I’ve put myself in His hands.”

  Dr. Traeger didn’t blame Kelly Ann for not trusting the bureaucracy that had strapped her onto a gurney. In prison, she was allowed to read newspapers and magazines with the parts that the officials did not want her to see blacked out, but there was one long-running story that probably should have been redacted, but was not, and she felt that they wanted to torment her with it and that’s why they had left it intact. The article told of a condemned man in Oklahoma whose lethal injection went horribly wrong, and he writhed and screamed while the executioners were desperately trying to kill him for over an hour of excruciating agony. The poisons were dissolving his blood vessels and internal organs without making him die, but the executioners kept upping the dosages till he convulsed for the final time, bleeding from every orifice.

  Kelly Ann asked why the state of Texas hadn’t carried on with her own failed execution in the same relentless manner. Dr. Traeger said that the public outcry over the botched procedure and horrible death of the condemned man in Oklahoma had caused the Texas governor to decide that she deserved to be spared.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” Kelly Ann asked anxiously. “Am I going to be sent back to prison?”

  Dr. Traeger had to give her an answer that was a combination of truth mixed with palatable lies, and she told herself it was the humane thing to do. “No, you are not going back to prison, you might even be paroled, if I recommend it. Your case history is quite valuable to me, from a psychiatric standpoint. I’ve been commissioned by the federal government to find out why people perpetrate horrible crimes, and even more so, why many of them seem capable of being rehabilitated.”

  “Do you believe I’ve been rehabilitated?” Kelly Ann asked hopefully.

  “I don’t know for sure
yet,” Dr. Traeger told her.

  She blanched at having to be so deceptive, but there was no other way. Although she had to lie, her lies were merciful ones. Kelly Ann would never know that the other death row inmates who were sent to the institute, like the serial killer Carl Landry, were selected within a matter of days or weeks either to be experimented upon, or else to become sustenance for some of the patients who required further study. It was an unfortunate but necessary protocol, and Dr. Traeger had to steel herself to carry it out.

  CHAPTER 26

  Tricia Lopez hated her father because he was different. Chapel Grove was a white-bread community, and he didn’t fit in. Like many adolescents, Tricia didn’t want to be different in the eyes of her friends. None of them had immigrant fathers. Umberto was born in Cuba and spoke with a Cuban accent. He was always trying to get Tricia to learn Spanish as a second language, from the time she was little. But she didn’t want to be different, like him.

  Not really wanting to take part in family doings, Tricia was reclining in a lounge chair in her bikini, her body already oiled with suntan lotion, listening to rock music funneled into her earphones, and eyeing her father snidely through her amber sunglasses as he grilled hot dogs on the patio. He was wearing denim cutoffs, his belly bulging over his waistline, where a belt would have been if he had worn one. Tricia thought that even his feet were too chubby for their rubber thongs. He had an olive tan, but she thought, contemptuously, that his Cuban skin would’ve been brown even without sun exposure.

  She glanced at her mother, who was finished setting the picnic table with paper plates and plastic knives, forks, and spoons. Hilda turned toward Bert when he said, “We should move back to Miami before summer’s out so Tricia can start the new school year there. She’ll love it—the ocean, the beach. Look how much she loves to sunbathe.”

  “But I don’t want to move again,” Hilda said.

  Neither did Tricia. She hated how her father flat-out said what she would love or not love without asking her opinion. He persisted, bringing up the subject of her baby brother to try to bolster his side of the argument. “Listen, Hilda, when Emilio gets bigger, he can play baseball year-round when we’re living in Florida. I almost made the minor leagues. Maybe he inherited my skills. He probably did, as a matter of fact. He might make the majors if he can practice all the time as he grows up.”

  That’s nothing but a pipe dream! Tricia thought to herself. You’re trying to relive your youthful ambitions, and making us suffer for it.

  “But Umberto,” Hilda said, “I love it here in Chapel Grove. I really do. And we haven’t had another attack here, since that one sixteen years ago. I don’t think lightning is going to strike twice in this town.”

  Tricia snapped, “Can’t you call him Bert instead of Umberto? It at least makes him sound American.”

  “He’s as American as you are,” Hilda snapped back. “He has his citizenship papers, and he had to study hard for them. He knows what this country is all about—better than you do.”

  “Hmph! Just because I don’t like history class. Who cares about that ancient stuff?”

  “You should care about it, Little Miss Smarty-Pants!”

  “Who says so?”

  “I say so!”

  Tricia glowered at her mother, her mouth pinched tight but her angry eyes hidden behind her amber sunglasses.

  Hilda said, “I don’t think I could ever go back to Miami now, Umberto. They have to fear the plague, just like everyplace else, but they also have those terrible hurricanes. And we’re comfortable here, honey. Tricia has close friends, and she doesn’t want to leave them. I think we should stay here at least till she graduates from high school.”

  “But that’s two more years!” Umberto said. “By that time, I might get downsized. My company is offering me a transfer with higher commissions. I can’t just sit still and wait for the worst to happen. I’ve got to be proactive.”

  Hilda came closer to him and whispered, “But what about the papers we signed?”

  But Tricia overheard, and although she didn’t understand what her mother was referring to, it sounded like something fishy that involved her, or else why would she be whispering? Her ears perked up and she listened keenly.

  “Red tape,” Umberto whispered to his wife. “She’s grown up enough now. I don’t think they can hold us to anything we signed.”

  Angry that she couldn’t comprehend what her parents were being so hush-hush about, Tricia got up in a huff and started across the lawn.

  “Where are you going, dear?” Hilda called out. “Food’s almost on the table.”

  “My hands are yucky from suntan lotion. I have to wash them.”

  She let herself in through the sliding glass door, but she didn’t really need to wash her hands. She had lied about it. She sneaked into her father’s little office and extracted a tiny key from under the leatherette corner of his desk blotter. Then she rummaged in the back of a file drawer, and got his pistol. She took it into her bedroom and hid it in her dresser, inside some frilly undergarments.

  CHAPTER 27

  Dr. Traeger went to Kelly Ann Garfield’s room and found her sitting up in bed eating her lunch from a tray. “This is much better than the usual hospital food,” she remarked. “Better than prison food by far.”

  “We do our best here,” Dr. Traeger said with a slight smile, and was gratified when Kelly Ann smiled back at her, in spite of what she had to keep hidden about the young killer’s fate and her own part in it. She had the power of life and death over Kelly Ann, true enough, but Kelly Ann had a certain glow about her that drew her in, which she hated to admit, because she liked to consider herself superior to all the others who had been hoodwinked or co-opted. She told herself that Kelly Ann’s magnetism was born of her deep, single-minded passion for a God that did not really exist. And yet she was finding herself far from immune to the sad young woman’s beatific aura. She knew that psychopaths believed so strongly in their delusions that they could overwhelm others with them and gain their belief as well. Perhaps that explained why so many people had not wanted Kelly Ann to be put to death.

  Ever since the death of her husband, Daniel, and because of the alienation between her and Kathy, Dr. Traeger felt deprived of emotional and intellectual companionship. Of course, she could never share anything about what actually went on at the institute with her own daughter. Ruefully, she told herself that if Kathy could only appreciate how important and how dedicated her mother was, perhaps their relationship would improve by leaps and bounds. But this was doomed to never happen because of the dictates of utmost secrecy. Dr. Traeger had few ways to share and celebrate her achievements in the laboratory except in the dry letters and reports that she routinely submitted to Colonel Spence and her other overseers at HSD. This was especially galling at this very moment, because during the previous night, working late, she had confirmed a startling new breakthrough. She was bursting to tell it to someone, but she knew she must restrain herself. She wished she could share it with Kelly Ann, if with no one else right now. Kelly Ann was bright enough and intuitive enough to understand it but would not be able to go out into the world and blab.

  So excited was Dr. Traeger about her newest discovery that she had almost opened up about it to Pete Danko, who did not deserve to be the first to know, and in her judgment was too obtuse to fully appreciate it. He was an enforcer, a bully, not a highly sensitive and deeply introspective human being. He was a walking advertisement for the observation by Socrates that “the unexamined life is almost not worth living.” His level of intellectual passion was so dull that he had to kill and torture people in order to feel fully alive. He might even deride Dr. Traeger for being so thrilled that she could barely contain herself.

  Her excitement derived from her late-night discovery of how the dead could become reanimated in spite of the fact that they did not have any blood circulation! Somehow their brains and nervous systems had been rendered active, while their circulatory systems
had not. Their blood had been coagulated in their veins and arteries. But their brains and nervous systems were still alive, or at least partly so. This was remindful of a phenomenon exhibited by male quadriplegics: that they can still achieve erections and have sexual intercourse even though their bodies are inert, “dead” so to speak, from the neck down.

  For a long time it had been well known in medical circles that the part of the nervous system that operates the sex organs is separate from the operations of the spinal column. In the case of the undead, the brain and the nerves were working, and also the digestive system that fed the nerves, without needing to rely on nutrients conveyed to the nerves by human blood. This seemed contradictory, even difficult to believe, but nevertheless it was so. That was the amazing thing that Dr. Traeger’s latest experiments had proven! And solving its perplexities was a task that loomed excitingly before her, giving her a multitude of avenues to explore.

  As Kelly Ann ate her lunch, Dr. Traeger questioned her about her teen years, how she had spent them on the streets, how she had managed to survive in her sordid world of drugs, sex, and prostitution, and how she felt about those things right now. She recorded the girl’s responses on her digital recorder and took backup notes on a secure laptop. None of Kelly Ann’s stories of her past life embarrassed her, and she was able to talk quite freely. She had come to terms with her ordeal and all its inequities and terrors. And so it struck Dr. Traeger that if Kelly Ann had never been through any of that, if she had had a decent upbringing, the kind of upbringing that Dr. Traeger was trying to give to her own daughter, who actually resented her for it, then Kelly Ann would have likely turned out to be a delightful human being. A young woman whom any mother would be proud of.