Dead Man Walking

by Gary M. Chesla

  The car finally broke through the trees ahead, lighting up the road in front of Logan and Jamie.

  “Hold up your arms and wave,” Jamie shouted.

  “I don’t know Jamie,” Logan replied hesitantly, “There could be some strange people in that car. It may not be safe.”

  Jamie started jumping up and down as the light grew closer.

  “I think I would be willing to get in the car with Jack the Ripper right now,” Jamie shouted. “It has to be better than where we’ve been.”

  Logan began waving his arms, but he didn’t feel too enthusiastic about this.

  He didn’t have a shirt on and his new wife was in her underwear, to Logan this was a recipe for the top listing on the local police blotter.

  The car slid to a stop on the loose gravel.

  The car smelled of burning rubber and oily smoke.

  The front of the car was hissing as a steady stream of steam shot out of the car’s grill.

  The sweet sticky smell of blood hung in the air around the car.

  The driver wound down his window.

  “Logan, get in the back seat, fast!” Levi shouted.

  “Dad?” Logan asked, “Is that you?”

  “Logan get in the damn car!” his mother shouted from the passenger’s seat.

  Logan opened the door and Jamie quickly climbed into the back seat.

  He heard Jamie shout, “George!” as he climbed in beside her and slammed the door.

  Levi hit the gas, throwing everyone into the back of their seats as the car engine began to roar and the tires spun in the loose gravel.

  “Did you get our message?” Levi asked as the car swayed wildly from side to side.

  “What message?” Logan asked as he held on to the back of the seat in front of him.

  “I left a message on your voice mail,” Levi answered.

  “No, in fact I have no idea where my phone is,” Logan said.

  “Did you go back to the reception?” Levi asked.

  “That’s where we just came from,” Logan replied. “Were you there when….” Logan’s voice began to shake and he stopped to compose himself.

  “When everything started?” Levi asked, “Yeah, we were there. I barely had time to get your mother and Lottie out of there.”

  “What happened?” Jamie asked as she started to sob. “It was so horrible.”

  Levi glanced at his wife Jamie, then looked at Logan and Jamie in the rearview mirror.

  Jamie was sobbing and Logan now had his arm around her.

  He wasn’t sure what to tell them, but from what he saw in the mirror, he knew that nothing he would say could make them feel any worse than what they were now feeling.

  “George started it,” Jamie said.

  “George didn’t start it,” Levi said, “George ran under our table with something in his mouth. It ended up being a shoe with some one’s foot still in the shoe. I have no idea where he found the shoe, but the next thing we knew there were these strange people, they were bloody and looked like they had been in an accident. They started attacking and killing everyone.”

  Levi decided to leave out all the bloody details.

  “We saw Matt’s body,” Logan said.

  “My brother is dead,” Jamie sobbed, “Then he tried to kill us. They all tried to kill us.”

  “What did you say?” Levi asked.

  “The people that had been killed, started to get up off the ground,” Logan replied, “and they started chasing us.”

  “You recognized them?” Levi asked as he thought about seeing Jimmy back at the cabin.

  “One of them was Connor,” Logan replied.

  “Are you sure he just wasn’t sick?” his mother asked.

  “No, he was dead,” Logan answered. “I saw him when we first came back to the reception. He was lying under a pine tree. It looked like he had been disemboweled. He was bloody and pale, I thought I was going to throw up. When he got up and started after me, dragging his guts behind him, I thought I was going to die.”

  “Then all the other bodies started getting up off the ground, including Jason,” Jamie started sobbing again, “He only had one arm.”

  “They all tried to get in the lodge where we were hiding,” Logan added. “That’s when we crawled out the bathroom window and made a run for it. We were coming over to the cabins to try to find a place to hide.”

  “Where is Lottie?” Logan asked as he looked around the car and just noticed Lottie wasn’t there.

  “She got bit on the shoulder,” Levi replied sadly. “She didn’t make it.”

  Jamie looked up at Logan and between sobs said, “I’m sorry about Lottie, Logan.”

  “Dad?” Logan asked looking confused, “What is going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Levi replied. “It’s a damn nightmare.”

  Levi drove out of the woods and turned onto the paved road that led past the office.

  “Where are we going?” Logan asked, “Maybe we could call the police from the office.”

  “Everyone at the office is dead,” Levi said. “I went over to the office after we got back to the cabin. Besides, the phones aren’t working and the power is out. I thought we would just go home. I don’t know what the hell we can do here. I don’t know how to fight the dead. Once we are safely home we can report what happened.”

  “Did you see my Mom or sister?” Jamie asked.

  “No,” Levi replied, “There were so many back at the cabin, we had to run. The only one I recognized was Jimmy.”

  Jamie hugged George.

  They turned right at the office and went west on Route 189 towards San Bernardino.

  Except for George chewing on the radio knob Jamie had thrown at him, everything else was quiet.

  They had all seen too much that they didn’t want to talk about, or be forced to relive.

  The temperature gauge on the dash was in the red, due to all the bones of the dead that had pierced the radiator when Levi drove the car through the mass of bodies back at the cabin.

  He ignored the gauge, intending to drive the car as far it would go before he had to stop.

  It was a long way to Huntington Beach and if they were going to have to get out and walk, they wanted to go as far as they could before they had to start walking.

  They had gone about five miles when they saw a light for the first time.

  “Levi, up ahead,” Jamie said.

  “I see it,” Levi said, sounding relieved. “Thank God.”

  As they drove closer to the source of the light, they saw that the light was coming from what looked to be something on fire.

  When they were within two hundred yards from the fire, they could see a tanker truck.

  The truck had overturned and slid into a narrow passage way where Route 189 turned sharply between two rock cliffs then continued sharply down the mountain side.

  The tank had spilled its contents and the tank and a large part of the cliff on the right side of the truck was on fire.

  The flames were shooting fifty feet into the air, casting a bright light around the scene of the accident.

  Levi stopped the car a hundred feet before reaching the truck.

  “I can feel the heat from here,” Jamie said.

  Levi backed the car up fifty feet to get away from the heat and then put it in park.

  “Logan, let’s see if we can get close to the cab, the driver might still be inside,” Levi said.

  Levi and Logan got out of the car.

  Logan saw the car clearly for the first time since Levi had picked him and Jamie up back at the cabins.

  “What happened to the car?” Logan asked as he looked at the dents, cracks and blood that covered the exterior of the car.

  “Long story,” Levi replied as he studied the truck, “I’ll tell you about it later. Let’s go see if the driver is OK first.”

  Logan studied the car curiously, then ran after his dad.

  The heat was too intense to get very close, so Logan and
Levi stopped after only going twenty or so feet.

  “If there is anyone in that truck they’re dead by now,” Levi said. “I wonder what happened?”

  “Maybe he was driving too fast for this narrow winding road,” Logan suggested.

  “I don’t see any skid marks,” Levi said. “A guy going too fast would have tried to slam on the brakes to stop at the last minute. I could be wrong, but this accident looks too neat. It’s almost as if someone had put this truck here to make it look like an accident.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Logan asked. “There would be easier ways to keep people from using this road.”

  “I don’t know,” Levi replied. “It’s just a feeling.”

  Levi looked at Logan, “Regardless of what happened, we’re not going anywhere in this direction. Do you know any other way to get home from here?”

  “When Jamie and I were coming up here to make all the arrangements for the wedding, we took Route 138 back once,” Logan replied, “I think it is the only other way out of the mountains. It goes out the north side of Lake Arrow Head, then it goes down the other side of the mountain and connects with Interstate 15. It takes a lot longer than going this way. We went that way just for a change of scenery. We only went that way once. The narrow cliff side road scared Jamie so we never went that way again.”

  “I guess we don’t have much choice,” Levi added.

  They started to walk back to the car.

  “Dad, what’s that over there?” Logan asked as he saw what looked like two people lying on the ground near the edge of the hillside. “It looks like two people.”

  “They might be from the truck,” Levi replied as they started to walk faster.

  “They’re moving,” Logan said as they moved closer.

  Levi and Logan started to jog to pick up their pace, but stopped when one of the bodies sat up and looked at them.

  They watched as the body staggered to its feet.

  One side of the person’s face was gone, white bloodied bone stood in stark contrast to the gray stretched skin that covered the other side of its face.

  One arm had lost all its skin, and a half-shattered arm bone and boney fingers began to reach out towards them.

  “Shit,” Levi yelled, “let’s get out of here.”

  Levi and Logan turned to hear the muffled screams coming from inside the car.

  Two mangled bodies were staring in through the car windows at the girls.

  George was barking fiercely. His flat nose pressed against the window as he barked.

  Even through the blood and flesh that was smeared over the windows, they could see George slobbering over the inside of the glass.

  They ran back towards the car.

  When they approached the car, the two grisly bodies turned their attention towards Levi and Logan.

  “What do we do now?” Logan asked nervously.

  “Wait here,” Levi replied.

  “Why?” Logan asked, sounding like he thought his dad was crazy.

  “There is only two of them,” Levi said, “and they aren’t able to move very fast. Wait until they get a little closer and we can run past them and get in the car.”

  Logan turned and looked behind him, “What about those other two?”

  Levi took a quick look over his shoulder and shouted, “Run!”

  When they got back in the car as the four staggering bodies approached the car, Levi quickly put the car in reverse and backed up a short distance, threw the car in drive, swung the car around and started back the way they had come.

  Jamie turned around and said, “You should have that dog tested.”

  Then she looked at Logan.

  “Logan where is your shirt?” she asked.

  “Jamie is wearing it,” he replied.

  Jamie looked at Logan’s Jamie, “Jamie where is your dress?”

  Then Jamie turned around and looked out the windshield.

  “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

  Chapter 24

  Eric sat at his desk and thought.

  Something had been nagging at the back of his mind for the last twenty-four hours.

  He had this feeling many times before in the past when he had been in school.

  He knew the feeling and it had been driving him crazy.

  He knew the subconscious mind never slept and continued to work on problems even when the conscious mind slept or was occupied with other matters.

  The only problem was after the subconscious mind had figured out how to solve a problem, was getting the message to the conscious mind.

  In his younger years, when he was twenty, it usually didn’t take too long for the answer to work its way into his mind.

  He was only thirty-two, but after the last few days, with all the pressure he had been under and not getting much sleep, Eric felt closer to ninety years old.

  All the nagging thoughts in the back of his mind, Eric knew the answer to something was trying to get his attention.

  He knew it, but what was it?

  Eric started to think what he had done the last few days.

  He rolled over in his mind what he had done.

  He thought about Joe Reynolds and what he had learned.

  Nothing there seemed to inspire him.

  Then he thought about Ben and Robert.

  The experiments with those two had confirmed his theory on how the infection was spread and how the individual mutated cells had communicated with each other to use the body to spread the infection.

  They had also been part of the activity that confirmed that by destroying the brain, they could disable the body and stop an infected body from actively attacking the living to spread the infection.

  He thought about what he had learned, but again nothing hit him as being overly important.

  Then there was yesterday, the Evan’s experiment.

  That was a total failure, but he had expected that.

  Everything he had done to that point told him that the Evan’s experiment was going to end in failure.

  The military had pressured him into doing the Evan’s test. As far as he was concerned, it was a waste of time as today’s experiment on Anderson was going to be.

  If only the government would leave him alone for even a week, Eric knew he could make some real progress.

  Eric pushed the irritating thoughts out of his mind and tried to concentrate.

  “What else did I do that produced good results?” Eric thought.

  “I did that elementary demonstration for those two men sent over from the base,” Eric thought.

  He smiled as he thought about dealing with those two.

  “Let’s see, after they left I got the idea to use the original biological agent to destroy all the mutated cells in Robert’s detached foot,” Eric thought, “then I was able to get into the core of the dead cells and discovered the ten-time delay modules that trigger a different mutation every twenty-four hours. That was an important discovery and should yield some big discoveries in the future,”

  “Think!” Eric told himself, “I know I’m close. What was it about the modules?”

  The last module, they thought the purpose of the last module was that the last module could possibly be the kill switch. The module that destroys the agent at a certain point so the agent’s creators could then safely exploit the area where the agent had been deployed.”

  Eric sat back, suddenly his eyes widened.

  If a light would flash when someone got an idea, Eric knew at that moment, the flash would have been so bright he would now be blind.

  Eric jumped up from his chair and ran over to the sample of cells he had collected for testing.

  First, he took a sample of the dead cells from Robert’s severed foot.

  He slid it under the microscope.

  He divided the cell until he could see the individual time delayed modules in the core of the cell.

  He carefully extracted the final module from two different cells and set them aside.


  Next Eric took two clean slides and placed a fresh drop of blood from his index finger on each slide.

  On both slides of his blood, he added a drop of the biological agent.

  He labeled the slide on the left, slide A.

  The slide on the right he labeled, slide B.

  Then Eric took the samples he had collected of module ten and added it to the slide labeled, slide B.

  Then Eric sat back on his chair and impatiently waited.

  He watched the second hand on the clock move agonizingly slow. After it would make one full rotation, the minute hand would click, moving one notch on the face of the clock.

  “Thank God I only need to wait five minutes,” Eric smiled excitedly.

  When the five minutes were up, Eric got up and walked over to the two sample slides he had prepared.

  He picked up slide A and slide it under the microscope.

  His blood cells had absorbed the biological agent. Any living being with these cells would be like Ben in observation room one, one of the walking dead.

  Eric had expected that result. Those results had been repeated dozens of times over the last few days. It was what the agent did to living cells and tissue.

  Now Eric excitedly picked up slide B. He moved over to the microscope and replace slide A with slide B.

  Eric held his breath.

  He hoped that his years of experience doing behavior analysis and biological engineering was about to pay off.

  Eric lowered his eye to the lens and looked at the slide.

  He studied the cell for three minutes.