Dead Man Walking

by Gary M. Chesla

  It appeared that swimming was just a physical impossibility.

  George was all head, and as dense as he was, mentally as well as physically, he sank straight to the bottom of the pool.

  Luckily, he and Jamie thought George was cute and could do no wrong.

  George had the run of the house except when he went over to Grandma Jamie’s.

  He was lucky he didn’t have to wear an orange striped jumpsuit and leg irons at Grandma Jamie’s.

  Logan grinned and slid out of bed.

  He got up carefully, as long as George was asleep, he could only manage to commit minor infractions against society.

  Logan stood by the bed and noticed his mother, pacing back and forth in front of the window.

  He walked over and looked out the window.

  “My God Logan, you scared the hell out of me,” Jamie shrieked.

  “Sorry Mom,” Logan replied as he stared out at the hundreds of bodies that were now dragging themselves past the Pine Rose office building.

  Then he noticed that his mother seemed to be trembling.

  “What’s got you so worked up?” he asked.

  Jamie continued to pace the floor and didn’t answer.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?” Logan asked.

  Jamie stopped and looked at Logan. She had tears in her eyes, “Your dad….”

  Logan quickly looked around the room and noticed that Levi wasn’t there.

  “Where’s Dad?” Logan asked.

  Jamie looked back out the window, “He is out there.”

  Logan moved over next to his mother, “What do you mean he is out there? What’s he doing out there?”

  Jamie tried to compose herself.

  “He went to find us something to eat,” she replied.

  “Where did he go?” Logan asked.

  “He went up to Antlers Inn,” Jamie replied. “He left over an hour ago and was going to come right back.”

  “He went out in this?” Logan asked looking at the dead roaming out on the streets.

  “No, when he left there were only a few of those things out there,” Jamie replied, “There are so many out there now I don’t think he is going to be able to come back.”

  “I’m sure Dad is OK,” Logan replied, but his mother could hear the uncertainty in his voice. “He probably went inside one of the other buildings to keep out of sight. He can take care of himself.”

  “I told him he shouldn’t go out there,” Jamie complained.

  Logan walked over in front of the window and looked up towards the Antlers Inn and Grill.

  He stared at the number of bodies between the office and the restaurant.

  “Mom,” Logan called out.

  “What?” Jamie asked, still pacing back and forth.

  “Come here,” Logan said. “Something is going on out there.”

  Jamie felt panicked. All she could imagine was Levi was being chased down Route 189 by the dead.

  Levi was cold and shivering, but at least he wasn’t in the dark any longer.

  Shortly after barricading himself in the freezer, he began to feel around the sides of the freezer walls, hoping to find something to keep him warm. When he heard the restaurant’s emergency generator click on, it remined him that freezers this big should have a light. He began to feel on the wall near the door and found a light switch.

  The light showed the freezer was larger than Levi had expected but he still couldn’t find anything that he could wrap around himself to stay warm.

  When he saw how large the freezer was, he hoped to find a back door, but he knew that was wishful thinking.

  He had been pacing the freezer from front to back, rubbing his hands rapidly over his arms and legs, trying to keep warm.

  Thirty minutes ago, Levi gave up trying to keep warm, now he was just trying to keep from freezing.

  It was bad enough he was going to freeze, but did he have to listen to all that banging against the freezer door and all that groaning.

  At least the smell of the dead hadn’t been able to penetrate the freezer door.

  “All that pounding,” Levi said as he paced.

  “Pounding?” Levi listened, “I don’t hear any pounding.”

  He walked over to the door and carefully leaned his head into the door and listened.

  Levi heard a thumping sound, then a crashing sound as if something had been knocked to the floor, but little else.

  He listened for a few more minutes.

  As he listened, he looked at the ice that was forming over his knuckles.

  He watched his breath freeze into ice crystals and sink to the floor in the freezer.

  “I’m freezing,” was all he could think about.

  That and, “I don’t hear anything now.”

  After tapping his ears to be sure his eardrums hadn’t frozen, he started to wonder what was going on out in the kitchen.

  “Had the dead left?” he wondered.

  “Even if they didn’t leave, could I open the door enough to warm up for a minute?” he thought, “But what if they are still out there, maybe waiting right outside the door. If I don’t get some heat, I’m going to freeze anyhow.”

  After a minute of trying to get his half-frozen mind to think things through, Levi decided to open the door and look.

  He moved over to the door and located the large knob that he had to push to open the door.

  He placed one hand on the knob and reached up with his other hand and turned off the light.

  He didn’t want the freezer light to shine out into the darker kitchen and give away the fact that he had opened the freezer door.

  The longer he could feel the warm air on his face before he had to close the door again, the better his chances to keep from freezing.

  Levi pushed in the large knob and leaned against the door.

  The door opened a few inches but then stopped.

  Levi pushed harder on the door and felt the door move a few more inches.

  Something was blocking the door, but whatever it was it didn’t try to push back. Even better it didn’t start to moan or hammer at the door.

  Levi stopped and listened as he enjoyed the feel of the warm air that was now flowing into the freezer.

  He let the air flow over his face and felt his face begin to thaw slightly.

  When Levi hadn’t heard any sounds for a few more minutes, he started to push against the door again.

  When he had opened the door enough for him to squeeze through, he stuck his head out through the opening and looked around the door.

  The light coming in through the skylight lit up the kitchen enough for Levi to see.

  At first, he thought the kitchen was empty, but as he let his gaze fall towards the floor, Levi was shocked to see that the floor was covered with bodies.

  Levi ducked back into the freezer, turned on the light and found his poker.

  He again squeezed out through the door and stood in the kitchen.

  He now saw why the door was so hard to push open.

  There were at least ten bodies piled up against the bottom of the door.

  Levi jabbed a few of the bodies with the poker.

  They didn’t react, however the bodies seemed to hiss and give off a putrid odor each time he jabbed them.

  Levi scooped up his two bags of supplies and slowly picked his way across the kitchen.

  It took him almost ten minutes to work his way to the door on the back wall.

  The blood and bodies covering the floor made it too treacherous to try to go back through the dining room.

  The back door also had bodies stacked against it, making it difficult to open, but Levi finally managed to get out of the restaurant.

  Once he got over the access road behind the building, walking became much easier.

  Levi entered the woods, but stopped and turned to look at all the bodies that were lying on the road.

  This was as confusing as trying to figure out where they had all come from in the first place.
r />   Levi walked quietly through the woods. He took a path that paralleled Route 189.

  He could see all the bodies that had collapsed on the road.

  He saw a few bodies still trying to push on, by they soon stopped and stood motionless for a long moment, then just fell over.

  Levi didn’t know what was going on, a feeling he had made peace with a few days ago, but decided to use whatever this was to his advantage.

  He picked up his pace and found himself across the road from the office.

  He picked his way through the bodies on the road and entered the office.

  Logan looked down the stairwell nervously when he heard footsteps coming up the steps.

  “Dad,” Logan yelled happily.

  George was the first to meet Levi when he reached the top of the stairs.

  But instead of greeting Levi, he went straight to the bags of food, sniffing as he moved from bag to bag.

  “Where were you?” Jamie asked.

  “In the freezer at Antlers Inn,” he replied.

  “Why are all those things falling over?” Logan asked, “Are they dead?”

  “I don’t know,” Levi said as he put the bags down on the table, “All I know is they are lying around everywhere out there. For now, make yourself a sandwich so you have some energy. We are getting out of here in the next five minutes before they start to get back up again.”

  Chapter 32

  Ken Anderson had been running all night.

  Ever since he had escaped from that holding cell, he had run none stop.

  He knew, after breaking his deal with the government, they would be out for blood, his blood.

  Since he was legally dead, when they found him, he knew he wouldn’t be going back to death row.

  They would just kill him and no one would ever know.

  He was on his own now.

  At least he knew he wouldn’t see his picture on TV or hanging in the Post Office.

  He wouldn’t have to worry about someone recognizing him and calling America’s Most Wanted.

  He was dead as far as the public was concerned.

  The Texas State Penal System made the announcement last week.

  His ashes were scattered over the heart of Texas.

  But he would still have to careful, the government had eyes everywhere.

  But he had no intention of letting them find him.

  All he needed to do was get away from here and find a place where he could quietly just blend in.

  Then he would be, “Dead Man Gone.”

  As he shadowed Route 138 Ken started to think about the place he had been sent.

  First of all, he had no idea where he was or where Route 138 lead, but he had to go somewhere, so he followed Route 138 until he would find a place to disappear or a reason to change directions and go somewhere else.

  That facility he was sent to was certainly a strange place.

  He wondered what was going on back there?

  After he knocked out the guy in the doctor’s outfit, he was surprised to not have seen any guards or barbed wire fences surrounding the building.

  In fact, he had only seen one other person on the way out and he was apparently only some kind of orderly.

  Both men were in white lab coats that had name tags on the lapels.

  Ken looked down at his lapel to see what was the name on the lab coat he had taken, only to see he was now wearing a long black coat.

  He had forgotten in all his efforts to put some distance between him and that strange facility, that he had ditched the bright white lab coat.

  About an hour after he had escaped, he saw a Goodwill box and decided to lose the white lab coat he had taken.

  Once he was away from that facility, he felt he needed something that wasn’t so bright.

  He would look out of place hiking in the woods in a white lab coat and the bright white coat could easily be seen against the green and brown colors of the forest.

  He almost got his arm stuck in the Goodwill donation box, but finally managed to pull out a long dark raincoat.

  Wearing the long dark raincoat, he felt almost invisible.

  He could blend in anywhere and not attract any attention.

  It was Ken’s intention to go back to Texas, but now would be too soon.

  Texas would be the first place they would look for him.

  He needed a place to go for six months or so to let things cool down.

  Hopefully after a few months, they would lose interest.

  “But where should I go?” Ken thought as he took a break and sat down next to what looked like the Panama Canal.

  Ken knew it wasn’t the Panama Canal, not here in the mountains.

  “At least I don’t think I’m in Panama, who knows,” Ken laughed.

  Ken got up and walked over to the concrete waterway.

  “Interesting,” Ken thought. “Too bad I don’t have a canoe.”

  He looked up over the wooded hillside and followed the concrete structure coming down towards him, then looked as it disappeared down over the hillside past him.

  The sound of the running water was calming and Ken enjoyed listening to water as he scanned the green hills against the bright blue sky.

  Even though Ken didn’t know where he was, he liked this place.

  As Ken leaned into the concrete wall that made up one side of the canal, something poked him in the side.

  He reached into the inside pocket of his raincoat and pulled out the carton of syringes he had taken back at that phony prison where they were holding him.

  He looked at the syringes and smiled as he thought about the guy he had stabbed in the ass with one of the syringes.

  “I wonder what deadly disease that guy has now,” Ken smiled, “I hope for his sake that they had an antidote. If not, the bastard deserves whatever happened to him.”

  Then Ken began to think, “I better get rid of these things if I want to blend in. I’m liable to be arrested as a drug dealer or something.”

  Ken pulled the syringes out of the pouch and one by one, he tossed them into the canal.

  He looked at the carton before tossing it into the canal along with the syringes.

  “Davis Bio Enterprises,” Ken read aloud, “So they were going to use me for a guinea pig. The bastards.”

  Ken tossed the carton into the water and watched as it washed away with the current.”

  Before turning to continue his travels, Ken spotted a green tarnished brass plate bolted to the concrete wall ten feet down from him.

  Ken walked over to the plate and began to rub away at the green coating so he could read the letters that ran across the front.

  He stepped back and read, “Los Angeles Aqueduct. Los Angeles Water Supply System.”

  “So, I’m near Los Angeles!” Ken thought. “The urban jungle.”

  He smiled, “Los Angeles would be the perfect place to disappear.”

  Ken listened as the sound of traffic on the interstate a few miles away echoed through the surrounding hills.

  “Los Angeles shouldn’t be too far away,” Ken thought, “No one would ever think to look for me there.”

  Chapter 33

  Miles Davis climbed into the truck and sat next to Specialist Cooper.

  Unit five, which Miles and Cooper had been assigned to, consisted of three trucks and twenty men.

  From what Miles understood, twenty units made up today’s task force.

  All the men were dressed in white Hazmat suits.

  Miles and Cooper also wore white suits, but their suits were different from the others. Their suits had a red ring around the right bicep.

  The trucks moved out at exactly 0900 hours.

  Unit five’s instructions were to go to the Pine Rose Cabins and the Twin Peaks areas and begin cleanup operations.

  The bodies at the Pine Rose Resort were to be stacked around the cabins, office and wedding venue areas.

  The Twin Peaks area bodies were to be stacked up around gas station
s and any areas with a lot of houses or buildings.

  Incendiary devices were to be planted in each pile of bodies.

  They were to complete their work and leave the area no later than 1300 hours.

  The incendiary devices would be remotely activated at 1400 hours to destroy the bodies and ignite wild fires in the San Bernardino Mountains.

  It was the time of the year when wild fires were common.

  If all went well, all anyone would ever know was that the wild fire season this year would be one of the worst in California in ten years.

  Many of the members of unit 5 had also assisted with the wild fires in California ten years ago.

  All would not be left to luck however, special units were on call to assist the local areas to fight this year’s wild fires.

  Their area of expertise however was not in putting out fires, but rather just the opposite.

  The three trucks had been on the road for forty-five minutes when they arrived at their first destination.

  The Pine Rose Cabins Resort.

  They came by way of a back road and stopped on the road by the parking lot for the main wedding venue area.

  The white suited men began to pour out of the trucks and walk through the parking lot.

  Two men held maps of the resort in their hands and directed the others to their assigned areas.

  Two men from each truck had rifles strapped over their shoulders.

  Their job was to watch for any of the infected that were still mobile.

  Miles slid out of the truck.

  Cooper followed him and jumped to the ground next to Miles.

  Miles grabbed Cooper by the arm and pulled him aside as the others got out of the truck.

  “Coop,” Miles said, “Watch your back, I have a weird feeling about this.”

  “No kidding,” Cooper replied. “I’ve had that feeling ever since they sent us over to that lab.”

  “These red rings on our suits make us stand out,” Miles added. “I don’t know why they marked our suits like this, but I wouldn’t wander too far away from the main group. Let me know if you see anything unusual.”