The Walking (27 page)

MY UNCLE DIED... BUT WON'T STOP WALKING!

He grabbed the newspaper and stared at the banner head line Underneath that was a grainy black-and-white photo of what looked like a typical middle-class house. A teaser for another story announced that Bigfoot was a descendant of Ancient Astronauts. Miles' hands were shaking, and he did not notice that the old lady had moved forward until he was nudged by the shopping cart behind him. He began placing his items on the black rubber conveyor, still holding onto the tabloid, working on automatic.

He opened the paper, riffled through it until he found the article he wanted. The story was a page long, with one bad photo of a stunned-looking young woman in the center. He didn't have time to read the whole thing, so he quickly scanned the first few paragraphs.

Apparently, a woman in Cedar City, Utah, had come home from work one day to

find her uncle dead and walking in a circle around the outside of their duplex. It had taken six men to stop him and tie him down to a gurney and transport him to the morgue.

At the sound of a throat clearing, Miles looked up. The clerk had already rung up his food items and was waiting for him to either buy the paper or put it away and pay for his groceries. Miles plunked the tabloid down in front of the boy, then paid the total displayed on the register's readout and hurried outside, where he sat down on a bench in front of the store and read the article all the way through. Then all the way through again.

The details of what this woman had experienced with her undead uncle were remarkably similar to his own. If the article could be believed, Janet Engstrom had recently moved to Cedar City in order to take care of her Uncle John, who was dying of cancer. She returned home from work one day to find her uncle dead, wearing only his pajamas, walking around the outside of their duplex in a continuous circle while neighborhood kids threw things at him. According to Janet, he had started walking inside the house several days before his death, and she had not informed anyone because she wasn't sure what to do about it.

Six men--three attendants from the coroner's office, the coroner himself, and two policemen--had been required to subdue the dead man and strap him to a gurney so he could be transported to the

/ morgue. A "source close to the investigation revealed" that the coroner could not stop the corpse from moving long enough to perform an autopsy, and that the body had been cremated in order to prevent the

"disease of the walking dead" from infecting any more dead people in the area of southern Utah.

Apparently, Janet Engstrom had approached the Insider because she could not find out what happened to her uncle. The county coroner's office would not release any information to her or the family and was denying that there had

been anything out of the ordinary in John Engstrom's death. As were the police. Even the parents of the neighborhood kids who had been throwing mud at the walking dead man seemed to have bought the explanation of the experts rather than the eyewitness accounts of their own children and were now telling Janet that she was merely suffering from "stress."

Miles drove home, dialed information for Cedar City, and surprisingly, Janet Engstrom's number was listed. When he called her, though, he was informed by a prerecorded voice that the number was out of service. He had a hunch she'd been besieged by calls from every wacko in the country who had read the tabloid story. The article didn't say where she worked or even what her occupation was, so he couldn't call her employer. He dialed information again, got the phone numbers for the local hospital, but as he'd expected, no one at the hospital was willing to give out any information concerning Janet or John Engslrom.

The coroner's office and the police were both forcefully un forthcoming

But Miles was undaunted. He was strangely excited, and if he had believed in ESP, he would have said that this situation spoke to him on that level, that it was calling out to him.

If he had believed in ESP?

He was trying to get a hold of the subject of a tabloid story about the walking dead, and he was doubting the existence of simple extrasensory perception?

He had to laugh, despite the horrific circumstances, and for the gust time he felt optimistic, as though answers and solutions were finally within reach.

He knew what he had to do. He had to get over to Cedar City and talk to this woman. He did not think she was in any danger--like himself, she was a witness, not a participant-but it was impossible to tell how things would go down. People connected to this situation seemed to be dropping like flies and he wanted to speak with her while he was still able to do so.

Miles had no idea how big Cedar City was, but he was sure he could catch a plane there, and he used his computer to sign on to an online travel agency and look up schedules. American had a direct flight to Las Vegas, with a connecting jump to Cedar City, that left from L.A. at six o'clock in the morning. He'd arrive at Cedar City by eight and even get fifteen off the regular price of an Avis rental car. He booked himself the deal using his Visa card number and accessed the site again to confirm it. "

Done.

He wondered briefly if he should have waited until he talked with Claire, if perhaps she would like to go as well, but he told himself that he'd done right. She wasn't involved in this. And whether she wanted to accompany him or not, this was something he needed to do himself. It might sound like boneheaded macho posturing---a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do bUt if that ESP was still kicking in, it was telling him this was a journey he had to make alone. Well, maybe not alone He called Hec Tibbert. The phone rang three times, five times, ten times, twenty.

He hung up, wanting to believe that Tibbert had gone to the store or to a movie or to Fred Brodsky's house, but knowing that the old man was probably dead. The excitement he'd been feeling faded, replaced by the familiar dread that had been his constant companion for the past two months.

He thought for a moment, then called the coroner's office. Luckily, Ralp, had not yet gone home, and Miles told his friend what he had found, what he planned to do. The coroner was not as skeptical of the tabloid story as he no doubt would have been before, but he would not go so far as trust in the article's veracity.

"You called Graham yet? What does he say?"

"I haven't talked to him.""

"If I remember right, didn't you specifically tell him to keep this out of the tabloids?"

'The Weekly World News. This is the Insider." "Are you going to tell him about this?" "Maybe when I get back."

"So you just called to get my blessing."

"Basically."

Ralph sighed. "Go ahead, do what you have to do, but be prepared. If, by" some chance, there is something to it and you do find out information, give me a call as soon as you return. At this point, I'd be grateful for anything."

"Think I should call the police, too? Let them know?" "Wait until you find out if it's real. Besides, if they're any good, they have their own detective tracking down tabloid stories."

"Are you making fun of me?"

"I wish I was."

Claire arrived shortly after nine, and Miles filled her in on the plan.

She grew quiet, but she did not beg him to tag along, and the fact that she instinctively understood that he wanted to go alone made him realize how lucky he was to have her in his life again. Even after all this time, even after the years apart, they understood each other. "Be careful," she said. "I will."

There was a pause. Claire held his gaze. "I love you," she told him.

Miles took her in his arms and hugged her tightly, feeling the warm softness of her breasts against his chest, feeling the fragile vulnerability of her shoulder blades beneath the palms of his hands. He could not remember the last time she had said that to him, and in spite of the situation, he found himself smiling absurdly. "I love you, too."

Clan Dyson laughed.

Because if he didn't laugh, he would cry.

Clan placed a hand on the strapped-down leg of the decedent and felt the thrum of hard muscle working beneath the skin, loosening and tightening, stretching, causing the ex posed testes of the corpse to jiggle slightly and shift from side to side.

It was outrageous. A week later, and John Engstrom's body was still attempting to walk. There had been no lessening of effort in all that time, not a single second of relaxation The corpse had not yet started to decay, either.

There was not even the slightest whiff of corruption from the flesh. By all rights, decomposition should have begun.

True, the room was refrigerated, but the embalming process had been held off, no preservatives had been administered, and nothing had been done with the body other than to strap it down to the autopsy table.

Yet there was no decomposition

And the leg muscles continued to move.

Clan had been the county M.E. for the past decade and deputy examiner for eight years before that, and in his experience this was totally unprecedented. He'd scoured records and textbooks, trying to find a case even remotely similar but to no avail.

He'd ended up contacting the FBI and CDC because he didn't know what to do. Ever since that damn tabloid story had come out earlier in the week, his office had been inundated with phone calls and faxes from the weirdos of the world, many of them offering ghoulish suggestions on how to deal with reanimated corpses. Some were even predict thing that this was the first sign of the apocalypse.

Thank God, the paper had printed that the body had been cremated. He did not even want to think about the hysteria

he'd have to deal with if people knew that not only was

John Engstrom's body still extant--but was still walking. Or would be walking if it wasn't strapped down.

Clan had called for help from the coroner in Salt Lake City, from the coroner in Las Vegas, from Dave French, a friend of his who taught pathology at the university here in Cedar City, but no one had been able to offer any advice. They were just as stymied as he was; only he had o actually make a decision and take some action. Finally, out of desperation, he had contacted the FBI and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. The FBI's medical personnel were probably more used to dealing with bizarre deaths than anyone on the planet. And while he had doubts that any diseases were at work here, the CDC was sending someone out anyway. It couldn't hurt to have more than one opinion.

Clan moved away from the autopsy table and busied himself making sure all of the necessary surgical implements were on hand and in place. As embarrassed as he was to admit it, he dreaded coming into this room.

Familiarity had not bred complacency, and after a week of this he was more frightened of the corpse than he had been at the beginning. He kept the radio permanently on, tuned to a country station, because if there were no other noises here, he would hear the sounds of Engstrom's legs: the subtly creaking strain of the straps, the arrhythmic tick of shifting muscles against the metal tabletop.

The lights remained on, too. He'd had more than one nightmare this week of returning to work, opening the exam room door, and flipping on the lights to find the body gone. Or standing right in front of him, freed of restraints, hands outstretched and ready to kill.

Both the CDC doctor and the FBI agent were supposed to have been here five minutes ago. Clan was about to leave and wait in the outer office, unable to find more busywork and unwilling to remain in the same room with that twitch thing cadaver any longer, when the swinging doors to the exam door opened and two men wearing scrubs and surgical masks came walking in.

"Dr. Dyson, I presume?"

Clan nodded, not sure which man was speaking.

"I'm

Dr. Hovarth from the CDC." The shorter man in

I front nodded as he approached the autopsy table. is this Dr. Brigham from the Bureau."

Clan exhaled as an almost physical wave of relief washed over him. He had not realized how much the pressure had been weighing on him. This opportunity to pass the buck and hand over his authority made him feel much lighter.

The three men shook hands, and Clan gave them a quick rundown of what had happened. They'd both read the reports and documents he'd faxed to them, and he skimmed over that portion of the story, but he went into detail about the past week here in the coroner's office, the minor tests he'd performed, the stubborn consistency of the so far unexplained reanimation.

Hovarth wanted to start on the autopsy immediately, and i, Clan deferred to his judgment. He had been reluctant to cut because the corpse.." still seemed like it was alive.

That was the truth. Even surgeons operated on people who were unmoving, under anesthesia, and he himself had never even cut into a live body before. The prospect of opening the chest of a dead man whose legs were still moving made him extremely queasy. "I'll lead,"

Hovarth said. Brigham nodded. I'll assist."

That meant that Clan would only be backup and proba i bly wouldn't have to cut at all, just observe. For that he was grateful.

They washed up, put on gloves, turned on the video cameras and tape recorders. Hovarth moved the instrument tray next to the table and began a running commentary as he first

measured the body, carefully examined its exterior, then picked up a scalpel. The muscle movement did not seem to faze him, and he did not even hesitate as he made the first incision and inserted a catheter.

Clan stood next to the CDC doctor, saying nothing, hearing the muffled thump of blood in his head, feeling the discomfort of sweaty palms against latex gloves.

The blood was drained, but there was no discernible change in the movement of the corpse's legs. Beneath the straps, the muscles still strained in alternating order: left foot, right foot, left foot, right.

When the chest had been opened and Hovarth began removing organs, weighing them and bagging them, those restless limb muscles mindlessly continued to exert themselves. The sight caused chills to surf down Dan's arms. It was the most unnatural thing he had ever seen, and even in this lighted room, surrounded by state of-the-art medical equipment and two other doctors, he was frightened.