To Wake the Dead

TO WAKE THE DEAD

Steven W Woeste

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

To Wake The Dead

Copyright © 2006 by Steven W Woeste

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-595-38900-1 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-83278-1 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-38900-7 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-83278-4 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

Introduction

Subj: None

Date: 1/20/18 11:25:04 AM Pacific Standard Time

From: TomH@uic.edu

Reply-to: TomH@mmq.edu

To: Ebailley@uic.edu

From: Tom Hollis

January 20, 2018

Ed:

Come see what I got.

Tom

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To: <TomH@uic.edu>

Subject: Field Trip

Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2018 9:22:36 -0500

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Tom’s e-mail was a little cryptic, even for Tom, who’d normally use as few words as possible when writing. That wasn’t what really piqued my interest, however. I was really expecting a lot more from him in that e-mail, once he got back from his field trip. Field trips were Tom’s reason for being an academic; the chance to get out and discover something new in the plant world, some herb with previously unrecognized potential for yielding an anti-cancer drug, a weed with the capability of turning waste into natural gas, or even a new plant species. Even his trips where he came home empty handed were worth a couple of excited paragraphs about his adventures. This was odd, and it could only mean one thing. Come right away.

I signed off the e-mail ap’ and tapped the screen for a quick shut-down. I wasn’t coming back today; maybe I wouldn’t be coming back tomorrow. My laptop would keep me in touch with whatever needed to be done on the University server. I gave my office a quick look over before I left; anything on my desk could wait a few days. I slammed the door, stopping briefly on the way out of the department to let the secretary know I’d be gone for a few days. Ten minutes and I was out the door, and at my car in the parking garage. Another ten minutes got me to the Interstate. Driving at a nearly legal 70, I fidgeted mentally about Tom’s e-mail. What was so important? How could I help? I wasn’t a plant molecular biologist; I was an animal physiologist. I’m sure Tom wasn’t spoiling for company; despite being his friend, I wouldn’t call him exactly sociable. He liked to go into his cave for a few days after coming back from a field trip, to ruminate on what he had discovered. It was very unlike him to contact me, or anyone, right after getting back from a trip. That bothered me. Was there trouble? I decided not to worry about until I got there.

Traffic threatened to bottleneck on the expressway as I got closer to Valparaiso University; the hicks were slowing down to watch another accident in the slow lane. As I drove by, I could see the rescue crews shooting the breeze; smoking and gesturing while waiting for the police. In one car, there was a slumped over figure at the wheel; absolutely motionless, and not getting the least bit of attention from the rescue crew. Typical. Once you were dead, you weren’t worth the trouble. I drove on without a backward glance at the accident.

Soon enough, I made the exit for Valparaiso University; shot through the small downtown area in record time, and sped rapidly into the countryside on a two-lane road. I cracked the window on the driver’s side; fields of cornstalks and tassels rustled in the breeze, the car’s tires thumping over potholes from last winter. I slowed a little, after my previous haste, enjoying the feeling of piloting the huge Pontiac over the road; an antique chrome-plated gunship from another age, when gas was 30 cents a gallon instead of 6 dollars. The car floated effortlessly, imaginary waves breaking over the bow as the yellow dividing line was swallowed by the hood, and reborn from the trunk. I signaled to the helm for flank speed, slowed, and cut hard a’ port, making the turn into the University parking lot with a squeal of tires. I coasted through the nearly abandoned lot, and noticed a white University van at the end of the park, just by the loading dock. Tom was standing next to it, quietly, stock still, not even fidgeting. He smiled slightly when he saw me coast in, but otherwise did nothing. I parked and cut the engine, locking and slamming the driver’s door. Tom watched all this without any reaction, not even coming over to the car to greet me.

I walked over to him, not quite knowing what to expect. His eyes regarded me blankly, seeing past me without really seeing me, yet he nodded as I reached him.

Hi, he said lamely. Glad you’re here.

No problem; glad to be here, I responded. What’s up?

He paused for a moment, not speaking, slowly blinking his eyes. Finally, he said

it’s probably best if I show you. It makes much more sense that way than to try to describe it. He paused again, sighed, and turned towards the van. He unlocked the back doors, slowly opening them while backing away from the vehicle. When he was about six feet away from the doors, he motioned me over. I went, not feeling too thrilled. As I got to the bumper, I could see there was a cage in the back of the van, pushed away from the back doors. Despite it being an early summer evening, I felt the skin prickle in between my shoulder blades, and I shivered, slightly. As I got close, I smelled something; it was dry and foul.

I leaned in to get a better look, and saw the cage had a tarpaulin covering most of it. The few inches of the bottom of the side facing me didn’t show anything. Inside the van it was dead quiet. I reached in slowly, quietly, without touching the floor of the van, and gently pulled the tarpaulin off. It came away easily with a bare whisper of sound, and I dropped the covering on the floor. I straightened up quickly, but not because my back was hurting; I had seen what was in the cage. Looking back at me, blinking slowly, was a dead dog.

My mind took all this in in an instant, merely registering what my eyes saw and storing it without evaluation or reaction. That would come later. There was no doubt the dog was dead; you didn’t have to be a doctor, a veterinarian, or even an animal physiologist to see that. Its condition assaulted rather than registered on me; my mind resisting, trying to block it out, but failing. The dog just stood there, quietly, as dogs will often do when regarding a stranger, trying to decide if the person is friend or foe. While I stood there, dumbfounded, it kept looking at me with its strangely lusterless eyes, then, finally, the very tip of its tale started to wag. That small movement started the gears in my mind working again, and I started processing the information that my senses had been feeding me.

The dog was dead!! Dead as a doornail!! Dead as hell!! It stank, no it reeked of rot and filth, and my stomach started to protest; the liquid bubbles of today’s lunch began to reach threatening levels. Its fur was missing in large patches, and in some places the skin beneath had sloughed off to reveal rotting muscle, and dirty, yellow bone. Several of the dog’s ribs poked through the dry, drum-taught skin on its flanks, and greasy loops of its swollen viscera bulged through its belly. The left side of its head had a nasty depression in it, like someone had struck it with a blunt instrument, hard. The dog was obviously aware of my attention, and it fixed me with a quizzical look. What’s wrong? It seemed to say. Don’t you like me? I like you; it seemed to tell me, as the tip of its tail continued to wag.

The incongruity of its appearance to its actions was almost too much for me; I needed a break, and I stood back and slammed the van’s doors shut. I stared at the closed doors for a minute, wishing I had a key to lock them. I turned to face Tom, who had remained motionless, and silent, through all this.

Well? I said weakly, for lack of anything better to say.

Well what? said Tom, not offering much help.

What exactly is this? I asked.

I was hoping you’d tell me, he said.

It sure looks like a dead dog. I paused, then added, a very dead dog. What I don’t understand is why the dog doesn’t know that.

I don’t know either, said Tom, and I’m fresh out of ideas.

Well, let’s just take this a step at a time. What’s his name?

Tom gave me a dirty look.

Okay, what do you want to do with him?

Tom seemed to consider this for a moment, then said let’s get him inside.

Good idea. After that, we can talk. I turned back to the van and opened the door. The dog was still standing there, looking at me. Hi, I said, wondering if the rules of engagement with a living-dead dog were the same as with the living variety. Would it bark? Would it bite? If it bit Tom or me, what would happen to us? What if we got infected from whatever it was that made the dog live? What if Tom was already infected? What if?….what if?….what if?….my mind threatened to whirl out of control. I braked mentally; it was probably too late for most of this anyway, and if the dog tried to bite, I’d just be careful. Before I went any further, I looked over my shoulder at Tom and asked, did the dog bite you?

No, why’d you ask?

I’ll explain later, I said. Let’s go.

I stepped slowly into the van, ready to jump out for any reason. Tom just watched from behind. I started to grab the bars of the cage with my bare hands, then thought the better of it. I unsnapped and pulled the belt from my pants, and looped it through several of the bars, giving me about a foot of space between the cage and my fingers. The dog watched all of this curiously. I gently tugged the cage towards the door while keeping an eye on the dog. It opened its mouth once, then sat down, still watching. When the cage was at the door, I jumped out of the van, and left the belt in the cage bars.

I’ll get a cart, ventured Tom helpfully. He jumped up on the loading dock and ran into the building. He reappeared almost immediately, pushing a large metal cart out the loading dock doors. He jumped off the dock and joined me at the van. Between the two of us, we each took a belt end and lifted the cage out of the van, carrying it up the dock steps to the cart. As soon as the cage left the van, the dog began to open and close its mouth repeatedly, like it was barking, but it only made small croaking noises. It lay on its belly, sprawled on the cage floor; the daylight coloring its ghastly state in sickly purples, bilious greens, and rotten browns. Unconcerned with its condition, the sun, or our gaze, it rolled over on its back, and lazily scratched itself; its broken claws digging at its matted fur. For the first time I noticed it was wearing a collar with a nametag; dirty letters spelled its name. Jack. We carried it to the cart, and wheeled it inside. First stop, the animal quarters.

We wheeled the cage down the basement hallway to the double doors at the end; Tom stopped briefly to unlock them. One good pull on the door opened it; a musty smell issued from the dark interior. Tom pulled on his lip, considering.

This hasn’t been used since 2010; I’m not even sure it’s still connected to the power supply. He shrugged, then flipped a switch just inside the doorway; the lights inside the walk-in flashed on, and a ratcheting noise started.

Looks like it still works, he said. We pushed the cart inside.

Through all this the dog just lay there, watching us. He didn’t seem the least bit excited or upset. Curiously, I got the impression that he was very much aware of his surroundings, and that he was studying us, instead of the other way around.

Tom and I used the belt to sling the cage gently onto the floor. The ratcheting noise from the refrigerator motor had quieted, and the temperature inside had dropped noticeably. We gave the dog one last look, and walked out. Tom shut the door and pressed some buttons on the walk-in’s keypad. There was a click.

I’ve reset the pass code so only I can get in. Nobody will bother him.

Good was all I could manage. But I wondered. What does a dead dog need to survive? Food? Warmth? Newspapers? Companionship? My mind still wasn’t fully ready to deal with this. Putting the dog in the walk-in refrigerator was a good move; out of sight, out of mind. My brain needed a rest, or it was going to go on overload. I turned to Tom.

Need any help with anything else?

Not right now, he said. Later, for sure. I’m not going to do anything with it for right now, until I can figure out what to do next. Call me tomorrow morning at home, about nine. Do I have to say ‘don’t say anything’?

No, you don’t, I said. I’ll keep quiet.

Great, said Tom. We shook hands. Later.

Later. I nodded and left.

The ride home was very boring.

The dog no longer knew its own name. Of course, it could still see and hear, after a fashion; and it could even still think, after a much dimmer fashion. The noises in the building that had briefly caught its attention ceased to interest it, and it turned its head away from the sounds. It had memories, and images; they began to fumble their way through the dog’s decaying brain. It was not like it was before, and it could not understand the reason for the difference. The memories it had began to crowd into each other, and they were bad. It remembered being ill, and dozing in the living room of its house in the afternoon, like so many afternoons before. Except this time, when it went to sleep, it went past the blackness that is sleep, and went further into the darkness than it ever went before. The next thing was being awake, like this, in a field far from its home. That was its only clear memory. And that it no longer slept.

It no longer remembered where it used to live, or the people it had lived with, or the things it did when it lived with them. It barely remembered what happened this morning when the man came into the van to look at it. The man acted oddly, and the dog didn’t understand. What could be wrong? The dog liked people, but the man didn’t seem to understand that.

Most of the dog’s existence was now in a state halfway between sleep and waking. Much of what it knew were not the things it still saw or heard, but strange phantoms, flickers across the nearly blank screen of its mind, that did not come from its own experiences or store of memories. These were things that had been passed down for generations of dogs to it, racial and ancestral memories, inherited and not experienced. The dog twitched as it thought of warm, pulsing blood steaming in the snow; the sounds of moon-dreamed howls echoing across the night. Its legs moved as it tried to run with its dream companions across the snow, their cries threatening to leave it behind. Other visions crowded in; a trapped animal in the forest, ringed by its pack. Yellow eyes in the dark; the threat vast and huge. A warm cave where it slept close to its companions. And others. The cold room, the cage, the bare floor, no longer existed for the dog as it raced with its shadow companions across the snow-spun plains of its mind.

CHAPTER 1

–––––▼–––––

I had a hard time sleeping after I got home. I went to bed early, but I couldn’t get the dog out of my mind. That was understandable; you weren’t confronted with the living dead every day. Part of me wanted to argue that I didn’t really know the dog was dead; I hadn’t done any tests, checked for its heartbeat, measured its blood pressure, and shined a flashlight into its eyes. It didn’t really matter; I knew what was what. The tests could wait ’til tomorrow. I stared at the ceiling and tried to sleep.

Sometime during the night sleep crept up on me and put me out. I woke with the sun well up, and distinctly rested and guilty feeling. I had to get to the lab! Before I could do more than get out bed, the phone on the nightstand rang. I snatched it up impatiently, wanting to be rid of whoever was on the other end.

Hello! said Tom, his voice issuing cheerily from the phone. He sounded a lot more animated than yesterday.

Hi, I replied. I was still trying to figure out what to say next when he spoke.

When you get time, get over to the lab today, he said, playfully sarcastic. You don’t need to bring anything besides an open mind."

I’ve always had that, I said, except where you’re concerned.

I heard a smirk on the other end. And bring your sense of humor too. It’s going to be a long day.

No problem, I said, I’ll be there.

He hung up, and I lay back down in bed. Despite the promise of doing some really groundbreaking research today, I was having trouble getting started. My biggest fear was, how were we going to keep this a secret? I tried to make myself lie on the bed and do some thinking, but my mind started racing, and it wouldn’t settle down. What was I going to do today? How did one do research on the living dead? Where did you start? Was the scientific method even appropriate? Did you need a priest? I decided to let my mind sort things out while I got ready to go.

A shower not only sounded good as the first order of business, it was a necessity; I smelled bad. I couldn’t kid myself that it was from the dog, since the odor smelled like me. I also needed a shave, and some tooth brushing was in order. I raced to the bathroom and peeled off my underclothes. Thankfully, the water heater was cooperating this morning, and the water from the showerhead was nice and hot. I shivered in pleasure at the hot spray, and let it play on my back while my muscles loosened up. I stood there, in the steam and hot water, relaxing, not wanting to go to see Tom today. All I really wanted to do was go back to bed; let the dog take care of itself. As I stood there, tempted not to make the trip, the water flow abruptly changed to cold. I jumped out of the tub, dripping water all over the floor. So much for the long hot shower. Time to go to work.

I didn’t spend much time drying and dressing, and I left home with my hair still damp; I’d trust it to dry in car, and I didn’t have anybody to impress today. Traffic was light, and I didn’t even need the radio to distract myself while I drove. In less than an hour, I blipped into the University parking lot and parked the car. There was nobody in the lot this time, so I assumed Tom must be in the basement lab; I headed there first. When I pushed through the loading dock doors, the lab looked dark and shuttered. The window in the door was dark. Nobody home? I tried the doorknob, but it was locked. Then I noticed the window had been covered with something. I heard movement close to the other side of the door, then the door was unlocked and opened. Tom was on the other side, not at all surprised to see me.

How did you know it was me? I asked.

He looked at me curiously, like I was a rather slow student. I used the video monitoring system they installed in the early 90s, to keep the animal rights activists at bay. It’s old, but it still works. They built this whole lab like a bunker, to keep them out." He let me in.

After locking the door behind me, he led me over to another room; the dog’s cage was in there, but empty. He must known what was on