The Real Night of the Living Dead (23 page)

“I can’t, my boy,” he said. “I am not a murderer.”

But I was. I was responsible for many of those who lost their lives tonight, and now it was time for me to pay. That was the way I saw it.

I gazed hard into Clara’s eyes as she attacked the door. I wanted to see the hazel in them again. I squeezed mine shut and prayed for her to be normal, for her eyes to go back to the beautiful hazel. I squeezed so hard, the darkness under my eyelids turned white. I opened them again, hoping to see Clara Daniels smiling at me with her beautiful hazel eyes, full of life.

And…nothing changed.

My Long Goodbye...

My eyes stayed on Clara, watching her screaming rotting corpse beat on the door, until I collapsed, passed out from exhaustion.

When the creatures made it in S-3, the professor and the two girls dragged me inside the nurses’ station. I was in and out over the course of the next two hours or so. I would hear the banging of the creatures, desperate to get inside our ward, gunshots erupting closer than before, and the screams of the infected creatures, but I kept shutting my eyes, trying to drift away, to force myself to die. But it never happened. Soon I would be awakened by medics in the back of an ambulance, on my way to the hospital.

What started out as a simple medical experiment turned into a night of hell on earth, a night of the living dead spreading death and destruction throughout the grounds of Philadelphia State
Hospital.

For the police, it was too much to handle. Local military units were called in, a perimeter was set up, enclosing the entire hospital campus, and by sunrise, things were under control. By noon Thursday, the last remaining creatures were terminated.

They managed to travel across Roosevelt Boulevard to the men’s group, but, by that time, the buildings were locked down. Clara had done her part in warning the rest of the campus of the disastrous breakout. If not for the warning, the infection would’ve spread across the men’s group and the creatures’ numbers would have increased by the thousands and, no doubt, reached into the neighboring communities.

Only a handful of doctors, nurses and attendants lost their lives that night, but almost a thousand patients died and no one even noticed. They were disregarded. No one cared about the patients living in a mental hospital with one of the worst reputations in the country. The families of the staff members who never came home were paid to forget, to never utter a word or question what happened, about what they believed was a mass patient escape gone awry.

The cleanup took weeks. The bodies of staff members were given proper burials, but the piles of patient corpses were transported and buried in mass graves at the local Potter’s Field, which still exist to this day ― it is located in the section of the city now known as Greater Northeast Philadelphia.

As for getting back to normal, the few staff members who experienced first-hand the horrors of that night, like myself, the nurse Pearl and Buster the attendant, were paid, by the government, twenty thousand each ― a lot of money in those days ― to never mention again what we witnessed. Also, my record was wiped clean, and I was able to walk out of
Byberry
a free man. Others, like Buster and Pearl, were offered jobs in other hospitals across the state. I’m not sure what became of Pearl, but Buster tracked me down in the early sixties, he called me, he was drunk and wanted to talk to someone who would listen and not think he was some nutty lush telling wild tales about the undead. He was the one who told me what happened once the cops and military arrived, and where the bodies were buried. He had taken a job offer at a hospital in western Pennsylvania after the Night ― as we came to call it ― and was still living there, but the memories haunted him, and he’d do his best to wash it away with alcohol. We’d call each other every few months over the next several years, but eventually I lost contact with him.

After receiving my money, I rented a small apartment in North Philadelphia, temporarily, until I figured out what I was going to do. Still in possession of Melvin’s driver’s license and keys, I visited his place, read over his notes and burned them. I couldn’t come forward with the notes because of the agreement I signed with the government. But it was then that I fully understood the history of the hospital, its long record of patient abuse, and the origin of the polio vaccine that was tested on March 21
^st
.

Speaking of the polio vaccine, it would be only one year later, 1952,
that successes
were being reported with a vaccine developed by Jonas Salk. Ironically, it was the same year the country experienced its worst polio outbreak in history with 58,000 cases. By 1964, only 121 cases were reported.

Philadelphia State Hospital continued to operate, but its conditions never improved. Beginning in the 1960s, some of its buildings began shutting down. By 1990, the entire hospital was closed. Patients were either transferred to other mental hospitals or released. The patients who were released didn’t have homes or families to go to. Some of them wandered the streets of Philadelphia, adding to the city’s homeless population and others went back to the abandoned hospital, living there as squatters.

I remember, back in ’94 ’95, I was in Philadelphia for an Eagles game. I’d stopped at Pat’s for a
cheesesteak
and came across a homeless man who was telling others about when he was just a kid, he was at a hospital and the dead were returning to life. People blew him off, thought he was nuts and ignored him. I sat him at one of the outdoor tables and bought him a meal, then left.

As for me, I wanted to get as far away from the memory of
Byberry
as I could, so I bought a place in Toms River, found a job and did my best to live my life. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t find happiness. I married, thought I was happy, divorced, stayed single for a few years, married again and divorced soon afterwards. And that was
it,
I’ve been alone for over twenty years. I never got over the loss of Clara, or the guilt of leaving her with the professor. The pain is etched into my memory and the feeling is there every day. I never thought about taking my own life, I don’t know, maybe I was too scared, didn’t have the guts. But now, I’m ready to go…

Oh, before I forget. I have a gift for all of you. I failed to mention, when I grabbed the keys and license from Melvin’s pocket, I also grabbed something else; three vials of the polio vaccine that gave birth to that nightmare ― Melvin took them when we ran out of the testing room that night. I kept them in my pocket that entire night. I had thought about handing them over to the cops or the government, but decided against it. I kept them and still have them to this day. I want you all to experience the horrors that I went through that night, to know what it’s like to lose the only person that you truly love, so I’ll do what I can to bring this nightmare back from the dead. I’ll inject myself and let it spread, this time, across neighborhoods, destroying families and their futures. Why not? I mean, really, do you think scum like you deserve to enjoy your lives, being happy, successful and in love? I didn’t enjoy mine.

Don’t judge me. I’m not crazy…I’m heartbroken.

About the Author

Mark L. Kramer came up with the idea of this novel from his love of zombies and his interest in the infamous Philadelphia State Hospital. After a few years of hearing fans ask for a sequel, Mark has decided to finally begin work on a Book Two. He lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania, where he continues to work on the next entry.
  

You can drop him a line about the book at [email protected].