The Real Night of the Living Dead Read online

  The Real Night of the Living Dead

  (Dead Memories Series, Book One)

  By

  Mark L. Kramer

  also by JAVA Publishing

  Horror Novels:

  Now I Lay Thee Down to Sleep

  Dead Memories Series, Book Two (late 2012)

  Crime Novels:

  Rushing the Row (Andrew Barry Series, Book One)

  Daddy’s Little Boys

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A JAVA Publishing eBook Original

  THE REAL NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (DEAD MEMORIES SERIES, BOOK ONE) Copyright © 2009 by Mark L. Kramer

  All rights reserved.

  Updated eBook edited by Felix Cruz.

  To contact Mark L. Kramer, send an email to [email protected]

  Cover design by Antonio Cruz and Felix Cruz

  ISBN-10: 1449508383

  ISBN-13: 9781449508388

  Table of Contents

  My Introduction...

  The name is Veimer Stanton. I’m 85 years old…

  Chapter One

  I was serving a five year sentence at Holmesburg…

  Chapter Two

  Doctor Oksenberg approached the dead patient…

  Chapter Three

  Doctor Haas was with the nurse now…

  Chapter Four

  Melvin saw the four move toward me…

  Chapter Five

  A few minutes ago, before I helped Melvin…

  Chapter Six

  We shut the door and pressed our bodies…

  Chapter Seven

  He was screaming. And loud…

  Chapter Eight

  William Kelly was born in Hatfield, PA…

  Chapter Nine

  “Evening, fellers…

  Chapter Ten

  Me, Melvin and Billy ran to the center…

  Chapter Eleven

  He was on his back and was screaming…

  Chapter Twelve

  Some of them began showing signs…

  Chapter Thirteen

  We ran…

  Chapter Fourteen

  He laughed once he recognized…

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was a few days into my position…

  Chapter Sixteen

  I told them about Clara, my “childhood friend”…

  Chapter Seventeen

  It started as a low single continuous thumping…

  Chapter Eighteen

  A few of us were screaming…

  Chapter Nineteen

  He crashed into the first of the infected…

  Chapter Twenty

  We were in the stairwell of N-7…

  Chapter Twenty-one

  About twenty feet away from the opening…

  Chapter Twenty-two

  My eyes widened as Dallas said, “She took…

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The door was pushed open and infected…

  Chapter Twenty-four

  He fired another two shots in the dark…

  Chapter Twenty-five

  We all looked to the door…

  Chapter Twenty-six

  We all screamed and jumped out…

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  My heart dropped. “Who was bitten?”…

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I was frozen…

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I was helping the professor to his feet…

  Chapter Thirty

  The cop was out of his patrol car now…

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “Get in the car,” I shouted…

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The Plymouth plowed right into…

  Chapter Thirty-three

  I screamed her name and caught the…

  Chapter Thirty-four

  I screamed, so did they, as they pulled me…

  Chapter Thirty-five

  I quickly pushed her away…

  My Long Goodbye...

  My eyes stayed on…

  About the Author

  For Jess. This one starts it all. Are you ready for the ride?

  My Introduction...

  The name is Veimer Stanton. I’m 85 years old, and I live in Toms River, New Jersey.

  I may not be around to see this published, but a close friend has assured me that it will. I’m not sick. At least, I don’t think so? It’s just that I am a very old man, and I am tired. So tired. I’ve lived my life. I lived my life the best that I could, and there’s not much else to look forward to.

  I get up at 3:30am every morning. Make my cup of coffee. Sit down in the living room and watch sports highlights from the night before. After around seven, I sit on my porch and watch my neighbors head to work. Then I whip up some eggs and French toast, smother them in syrup (even the eggs), grab another cup of joe, and plant my butt on my sofa in the living room. There I spend the next eight hours or so watching old pictures on the cable. The other day I saw Sunset Boulevard and Mr. and Mrs. Smith ― that would be the Hitchcock one, not that malarkey with the dame who has all those kids. There was another one, but I can’t remember. Maybe it was a Bogie flick? Speaking of Bogie, there was a Cagney marathon on last month. I love Cagney.

  I have my lunch while watching the cable, then around four, I eat supper. I take a shower after the dishes are clean, and I sit on the porch, with another cup of joe, to watch my neighbors return at the end of the day. Then I go to sleep, usually around 7:30. I live in a nice quiet area. People are nice. No problems.

  It’s boring.

  Which is why I watch the cable all day.

  But last week was Halloween, so instead of watching the cable, I spent the evening handing out the sweets to the kids who came ringing at my door. Usually, whenever Halloween came around, I would shut off my lights and go to sleep early, to avoid having to spend money on the junk food. But this year was different; I felt extra lonely, so I decided to be generous. The evening was going swell; kids showed up dressed as firefighters, superheroes, all kinds of stuff. Then came the moment that terrified me so much that I had to lock myself in my bedroom and couldn’t sleep for days; the doorbell rang, and when I opened it, I was met by three kids dressed as the walking dead.

  Since then, I haven’t been able to think straight. It’s amazing. I can sit back and remember everything that happened that night; almost as if it took place yesterday. All the memories continue flooding back into my decrepit mind. The memories of what happened that cold spring night back in 1951. A lot of people died that night. Some more than once.

  Chapter One

  I was serving a five year sentence at Holmesburg Prison, about seven months into it I was asked if I’d rather serve my remaining time at Philadelphia State Hospital. I asked, Serve as a patient? They told me, No, serve as a worker. They were far overcrowded and didn’t have enough workers to perform the necessary duties. I think at the time, there was one worker for every eighty patients. So they needed help. Bad. But the state wasn’t interested in spending the additional funds. So what did they do? They compromised. Philadelphia State Hospital needed more workers? Okay, we’ll get them help. Have someone visit the nearby jails and prisons and see which convicts want to leave to work at a hospital. The catch is: you work for free. You don’t get paid. Not a red cent. But, you’re not locked in a cell all day. You have to stay on the hospital’s premises, but at the time, this hospital had so many buildings that it was like a small town. And, you get to live in a dormitory with the
other workers. You see, back then, this part of Philadelphia was still very rural and secluded from residential areas. So workers had the option of living on campus. There were other big advantages for prisoners: get good food, be around women all the time (depending on where you worked.) To hell with getting paid, I mean, the prison and the warden could go jump in the lake. It was a no brainer for me. I chose the hospital.

  Before I go into the events that took place that night in 1951, let me give you a brief history of Philadelphia State Hospital. I’ll begin by telling you that it was not a regular hospital. You know, your kid gets sick so you take him to the ER, or your wife is about to have a baby so you rush her in so she can give birth. No, it wasn’t like that at all. Philadelphia State Hospital, or Byberry (as it has come to be known as over the years), was a mental hospital. It opened in the beginning years of the twentieth century and began closing some of its buildings in the sixties. By the end of the eighties, it was completely shut down.

  Almost from the beginning, the hospital was infamous for the horror stories that took place inside its walls. Some of the stories include: patients forced to walk around naked because they tore off their clothes and the hospital didn’t have the money to replace them. Patients being chained to their beds for months at a time. Others kept doped up, walking about the ward while the nurses remained locked in their station, frightened of what the patients were capable of. They would keep them doped up by passing their medication through a slot in the window. Even murders occurring among the patients, one of which involved a male patient who murdered a female patient, chopped her body into itty-bitty pieces and scattered them throughout the campus. My friend, one of the attendants, found a patient (about 8 years old), playing with the victim’s jaw. The guy couldn’t eat or sleep for days after seeing that.

  Throughout its years, the hospital became known as a last resort, a place to send members of your family, who were handicapped or mentally ill, when you wanted them out of your life, wanting to hide them from others, wanting to have nothing else to do with them.

  I guess that’s one of the reasons why my story was discarded for so many years. Many of the victims were patients and, sad to say, they had no loved ones to claim them. No one who gave a damn.

  It was late in the evening, Wednesday, March 21st, 1951. Two days before Good Friday. I was working in the N-3 building, it was a therapy building. Actually, on one of the floors, the third floor (where I was working that day), doctors would test drugs on patients. Used them as guinea pigs. Tested all kinds of drugs that were in the early stages of development. They weren’t too concerned with side effects, because the patients were considered crazy and really couldn’t complain. Who would listen to them? It was really horrible.

  I was an attendant; had been working at the hospital for the past five months. Me and my friend, Melvin, were assisting a couple of doctors who were testing a new vaccine. Really we were just standing by, in case they needed the extra muscle to control the patients.

  The third floor of N-3 had at least a hundred beds in the room, two rows on either side of the room, lining the walls, then a row going down the center.

  There were about twenty patients on the floor, most of them men, a few women. Some were shackled to the metal bed frame as they were considered criminally insane, but most of them weren’t. They were just too crazy to give a damn and just laid there with smiles on their faces.

  The doctors were given a new polio vaccine to test. Back then, the polio virus was a son of a bitch, and there were tens of thousands of cases reported each year. The vaccine was developed by a colleague of a doctor by the name of Kollmer, who years earlier tested a polio vaccine which turned out to do more harm than good. The people who were given Kollmer’s vaccine had their polio worsen and some even died. But this new vaccine, the researchers said, was destined to cure polio.

  Doctor Haas had already injected the vaccine into three of the patients, and he was working his way down the line. The second doctor, Doctor Oksenberg, was observing the injected patients. His hand on his chin, and his eyes squinting. Looked like he had to use the john. A nurse was following Doctor Haas, handing him tools as he requested them.

  The doctors and the nurse barely said a word to Melvin and me. To them, we were scum. I was a convict, and he was hired off the street, almost literally. There was a sign posted along the block where he lived in North Philadelphia, calling for men needed as orderlies, no experience required. He applied and was hired on the spot. He’d been here for a couple of months, and I don’t think a day had passed that I worked with him and he didn’t smell of booze. But he was a good guy. We got along great.

  “You listen to Dragnet last week?” said Melvin, as we stood side by side.

  My eyes were on Doctor Haas as I said, “No, it’s been a while.”

  Melvin said, “Yeah, lately, I’ve been going to my neighbor’s house down the street. In the evenings, a bunch of us go there to watch his television.”

  “Television? He rich or something?”

  He shook his head. “He won it in some kind of lottery. I don’t know. All I know is he’s got himself a television, and he charges us a nickel a piece to watch the programs after supper.”

  I began to hear a slight grunting, and my eyes moved from the doctor over to the first injected patient.

  “You missed a great one, pal,” said Melvin. “About a guy who was beaten, had his car stolen, then a murder took place.”

  “Melvin, when doesn’t a murder take place on Dragnet? No skin off my back. I’ll catch it next time.” I was too busy focused on the grunting patient. Something about the guy didn’t seem right.

  “Next time? Next show doesn’t air until sometime in April.”

  “Okay, good lord. What, you got the hots for Jack Webb or something?” I said.

  “It’s a good show. Probably my favoritest radio show.”

  I nudged Melvin and motioned with my head to the grunting man.

  “Yeah?” said Melvin. “What about him?”

  “Something’s wrong with him. Listen to him.”

  “You just figured that out? Guy’s a nut job. Prob’ly the same sound he makes when he plays with himself.”

  The grunting grew louder. My eyes went to Doctor Oksenberg. He was watching the grunting man and recording notes on a pad of paper.

  “Should he be making sounds like that, doc?” He ignored me as he studied the patient who was beginning to turn pale. Then the grunts came to a halt. The patient stopped moving. His arms dropped limp.

  Chapter Two

  Doctor Oksenberg approached the dead patient and leaned forward, putting his ear to the patient’s chest. He looked up toward his colleague and said, “I don’t hear a heartbeat. Doesn’t appear too promising.”

  “Let’s see what we can get from the rest,” said Doctor Haas. “Have one of them take the deceased downstairs to the morgue.”

  Oksenberg stood upright and looked to me and Melvin. He said, “Come on. One of you boys get over here and take him. You know where the morgue is, right?”

  Melvin shook his head. He seemed a little scared. He probably never put his hands on a dead body before. I was a little familiar. “I’ll take him.” Melvin was relieved.

  I moved toward the bed. Then he twitched. Me, Melvin and Oksenberg flinched in unison. I could feel the hairs on my arm stand. Doctor Haas and the nurse were busy moving their way down the line of patients to notice what just happened.

  “Cancel that,” said Doctor Oksenberg. “He’s moving.”

  The patient was a man, I would say in his late thirties, but he appeared to have aged twenty years since taking in the vaccine. He was dragging his feet up and down against the thin urine soaked mattress pad, and his eyes were rolling side to side under their lids.

  Oksenberg’s pen began to dance again. Standing behind him now, I looked over his shoulder, past his thinning gray hair, at what he was scribbling. He wrote: Within 5 mins. of vaccine injection - Outermost layer of ey
e appears yellow in color.

  My gaze drifted to the patient. He was staring dead at me. And the doctor’s notes couldn’t be more correct; the whites of his eyes were now a stale yellow. I’ll tell you what; I was a tough guy in my day. Never backed down from any joe. But when I saw those yellow eyes on me, I was intimidated. For the first time in my life. And that made me feel very uncomfortable.

  I turned to Melvin and he looked confused, like he was waiting for Oksenberg to give the next order. I put my finger to my eye and mouthed, His eyes.

  His gaze went to the man’s eyes. His forehead wrinkled and he said, “Say, doc, what’s with his eyes? He ain’t looking too hot.”

  “Please, boys. We’re extremely busy here. Would you prefer to work your shift at N-9 and try to deal with those psychos?” said Doctor Oksenberg. “I’m sure they would enjoy hearing your questions as you listen to them scream themselves to sleep.”

  Melvin hushed up real quick, and I wasn’t going to open my mouth again. Not after that threat. N-9 was the maximum security building where they kept the worse of the worse of the men. No thanks.

  Oksenberg continued scribbling as the yellow eyes scanned the room, like he had just woken up after a long nap and was trying to figure out where he was. Doctor Haas and the nurse were nearing the end of the injections. I could hear one of the patients say, Thanks. Another said she was being crucified for stealing muffins from the kitchen. A few others laughed as the needle shot the vaccine into their veins, others cried. But we noticed some of the first patients injected were beginning to show the same effects as the man who we thought had died.

  The man with the yellow eyes placed his hands on the edges of the bed. He let out a faint moan as he pushed himself into a sitting position.

  “Please lay down.” He didn’t listen. His head was hanging. His chin was resting on his chest, but his eyes were focused on Oksenberg. He said, “Lay down. Do as I say.” He placed his hand on the man’s chest to shove him back, but the man snatched the doctor’s hand and screamed as he moved the hand toward his mouth.