Seven Days Dead

by Christopher Johnson

  It only took the five minute drive to Sdei Trumot, however, to wipe even that from their minds. As soon as they entered the town, John hit the brakes and pulled the wheel hard to the right and down a wide turn off.

  “What the hell, John?” Tal said, shaken from his reverie by the rapid shift in his center of gravity.

  “You said to find gas as we can, right?” he replied. “Well there’s a big delivery truck right there. Ooohhh, yeah! And look at that! A store too! We can get the gas from the truck, and see if there’s anything to scavenge in there.”

  “Good call.” Tal admitted grudgingly, still a little irritated by the maneuver.

  A small tank was parked off to the side, perhaps as a memorial or just a tourist attraction, on which some graffiti artist or enterprising shopkeeper had spray painted the words ‘brown ale’. And in the parking lot were a few

  abandoned cars and a delivery truck with the driver’s side door open. Apparently the driver had fled on foot, the truck probably being too heavy to idle fast enough to hit the building.

  “Alright people. Christine and I go first. Once we’re in, it’s my turn to clear, Christine you’re on the door once we’re all inside. Get what you can, but keep an eye out for a funnel or something; these little convenience stores often have them for motorists who need to buy extra oil or whatever. We can siphon the gas out of the truck and into the bucket, but we’ll need a funnel or something to pour it from the bucket into the bus’ tank.”

  They exited the bus hastily, and would have followed the plan immediately but for Nasir coming up short and yelping. Apparently the delivery truck must have simply idled the last bit of distance into the parking lot, the driver probably having jumped out before it came to rest. The front bumper was dented and stopped against one of the large boulders the store used for parking blocks, and as luck would have it, had rolled partially over one of the undead. The group hadn’t noticed because it laid perfectly still until Nasir had walked near to it, and there was no noise or howl from the beast since the truck’s front tire had stopped on the creature’s chest.

  Had they not parked the bus so close, their peripheral vision would probably have seen the mess of internal organs the weight of the truck had forced from the undead, but John had wanted to minimize the distance they would have to carry fuel between the two vehicles. The group just stared down at it as the creature weakly waved its arms, and lying on its back, thumped its skull on the ground. John walked up to its head, and using the blunt side of his axe and a stance like that of a golf pro, stove the top of its head in, stilling it permanently.

  After that, the plan went smoothly. They entered the building and rooted around, finding some canned fruit, a few pastries still in their packaging, and bottles of soda and water. And a much needed yellow plastic funnel. Nasir stowed the supplies on the bus, while the rest took on siphoning the gas from the truck and pouring it into the bus, after which they had managed to fill their tank. Once the tank was filled and they had all boarded the bus once more, John took them back out onto Route 90 towards the north.

  The drive was once more routine. They went through Sdei Trumot, passed the

  Monument to the Fallen, and through Bikura and Rehov with little problem. The undead still ran out from the sides of the road, or buildings they had been in when they heard the bus engine, but it was to no avail. The armor on the bus, meant to safe guard Israeli soldiers in time of war and school children in times of what passed for peace in this region, was simply too thick, the bus’ 420 horse power engine simply too strong, to slow. Even though it was becoming difficult to tell what the bus’ original color was when viewed from the front, there was no doubt that they were nigh invulnerable in their armored rolling fortress. Then they hit Beit She’an.

  Beit She’an had stood since the Neolithic age, in one form or another. Thutmose III had conquered it during the 300 years of Egyptian rule in the 15th century B.C. The Philistines had hung the body of the defeated King Saul, from this city’s walls. Herod the Great’s cousin was buried here when Rome held dominion around 63 B.C. Today it served as the hub of the several villages in the Jezreel Valley, and had a population of over 17,000 people, before the troubles started.

  It was also thick with the undead. For the most part, the bus was able to continue through relatively unhampered, but Menachim Begin Boulevard was wide, and the area was largely residential. Around half way down the boulevard, the mass of undead had thickened considerably, having run from several outlying sections of town. The concrete buildings served to reverberate the sound of the bus’ engine, and the wails of the undead surrounding it, providing a homing beacon for any who were listening farther away. By the time the bus had reached the circle where Menachim Begin and Ben Gurion Street met, it was slipping and fishtailing in the blood and fluids of the undead it had plowed through.

  There were more than a few times that John nearly lost control of the bus, now reduced to going about fifteen miles an hour in order to navigate the circle. It seemed that a wailing, screeching horde had gathered around the bus, beating the sides and climbing over one another to try and get at the ‘food’ trapped within. The bus’ tires would spin and the weight of the huge vehicle would cause it to fishtail slowly, the back side coming dangerously close to hitting a lamp post or retaining wall. Several of the small signs that were placed around the circle had already been taken out in the effort to push the bus through the ever increasing slurry of gore.

  Finally, John managed to make the turn most of the way, putting the right front tire on the grass of the curb which provided some better purchase. Easing his foot down, so as not to spin out in the soft dirt beneath, the bus punched through the crowd of undead and with only a slight fishtail, put the bus back on the straight away out through the Old City. The last circle was easier, the undead of the city for the most part behind them now, and it wasn’t long before they were seeing the Nahal Harod river cross under the road, and the fish ponds that signaled they were out of Beit She’an proper.

  The excitement having died down from Beit She’an, the group settled into the idea of another short trip of no particular consequence. The distance was minimal to the Sea of Galilee; they’d probably be there in around a half hour assuming no further incidents. They stopped once along a barren stretch of road between Hamadya and Khavat Doshen, to heed the call of nature and eat some of the meager stores they’d been able to scavenge. After an eclectic meal of canned tuna fish and canned fruit salad, washed down with a can of diet soda or bottled water, Tal walked over to Nasir who had been sitting with his back against the bus and looking out over some farmer’s forgotten fields.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked in Farsi, knowing Nasir was uncomfortable with English.

  “As well as can be expected, I suppose.” He replied.

  “Look, kid, I’m sorry about Isabella. I really am. I had no idea, though I probably should have. After the store in Kfar Adumim, she wasn’t right, but before we got to that little town, she started getting better. I thought anyway. She apologized to you, and was talking, and I guess I thought she was good. Or at least good enough to help out. I was wrong. I was so wrong and we lost her, I lost her, because of it.”

  Nasir looked over to Tal, the pain of his failure clear on the older man’s face, and he put his hand on Tal’s shoulder.

  “Tal. I made a promise to her too, for her father’s sake. I could have said no when you sent me with Christine and my uncle. I could have asked to stay with her. I thought things were getting back to normal, if that word even applies these days, as much as you. If you failed her, I failed her too. But I do not think that we could have fixed what had broken inside her. Even if we had made it to…wherever we are going, and had saved her life, I think that she would still be standing back on that desert floor before Nofei Prat, watching her father die, for the rest of her days. She had lost so much already, and that’s where she lost the rest.”

  Tal looked at the boy, No, young man, as though
for the first time. It was hard to imagine that the child he’d met at the monastery, angry at his father’s death and seething with hatred towards Levi and himself, could have become the thoughtful boy next to him now. Perhaps it was an unworthy thought, but in the face of the choice Isabella had made, he was proud of Nasir. There were so many ways that combat and death could affect a man, countless paths of thought and action that a mind could take a person down when faced with these types of horrors. Adding the impossibility of the dead rising to eat the living only served to add another way in which a person could crack. But Nasir had grown from it and hadn’t let it tear him down.

  Maybe he’s better than me in that way, Tal thought, shades of drunken memory flitting around his mind.

  “Thanks, Nasir. I’m glad I met you, though I wish it were under better

  circumstances.” Tal commended the boy.

  “If the circumstances had been different, I probably would still have been a fool. But thank you, Tal. I’m glad Allah saw fit that we should meet as well.”

  Tal excused himself to get the rest of the crew moving, dusk being only around four hours or so away. Nasir watched him go to John and Christine, and turned his head to find his uncle looking at him as he packed away his own supplies. Omar caught the boy’s eye and smiled, nodding his approval. The boy looked away, slightly embarrassed, but also proud that he had gained his uncles approval without having tried to do so. Omar was a good man, even his father had told Nasir as much, sometimes it seemed grudgingly, and it pleased the boy greatly that he might survive to become a man his uncle would be proud of.

  The group began to load back onto the bus and Tal spoke with the others. It was decided that they would bed down here on the side of the road inside the bus. Lying down on the floor, they would be invisible to the undead and if they barricaded the door sufficiently, they should have no problem. Even still, they’d take a watch each until dawn. There was no such thing as being too careful these days.

  Chapter Sixteen

  No one had gotten much sleep that night. Though the bus had proved itself again and again, when the night fell and they were not so much indoors as they were simply not outside, memories came unbidden.

  Their own personal nights between the start of this cataclysm and their meeting.

  The night before they left Jerusalem.

  The night they ran from Faran monastery.

  Nerves were on edge, and every errant wind was the heralding cry of an army of undead. Every grain of sand that the wind threw against a window was the fingernail of a searching beast. In fact, they passed the night unmolested, the emptiness of the surrounding area between the two towns (which by themselves were fairly small to begin with) was sufficient to ensure that the undead would be looking for more active areas to hunt. And even though they all knew for certain that the undead could and would attack regardless of the hour, when the sun finally crested the highest ridge, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Everyone except Tal, that it, as he was the only one that had no problem sleeping.

  “Comes from the job.” Was all he said when Nasir asked how the stress hadn’t kept him up all night. The boy looked at him with a little bit of awe, whatever he’d gone through to harden him enough that he could sleep amidst the chance of flesh eating undead corpses attacking as well as if he were in a feather bed in a hotel…Nasir was happy not to have a frame of reference.

  After checking to make sure there were no undead about, the group decided to eat breakfast outside of the bus. They opened the windows and left the door open to air out the lingering odor of five unwashed bodies in close quarters. Tal sat just outside the bus’ steps, the vehicle’s radio on seek trying to find a signal that they were not the only ones left, but to no avail. It was about nine or so in the morning, by Tal’s estimation, and he rounded the group up from their various spots to get back on board. Nasir was the last to get on, and before he did so, he looked out over the field they had parked beside.

  The crops were already harvested from this field, whatever they were, Nasir had no skill with plants, and the weeds were only just sprouting between the stalks. It was, for a moment only, as though none of this had happened and the last week had been just a fevered dream; he half expected to see the farmer walk out to frown at the invading scrub. But he knew the truth; it was no dream. The corners of his mouth drooped a bit and he followed his uncle onto the bus and to a middle seat.

  They passed a few small towns on their way to the Sea of Galilee, mostly farming communities with little population to speak of, which worked in their favor. The choice to take Route 90 had been a good one; few and far between were the towns, and those more village or settlement. They decided not to stop to try and scavenge more food; they had a decent amount settled in the last two seats of the bus from the two stores they had already gone through. Plus Turkey was still some 10 hours away, and no one wanted to stay on the road a moment longer than they had too.

  They crossed the river Jordan, little more than a stream this close to Tzel Tamar. As they grew closer to the town, the yellows and golds of the desert opened to the green of grass and trees. The road was mostly clear, not many people had gone so far into the desert, few were those that even had a chance or the presence of mind to get into a car or truck, but they did occasionally pass other vehicles. Most were wrecked, though some looked simply abandoned, but either way the bus stopped for none of them. There was too much chance that those that held shadowy figures were simply metal tombs or perhaps worse, cages for their undead prisoners; regardless, there was nothing to be profited from checking. For a brief stretch, the road opened up to a four lane highway with green grass in the middle and rows of soft trees, perfectly aligned. In happier times, it might have made a pretty post card. They reached the town proper and the now familiar process played itself out. There were few undead, but those still here and listening, came running at the sound of the bus’ engine. They would try to attack the vehicle but would bounce harmlessly away. Thankfully, with larger cities like Tiberias and Shikun C to the north on eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, there was little south and west that would have held the undead in this region. What they encountered probably constituted the last holdovers, or if it was possible, the lazy.

  They navigated one circle on their way to the Sea, the memories of the near catastrophe at Beit She’an still fresh. And despite Tal’s assertion that they were close, John had to go completely around the second circle when he realized he could go straight no further, missing the left turn for 92 toward Syria. Directly ahead, mostly hidden from view by trees and the rock monuments facing the circle, was the Sea of Galilee. Christine especially was looking forward to reaching this place. She and John were on pilgrimage after all, before the dead rose again. This was the fabled Sea of Galilee, mentioned in all four Gospels! Jesus told Peter, Andrew, James, and John that he would make them ‘fishers of men’ on these very shores! The water on the other side of those trees had touched the feet of Christ as He walked atop it! Sadly, it was not to be more than a glimpse, however. Tal had John take 92 once he’d gone back round the circle, but that only lasted a few minutes, because soon the turn for 98 appeared, heading toward the border between Syria and Israel. The foliage along the road hid the fabled lake from her; and the only glimpse she caught was back at that circle, tantalizing hints of azure between the monuments.

  The bus trundled on, and it seemed that the trip toward Damascus was going to follow the same paradigm laid out by the many other towns and roads they’d already traveled. As they rolled down 98 and they came around a curve to see the Yarmouk River, the crops in the field to their left ended to reveal an ambulance stopped dead in the middle of the road. It was still a few thousand feet up the highway, and looked to have broken down just before the valley opened out onto the plains around the Sea of Galilee. The vehicle looked as though it was still in relatively good condition from a distance, though there was the definite splatter of undead effluvia which almost obscured the Red Crescent on t
he driver side door.

  “John,” Tal said, placing his hand on the man’s shoulder, “slow up. There’s no roamers around here and we could pick that ambulance over for first aid stuff.”

  “Got it.” He replied, slowing the bus on their approach.

  As the bus slowed, Tal looked around to make sure they were still clear. Something about the ambulance felt strange, like there was an itch in the back of his mind again. One that after Isabella, he was not keen to ignore a second time. The last time he’d felt that itch this strongly was during the Second Lebanon War. Tal was with a unit clearing Hezbollah fighters after one of Israel’s airstrikes, when the militants

  – much more organized and better trained than expected – orchestrated an ambush. Just before hand, he’d felt this same itch, and he’d been lucky to make it out of that scrape alive.

  The bus stopped, and John opened the door once Christine had removed the fire extinguisher. Christine made to get out of the bus, but Tal blocked her with an arm.

  “Go around back, behind the bus. Keep your weapon ready. I’ll take the front.”

  She nodded, knowing better than to question his instincts by now, chambered a round and moved behind the bus. Tal exited the front, held his hand up for the rest to stay put, and walked around the front of the bus with his pistol at his side. He passed the passenger side of the ambulance at a distance, seeing nothing through the window, and made for the rear doors. He was a little past half way to the rear of the vehicle, when the passenger side door burst open and a tall, blonde haired woman rushed out with an AK 47 pointed straight at Tal. She had been lying down across the seat; the rear view mirror angled enough to see when he’d passed the door, waiting for him to be where she wanted him. Before she’d set herself, Tal had his pistol trained at her head.