as loud as he could the Kel Maleh Rachamim.
The dead heard him, as he planned, and
smelling the coppery effluvia of his blood, broke
from following the survivors up the hill, to run
him down.
The group had almost crested the hill of
the settlement when the grenade exploded, the
blast bright against the velvet blackness of the
nighttime dessert, even with the street lamps so
close. Isabella saw the fiery cloud and heard the
concussion, and she let out a long doleful cry at
the loss of her father before all the fight went out
of her and she collapsed against Tal’s shoulder
and back. Thankfully the streets were clear of
undead. Had there been any in this settlement
before, it’s likely that the sound of Levi
murdering brother Sergius or the gunfire of the
survivors flight had drawn them toward the
monastery, and if any of the flaming dead had
made it to a wooden structure the resultant fire
would lure any others. The houses were upper
class, so – reasoning that the doors would be
locked with deadbolts – Tal kicked the back door
in on the first house they came to. Moving in to
clear the structure, an unconscious girl over his
shoulder and the Jericho held out in front of him,
he listened for any sound of occupants, but
heard none. The rest of the group followed in,
once he called for them, and he laid Isabella on a
couch before grabbing John to help him move a
full book case up against the door. Christine
cleared the upper floor and once she came back,
the survivors hunkered down for the night.
They slid the room’s single long couch up
against the door since the dead bolt was now
useless.
No one slept much, especially Nasir who
had come so close to death. When Omar asked
him if he was hurt, the only response he could
give was to shake his head no.
“Uncle…he saved me. I spent so much
time hating them, blaming them for Father’s
death…but he didn’t hesitate to throw himself at
that thing when it had me. He could have just
let me die…be…eaten. But he didn’t. Will Allah
ever forgive me for being such a fool?”
“Of course He will, Nasir.” replied Omar,
a hand on Nasir’s shoulder. “Of course He
will.”
Chapter Eleven
Morning found the group slumped in a rough circle in the living room of the house. No one spoke, exhaustion mixing with the terror of their exodus and the loss of Ben. Isabella still lay on the couch where Tal had dumped her, eyes open and staring blankly into space. John and Christine sat silently side by side, holding one another’s hand. Omar rested against one of the room’s chairs, his arms on his knees and his hands hanging limp. Nasir sat next to him hugging his knees to his chest and staring guiltily in Isabella’s direction. They sat silently in the gloom that accompanies a quiet room washed gray with the fledgling dawn.
“Ughuh” coughed Tal, breaking the room’s funerary silence, “anyone know where we are?”
“Nofei Prat. I saw a sign before we got in the house. The Prat river must have been nearly dry, or we ran over a land bridge, but Nofei Prat is where we are.” Omar barely moved as he answered.
“What’s here? Anything we can use?” “Not much. Some social clubs and nicer houses is pretty much it. We are close to Kfar Adumim, but there isn’t much there either. A grocery store. A school. That’s it.”
“Ok. We can get supplies from the grocery store, maybe…wait…did you say a school?”
“Yes. An elementary school. Why?”
Tal thought for a minute. The end had come very quickly; practically no time to mount an organized defense, and all accounts had the sickness coming on first. That probably meant that people were caught mostly at home when the worst of it started, and if people were getting sick in any great numbers, then it seemed likely school was out too. That meant that maybe there were still buses at the school, and that was a much better idea for getting out of here than on foot.
“Ok…ok…I’ve got an idea. We need to hoof it to that school and see if there are any buses still there for the kids. Is this the closest school for Nofei Prat?” Omar shook his head yes. “Then they probably bused kids from here to there. If we can get one with a full enough tank, we can go…somewhere.”
“Go where, Tal?” Christine asked. “The whole world has gone to shit, you heard Father Alexius, where can we possibly go?”
“I don’t know. Turkey, maybe? There’s a ton of hospitals there, and they are a pretty big player, or they were, in the Middle East. Maybe they got through the worst of it. For God’s sake, there were over 6 billion people before this started, someone has to have made it. But we need to know what we are working with if we are gonna make it anywhere, so do an ammo check.” Tal avoided mentioning the obvious possibility that maybe the only people who made it were sitting in a living room in Nofei Prat wondering just where the hell to go. He was also studiously avoiding talking about Ben. Isabella was all but comatose just now anyway, and scratching at so fresh a wound would serve nothing.
“I lost my rifle on the run here.” said John
Only Tal and Christine had a firearm then, and after both had checked their clips, she had one magazine of 20 rounds, and a half magazine left after the flight. Tal still had his 11 rounds, knowing better than to fire blindly in the dark.
Shit. This isn’t going to get us down the street, much less the next town.
“Ok, let me think. This is Nofei Prat…so we are in a “high priority” area….ok, in 2015 they relaxed some gun laws to allow settlements out in dangerous zones to have gun permits issued to the citizens. It helped fight of ‘lone wolf’ terrorist attacks, or that was the idea anyway. So, we get into a few of these houses and see if we can’t find some weapons first, then we get our asses to that school, yes?”
No one else had anything to say, so Tal took that as confirmation that his plan was good. Or at least as good as they were going to get anyway. Since he and Christine were the only ones armed, he called her over to lay out the plans for breaching the houses and clearing them, leaving the rest to look after Isabella. Once he was satisfied that they would be able to clear each house without shooting one another, he gave John instructions to search the house for food and he and Christine looked out the windows for signs of the undead. Outside was only stillness, the mournful sounds of scavenger birds only occasionally breaking the silence. Nodding once to Christine, and then to John who would close the door and replace the couch behind them, Tal slowly turned the knob, looked through the crack out into the street, and went out with Christine following closely after.
Once the door was closed and barricaded again, John proceeded into the kitchen to find what supplies he could. Nasir stole furtive glances at Isabella, the whole time listening to the sounds of John rifling through drawers and cabinets. Isabella simply sat on the couch, her face stained with dirt and the tracks of her tears, her long dark hair hanging limp and disheveled along the sides of her face. Her hands were in her lap, and she was methodically picking at the skin around her thumbnail. She had already lost her mother, the world had gone insane, and the last person who she knew and loved had died protecting a Palestinian boy he hadn’t even known. The guilt sat on Nasir like boulder on his heart.
“Isabella…”he began in halting English, Omar looked up and the face he gave Nasir seemed to say ‘not now’, but he couldn’t keep his silence any longer “Isabella…I’m so sorry. Ben saved my life, and I….I promise you now, though I know it does
little for you, that I will…kafa… repay…I will repay your father’s bravery and kindness if it is the last thing I do.”
Isabella slowly raised her head to look at Nasir, her eyes were red rimmed and her breathing sounded like barely restrained sobs trying to escape. She looked as though she had become possessed of some zār intent on wasting the girl away to nothing but tears and memory.
“It should have been you. You were no one to him. You are no one to me. Who are you that a good man should die for you to live? If you ever speak to me again, I will kill you myself. I will finish what that monster started.” And just as slowly, she let her hollow eyed gaze simply drift back to her lap before lowering her forehead to her arms and weeping quietly. Hot tears welled up in Nasir’s eyes and he stood and walked upstairs to hide them from his uncle.
Omar knew it would take time and that she probably hadn’t meant what she’d said, but the young were always slow to understand and quick to blame. That had been his younger brother’s problem too, what had driven him to become a martyr for his faith. It was always easier to look at a single person, country, culture, religion or idea and say, ‘if not for you,
everything would be perfect’, but only the older people understood…nothing ever comes from nothing.
Palestine would still have its whole country if it wasn’t for the Israelis and their allies who had taken it, true. But then again, Palestine wouldn’t have been Palestine if the Ottoman’s hadn’t taken it from the Persians, who took it from Rome, and they from the Persians who had taken it the first time from the Babylonians, who took it from the Jews after they regained it from Egypt who had enslaved the first Semitic peoples so long ago that the original settlers of the Land of Israel probably shared little with its current inhabitants. Nothing ever came from nothing, and every war in this land could be traced back to the war just before it; every problem to the previous solution, but the memories of people are short enough when they wanted them to be. Facts would get lost in emotions, slights real and perceived would outgrow kindness, and newspapers practically lived on strife. And the land itself… it just sat there. Never caring one bit for who sat whose ass where. Isabella would blame Nasir for Ben, for now, but eventually she’d
understand that it was the undead that had killed him, not Omar’s nephew. And just like the dirt and rocks of their shared homeland, the dead wouldn’t care one bit for who blamed who, as long as they could eat.
Omar got up and went into the kitchen to help John, leaving both youths to go their own way, and be with their own thoughts, for the time being. No words he could offer would help until they were ready to listen anyway, but he could be of use in gathering supplies. John was still going through a large cupboard, cans of food lined up on the counter top, when Omar walked in.
“John,” he spoke in a low tone to avoid any roving undead from possibly hearing him, “how are the stores of this place?”
“Not bad. Not great, but not bad. A decent amount of canned food, and there are a few apples that haven’t started to rot. I guess GMO’s aren’t all bad after all. Should probably cut them though, don’t want the dead to hear us chomping down on them.”
Knowing that the dead hunted by sound, one couldn’t be too careful, so Omar set about to find a paring knife in the drawers. A medium sized cupboard off to his right, finished in a light golden stain, looked like a promising place to start. He rifled quietly through the drawers to find only linens and decorative cloth napkins, but when he opened the larger cabinet drawer he was greeted with a whole host of kitchen implements. And there, along the back of the cabinet and upheld by a magnetic bar, was a range of blades from cleavers to steak knives.
“John, some of these could be used as weapons, especially the heavier ones….is there a garage? Perhaps I will check in there as well. We should start thinking outside the box, in case they find no firearms. A good stout hammer and these knives would make less noise than a gun, and it’s better than nothing at all.”
John nodded to the garage door in the back corner of the kitchen, through the house’s mud room and Omar set some of the larger knives out while John took a smaller one to cut up the fruit. He remembered reading
somewhere that perishables were the first thing you eat in a survival situation lest it rot and become useless; the canned stuff could be taken with. Omar moved to the door at the back of the kitchen and opened it slowly. Tal and Christine had already cleared the house, but while fortune favors the bold, caution favored the old, and he had plans to get a little older yet. Seeing nothing, he stepped in to look around. After a few moments, and the sound of much rustling, he emerged with a large pipe wrench and a ball peen hammer, which he took into the living room to add to whatever Tal and Christine brought back. Whenever they brought it back.
After the better part of an hour, John had much of the canned food and a can opener stowed into a backpack that Nasir had found in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and Isabella had left to rest upstairs as soon as Nasir had returned, not wanting to be in the same room with him. The three men sat around quietly, the stress of Christine being gone so long clearly beginning to bother John. His leg had begun to bounce on the floor, and as he was beginning to move from anxiety to pure fear, there was a quiet tapping at one of the glass panes of the barricaded door.
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap . “Hey!” Tal’s voice came across as a rough whisper. “Hey, it’s us! Open the door!”
John and Nasir rushed up to move away the detritus of the parlor’s furniture and let Tal and Christine in. The minute she crossed the threshold, Nasir and Tal hurried to put the blockade back in place while John had wrapped Christine in a relieved embrace. After some whispered assurances that she was ok and that she was sorry he’d worried so, John noticed the blood on her and Tal’s clothes and the fact she still held a bloody baseball bat and he a length of pipe dripping viscera.
“There were some stragglers.” said Tal by way of explanation. “We don’t have a lot of ammo to waste and these don’t make as much noise.” He put a black duffle bag with the logo of the local cultural center on it in the middle of the group. Inside were a few pistols, two nine millimeters and a .357 revolver, four loose boxes of ammo, and some heavy hammers. John picked up one of the hammers and hefted it to feel its weight.
“Oh no, big man,” said Tal with a smirk, “I saved the best for you. I know you don’t like guns, so here.” He reached behind his back and pulled out a long hafted axe and handed it to John.
“What the heck is this? Is this a fireman’s axe?!” he asked, eyes wide and the corner of his mouth turning up.
“Yeah. One of the houses we went in, I guess the guy volunteered on a local fire brigade or something. Not a lot else useful there, a couple of helmets and jackets, nothing worth taking for food, and…well…that. I thought you’d like it. It even looks fairly new.”
John examined the weapon from head to haft. It looked like it had seen only light use if any, and the handle was made of some type of high impact plastic. He held it out at full length to feel the weight and balance of it. “I like it very much. This is more my speed anyway.”
“Look, while we were out, we got the lay of the land. Out in the desert, there are starting to be more of the undead roaming around, mostly individuals but there were a few groups of three or four. Thankfully, we are on a ridge line here, and they don’t really seem too coordinated or interested in trying to climb up it, but I can’t say it’ll stay like that if they catch sight or smell of us. We’ve all seen how much more active they become when they’re on…prey. Anyway, we are near the western most edge of the town and Nofei Prat is practically one long street with a cul de sac on one side with more houses and buildings. The streets here are relatively empty, I guess they all went out to investigate the ruckus at the monastery and the fire, or all the noise we made getting here, and either can’t or don’t feel like climbing back up. The road looks clear all the way to Kfar
Adumim. However, the road to Kfar Adumim has a
long stretch where there is nothing on either side and the terrain dips down from there, so we will be sky-lined. We will be visible to whoever or whatever happens to look that way, and then, according to Alexius’ map, I think it’s about a kilometer and a half to the grocery store, but I only saw it briefly.”
“If I remember correctly, “Omar began, “the grocery store is close to the school, so once we get in and get out, we don’t have far to go.”
“Then where? Assuming we make it to the school, and assuming there is a bus which we’ll assume has gas. What’s the plan at that point? Find somewhere more scenic to die?” Asked Isabella, who had quietly slipped down the stairs and snuck up on the group while they were planning.
After a jump shared by all, Tal looked at her and took in the red rimmed eyes and the flat, almost empty, expression. She definitely didn’t look well, or even completely present for that matter.
I’ ve seen that look before. Not good. But the poor girl did just lose everyone.
“Uh hem. Well, I found a map in one of the houses that shows the roads in the area. Guess the family liked to travel. But I think if we take rout 90 up to the Sea of Galilee, we’ll miss most of the huge cities. Still some towns and small cities but there is nothing we can do about that, towns are built on roads and, as the Romans knew, roads are the fastest bet. From there we can split off on 98 and, through a network of roads up through Syria, we can make it to Turkey. Damascus, however, may be a problem. It’s a massive city and all the major roads meet there. We don’t know what shape it’ll be in, but I’d have to guess…it’ll be bad.”
“How far to Damascus?” asked Christine.
“Over 300 kilometers. Yeah…we got ground to cover.”
“May I see the map?” asked Omar. Tal unfolded it from a back pocket and laid it out on the low coffee table in the center of the room. Routes that the family had either taken or planed to take, probably for a vacation or a day trip that now would never happen, were marked out in yellow and orange highlighter. “Why do we not turn at Beit She’an? It’s closer than the Sea of Galilee and we can go across on 71. Less towns that way.”
Seven Days Dead Page 11
