Seven Days Dead

by Christopher Johnson

  “What do you think it is, Elana? What makes them come back?” asked John as Elana gave him his dose.

  “Well,” she began hesitatingly, “I don’t truly know. I mean it certainly behaves viral, infecting someone from a bite or if they were to ingest enough infected fluids…but at the same time it’s not. The brain is obviously torn apart, like rabies does to animals or syphilis in humans eventually does. And it moves fast like a virus, even if it is on an order of magnitude that I’ve never seen before. But with viruses, there are only two outcomes: the host kills the virus or the virus kills the host. Maybe this mutated, like good pathogens tend to do, to finally figure a way around that little issue.”

  “But how could a virus do this? Doesn’t the host need to be…you know…alive?”

  “Well, yes. But everything that lives on this planet has the ability to mutate, so who knows? Toxoplasma gondii parasites have been known to alter the brain chemistry of rats so that they seek out cats. The cat eats the rat and the toxoplasma gets into the cat’s system, which is the only host it can reproduce in. There have even been studies that have shown some viruses can reactivate the nuclei of dead eukaryote cells to become virus making plants.

  Some viruses have been known to ‘decide’ whether to kill a host immediately or stay in a latent status, and bacteria have been found to communicate with one another through molecular secretions. Or, if you took away the brains ability to produce serotonin, we would turn into raving violent monsters. That’s the thing about mutations, it’s almost always new. We don’t have recurring mutations that are not beneficial to the organism because they get weeded out by natural selection, and every now and again something never before seen hits the stage.”

  John thought about it for a moment.

  “Ok, so what about the eating people? Where does that even fit in?”

  “Everything needs to eat. It’s one of our basic drives. If the higher order functions of the brain get damaged enough, then all that’s left is ‘Eat. Sleep. Reproduce.’ And I had been thinking about that myself. I’m not virologist by any stretch and I’ve had absolutely no ability to actually study the phenomenon…but I have a theory. What if the virus needs protein to live? Needs it like we need water or air. But if it fed off of the protein in the host, it would wither and die, taking the virus with it. So, in a practically ingenious paradox, it kills the host first so as not to mistake the host for food and somehow taps into the central nervous system. We run off of bioelectricity essentially, so if this virus found a way to eat protein and secrete a chemical that produced a bioelectric signal…we would basically be dead, cannibalistic marionettes. Of course that assumes that this virus, if indeed it is one, is somehow…sentient. Which would normally be insane to suggest, if there weren’t dead, cannibalistic marionettes actually and physically running about the whole world. In that scenario, insane is the order of the day and all bets are off.”

  “I think I much prefer the days when my most pressing concern was protecting my crops from wheat stem rust.” John said, getting up and walking to the back of the bus where his wife was trying to learn the names of the children.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It had been settled. With everyone safely on the bus, the group decided to go back through Ma’agan and back around the Sea of Galilee. Once the bus had entered back into the town, the undead once again assailed the vehicle. Elana and the children started to panic, but Christine assured her that the bus was built to sustain much more vigorous attacks and was already battle proven with the undead. The children hid under the seats none the less. Once again they traveled along Route 90, this time in the opposite direction, and after John had navigated the second traffic circle in that direction the view opened up.

  The bright blue waters of the Sea could be seem flitting between the trees one moment, and the next the greenery dropped away and the shore was laid bare. Christine stood and moved to the right side of the bus, one hand over her heart and the other placed against the window as though to touch the waters. Here, finally, was the Sea of Galilee, spread out before her like the blue folds of Christ’s garments. For a moment she could see the old boats of the Galileans plying the waters and her mind’s eye showed her the Apostles laughing as they cast the net once more over the right side of their boat, heeding their Lord’s command. The dun hills on these shores had born witness to the life of Jesus, and now that she had seen the place where He and his Twelve had been, she felt a semblance of peace.

  The Sea once more receded from view and the bus took a soft left hand turn into Kinneret. Kinneret was a small community, organized as a kibbutz, and was pretty standard as far as settlements in this area go.

  Some few undead chased the bus, but none got close enough to touch it. It’s only notable oddity was a tree that had been placed along the Goren side of 767 as though it were on display. Before long, the bus had once more passed from the small town and found itself back in the desert surround. Farms blanketed the country side, rows of crops that folk would never harvest swaying gently in the desert breeze. Eventually the road led them to Yavne’el a larger town than Kinneret with more modern housing.

  The gardens and lawns had been well cared for in the neighborhoods they had passed and Tal told them of Rabbi Eliezer Shlomo Schick, a Breslov Hasidim who had lived in the town until 2015. Even though Tal had not been very religious since leaving the Maglan, he had picked up a copy one day of Rabbi Nachman’s Sefer HaMiddot, and had felt a particular pull towards the Rabbi’s views on anger and chastisement. The undead were more plentiful here, and once again the children took cover beneath the seats while the creatures dashed themselves against the sides of the armored bus to no avail.

  They passed a small gas station, but the pack of undead following them and the crazed beasts that flew out from the sides of the road made stopping to scavenge impossible. 767 took them through the remainder of the town without much incident. Along the side of the road, a green swath of grass marked with occasional decorative stones evaporated suddenly, and the rolling hills between Yavne’el and Kafr Kama ululated before them. A large brown sign below a white one claiming Kafr Kama was

  approaching, labeled the town a Circassan Heritage site.

  “What are ‘Circassan’s’?” Nasir asked.

  Tal smiled a little, remembering the boys intense dislike for all the Israeli folk at the monastery before he’d lost the hatred on the road.

  “Sunni Muslims, mostly from Russia. They were persecuted and hunted by the Czarist Russians and were eventually driven from their homeland. Some of them sought sanctuary in Israel during the time of the Ottomans, and even fought with us during the War of Independence. They even serve in the IDF.”

  “Truly?” the boy asked.

  “Truly. Or they did, at any rate.”

  “Would that we all knew more of things

  like this. Perhaps we might have learned from it.” He mused.

  The road passed through only the outskirts of the town, and for the most part they were unmolested. As they came near to the residential area on the other side of the community center, however, many of the city’s undead began to rush from the houses and launched themselves over the guard rail and into the side of the bus. The impact on the sides did nothing to the bus’ heavy armor, but one of the undead cracked a window with its skull. The crack was small and the window held, covered with gore and brain matter; but for the first time the group was made aware that although the bus was safer than other modes of transport, they were not invulnerable.

  Just on the outskirts of town, they did find a little gas station in front of a restaurant. The group scavenged through the gas station store for bottles of water and any food items they could find. Christine stayed on the bus with the children this time, being the only other member of the group with a firearm, and they had decided to forego looking through the restaurant.

  It was working on two weeks now since things had gone to hell, and that probably meant that most of the food had spoil
ed and was no longer worth the effort. Plus, even though they were about a half mile outside of town, a half mile wasn’t far enough from the town’s current inhabitants to risk taking too long in the building. They had gathered everything they could in the few minutes Tal allotted for the search and boarded back onto the bus to head toward Kfar Tavor. The open, flat expanses of farmland had long since replaced the open, flat expanse of desert, so when the summit of Mount Tabor burst from the landscape heralding their arrival at Kfar Tavor the group was momentarily startled.

  Mount Tabor was known to all three faiths of the area, and had long been the site of battles in practically every age. The fact that the mount commanded such a position in an otherwise flat geography had made it a strategic necessity from the time of Barak of Nephtali, through Napoleon Bonaparte, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Many Christians believe it to be the site of Christ’s Transfiguration.

  The mount would offer no such

  advantages to the survivors, though as it was here in Kfar Tavor that they would leave 767 and head north on Route 65. The right side of 767 into Kfar Tavor was all open land without a large number of houses, and after navigating a traffic circle and making it on to 65, the bus was hidden by a hedgerow for a distance. Only a very few of the undead came out to greet the bus, presumably either farther south in the more urban areas of Kfar Tavor, or perhaps having been mostly driven westward to the larger town of Daburiyya and its surrounds. As the bus made its way up 65 toward Ilaniya, the specter of black smoke once more rose from the skyline beyond Mount Tabor.

  “Nazareth burns.” Was all Omar offered at the sight, and Tal felt a familiar chill crawl up his spine.

  They left the city of Mount Tabor without further issue and within minutes had passed through the small town of Ilaniya, where the seed idea for the kibbutz was first made reality. The clover leaf where the junction of 65 and 77 met was mostly clear, a couple of wrecked autos along the sides, and John exited with little issue. 77 itself, however, was not in such great condition. The cities of Tur’an and Nazareth were close off the road, and together had boasted a population over 200,000 people before the end had come. The side roads coming from Tur’an were choked with the wreckage of all manner of vehicles, the inhabitants likely trying to flee to the highway as fast as they could and colliding on the smaller back roads, further choking the exits beyond use. The road was mostly still banked on either side by open agricultural fields, but the number of roving undead was much greater than any of the other highways heretofore.

  There were a few occasions where John had to use the bus to nudge a derelict car that had been abandoned out of the way, the back or front end just sticking into the road enough to be a bother. This close to Route 77, only the northern most parts of Nazareth and its surrounds were of concern, and even then it was the barest part of Kafr Kana that the survivors even saw. Thankfully the middle of 77 in this area had a fence along the median which kept much of the dead from Kafr Kana at bay, the occasional lost soul finding an opening in the fence or coming from the northern side of the road to beat pointlessly on the armored bus’ sides. They passed the junction where 77 met 754 into Kafr Kana and the town spread before them, creeping across the face of the hills but momentarily. Then, just like that, the mounds and hills that bordered the highway rose back up, and the town where Jesus had turned water into wine had vanished. The road was fairly wide here, a four lane highway with a concrete median running down the middle.

  Before very long, they came across a decent sized gas station near the Memorial Monument to the Bedouin Warriors. It was nearing late afternoon, the time spent with Elana once they’d found her and the trip through Galilee up to here had taken much longer than it should. They were also back down to around a half tank of gas, so when the station came into sight, Tal opted to stop for the evening. Nazareth and its nearby cities were far enough away that stragglers were unlikely, especially since this area was known not only for the Bedouin Warrior monument but the HaSolelim Forest Reserve. Even though the reserve wasn’t huge by the standards of the Americans (where national forests were on the order of

  Yellowstone or the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area; preserves whose combined acreage would be just slightly smaller than the entirety of Israel itself), it still provided enough of a buffer to keep the undead

  disinterested. If they could clear and secure the doors to the gas station, they could stay the night and perhaps avail themselves of whatever food was left over, before continuing on to Acre. Shefar’am was still between them and their destination, and it had long become the smart choice to never go near a larger city or town in the dark. They could decide if they wanted to try and siphon any diesel from the tanks, and if they decided to do so, could finish in the morning.

  John pulled into the parking lot, entirely empty of vehicles, and Tal gathered the usual suspects to clear the structure. Since they were still in relative proximity to some large cities, Tal had John stay with the bus and kept the engine running. Even if they cleared the building and decided to stay the night with no issues, John could maneuver the bus to cover the front windows of the station and provide them with a quick means of escape without having to expose themselves running for the vehicle. After the obligatory look around, Tal asked Elana to tell the children to wait with John since only she spoke their particular dialect of South Syrian Arabic, and he and Christine readied their weapons. John pulled the bus up so that the vehicle’s door was directly across from the station door, and removed the fire extinguisher before the team exited. Tal went first, followed by Nasir, who had taken John’s axe, and Omar. Christine took rear guard at the back end of the bus. The station was small and there were only two other doors, one exiting out the back by the restrooms and one leading into an annex attached to the station proper; both were easily locked and blockaded with spare shelving from the few aisles.

  John took the time to look around as the team was ensuring the safety of their latest temporary shelter. The sun was still above the horizon and shining directly into the front window, though it wouldn’t be for very much longer, and he pulled the visor down to shield his eyes. As the sun sank slowly it threw long shadows from various light posts and antennae eastward along the highway, the few buildings atop the foothills of the Tir’an Mountains in the distance were unconcerned and bereft of shade. There were no undead in sight, though that wasn’t entirely surprising given where they were, but John still jumped in his seat when Christine tapped on the door of the bus to let him know the building was clear. He eased the bus forward until the door was almost right up against the wall, the locking mechanism having been broken since Kfar Adumim, and the rear of the bus just covered the front windows. He’d left enough space for himself and the children to squeeze between the bus and the wall once they’d exited out the back emergency door, which thankfully still had an operating lock bar.

  Once inside, the group staked out places to sleep, mostly near the counter or behind the sparsely filled shelves. There was very little chance the undead would see them, if any even made it out this way; nor would they be able to easily fit between the bus and wall or get through the makeshift barricade of the front door, but they were still all uneasy of being too visible. Most of the inventory had been ransacked, likely by panicked motorists trying to get anywhere but where they were, and the bread products had already started to mold. The group subsisted mostly on sugary treats, warm soda and the odd can of kashrut food. The bathrooms were still clean, and it seemed that there was still water pressure in the pipes which was no small miracle, so for the first time in a while the group used operational toilets and cleaned themselves with sinks of cold water.

  “You clean up decently, when you’re not waiving a handgun at a girl’s head,” Elana said when Tal emerged from his turn in the

  restrooms.

  He smiled sheepishly and said nothing, though John gave him a quick jab with his elbow as Tal passed him by. After that, Elana spent most of the evening tending to the
wounds that the kids had from before their flight from the hospital. Even though he had been a great asset in their current situation, the sight of children wounded in a war they had no part or say in served to further galvanize his resolve that he’d been right to leave the army. After all he’d learned about his service, he could never be completely sure that there weren’t children who bore the wounds of some of his actions

  somewhere in this slice of the world. He moved to Elana’s side and helped dress the kids wounds with supplies from the ambulance’s supplies. Elana noted how skilled he was with bandages, as well as the scars on his hands and arms, and thought it was probably best to thank him for his help and not ask too many questions. The other members of the group paired off naturally, John and Christine, Omar and Nasir; the sun was setting and no lights were available once the night fell. Not that they would use them if they had them, advertising their presence to the undead as surely as any gunshot. Conversations were kept at a hushed tone, and movement was restricted which Tal made double sure with Elana that the children understood. Sleep took them one by one, the promise of uneasy dreams in the night, and a city which had previously house over 40,000 people followed, hopefully, by an ocean voyage to an uncertain future just on the other side of morning.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The sun had risen about an hour ago, and Elana had found a pack of cigarettes not too badly damaged or stale behind the counter. She had quit several years ago, her then boyfriend gave her such a hard time over being a doctor (“You’re supposed to know better!”) and a smoker. Obviously she wasn’t going to light up last night, the cherry from the cigarette or the smell would have been a dead give away, but this morning was a different story.

  They had all woken up with relatively high spirits, even the children seemed to be excited though that may have been because they’d gone from one person with one old cheap rifle to six people with more impressive weaponry.