Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible)

by Stant Litore

  There were levites on the ground among the tents now—their white robes gashed open and reddened with blood. She ran faster, leaping over the bodies, breathing hard, a stitch in her side. Then she was around the last of the priests’ tents, and she could see the Tent of Meeting and the scorched earth around it and high on its pole near the Tent, the ram’s horn, the shofar, untouched, no alarm blown. Had there been no time?

  Several northern men were dismounted by the pole, and one was bent over the body of a fallen priest. Zadok and another nazarite were fighting to get into the Tent, the door barred by a lean man whose face was turned away from her; the man held a bronze blade and a round shield. Zadok lunged in with his spear, but the man caught the spear on the edge of his shield and spun the shield in one quick, smooth motion, ripping the spear out of Zadok’s grasp and sending it clattering away. The other nazarite had only a knife in his hand, and he danced in place, awaiting an opening.

  Devora had only a moment to take in the scene—the battle at the door, great gashes in the side of the tent, the body in the dirt, and the men moving away from the pole now to flank Zadok—when there was a bellow like a bull’s voice to her left, and her husband leapt around one of the tents with a tent pole uplifted in his hands. Lappidoth ran at the men and drove the end of the pole into one’s face, sending the man sprawling limp some distance away. He spun the pole at another man’s head, but the man ducked. Then Devora was at her husband’s side, screaming loud enough to drown out her fear, and they were facing three from the northern tribes, tall, lean men wielding staves of cedar. They carried no shields; those staves served them for both attack and defense. The blade wavered in her grip; these were living men, men of the People, and she had only once before in her life raised Mishpat against another’s life. But these men meant to kill her husband. They meant to defile the Tent of Meeting, had defiled it. And they meant to kill Lappidoth.

  Everything in her went cold.

  She swung the blade.

  The eyes of the men facing her widened in horror at the sight of this white-robed levite woman bearing down on them with a blade of iron that seemed not of this land or any other, slender metal, a white slice of death such as they had only seen perhaps in the hands of men of the Sea Coast during raids from the walled towns in the west. The strangeness of the sight and the hesitation it provoked was lethal; Devora’s blade slashed across the face of the man in the middle. A spray of blood, some of it spattered warm across Devora’s neck and her cheek. The navi’s heart was pounding. She screamed again and swept the blade down at the legs of the man to the right, even as Lappidoth blocked the man’s club from striking her; the iron blade slid through sinew and bone as though they were milk, and the man crumpled with a shrill cry.

  As her husband faced the last of the three, Devora caught a glimpse of the Tent of the Meeting past the enemy’s shoulder. The second nazarite lay still on the ground, a pool of blood beneath his head. Zadok had taken up the fallen man’s knife and was dancing to the left, then the right, with the kind of grace one sees in desert asps or in the lethal mamba of Kemet, the serpent that strikes unseen from the trees. But Zadok could not get within the northern man’s reach; the man’s war braid and the colored stones he’d woven into his belt declared him a chieftain of men, one who had survived many harsh raids in the north. In less time than the beat of a heart, Devora’s eyes took in the nazarite’s peril and the great cuts in the side of the holy Tent.

  The Tent had been violated; there was at least one man within who had not been consecrated or prepared to enter the shekinah and who dared to bear sharp bronze before Holy God. Yet no fire blazed from the Tent to wither the northern man where he stood, which Devora couldn’t understand. But then, these were not strangers in the land who raided the Tent but men who partook of the Covenant and the promise. Perhaps God, whose ways were not the ways of men and women who walk on the earth, was waiting for his Hebrews to clean up the evil of their own. She didn’t have time to think of it—it was only a silent cry of astonished horror in her mind.

  Other northern men had emerged from among the tents to the right, one with a bloodied spear. Devora sprang away from her husband and his opponent, bolted the few steps to the pole by the Tent. She reached up for the peg from which hung the shofar, the curved ram’s horn, the voice of the People’s need or the People’s might. Snatched it from its peg and lifted it to her lips. Blew on it the t’qiah, the notes of challenge and alarm.

  The call was deep and clear; after a moment the call seemed to return, doubled, from the slopes of the hills.

  There were shouts in the camp. And footsteps, white-robed men rallying to the Tent at the call of the horn. Somewhere, a woman’s scream. Hannah, the midwife. That was Hannah’s voice.

  There was no time for thought or judgment, only action. Devora ran toward the other northern men who were closing on Zadok and her husband, looping the shofar about her neck by its leather cord as she ran. She brought Mishpat up, and the blade was slender and violent like a scream out of God’s mind in the desert. She knew no art of its use, but she was furious and desperate, and one of the men fell back before the rage in her eyes, and the other took the blade across his right shoulder and spun to his left and dropped to his knees, where Devora’s sandalled foot took him in the face.

  Then a third man was before her with a club in either hand, and the navi was slashing the blade in great strokes through the air that made her arms ache and left her open and vulnerable had she known it. But the other man simply avoided her strokes and did not strike, his eyes round with astonishment. Perhaps he guessed she was the navi; perhaps it was only that he found himself met in the dance of spears by a woman and didn’t know what to do. But then other men of the camp were behind Devora and at her side, and the northern man fell back. Powerful arms wrapped around Devora from behind, pinning her own upper arms so that she could hardly swing the blade. She screamed and kicked back at her assailant. Heard a rough, low voice in her ear. “Easy, Devora, easy. It’s over, it’s over.”

  Lappidoth.

  She collapsed back in his arms, panting for air, and Mishpat hung limp at her side. She was shaking. She just let his arms hold her for a moment, then the reality of what had happened seized her. “The Ark!” she cried.

  Lappidoth released her, and she turned to the Tent. Zadok stood there with a shallow cut along his cheek, his hand gripped fierce about the invader’s throat. Somehow he had gotten past the enemy’s blade and taken the man’s throat in his hand and wrenched him from his feet. Now the man had been forced to his knees, and the nazarite loomed over him, squeezing his throat, his other hand holding the man’s right wrist at a cruel angle, though the northerner stubbornly clung to his sword’s hilt and would not drop it.

  With a start, Devora realized she knew the man.

  Nimri.

  This was Nimri, that chieftain of Naphtali who had spoken so scornfully by the cairns, before the Sabbath. Her heart went hard and cold.

  Zadok’s eyes were those of a killer, but in a moment, two of the camp’s other three surviving nazarites were beside him, and they pulled Zadok loose, muttering low words in his ears. One of them then kicked the invader onto his back, then held him down with a foot over his throat while his companion disarmed him. Zadok stood silently by, his eyes still hot with rage, his hands flexing as though it were taking all his will to keep from leaping upon Nimri and choking away his life.

  But Devora spared the men little attention, for now she could see through the wide door of the Tent of Meeting.

  And what she saw winded her.

  Within, the altar had been toppled to the side, and two northern men lay slain beside it. A white-robed priest knelt by them, clutching his belly from which a darkness flowed that could only be his life leaving him. A spear lay discarded to the side, its bronze head wet with the priest’s blood. In his hand, the dying priest still held the flint knife that was used in preparing sacrifices for the altar; this morning, it had sacrificed onl
y the two northern men who lay dead within. Beyond the priest was the veil that concealed the kodesh kodashim, the Holy of Holies, from the eyes of those who hadn’t been consecrated to meet God face-to-face like a lover. But the veil had been ripped aside, like a rape. Through the tear, Devora could see the Ark of the Covenant tipped on its side and its lid fallen away, revealing the scrolls of the Law and the two stone tablets on which were chiseled, durable as the land itself, the words of the Ten.

  The bleeding man turned toward the door, but even before she could see his face, Devora could tell who he was from the hoshen mishpat he wore.

  “Eleazar!”

  The priest’s eyes showed recognition; then he swayed and fell.

  In another moment Devora was within the Tent, despite the sacrilege of it; she knelt and lifted Eleazar’s head to her lap and cupped his face in her hands, her heart stricken with ice. This was the high priest of her People, struck down by a spear within the very walls of the Tent of God. Those walls stirred loudly in the wind, and the veil fluttered, a fragile thing.

  “No,” Devora said, her voice thick. “Oh no.”

  Eleazar’s gaze lifted, focused on her though dull with pain. “Ark,” he gasped. “They wanted the Ark. Told them. Law forbade. Ark can only go—where all the tribes go. Not just two or three.”

  “Shh,” Devora whispered, and brushed strands of lank, sweaty hair away from his face. “Don’t talk. Just rest, kohen. Just rest. Until Hannah is here.”

  His mouth worked a moment without words. Then: “No time. Your vision. The dead. You must go. Where God needs you to be.”

  “Please don’t talk,” Devora said, desperate. She took cloth and pressed it to his wound, but the dark blood kept pulsing out. He was dying. Devora felt a firm hand on her shoulder and didn’t need to glance up to know Lappidoth was there with her, silent and strong behind her. As he had always been.

  “My sons,” Eleazar rasped. “In Beth El camp. Send for them.”

  “We will,” Devora said, gripping his hand tightly.

  Gazing past Devora’s shoulder as if at the sky, Eleazar gasped, “Don’t let the People be—eaten—or—or burned—”

  Devora didn’t understand, but she nodded. Everything in her felt wrung tight.

  “Sh’ma,” Eleazar forced the words out. “Sh’ma Yisrael adonai eloheinu, adonai echad.” Hear O Israel, Adonai our God, Adonai is One. A Hebrew’s death prayer, since the time in the desert. Speaking it, Eleazar was saying, I may die, but I die in service to Holy God, as my fathers did before me. You who live, see that you do likewise.

  The breath left his body in a long sigh that stopped abruptly. A sound more terrible in its way than the moans of the dead. Devora stared down at him. He was gone. The high priest of Israel. Gone. She’d been too late. Once again, as on that other night three decades before, when there’d been fire in the tents and many who’d mattered to her had perished, she’d come too late.

  Gently Devora laid the priest back on the bloodstained rugs that floored the Tent. She took his left hand and placed it on his chest, then brought his right up to join it. Even as she did, another woman entered on silent feet and knelt across the body from her, then took the priest’s face in her hands. This other woman was weeping breathlessly. It was Hannah. She too had arrived too late.

  “He is dead, Hannah,” Devora said gently. “You mustn’t touch the body. When it cools, he’ll be unclean.”

  Hannah shook her head, her eyes wet with her tears.

  Devora lowered her head, her own grief rising within her like a wind. She and Eleazar had never been close, though they had shared a bond, as had all the survivors of that terrible night so many years ago. The bond that all the old shared, that none of the young could truly understand. Devora had seen the others who had lived through that night die in recent years, of old age or disease or weariness. Maybe a day would come when only she would be left. She alone.

  As she looked down, her gaze caught on Eleazar’s breast-piece and the stones placed within it. The stones on which were carved the names of the tribes, and the other two stones. The urim, dark as a horse’s eyes, and the thummim, pale like dead flesh. Gently, reverently, Devora lifted those two from the breast-piece; Hannah, lost in her weeping, didn’t appear to notice. For a moment she held them in her hand. The stones were very small. They were rarely used.

  “Does your hand still cover Israel?” the navi whispered.

  She cast the stones. Letting them roll across the rugs within the Tent. Held her breath as she waited to see which would stop rolling first.

  The two stones rolled.

  The urim settled, dark on the earth-colored threads. The thummim, the “no” stone, rolled a little farther.

  Devora let her breath out slowly.

  The urim had stopped first.

  The “yes” stone.

  The answer was yes.

  She rose and picked up the stones. One, then the next. Held them in her hand, pressed them to her lips. She needed a moment, just a moment. She was shaking.

  The answer had been yes.

  Her fist tightened until her nails dug into her palm and she felt she could feel the urim and thummim pressing right against her bones, through her skin. She drew in a fresh breath with a hiss. God still covered his People. Provisionally, perhaps, but God was still here. Still here.

  Hannah’s weeping behind her was quiet.

  Devora could act again with the authority of God’s navi. And action and judgment would be needed. For a great violation of the Covenant had been committed.

  Devora rose stiffly to her feet and left the tent, emerging into the morning sun. The shofar still hung about her throat, Mishpat in her right hand. She gazed numbly at the blood on the iron. She’d meant to wield Mishpat against the unclean dead, not the living. Wind tugged at the slashed sides of the Tent before her, though within the recesses of the Tent the veil hung limp, gashed and still, as though that veil were God’s hymen, torn and then held to be of little value. A flicker of heat lit somewhere on the cold plain of her grief and grew until the flames consumed her heart. Lappidoth spoke to her, but she did not hear him. She saw Zadok standing near and she said quietly, “Take me to him.”

  The nazarite nodded, his face still hard with violence. He turned and led the way, and heeding neither Hannah’s weeping nor the cries of the wounded, Devora moved through the camp. Rage burning in her heart. She did not even feel her husband’s gaze on her.

  She found Nimri held out in the heather beyond the Tent, between two nazarites who had pulled him away from the camp as though he were unclean. Now he stood among the purple blossoms, and the wind tugged at his hair. He hardly seemed to notice Devora approaching, but when he saw Zadok, he spat like a cat. The other two nazarites gazed at the navi with something in their eyes that she had never seen there before. Awe, perhaps. Devora’s long, silvered hair bannered in the wind; her white gown, though dirtied and splashed with blood, billowed about her legs in a way that suggested a mighty bird swooping through the heather. The shofar about her neck, Mishpat held out bloodied at her side.

  Devora stopped when she stood before Nimri, her eyes hot with fury.

  “Whose command?” she demanded. “Who sent you here?”

  Nimri lifted his chin. He’d been bruised about the face, and the marks of Zadok’s fingers were dark on his throat. “Go home to your tent, woman.”

  “I am the navi of Israel, Nimri! Why are you here?” Her voice cracked sharp as a lash in the air.

  He watched her a moment, a brooding look in his eyes. “Asking for the Ark.”

  For an instant there was only the wind in the heather.

  “You might try leaving your spears behind when you ask,” Devora said. “Where is Barak?”

  “He’s left for the north, woman.” Nimri sneered at her. “I’m to meet him there at Walls, with you and the Ark.”

  “Left? This morning?” It made no sense. His camp was only a few miles away. Surely he would have waited an hour o
r two for Nimri to return.

  “Yesterday.”

  Devora cried out, enraged. “On the Sabbath! Has he forgotten the whole Covenant?”

  “What does a woman know of the Covenant?” Nimri’s voice went quiet with menace. “Judgment, of either Barak or the dead, is for men to decide. You have no place here. Get back to your husband’s tent.”

  Devora struck him.

  His head whipped back, and then he looked at her with rage-darkened eyes and blood on his lip. His face reddening. Devora held his gaze, her eyes hard. “I speak a navi’s judgment and a navi’s curse,” she said, and at the words, a little color left the man’s face.

  Devora’s words welled from some hot pool of fury within her, and heat washed through her body, the heat that had always presaged for her the nearness of God and the nearness of the future. Her voice hard as the tablets in the Ark on which were chiseled the Covenant of their People. “You will come once at each planting and once at each harvest to Shiloh. You will come on foot, without sandals or waterskin, relying on the mercy of the levites to give you water to drink and oils for your feet. You will bring to them a white bull, without blemish, and beg the priest to sacrifice it for you, to atone for this day’s evil. You will do this year after year, until the priests release you.”

  She drew in a hissing breath. “That is my judgment.” Her voice rose, shrill and cold. “This is my curse. Nimri ben Nabaoth, until the priests release you, you will take up no spear nor blade nor any implement of metal, nor any bludgeon, nor so much as lift your hand to strike another man. The instant you do, your hand will wither and your whole body will be struck with the white sickness—for with your own hand you struck down a priest of our God. And my friend.” For he had been. She knew in this moment that he had been. However uneasy they had at times been with each other.

  Devora was almost shrieking the words now, the heat of the future, of prophecy and curse, crackling along her skin, making her hairs rise. Nimri’s face had gone white. “You will be a leper, unclean, begging at the roadside with stumps where your hands were. Your manhood will decay and fall off. You will be spat upon by all who are true to their Covenant. I, Devora, the navi, who sees what God sees, I speak this curse. Whatever covenants you made with Barak ben Abinoam, you must abide the consequences of their breaking, for you will never again march with other armed men.”