Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible)

by Stant Litore

  She had just reached the shadows of the terebinths in their line behind the girls’ tent when she felt a strong arm about her waist. The soft laugh behind her, a laugh she recognized, stilled a momentary panic. In a moment she was pulled up against a firm, male body, her heart wild within her. She had just time to glimpse his face and gasp before the nazarite covered her lips with his, and the shock of the kiss rushed through her like fire and flood. A weakness came over her that was almost like drowsiness, but beneath it there was a thrill and a heat tightening up deep within her. She yielded willingly to the kiss, so many feelings rushing into her and through her, like cattle stampeding through a grove, the force of their passage tugging the leaves from the lower branches and sending them whirling about. After a few moments she found herself gazing up at his face, her lips still parted. Hardly enough air.

  He smiled.

  “You are pretty,” he murmured. “Sleep well tonight.” He cupped her cheek in his warm hand, and she just stared up at his face, blushing, because it was unlike her to have nothing to say. Then he kissed her again and she made a small, soft sound as he did, overwhelmed by the taste and scent of him and the strong, uncompromising way he held her. Then he released her, brushed the tip of her nose with his lips, and moved away through the dusk beneath the terebinths, leaving her standing alone, shaking a little. The cicadas were louder than anything she’d ever heard, and she could see every shadow and every patch of dim light beneath the trees cut as sharp as though the world had been made only moments before. She lifted her fingertips to her lips. Her body still felt warm and weak. This wasn’t anything like how Hannah had described kissing in her stories in the moon tent.

  It occurred to Devora as she stood beneath the terebinths that if this nazarite asked for her, she would be his second wife. She knew he had a wife whom he went to visit each Sabbath, an afternoon’s walk from here at the encampment of Beth El. A woman of Manasseh tribe that Zefanyah’s father had bought for him after his mitzvah. He might even have children; Devora wasn’t sure. She would have to find out; surely the woman would come to Shiloh soon for the Feast of Tents. She felt a little unease, but she had never expected to have a husband. No man in the camp had spoken for her before, and she had no father to provide a dowry. This kiss was new—and unexpected.

  She wondered if she was pretty.

  Even as all of these new joys and anxieties rushed through her like wine and water, Devora lifted her eyes and saw the navi walking between the tents with two other women of the camp. A heat rushed through her that was nothing at all like the warmth she’d felt deep in her belly when Zefanyah had held her and pressed his lips to hers. This heat scorched her and dried her out and left her pale and faint. Then the vision came, and the shock of it was too great. After a moment she slid to the ground, fainting.

  A touch on Devora’s shoulder woke her, and she came to with a cry of panic. Old Naomi was seated beside her, her brown face wrinkled and furrowed like a freshly plowed field.

  “Calm yourself, girl,” Naomi said. Her voice was firm and had a hard edge to it, though it wasn’t unkind.

  The navi touched Devora’s brow, and her hand was dry.

  Above her, the cicadas seemed loud as thunder.

  Devora drew in great swallows of air.

  “Why did you faint?”

  “I grew dizzy,” Devora said. “And afterward I fell.”

  “Your flesh was hot as coals when I reached your side. But now you are cool. There’s no fever.”

  Devora moistened her lips with her tongue, for they felt so dry they must crack.

  “You saw something, girl.”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  Naomi watched her a moment, her eyes hard and unrevealing. At last she made a small noise of assent. “Do you know what it is like to be the navi?” she asked.

  Devora shook her head.

  “God terrifies us all. The kohannim do not dare to take off their sandals and step onto the holy ground within the Tent unless they’ve first washed for seven days.” Naomi gave a wry smile. “I wish men in the land might do that before entering into their own tents to lie with their wives. They would smell better. But there, God scares them more than women do.” Naomi looked toward the Tent of Meeting, and her eyes hardened. “Yet they do fear me. Did you know that, child?”

  Devora nodded.

  “God sends visions to my own eyes and does not care whether I wash first. In fact, I do not kneel or ask for him to show himself, he simply does. His shekinah, his presence, falls on me like wind and fire and nearly scorches me to the ground. A heat almost too fierce to bear. You know what I’m talking about, girl?”

  “Yes,” Devora whispered, frightened.

  Naomi’s gaze pierced her.

  “What did you see, child? Before you fell?”

  Devora shook her head vigorously, and Naomi’s eyes narrowed. “You have pluck, girl. Not many people try to hide something from God’s navi.” She lifted a few strands of Devora’s hair between her fingers, looking at them as though she might find in them the answer to her questions. That wry smile again. “Very well. You and God may keep your secret, for now. But listen to me, child. I want to know whenever you have one of these dizzy spells. I need to hear about it. And I think you will come visit me in the mornings. We are going to have a lot to talk about, you and I.”

  The thought of approaching the old navi’s tent, alone, to be questioned by her—that would have filled Devora with dread, if the old woman’s words had not already given her more dread than she could carry. Naomi helped the younger woman to her feet, and for a moment Devora clung to her, feeling unsteady. The fear of what all this might portend, what it must portend, gripped her.

  “Please,” she cried. “What does it mean? Why am I seeing these things?”

  “It means you are the next navi,” Naomi said quietly. “It means you are seeing what God’s eyes see.”

  CARRYING THE DEAD

  THE NEXT afternoon changed everything.

  It was Devora’s turn at the washing. As she left the white tents to make her way upstream, she hauled a washing board under one arm and carried a basket of heavy, soiled cloth on her shoulder. The sun was late-summer hot, baking away what strength she had, and she moved beneath it in a daze. In the sky behind her, cloud was piling upon cloud, promising thunder.

  Doing the washing meant a long walk. The women of Shiloh kept the Covenant and were careful not to soil the stream that ran through Shiloh before rushing east past many camps of the People on its way to the Tumbling Water. Instead, the women took the clothes to small, isolated pools that formed in the mud near the stream. In the early dawn the water in these wash holes was cool and clear, but a little splashing of clothing in them and they became brown and more soiled than the tunics and robes a woman hoped to wash. So as the day aged, the women had to move farther up the stream to find new wash holes, often walking far from the camp. Once the clothes were laid out to dry, there was a brief respite. A woman could lie out on the grass and watch the thunderclouds build on the horizon or stare for an hour at a small beetle clinging to a reed. Or, if she was far enough from the sight of the tents—and if she dared—she might strip away her own tunic and leap into the cold river with a shock like being born. There, swimming between sand and sky, a woman could feel, if just for a little while, completely free and clean.

  Today Devora had to walk far; as her feet squelched in the river mud and the tents of the encampment fell far behind, she could see through a haze of green reeds Hannah and Mikal, the women of the shift before her. They were bathing. Devora hoped to find a clean wash hole after passing them. She tried to hasten, but the weight of the basket on her shoulder made her grunt, and twice she slid in the mud, catching herself on a splayed hand but splattering her face and breasts with mud. By the time she reached the bathers, she was livid and in an ill mood. She cast them a glowering look that neither of them noticed. They were enjoying the river and had no room in their minds for anything b
ut the fresh, cool water. Hannah was leaping and diving as though she were part fish.

  It was the upcoming Feast of Tents, not only the cool water, that had them in such a good mood. Some of the girls were already considering who they hoped to dance for; a few had even begun quietly sewing decorative patterns into their dresses: flowers, or shapes of people crossing a desert (for the Feast commemorated the time in the desert), or trees.

  Now even Hannah called out to Devora cheerfully.

  “Come swim with us, Devora! The clothes can wait!”

  For a moment she hesitated. The thought of joining them and letting the water wash the dirt and mud from her skin and the terrors from her mind—it was an attractive thought.

  But she turned away from them, shouting back, “I will keep to my work, thank you. You can play like fish if you like.”

  She heard the groans and boos of the girls in the river, but ignored them and moved on through the river mud. She couldn’t bear the thought of being among other women just now. Naomi’s words resounded in her mind like drumbeats: The next navi...you are the next navi...you are seeing what God’s eyes see.

  Devora had spent the early morning in the old navi’s tent, in what Naomi promised would be the first of many talks between them. The old woman had questioned her keenly about the visitations she’d had from the shekinah, and Devora had found herself telling the navi of her first vision—the one that had come to her when she was twelve. The words had flowed from her like water and blood, until she was nearly sobbing with them. She told of her mother’s death and of how she had seen herself grieving—how she had been warned—and had said nothing to the elders in the camp.

  “They would’ve thought I was dreaming. That I’d fallen asleep when I should have been bringing water to the camp.” Devora’s eyes burned with tears. “I didn’t want to be beaten. And they’re all dead. Because of me. Because of me.”

  Naomi had listened in silence, her sharp eyes peering deep into the girl, then sighed. “Don’t be foolish, girl,” she said. “You didn’t know better. You do what you must, you trust the rest to God. Some days, a woman can only save one life. That day, it was your own life. Some day yet to come, it may be another’s.” And Naomi clapped her hands, and a slave came in with hot tea.

  But when Naomi sent the younger woman from her tent at last, Devora felt little comfort. She believed old Naomi—she was the navi. God was sending her visions. The enormity of it was unbearable. Because she’d said nothing. She’d seen and said nothing. She searched her memory. The fear she’d felt then, of being beaten by the elders for telling lies—that seemed another girl’s fear and not her own. She could remember the fact of it, but not what it had felt like. Now as she stumbled on through the mud with her washing board and her basket, Devora burned with anger at herself. The girl she’d been—that girl had been too afraid to do what was necessary to keep her people safe. Devora could never forgive her for that.

  She came to a waterhole, one where the water was clean and the laughing of the girls was distant, and she let the basket down with a groan. She cast a glance back at the girls bathing. It must be nice to be Hannah or Mikal. To have never seen the dead. To have never truly suffered or feared. To worry only about whether they would be a man’s first or second wife and whether that man would be young or old, handsome or foul. Devora’s own hopes of the night before, and the way she’d been flustered at that kiss, all seemed so foolish to her now. Bitterness gnawed at her heart.

  You are the next navi.

  If that were true, there would be more warnings. What she had seen the day before must have been another warning, and she swallowed uneasily, realizing what the warning must mean. She made up her mind to tell the navi of it when she returned from the washing. Naomi the Old was right. She must never again hide anything she had seen. Not if it was from God.

  She bent over the basket, reaching for a tunic. She made a face; the water before her was clean, but she had not picked her spot well, for the reeds here stank. There was a scent of decay, of something rotting under the weeds—

  Something cold grasped her ankle.

  A savage pull, and the ground rushed toward her. She slammed onto her belly; her fall shoved the air out of her before she could shriek. She kicked wildly, glanced over her shoulder and saw—it. A face half-torn away, its mouth open now in a hiss; eyes gray and sightless, a thin hand clutching her ankle with terrible strength while the other hand clawed forward to grasp a clump of reeds near the roots; with a groan, the creature pulled itself forward, toward her.

  Its rotting torso slid free of the brush, and for a moment Devora was certain that she was back in her mother’s tent, and the thing that had been her mother was crawling back into the tent after her, grasping at her. The body below the waist was gone, and it trailed entrails and scraps of tissue behind it. The reek of it did violence against Devora’s insides. She tried to scream but managed only a breathless whimper. Its cold, dry hands gripped so tightly. Making her unclean.

  She kicked at it, but it only snapped at the kicking foot with its teeth, and Devora twisted and writhed in panic. She looked desperately about her, hands scrabbling among the soiled clothes that had fallen around her. She wanted a stick, a rock, anything—she gave a low, keening cry as the thing’s other hand seized her calf, and she heard the slither of its body through the reeds. In a moment it would have its head above her leg and would dig into her skin with its teeth. It would eat her—it wanted to eat her!

  Her hand struck something.

  Wildly, she grasped it with her fingers—a hard surface—

  The washing board!

  With a cry she lifted it in both hands and rolled to her side, brought it crashing down on the creature’s head as it hissed just above her captured foot. She heard the smack of the wood against soft, rotting flesh. A growl from the creature. Screaming now, the air back in her lungs, she smashed the board down on the creature again and again, putting all her strength and terror into each blow.

  When she stopped, the corpse was still, the top of its head mashed. One eye had been crushed by the washing board; the other stared dully at the sky.

  Panting, Devora reached down, pried the dead fingers from her leg, then pulled her leg quickly away from its hands. With trembling fingers, she examined her shin and ankle. There were no scratches there, just a developing bruise where the corpse had clutched her. Her lip began to tremble, and she stilled it. She would not cry, not here.

  Devora got to her knees, shaking. She could hear cries nearby, splashing. Then running feet. The girls from the stream. Hugging herself tightly, Devora looked at the thing that lay still now in the grass, smelling like a cow found dead in a field days late. Though the thing’s strength had been terrible, it was small. She looked at the cut of its hair, at the tatters that remained of its garments. A boy. It had been a boy. A small boy.

  Then the other girls reached her, their hair wet about their shoulders, dry cloth wrapped quickly around their bodies.

  Hannah swayed on her feet, her eyes wide. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh God, oh God, God, God,” she moaned through her fingers.

  “It’s Nathan,” Mikal whispered. “It’s Nathan.”

  Nathan was Hannah’s younger brother—gone a few days before to carry a message to the camp at Beth El for the priests.

  Hannah moaned and fell to her knees.

  “It was Nathan,” Devora said hoarsely, remembering too vividly her mother’s face in the door of the tent. “Now it is unclean. It’s not him.” She shivered; a breeze touched her cheek, and then without warning it became a wind, driving ripples across the water hole and making the reeds whisper, and the heat was gone from the day. Devora was sweaty and shivering in the wind. “We have to make a cairn,” she whispered.

  “There aren’t any stones here,” Mikal said, her face tight as though she were holding back tears.

  Devora looked out over the reeds toward Shiloh. The camp was a long walk. They could go to find men, but that w
ould mean leaving the body in the weeds. That would be unthinkable. And in any case Hannah would not leave the body like this. One of them could go. But the others would have a long time to wait, and—she glanced at the corpse. It had been half-eaten; there were other dead near, somewhere. None of them should wait here, where other mangled dead could already be crawling through the weeds. A fire lit in her, and her terror flickered out. She was not shivering, crying, useless in the reeds. She was not standing by while others confronted the dead for her. She was not helpless, as she had been in her mother’s tent.

  “My skin is already unclean from its touch.” Devora stooped over the body. “I will carry him to the camp. The men can make a cairn for us.” She kept her hands from shaking as she slid her arms beneath the reeking, broken thing that had been a boy; she lifted it. The corpse was very light—lighter than the basket of clothes she’d carried. Its intestines trailed to the ground beside her as she held it. Devora averted her eyes. “Gather up the clothes, Mikal,” she murmured, and then took an uneasy step forward, then another. She tried not to think of what she was carrying; when it shifted slightly against her, she bit back a scream, swayed for a moment, eyes closed.

  “Let me help.” Hannah’s voice was hoarse with crying.

  “Touching it means being put from the camp.” Devora’s own voice was harsh. “That should only happen to one of us.”

  Hannah stifled a sob. Devora ignored the sound, kept walking. The mud by the river sucked at her feet. The wind, which made waves of purple blossoms in the heather and made the reeds hiss like serpents, kept tugging her hair across her face. She gritted her teeth, pressed on. There had been no opportunity for Hannah to say goodbye to the child. Devora understood her pain, but she had no time for it and could not permit herself to think about it, or she would begin crying as well.

  “Maybe we should leave the body,” Mikal whispered, her eyes wide.

  “We do not leave one of our dead unburied.” Devora’s voice was cold.