Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible)

by Stant Litore

  “Fewer even than I thought,” Devora agreed.

  The tents were pitched tightly together, like a flock of birds eyeing with dread the sharp hills surrounding them. Ready to spread their wings in a moment and leap back into the sky, leaving the land to its own horrors. Quiet in the dusk ran the Tumbling Water, which the lake fed but which didn’t start tumbling until after it flowed out of this narrow valley and began descending out of the hills. The smoke of cookfires wafted across the water toward the cedar-and-thatch houses of Walls, a half mile around the edge of the lake.

  But only silence wafted back.

  Some of the men of the camp were standing at the shore, tiny at this distance. Perhaps they were gazing across at the eerie town. Towns were loud. So were encampments of tents and flocks—but towns were louder, and the men knew this. The beer-house at least, even at this hour of dusk, should have been boisterous and awake with firelight.

  This town, however, was utterly still, utterly silent.

  Devora didn’t like it.

  “Zadok, ride ahead, please. Tell them the navi is here. That she wishes to speak with Barak at once. And ask for herbs for the girl.”

  “Your will, navi.” Yet Zadok cast her a glance that showed his reluctance to leave her side; Devora wondered at it. She did not think she would be in danger riding into the camp. She was kadosh. And she and the Canaanite girl were unlikely to be attacked by any dead on this open slope as they neared the tents. Devora cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder at the ridge behind them, half expecting to see corpses silhouetted against the sky. But there was nothing there. Not even a bird. As though the entire land had gone silent, waiting.

  Like that settlement across the water.

  Perhaps it was only that Zadok was uneasy leaving before speaking whatever words he’d hidden in his heart since the morning. For a moment Devora both dreaded and hoped that he would say something. But the nazarite only turned and gazed down at the camp grimly, then nudged his horse into a canter.

  As he rode ahead, Hurriya whispered, “I don’t have to fear him, do I?”

  “No. Other people do.”

  “What is he?”

  “You must have heard stories. Everyone in the land knows about the nazarites.”

  “I know they fight.”

  Devora watched Zadok approach the tents below and felt sorrow and a strange kind of possessiveness for the man. Zadok was hers. Had been, ever since he took the nazarite’s vow, swearing it to her and God. Even before then—ever since she gave him words of comfort that day he stood by his dead father. It was right that she should speak for him. “Fighting is all they do,” she said. “They do not tend the land, they say no prayers and perform no priestly duties. They do not trade or barter. They defend those who keep the tablets and the Tent of the Law. They give up everything for that. No, girl, you don’t need to fear him.”

  Hurriya started shuddering. Devora felt the tremors against her body and tightened her arm about the young woman. “What is it, girl?” she whispered.

  “The faces,” Hurriya whispered back. “The faces.”

  Devora was suddenly aware of an intense, familiar heat emanating from the woman she held. Her eyes widened.

  After a moment the heat flickered out as abruptly as a candle’s flame. Yet Hurriya kept shaking. “The town is full of lost things,” she whispered. “We have to go there.”

  “You saw something,” Devora murmured.

  “Only for a moment. A glimpse. Faces. There was a fire and all the faces were burning.”

  “I don’t see any smoke over the town.” Devora thought for a moment. Had God sent a vision of what had happened there, of what would happen, what might happen?

  “The gods are cruel,” Hurriya said, her voice thick. “Do they think I’ll hate them less for taking my child because they bless me with knowledge they keep secret from others?”

  “It is no blessing,” Devora said dryly. “The navi brings words men need to hear, visions they need to see, not visions they wish to see. You see what God sees, but men don’t want to see what God sees. It’s not a blessing.”

  They were nearing the outskirts of the camp now, and Devora heard a horse coming toward them. It was not Zadok’s horse. After a moment the rider cantered away from the tents and approached them, and Devora saw a scarred face and braided hair. She knew this man, and her lips twisted in distaste. Omri, the Zebulunite.

  “You are here,” he called as he approached. “Where is Nimri?”

  “Ask him when he arrives,” Devora quipped. “Where is Barak?”

  Omri’s eyes narrowed. “Have a little respect, woman.” He drew his dun-colored horse up alongside Shomar. “You were supposed to come with an Ark,” he muttered.

  “Barak will have to settle for me,” Devora said icily.

  Omri grunted and rode beside them a moment. Then he leaned near, attempted to glance down Hurriya’s salmah. Devora felt the girl tense.

  “A Canaanite,” he said. “And a curvaceous one. Is she for sale?”

  “No, Omri.” Devora’s voice was winter. “She is not.”

  “Still.” He leered at the girl. Hurriya stared fixedly ahead.

  “She’s unclean, Omri.” Stressing each word, Devora added, “For seven days.” Actually, only six days of her uncleanness were left, but this northern savage didn’t need to know that.

  The man recoiled and rode just behind them, his face unreadable. Devora turned her shoulder to him, speaking in a low voice to Hurriya. “Because you are unclean, your feet must not touch the ground within the camp.”

  Hurriya glanced over the navi’s shoulder, and her eyes flickered with hate.

  “Ignore him. Don’t even look at him. Think of him not as a Hebrew man like the one who owned you but as a small boy watching a dragonfly to see what it will do. Now imagine the dragonfly not moving, not even a flicker of its wings. The boy pokes at it. The dragonfly still does not move. So he loses interest and goes to trouble some other.”

  “There are no other dragonflies,” Hurriya murmured.

  “What?”

  “No camp followers. Didn’t you see? You and I are the only women here.”

  Devora gave a start. She halted and heard Omri halt a little way behind her. She gave the camp ahead a hard look, and considered what she hadn’t seen, riding into the valley. Hurriya was right. There was the camp, but there were no camp followers. None of any kind. Devora knew enough about the raids that plagued the land to realize that any camp of armed men always had followers. Thieves ready to pick the unclean bodies of the dead. Carpenters and weavers who might be called upon to mend a broken cart or a torn tent or coat. Old Canaanite women with packets of herbs, ready to tend to fever or foot rot. And young women, Hebrew and Canaanite and mixed, women without husbands or fields to glean, who in the final extremity of their hunger would barter their bodies for food.

  Usually there were far more camp followers than there were men in the raid. But not this time. There were none. Not when the men were going to seek out the dead.

  That made her uneasy—it meant she and Hurriya were alone in a camp of men. Already others in the camp were gathering outside their tents, not near enough yet to shout to, but near enough to watch Devora and Hurriya ride in. Omri wasn’t the only one who was famished enough for sex to cast an eye on the navi and the woman who was with her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Devora murmured. “I am the navi and can’t be touched. And you are unclean and can’t be touched. These men are bound to the Covenant and the Law.”

  “I have seen how they keep it here,” Hurriya said coldly.

  Devora straightened. She didn’t want to think about that just now. About how the keeping of the Law may have decayed in these hills. She cast the men an uneasy glance. Remembered Lappidoth urging her to take the other nazarites with her. “We will keep it,” she said. “And so your feet will not touch the ground within the camp. Stay in this saddle until I can arrange for bedding and a tent outside the cam
p.”

  “Where I’ll be defenseless,” she said quietly. “Your rules are ridiculous.”

  “And necessary.” Devora’s voice was sharp. She was keenly aware of Omri’s eyes on her back. “We don’t know what kind of touch allows the uncleanness to pass from one body to another. So we must assume any touch may defile.”

  “But this fever isn’t—it isn’t that fever.” A sharp intake of breath. “It isn’t, is it?”

  “No.” Devora softened, and started Shomar toward the tents again at a walk. “No, I don’t believe so. It is all right, girl. But the words of the Law remain. The Lawgiver in the desert demanded seven days. He wrote that into the Covenant. To make sure the People would never become too hasty, never endanger the camp by bringing someone unclean back into it too quickly. Our Covenant holds the living together and gives them hope, and keeps the dead buried and still. Look around at the terror in these hills, and see the consequence of neglecting it.”

  Omri interrupted then by nudging his horse alongside Shomar. His grin showed all his teeth.

  “Where are the dead, Omri?” Devora asked, cutting off whatever the man had intended to say.

  “God knows. We’ve been waiting here for Nimri since early morning.”

  “I see. Have you sent men to scout the hills around? Why is the town so quiet?”

  “Why doesn’t God send us visions to tell us?” Omri muttered. “Why else have you come?”

  “God may send warnings,” Devora said, “but I doubt our God intends to do the work that the men of this camp can do.”

  “He didn’t send us warnings that the dead would be eating tribesmen up by Judges’ Well. So what good is he?”

  Devora stared at the Zebulunite in disbelief. “You northerners marry heathen, allow heathen gods to be worshipped in your tents and your houses. Someone up here leaves dead unburied, untended. And the dead rise and begin eating, and you want to blame God for not forewarning you? Your actions, your—callousness toward God and Law—these are warning enough!”

  “You’re the one with a heathen slut on your horse,” Omri grinned. For some reason he didn’t seem rattled by Devora’s outburst, and with a shock she realized that she had diminished herself in his eyes. Just a woman getting upset and railing at a man, like any other who didn’t know her place. That’s what Omri must be thinking.

  “There’s too much God in you,” he told the navi, then looked her over as he had on the hill. Devora’s jaw tightened.

  “A lot of woman too, though,” he grinned. “I am glad you are with us.”

  Devora said nothing in reply; her unease grew. Hurriya was tense in her arms. Perhaps the girl had a point about the men of this camp.

  “I saw the nazarite,” Omri said as he nudged his horse closer, “but not your husband. Why didn’t he join us?”

  Devora’s throat was tight. She couldn’t say that she had begged Lappidoth to remain behind, for this would diminish him in the eyes of the northern men, making him seem a slave to his woman. Yet anything else she blamed his absence on—his age, or fear, or a devotion to other duties—would make him seem no less small to them. She kept her lips closed and held down a flash fire of fury at Omri for the question. And truly, she wanted—needed—Lappidoth here. He had always been the tent over her, the shelter for her when her fears were fiercest.

  “Huh,” Omri grunted. “At least I have something to look at that’s prettier than Barak’s old face.”

  Devora felt her face burning. The Zebulunite was flirting with her. Yet she was the navi and had a husband, and if she’d had a son when most Hebrew women had their sons, that son would now be Omri’s own age, or older. What was he thinking?

  Devora nudged Shomar to a slightly quicker pace, but Omri stayed beside them, complimenting her eyes, the line of her jaw, the cradle of her hips. Devora’s face burned hotter.

  Hurriya shifted as though about to act or speak; Devora clenched her hand tightly around the girl’s arm through the wool of her salmah, forbidding it.

  “I like the way you ride that horse,” Omri crooned. “Would you like to ride something else?” As Devora refused to look at him, Omri sidled close enough to place his hand on her thigh, his fingers gripping her in the most nauseating manner. She turned on him as quickly as a serpent. “What are you doing?” she whispered fiercely. “Do you think I won’t cry out and have you stoned for trying to possess another man’s woman?”

  “I don’t see another man here,” Omri grinned. “He seems to have lost you.”

  As if she were a sort of misplaced trinket that had rolled out from under her husband’s watchful eye and might now be picked up! Lappidoth had taught her that men were capable of valuing all of a woman, not only her thighs or her womb. This oaf apparently wanted only to rut with her. She was the navi; who did he think he was?

  “Get your hand off me,” Devora hissed.

  Omri’s fingers dug into her thigh as his face flushed with anger. Perhaps he had not heard that commanding tone from a woman since he was a small boy in his mother’s tent.

  Devora’s eyes went dark. She reached for Mishpat.

  Just then there was a clatter of hooves, and glancing over her shoulder Devora saw Zadok riding toward them from the tents at a clip that was just a little too quick to be casual. Relief swept through her like a summer wind.

  Omri followed her gaze and scowled. “Does that dog always heel you?” he muttered. His hand left her thigh.

  “Only when the navi needs him to,” Devora said quietly. “I am kadosh, Omri. Holy. Not to be touched.”

  He sneered. “You are still a woman.”

  “Not your woman.”

  “Huh. The Galilee is a long way from Shiloh.”

  Devora’s insides went cold. How dare he. Did he think distance lessened her husband’s claims on her, or hers on him? Or did Omri mean to threaten her, to indicate he could claim her as he pleased, here in the north, among his own people?

  Zadok was nearly up to them. Omri whispered, “If you find your need is hot on you, woman, and you need a man between your legs, my tent is easy to find.”

  “Shouldn’t you be making plans for dealing with the dead?” Her hand clenched about Mishpat’s hilt, a fact that Zadok’s eyes didn’t miss as he reined up beside her. Massive and brooding and watching Omri with his cold, dark face.

  “Omri,” Zadok grinned—though the grin did not touch his eyes. “Is there any beer in the camp?”

  Omri bristled, as though expecting a challenge. But Zadok offered none.

  “Ride with me,” the nazarite said. “There’s a lot we need to talk about.” He said that with a bit of an edge to it, and in a moment he’d grasped the pommel of Omri’s saddle and was steering the man’s horse away from the women. Devora let out the breath she’d been holding, but her hand did not lift from Mishpat’s hilt.

  “You still think I should sleep alone at the camp’s edge?” Hurriya asked quietly.

  “I will be sleeping at the camp’s edge,” Devora said firmly. “I am kadosh. My tent will stand apart. Zadok will be at hand. You will have bedding outside my tent. Be alert and cry out if you need to. But you won’t need to. No one but a fool would cross Zadok.”

  Hurriya looked ahead, at the men standing outside their tents. “I see nothing but fools,” she said.

  Choosing not to answer that, Devora watched Zadok and Omri cantering ahead, then lifted her eyes, looked again at the placid lake and the too-silent town on the farther shore. Cold clenched about her heart. She didn’t know what Hurriya’s vision meant, and the younger navi was untrained, unable to interpret the things God showed to her. But Devora did know this. Whatever was to happen here in the north would begin there, at that lake.

  At the town of Walls, which no longer had any. Among houses silent as cairns for the dead.

  As Shomar followed Zadok’s horse among the tents, Devora began to notice how odd this camp was. Not at all what she might have expected—but then, her experience of fighting men was largel
y limited to the nazarites, who were well-armed, disciplined, and who acted as though ferocity were an essential, if unspoken, part of their vow. This camp was not a camp of nazarites. It was something else entirely.

  For one thing, the men were barely armed at all. Only a few with shields, some without even spears, just farming implements or sharpened poles. These were northern men; their fathers hadn’t taken any lions’ shares of the loot from the cities whose walls had tumbled in the south where the Tumbling Water stopped tumbling at last and moved lazy and wide through green fields. And the glances of desire they cast at the two women riding past could not disguise their underlying fear. Devora saw the way their hands trembled, the pallor of their faces. Was it these men she had come north for? These were only children, fearing the dark.

  The men gathered near as she walked Shomar through the tents, and the horse shied, having never been among such a press of people. Devora patted the horse’s flank to calm him. Feeling the shiver that passed through Hurriya, Devora said softly by the girl’s ear, “My husband’s horse will not drop you.”

  Hurriya gave a terse nod.

  “Anath loves horses,” the Canaanite said after a moment, keeping her eyes on Zadok’s horse ahead of them, refusing to glance at the men who crowded close to either side. “She even found one, a wild horse by the river. She tamed it and used to ride it in the early morning. She thought none of us knew, but I knew.” Again the shiver. “I need to tell her horses hurt. They hurt. Why does she always look happy after riding?”

  “A horse doesn’t always hurt,” Devora smiled. “We just haven’t ridden much, you and I. We will heal.” Privately she wondered if that was true of the girl. It was perhaps a miracle that she was still this lucid. Would herbs help, or was this journey in the north consuming the girl’s last strength? She cursed Barak in her heart for making such a journey necessary.

  She tried to ignore the fear in the many faces around her. But what good would a camp filled with terrified men be to her or to God?

  “Damn it,” she whispered.

  She kicked Shomar to a gallop, startling a cry from Hurriya. Then a shout from Zadok, who had turned in his saddle at Hurriya’s cry. Devora made for the center of the camp, pulling up her horse where the tents were thickest. Men gathered in a half circle about her, and she lifted one hand high, her other arm about the Canaanite.