No Lasting Burial (23 page)

“Abba,” he gasped, “abba.”

“No,” Rahel whispered. She swayed on her feet.

Leaping up, Shimon caught her as she fell, a woman weak from horror and loss of blood from her labor; even as Shimon threw his arms about her and held her tightly, the spear slipped from her limp hand and sheathed its point in the sand.

That moment, and others, flashed through Shimon’s heart like a school of fish. Rahel between him and the corpse of his father. Or leaping before Barabba’s horse. Even Koach his brother, standing over the body of his beloved, that blunt rock in his hand. For so long Shimon had thought his entire life but the last rattle in a corpse’s throat—a last fight for air that was without meaning or hope of victory. His failure to bring in fish enough to feed his kin had always shamed him; now his days of despair shamed him more. While he’d sat in his grief and his gloom, his mother, who’d once given birth in a tomb even as the
shedim
moaned on every side, had stood constant, had never stopped hoping and believing in her sons. The waters may wear away the stones, but no matter how the waves crash against the shore, some hearts can never be worn away, can never be crumbled, can never be pounded into sand.

“How did you do it?” he asked suddenly. “When father came back. How did you do it, amma? How did you find the courage?”

Her face showed her pain. “I did it,” she said slowly, “because I loved him. I loved him, Shimon. Most wives do not love their husbands, because most husbands do not love their wives. But I loved your father. I loved him from the moment he appeared at my father’s door with a net of fish and a plea in his eyes, asking for me.” She smiled faintly, her eyes wet. “I loved him, so I had to.”

“Amma,” Shimon whispered.

She reached up and grasped his hand again, tightly. Her eyes sought his. “Your father would be proud of you, Shimon. Never doubt it.”

He choked. “I love you, amma.”

“And I you, Shimon.” Her face was tight with weariness. “Will you sing to me the way you did when you were a boy? After your father had kissed me, while he was gathering up his things for the boat, you would come sit by me and sing me to sleep. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” Shimon said hoarsely.

“I am going to try to sleep.” A faint smile. “I don’t care how many people are here. You and Koach can care for them a while. Sing me to sleep, my Shimon.”

Shimon drew up her wool blanket and tucked it around her chin. Long ago it had been dyed blue, but its color had faded away with time, like so many other things. Behind him, Shimon could no longer hear the
navi
and others speaking; it was quiet out in the atrium. Outside the house, his brother and the priest’s sons might be watching for the dead, but he could not hear their footsteps or their fear. For the moment, there was nothing in the world but mother and son. Rahel squeezed his hand and he returned her grip, and sang in a low murmur, for her. A song he’d heard her sing once in a tomb, far away, on the other side of time.

Though the fig tree does not flower,

And no grapes are on the vines,

The olives give no oil

And the fields no barley

The flock does not come home to the fold

Nor the herd home from the field,

Yet I will cry out in joy.

God is my strength;

He makes my feet like the deer’s;

He makes me walk in high places.

Leaving his mother sleeping, Shimon stepped out into the atrium. The house was nearly empty again. The people who had gathered there were gone, and Koach hadn’t returned. Yeshua sat alone by the cold firepit, holding a small lamp in his hands; there was a little flame—he must’ve lit it before dark fell, before the Sabbath Bride settled down for her night’s rest—and the scent of rancid oil mixed with the lingering smell of roasted fish in a way that did uncomfortable things to Shimon’s stomach, though it also made him aware that he hadn’t eaten since the morning. The town had feasted, yet he had not.

He crouched across the firepit from Yeshua, giving him a wary look. Two fish still lay on the coals. Shimon snatched one up in his bare hands; it had cooled long before, but when he lifted it to his teeth and bit, the oil and flavor of the fish ran into his mouth and his hunger roared in his belly. He tore at it in urgent bites. A small sound made him glance up, and he noticed the beggar woman—the one Koach had helped—leaning against the olive tree, in its shadow.

Shimon cast the bones of the fish down over the coals; he would clean out the pit in the morning. He considered Yeshua. Madman or
navi
, was this man a blessing or a threat to the town? His mother trusted the stranger and thought him a holy one—
the
holy one, the
navi
. The bruises on the man’s face were dark in the lamplight, his face thin. Shimon wondered whether this stranger in his house had eaten much, either.

“There were …” Shimon glanced around. “People.”

“Gone home for the Sabbath,” Yeshua said quietly. “All of them. Or to what shelters they could find or that those who feasted here would … would offer. All gone. I am alone.” Anguish in his face, he didn’t look up from the light. “Still alone. I’ll always be alone, won’t I, even if I feed a house, even if I feed a town, even if the lame walk and the mute sing. I am still alone. I am still standing in the desert, listening to the screams.”

Shimon grunted. Earlier in the day, the stranger had been almost
furious
with energy. He had moved with a hastiness and an urgency that was entirely alien to the slow, exhausted men and women of Kfar Nahum. But now a hush had fallen over him; he looked faint. Worn. Shimon realized, startled, that there were wrinkles about Yeshua’s eyes that had not been there in the morning. Now he looked more like the men Shimon knew. Even his voice, the way he talked, had changed. He no longer sounded frantic, desperate, dangerous.

Only sorrowful.

“You have the hospitality of this house.” Shimon’s voice was gruff. He would honor his mother’s wishes and her hope.

“I would … I would like that,” Yeshua said, a flicker of gratitude in his eyes. He stared at the small flame.

“Well,” Shimon muttered. “I will bring some bedding out here.”

“My mother lights a lamp,” Yeshua said, as though he hadn’t heard. “A small lamp, much like this one, a
lot
like this one, every night.
Every
night. Though oil is costly in Natzeret.” He glanced at the fish bones on the cold coals, such grief in his face that Shimon had to look away. “I suppose it is here, too.”

The flame wavered; the stranger glanced at it and then stilled the shaking of his hands. He took a breath, then set the lamp carefully to the side. “They are so loud. I hear them, Cephas. I hear them whether I rise or whether I lie down. I hear them always. Every hour, every day.”

“Hear who?” Shimon peered cautiously at the man’s face, but his eyes held a cold, clear intelligence. There was no madness there. Only thought and pain.

“The cries,” Yeshua answered. “Their moans of hunger.”

Shimon’s breath caught. “The dead?”

“The living,” Yeshua said sharply. Then he pressed a hand to his eyes. “The dead. Both.” His voice was calm, though thick with fatigue—as though his raving had been a thicket he’d broken through and now he was in the open again, but sweaty and weary from his work. “All of you eating alone, and not together. So many closed doors, so many windows shut. So many of you dying alone in your lonely houses.” He sighed. “Kana is wrong. Zebadyah is wrong, too. We can’t avoid our past, its violence. Can’t deny it, not ever. The screams in our desert. Nor even atone for them.” His eyes were distant. “Only forgive.”

Suddenly, a scream pierced the air. Shimon gasped. Yeshua’s face hardened. Outside, a few doors slammed; wooden slats rattled shut over one window.

The murmur of the sea, the sigh of water on the sand.

Then they heard it.

Low, wavering moans. Distant yet loud in the stillness.

“You did this,” Shimon said, his insides numb and cold. “You brought the dead back up.”

“Yes.” Yeshua’s voice was quiet and sad. “And the fish also. But by this time tomorrow it will be over, I think.”

Shimon stood. “We have to bar the door,” he breathed.

“No.” Yeshua’s face hardened, and he stood, too. “Let others hide. You and I, we will do the father’s work.”

Shimon turned on him in horror. “Don’t you hear?” Hardly daring to speak above a whisper. “The
dead
are coming.”

Those strange eyes of Yeshua’s were bright and fierce in the light of the lamp. “No matter how the door burns, Cephas, I have to step through it in the end. I can’t flinch back from it any more. Whatever the father wishes me to do, the weeping father, it’s time I did it.” He gripped Shimon’s arm. A hard, tight grip. A workman’s grip. A
nagar
’s grip.

His voice was clear and calm.

“Don’t be afraid, Cephas.”

When Yeshua stepped past him to the door, Shimon followed, still meaning to bar it. But instead, Yeshua took hold of the door and threw it wide. Shimon could see the shadow-shape of the house that leaned just across the narrow street from this one.

Then he sucked in his breath, for in a stab of cold dread, he remembered.

Yakob and Yohanna. And Koach.

His brother was out there.

Bar Cheleph saw them first, and when the others—Koach, Yakob, Yohanna—turned their heads, it was as though Bar Cheleph’s shriek had split the night open and let the
shedim
tumble out of nightmares into the real world, the world of time and suffering. The corpses stumbled up the shoreline toward them, lurching, their arms lifted, their moans muted by the surge and song of the sea, but no less terrible. There were perhaps ten or twelve of them, their eyes glinting in the faint light off the water. A few boat people, having lost their shelters, had erected hasty windbreaks of driftwood draped with lake-weed and had huddled behind them against the cold of night. Now they leapt to their feet and sprang, shouting, across the sands, fleeing the oncoming ghouls. The same wind that had brought the Sabbath Bride to Beth Tsaida with the dusk swept up, bringing to Koach’s face this time the reek of the dead.

“God,” Bar Cheleph gasped, “oh God.”

Yakob and Yohanna went very still.

But Koach’s face hardened, and his grip whitened around the pestle he’d taken from his mother’s house.

The dead came trailing sea-wrack and weeds from their arms. Sometimes the town saw straggler corpses from the hills, but these dead had risen from the sea, somewhere north along the shore. Benayahu was not among them.

“So many,” Yakob breathed, “why? Why now?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Koach said. “We have to stop them.”

“No,” Bar Cheleph whispered. “No.” He glanced wildly at the faces of his companions, then broke and ran across the grasses.

He fled
toward
the houses of Beth Tsaida.

“You fool!” Yakob cried, his voice loud over the sand.

Three of the corpses turned their heads, their attention caught by Bar Cheleph’s scrambling run, their mouths gaping. That
moan
, that sound without words or thought that made the blood move cold and sluggish like mud in the hills. The three lurched away from the group and slouched up toward the tideline, following Bar Cheleph. Koach’s breath hissed out through his teeth. Bar Cheleph would lead them
right
into the houses of the fishers. To his
mother’s
house.

Koach whispered a prayer, a bitter, desperate prayer, under his breath—
If you are a father, El Shaddai, El Shaddai, if you are what the stranger says you are, help us
—and then he ran along the grasses, leaving the others behind, pursuing the dead who pursued Bar Cheleph, though he felt out of breath, felt as though he might faint. He called out Bar Cheleph’s name, but the other man didn’t stop. Nor did the dead turn from their chase of him; they could not run, yet Koach closed the distance only slowly. He felt the fear, the fear eating his mind, trying to make him into a small, shivering animal who might drop into the tidal grasses to quiver and hide. It was more overpowering than when he’d faced Tamar, for then his fear had been crushed under a weight of grief. Now he could think only of cold fingers grasping, cold teeth biting into his arm or his throat or his belly.

He shoved back the terror, kept staggering toward the houses of Beth Tsaida.

The rest of the dead lurched after the boat people, who stumbled up the sand toward the priest’s sons. Earlier Yakob had led a small search party north along the shore, searching for Benayahu and finding blood in the grasses but no sign of where the man had gone. He’d thought—for a moment—that he heard a moan in the hills, distant, barely audible. He had shivered and started back, his heart full of dark thoughts and darker fears. Now his fears were enfleshed.

“Shit,” Yakob breathed. “Shit!”

He ran toward the boat people, gesturing wildly with his arms. “You! All of you! Follow me!”

They turned to him, their eyes fearful, desperate.

“Come
on
!” he shouted.

Yakob thought quickly. He could lead the boat people down the shore, away from the town, trailing the dead behind—then circle up into the hills, in the hope of losing the dead in the wild. Some of the boat people would falter and collapse, some would be eaten. But his brothers, his father, his grandfather, they would be safe.

He
could
do that.

Instead, he got his shoulder under one of the haggard women even as she stumbled. Half carrying her, he began walking up toward the houses of Kfar Nahum, toward whatever sanctuary the broken town could offer.

A moment’s choice, a moment’s decision.

His brother fell in alongside him, his face twisted with fear. Yakob met his gaze. “We are all kin,” he said.

Yohanna nodded, pale.

The woman coughed faintly. Others ran past. Yakob refused to glance back at the moaning dead. “It’s all right,” he murmured to the woman. “Just come with me. It’s all right … Yohanna, run. Run ahead. Warn father.”

“And leave you to face this alone?” Yohanna choked.

“Hurry, brother. God will keep me.”

Yohanna whispered, “God had better.”

The wailing behind them drew nearer. The boat woman began whimpering almost too quietly to hear. Yakob gave his brother a strained smile … or something he meant to be a smile. He clapped Yohanna on the shoulder. “Go!”

Once again, Koach ran through the stone houses and decayed shelters of his people, with lives at stake. The stone pestle was cold in his palm. The sound of his breathing was loud in his ears, and sweat stung his eyes. He was not made for running, had done little of it. But there wasn’t far to go.

Bar Cheleph had already strained his hip throughout the day, and Koach caught up with him as he was panting past the houses of the fishers. As they ran near, Natan El threw open his door, and he and his young wife stood at their doorstep across from Rahel’s house, gazing out with horror in their faces. They could see Bar Cheleph stumble and catch himself; they could hear the moans of the dead, coming up from the shore behind their house. In another moment, the door across the narrow street swung open, and Rahel looked out, her face haggard, newly wrenched from sleep. Her face went white as she gazed out; even as Koach closed the distance with Bar Cheleph, calling out his name, the three corpses lunged from around the corner of Natan El’s house, right in front of Bar Cheleph. One grappled him, its gray hands seizing his arms, its weight bearing him beneath it to the ground. The second staggered across the street toward Rahel. The third lurched past, toward Natan El’s door. A shrill scream—from Natan El, not from his wife; he sprang back, and his wife swung shut the door even as the corpse reached it, slamming it against one groping arm. The door rattled hard, the corpse hurling itself against the wood. Across the street, the other corpse threw itself against Rahel’s door.

Koach let out a cry and sprang on the nearest corpse from behind, swinging his pestle. But the creature turned, hearing him, and its hand caught Koach’s arm just above the elbow, a grip fierce and strong. Koach felt himself pulled from his feet toward the thing’s mouth; its head snapped at his arm, the teeth closing on the thick wool his mother had woven for him. He felt the pressure of its bite and screamed, kicking wildly, thrashing in the thing’s grasp. Those horrible, dead eyes looked at his for an instant as it worried his arm like a wild dog. Nothing in its face but hunger.

Then the door wrenched open. There was a sickening crunch of bone and a spatter of necrotic flesh as an iron shaft was driven into the thing’s cheek. The corpse didn’t release Koach’s arm, but it turned, pulling Koach with it, its jaw still grinding, trying to dig into Koach’s flesh through the wool sleeve. Koach fought to bend his hand and the pestle toward its head, but he had only one arm, and the creature held it. He caught a glimpse of Natan El’s wife, Bat Abner, in the door, her face a grimace of terror. Both hands whitened around the haft of her husband’s fishing hook. She was tugging at it wildly, trying to free it of the corpse’s face, to thrust or swing it a second time, but the hook had caught on the creature’s jaw and she couldn’t free it. The ghastly face tore at Koach’s arm and it growled against the wool. The scent of its decay was too much; Koach vomited, the fish of his brother’s catch surging up his throat and out of his mouth in a hot, steaming rush, fouling his chin, his clothes.

Helpless.

Again.

Always.

No.

Vomiting, shaking, furious, Koach swung his body, lifting his left leg and slamming his sandalled foot against the corpse’s groin. It didn’t feel the pain, but the impact drove it back, even as Bat Abner’s pull on the spear tugged hard in the other direction. The iron hook tore the creature’s jaws free from Koach’s arm, tearing the sleeve with it. Koach’s arm slithered free of the thing’s grip, unsleeved, and he fell, smacking his chest hard against the stone doorstep. Ignoring the stab of pain, Koach rolled hard. He’d dropped the pestle; it fell near him and he scrambled to it, lifted it in his hand, and turned to see the corpse biting wildly at the hook as its cold hands reached for Bat Abner. It shoved itself through her door, thrusting her back, the two of them, the living and the dead, separated by only the length of that small spear of iron. Shouting wildly, Koach surged to his feet and rushed the corpse, swinging the pestle; the hard stone drove in the back of the thing’s head. He heard it spit and snarl, and he swung the pestle again, again, crushing in the creature’s skull, until its legs crumbled and it hung, a silent, limp weight on the end of Bat Abner’s spear.

Less than three paces away, Bar Cheleph struggled for his life. The thing he wrestled had been corpulent in life, and its dead flesh was massive and held him crushed to the grit of the street. The rage he’d felt when he speared Bat Benayahu’s corpse had deserted him, leaving only stabbing, wild terror and hot shame, hot urine wet on his thighs. His fingers gripped the thing’s face, holding its jaws back from his throat, and he panted and wept. The corpse’s eye gave beneath Bar Cheleph’s fingers, but the thing didn’t shriek, didn’t rear back, just kept biting at the air above his collarbone.

Then the corpse’s jaw slackened and gray matter sprayed outward from the back of its head; its grip on Bar Cheleph’s shoulders loosed. Glancing up, Bar Cheleph saw standing over him Koach, a clay pestle clutched in his left hand, the end of the pestle dark with gore. Gasping, Bar Cheleph just shivered beneath the corpse, staring up at his rescuer in shock.

The youth who stood over him was grim-eyed and fierce. And not in the least
hebel
. Yakob bar Cheleph did not know this boy.

Koach cast the pestle aside; bending, he wrapped his hand in the hem of his wool tunic and gripped the corpse’s arm through the fabric, his fingers protected from the touch of skin against unclean skin; a heave, and the corpse was rolled aside. Bar Cheleph scooted out from beneath it, kicking. Then he stopped, his chest heaving.

Koach freed his hand of the wool and offered it.

Bar Cheleph swallowed. “But I—I tormented you.”

“I forgive you.” The youth’s voice was quiet. “Now help me. One of them is at mother’s door, and I need more than one hand. Help me.”

Bar Cheleph gazed up at him helplessly. Then he took Koach’s hand and felt himself pulled to his feet. He marveled at the strength in the youth’s left arm.

“My brother,” he gasped.

Koach’s eyes went cold, but he nodded. “Brother.”

There was a moan behind them, and then a sharp crack. Turning, Koach gasped. The other corpse had stood facing his mother’s door, its back to him, but now it swayed to the left and fell. Rahel stood at her open door, her hair wild about her shoulders, her husband’s
tallit
drawn over her like a woman’s shawl. Her face was gray, and she held tightly in both hands a shard of pottery longer than her hand, its broken point dark with gore. Other shards lay shattered about her feet, and there was a dark puncture in the head of the corpse. That sound they’d heard … Behind her in the doorway, the woman who had been mute gazed out with wide eyes.

Rahel glanced up from the corpse, and though she had no words, there were a thousand in her eyes, and memory dark as the sea—unburied memory of a night of the dead.

“Amma,” Koach breathed.

Bar Cheleph, still panting, bowed his head slightly in respect. “Bat Eleazar,” he murmured.

“My son. Kinsman.” Her eyes flashed in the dark. She let the gory shard fall from her hand; it rang against the stone beneath her feet. She bent and spat on the corpse, then straightened, her face flushed. “Help me get this thing off my doorstep.”

The boat people fled like deer between the old houses of Kfar Nahum, the empty houses that sat quiet as desert stones farther in from the shore, their doors and windows long since boarded up against squatters living or dead. Yakob was near the rear now, carrying that ragged woman who could hardly stand, let alone flee. The dead followed, lurching against the houses and scraping along the stone walls, but ignoring the structures, intent on the fugitives from the shore.

The vagrants broke out into the open space before the synagogue, its white basalt luminous in the rising moon. For a moment they stopped, their eyes round in the dark, glancing about, uncertain where else to run. Even as the first dead lurched into the space after them, the door to the synagogue was flung open, and a man in the white robes of a priest burst out onto the polished steps, a great menorah held in his hand, its eight candles new-kindled. His eyes burned as with fever. In an instant, a single beat of the heart, he took it all in: the pursuing dead, the sickly stench of them. The sobbing, stumbling boat people. His son Yakob half carrying one of them, risking his body and blood for these heathen and half-heathen poor.

Yohanna stepped out beside him, his face tight with fear.

“Go, son,” Zebadyah said gruffly. “Warn the weaver and the other houses. All you can.”

Yohanna gave a shaky nod. Then he sprinted; in a moment, he was gone.

Zebadyah wanted to slam the door of the synagogue against the boat people, but the old guilt coursed hot through his veins. He could not let others die before him, as he had long ago. The dead were within the town; whatever walls of fire or stone or will Zebadyah might have erected, it was too late. There was no time to sort out who were his kin, to protect, and who were not. And his oldest, by his act of carrying that woman and bringing all of them here, had already committed his house to sheltering these men and women. There was no wall here, and he was not Ezra.