Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (19 page)

A terrible unease was growing in Devora, as though some beast had given birth in her heart, and its clawed pup was growing, scratching at the walls within her, feeding on all that Devora now saw. Many times Devora had suffered her nightmares and night terrors, seeing again her mother’s face and the lurching dead in the camp. Often she had cursed the heathen in her heart, those who would cast the dead into open water, uncovered and unrestrained and utterly without burial, if the Hebrews who possessed the land permitted it. Devora hadn’t forgotten the Canaanite cheekbones and eyes of the dead who’d fallen upon Shiloh camp thirty years before. When Canaanites were brought before her seat beneath the olive—which was rare, for cases involving them were easily dealt with, without the
navi
’s intervention—but when they
were
brought to her, Devora had dealt her judgment harshly, knowing that only the strictest observance of the Law could keep the People safe. One Law for the Hebrew and for the stranger in the land, and a stoning and then burial beneath the stones if the violation of Law was so severe that no lesser cleansing would suffice.

Often, she had remembered the Canaanite features of the dead.

But never had she imagined having her life
preserved
by one of the heathen.

Hurriya shivered in her restless sleep. Devora crouched beside her, held her hand an inch above the girl’s brow. Warmth.

The beginning of a fever, perhaps. For a moment the panic rose again in Devora. What if it was the fever of the dead? But no, the girl did not have that look. This was a fever of the living body, some uncleanness that came of having a child and losing it and suffering after. At least so Devora hoped.

She rose shakily and walked about the fire. Took up Hurriya’s salmah and brought it back to where she was lying. Draped it over her. Hurriya didn’t move beneath it.

Devora set to the task of cleaning her sword, with as much care as she had cleaned Hurriya’s body. She shuddered as she wiped the flesh and stains from the blade with a handful of grass. She did so meticulously, slowly, careful not to get any of it on herself. “I was right to bring you,” she whispered to the blade. Her eyes round in the dark.

Glancing up, she caught a glimpse of movement beneath the trees and gasped. Her heart wild in her breast. She gripped Mishpat’s hilt and was about to cry out, but then Zadok’s enormous shape emerged from the darkness, and he stepped out into the firelight. He had on his goatskin gloves and was dragging the corpse behind him by its ankle, carrying his spear in his other hand. He gave Devora a grim look and cast the body down at the edge of the firelight. “I think it is the only one,” he said.

“You think?” Devora whispered.

He set his spear aside. “I may be wrong. You and the girl must stay by the fire,
navi
.”

Devora nodded. She was full of questions, but she glanced down at the corpse, and for the moment her questions choked in her throat.

Now that it wasn’t moving, the corpse seemed indeed a pitiful thing. Its left shoulder and the left side of its face had been terribly
hacked open by the sword. The rest of it—a husk and only a husk. As though God had sucked out the breath of life that he’d blown into the human body at the beginning of time and left behind something fragile as papyrus but upon which no letters Hebrew or other could ever be written again. In this leathery flesh that remained, no hopes or fears could be inscribed, and even if a man were to pull the unclean bones free from this withered corpse and chisel words into them as if into stone, even those bones would merely crumble away. Gazing at that corpse, Devora felt a horror of the brevity of life and the transience of all lives human and animal, which in the end are eaten or devoured whether by their dead or by some rogue lion or only by wind and soil. Whether God will remember them or not.

“Where were you?” she breathed.

“By the water,” Zadok said. “There’s a stream downhill, beyond the trees, barely close enough to hear a shout. I heard something in the trees while you slept, and I went that far looking for it.” He paused, his regret showing in his eyes. “That was a mistake.”

“It
was
a mistake,” Devora said hoarsely.

Zadok was silent a moment. “I am used to doing this alone,” he said. “When the levites send me out. When there is some corpse in a man’s barley or feasting on his flock. Forgive me,
navi
.”

“We are not hunting, Zadok.” Devora couldn’t keep the edge from her voice, and no longer wished to. So the man was grieving. So he felt he’d failed Eleazar. He still had responsibilities to
her
. “Not until we find Barak and his men. We need to
find
Barak. And you need to stay here and defend us until we do.”

Zadok gazed into the fire, the lines of his face tense. “There were three sets of footprints by the stream.”

Devora was silent a moment. Zadok’s words doused her anger like ice water. “The dead?”

“They did not walk like living men.” His gaze flicked down to the corpse. “We must hope the other two have walked on.”

“Surely my scream would have brought them if they hadn’t,” Devora said uneasily.

Zadok shook his head. Then he crouched by the corpse. His gloved hands turned its head to one side, then the other. Devora gasped. The body was missing both of its ears. Indeed, now that it lay in the firelight she could see that the right side of its head had been torn open from where the ear should be to the middle of its hair, baring tissue and torn muscle and a white glint of bone.

“Ears are easy to tear away,” Zadok muttered. “If one of these is feeding, it is likely to go for the throat or the cheek or the ears. Soft places where the teeth can dig in and tear. This one may have been in the trees all evening,
navi
. Yet it did not moan or approach our camp. It did not hear us.” He gave her a grim look.

“So the others could still be in there.” Devora peered into the dark beneath the trees.

Zadok didn’t answer. His hands were shaking slightly.

“
Don’t
freeze on me,” Devora breathed.

“Your will,
navi
.” The nazarite’s voice was hoarse. Without lifting his gaze from the corpse, he pulled out his bronze knife and set the blade against his left palm. Drew it swiftly across his skin. For a moment he closed his hand around the blade. Devora looked on, disconcerted, as blood leaked between his fingers.

She rose to get a cloth, but Zadok shook his head. “Let it bleed a while,” he muttered.

She watched him a moment. “This will keep you alert?”

He lifted his eyes to hers. Dark with pain.

She nodded, glanced at the corpse, then at the fire and the girl lying beneath her salmah near it. Trying to gather her thoughts. After a moment she realized Hurriya was awake and watching them. Her face still terribly pale, her eyes cold.

“Is the girl well?” Zadok asked hoarsely. He was gripping his sliced hand tightly with the other.

“Yes,” Devora said.

“She must not panic. It’s best if we stay quiet tonight.”

Devora nodded.

“She took up your blade.” Zadok’s eyes shone in the firelight. “Brave girl. For a Canaanite.”

Hurriya could probably hear their words, though they kept their voices low; she was only a spear’s length away. But she did not appear to react to them. She was staring at the corpse.

“She hates them,” Devora whispered. “She doesn’t
fear
them anymore, not as I do. She just hates them.”

“Hers are a strange people.”

“Yes they are.” Devora glanced back at the trees, peering into the
hoshekh
beneath the branches. Nothing there. Nothing that could be seen. She glanced down at the corpse’s ravaged face. It was male, but she could tell little more about it. Neither what color its eyes had been nor its age. “I can’t tell if he was Hebrew or heathen,” Devora muttered. The uncertainty of it weighed on her. It seemed now vitally important to her to know who had unraveled the roots of the Covenant: the heathen in the north or the uncareful Hebrews. She gave the corpse’s face another hard look, then her gaze strayed down its body, settled on its hips. She drew in a quick breath as a solution to her uncertainty occurred to her.

Devora averted her eyes quickly, her face warming. Found herself facing Hurriya, whose eyes seemed to read hers. The Canaanite woman got unsteadily to her knees, one hand clutching the salmah tightly about her. Hollows about her eyes—the day and the night were exacting a fierce toll on her body.

Hurriya crawled near, then bent over the corpse, swiftly tugging its clothing aside. Devora couldn’t look. She fought a surge of nausea at what Hurriya was doing, at her closeness to the dead. But the girl was already unclean; it would make no difference.

“He was Hebrew,” Hurriya rasped.

Devora said nothing. Zadok watched the Canaanite with that quiet wariness of his.

“You Hebrews mark your bodies,” Hurriya said coldly. “A Canaanite woman always knows what kind of man has assaulted her.”

Without another word, Hurriya rose and returned to her place across the fire, keeping her salmah wrapped tight about her.

Devora looked after her a moment, thoughts leaping through her, quick as a flight of deer through a wood. She exchanged a look with Zadok, then went to Hurriya. The girl lay shivering. Devora knelt by her, trying to think through what the girl had said. There had been signs enough for her to interpret, but she had to step carefully. She watched the girl’s face.

“The child’s father. Malachi ben Aharon. You were his slave?”

Hurriya didn’t answer.

“He bought you and was cruel to you?”

The Canaanite just stared at the fire.

Devora waited for a while. She heard Zadok digging, for there was a body to bury. The
navi
was just about to give up and try sleeping again when the girl spoke.

“My father couldn’t feed the three of us—my mother, my sister, and me. So he sold me to one of the other workers in the olive grove. A Hebrew, who could afford me. He sold me because I was old enough to be—desirable. When that man—” Her voice broke, but she recovered quickly, and Devora felt chilled at the anguish she heard. “When he touched me, I thought I’d die. The way he hurt me—he
liked
to hurt me.”

Not knowing what other comfort to give, Devora reached out and gripped Hurriya’s shoulder through the salmah. Her breast felt tight. Nothing of which Hurriya spoke was against the Law. None of it was a breaking of the Covenant. But the fear and hate she saw in the girl’s eyes—no woman should have to endure that. It was women who gave the Covenant to their children, who bore in their wombs the living sign of the promise. With God, together they made the future of the People. What had happened
to Hurriya was not against any words of the Law, but surely it could destroy the Law and the Covenant all the same.

“I tried to hide from him once,” Hurriya whispered. “He beat me until I couldn’t rise from his bedding for three days. And little Anath had to hear it. Every one of my screams. Malachi only lived a stone’s throw from my father’s shed. They worked the same presses. When I took water out to him at midday, I would look up and see Anath in the treetops.” She fell silent.

“I have erred,” Devora whispered. “You have no kin to return to. None who will keep you. I should’ve found another guide. Yet the things you see—” She thought for a moment, her heart aching. “You must return to Shiloh with me—after this. You must be near, where I can teach you.”

Hurriya shook her head. “I’m not going back there.” She paused. “I don’t care about these visions,” she added after a moment. “Or your God. But help me find Anath.” She swallowed. “And the dead. If you want to help me, tell me everything you know about the dead. You have so many rules about the dead. So teach me.”

“Girl—”

“I am no
girl
. I am Hurriya of Judges’ Well. I have lost my child. Those corpses—they
took
my child. My
child
. I have one sister, and that is all I have. I will find her, I will help her stay safe.” She was speaking rapidly now, trembling with urgency. “We are going to a camp of armed men. When—when I am
clean
—” She mouthed the word with distaste, “help me find clothes. And a knife. And my sister. That is what I ask of Israel’s
navi
.”

“I will see that you have clothes. And we will have to find herbs for your fever. If I teach you about the dead,” Devora added after a moment, “I must teach you the whole Law. And you must abide by it.”

“Your Law.” Hurriya laughed coldly, bitterly. “Always your Law, your strange and terrible Law. You would cast a woman
from the tents because a corpse touched her, or stone a woman for placing a bowl of fruit before the goddess.”

“If necessary, yes,” Devora said hoarsely. “The People must be kept clean.”

Hurriya turned her face away, shivering in her salmah. “Teach me, then. I don’t care.”

Devora’s temper flared. “You
do
care, you impossible heathen!” she hissed through her teeth. “
Damn
you. Filthy, unwashed—you think your gods and the corpses of your dead are both things to keep in your houses! You bring the dead down on us, bring the blight and the curse and barrenness to the land—and then you lie down ready to die and you don’t care! You
do
care, damn you!”