Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (42 page)

Barak didn’t answer; he just gazed at the corpse. Hurriya stepped past him, gave the man with the knife a wide berth, went to lean against the open doorway at the other end of the room. She lowered her head as though to seek what privacy she could as the fright of her near escape took hold of her. Devora watched her, worried, but did not go to her. Her heart had not stopped pounding.

“Who are you people?” The man with the knife looked from one of them to the other. A flicker of recognition in his eyes when he glanced at Hurriya’s face, though the Canaanite didn’t appear to notice.

Devora turned her gaze away from the Canaanite. “I am Devora, the
navi
. I see what God sees.”

The man sneered. “God doesn’t see anything anymore. She’s left us. Left the land. She’s gone.”

Another day, Devora would have rebuked him, would have had sharp words. She had none today. Not with that corpse on the floor and so many of them outside, lying in the blighted field about the house. “That might be,” she said. “But if God does have anything to show us, I will see it. Or she will.” She nodded toward Hurriya.

The other man followed her look, but Barak cut in. “Where are the dead?”

“Everywhere. Hills stink with them. You can’t do anything but run.”

“We didn’t come here to run,” Devora said quietly. “Are you bitten?”

“No,” he muttered. “I’m likely to end up the only man in this forsaken land who isn’t.” He considered her with that look the northern men gave her that meant she was strange to them, a woman but something else as well. That look that meant they didn’t know how to speak to her.

“I’m Heber,” he said.

“You’re a Kenite.” Devora recognized his accent.

One side of his mouth curved, half a smile. “I am.”

The Kenites were desert men. Rare to see one west of the river. They were not of the twelve tribes, but had bound themselves to the Hebrews with many covenants in the wilderness years, and had sheltered vulnerable Israel out where the wind screamed in the rocks. The Lawgiver himself had taken a Kenite wife, and the Kenites had sworn to live by the same Law, worship the same God. The Kenites were known in the land as a wild tribe, hot-tempered and skilled with bronze.

“You have a camp nearby?” Barak asked.

“Up there.” Heber waved his hand vaguely upriver. “Had four men with me. Dead ate them. Ate my horse. Ate theirs. I crawled through the river a while and lost them. Fell a few times, then got up and went on. No use dying in the water, unburied, for anything to eat. Two nights back. So dark, those clouds, no moon even. Couldn’t see anything. Even God must have been blind in that. Finally find a little place to get out of the water, up onto the high bank. Can’t get back to my camp—too many between here and there.” He shook his head. “We’d had a good raid,” Heber said. “Against the heathen,” he added quickly, seeing the look Devora gave him. Hurriya must have heard him, but she didn’t look up from her grief. Impossible to know if she was even listening.

“I don’t care to get the blood of the People on my knife,” Heber went on. “A good raid, though. Loaded most of our goods on horseback. We meant to trade at Refuge and hear who had seen the dead and where. Set out that way, didn’t make it. Our horses. They ate
our horses
.”

“Your camp. How large is it?” Barak asked. “Is anyone left there?”

“No, just my goods. Some woven rugs, a slave girl. And my other horse, Ira.” He scowled. “I did not come easily by that horse, and now I’m on foot, with the dead on every side.”

Devora gave him a sharp, appalled look. His
other
horse. When she and Zadok had left Shiloh, they had taken with them two of the only three horses in the camp. Barak’s camp had only eleven. And this
raider
, who lived by taking the possessions of other men, spoke casually of his
other
horse. She glanced at Hurriya, but she was still leaning against the doorway, silent in her grief.

“At dawn, there were dead along the bank, just wandering there,” Heber muttered. “So I lowered myself over the edge before I was seen, and there was a wolf’s den under the weeds, in the wall of the bank. I slipped in. No wolves now. They don’t like the
dead either, they don’t. Nothing living does.” He glanced up at Barak and Devora, and his look was haggard with memory. “Had to stay there in the dirt all of the last day and this last night and most of this day too. No food. Didn’t dare crawl down to the river for water. Didn’t dare sleep. One of the dead fell from the bank once, right into the water, made my heart nearly stop. Waited for it to get up—where it was standing it would have seen me—but its body broke in the fall, its back maybe. It just moved its head from the left to the right, facedown in the water. Couldn’t even moan with its face in the water like that. Probably still there. Hope it rots there.” He lowered his voice fiercely.

“Sometime this morning, the dead wandered on, all but that one in the water. So I got up, climbed quietly as I could onto the bank. Walked downriver a bit, climbed back down for water, then up. Kept moving. Have to keep moving now. Found refugees coming up the river to meet me. From Walls.”

“They’re alive!” Devora cried.

Hurriya looked up quickly. It had been her vision of survivors that had sent them here.

Devora felt a surge of sudden hope. If this were true—if there were truly refugees from Walls, men and women who still lived and breathed and had survived the death of their settlement—if Barak’s men could find them and protect them—perhaps everything would be all right. If they could save some of the People, surely they could cleanse all the land. Surely it would mean God had not forsaken them. Whatever reason God had for sending no visions to his servant Devora since their coming to the north, for sending visions of what might come only to a Canaanite girl who did not worship him—whatever it all meant, if they could save these people, they would know, they would
know
God was with them. And all these deaths—the children in that town, and this pregnant woman who lay dead on the floor of Barak’s house, and
Zadok
—these deaths would not be without meaning.

Heber nodded. “Fifty, sixty of them. Fleeing the dead. Said Refuge was besieged. Said I could join them, they’d be grateful, they would, for another knife and a man who knows what to do with it. But I wasn’t going to try going north again.” He shuddered. “Thought I’d be able to slip by the dead, if I was quiet. I’m used to being quiet. Then I met her.” He nodded toward the corpse behind them. “She wanted to try getting back to Walls. Made a pact with her—”

He stopped. His face went ashen. He was staring past them at the corpse.

D
EVORA GLANCED
over her shoulder and froze. The corpse was
moving
, its fingers twitching against the cedar floor. Though it had a knife wound in its breast.

“
El kadosh
,” Heber breathed. Holy God.

“
El adonai
,” Devora whispered. She lifted Mishpat and turned toward the body. By the door, Hurriya’s face twisted into an expression of loathing and hate.

Even as Devora stepped toward the corpse, its eyes opened. Devora gasped. There was nothing in those eyes, no emotion, no awareness, no life. The woman’s eyes did not reflect back either Devora’s face or the blade lifted over her. Devora recalled Hurriya’s words to her amid the ashes of Walls—that in the eyes of anyone living, be she Hebrew or heathen, you could see her life and her need and the reflection of God in whose likeness she was made.

But not in these eyes.

These eyes might drink in what the corpse saw, but they gave nothing back.

The corpse’s lips parted and it drew in its first breath, lifting its heavy womb. Then it let out the breath not in a wail like a new life being born, but in a long, slow moan, a sound that swept into your ears and inside your mind and under your ribs and into your heart, the voicing of a need so great it could never be met, not even if the one voicing it should devour all the world.

The corpse rose up on its elbows and rolled to its side, those dull eyes turning toward Devora’s legs, the moan dropping to a hiss.

“God!” Barak choked. “Slay it!”

Heber stepped near, his bloodied knife ready. “Step aside, woman,” he said.

Devora could not look away from the corpse’s eyes. She felt cold throughout her entire body. Then the thing’s arm lifted, fingers curling to grasp. It reached for her leg.

“Damn you,” Devora breathed.

She brought Mishpat down. The iron sank into the corpse’s head as easily as a keel sinks into water. One shudder and the corpse went still. Devora’s blade held it up on its elbow for a moment, then the body slid from the sword and fell back. Its hands hung limp. A great gash in its head, cleaving it nearly to the eyes. Those eyes were open and unchanged.

It did not bleed.

After a moment they heard the sounds of anxious voices outside, the men talking. And a scratching against the wooden floor in the other room, probably the flight of a mouse.

“God,” Barak breathed again. “God.”

“It’s what happens,” Heber muttered. “Seen it before. Never get used to it, though.”

Devora just stared at the corpse’s womb, so large and full. This woman had carried life for the People, had carried within
her own body the survival of the Covenant and of her tribe. Now she lay dead and unclean. Devora could see no movement against the skin of the corpse’s belly, but still the sight of that distended belly struck her with horror. What if some small, waiting life yet moved in there? She had an almost overwhelming urge to bend and press her hand to that unclean flesh, to feel for some movement or some beating of a tiny heart.

“Get it out of here, please.” Devora swallowed.

Barak nodded, his face stunned, and he stepped toward the outer door, then through it. They could hear his voice lifted outside.

“You did it right, girl,” Heber said. “Went for the head.” He lifted his gaze from the body, gave Devora a bewildered look. “What are you doing with a man’s blade?”

Devora ignored him, stepped away, and looked to Hurriya. The girl still leaned against the edge of the inner door. Her eyes still glassy from the lingering fever, yet intent on the body.

“How many have to die?” the Canaanite whispered.

“Some days a woman can only save one life,” Devora muttered. Glanced at Heber. “It looks like today we saved yours.”

“The men with you did,” Heber said. He nudged the body contemptuously with his foot. “Not that I’m not thankful for it, Hebrew.” He looked around at the dim room, glanced up at the rafters. “May be enough room for the men in here. Could wall up the door, be safe until dawn if we’re quiet.”

“There are five hundred men by the river,” Devora said. She gave the walls of cedar a look of distaste. “We’ll sleep in the tents.”

Barak stepped back in, and two men with him. They had gloves. Grimly the two took up the corpse by its feet. Devora stepped aside as they dragged it out through the door. Hurriya stared at the corpse until it was gone.

“Cairns,” Devora whispered.

“They gather stones already,” Barak said.

“Thank you.”

Heber glanced from one of them to the other, the bewilderment in his face growing. He sucked in his lower lip, chewed on it.

Barak’s face was drawn with pain, and Devora remembered that his fields and his very house had been defiled. Devora stepped beside him. “We will cleanse the land,” she said for his ears only. “And there will be another vineyard.”

“I will keep my covenant,” the man said wearily, and Devora realized that though she’d meant to comfort, Barak thought she was doubting him.

Before she could say anything more, she heard that scratching sound from the inner room again, louder now. Frowning, Devora glanced at the rug hung over the door to the inner room, then gasped. The rug had been pulled aside a little, and a corpse was looking through it. A mangled body on its elbows, most of its face chewed away, only one eye intact, both ears gone, a thing deaf and nearly blind and no longer bleeding or feeling, yet still moving, crawling and scratching its way across the floor in terrible purpose. Even as Devora glimpsed it, the death-stench filled the room, pinned back previously by the heavy rug and now freed to warn them all, though too late.

It happened fast. Too fast. The thing’s rotted hand reached out, grasped Hurriya’s ankle, and tugged sharply. The Canaanite fell to her knees hard, then slammed down on her face with a startled cry. The corpse tugged Hurriya half under the rug as it pulled itself forward, climbing onto her. Ripping her dress open and gouging into the woman’s side with its fingers and teeth. Even as Devora leapt at the corpse with Mishpat in her hand, she saw the rush of blood, red and thick, and torn meat.

With a scream Devora swung the blade, slicing through the corpse’s face and carving the top of its head away. The body fell to the side and did not bleed or stir. Devora cast her blade aside and threw herself to her knee beside Hurriya. The wound in the girl’s
belly was lethal; the blood coming out was black and sluggish, and her face was pale, so pale. The girl was breathing in shallow little gasps, but she was aware, and her eyes looked helplessly up at the older
navi
.

“You didn’t tell us there was a corpse in that room!” Devora cried over her shoulder.

“I didn’t
know
!” Heber sounded shaken. Perhaps realizing that it might as easily have been him leaning against that door.

“Get out. Both of you.”

The men hesitated.

“
Get out!
” Devora screamed.

Footsteps. She heard Barak take up her blade and wrap a cloth about it—as though to signal her that he would make sure her sword, her waterskin, and her horse were seen to. But Devora didn’t turn or acknowledge him. Another moment, and she and the Canaanite were alone. Heber’s knife lay on the floor near them, forgotten. Devora took up a fold of Hurriya’s torn dress and pressed the fabric to the wound, but the blood welled up, soaking it. There was nothing she could do. Even if Hurriya could survive such a fatal wound—even then—Hurriya looked up at her, kept her gaze on the older
navi
’s face.