Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (18 page)

Her eyes flew open. She could still hear the silence after her mother’s shrieks and then the wet sounds of the dead feeding. Could still feel the cool clay pestle in her hand, clenched tightly because her palm was slick with sweat and she had to keep hold of it. Breathing hard, Devora struggled to reorient herself. She was lying on her side with a fire before her. Hurriya sat across the fire, her eyes reflecting back the flames. She was singing softly. That same go-to-sleep song Devora had heard her sing before. The melody tugged at Devora; there was something so wistful about it. Like a woman alone in a boat on a lake singing to another woman walking alone along the shore.

Somewhere to the left, Shomar whickered softly. Zadok was not at the fire; he was gone.

Devora wrapped her arms about herself and bit her lip to hold in a whimper. Anger flashed through her, a heat that didn’t warm her. She could not suffer these dreams now. She could
not
. The People needed her.

“Did I cry out in my sleep?” Her tone was sharp, bitter.

Hurriya stopped singing and shook her head. Kept watching the fire. She had a strained look now that she wasn’t singing, as though it was all she could do to hold back her pain from overwhelming her.

“Where is Zadok?” Devora asked.

“He heard something.”

“What did he hear?”

“A deer. He said.”

Devora looked to the trees. The wind had died down and the trees were no longer full of menace but only mournful. Because they trapped the dark and held it beneath their branches even as some men and women trap it in their hearts.

“A deer,” Devora murmured.

She thought it unlikely that a deer would have drawn the nazarite from the fire.

She shivered, glanced away from the trees, saw the girl watching her.

“He was alone with me,” Hurriya said after a moment, her voice holding a faint hint of relief. “He didn’t touch me.”

“You are unclean,” Devora said, irritated. “And Zadok does not take women unwilling. He’s a nazarite; he’d hardly need to.”

“That’s what Hebrew men do,” Hurriya said.

Devora felt a rush of anger at her and beneath it a touch of pity that she let the anger smother. This girl had endured things she had never heard of a woman enduring before. But she couldn’t afford to think about that. Devora looked away from the girl and watched the fire, wondering where the nazarite was and whether indeed he had heard or sensed the dead moving in the thicket. She shivered, and when she glanced at last at the Canaanite, she saw that the girl was shivering too.

No, she was
shaking
.

Devora watched her with growing alarm; the girl’s eyes stared just over the fire into the dark beyond it, and her eyes were those of someone staring at things God had hidden before the making of the world and had never intended to be seen by living eyes. Devora rose and went to her side. The
navi
could feel heat rising from the girl as though she were sitting next to a fire blazing as high as the roof of a house. But after a moment the heat was gone, simply gone. Hurriya blinked, then her shaking subsided.

And suddenly Devora understood. She caught her breath.

“You
saw
something,” Devora whispered. “Something that isn’t here, not yet. And you did earlier too. When you saw something in the trees.”

Hurriya glanced at the
navi
but seemed disoriented.

“Answer me, girl,” Devora snapped. “Has this happened before?”

“Twice,” she whispered. “Twice before this night. While I was with child.”

Devora tried to take this in. It shouldn’t be possible. Could the girl be imagining it? Yet Devora had felt the heat. She
knew
that heat. God had shown this girl things that usually only his eyes saw. Yet how could this be? She wasn’t Hebrew.

“What did you see?”

“A man, Hebrew, I think. He was beating my sister.” She began shaking. “I would rather die than see this. I wasn’t dreaming.”

“I know,” Devora said quietly.

“Then I saw you. You were sitting beside a dead man. I don’t know who he was. You got up to gather stones.” Her eyes were vulnerable. “What does it mean?”

Devora took a breath. “It means you are chosen to be the next
navi
of Israel.” Hardly believing her own words. “It means you see what God sees.”

Hurriya laughed that cold, bitter laugh she had. “I’ve been touched by your God, you mean.”

“Yes.” Devora’s voice sounded very small to her.

“I don’t
know
your God.”

For a moment only the fire was speaking.

There was strife in Devora’s heart. This woman was
not
of the People.

“It seems
he
knows
you
,” Devora said. “This is a very great burden, and a great gift. No veil between you and God. I have to think about this.”

Devora got up quickly, paced out to the shadows beyond the firelight. She set her back to the nearest tree and just breathed evenly.

That Hurriya should be chosen, that was a sign.

But a sign of what?

That, revoking his promise, God had chosen another People? Or that the survival of the Covenant and the People depended on strangers? Or something else?

She glanced around the bole of the tree, saw Hurriya at the fire in her salmah. Thought again how inadequate a garment that was. A new and strange thought occurred to the
navi
—what if God had left the People unsheltered because they themselves had given no shelter?

Shelter the stranger in your land...

If Hurriya was the next
navi
, it was because God had something for her to say to the People, something only Hurriya could see, something only she could tell them. Something they must hear. Something about the strangers in their land.

The sickly sweet scent of death assailed her, making her belly heave. With a gasp, Devora turned her gaze away from the fire and gave a start, her heart pounding. A tall figure stood there in the dark, massive and looming over her. Its eyes glinting in the light of the fire.

It was not Zadok.

F
OR SEVERAL
heartbeats Devora stood paralyzed, caught by the thing’s eyes, which were empty and cold and only gave back firelight the way metal gives back a dull sheen. The corpse’s sides moved in and out as it took quick breaths. Then it snarled, a sound that had nothing human in it, and lunged into her, knocking the breath from her, pinning her to the tree with its weight. Devora lifted her arm to shield her face and throat, felt the thing’s neck pressed against the heavy wool of her sleeve. Its breath on her cheek, cold as the air over a frozen lake. The corpse leaned hard on her arm, its teeth snapping a mere breath from her throat; it had lurched right out of her night dreams and into her waking life, it had come for her, she’d always known it would. She found her breath and screamed shrilly. Turned her face to the side, fighting to hold it off with her arm, but the thing was
strong
. Another moment and it would be
feeding
on her—

A flash in the dark, and the corpse’s head was severed half from its neck and fell limp against its left shoulder. The thing’s hissing went silent, but still its cold hands grasped at her. Wide-eyed, Devora saw Hurriya standing behind the corpse, naked, Mishpat lifted in her hands.

With a cry, Devora dropped to her knees and threw herself to the side in the dark, heard the corpse scrambling after her as she rolled. A cry from Hurriya, and as Devora rolled onto her back she caught a glimpse of the sword flashing again through the air, and then she was on her belly again and then had her hands and knees beneath her and was pushing herself up to her feet.

The corpse was impaled on Mishpat, the blade driven into its chest; its head hung limply behind its shoulder, and its hands were groping in the air. Hurriya was ducking them.

“The head,” Devora gasped. “The head!”

Hurriya wrenched the sword free of the corpse’s belly and began swinging it like a wood-axe, chopping the blade into their assailant’s head, shoulders, and arms. Again and again. The body went down and she stood over it, lifting Mishpat high and sending the blade shrieking down through the air. Sobbing as she chopped into the body.

For a moment Devora looked on with horror. Then staggered toward her, panting. “It’s done,” she rasped. “It’s done, girl!”

Hurriya didn’t seem to hear her; she just kept lifting the blade and chopping. Her face wild with anguish. Bits of necrotic flesh flew through the air. Some of it spattered across her legs.

“God’s Covenant, girl! Stop!” Devora cried, her eyes wide.

A sound of crashing through the trees to her left, and she spun to face it. Hurriya did as well, lifting Mishpat, but then there was a man’s cry from that direction: “
Devora!
”

For an instant Devora was startled—Zadok had never used her name before, nor had she permitted it—but relief overwhelmed the brief shock. “Zadok!” she cried.

The nazarite burst into sight, his spear in his hand and three waterskins looped over his shoulder. Taking in the scene at a glance, he cast spear and skins aside and swept Devora up in his powerful arms, startling her. In a moment he’d borne her to the fire and set her beside it. His eyes were hot with fury, but he said nothing. He ducked into the shadows of the trees, and in a moment he returned with spear and waterskins and Hurriya walking beside him, naked and shaking, her legs bespattered with bits of flesh and tissue. She carried Mishpat out to her side.

Devora got hurriedly to her feet. “Zadok, my waterskin—”

He tossed it to her. “
Why
did you leave the fire?”

“Why did
you
?” Devora cried.

Zadok looked at her a moment. “Stay here,” he said firmly.

She nodded jerkily. His bronze spear clutched in one hand, the nazarite rose and hurried back into the shadows beneath the trees. Devora looked into the dark for a moment, shivering. Were there more out there, more dead?

But she had a problem here, near at hand, something she had to tend to. Something she
could
tend to.

“Sit,” Devora said to Hurriya. “Quickly.”

Hurriya lowered herself unsteadily, the firelight showing goose bumps along her arms and on the skin of her breasts, from the cold. She held Mishpat out to the
navi
, and Devora saw now that the girl had wrapped a small cloth about the hilt, so that her skin did not touch it. Devora would have been relieved, but she was too shaken with fear. Hurriya set the blade before Devora and removed the cloth. She did so slowly, as though reluctant to let the blade go.

Devora set the blade aside—it would have to be cleansed—and then poured out the entire waterskin over the girl’s thighs and legs. Swept up some dry brush and began scrubbing her legs.

Hurriya gasped at the pain of it.

“Be still,” Devora snapped. “You have bits of—of
it
—on you. Be still, girl.”

Devora bent low over the girl and looked at her legs carefully in the firelight. Hissed through her teeth and brushed at a spot just above her knee. She glanced at the hair between the girl’s thighs, then gave a closer look though her face burned. But nothing had spattered that high on her body.

When Devora was satisfied that none of the unclean flesh was left on the girl’s body, she began brushing fiercely at the ground, pushing dirt and offal into a small pile that one might cover with two hands, if one dared to touch it. Devora straightened and turned toward Hurriya, still breathing fast.

“Never do that again,” she snapped.

“It stopped moving,” Hurriya breathed. “It stopped.”

“Yes, it did.”

“And it didn’t bite you. Or me.”

“It didn’t.” Devora’s voice was sharp. She wanted no comfort or help from this heathen girl; now that she was sure the girl had no bits of the corpse still clinging to her, Devora wanted to be left alone, to hold herself in her own arms and shiver. She realized she was still on the edge of panic. A whimper of fear rose in her throat, and she held it back. She bit her lip, hard, tasted her own living blood. Began to breathe more calmly. The girl was right. The corpse hadn’t bitten the
navi
, hadn’t even touched her bare skin. She was all right.

“You don’t know what I saw.” The Canaanite stared into the fire. “Coming down from the hills. With my child. The things I saw. I couldn’t watch another woman be eaten.”

Devora knelt by her and sat back on her heels. She watched the firelight play across the younger woman’s face. Then glanced over her shoulder at the dark under the trees. With a shudder, she wondered if she would ever again be able to sleep near trees.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and glanced back at the girl. But Hurriya had lost consciousness.

Devora watched her a moment, saw again the leanness of Hurriya’s body as she lay naked by the fire. Her breasts rising and falling with her breath. That ghastly pallor to her skin, almost as though she might be one of the dead herself. And now, great bruises forming on her thighs and the beginnings of sores where the saddle had rubbed her raw even through her salmah.