Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (8 page)

“I
T IS
only one tree,” Zadok said as they hurried down the long slope toward the tents. He carried the Canaanite girl in his arms as if she weighed no more than a linen cloth. Their voices were hushed, breathless as they rushed through the heather at nearly a run, the slope already cast into shadow. Less than an hour now before dark, when the Sabbath would come like a bride to the People, her face veiled by the night sky, to free the People from work, give them rest, remind them they were free and possessors of a land of their own, with no overseer’s whip and no foreign gods to take from them their labor and their harvests.

But though it was customary to greet the bride with song or with a slapping of hands against thighs and exuberant shouts, tonight the delight of Sabbath barely touched Devora’s heart as she struggled to keep pace with Zadok’s mighty strides. Her heart
was clutched in the withering roots of that olive tree. Her face very pale.

“It is
not
only one tree,” Devora protested. “What sickens one plant can kill an entire crop. What sickens within one woman’s heart can poison an entire People. You know this, Zadok. Why else did you take the nazarite vow?”

“It is
one
tree,” Zadok said, “and all about me I see a land fertile and lush, a land of olives and great herds.”

“This day I have seen the land filled with herds of the ravenous dead.” Devora’s voice shook. “Zadok ben Zefanyah, the Law will defend the People from the dead,” Devora breathed, “but only if the People live by it. How many times have I sat in judgment over acts that tear at the very roots of the Covenant? Brothers killing brothers or robbing them. Bodies left unburied. And always, I hear of—of
her
people, mingling with ours. Of Hebrew men who permit deities of wood and clay to reside in their homes, or who dance at Canaanite festivals in the hill country. Zadok! What
if
—”

Zadok made no answer, and Devora did not voice her fears. Her side burned; though she was aging, she was the
navi
and she climbed and descended this hill often. And her need and her anxiety drove her. Yet their haste was taking its toll on her, and her growing dread seemed to choke away her breath.

Glancing at the silent girl Zadok carried, Devora wanted badly to hate her, to loathe her for the withering that was coming on the land, a blight in which her strange people and their small, useless gods had surely played some part. And hate would be easier on her than this cold, clinging dread. But the little flame of hate flickered out; she could not sustain it. The girl was too weak to hate.

Hurriya was a ruin, barely alive; she’d likely been held together only by her need to seek out the
navi
, to bring her that tiny corpse and beg for the impossible. Now the Canaanite stared out at the
valley and at the white tents they were approaching. Unblinking, apparently unaware of the day or the hour or of anything but what lay within her own heart, in her own grief.

The
malakh ha-mavet
!

Every Hebrew child knew the story. How the night before their fathers’ exodus from a foreign land, the
malakh ha-mavet
had visited the homes of the men and women of Kemet, from the lowest farm worker to the home of Pharaoh himself. And in each home, the firstborn had been struck with the uncleanness, the fever, the drying out and convulsing of the body, then the quick tossing of the spirit into the empty dark and the stillness of a corpse cooling slowly on its bed. And then, in the hours before dawn, when the Nile was calm and quiet as a lake, the firstborn rose hungering, and the grieving of their parents turned to shrieks of terror as son devoured father and daughter devoured mother, as parents turned on the bodies of their children with spades or shovels or sharpened styluses. That night of the risen dead had left every house in Kemet spattered with blood.

Every dwelling place but the Hebrews’.

For God’s hand had covered them.

The Hebrews commemorated that night each spring at the festival of Pesach, the Passing Over, even as they commemorated the time of wandering in the desert each harvest at Sukkot, the Feast of Tents. Each year, the
kohannim
reminded the gathered celebrants in the fields about Shiloh that so long as they kept the Covenant and lived by the Law, God’s hand would cover Israel. Their sons and their daughters would be as many as the stars in the night sky; their tribes would grow as fruitful as the branches of the olive tree.

But now the olive tree above Shiloh had withered.

The three in the heather were approaching the camp swiftly; Devora could see men and women among the white tents ahead. She found that she was reciting one of the
mitzvot
softly, though
she barely had breath for it; for once, the words of the Law brought her little calm. The burn in her side was fierce.

When they had approached within shouting distance of the camp, they halted where a dip in the land would conceal the girl’s uncleanness from the sight of the tents. While Devora leaned forward with her hands on her legs above the knees, gasping for breath, Zadok took his cloak and, with only a moment’s hesitation, laid it out across the weeds and blossoms. Then he placed the girl gently on it. He would need to find a new cloak; he would not get this one back.

The girl lifted her hand and caught at Devora’s sleeve. The
navi
tensed.

“I heard you talking with the men,” she whispered. “There are more dead. Many more dead.”

“Yes,” Devora said.

“We’re all going to die. Like my child.”

“We most certainly are not,” Devora snapped.

“They came out of the olive grove. There were eight of them, and their bodies had been torn open and eaten on, as though a lion or a wolf had been at them. But they were walking, they were
walking
.” The girl’s eyes showed their whites.

“I know,” Devora said.

“Malachi was at the olive press, and they
ate
him. They snarled like animals. They dragged him down and tore at him and
ate
him.”

Devora shivered.

“I was in the shack, and I tried to hold the door. I tried to keep them out—I tried—I tried—” She began weeping, without tears. “They were too strong. They wanted the baby—they wanted my baby—”

In her mind Devora could hear the shrieks of her mother again, dying outside the tent. “I know,” she said again, her voice hoarse. The girl’s misery seemed terribly familiar, a dark mirror of Devora’s own. The girl had come to her seat for judgment, but there was never any forgiveness for the deaths of your kin. Whether you could have prevented their deaths or not, they were gone. Devora knew this too well.

Some days a woman can only save one life
, the old
navi
Naomi had tried to tell her when she was a girl. Yet surely if that one life were always your own, that was an abomination in the eyes of the God who sits in decision over the living and the dead. Unable to look away from Hurriya’s quiet misery, Devora realized that the Canaanite, like she herself, stood alone and still breathing among the corpses of her kin. And even if Hurriya survived her heart’s grief and her body’s anguish, she would still stand there, every night of her life, every morning. Though she had sacrificed everything she had and everything she was as she struggled out of the hills, wasting her body away as she bore her dying infant in her arms, still her child and its father were dead. She, she only, was alive. There would never be forgiveness for that. Devora knew this; she had fled alone out of the death of her parents’ camp when she was twelve, had listened and waited for mercy, and had received only barrenness in her womb and night terrors when her memories came back to her in the dark, and hard burdens to carry.

Devora felt that she must say something. She could not just leave this girl grieving here in that woolen cloth that could only be called a garment by an act of the imagination, with her body thin and exhausted and torn from childbirth, her breasts swollen with milk that had become futile, a curse to her.

“You did what you could,” Devora told her after a moment. “Try to sleep, and forget.”

“Forget,” Hurriya whispered. She began to laugh softly, helplessly. Letting go of Devora’s sleeve, she curled up, bringing her
knees to her chest as though to protect an unborn child, though she had only her own ravaged heart to protect, only her own body to shield.

Devora exchanged a look with Zadok, then stood.

“I can get bedding for her,” Zadok said. “But if we leave her here weeping, a wolf will come for her.”

“Guard her tonight, for me.”

“Your will,
navi
.”

Devora’s shoulders sagged beneath the weight of her unseen burdens. What if the girl
did
die out here? She glanced at Zadok, saw the weariness in his eyes.

Shelter the stranger you find in your land.

Yet like Hurriya fleeing her hills, Devora had done what she could. It was not enough, but only a small crescent of the sun was visible now above the hills. She’d lingered too long already.

“When your uncleanness has passed,” she said without looking at the girl, “you can wash linens in the camp, be given meals, a place to sleep. Until we know if any kin live who can claim you. Forget, girl. That is all you can do. There will be other children.”

The girl just sobbed. The sound wrenched at the
navi
’s heart.

Devora turned and hurried toward the white tents, walking fast.

S
HILOH CAMP
was both a monument and a defense against the past. It lay on the land like a great map beneath the gaze of God that charted the People’s history and their orientation toward their deity. The
kohannim
boasted that no matter where a Hebrew found himself in the land, he always knew which direction he was facing. For a People whose fathers had lost a generation wandering in the desert and hiding from the restless dead, knowing where things were was vitally important. Where there was water, where there was sand, where there were quail to eat or deer to hunt. Where there were enemies and where there were kin. Where you were and where God was in relation to you.

The camp was a great square, tilted so that its points faced north, west, east, and south. The eastern quadrant held the tents of the
kohannim
, the priests who’d gone through seven-day rites of purification and cleansing and could now approach God’s
presence without fear, bringing burnt offerings to atone for the uncleanness of the tribes. The doors of their tents faced east, toward the Tumbling Water, the great river the People had crossed when they took the land. Their tents faced the past.

The western tents held those levites who were not of the priesthood. Scribes and craftsmen and the young dedicates who were brought to Shiloh as children, to be raised as levites if they were boys or to be raised as wives for them if they were girls.

The southern quadrant held the tents of the seventy judges appointed to resolve disputes. These faced the vast settlements of Benyamin and Yudah tribes, the most populous in the land.

And across the camp, facing north and away from the People, as though keeping watch toward those hills where there were still many heathen, stood the tents of the nazarites, those who’d taken the harshest of vows to defend the Ark, the holy tribe of Levi, the priests, and the
navi
. In the midst of their tents lay a great cleared space of dirt and sand where the nazarites danced the spears each morning, training for battles with either the living or the dead. The nazarites were few. There were in fact only five in Shiloh this year. Though in the north there were raids from the fortified towns on the coast or from the heathen settlements in White Cedars where the hilltops were high enough for snow, those were the concern of the northern tribes. The rest of the land had lain quiet for a generation. Few now took the nazarite vow or kept it. Many of the older nazarites had even gone through the rites to be released of their vows. Of the generation who remembered the night the dead had come to Shiloh, only Zadok was left.

And finally, broad and mighty at the utmost east of the camp, standing between the People and their terrible past, stood the Tent of Meeting, many-colored and stretched over a frame of wooden poles. It was the reason for Shiloh’s existence. Within it, behind a heavy veil, was the
kodesh kodashim
, the Holy of Holies,
which held the Ark of the Covenant. Inside that great chest of wood and gold were tablets of stone on which were inscribed the Ten, the words spoken by God to the People at Har Sinai, the words that had initiated the Covenant, the first words of the Law. And above that Ark, in an empty space between the outspread wings of carved golden angels, dwelled the
shekinah
, the heat and presence of their ancient desert God.

Even in their ancestors’ time when Shiloh had moved often, this Tent had never been raised
within
the camp. It always stood just outside, in hope that the uncleanness of the People would not offend God to wrath. In the outer part of the Tent, in a tiny censer prepared by levite women and placed before the veil, incense was burned at all hours, to sweeten the scent of the camp, so it would be easier for God to live near them. The
kohannim
taught that this God they’d found in the desert was not like the handcrafted gods of wood and stone that the heathen revered, gods who might be housed within your own tent without fear, small gods who were powerless to protect those who honored them from either the spears of the living or the teeth of the dead.