Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (22 page)

Now even Hannah called out to Devora cheerfully.

“Come swim with us, Devora! The clothes can wait!”

For a moment she hesitated. The thought of joining them and letting the water wash the dirt and mud from her skin and the terrors from her mind—it was an attractive thought.

But she turned away from them, shouting back, “I will keep to my work, thank you. You can play like fish if you like.”

She heard the groans and boos of the girls in the river, but ignored them and moved on through the river mud. She couldn’t bear the thought of being among other women just now. Naomi’s words resounded in her mind like drumbeats:
The next navi...you are the next navi...you are seeing what God’s eyes see
.

Devora had spent the early morning in the old
navi
’s tent, in what Naomi promised would be the first of many talks between them. The old woman had questioned her keenly about the visitations she’d had from the
shekinah
, and Devora had found herself telling the
navi
of her first vision—the one that had come to her when she was twelve. The words had flowed from her like water and blood, until she was nearly sobbing with them. She told of her mother’s death and of how she had seen herself grieving—how she had been
warned
—and had said nothing to the elders in the camp.

“They would’ve thought I was dreaming. That I’d fallen asleep when I should have been bringing water to the camp.” Devora’s eyes burned with tears. “I didn’t want to be beaten. And they’re all dead. Because of me.
Because of me.
”

Naomi had listened in silence, her sharp eyes peering deep into the girl, then sighed. “Don’t be foolish, girl,” she said. “You didn’t know better. You do what you must, you trust the rest to God. Some days, a woman can only save one life. That day, it was your own life. Some day yet to come, it may be another’s.” And Naomi clapped her hands, and a slave came in with hot tea.

But when Naomi sent the younger woman from her tent at last, Devora felt little comfort. She believed old Naomi—she was the
navi
. God was sending her visions. The enormity of it was unbearable. Because she’d said nothing. She’d seen and said nothing. She searched her memory. The fear she’d felt then, of being beaten by the elders for telling lies—that seemed another girl’s
fear and not her own. She could remember the fact of it, but not what it had felt like. Now as she stumbled on through the mud with her washing board and her basket, Devora burned with anger at herself. The girl she’d been—that girl had been too afraid to do what was necessary to keep her people safe. Devora could never forgive her for that.

She came to a waterhole, one where the water was clean and the laughing of the girls was distant, and she let the basket down with a groan. She cast a glance back at the girls bathing. It must be nice to be Hannah or Mikal. To have never seen the dead. To have never truly suffered or feared. To worry only about whether they would be a man’s first or second wife and whether that man would be young or old, handsome or foul. Devora’s own hopes of the night before, and the way she’d been flustered at that kiss, all seemed so foolish to her now. Bitterness gnawed at her heart.

You are the next navi.

If that were true, there would be more warnings. What she had seen the day before must have been another warning, and she swallowed uneasily, realizing what the warning must mean. She made up her mind to tell the
navi
of it when she returned from the washing. Naomi the Old was right. She must never again hide anything she had seen. Not if it was from God.

She bent over the basket, reaching for a tunic. She made a face; the water before her was clean, but she had not picked her spot well, for the reeds here
stank
. There was a scent of decay, of something rotting under the weeds—

Something cold grasped her ankle.

A savage pull, and the ground rushed toward her. She slammed onto her belly; her fall shoved the air out of her before she could shriek. She kicked wildly, glanced over her shoulder and saw—
it
. A face half-torn away, its mouth open now in a hiss; eyes gray and sightless, a thin hand clutching her ankle with terrible strength while the other hand clawed forward to grasp a
clump of reeds near the roots; with a groan, the creature pulled itself forward, toward her.

Its rotting torso slid free of the brush, and for a moment Devora was certain that she was back in her mother’s tent, and the thing that had been her mother was crawling back into the tent after her, grasping at her. The body below the waist was gone, and it trailed entrails and scraps of tissue behind it. The reek of it did violence against Devora’s insides. She tried to scream but managed only a breathless whimper. Its cold, dry hands gripped so tightly. Making her unclean.

She kicked at it, but it only snapped at the kicking foot with its teeth, and Devora twisted and writhed in panic. She looked desperately about her, hands scrabbling among the soiled clothes that had fallen around her. She wanted a stick, a rock, anything—she gave a low, keening cry as the thing’s other hand seized her calf, and she heard the slither of its body through the reeds. In a moment it would have its head above her leg and would dig into her skin with its teeth. It would eat her—it wanted to
eat
her!

Her hand struck something.

Wildly, she grasped it with her fingers—a hard surface—

The
washing board
!

With a cry she lifted it in both hands and rolled to her side, brought it crashing down on the creature’s head as it hissed just above her captured foot. She heard the smack of the wood against soft, rotting flesh. A growl from the creature. Screaming now, the air back in her lungs, she smashed the board down on the creature again and again, putting all her strength and terror into each blow.

When she stopped, the corpse was still, the top of its head mashed. One eye had been crushed by the washing board; the other stared dully at the sky.

Panting, Devora reached down, pried the dead fingers from her leg, then pulled her leg quickly away from its hands. With
trembling fingers, she examined her shin and ankle. There were no scratches there, just a developing bruise where the corpse had clutched her. Her lip began to tremble, and she stilled it. She would
not
cry, not here.

Devora got to her knees, shaking. She could hear cries nearby, splashing. Then running feet. The girls from the stream. Hugging herself tightly, Devora looked at the thing that lay still now in the grass, smelling like a cow found dead in a field days late. Though the thing’s strength had been terrible, it was small. She looked at the cut of its hair, at the tatters that remained of its garments. A boy. It had been a boy. A small boy.

Then the other girls reached her, their hair wet about their shoulders, dry cloth wrapped quickly around their bodies.

Hannah swayed on her feet, her eyes wide. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh God, oh God, God, God,” she moaned through her fingers.

“It’s Nathan,” Mikal whispered. “It’s Nathan.”

Nathan was Hannah’s younger brother—gone a few days before to carry a message to the camp at Beth El for the priests.

Hannah moaned and fell to her knees.

“It
was
Nathan,” Devora said hoarsely, remembering too vividly her mother’s face in the door of the tent. “Now it is unclean. It’s not him.” She shivered; a breeze touched her cheek, and then without warning it became a wind, driving ripples across the water hole and making the reeds whisper, and the heat was gone from the day. Devora was sweaty and shivering in the wind. “We have to make a cairn,” she whispered.

“There aren’t any stones here,” Mikal said, her face tight as though she were holding back tears.

Devora looked out over the reeds toward Shiloh. The camp was a long walk. They could go to find men, but that would mean leaving the body in the weeds. That would be unthinkable. And in any case Hannah would not leave the body like this. One of
them could go. But the others would have a long time to wait, and—she glanced at the corpse. It had been half-eaten; there were other dead near, somewhere. None of them should wait here, where other mangled dead could already be crawling through the weeds. A fire lit in her, and her terror flickered out. She was not shivering, crying, useless in the reeds. She was not standing by while others confronted the dead for her. She was not helpless, as she had been in her mother’s tent.

“My skin is already unclean from its touch.” Devora stooped over the body. “I will carry him to the camp. The men can make a cairn for us.” She kept her hands from shaking as she slid her arms beneath the reeking, broken thing that had been a boy; she lifted it. The corpse was very light—lighter than the basket of clothes she’d carried. Its intestines trailed to the ground beside her as she held it. Devora averted her eyes. “Gather up the clothes, Mikal,” she murmured, and then took an uneasy step forward, then another. She tried not to think of what she was carrying; when it shifted slightly against her, she bit back a scream, swayed for a moment, eyes closed.

“Let me help.” Hannah’s voice was hoarse with crying.

“Touching it means being put from the camp.” Devora’s own voice was harsh. “That should only happen to one of us.”

Hannah stifled a sob. Devora ignored the sound, kept walking. The mud by the river sucked at her feet. The wind, which made waves of purple blossoms in the heather and made the reeds hiss like serpents, kept tugging her hair across her face. She gritted her teeth, pressed on. There had been no opportunity for Hannah to say goodbye to the child. Devora understood her pain, but she had no time for it and could not permit herself to think about it, or she would begin crying as well.

“Maybe we should leave the body,” Mikal whispered, her eyes wide.

“We do not leave one of our dead unburied.” Devora’s voice was cold.

Hannah cast her a grateful, tearful look.

“Run ahead to the camp, Mikal,” Devora said. “Tell them.”

Mikal bit her lip, then nodded and sprinted through the reeds. In a few moments she was far ahead, running fleet as a gazelle.

Devora gazed ahead, fixedly ahead. The camp seemed an eternity away, as though it were in far Kemet and she had a wilderness to walk across before she could get there. Her arms ached beneath the small weight of the boy. Yet she did not let herself stumble or stop.

By the time Devora and Hannah stumbled out of the heather and reached the first of the tents, Devora’s rough washing dress was pasted to her back with cold sweat, and despite the wind her hair clung to her cheeks and neck. She feared falling ill, but the grim resolution within her was stronger. She still carried the dead child.

The
kohannim
and some of the other levites had gathered at the edge of the camp, and Mikal was there speaking urgently, tearfully, with them. The high priest stood with them, his sleeves bloodstained from a recent sacrifice, an
olah
in the Tent of Meeting. He’d been listening to Mikal with a grim look. But then one of them saw Devora and Hannah and cried out, pointing. They all fell silent.

The levites parted, making a path for the two girls. Eleazar’s eyes were wide with shock, his gaze fixed on the burden Devora carried. She saw Zefanyah, and the look
he
gave her lent her strength, strength she badly needed. Devora held her head high and carried the boy’s corpse into the midst of the camp.

As she reached the
navi
’s tent, two nazarites ran up with a woolen cloth and laid it a few feet before the door of the tent, so that Devora could set the body down without defiling the earth within the camp. Then the cloth could be lifted to carry the
corpse to the slope where cairns were raised, and the body could be wrapped in the cloth, lowered into the earth, and covered with heavy stone.

But Devora did not lay down her burden. She stopped with her toes nearly touching the edge of the cloth and waited, holding that small, dry weight in her arms, her eyes on the woman who stood in the door of the tent.

Naomi wore the white dress of the levites, and though she had never been tall, in the moonlight at the door of her tent she looked as regal as a queen of Kemet. Her gaze took in Hannah’s tears, the corpse Devora carried, the brown stains and gore on Devora’s sleeves.

Her eyes grew cold.

“Were any of you bitten?”

“No,
navi
.” Devora held her head high, though she wanted to slip away and hide; the hardness of Naomi’s face shook her. Devora stood very still. “I was the only one it touched.”

She heard a half sob behind her. Hannah.

Naomi searched Devora’s eyes for truth. Her face remained hard, her emotions masked. This was not the Naomi who had smiled wryly at God’s secrets or Devora’s “pluck.” This was Naomi the Old, judge of Israel, who had been alive when the People had taken possession of the land. Naomi, who had learned from the first
navi
and whose responsibility was keeping the land clean from the dead.

“I believe you, girl.” For a brief moment, Naomi’s eyes showed her pain. Devora took in a quick breath, but did not otherwise react. She had to be strong if she was to face the consequences of her choice without tears and without terror.