Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (39 page)

Her gaze followed his nod. She could see the outcropping, almost a low wall of stone rising at a slant from the land, as though God had driven a massive stone into the soil like a spearhead. Beyond it, a stretch of open grasses, then the west wall of the city, the only wall with no corpses beating against it.

But she saw something else, too.

“Zadok,” she said, “there’s no
gate
in that wall.”

It was true. The walled settlement had two gates, one in the east wall and one in the south—both had dead beating against the timbers, which must surely have been reinforced heavily from the inside. In fact, the reason there were no dead pressing against the west wall was likely because no one had fled into the city through it when the corpses had first descended on the valley.

“The men of Refuge will lower a basket for me,” Zadok said.

“You don’t know that. They’re terrified. Who knows what they’ll do.”

Zadok smiled grimly. “When I make it past those dead,
navi
, Refuge will want to speak with me.” His smile widened, showing his teeth. “I promise it.”

“Zadok—” But her throat tightened, choking off her words. So much she didn’t know how to say.

He gripped her shoulders in those powerful hands, held her gaze a moment. Then he glanced over her shoulder at Barak. “Keep and preserve her life, in my stead. The Canaanite too.”

Barak gave him a brisk nod, his face drawn.

Zadok nodded back, then stepped away from the
navi
, releasing her. Quickly he unbuckled his breast-piece and cast it aside; it would be too heavy, a hindrance rather than a defense. His greaves, too, he slid from his legs. His tunic he pulled off over his head. He stood a moment in his loincloth and his sandals, his body muscled and bronzed by the sun, his dark hair long and uncut. He took it up in firm hands and bound it in several knots near to his scalp, where it would be less easy for the dead to grasp. Then knelt on one knee at the
navi
’s feet, lowering his eyes. His fingers moved quickly, tightening the laces on his sandal. “Bless me,
navi
,” he asked.

She didn’t want to bless him. She wanted to keep pleading with him not to go. She wanted to ask him to stay with her. Slowly Devora set her hand on his head, felt the thick curls of his hair. For a moment she didn’t speak. When she did, her voice sounded frail to her.

Adonai bless you and keep you,

Adonai make his face shine on you and be gracious to you,

Adonai look on you with favor and give you peace.

She didn’t lift her hand from his hair. Another, she was going to lose another of her tribe, her family. She’d lost Naomi. She’d lost Eleazar. She was going to lose this man too. “Zadok, you—” She tried again, managed to keep her voice calm. “Tell them where we’re going and why. That there are people with no walls and no refuge, and we go to shield them. Tell them we will be back and that as long as they remain within their walls, God will be their shield and their tower. Tell them the
navi
is with Barak’s men and that she promises them this. Zadok—” She paused, gathered herself. Her voice low and intense. “You make it to those walls, Zadok ben Zefanyah. You
make
it there.”

She lifted her hand, and Zadok got to his feet. His eyes met hers, and they were unveiled. The passion in them she had only seen before in Lappidoth’s eyes.

“
Navi
,” he said with another duck of his head, and then he turned and bolted into a run, flashing past Barak and the gathered men, darting down the slope. Devora found she couldn’t breathe, watching him move. He was fast, fleet as a deer, leaping and ducking through the brush.

Almost absently Barak gave the chieftains commands, calling to ready the men for the march upriver. But his gaze never left the valley below, and the other tribal leaders walked away slowly, looking over their shoulders.

At last, only Devora, Barak, and Omri stood on the high rock. Omri’s face was pale with horror, Barak’s awed. Devora, however, felt that she had been struck through the breast with a spear and was now in shock and waiting to feel the pain of it. She glanced once back the way she’d come. Shomar’s head was down;
he was grazing among the rocks. Hurriya sat huddled on his back, watching Devora with eyes glazed with pain and vision.

“Holy God, the man can run,” Barak breathed.

Devora swallowed and turned her eyes back to the valley. Had she been a young woman, she might have offered to run herself, hoping that God would bless her and shield her as his
navi
and bring his words through her to the settlement.

Once again, Zadok carried her burdens for her.

The nazarite was sprinting along the outcropping now, keeping the low stone bulwark between him and the dead; there were perhaps only a few spear casts between him and the southern wall where the dead moaned and beat on the stone. He would have to run northwest along the stone, then round the far end of the outcropping and make for the west wall, hoping either that the dead would be too preoccupied to see him or that his legs would carry him so swiftly to the wall that he could be hoisted up before they reached him.

It was desperate.

And wondrous.

She watched Zadok’s powerful body race along the rock. In him she saw his father, Zefanyah, who had danced the spear so furiously on the training ground that none of the other nazarites could best him. Zefanyah, who afterward would stand laughing among the other men on the packed dirt, sweating, his chest heaving, until he would glance over to where Devora watched with the other girls and smile at her.

And she saw her husband, Lappidoth, as a young man, slaying the corpses that had come for his cattle, his bronzed skin shining in the sun, his blows powerful and sure. His eyes full of purpose and will and the determination to hold firmly to what was his.

“I have never seen a man move like that,” Omri muttered.

“Until this last night and day, you had never seen a nazarite,” Devora said, her heart swelling with pride even amid her fear.

“He is one man,” Barak said. “There must be four hundred beating on that wall. At least.”

“He is Zadok ben Zefanyah,” Devora said.

“He’s rounding the end of that rock,” Barak said quietly.

Below them, Zadok came clear of the rock, but even as he did, several figures lurched out of a fissure. Eight, nine of them, barring his way. Devora found she couldn’t breathe. There had been dead hiding
in
the rocks. Possibly someone working the fields had taken refuge in some den within the rocks and been followed and eaten, and the dead had stayed there until stirred by the sound of Zadok’s footsteps and his breathing.

Now they were upon him.

A hush fell over the hill. Devora’s blood was loud in her ears. She could have forbidden him to go. She was the only one whose forbidding he would have heeded. Yet she knew that this would have broken him.

The moaning of the dead was faint but terrible in her ears.

She watched helplessly as Zadok leapt among the dead, his spear flashing in the sun. Two figures lay still on the ground. He spun and danced—he
danced
—darting forward and back, leaping over one corpse that had tumbled to its knees, landing on his feet and bringing the spear up, stabbing with the bronze head, wielding the butt end like a weapon itself, knocking corpses back. Then he wielded the spear one-handed—though its weight was not light—and his other hand plucked out his knife, and that too flashed in the sun as he leapt and fought.

“He’s going to make it,” Omri breathed. “He’s actually going to make it.”

Zadok fought in utter silence. No raiding cry, no prayer, no voice that came faint to Devora’s ears. Just focused, silent discipline.

“
Navi!
” Barak gasped.

“That does it,” Omri muttered.

Some of the dead were breaking away from the south wall, lurching out over the open grass, their attention drawn by the moans and snarls of the corpses that had closed on Zadok. Devora bit her lip and prayed silently, her palms damp with sweat. Below the ridge came the sounds of men shouldering their burdens, unaware of the grim battle the nazarite was fighting.

But now Zadok thrust his knife into the face of one of his assailants, and it appeared to stick in the corpse’s skull, for he shoved the corpse aside, abandoning the blade, and broke free, bolting out over the grass. The way he’d run before had stirred the admiration of his watchers, but now he
truly
ran. It couldn’t be less than two hundred strides between the rock outcropping and the west wall, but he tore across the ground like a stallion in full gallop. Veering north to buy time as the lurching corpses moved toward him, a reeking herd flowing along the wall and over the grass.

“He won’t make it,” Barak said softly.

Omri just shook his head.

“He will,” Devora said forcefully. “He
will
.”

Run, Zadok.
She mouthed the words, without sound.
Run, Zadok. Run, damn you.

He had perhaps eighty strides to go—but there were dead all around him now, and dead between him and the wall. He dodged and darted between them, sometimes knocking one aside with his spear, then spinning past. Devora saw the dead thicken about him, and she felt almost dizzy.

“
Run!
” she cried aloud.

She saw the sunlight on his shoulders and back where he shone with sweat. He dodged and the point of his spear cut the air. Then the dead were thick between him and the wall, and he didn’t hesitate, didn’t turn back or flee. The nazarite ran directly
into
the corpses, wielding his spear and using the sheer force of his run to shove the walking corpses aside.

Omri cursed.
They say a nazarite fights like ten men
, Omri had told Zadok when the two of them met, both taunting him and questioning.

No
, Zadok had answered.
I fight like twenty.

Now Zadok proved it. He spun on his heels faster than Devora had ever seen any man move, ducking and thrusting among the dead, his lethal bronze slicing and piercing scalp and face, throwing corpses to the earth. Still they closed on him, hands grasping for his shoulders, his arms, uncaring that he was armed. Their fingers brushed him, defiling his skin, yet he struck with both blade and shaft of the spear, as though it were only heads of summer wheat touching him and the spear he held a scythe. More corpses fell. But now he could not move forward farther, so he stood and fought. The moaning dead pressed in on him, the ones behind shoving those before them, and after a moment Zadok went down beneath the sheer weight of their bodies, and Devora let out a low cry; she couldn’t help it, it tore its way up her throat. She saw the corpses bending over that piece of earth where he’d fallen, only thirty strides from the wall. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. Something was tight and hard in her breast. She remembered the scorched, unrecognizable face of Zefanyah as he lay stretched out on the ground in a line of dead.

“He
rises
!” Barak yelled. “He rises!
Navi! I can see the sun on his spear!
”

Devora gasped. It was true; she could see it too. The flashes of light as the spear thrust up from the ground, twice, then again. And then with a roar she could hear even from here, even over the wailing of the dead, Zadok ben Zefanyah, nazarite since he was seven, burst to his feet, the dead still clutching him, one of them even with its jaws about his left arm, blood running down to his left hand. Yet Zadok stood, screaming hoarsely, thrusting against the dead with the shaft of his weapon. His hair had come loose and it swept about him as he fought and turned, hair longer
and more flowing than any woman’s, hair that had never been cut. Bloodied now about his shoulders. Dead grasped at it, pulling his head back; a corpse tore into his left shoulder with its teeth. Still he remained on his feet as they ate at him, still he roared and battered at them with his spear, using it more now as a pole and shield than as a thrusting weapon. Bodies lay still about his legs, dead he’d silenced, yet others clambered on top of the fallen to clutch at him. He drove the butt of the spear back, crushing the face of the corpse that had his shoulder, destroying its head; he shook his arm and shoulder like a man shrugging off a cloak, and the body fell away. Blood ran down over his chest from the deep bite in his shoulder. The dead still held his hair and his left arm, yet he turned, and gripping his spear near its head, he drove the point like a dagger into the eye of a corpse behind him. He was bleeding, he was unclean, still he fought. Still he fought to get the
navi
’s message to that settlement.

People had come to the west wall now and were hurling shards of pottery and ewers and even beams of wood down on the dead who moaned between the wall and Zadok, though with little effect.

“He is still fighting,” Barak breathed. “He is still fighting.”

“He is a nazarite,” Devora said again. Everything in her numb.

Then the dead tugged Zadok beneath them a second time, and on the ridge Devora and Barak and Omri waited, but there was no flash of sun on Zadok’s spear nor any surge of the man to his feet. Only the dead, bending over that spot and feeding, covering Zadok so that his body could not be seen through them. A pain sharp near Devora’s heart. His body. Zadok’s body. It would be left down there, to be fed on, to
rise
—if the dead left any of him intact.

With a cry, Devora turned and moved as quickly as the her soreness would allow, running for her horse.

“
Navi
, no!” Barak tore after her.

In a moment Devora felt the man’s weight slam into her, bearing her to the ground on her belly, driving the breath from her. Wheezing, she kicked wildly, but he crushed her to the earth.

“We have to get his body!” she screamed. “We have to get his body!”

“It’s no good! Be
still
, you fool woman!” His growl in her ear.

“No! We have to!” She shrieked and thrashed under the chieftain’s weight and heard him cursing wildly as he fought to hold her. All she could think of, the one terror in her heart, was that Zadok was down there being torn and eaten, that she had sent him to die and could not leave him there, not like that. Zadok, who had loved her and sworn to her, who had been her defender and her right arm and her strong cedar to lean on, these last days of their nightmare journey into the north. She could not leave his body there among the dead. She could not betray him so.