Free Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) by Stant Litore Page B

north with the men. Why else would he have sent me such visions?”
    “Perhaps. But right now it is time to greet the bride,” Eleazar said, cutting her off. And he turned toward the door of his tent.
    “Eleazar, please—”
    “We will talk after the Sabbath,
navi
.” He spoke without turning and disappeared into his tent.
    Devora stood a moment, afflicted again by a terrible sense of not having done enough. Hannah gave her an understanding look but said nothing. Devora turned to leave, then stopped. Fresh to her mind had come the sight of the Canaanite curled up like a wounded animal in her travel-stained salmah, nothing but a woolen blanket to shelter her body and her grief.
    “Hannah,” Devora called.
    The priest’s wife had her hand at the door of the tent. She glanced back at the
navi
.
    “Hannah, please. After the Sabbath. There is a girl at the edge of the camp. Zadok is tending her. She is weak from childbirth and likely ill. She’ll need ointment, and herbs, and warm water and cloths. You’ll know what else she needs better than I. Will you go to her, Hannah?”
    Hannah gave her a curious look. “Who is she?”
    The
navi
paused. She could hear the sides of the tent flapping slightly as a wind moved through the camp. It seemed to her that the wind carried to her the sound of a faint moan, as if from the hill. Then a quiet, gasping sob, the grief of a bereaved woman. Perhaps visions came to her ears this day and not only to her eyes. Or perhaps she only imagined it. “A supplicant,” she said. She could not say
a heathen
, nor explain why it suddenly seemed so important to her that someone see to the girl. She had no time to argue with Hannah.
    Hannah gave a small nod. “I will see to her. Good Sabbath,
navi
.” She paused. “The other wives are dining with us. Will you join us?”
    “Not tonight,” Devora said.
    Then she walked swiftly, almost at a run, toward her husband Lappidoth’s tent. All through the camp, the priests’ songs were falling silent; the Sabbath had arrived.
    And then Devora
did
run, forgetful of dignity.

THE MAN WHO DEFENDED HIS CATTLE
    D EVORA HAD been twelve the first time she had seen him; he had been twenty. She was traveling alone on her way to Shiloh after the dead had devoured her mother’s camp and all her kin. By night she lay in the weeds, shivering. By day she moved with caution, listening for any moaning dead and keeping away from any cart paths or any living men she saw, who might be tempted by a girl alone and without the protection of her tribe. It was easy to tell at a distance whether a figure striding through barley or tall grass was living or dead, for the dead staggered and lurched, but either the living or the dead could be dangerous to her. She was the only one left of all the men and women and children she knew; the fourteen others in her camp were dead. She was weak from hunger, and she hurried from one small pond or mud hole to the next, anxious for water.
    The day she first saw Lappidoth was the second day of her flight.
    She heard the moaning first, faint but unmistakable over the music of nearby water, and for a long time she stood still, terribly still, in grass higher than her chin. When she moved a little, as silently as she could, she came to a stream and saw the dead—and
him
—on the other bank. He was defending his herd from them. One of the cows had been torn apart; the others huddled in the middle of the stream. There were four corpses attacking. One was naked with a great gash in its side, its ribs white in the sun. Another of the dead had only one arm, yet it clawed at the air with the other as it came at the herdsman.
    The young man had cast aside his cloak so that they could not grasp at it to pull him toward their biting teeth; he wore only his loincloth and a cattleherder’s gloves, his body covered in a sheen of sweat. He held a flint hatchet, and he ducked and darted among the dead like a desert fox among serpents. Devora