by Stant Litore
“God,” Bar Cheleph gasped, “oh God.”
Yakob and Yohanna went very still.
But Koach’s face hardened, and his grip whitened around the pestle he’d taken from his mother’s house.
The dead came trailing sea-wrack and weeds from their arms. Sometimes the town saw straggler corpses from the hills, but these dead had risen from the sea, somewhere north along the shore. Benayahu was not among them.
“So many,” Yakob breathed, “why? Why now?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Koach said. “We have to stop them.”
“No,” Bar Cheleph whispered. “No.” He glanced wildly at the faces of his companions, then broke and ran across the grasses.
He fled toward the houses of Beth Tsaida.
“You fool!” Yakob cried, his voice loud over the sand.
Three of the corpses turned their heads, their attention caught by Bar Cheleph’s scrambling run, their mouths gaping. That moan, that sound without words or thought that made the blood move cold and sluggish like mud in the hills. The three lurched away from the group and slouched up toward the tideline, following Bar Cheleph. Koach’s breath hissed out through his teeth. Bar Cheleph would lead them right into the houses of the fishers. To his mother’s house.
Koach whispered a prayer, a bitter, desperate prayer, under his breath—If you are a father, El Shaddai, El Shaddai, if you are what the stranger says you are, help us—and then he ran along the grasses, leaving the others behind, pursuing the dead who pursued Bar Cheleph, though he felt out of breath, felt as though he might faint. He called out Bar Cheleph’s name, but the other man didn’t stop. Nor did the dead turn from their chase of him; they could not run, yet Koach closed the distance only slowly. He felt the fear, the fear eating his mind, trying to make him into a small, shivering animal who might drop into the tidal grasses to quiver and hide. It was more overpowering than when he’d faced Tamar, for then his fear had been crushed under a weight of grief. Now he could think only of cold fingers grasping, cold teeth biting into his arm or his throat or his belly.
He shoved back the terror, kept staggering toward the houses of Beth Tsaida.
The rest of the dead lurched after the boat people, who stumbled up the sand toward the priest’s sons. Earlier Yakob had led a small search party north along the shore, searching for Benayahu and finding blood in the grasses but no sign of where the man had gone. He’d thought—for a moment—that he heard a moan in the hills, distant, barely audible. He had shivered and started back, his heart full of dark thoughts and darker fears. Now his fears were enfleshed.
“Shit,” Yakob breathed. “Shit!”
He ran toward the boat people, gesturing wildly with his arms. “You! All of you! Follow me!”
They turned to him, their eyes fearful, desperate.
“Come on!” he shouted.
Yakob thought quickly. He could lead the boat people down the shore, away from the town, trailing the dead behind—then circle up into the hills, in the hope of losing the dead in the wild. Some of the boat people would falter and collapse, some would be eaten. But his brothers, his father, his grandfather, they would be safe.
He could do that.
Instead, he got his shoulder under one of the haggard women even as she stumbled. Half carrying her, he began walking up toward the houses of Kfar Nahum, toward whatever sanctuary the broken town could offer.
A moment’s choice, a moment’s decision.
His brother fell in alongside him, his face twisted with fear. Yakob met his gaze. “We are all kin,” he said.
Yohanna nodded, pale.
The woman coughed faintly. Others ran past. Yakob refused to glance back at the moaning dead. “It’s all right,” he murmured to the woman. “Just come with me. It’s all right … Yohanna, run. Run ahead. Warn father.”
“And leave you to face this alone?” Yohanna choked.
“Hurry, brother. God will keep me.”
Yohanna whispered, “God had better.”
The wailing behind them drew nearer. The boat woman began whimpering almost too quietly to hear. Yakob gave his brother a strained smile … or something he meant to be a smile. He clapped Yohanna on the shoulder. “Go!”
Once again, Koach ran through the stone houses and decayed shelters of his people, with lives at stake. The stone pestle was cold in his palm. The sound of his breathing was loud in his ears, and sweat stung his eyes. He was not made for running, had done little of it. But there wasn’t far to go.
Bar Cheleph had already strained his hip throughout the day, and Koach caught up with him as he was panting past the houses of the fishers. As they ran near, Natan El threw open his door, and he and his young wife stood at their doorstep across from Rahel’s house, gazing out with horror in their faces. They could see Bar Cheleph stumble and catch himself; they could hear the moans of the dead, coming up from the shore behind their house. In another moment, the door across the narrow street swung open, and Rahel looked out, her face haggard, newly wrenched from sleep. Her face went white as she gazed out; even as Koach closed the distance with Bar Cheleph, calling out his name, the three corpses lunged from around the corner of Natan El’s house, right in front of Bar Cheleph. One grappled him, its gray hands seizing his arms, its weight bearing him beneath it to the ground. The second staggered across the street toward Rahel. The third lurched past, toward Natan El’s door. A shrill scream—from Natan El, not from his wife; he sprang back, and his wife swung shut the door even as the corpse reached it, slamming it against one groping arm. The door rattled hard, the corpse hurling itself against the wood. Across the street, the other corpse threw itself against Rahel’s door.
Koach let out a cry and sprang on the nearest corpse from behind, swinging his pestle. But the creature turned, hearing him, and its hand caught Koach’s arm just above the elbow, a grip fierce and strong. Koach felt himself pulled from his feet toward the thing’s mouth; its head snapped at his arm, the teeth closing on the thick wool his mother had woven for him. He felt the pressure of its bite and screamed, kicking wildly, thrashing in the thing’s grasp. Those horrible, dead eyes looked at his for an instant as it worried his arm like a wild dog. Nothing in its face but hunger.
Then the door wrenched open. There was a sickening crunch of bone and a spatter of necrotic flesh as an iron shaft was driven into the thing’s cheek. The corpse didn’t release Koach’s arm, but it turned, pulling Koach with it, its jaw still grinding, trying to dig into Koach’s flesh through the wool sleeve. Koach fought to bend his hand and the pestle toward its head, but he had only one arm, and the creature held it. He caught a glimpse of Natan El’s wife, Bat Abner, in the door, her face a grimace of terror. Both hands whitened around the haft of her husband’s fishing hook. She was tugging at it wildly, trying to free it of the corpse’s face, to thrust or swing it a second time, but the hook had caught on the creature’s jaw and she couldn’t free it. The ghastly face tore at Koach’s arm and it growled against the wool. The scent of its decay was too much; Koach vomited, the fish of his brother’s catch surging up his throat and out of his mouth in a hot, steaming rush, fouling his chin, his clothes.
Helpless.
Again.
Always.
No.
Vomiting, shaking, furious, Koach swung his body, lifting his left leg and slamming his sandalled foot against the corpse’s groin. It didn’t feel the pain, but the impact drove it back, even as Bat Abner’s pull on the spear tugged hard in the other direction. The iron hook tore the creature’s jaws free from Koach’s arm, tearing the sleeve with it. Koach’s arm slithered free of the thing’s grip, unsleeved, and he fell, smacking his chest hard against the stone doorstep. Ignoring the stab of pain, Koach rolled hard. He’d dropped the pestle; it fell near him and he scrambled to it, lifted it in his hand, and turned to see the corpse biting wildly at the hook as its cold hands reached for Bat Abner. It shoved itself through her door, thrusting her back, the two of them, the living and the dead, separate
d by only the length of that small spear of iron. Shouting wildly, Koach surged to his feet and rushed the corpse, swinging the pestle; the hard stone drove in the back of the thing’s head. He heard it spit and snarl, and he swung the pestle again, again, crushing in the creature’s skull, until its legs crumbled and it hung, a silent, limp weight on the end of Bat Abner’s spear.
Less than three paces away, Bar Cheleph struggled for his life. The thing he wrestled had been corpulent in life, and its dead flesh was massive and held him crushed to the grit of the street. The rage he’d felt when he speared Bat Benayahu’s corpse had deserted him, leaving only stabbing, wild terror and hot shame, hot urine wet on his thighs. His fingers gripped the thing’s face, holding its jaws back from his throat, and he panted and wept. The corpse’s eye gave beneath Bar Cheleph’s fingers, but the thing didn’t shriek, didn’t rear back, just kept biting at the air above his collarbone.
Then the corpse’s jaw slackened and gray matter sprayed outward from the back of its head; its grip on Bar Cheleph’s shoulders loosed. Glancing up, Bar Cheleph saw standing over him Koach, a clay pestle clutched in his left hand, the end of the pestle dark with gore. Gasping, Bar Cheleph just shivered beneath the corpse, staring up at his rescuer in shock.
The youth who stood over him was grim-eyed and fierce. And not in the least hebel. Yakob bar Cheleph did not know this boy.
Koach cast the pestle aside; bending, he wrapped his hand in the hem of his wool tunic and gripped the corpse’s arm through the fabric, his fingers protected from the touch of skin against unclean skin; a heave, and the corpse was rolled aside. Bar Cheleph scooted out from beneath it, kicking. Then he stopped, his chest heaving.
Koach freed his hand of the wool and offered it.
Bar Cheleph swallowed. “But I—I tormented you.”
“I forgive you.” The youth’s voice was quiet. “Now help me. One of them is at mother’s door, and I need more than one hand. Help me.”
Bar Cheleph gazed up at him helplessly. Then he took Koach’s hand and felt himself pulled to his feet. He marveled at the strength in the youth’s left arm.
“My brother,” he gasped.
Koach’s eyes went cold, but he nodded. “Brother.”
There was a moan behind them, and then a sharp crack. Turning, Koach gasped. The other corpse had stood facing his mother’s door, its back to him, but now it swayed to the left and fell. Rahel stood at her open door, her hair wild about her shoulders, her husband’s tallit drawn over her like a woman’s shawl. Her face was gray, and she held tightly in both hands a shard of pottery longer than her hand, its broken point dark with gore. Other shards lay shattered about her feet, and there was a dark puncture in the head of the corpse. That sound they’d heard … Behind her in the doorway, the woman who had been mute gazed out with wide eyes.
Rahel glanced up from the corpse, and though she had no words, there were a thousand in her eyes, and memory dark as the sea—unburied memory of a night of the dead.
“Amma,” Koach breathed.
Bar Cheleph, still panting, bowed his head slightly in respect. “Bat Eleazar,” he murmured.
“My son. Kinsman.” Her eyes flashed in the dark. She let the gory shard fall from her hand; it rang against the stone beneath her feet. She bent and spat on the corpse, then straightened, her face flushed. “Help me get this thing off my doorstep.”
The boat people fled like deer between the old houses of Kfar Nahum, the empty houses that sat quiet as desert stones farther in from the shore, their doors and windows long since boarded up against squatters living or dead. Yakob was near the rear now, carrying that ragged woman who could hardly stand, let alone flee. The dead followed, lurching against the houses and scraping along the stone walls, but ignoring the structures, intent on the fugitives from the shore.
The vagrants broke out into the open space before the synagogue, its white basalt luminous in the rising moon. For a moment they stopped, their eyes round in the dark, glancing about, uncertain where else to run. Even as the first dead lurched into the space after them, the door to the synagogue was flung open, and a man in the white robes of a priest burst out onto the polished steps, a great menorah held in his hand, its eight candles new-kindled. His eyes burned as with fever. In an instant, a single beat of the heart, he took it all in: the pursuing dead, the sickly stench of them. The sobbing, stumbling boat people. His son Yakob half carrying one of them, risking his body and blood for these heathen and half-heathen poor.
Yohanna stepped out beside him, his face tight with fear.
“Go, son,” Zebadyah said gruffly. “Warn the weaver and the other houses. All you can.”
Yohanna gave a shaky nod. Then he sprinted; in a moment, he was gone.
Zebadyah wanted to slam the door of the synagogue against the boat people, but the old guilt coursed hot through his veins. He could not let others die before him, as he had long ago. The dead were within the town; whatever walls of fire or stone or will Zebadyah might have erected, it was too late. There was no time to sort out who were his kin, to protect, and who were not. And his oldest, by his act of carrying that woman and bringing all of them here, had already committed his house to sheltering these men and women. There was no wall here, and he was not Ezra.
He lifted the menorah high. “Into the synagogue!” he shouted. “All of you!”
His cry broke the stupor that had fallen on the boat people as sharply as a branch might crack beneath the blow of a man’s heel. The vagrants rushed past him, stumbling up the steps and through the door, into the holy place at the heart of the town from which they’d so long been banned. Last, Yakob brought in the woman and laid her on the floor below the cabinet that held the scroll of Torah. Even as he glanced up from her, his eyes full of the intent to join his father, Zebadyah swung the door shut.
Zebadyah ran from the synagogue steps out into the open, wielding the light and hope of his People, like the knife-wielding kanna’im in the south, the grieving priests. Alone in that open space before the steps, he took his stand, thrusting the fiery menorah into the faces of the pursuing dead, their eyes glowing in the flames. His ears were full of the shrieks and moans of that other night, that terrible night, that night he had never woken from. Again he heard the whisper in his heart, Run, little priest. Run. You are not Ezra or Moshe or Aharon. You cannot face this. You will be eaten. That quiet whisper of the shedim waiting to take his heart and hollow it out and live inside its cold shell.
“Not this time,” he growled.
The dead shied back before the stabbing flames, but only barely; and now the corpses closed in on either side. There were nine of them, their jaws snapping as they tried to press in on flame and priest. Though Zebadyah darted to the left and to the right, one man with a stick of candles, even a holy one, could not hold them all. He fell back but stopped when he heard the door of the synagogue thrown open behind him. Clenching his teeth, he swung the menorah in an arc of flame. Grasping hands, the growls of the dead—
“Father!”
Yakob at the door.
Run, little priest, run. You will be eaten, eaten, eaten—
To silence the drumbeat of his heart and the knife-sharp cutting of that whisper into his spirit, Zebadyah raised his voice in a desert scream of desert song, words invoking the strength and refuge of a desert God, ancient and severe, in whose presence all unclean things, whether mortal or immortal, withered like grass:
His arms are mighty,
He shatters the foe!
He is my tent
My refuge,
My rock and fortress …
He trains my hands for battle,
And my fingers for war!
He drove the menorah into a corpse’s face. It spat and hissed as it fell back, and then cold hands, so cold, grasped his extended right arm, and suddenly he was on his back gazing up at the stars in their sky and the dark shapes of the dead bending over him. Fingers dug into his flesh, into his arm, his shoulder. Then the touch of a
cold face and the pain of teeth, more violent and sharp than he could have imagined or feared, peeling away his skin, tearing away a part of him, a part of his body. This was his death, his death … In a scream of agony Zebadyah cried out the life-prayer and death-prayer of his People, hoping that God, however distant, would hear his last words: Sh’ma Yisrael adonai eloheinu …
Kana blew a long call on the shofar, desperate and loud. Then he dropped it from his lips and leapt into the crowd of dead at the synagogue steps, his sica flashing in the dark. He saw the priest tugged beneath the corpses and he howled in his rage, as he had once heard Barabba howl on the dusty pass of Adummim, the Red Way, the Way of Blood, when a pack of dead lurching out of the rocks took one of his most trusted warriors. Tonight Zebadyah had not hidden beneath any boat on the shore, leaving Shimon bar Nahemyah to stand in his place at the door of the synagogue. Instead, tonight the priest had stood in Kana’s place, while Kana paced brooding on the slope of the hill of tombs. Hearing the moans, he had unsheathed his sica and run into the town, run fast until his sides burned. And yet he was too late.