Noah (19 page)

Desperately Tubal-cain snatched one of the two war axes from his belt, drew back his arm and buried the blade as deeply as he could into the wooden wall of the Ark. The scaffolding collapsed beneath him, leaving him hanging there, clinging to the shaft of his axe with one hand, suspended fifty feet or more above the water.

Reaching down with his free hand, he carefully pulled the second axe free of his belt and, moving quickly and efficiently, began to hack away at the wall of the vessel.

* * *

Ham jerked awake, alerted by a
thwacking
sound. He lay for a moment, listening.

Is someone chopping wood?

Slowly he sat up, leaves tumbling from his body. The rain battered the outside of the Ark like a never-ending hail of stones, but the hacking of wood was closer and louder.

He stood up and looked around cautiously. If he hadn’t known better he would have said that the sound was in the room with him. He pivoted on his heels, then came to a halt facing the far wall—the outer wall.

Is it coming from over there?

Frowning, still cautious, he walked across, reaching out a hand…

And jumped back with a startled cry when the wall in front of him suddenly splintered, and the edge of a curved metal axe blade appeared through the wood.

* * *

Methuselah hummed tunelessly as he pushed aside the leaves of a spiny-stemmed bush. It didn’t seem to bother him at all that the rain was battering down upon his head and plastering his thin white hair to his face. Or even that, despite being on high ground within the forest, he was still standing waist-deep in water.

“Ah,” he murmured as he uncovered a cluster of small red berries clinging to the underside of a leaf. He picked one of them, sniffed it, then popped it into his mouth, closing his eyes in ecstasy as it burst, sweetly and juicily, between his teeth.

All at once a violent roaring, tearing noise made him look up. It was as if something massive and deadly was rushing toward him, destroying everything in its path.

Unconcerned, Methuselah simply smiled and popped another berry into his mouth.

* * *

Secured to the Ark by a length of rope, Noah weighed his options as a score of men scrambled up the slippery incline of the ramp.

He
could
go inside and slam the great wooden hatchway behind him. But if he did that, it would only be a matter of time before the invaders hacked their way through the wood and poured inside, leaving a gaping hole in the vessel.

No, the Creator had appointed him as the Ark’s builder, and as its protector, too. So protect it he would, to his dying breath.

But could he fight off
all
of these men? Many of Tubal-cain’s army were dead, true, and those who had survived were exhausted, often injured, mostly weaponless…

But even so, there were still hundreds of them. And he was just one man, armed with nothing but a spear.

He thought of Methuselah, his grandfather, the great warrior. It was said that he had killed thousands of men. Would Noah need to match his achievement, in effect
become
his grandfather, in order to fulfill his destiny?

The men were halfway up the ramp now, scrambling over one another. They looked eager, frightened, desperate.

Noah stood his ground, braced himself, tightening his grip on the spear, despite his wet hands.

Then he looked up, peering beyond the men, into the murky, rain-lashed darkness of the forest. Did he hear something? A deep, ominous rumbling, underpinning the gushing roar of the still-spurting geysers and the hissing clamor of the rain.

Many of the men clambering toward him could hear it, too. Some of them paused and looked behind
them. Some even looked up, as if they expected the Creator himself to break through the black mass of cloud that filled the sky, and crush them beneath His heel.

The rumbling grew louder and louder. Noah’s stomach curled heavily in on itself.

Then, abruptly and terrifyingly, the forest was ripped apart, flattened as a vast, white, roaring wall of water reared up, towering over the trees, over the Ark, blotting out the boiling sky.

Noah’s mouth dropped open in awe as the huge wave hurtled toward him.

And then it was upon them. Crashing down. Sweeping all before it.

A white, screaming world of water.

* * *

Tubal-cain was still hacking his way through the wall of the Ark when the wave smashed against it. Hearing the thunderous roar, he twisted his head, saw the looming wall of white water, and slammed his second axe into the wall as hard as he could.

As the wave hit and his world turned upside down, he bent his elbows, flattening himself against the wooden wall. Time became meaningless as he clung there, buffeted and pummeled, unable to breathe, unable to see anything but white, crashing water all around.

* * *

When the wave hit, almost all the men milling around the base of the ramp, and most of those who were clambering up it, were swept aside as casually as if they were flecks of debris. However, those at the
forefront of the group were propelled forward like arrows from a bow, tumbling over and over until they slammed into the vast wooden door covering the hatchway at the top.

Some died instantly, the sheer pressure of the water causing their bones to be pulverized upon impact. Others struck the door and bounced off at an angle, their limbs shattered, their fragile bodies torn open like wet cloth bags.

A few, however, survived, one even grabbing hold of Noah as he swung around on the end of the rope, and slammed against the hatch door.

The Ark itself shuddered, recoiled. The wave crashed against it, then swept up and over it, submerging it for a long, terrible moment, before finally pushing it back to the surface, where it popped up like a piece of driftwood.

Almost as soon as it re-emerged, however, a new wave, like a giant fist, smashed into it from the side.

The Ark tipped, then teetered, as if about to capsize. And still the man clung to Noah…

* * *

Naameh was on the mammal deck, still searching for Ham, when the second wave struck. As the Ark abruptly lurched and the deck tilted, she was hurled sideways so violently that her feet left the ground. Thrown across the vast space, she was fortunate enough to land in the cushioning embrace of a sleeping chalicothere. The huge animal grunted slightly, but seemed otherwise undisturbed.

Yet Naameh wasn’t the only one affected by the sudden violent tilting of the Ark. Plucked from their sleeping positions, many of the mammals were
likewise thrown across the open space of the deck. Although most landed with no ill effects, several were not so lucky. A small, horned horse crashed against a pillar headfirst and snapped its neck. An ape flew across the room and landed on the ground, unharmed, only to be crushed to death beneath the body of a buffalo that landed on top of it.

There were other casualties, too. Each death was a terrible tragedy. The loss of even a single creature signified immediate extinction for a species earmarked for the new world.

* * *

Gathered together in the Hearth, Shem, Ila and Japheth became a tumbling, uncontrollable mass of limbs as the Ark shifted. Unable to stop himself, Japheth found himself sliding across the suddenly upraised floor toward an opening in the deck. He and Ham had been warned by their father to keep away from the shaft because it plummeted deep into the bowels of the Ark, to a furnace.

“If you fall down there, you will die,” Noah had told him sternly, more than once.

As he skittered toward it now, Japheth wondered how quickly he would die, how much it would hurt, and how angry his father would be with him when he found out.

Then something clamped around the wrist of his upraised arm and, with his feet mere inches from the lip of the shaft, his body jolted to a stop.

He looked up to see Ila lying on her stomach on the still-tilting floor, her arm outstretched, her hand encircling his wrist.

He flashed her a look of relief and gratitude, and
then he looked beyond her, to note that Shem, too, was lying full-length, his hand clutching Ila’s ankle.

Japheth could see that Shem’s own foot was anchored around the brazier in the corner, from which warm ash was now spilling down the still-tilting slope of the floor toward him.

The Ark creaked and groaned in protest as it was pushed to what seemed like breaking point.

“What’s happening?” Japheth cried.

Beneath him the dark opening of the shaft gaped like a hungry mouth.

* * *

Although the Ark tilted alarmingly, it didn’t capsize. Once it had absorbed the impact of the second wave that had sideswiped it, the vessel crashed back down, righting itself in a white explosion of spume. For a few moments it bobbed and spun, water streaming from its sides. It was buffeted this way and that, and then, riding the tide, it began to float through the still-rising floodwater.

Resembling a huge, rectangular box, a giant coffin, the Ark was carried by the swirling currents toward—and then around—a small rocky island jutting from the surface of the sea. If anyone had been standing on the flat upper deck at that moment they might have recognized the peak of Methuselah’s mountain.

If they had continued to stand and watch as the Ark swept past the mountain, they would have watched the island gradually shrink, becoming smaller and smaller as the water rose around it. Eventually they would have seen it dwindle to a nub of rock, and then a shrinking dark spot in the water.

And then nothing at all.

If, at that moment, they had turned in a slow circle they would have found themselves surrounded by a new world, a world composed entirely of water. Try as they might, they would have seen nothing
but
water, stretching to the horizon in all directions.

* * *

Astonished to find himself still clinging to the side of the Ark as it righted itself, Tubal-cain opened his eyes and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Water streamed from his hair and beard, trickled from the toes of his boots.

Looking around, he saw only water.

So the prophecy has come true
, he realized.
The world has been swept away in a deluge, after all.

But Noah himself had been wrong. What was it he had said?

“He will wash away all of you!”

Yet Tubal-cain had not been washed away. Despite everything he was still here, still alive.

Perhaps, he thought with a grim smile, Noah was not the only man left on this world with a destiny to fulfill.

* * *

As soon as the Ark stopped lurching, and they were able to regain their feet, the man clinging to Noah began to grapple with him, attempting to wrest the spear from his hand.

He made no attempt to befriend Noah, to beg for a place on the Ark. His ordeal seemed to have reduced him to little more than a creature driven by the basic instinct to survive. Certainly his eyes were filled with a kind of flat, impenetrable madness, and
violence seemed to be his only recourse.

Frenziedly determined though he was, however, the man was also weak, thin and exhausted. His physical condition and his clothes told Noah that he was clearly not a soldier, but merely a refugee from the squalid camp that had surrounded Tubal-cain’s compound. Noah, therefore, was able to overpower him easily and shove him away. The man staggered backward, his bare feet skidding out from under him on the slippery ramp.

He fell heavily and lay on his front for a moment, his thin body rising and falling as he breathed rapidly in and out through his open, drooling mouth. His saturated clothes, little more than rags, were plastered to his body, and his hair was a black, dripping cap clinging to his head. With a grunt he clambered painfully to his knees and crouched there, glaring at Noah with a sullen, hateful expression.

Noah regarded him steadily, though not without pity. Still he did not speak; he knew there was nothing he could say or do.

The man spat on the wood beneath him and uttered a shrill, half-hysterical laugh.

“So what would you have me do?”

Noah’s face was like granite.

He leaped at Noah, who instinctively raised his spear to fend him off. The man neither stopped nor tried to dodge out of the way. He ran straight onto the point of the upraised spear, which punctured his belly.

Bleeding profusely from the wound, the man stumbled and fell sideways, his falling weight almost wrenching the weapon from Noah’s hand. Noah tightened his grip on the spear’s haft, which pulled free of the man’s belly, opening the wound still further.
The man’s eyes rolled upward and he fell into the sea with a splash. For a moment the water turned red around him, and then his body sank and was gone.

Although Noah had seen much violence over the recent days, this final encounter rattled him to the core. He stood at the top of the ramp, shaking, trying to come to terms with all he had done and seen.

The Creator’s actions were necessary—he
knew
that—and yet he knew also that he would not be worthy of His compassion if he rid himself of all emotion. For a while Noah looked out at the vast gray sea of death, at the thousands of bodies, tangled with other debris, bobbing on its surface.

And then he turned and went inside.

* * *

After a pause during which the Ark—and Ham himself—had been hurled first one way and then the other, the chopping sounds started again, becoming increasingly frantic, as if whoever was trying to gain entry was working against time.

Ham had managed to avoid serious injury when the Ark had tilted, by grabbing onto the base of a thick wooden strut in the hold. Then he hid himself once again beneath a pile of leaves, peering in fearful fascination at the widening hole that appeared in the opposite wall.

He considered running to find Shem, or his mother, to tell them what was happening, but something prevented him.

Perhaps it was a fear that he wouldn’t be believed, or even listened to, though he didn’t think either was the case. Although he was reluctant to admit it to himself, the real reason was simply that he wanted
something to upset his father’s plans.