Noah (3 page)

The bearded poacher fell, tearing the spear from Noah’s hands as he lurched sideways. Blood bubbled from his mouth and he writhed in agony on the
ground for a moment, his legs pedaling frantically as if trying to outrun his own imminent demise. Then, hands still clutched around the increasingly bloody shaft protruding from his stomach, he became still, his body slumping and relaxing in death.

Withdrawing the spear, Noah looked at the three fallen men, panting a little from his exertions. Then he raised his head and looked beyond them, to where he had last seen the hound.

Immediately his face fell. The creature was crawling gamely toward the opening in the rocks, dragging itself along using its front paws, leaving a thick, dark trail of blood. It was clear from the way its back legs were trailing helplessly behind it that the poacher’s rock had all but finished it.

Noah hurried up to the hound and knelt before it. He muttered a few soothing words, and slowly extended his hand towards its muzzle. The hound sniffed his fingers, then licked them. Murmuring softly Noah stroked the animal’s head, his strong hand smoothing its thickly plated hide, providing comfort. But he knew the creature was doomed. He had to put an end to its misery.

The hound closed its eyes. Still stroking its bony head with one hand, Noah slipped his knife from its sheath and positioned its point in the gap beneath one overlapping scale and another, precisely at the base of the animal’s skull.

“Sorry, my friend,” he murmured. And then, with one quick, decisive thrust, he ended the creature’s life. It shuddered once and then was still.

Noah rose wearily to his feet and slipped the knife back into its sheath. He was about to walk away when he heard a whimper of pain. Two of the
poachers lay dead, but one, the leader, was stirring. He attempted to rise and screamed out in agony as the bones of his shattered knee ground together. Sensing or perhaps merely hoping that Noah was nearby, he began to plead for help.

Noah considered leaving the man to his fate, and then with a grim expression he walked across to him.

The man’s eyes, clouded with pain, swiveled to look at him. His mouth moved. “Please,” he whispered. “Have mercy.”

“As you had mercy for that poor creature?” muttered Noah.

Despite the pain of his injury, confusion and indignation passed across the man’s face. “That is nothing but an animal.”

“As are you,” said Noah.

“Man has to eat,” the poacher whispered.

Noah’s face darkened. “Man has a choice. To destroy Creation or to tend it, to live and work alongside it. In peace.”

The poacher frowned. Noah’s philosophy was clearly incomprehensible to him. Trying a different tack, he fumbled beneath the layers of animal skin adorning his body and withdrew a small drawstring bag, which he opened and upended.

A number of small whitish-yellow stones tumbled out and rolled across the dusty ground. They seemed to absorb the light around them and to glow with it, or perhaps even to pulse gently with a mysterious inner light of their own.

Noah recognized the substance. This was tzohar, a rare and precious commodity. It was said that the Watchers had once been made of it before they fell from the heavens. It was said that it was the
source of light in the world of Man before the Creator provided him with the sun.

“Take it,” the poacher said, gazing up at Noah beseechingly. “Take all of it.”

Noah simply glared down at the poacher, his face hard.

“
Please
,” the man begged. “Please. What more do you want?”

Noah looked at the sprawled body of the hound, its back legs smashed, its flank bleeding from the spear that had penetrated its flesh.

Turning back to the man he withdrew his knife from his belt.

“What do I want?” he muttered. “One thing only. Justice.”

* * *

Ham helped his father wrap the body of the hound in a simple shroud made from the cloak that Noah wore to protect himself from the dust storms that blew frequently across the plains. They climbed to the peak of the highest ridge in order that the corpse could be as close as possible to the Creator. Noah lit a fire by placing a piece of tzohar on a flat rock and smashing it with the hilt of his knife, causing it to ignite.

By the time Noah lifted the makeshift shroud and carried it across to the fire it was late afternoon and getting cold. Noah placed the shrouded beast almost tenderly into the flames and then the three of them stood back, watching it burn, Ham wrinkling his nose at the pungent smell of the smoke that drifted his way.

They were silent for a time and then Ham spoke.

“Father?”

“Yes, son?” Noah looked at the small boy.

Ham’s head was cocked to one side, a frown wrinkling his forehead. “Why did those men kill the hound?”

“To eat it,” Shem told his brother.

“Eat it?” Ham looked shocked and confused. He couldn’t conceive of such barbarity. “Why?”

“They think it makes them stronger,” Noah said.

Ham sniffed the burning meat, curious. “Is it true?” he asked.

Noah scowled. “They forget. Strength comes from the Creator.”

“Will more men come?” Shem asked his father.

Now Noah gazed out over the ridge, beyond the valley below and across the plain to the horizon.

He pointed. “Look there, Shem. What do you see?”

Shem squinted, the dust stinging his eyes. Far away in the distance he saw strange spire-like constructions jabbing darkly into the sky, threads of black smoke curling upward.

“I see… mountains?” he said uncertainly. “Mountains full of fire?”

Noah smiled grimly. “They are not mountains. They are buildings, created by Man.”

Shem gasped. “But there are so many of them!”

“It is a city,” Noah said.

“Do men live in the city?” Ham asked fearfully. “Like the ones who wanted to kill and eat the beast?”

Noah nodded. “Yes. There are many men. So many. Soon they will be everywhere.”

Ham’s eyes widened in fear.

“What shall we do, Father?” Shem asked.

Noah sighed. His gaze followed the threads of
smoke as they rose toward the mute heavens.

Finally he muttered, “We will pray.”

Without another word he turned and walked away and began to descend the ridge. Shem followed.

Ham stood for a moment, staring across at the distant city, fear and awe on his face.

“Many men,” he murmured. He glanced at the blackening corpse of the hound in the fire, which was popping and crackling angrily as the fat in its body burned.

Then, with a final shudder, he turned and hurried after his father and Shem.

* * *

A hazy red sun was setting over a distant, dormant volcano as Noah and his two sons walked toward a pair of small, domed tents close around the warmth of a blazing fire. Above the fire was suspended a bubbling pot of heavy black metal, yielding an aroma which, drifting across the plain, was so appetizing that it encouraged Ham to break into a run despite his tiredness. The tents, coated with dust, were the same color as the surrounding hills and would have been invisible to the naked eye if it hadn’t been for the fire. In the dusk the flame was like a beacon, announcing their presence. Despite the fact that the home camp was well sheltered, Noah felt nervous. As far as he was concerned, the encroaching civilization was getting too close for comfort.

“Mother! Mother!”

As Ham pounded up to the camp, the flap of the largest tent was pushed aside and a woman emerged. She was carrying a tiny infant, a newborn, in the crook of one arm. She smiled and ruffled
Ham’s hair as he threw his arms around her and pressed his face into her belly.

The woman, Naameh, was around thirty years old. She was tired and thin, ground down by life, but still breathtakingly beautiful. Her pale eyes were almost catlike, her hair as black and glossy as a raven’s wing.

Noah walked up to his wife and kissed her deeply. Then he planted a more chaste kiss on the head of his newborn son, Japheth.

“You were so long. I was getting worried,” Naameh said.

“We met with some unexpected difficulties,” Noah muttered.

Ham, still clinging to his mother, looked up at her, his eyes shining. “There were men,” he said breathlessly. “They killed a hound. They were going to
eat
it!”

“Men?” Naameh looked at Noah in consternation.

Noah gestured toward the largest of the tents. “The boys are hungry. Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you all about it.”

* * *

All was quiet, and only a single candle was burning inside the tent. The boys were asleep, breathing deeply. Naameh was feeding Japheth, the baby suckling hungrily at her breast. Noah, sitting on his bedroll, watched her, grim-faced. She smiled at him, but received only a twitch of the lips in response. When Japheth was full and she had laid him in his cot, Naameh crossed to her husband and wrapped her arms around him. They both looked up as Ham murmured and twitched in his sleep, troubled by bad dreams.

“How was he today? About the hunters, I mean?”

Noah shrugged. “A little too interested.”

“He had to see it sometime.”

Noah was silent for a moment, and then he said, “I saw something else. A flower bloomed from nothing.”

Naameh looked at him curiously, then placed a hand on the back of his head and began to stroke it gently, running her fingers through his hair.

“Rest,” she murmured.

Noah sighed. Looking around the tent again, his gaze roaming restlessly over his sleeping sons, he said bitterly, “They deserve better than this.”

Naameh leaned into her husband, kissed his grizzled cheek and squeezed his rough, scarred hand.

“You are a
good
father, Noah,” she said, so fiercely that it made him smile.

“I try,” he agreed. “But what can I do when the world is vile?”

She kissed him again, then took his face in her hands and turned his head so she could press her lips to his. Then she pushed him gently in the center of his chest, encouraging him to lie down.

“You can sleep,” she said, “and face the new day with renewed hope.”

She blew the candle out and they lay down. Naameh fell asleep quickly. But Noah remained awake for a long time, staring into the darkness.

N
oah walked toward the injured hound. It was panting rapidly, its eyes rolling, dragging itself along by its front paws. The trail of blood it left in its wake was black. The blood pouring from the wound in its flank, where the shaft of the spear projected, also was black.

Crouching down beside the hound Noah spoke to it softly, knowing that it was doomed. Stroking its head, determined to end its suffering, he withdrew his knife from its sheath, placed it at the base of the hound’s skull, and pushed the blade swiftly upward into its brain.

Instantly the beast dissipated into dust. It ran through Noah’s hands like sand. Like time.

Confused he rose to his feet. He looked around and realized that he was standing not in a valley, but in the center of a vast, black, dried-out plain. He was
utterly alone. There was no life here, nothing to see for miles but a blistering, silent emptiness.

He wanted to scream. But he was afraid that if he did so, no sound would emerge from his mouth. He felt panic rising within him. He felt certain that the death of the land—the silence that lay upon it—was only a prelude to what was to follow. Next, the Creator would extinguish the light, and then Man himself would be no more. Noah would be the last of mankind, the only witness to the fall of Creation.

He wanted to plead for salvation, and yet there was a part of him that agreed with The Creator, that knew Man was wicked, and that this judgment was a just one.

And then a drop of rain fell. Noah didn’t see it, but he
heard
it. A single drop striking the ashen ground. He looked down and saw a bead of moisture shimmering for a moment, before it was sucked into the parched earth, leaving a tiny crater behind. It had been nothing more than a single drop, and yet all at once, to Noah, it seemed like a miracle. He looked up, into a blank and cloudless sky.

After a moment he lowered his gaze. The horizon stretched forever. The earth was flat and dead and black in all directions. He turned to the north, to the south, to the west…

And then he turned to the east, and saw a lone mountain straining toward the sky, a rising surge of rock. It was as if the Creator had reached down and pulled the rock from the dead earth like a man molding clay.

Noah knew this mountain. He knew it instantly. A word formed in his mouth.

“Grandfather.”

Noah took a step toward the mountain. But as he did so he realized that something was wrong. He looked down and saw that the ground was wet. He raised his foot and was astonished to discover that his feet were bare. He was even more astonished to find that the earth on his feet was not black, but red. He looked around again, and suddenly it was as if he was seeing with new eyes. The ground was wet not with rain, but with blood.

The blood of Man…

Fear and panic seized him. He sensed something behind him, something vast and terrible rushing toward him, threatening to overwhelm him. He spun around. And suddenly, impossibly, he was…

Underwater.

His eyes opened wide as the naked white corpse of a man floated past, its eyes and mouth gaping open, hair drifting like reeds in the undersea current. He flailed in panic, twisting away from the corpse. He kicked his legs wildly, and all at once, his feet made contact with something solid.

It was an underwater reef, a gnarled precipice of rock and coral, like a vast mountain beneath the sea. He planted his feet upon it and found himself looking down into a huge pit, where the whole of humanity lay dead and rotting. Millions upon millions of corpses, stretching as far as the eye could see…

It was an appalling sight. The most terrible and terrifying sight imaginable. Noah screamed. Bubbles rushed out of his mouth, obscuring his vision. Though he could make no sound he screamed and screamed. The rushing, rising bubbles obliterated the awful sight that lay before him. They overwhelmed his senses with darkness. He felt a hand tugging at his
arm, and then another upon his leg. And then many hands were tugging at him, and although he was underwater and could see nothing, Noah knew that the hands were cold and lifeless, and that they were the hands of the dead. He was the only man left alive in the whole of Creation and the dead were angry and jealous. They wanted him to join them.