Noah (14 page)

What if his father was
wrong
?

Finally, after running for what seemed like hours, his satchel slapping against his hip, he stopped beside a large black boulder to catch his breath. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears, and as it quieted he became aware that he could hear other sounds in
the forest—not the ones he was used to, the wind in the trees and the rustling of small animals in the undergrowth, but alien sounds: cries and shouts and the bustle of movement.

The sounds of men.

He stood motionless and listened, the sounds—still distant—rising and falling on the breeze. He felt a shiver of curiosity, of excitement even. He thought of the great warrior, Tubal-cain, and of how proud he had felt to heft the king’s axe in his hand, to walk by his side.

Then his pride turned sour as he remembered how his father had humiliated him in front of everyone.

Well, my father isn’t here to stop me now, is he?

Tingling with anticipation, he headed toward the distant clamor of voices.

* * *

Ila moved through the forest, her head darting this way and that. Though she knew Ham could look after himself, she hated the thought of him being out here, alone and upset.

She stopped beside a large black boulder and looked around. Could she hear something? Faint voices? She must be close to the camp of that barbarian king.

“Ham?” she called. “Ham?”

There was no reply.

* * *

Halfway up the mountain, Naameh paused to rest. The climb had been arduous and she was trembling from the exertion. Crouching on a rock shelf, she looked down at the land far below.

Although it was no less troubling, the view now was very different to the one that had been described by her husband and son, ten years previously. A decade ago the land had been so barren it had been all too easy to believe that nothing would grow on it ever again. Now the forest was lush, sprawling, fecund with life. Dominating the clearing at the base of the mountain was the immense Ark. From here the Watchers that were crawling over its surface looked like pale beetles, feasting busily on a corpse.

It took Naameh a few moments, her gaze roving back and forth, before she was able to pick out Noah and Shem. Even from her current vantage point their postures seemed to suggest a mood of grim determination.

Two miles or more beyond the Ark the forest had been decimated. Tubal-cain’s camp, a filthy blight on a once beautiful landscape, was still spreading, creeping outward in all directions like fungus. Naameh saw men crawling like ants, destroying all that lay before them. She saw trees fall beneath their relentless advance, fires spring into being in tiny bursts of flame, threads of black smoke spreading like cracks across the white sky.

Perhaps most worrying of all, she saw that the relentless processions of people were still coming. They extended like dark, weaving bands, all the way to the horizon.

If the flood came, as Noah was adamant it would, all of those lives would be snuffed out. It was a horrifying prospect, utterly inconceivable. Yet just as horrifying was the thought of the Ark being overrun, of all their years of planning and hard work amounting to nothing.

Taking a deep breath, Naameh turned back to the mountain, resuming her climb. She emptied her mind, concentrated on nothing but the juts and crevices of rock for which she reached, and into which she placed her feet. Slowly but surely she moved ever upward, until, some time later—two hours, maybe three—she came to the cave.

It was the tzohar candle which informed her that she had reached her destination. It stood upright on a jag of rock, directly outside the zigzagging crack in the cliff face, burning with a steady white flame. It seemed to her a miracle that it had not blown out or fallen over. Just a few thin tendrils of melted wax held it to the stony surface.

Should she construe the candle as a greeting? An invitation to enter? Had Methuselah somehow known that she was coming?

Creeping to the opening in the rock, she peered into the cave, but could see nothing except darkness. Turning back, she took the candle—which came loose so easily that it might have been placed there only minutes before—and ventured into the cave.

“Grandfather?” she called as she moved forward tentatively. “Grandfather, are you there?”

The first thought that crossed her mind was disbelief that anyone could possibly live in such circumstances. Although rugs on the floor provided evidence of recent occupation, they were covered with a thick, gray layer of rock-dust. Again she called out, “Grandfather?” But her voice bounced back from the stone walls, and was met with nothing but silence.

Her shoulders sagged. She couldn’t believe that, despite all of her conviction, her mission was destined to end in failure. Although the candle was a mystery,
it seemed as if Methuselah no longer lived here, and had not done so for some time. More in desperation than hope, she raised the candle above her head and turned in a slow half-circle, peering hard into the cave’s deeper recesses. She was about to turn and leave when a voice, rusty from years of disuse but still melodious, drifted from the darkness.

“Did you bring me something?”

Naameh raised her candle once again. Although she was certain it had not been there before, a face appeared in the darkness. It was an old face—so old that it seemed as ancient as the rocks around it. The skin was dust-white and scored with so many wrinkles that it looked as though it would crumble at the slightest touch. The hair, long and white and incredibly fine, gave the impression that the old man was swathed in cobwebs.

Naameh picked her way toward him, through beams of light which penetrated the ceiling here and there, but which only seemed to make the darkness at the back of the cave all the blacker.

“What would you have me bring?” she asked, puzzled.

Methuselah’s face and body might have looked ancient, but his startlingly blue eyes still danced with eagerness.

“Didn’t Noah plant the seed I gave him?”

Naameh nodded. “Yes.”

“And did nothing grow?”

His dry, cracked lips curled upward in a smile. It was a smile of such warmth, and such mischief, that Naameh couldn’t help but smile back.

“A great forest, Grandfather,” she said, wondering whether, at any time in the past ten years, he had
ventured beyond the entrance of his cave to view the land for himself.

Methuselah nodded slowly, apparently impressed. “And in all that forest, there were no berries? Shem promised me berries.”

Still smiling, she said, “I’m sorry, I did not know.”

“Ah, it’s a pity.” Then, as though it had only just occurred to him, he asked, “Then why did you come here?”

The smile slipped from Naameh’s face.

“It’s Noah. He leaves the boys with no one. No wives to bear their children. Shem has Ila, but she’s barren. Surely this is not what the Creator wants?”

Methuselah released a deep, rattling sigh. But he opened his eyes and looked straight at Naameh, and suddenly she saw a strength there that she hadn’t dared hope he might still possess.

His words, however, were not encouraging.

“It is justice,” he said.

“Justice?” She shook her head. “In what way?”

As he spoke, Methuselah’s voice grew stronger, more commanding. “The Creator destroys this world because we corrupted it and filled it with violence. So we ourselves will be destroyed in turn. What could be more just than that?”

“That is not just!” Naameh retorted. “It is the opposite of just! What about my boys? Are they not good men? Shouldn’t there be a chance for them? It is
your line
, Grandfather. Don’t you care?”

Methuselah looked at her calmly, with a hint of amusement, as if surprised at her anger.

“Do you know how many I have killed?” he asked. “How many more will die while you hide away in your Ark? How am I supposed to know
what is right? Mercy. Justice. It is the right balance that matters. That choice is Noah’s. Not mine. And not yours.”

He closed his eyes, as if to indicate that the conversation was over.

Naameh glared at him, feeling the same sense of irritation that she often felt toward her husband. It was obvious where Noah got his stubbornness.

“So you will not help me?” she said sharply.

Methuselah sighed. “I do not know if I even could. But if I tried it would cause pain. Possibly tragedy. And in the end it would just come back to Noah again. Is that what you wish?”

She waited until he had opened his eyes to look at her and then she said decisively, “Yes. I want my sons to have children. I want them to be happy. I can’t bear to think of them dying alone.”

“Then it is done,” he said. “You may go.”

She hesitated, not knowing how to respond. Was it really as easy as that? But she didn’t want to anger him by questioning him further, or give him a chance to change his mind.

“Thank you, Grandfather,” she said, a little uncertainly, then rose to her feet in preparation to go. As she turned away, he called out to her.

“Naameh?”

She turned again to face him.

His smile was warm, and his voice, too. “You are just as beautiful as he said you were.”

She smiled back at him, but there was sadness in the smile.

* * *

Ham walked slowly through the city of tents, his senses assaulted by a barrage of sights and sounds and smells, very few of which were pleasant. Indeed, most of what he saw shocked him to the core. He had vaguely imagined that Tubal-cain’s camp would be grand and glorious, as befitting a warrior king. But in fact, the opposite was true.

Wherever he looked he saw nothing but squalor and degradation. The people crammed into the shabby, makeshift dwellings were, for the most part, filthy, hungry, and desperate. Some squatted in the mud, eyes wide and mouths drooling, as though the horror of their situation had rendered them insensible. Some shuddered and moaned as they lay on filthy mats within flimsy shelters, as if wracked by terrible nightmares or stabbing hunger pains. Some sported appalling wounds which were black or green, swollen with infection. Some were missing limbs, either through illness or violence, their stumps wrapped in grimy, seeping bandages.

Ham saw an old woman, her left eye socket a raw and empty crater bubbling with pus, crawling across the muddy ground on her hands and knees, muttering to herself. He saw a dead baby in a box, its body bloated and purple and smothered in flies. He saw a toothless woman with her legs wide open, beckoning to him desperately from the gloom of a tent that stank of raw sewage. He saw a naked toddler with stick limbs, a distended belly and a starved, skull-like face. It was scooping up human feces from the ground and cramming it into its mouth.

Even if Ham had closed his eyes—which he wouldn’t have dared to do—it would have been no better, because then his head would have been filled
with the wailings of the damned. The place rang with a chorus of screams and shouts and groans of pain. From within the dark depths of many dwellings drifted the heart-rending sounds of weeping and sobbing. Ham wanted to help these people, but he didn’t know how. They frightened him. Pathetic and feeble though most of them were, there was a desperation about them that burned with such intensity that it seemed positively murderous.

Rounding a clump of half-collapsed shelters made from tree branches draped with rags, he stumbled across a pair of rangy, skinny men, carrying a wrapped, blood-soaked bundle between them. He watched as the men heaved the bundle into an open trench that stank sickeningly of rotting flesh, above which swarmed clouds of fat, madly buzzing flies. Their task completed, the men turned, and then immediately, as if alerted by some predatory sixth sense, swung to face him. One grinned a wolfish grin, scab-crusted lips peeling back from gray gums and long, yellow teeth. The other’s mouth dropped open, releasing a thick string of drool, and he snorted like a hog.

Then, as if at some unspoken command, they ran at him, their arms extended and their bony fingers hooked like claws.

Terrified, Ham turned and fled. Despite his earlier exertions, he ran as he had never run before. His pounding heart tried to keep pace with his feet as he raced across the muddy, flattened ground. He ducked around trees, dodged between people and lean-tos, and once had to leap over a fire which flickered feebly within a mound of stones. Eventually, scurrying around a clot of muddy tents propped up on leaning wooden staves, he came to a bulbous and
craggy rock formation which rose from the earth like the ridged back of some long-petrified mythical beast.

Panting in terror, he glanced over his shoulder, and was relieved to neither see nor hear any sign of his pursuers. Hoping he had given them the slip, he scuttled around the base of the rock formation…

…And suddenly the ground disappeared from beneath his feet.

Instantly he felt himself falling. He reached out frantically, trying to stop himself, but there was nothing to grasp. His surroundings rushed by in a flash, and then he landed with a thump. He grunted in pain, but was relieved, after an instant of disorientation, to discover that aside from a few bumps and bruises, he was fine. He had landed on something soft—or at least soft
ish
. He looked down and saw a gray bundle, one among many, from which projected a withered arm. His eyes darted across to another bundle, from which poked a portion of a face, its mouth gaping in death.

And then the stench hit him.

Rotting flesh. Decay. He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, feeling things moving and sliding beneath him, hearing bones crack like dry twigs. He had landed in a death pit. A mass grave. Beneath his feet were dozens of stacked bodies, wrapped in makeshift shrouds.

Ham panicked. Tried to scramble up and out. But the sides of the pit were too steep, the soil too loose when he tried to dig his fingers into it to haul himself upward.

He began to hyperventilate, the stink of decay clogging his throat, invading his air passages. He forced himself to calm down, to take longer, deeper breaths despite the stench. After a few moments he
felt his racing, panicky thoughts slow down. His heartbeat, too.