Flood

by Brennan McPherson

  “The animals? What are you talking about?”

  “They came, Noah. Just like the Almighty said they would. They’re all in there, waiting. Every beast and bird I’ve ever seen. It’s a miracle, and our children are tending to their needs as we speak.”

  “Show me.”

  Jade led him up the ramp through the door into the ark, and immediately Noah was assaulted by thick, earthen smells, and the sounds of snuffling, flapping, and low groans.

  In the dim lighting from the open entrance, he saw a lion pacing on the other side of a low wall. A shiver spread down his neck and shoulders.

  Jade squeezed his hand and whispered, “They’ve not attacked any of the other animals. When he led the animals here, he said their mouths had been closed.”

  “He?”

  “You know of whom I speak,” Jade said and nodded. “I was afraid when I first realized that the Almighty was here among us, but he presented himself as just a man. And he was . . . kind. And gentle. Though he looked very plain. And he led the lions in with the rest of the predators and commanded them to lay down, and they obeyed.”

  Noah shook his head and offered his hand to the lion. The beast approached and licked his hand. When the wet, velvety tongue scraped his skin, he jumped and pulled back. “Was the Almighty here when the village was attacked?”

  Jade frowned. “No.”

  Noah turned away and looked at the lambs in the pen next to the lions. “How could the Almighty be kind and gentle and command even the most powerful beasts to lay down, yet not save our friends?”

  Jade opened her mouth to respond, then pressed her lips together and looked away.

  Noah looked at his own hands. “I’m not doubting him. We both know how stained my own hands are, so who am I to criticize the Almighty? But I don’t understand him. I can’t see how so much wonder and so much pain can be present in the same moment. I don’t have the capacity to think of what remains ahead of us, because—” His voice broke, and he struggled to fight the ache. He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. “I miss them.”

  “Me too,” she whispered.

  “You swear our children are safe?”

  Jade scoffed. “You’re a bigger fool than I’ve ever thought if you think I’d lie about that.”

  “Of course I don’t think you’d lie about it. I just need to see them.”

  “I suppose it would be best if you did,” she said. “They’ve been worried for you.” She led him up the stairs to the second deck, where his children and their wives sat huddled around several large candles and a loaf of bread.

  When they saw him, they leapt to their feet and huddled around him, embracing him and kissing him, asking him about his journey, demanding he sit down and eat with them. But Noah pushed them away.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I needed to see you all, to make sure you were safe. But I need some time. Some space.”

  “We understand,” Shem said.

  “Come,” Jade said. “If you’re ready, let’s go back outside.”

  So Noah and Jade walked hand in hand down the stairs, back out of the ark. They said nothing while they went, for to merely hold her hand in silence was enough.

  Noah leaned against the scaffolding and pointed upward. “What were you doing up there?”

  “Nothing,” Jade said.

  “Nothing?”

  She rubbed her eyes, which were still red and puffy. “A slash in the wood for every person whose hands built the vessel that would carry us to a new world.”

  Noah saw her hands shaking, saw the stain of the pitch, and the beginnings of blisters from her painful task. Many—so many—had taken part in building the ark, and now would never see it used.

  “Because of me,” Noah said, and grabbed at the skin of his chest.

  Jade placed her hand over Noah’s. “It’s not your fault.”

  He pushed her hand away. “How could it not be?”

  She slipped her arms around his waist. “Because I know you. That you are a good man. A Godly man.”

  He wiped his face and leaned into his wife—the woman who had saved and supported him all these years. The mother to his children, and friend to his friends that now lay dead in the streets.

  “You never chose this,” she said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yet what can we do now but wait for what the Almighty has planned?”

  Noah remembered the words of the God-King and felt a sickness churn in his belly. The God-King was right. After all that had happened, he knew he had to meet him one last time, if only to find closure and understand why his friends had been murdered. For the Almighty refused to respond to any of his appeals, and it felt necessary after what the God-King had said, as if closing this final circle was the last task the Almighty had given before the end.

  If the God-King truly did have someone he cared for, could that mean that the devil had kept his mother in captivity all these years?

  How could he leave without at least finding the truth?

  He backed away, and Jade watched him, expression growing strained.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “There’s still one last thing before the end.”

  “The Almighty tasked you with something else?”

  Noah shook his head slowly. “The Almighty has said nothing to me in weeks. This is something else. Something different.”

  And he told Jade all he endured on the long journey. Of the strange audience he received with the God-King, and the “gift” the God-King prepared for him.

  Jade blanched at that final detail, and shook her head. “He knew. He knew that he was going to slaughter everyone and burn our village. It was all to send you a message.”

  “But why? That’s what I don’t understand. That’s why I need to go. Because what if he has . . . ?”

  Jade grabbed his face gently, her frown deepening. “I know,” she said. “Did you think I wouldn’t after all we’ve been through? After all these years? I need to see this through with you.”

  “No. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’d rather die than be separated from you again.” She stuck her finger into his chest to punctuate her words. “Never. Again.”

  Noah considered her. If he denied her such a condition, she would just find a way either to make him stay, or to follow him regardless. “What of our children?”

  “The port is hardly half a day’s walk. We will ride there. Some of the camels are still tied outside the village. I heard them braying while the flames still raged. Our children haven’t stepped foot outside the ark since the Others set fire to the village. They think the ark hallowed by God. And perhaps it is, seeing as the Others never touched it.”

  “And if we die?”

  Jade paused, then spoke as quiet as a distant breeze in the leaves. “At least our children will be saved, and the world will begin anew.”

  Chapter 69

  The wind whipped Noah’s hair and beard as they loped atop saddled camels. Jade kept up remarkably well despite the blisters on her hands, her expression locked in deadly concentration, her hands clenched as tight as the skin of his chest. Cool air sent chills down his back as he flicked the reins and yelled the command for speed.

  He felt the swirling sense of the end fast approaching. The downward spiral toward inevitable Fate. But he was confused, for the Almighty still refused to speak. Multiple times Noah petitioned the Almighty for guidance, wisdom, anything.

  The only answer was silence.

  It made him anxious. So instead of think about it, he let his thoughts dissolve to the shadowed outline of the mother he never knew. From the beginning, she had been the source. Without her, Noah would never have been born, and the God-King would never have hunted his family and stamped out so many he loved.

  Now he though he heard her voice like distant Music.

  Come and taste what fruit the God-King prepared for you, and know.

  Was your whole life a lie?

  Tears sprang to h
is eyes as he thought of his father, dead and mutilated. Preserved just so that his skull might be presented as a tool to apply leverage to Noah.

  If his mother lived, had Lamech been given the chance to see her one last time? Would Noah finally be able to meet her?

  Would he . . .

  Hills gave way to riverside. They followed its bends as it cut through stone and soil, until the water spread into a great delta that opened to distant blue and a city built on docks. The Others were everywhere. War ships docked at the port, and warriors stood on either side of the road like sentinels to corral him in.

  They whipped past the soldiers with horns and, as the way opened to a broad circle, Noah slid off, and Jade followed. The camels skidded to a stop, just before where the God-King sat in an iron throne in the center of the circle, and backed away, wary of the soldiers.

  The God-King stood and beckoned them forward, eyes glittering silver beneath black horns and an iron crown studded with emeralds.

  Noah stood his ground. “I have come.”

  The God-King nodded.

  “Show me what you will, or be damned,” he said.

  “First,” the God-King said, “bow to me.”

  Noah gave Jade a meaningful look.

  “Why does he even ask?” Jade said. “He knows your answer.”

  Noah kicked dust in the God-King’s direction.

  “No?” the God-King said, and he motioned for two guards who jerked up an old man bent with age. The man’s hair was heavily matted, and he was too weak to stand unaided.

  The guards shoved the man forward, and he fell with a grunt, breath hissing between yellow teeth, paper skin shaking over bones too sharp.

  The God-King walked to the man and lifted his chin with his toe. “Speak, Methuselah. Your grandson awaits you.”

  Noah pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. “No,” he said, and took in the withered figure before him.

  Methuselah looked up at him with gray eyes sparkling with life yet drawn downward by the cares of a world too heavy. His beard shook as he rasped, “It’s all right, Noah.”

  The God-King kicked Methuselah in the stomach, and Noah fell to his hands and knees and said, “Stop!”

  The God-King looked at him, surprised. “So you do care for him. Well then, you know how to save him. Bow.”

  Noah dragged his nails through the dirt and spit at the God-King, who lifted Methuselah by his beard, forcing a pained croak from the man’s throat. The God-King withdrew a knife and motioned another guard forward.

  The guard held both a spear and a burlap sack, and he stopped halfway to Noah and dropped his spear to take up the sack in both hands. In one fluid motion, he loosened the tie and tossed the sack’s contents forward.

  Decaying bones clattered toward Noah and rolled over his foot. He grimaced and kicked them away, glancing first at Jade, who stared at the bones in horror, then at the God-King, who smiled.

  “Behold,” the God-King said, and pointed with his knife. “Your dear mother!” Then he dragged the blade through Methuselah’s throat.

  “No!” Noah screamed, feeling the burning consume his arms and legs as Methuselah’s body fell, spewing red just like Elina’s had so many years earlier.

  He thought of his mother, of his father, of Kenan, Barak, and all the friends he’d ever loved wrenched away. His sight blackened and reddened, and he knew he should stop but refused to remain passive any longer.

  He ran forward, grabbed up the spear, only barely aware of the rush of the wind and the blurred figures swirling around him as he aimed himself at the God-King’s horns.

  “Stop!” Jade screeched, and her voice sent a shock through Noah’s body, causing him to stiffen, feet sliding, just barely staying upright as the tip of the spear stopped inches from the God-King’s chest.

  No one was moving. Not the God-King. Not the guards. Not the soldiers, and not Methuselah, who lay in a pool of red.

  What was happening? Why was no one trying to stop him? Why was . . .

  “What are you waiting for?” the God-King said, and his voice was cold and quiet.

  It hit Noah then, and his throat tightened until he thought he would never breathe. The God-King wasn’t trying to make Noah worship him.

  He was trying to get Noah to kill him.

  Every mystery of his past suddenly fell into place, and he could see why the God-King had sent Methuselah to Noah and Lamech—so that Noah would develop a relationship with his grandfather. The God-King had kept himself from destroying the village Noah lived in these past five centuries precisely so that he would grow to love the people there.

  Noah’s mother had been murdered, and her bones reclaimed, for this moment. Lamech’s skull had been preserved and offered as just another tool to incite rage.

  Everything about Noah’s life had been orchestrated for this moment, so that the God-King could tear everything away and make Noah bow to rage when he refused to bow to anything else.

  Because if the God-King could plant the lust for revenge where the Almighty demanded surrender, would he not be in control? Would the God-King not, in a perverse reversal, become Noah’s obsession, his god, and in doing so, defile Noah’s heart?

  In that moment, the Almighty’s single response these past few weeks finally made deadly sense. “My grace and mercy are sufficient for you.”

  He wanted Noah to forgive rather than to bow his head to bitterness.

  Noah looked back at Jade, the woman who had walked with him, faithful for so many centuries. She had seen the God-King’s true intentions when he had not, and he loved her for it.

  But as he returned his gaze to the God-King, he felt his soul slip back into all the hate he’d borne since a child. “You killed my mother.” He ground his teeth, letting the rage coil serpentine cold in his throat. “My father. My grandfather. My friends. You took everything.”

  “Yes,” the God-King said. “And I’ll take more still.”

  Noah knew that the God-King planned only to defile him, yet wanted nothing more than to press the tip of his spear through the devil’s chest. He could do it. And no one would stop him. Not the God-King. Not the soldiers. Not even the Almighty.

  Surely the God-King deserved it more than any other creature to walk the face of the earth.

  But the Almighty’s words echoed like distant, gentle Music, “My grace and mercy are sufficient for you.”

  And the meaning of those words sent a shudder through Noah’s bones, for he finally realized what the Man tried to show him in the Shrine of the Song. The two Musics were at war beneath the skin of his chest, coiled over his soul, slowly strangling him.

  How could he show the devil mercy?

  Yet how could he disobey the Almighty?

  God had led him through the wilderness and kept his wife and children safe. The Almighty had given him everything the God-King ever stole.

  Noah’s shaking hands edged forward, the tip of the spear finding the God-King’s tunic.

  “No,” Jade said. “Don’t do it, Noah. You’ve seen what he has to offer. Just come away like we planned. The ark is waiting.”

  “You took everything because I hated you,” Noah said. “Because I’ve hated you all my life.”

  “And why shouldn’t you?” the God-King said.

  “My hatred for you, alone, have I kept from the Almighty.” He paused, his body convulsing, and his voice quieted to little more than a whisper. “But not anymore. Because now I see.” Noah shook his head, stared into the God-King’s eyes, and said, “I . . . I forgive you.”

  The God-King’s face seemed to jerk, and he grabbed the shaft of the spear and pressed it into his chest until blood dribbled out. “Do what you’ve dreamed of all these years.”

  Noah shook his head. “I won’t.”

  Even as it was all he wanted.

  “Do it!”

  “No!” Noah wrenched the spear away and threw it for fear of his own desire. Tears came to his eyes as he watched it roll through the dust. �
�I’m done hating you,” he said. “You’ve taken everything, but you won’t take my God from me.”

  The God-King yelled and reared his head like a ram just as a cry erupted from the crowd, and the circle of guards surged. Noah turned and followed their hands pointed toward the sky where a massive light such as a star slashed across the sky and fell toward the earth countless leagues away, sending a rumble through the ground and lighting the edge of the horizon until it outshone the sun.

  Buildings shook, and the Others scattered. Boats rocked in the water, and the earth groaned as the roof of a nearby building toppled.

  Jade’s hand warmed his arm. He turned and met her gaze as she said, “It’s time! We have to go.”

  He followed her back to their mounts, where she helped him up, then joined him.

  And with a snap of the reins and a one-word command, they fled the city to return to the ark.

  Chapter 70

  When they arrived back at the burnt village, water had already overrun the river and quenched the cinders in the rubble. The camels splashed toward the ark, and Noah’s children stood just inside the entrance, leaning against the chains they would use to seal the door.

  When Shem saw them, he pointed, and the rest waved their arms and screamed for them to hurry. Noah looked behind and saw a wall of water approaching fast. Far in the distance a plume of water shot hundreds of cubits into the sky. Jade saw it, too, and they whipped their reins, but the camels were already running as fast as they could.

  The wave continued gaining, snapping trees and thrusting boulders, tossing splinters and foam to the sky.

  The camels loped up the ramp and, just as they made it inside, the wall of water rushed by, barely an arm’s length below the bottom of the entrance.

  Noah dropped off the camel and fell against the wall, thanking the Almighty for how high they’d built the opening.

  Shem, Ham, Japheth, and their wives hung on the chains, pulling with all their strength, but the door would not lift.

  “It’s not budging,” Shem said, and a chill descended Noah’s throat as the water continued to rise.