Jason Dayan drove the black Chevy Suburban through the blowing snow. Saul Gordon sat beside him, an unwilling passenger. He wiped a little circle in the fogged-up window. Just beyond the shoulder of the road, Little Blitzen Gorge yawned like a huge mouth, sucking the snow down into its swirling depths. Saul could practically hear the famished groans of the old cannibal-monster, the Indian-crusher, who in olden days carved out Little Blitzen Gorge with an obsidian knife. At least that was the story his granddaughter, Demi, had learned while out hunting with her cousins. But Demi was older now, old enough to laugh at the cannibal's groans, old enough to know that Little Blitzen Gorge had been carved by a glacier. Old enough to hunt on her own.
Dayan's gravelly voice broke the silence. "I'm curious. How did you come by the artifact?"
Saul had been rummaging his memory ever since the doctor arrived. "It was years ago, before we even met. There was this elderly woman, a member of my son-in-law's tribe, who asked if I could appraise a family heirloom, and old wooden box. She called it their 'white man's artifact.'"
"Do you know how the artifact came into their possession?"
"She couldn't remember. And I had no idea what it was worth. I didn't even know what it was, or what it contained. But I did recognize certain carvings on it, and I reached out to a professor of Germanics at the University of Washington. He came to appraise the box and said it belonged to the treasury of a 10th century Norwegian king. He said it was incredibly valuable."
"It is valuable indeed. And much older than he thought. For two thousand years, that wooden box has been making its way westward, steadily westward, working its way back home. I think it was looking for you, Gordon. You and this mountain. Can't you feel the gravity of this place?" He nodded at the uncertain terrain ahead. "It's like a knot in the fabric of time and space. So many threads pass through this mountain."
Saul met Dayan's strange words with silence. Looking out his window again, he searched the snow for Demi. Early that morning, she had taken her rifle and gone hunting by herself.
"So why did you bury it?" Dayan asked after a little while.
"The family asked me to hide it for them. Once they learned how important it was, how valuable it might be, they grew afraid people would come and take it away from them."
"They were right."
Saul nodded.
"But they didn't understand how important it was."
"What do you mean?"
"That artifact you buried holds information that could save this world from the plague that's about to wipe it out. In a matter of months, every human being on this planet will be dead. Except for a chosen few, us Jews and the Native people of North and South America. We alone will endure."
Saul gaped. "That's exactly what the doctor said about this virus. He calls it . . . JCAV."
"Oh, he's given it a name already." Dayan glanced over at Saul. "Who's he working for?"
Saul hesitated. "The CDC, I believe. He says the virus was engineered in a lab. He thinks it was your lab. He says you were the only one with the technology back when the virus was released."
Dayan kept his eyes on the snow-covered road. "He's right. I was the only one with the technology back then. But I had nothing to do with making the virus."
"Then who did?"
"Somebody, in some laboratory, somewhere, a hundred years from now, a decade, a thousand years. Nobody remembers."
Again, Saul was speechless.
"It's a thread in the fabric now."
Saul turned to face Dayan. "But why?"
"It's time. Again. Just like in our ancient scriptures. It's time for the Flood."
Saul ran his fingers through his wavy white hair. "Are you saying this virus is some sort of divine punishment?"
Dayan nodded. "In a way. And we are the righteous ones, Saul, just like the house of Noah."
"And Native people?"
"They are with us."
Saul shook his head. "I know our two people have suffered through persecution and genocide. And it would be lie to say I haven't thought about this type of thing, especially now with the Ghost Dance and Wovoka's prophecy. But my God, Jason. This isn't right. This is pure evil, and I'll have nothing to do with it."
"You're wrong, Saul. The survivors of this plague will build a world more righteous and just than anything you can imagine." He peered up through the windshield just in time to catch a raven sailing low overhead, left to right, wings tucked as it arced down into the gorge. "Now and then, the world must be destroyed so that better seeds can take root. Time after time, the gods sacrifice humanity on earth's altar. Every culture tells the same story. We Hebrews and our Flood. The Norse and their Ragnarok. The Hindu myth of Manu and Matsya. The Five Suns of the Aztecs. Even your granddaughter's tribe tells the same story."
Saul had heard it one winter at the tribal center, Demi and her parents sitting beneath a Pendleton blanket by the fire. Gray Wolf, the Creator, saw how corrupt the world had grown, so he burned it all to the ground and started from scratch. "They're just stories."
Dayan's gray eyes seemed to flash. "No. Not stories. Memories."
"But billions of innocent people are going to die, Jason. Children!"
"Does anyone weep for the innocents who died in the Flood? Does anyone even give them a single thought? No, they celebrate the rainbow and the new covenant." He shook his head as if to rid it of any lingering doubt. "It's a small price to pay, infinitesimal really, compared to the wholeness of things, compared to all the lives that were, that are, that will be again. It's a tiny price."
He reached up and touched the ugly scar that split his left eyebrow. "This world has grown old and decrepit, twisted by war and poverty and ignorance. It's time for it to die. And now it will burn to ashes so that better seeds can sprout."
Ahead, the road skirted a rocky knoll before mounting the edge of a knife-like ridge. To either side, jagged cliffs tumbled down through the swirling snow. Soon the road delivered them to a high overlook, a lonely pulpit in the cloudsâthe summit of Steens Mountain.
Dayan brought the vehicle to a stop. "Now, show me where you buried that box."
***
Peter leaned forward, fingers digging into the chair's armrests. Davila stood in the entryway, head bowed. From behind the partial wall, a jacketed arm reached out, a gloved hand gripping the back of Davila's collar. Another pressed the barrel of a gun to the base of her skull.
She seemed to hang there like coat, arms dangling, the snowball she had gathered now melting through the clutch of her left hand, splint soaked. She fell to her knees and bowed forward. The holster at the small of her back was empty.
From behind the partial wall peeked a head of slicked-back jet hair and a pair of honey-colored eyes. They latched onto Peter, narrowing down.
Jesus.
"Where's the doctor?" Gryphus asked, firming up his grip on Davila's collar.
To Peter's right, the vague form of Brisling in his rumpled brown suit was rising up from the couch. An arm stretched for something on the dividing wall behind the stove. The sheepherder's tools.
Adrenaline clotted Peter's throat. "You mean the guy on the kitchen floor?"
Gryphus aimed the gun at Peter's chest. "Don't lie to me."
Peter opened his mouth to speak, but the words crumbled on his lips. His gaze slid down Davila's arm to her left hand, now a fist, the snowball crushed within it, splint ripped loose. Rivulets of icy water dripped from her knuckles onto the dirty floor.
"Hoo-ah!" Brisling leaped out from behind the partial wall with a pair of rusty sheep shears held like a bayonet.
Peter sprang from the chair and launched himself at Gryphus, arms wide for the tackle, eyes closed. The blast came a split second later, heavy and muffled, like the wallop of a down pillow. It jumbled his senses: the cold ring of metal on metal, a bullet passing by so close it tugged the fabric of his jacket, falling forward, palms scraping the gritty floor.
He lay face down. A brass shell danced by his ear. The stench of gunpowder tingled his nostrils. Something dense thudded against the floorboards, and he turned his head. There lay Gryphus's gun, smoke trailing from the muzzle. And beside it lay the snowball, a perfect cast of Davila's fist, like an apple core. She still knelt with her head bowed, but she held her left fist held high in triumph. In it, she grasped the handle of the knife she had taken from the kitchen, its blade buried to the hilt in the soft flesh just below Gryphus's rib cage.
He teetered, swayed and crumpled to the floor.
In a flash, Davila grabbed Gryphus's gun and jumped to her feet. Straddling him, she gripped the weapon with both hands and took aim. Brisling reached out to stop her, but it was too late. With a primal scream, she pulled the trigger, over and over until her lungs were empty and blue smoke filled the room.
_______________
Author's note:
Thank you for reading Chapter 41!
This chapter is dedicated to @SakinaNasir5253 who introduced me to Nabi Nooh!
All comments and questions welcome.
-Frode
Image: "The Deluge" by Gustave Doré. Scanned directly from a leather-bound 19th century Swedish Bible that lives on my bookshelf.