Saturday, December 26, 2015

FRANKLIN

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson


            Alvin Sullinger closed his Apple Air 3 tablet and covered it carefully with a white cloth. Kim Jones was tweaking the reverse light-speed modulators on the Geodesic Voyager. “If we’re going to grab anyone from their own time and bring them here, I’m positive it must be Benjamin Franklin.”
Kim laughed. “The First American? You sure you don’t want to bring Julius Caesar or perhaps Attila the Hun? … Someone flashy, with more in-your-face-gusto.”
            “No one in history is more thought-provoking than Franklin,” Alvin said. “Besides, he wanted to be here. In May 31, 1788 Franklin wrote in a letter to the Reverend John Lothrop of Boston …” Alvin mimicked the dialect of eighteenth-century America with Broadway Stage bravado. “I have sometimes wished it had been my destiny to be born two or three centuries hence. For invention and improvement are prolific, and beget more of their kind. The present progress is rapid. Many of great importance, now unthought of, will before that period be procur’d; and then I might not only enjoy their advantages, but have my curiosity satisfy’d in knowing what they are to be.”
            “Damn, that brain of yours soaks up knowledge like Sponge Bob Square Pants!” Kim used a hex-wrench to tighten a dark-energy switch while he studied readouts on a computer. The bubble-shaped stainless-steel travel chamber loomed behind him like a futuristic automobile capable of breaking established light-speed limits in countless intergalactic traffic zones. “Don’t you ever forget anything you read?”
            “No,” Alvin said. “If I was going to forget … why would I bother reading?”
            “It looks like we’re finished,” Kim said. “What not break for lunch?”
            “Fine,” Alvin said. “But I want real-food this time not another platter of yeast-infected grain-flour covered in sliced pig-bellies and bacteria-cultured milk-fat … I want real food.” He pulled a red-vinyl wallet from the pocket of his JC Penny high-water denims and handed Kim a bill. “Buy two orders of Chuotang from Miggulaji’s Korean Restaurant, on Prospect Street; along with a double-order of rice … I’ll make tea. This project’s taken months to complete. It’s time we celebrated.”
Kim looked at the image on the hundred-dollar bill. “No pizza huh? Well Mr. Franklin … it looks like we’ll be meeting each other real soon.”

-------2-------

            Benjamin Franklin looked up from the manuscript he was editing: Supplemental Experiments and  Observations on Electricity. A low-rumble and a gust of wind scattered pages across his table; some fluttered to the floor. Oil-lamps swayed from the ceiling of the Moravian Sun Inn. A rain drenched traveler dripped water onto the floor as he closed the door. A busty bar-maid named Elisabeth Manning stooped to pick up the papers; allowing the flirtatious scientist to admire her exposed cleavage. “I’m sorry Doctor Franklin,” She said, then scowled across the room towards the oddly dressed stranger, and deliberately raised her voice to add: “Most of these Dandy Prats we got loitering in Pennsylvania these days were born in swine-sheds or worse.” T Instead of looking insulted, the stranger grinned and hurried over.
            “Doctor Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia?” he asked extending his hand.
Franklin quickly downed a tankard of beer and stood up gathering his papers. “I’m sorry to be rude,” he said ignoring the hand, “but that clap of thunder that pushed you into our hospitality was a signal advising me that I must go outdoors and attend to my business.”
            “Outside in this? You must be mad.” The stranger shook his thick hair like a dog.
Franklin squinted at him. “No, I’ve been waiting for this storm for some time.” He stuffed the papers into a leather satchel, lifted the strap across his shoulder and grabbed a kite propped against the door frame. “If it’s employment you’re seeking, I’m afraid all of our printing opportunities are filled.”
            “I’m sorry,” the young man stammered. “I’m not looking for work. It’s you I’ve come to see.” He extended his hand again. “I’m Kim Jones and I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.” Franklin shook the hand. “Jones is it? That name doesn’t sound Lithuanian. That would have been my guess as to your nationality, although you do possess an uncommon accent and make ruthless war on King George’s English.”
            “Actually I’m American,” Kim said, “from Cambridge.”
            “You may delay, but time will not,” Franklin told him, “and I’m about to conduct an investigation to prove that electrical fluid and lightning both pour from the same vessel.”
            “Ah your famous kite and key experiment!” Kim smiled.
            “Did Peter Collinson send you?” Franklin fastened the shell buttons on his coat. “I wrote to him that an assistant familiar with electrical science would be helpful.”
            “I’m not an electrical engineer. My specialty is physics … but I do have this.” Kim removed an Apple iWatch from his wrist and handled it to Franklin. “This watch has a keyboard for keeping notes, as well as a light and multiple applications that will be useful in your experiments.” Franklin staggered and almost dropped the object when his fingers brushed a button on the side of the brushed aluminum case. The kite fell to the floor. He examined his fingers for burns. A digital display, showing the date and time, illuminated his hand. “Where did you say you were from?” Franklin gasped. He couldn’t take his eyes off the glowing time piece.
            “From the future,” Kim told him. “From the year two-thousand fifteen to be exact.”
Franklin removed his coat still staring at the object. “A watch you called it?” he sleepwalked toward the table. “Astonishing! … Bring us more ale,” he called to Elisabeth.
            “I thought you were going outside,” she complained as she brought a pitcher of beer and two tankards. “I’ve heard thunder and seen lightning strike twice already!”
            “Yes,” Franklin said without looking up, “and once was inside this room.”

-------3-------

Puddles of water covered the winding dirt roads bypassing tiny farm houses. Franklin insisted on hiring a carriage to transport them two miles. “If it wasn’t for this sticky Pennsylvania mud and its ability to pull rims from wagon wheels,” he said. “I would have no aversion to employing my legs, but the wages of a good cobbler far exceeds the cost of a teamster.”
The Geodesic Voyager was hidden in a grove of trees just outside of Bethlehem Pennsylvania near the ashes of a burned barn. “We won’t be surprised by any farmer’s wife coming out to milk the cows will we,” Franklin said as he paid the driver.
“I took my time selecting this spot and thought it would be best if we kept our time-travel plans a secret,” Kim said. “If the scientists in my world are not ready to follow a needle through the fabric of space time, surely yours would not be.”
“The Christ Church in Boston has not burned a witch in years,” Franklin said. “If we are found out … I’m confident that the practice will be reinstated.”

Franklin gasped as he stared at the polished cylinder. Kim was removing cut cedar branches. “It looks like a giant soap bubble blown from some effervescing type of metal!” He walked around the futuristic object studying each intricate detail and then cautiously touched the lustrous surface.
“It’s called stainless steel,” Kim said “An alloy of iron, carbon, chromium and nickel. He typed a code into his iPhone and a hydraulic door whooshed open on one side of the chamber. “Don’t be a chicken, my dear Doctor,” Kim said when he saw Franklin step back. “It’s quite safe. Please have a seat.”
“I’ve observed hundreds of ideas hatching,” Franklin said, staring with wonder at the glowing electronic interior as he climbed inside the sphere, “but less than any with such elegance … and fewer even than those with more trepidation. I’m certainly grateful to be here; I only wish that I had my business affairs in order. I see you have learned to pour out small bits of the electric. If this is death come to take me in a chariot to heaven or a cart bound for the blisters of hell … pray that either be speedy. If it be a dream, please don’t let it end bloody and startle the other Inn borders when I shout.”
“We shouldn’t need any body-bags,” Kim said climbing inside. “You’ve flown before haven’t you?”
“Not recently,” Franklin forced a smile as Kim apologized for his idiotic presumption. “We are different species of goose and are from obviously different nests … separated by numerous Februaries of invention and the March of time.” Franklin had figured out how to buckle his seat belt and closed his eyes as the machine became activated.
“My fondest desire has always been to show the future to a famous person,” Kim said.
“It was my desire to reach that future without dying,” Franklin said opening his eyes. “How on earth can such an off the hooks invention possibly work?”
“It’s General Relativity Physics,” Kim said. “The entire universe, and everything in it, spreads outward at the constant speed of light.” He busied himself pushing buttons and adjusting digital readouts on numerous computer display screens. “To go back in time you exceed the perpetual speed of light, which happens to be one-hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second.” He pressed a series of orange and red buttons and the Geodesic Voyager began to vibrate at 1760 HZ. “To go forward in time, you must slow that unalterable speed to nothing … and then go even slower.”
“As a scientist,” Franklin marveled. “This defies the total of my existing knowledge and understanding. Are we on a horse ladder?”
“Men of science, devoid of spiritual beliefs, always work by reason and within subjective limits,” Kim said, “while those of great faith … at times do the impossible.”
“God! Help us then!” Franklin said as the craft began to move.

-------4-------

Franklin was swaying when he climbed out of the taxi at John F. Kennedy International airport in New York City. “Are you okay?” Kim Jones asked as he rushed around to support the now three-hundred and nine year-old gentleman. “I didn’t consider the effects of motion sickness on a time traveler.” The world’s most famous person in the seventeenth century was now dressed in oversized purple cargo pants and a black hooded jacket with an image of Snoop Dog on the front. He had picked it out himself from Saks Fifth Avenue.
“It is a bit like being to sea for the first time,” Franklin said bending his legs to keep his balance and staring as a Delta Airlines 737 lifted into the air, “riding in these horseless carriages you call automobiles, but also having tides of new ideas flooding my poor printer’s brain from all directions.”
“Sensory overload,” Kim said. “It’s one thing I never considered.”
“Are we really going into the sky in one of those machines?” Franklin said staring at the vanishing airliner.
“Just a short flight to Boston,” Kim said. “With no passports and only carry-on baggage boarding shouldn’t take too long.”
Franklin noticed an obviously homeless blind-man sitting by a garbage can with a sign saying: Iraqi war veteran Please Help! He walked over to the man astonished. “With all the wealth and influence of your world, I would have thought vagrancy to have gone extinct like the ferocious giant reptiles of earth’s distant past.”
Kim rushed over and pulled Franklin away from the veteran just as Ben dropped paper money into the man’s empty coffee can.
            “What the hell is this?” the blind-man said pulling the note from a tin can and holding it up to the sunlight.
            “I thought you were blind!” Kim yelled. He was furious at the deception.
            “Even a blind man can spot counterfeit money,” the immitation beggar said.
            “I assure you that twenty shilling note is authentic,” Franklin told him. “I printed and signed it myself.”
            “I’ll bet you did … you cheap bastard!” The man wadded up the bill and tossed it toward the curb just as Jones dragged Franklin into the terminal.

Ten minutes after the fake beggar had moved to a new location, an immigrant family from France, with very little extra money, but filled with the American dream, stood on the curb waiting for a taxi. Destin Vergennes, the father of five ragged children, had worked in an antique book-store, before leaving Paris. The printed bill in the street caught his attention. He picked it up. Less than a minute later he was dancing. “L'Amérique est vraiment le pays des opportunités,” he shouted forgetting for a moment to speak English. “Cette note de Pennsylvanie Colonial monnaie banque originale imprimé et signé par Benjamin Franklin … it is worth at least three-thousand dollars!”

-------5-------


Franklin explored the massive airline terminal while Jones secured the boarding passes using fake identification for his new friend under the name Ben Franks. The eighteenth-century scientist and inventor conversed with several groups of people mostly about politics but was fascinated by leisure time activities at one end of a large waiting area. He watched as two pre-teen boys played a new version of an old hack and slash arcade-game called Gauntlet.
“What do you do with all the tiny bodies?” he asked the boy watching his brother.
“What are you talking about mister?” the child stared at Franklin with wide eyes.
“That brutish Medieval Army of Prussians you are slaying … what do you do with the corpses?”
“We don’t do anything with them,” the youngster said. “The game trades each kill for points.”
Kim found Franklin and guided him away. He had both boarding passes. “We need to make our way to gate nineteen,” he said. “We’re in a bit of luck, I secured a window-seat for you on a Boeing Seven Thirty-seven. You should have a great aerial view of your old stomping grounds.”
            “I hope it is not my destiny to meet that old stomping-ground as you call it in an abrupt and unexpected manner,” Franklin said as they boarded the airliner. “Do tell me that all in-the-sky accidents are a thing of the past.”
            “We’ll be fine,” Kim told him …. Trust me!”
            “It is only when you tell others to trust in God,” Franklin said with a smile, “that they know they are about to meet him.”

-------6-------


Franklin was seated in the first-class, fourth-row window seat on the left and Jones sat next to him. “These seats are expensive,” Kim said, “but you are somewhat of a celebrity even if nobody in this century knows it.”
“I know you mean well,” Ben told him with a nervous laugh, “but if we should exchange seats, I might close my eyes and imagine I’m in the hull of a ship headed for France instead of in the belly of a large metal bird being slowly digested by my own fear.”
“Try sitting by the window for a bit …” Kim pleaded, “if you don’t like it … later we’ll switch.”
A pretty flight attendant, with a name-tag that read Sally Lewis, and with dark hair and soft blue eyes, brought drinks as soon as they were in the air. Kim had to nudge Ben twice to get his nose away from the glass. “For a moment I had the feeling of growing very large,” Franklin said smiling, “as the world suddenly shrank.” He accepted a Bacardi rum and cola on ice from Sally graciously and drank it quickly.
He once again had his face pressed against the oval window. “Creatures with wings must think of themselves as giants as they look down upon whole nations that float below them.”

A well-dressed male passenger with the fair complexion of the Danish stood up from the seat across the aisle and headed forward toward the bathroom. A minute later, the vivacious red-headed female passenger sitting next to him followed. Kim imagined a married middle-age businessman on a clandestine vacation with his young secretary joining the mile-high club.
            “I’ve always thought the ground looked like a patchwork quilt on someone’s made-up bed and I imagined I was a bee flying over it looking for an open window.” Franklin nodded without looking at him. Kim caught the pretty attendant’s eye and begged her for two more drinks.
            “Normally we only serve each passenger one beverage on this short flight to Boston,” Sally said. She pointed to Franklin and smiled. “but your companion seems to have such an enthusiasm for life, that I’m tempted to break the rules.” A minute later she was back with two more drinks. “Is this charming gentleman your father?” she asked as she handed over another rum and coke.
            “No, he’s an old friend,” Kim said. Franklin was laughing and twisting in his seat as he stared at the ground. He glanced at Sally and winked.

            A loud bang like a car-tire exploding came from the area of the front galley. Sally tumbled into Kim’s lap. Normally he would have been thrilled … this time he was confused and scared. Smoke filled the front of the compartment and appeared to be coming from the forward section. “Good heavens,” Franklin exclaimed. “What is happening?”
            “I think a microwave-oven or something else just exploded in the galley,” Kim told him. “We’re still in the air so I wouldn’t worry.”
            “That’s impossible,” Sally said. “This airline uses transferred heat from the engines to warm our pre-cooked meals in special containers.” Sally struggled to her feet.
Jones’ mouth gaped open when the Irish looking woman who had gone into the restroom appeared standing in the smoke cloud. Her blouse and bra had been removed and two perfectly formed cones of clay-like material jutted outward from her naked upper torso where her surgically removed breasts should have been. Two wires ran from her artificial cleavage to a button-switch held between her fingers. Her pale blue eyes contained both the color and warmth of arctic ice flows. Neon-streaked shag-cut hair rose from her head in static-electrical fashion.
            Her voice revealed just the slightest hint of a Turkish accent. “There is a pound of C4 explosive in each of my göğüsler,” she said showing her teeth. “Anyone decides to play with them, and we will grace ve sevgisi ile Tanrı … blow this western symbol of infidelity to hell where it belongs!”
The smoke was beginning to clear. Kim could see that the reinforced door separating the crew compartment from the passengers had been blown-off its hinges. A whiff of chloroform tinged the air. The co-pilot lay on the floor. The Danish man was pulling an unconscious pilot from his seat. Two men, both looking like fat Georgia rednecks, appeared from the economy-class section wielding torn off arm-rests as clubs. “Uçak güvenlidir,” (the aircraft is secure) the first one said. The plane began to bank left in a steep turn, leveling-out as it moved south toward Washington D.C.
“A half-hour from now, the world will understand that Tanrı will never stop in his glorious quest to destroy evil,” the woman shouted as she beat one fist on the overhead luggage racks.

“Is there a problem with your flying machine?” Franklin asked Kim … moments before the airliner began to descend rapidly and all of the passengers screamed.


TO BE CONTINUED ….

             



Sunday, December 20, 2015

CHILDREN of the SNOW

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.


CHILDREN of the SNOW
By R. Peterson
“Sequel to the 2013 short story A FEAR of REINDEER”

Sam Otto Bird lifted the flap on the snow covered wigwam and stepped out. Days were less than an hour long at this time of year and the Inuit village in northern Alaska was crowded with frightened children from the abandoned orphanage eating and warming themselves by seal-fat fires. Eddie Stowell brushed past the Indian youth and came inside the skin-covered shelter. The smiling fourteen-year old handed Tim a hot bowl of soup made from Sculpin (fish), spring beauty roots, and seaweed. “This Ujuk (meat) will warm you. The bannock (flatbread) is all gone but the village women are baking more …,” he said, “this tribe isn’t used to feeding so many.”
Tim remembered the betrayal of Yoskolo James, the Regional Social Services Director from Barrow, and others. They had planned to turn more than forty orphans over to alien creatures called Conke’la in return for their alien technology. The Conke’la resembled Caribou (reindeer) that walked on two legs and had a taste for human meat, especially the flesh of children.
            Tim still wondered about Eddie. The fourteen year old had a limp when they first met, but it was gone now. The Conke’la often gave miraculous health benefits as incentives to those who served them. It was Eddie who brought Yoskolo and men with guns back to the orphanage. The children had been rescued by Sam Otto Bird, his trapper father and a pack of wolves who chased away the armed-men doing the bidding of evil creatures.
            “Sam and his father are holding council with the other elders of the village,” Eddie said. “It sounds like we may have to go back to the orphanage.”
            “How can they send us back there when the Conke’la might return at any time?” Tim stammered.
            “They might not have a choice.” Eddie said. “Yoskolo James is said to be headed this way with a group of soldiers. Apparently he’s claiming Sam’s tribe kidnapped all of us orphanage children and they are now holding us for ransom.”
            “Won’t they listen when we tell them what Mr. James and the Conke’la had planned for us?”
            “They will probably laugh and say we’re all suffering from over-active imaginations and cabin-fever. Who ever heard of a group of reindeer that walk upright and eat children?”
Tim and Eddie didn’t have to wait long for Sam Otto Bird to return. “The village elders have decided that you all must return to the orphanage,” Sam said. “My father and two of my uncles have the frozen body of a Conke’la and they will ship it to Fairbanks by dog-sled and convince the officials there that our words on the radio are true. I’m sorry but it will take them almost a month to get arrive. Until then, you and the other children must find a way to survive.”
A gust of cold wind blew snow around the fires as Tim and Eddie walked outside. It was already growing dark. The northern lights seemed to surround them. “Is it true that we have to go back?” Bonnie Cromwell was crying.
            “Only until Sam’s father and others bring back help, “Benny Jackson told her.
            “I will be coming with you,” Sam Otto Bird said loading bullets into a Marlin 30-30 rifle. He cocked the lever to place a shell into the firing chamber. “And this time we will have at least ten guns and we will be ready.”
Tim watched as the Aurora Borealis turned the horizon pink and then shades of blue green. ‘I hope it’s not an evening meal for the Conke’la that they are ready to attend.”  He thought about the twenty-two caliber revolver Eddie had given him before the first attacked. Killing, even flesh eating reindeer, was never an easy thing.

-------2-------

            The abandoned airplane-hanger used for an orphanage looked deserted when the group of orphans arrived. Sam Otto Bird had led them a mile north to avoid Yoskolo James and his armed men. “We have a well inside the main building and our own generator,” Eddie said. “And plenty of food. With the extra guns we should be able to hold off a small army.”
Tim noticed the dead reindeer had been moved from the drifts in front of the hanger. Several bullet holes in other buildings had been repaired. “They must have others with them,” Sam Otto Bird said. “Ones who are not working with the Conke’la.”
The inside of the hanger was cold and Eddie went to start the generators. Tim climbed into the rafters and had Sam hand him up three boxes of shells. He sat near a window where he could watch for any approaching enemies. “They won’t attack us today; they’ll come back at night once they figure out what we are up to.” Sam slid heavy crates beside the man door. “Once Eddie gets the lights and heat running and I leave, block the door and do not allow anyone in or out until I return.”
            “You’re leaving?”
            “They will try to sneak up on us in the night,” Sam said. “I want to be ready for them.”

Eddie returned from outside and he and some of the older children blocked the door after Sam left. Tim shivered as he watched the Indian boy disappear into a clump of trees. It was not just a lack of heat that made him shake.

-------3-------

Yoskolo James and twenty-three others including sixteen soldiers thundered into the Inuit village on a dozen rumbling snow-machines. “We know you took the children,” James told Atiqtalik the village chief as she and many others came to meet him. “A snow has fallen, but I have men in my employ who can track as well as your hunters.”
            “Then you will also know that the children have returned to their lodge without mothers,” Atiqtalik which means Polar Bear Mother loomed over the armed men without fear.
            “We don’t want trouble we only want the children’s safe return.” James looked around the camp nervously. This was not what he expected.
            “And we don’t need our ears to tell us what you want.” Atiqtalik smiled. “The children were chased here by a large pack of starving Amaruq (wolves). We have given them an escort back to their homes.”
A woman dressed in a billowing parka with the emblem of Alaskan Social Services sewn on the back, and two other civilians approached the domineering matron. “Then you’re not going to tell us some wild story about creatures from outer space coming to devour the children? She gave Yoskolo James a dirty look.
            “Of course not,” Atiqtalik laughed. “We’ll save those silly entertainments for the long weeks when the deep-snow keeps us from hunting. We don’t receive television signals here.”

Several of the younger men crowded around the chief as they watched the snow machines depart.
“You didn’t tell the woman about James and his connection to the Conke’la,” one of the younger men accused.
            “Yoskolo James expected me to,” Atiqtalik said. “I’m sure he had a story and proof ready that would make me look foolish.” She looked at the boy who would go on his first hunt this season and smiled. “I think maybe … he is the one who looks foolish; and perhaps the woman will wonder where his story came from.”
-------4-------


Night came quickly to a sky already dimmed. Tim squinted his eyes to stare into the areas where the yard lights reached into the icy gloom. He agreed with Eddy that the attack would most likely come in the early morning hours when almost everyone was asleep. Tim didn’t relax until Sam Otto Bird returned to the hanger. Sam’s pants and shirt were coated with a black powder almost like graphite but Tim was so relieved to have him back, he didn’t ask him how he got so dirty.
            After the smaller children were fed, Sam climbed into the rafters to spell-off Tim. “Try to get some sleep,” he said as he loaded his rifle. “My guess is the attack will come about three a.m. We’ll need all the guns at every window when it happens.”
Tim had just begun to climb down an extension ladder when he heard Sam’s cry. “Oh my God! I was wrong!” he screamed.
Tim heard the roar of a diesel engine seconds before a wall exploded and a military vehicle burst into the airplane-hanger. His hands were frozen on the ladder rungs. Sam’s rifle shots behind him bounced off the armor plating. Bits of corrugated metal siding, insulation and splintered two by sixes littered the floor. The steel-tracked Army LAV slid to a stop as Tim dropped to the floor between him and forty terrified children trying to crawl under two long tables. Tim could see a dozen rifles pointed at him and at Sam as the dust cleared. “Come down out of those rafters and leave your gun behind or else we start shooting a few of the smaller ones right now!” Yoskolo James looked at Tim and smiled. Sam cursed as he climbed down the ladder. He had no choice.

-------5-------

 George Otto Bird was driving the first sleigh when they came to several trees lying across the trail. “We’ll have to saw our way through,” he said. “It will take too much time to go around.”
One of George’s nephews took a bow saw from his sleigh and approached a fallen trunk. “Look at this,’ Tom Black Wolf said. His brother Dave was searching through a heavy pack. “These trees were cut on purpose.”
A wedge near the top of a stump showed he was correct. The dogs from all three sleighs began to growl. Jimmy Rance, Maxwell Stark and four armed soldiers stepped from behind snow covered evergreens leveling automatic rifles at the three Inuit.
            “You shouldn’t have interfered with our plans,” Stark said as they shoved the three men into a tight group. All six rifles were pointed at them. “The Conke’la are very appreciative if you do their will … but deadly if you don’t cooperate.”
            “These Caribou with Devils in them will fix all of your health problems as long as you keep bringing them human flesh,” George spat on the ground. “Is that it? But what about when the food runs out … are you going to be next on the menu?”
            “The Conke’la are migrating across the galaxy,” Stark said. “They’ve been on Earth a little more than three-hundred years storing fresh meat in cryonic chambers aboard their spaceship. Any human meat will do, even a tough old-administrator like me, but they have limited space and exquisite taste. I promised them enough tender meat from live children to fill their larders for the long voyage ahead.”
            “Let’s kill them now!” Jimmy Rance was almost dancing as he clutched the military issue M-16 assault rifle. The growling half-wolf sled dogs were making him nervous. “I hear these guns can cut a man in half.” He was giggling. “I want to find out if that’s true.”
            “Not here,” Stark said. “It’s not likely that someone else will come along … but things like that happen.” He pointed toward the trees. “Take them at least a hundred yards off the trail and then cover the bodies with snow. The wolves will clean the ground before spring I’m sure.”
Dave Black Wolf glanced quickly at the sleigh he’d been driving as the soldiers pushed them into the trees. Heavy animal hide covered packs filled the sled. He thought he saw movement under the furs. It wasn’t much hope but it was something.

-------6-------

            Blue and green lights made the icy ground look like it was covered in moss. Tim had never been this scared before. The alien craft hovered in the air about thirty feet in the air. It looked much closer to the ground because of its enormous size. When you got close you realized it was as large as a fishing cannery. Most of the smaller children were too terrified to cry. An elderly woman Tim recognized as the librarian from Barrow and another lady who looked to be in her seventies were urging the children toward a beam of light with promises of hot cookies and milk. He didn’t think any of the young ones, even the smallest, believed what they were told; they just didn’t know what else they could do. The light beam lifted the children and moved them sideways at the same time, like being on an invisible escalator. The stunned children began to disappear into an open hatch on the hovering craft.
            “You’ll go up too,” Yoskolo James pointed his gun at Tim, Sam and Eddie. “You might be a little tough chewing compared to the babies, but maybe the Conke’la will swap you for some of the meat they’ve had for centuries.”
Tim knew they had to follow if only to calm the other children before the end came. He noticed Bonnie Cromwell’s terrified face staring at him as he stepped into the beam of light. Pulses of heat swept up and down his body lingering on his muscles like invisible hands. Tim decided since they were considered food, it was probably some kind of measuring device for protein and fat content.
            He rose in the air along with Sam and Eddie. The vast arctic tundra glowed with a strange light. Tim realized the ship was the light source. Beams of rainbow illumination spread outward in all directions. People always thought this was a natural phenomenon, Tim sighed. How wrong we all were.

For the first second they were pulled into the alien craft Tim could see only darkness and feel a strange, humid warmth. Suddenly there was light and what looked like hundreds of soap bubbles moving across a vast round chamber. Eddie and Sam were beside him inside one large bubble seemingly trapped. Sam beat his fists against a transparent membrane that matched force for force any pressure applied against it.
Minutes later the bubble seemed to settle and Tim, Sam and Eddie found themselves on a floating platform with Yoskolo James, the two women and a dozen horribly deformed reindeer walking erect like men. Several of the aliens were licking puffy lips with swollen tongues.
Yoskolo was lying on a table while two of the Conke’la vacuumed blemishes from his hairy legs with some kind of laser apparatus and made them look young again. The two old women were having all the wrinkles removed from their faces. “I confess I was wrong,” James said. “Our reindeer friend’s fresh meat containers are not quite full,” he said. “We will need at least a dozen more humans, preferably younger than six, to fill up the largest cryonic freezers.”
The Conke’la spoke to him in a language that sounded like various sizes of symphony horns blowing underwater. “East,” James told them. “I’m sure there are more children in Prudhoe Bay. It’s almost two hundred miles, but I understand at least half of the more than one-thousand oil workers from Canada bring their families along when they are working during the winter.”
            “We have to convince them to travel west,” Sam whispered to Tim. “But it’s important that this not seem to be my idea.”
            “There is an Inuit village less than sixty miles to the west of us,” Tim told the man getting his youth restored. “There are many young children there. Most of them are only three or four years old. I can show you how to get there if you promise to let us three go.”
            “You are scum!” Sam wailed at Tim. Eddie made a show of holding him back. “You would sell out helpless children to save your own skin?”
            “Show us where the best meat is,” Yoskolo James smiled like a crocodile, “and I will show you mercy.”

-------7-------

            As soon as the men with guns pointed at George Otto Bird and her two brothers vanished into the trees, Ena Black Wolf crawled out from under the piled firs on the last sleigh and began to unharness the dogs. “Wait and be silent,” she whispered to the half-wolves in the Inuit tongue as she unhooked each leather strap. She worked swiftly to release all twenty four dogs. “We must be swift and take them by surprise if we are to survive.”

            “I think we’ve gone far enough,” Jimmy Rance said. “Let’s have a contest to see who the best dancer is as I shoot at their legs.” He grinned. “Kind of a last man standing type of thing.”
            “We haven’t got time for your foolish games,” Maxwell Stark told him. “Shoot them now and we’ll return to the Conke’la for our reward.”
Just then a loud whistle broke the stillness of the night. Sturdy half-wolves used to pulling loaded sleighs for hours upon hours leaped at the six men from eight different directions. There were four gnashing animals on each member of Starks’ gang. The men didn’t have a chance.

“I think this whole night has been one big deception,” George Auto Bird said as the last soldier was torn to bits. “I fear for my son and the other children. If only we knew what the Conke’la were up to.”
            “We don’t know exactly what they are doing but we know where they are doing it at,” George Black Wolf pointed toward the sky. “I’ve never seen the Aurora Borealis move east to west across the horizon like that,” he said. “That must be the Conke’la spaceship and I’ll bet a winter of furs that all the orphan children are inside.”
            “What are we waiting for,” Ena Black Wolf said. “We must do all we can to save them.”

-------8-------

            “Why haven’t we seen the lights of this Indian village yet?” Yoskolo James was staring at a monitoring screen that showed the ground below. He was getting angry. Sam Otto Bird nudged Tim from inside a bubble and glanced to the left. “A little farther south,” Tim suggested. “I think we’re almost there.”
The humming sound that always surrounded the spacecraft when it was in operation, raised at least an octave and tripled in volume just before the entire vessel began to shake with increasingly violent tremors. “What the hell is going on?” James thundered. “We’re coming down too fast!”
The Conke’la were racing toward protective bubbles when the huge ship crashed onto the frozen tundra in a ball of multicolored fire and flame. The Northern Lights blazed the brightest in history just before they went out for good.

-------9-------


George Otto Bird and the Black Wolfs saw the ball of fire when they were still a mile away. By the time they reached the crash site the huge spaceship was nothing more than a honeycomb turned to soot and ash. The shimmering bubbles that held Tim, Sam, Eddie and the other children acted as protective spheres and the bubbles opened when they touched the ground.
            “We were lucky the ship crashed when it did,” Tim gushed.
            “Luck had nothing to do with it,” Sam told them. “When I left the orphanage yesterday I gathered Lodestones from all of the Inuit villages in the area and placed them in a circle at this spot.” He kicked a large black magnetic rock with his boot. “The Inuit have known for centuries that the magnetic properties of this stone destroy the control functions of the alien ships … that’s why the Conke’la don’t just float over a village and suck up children.”
            The fire died down. They stared in awe at more than three-hundred frozen balls hanging in the charred ruins of the ship. Tim and Eddie helped Sam and they climbed into the wreckage and released the cryonic storage containers one by one.
            Most of the icy balls contained frozen Eskimo children, some missing for many years who miraculously came back to life once the balls touched the ground and were opened. The group was most astonished when Englishman John Franklin and over one-hundred members of his ill-fated Northwest Passage Expedition Party appeared not a day older than they were when they disappeared in 1845. “Have you seen the Pacific Ocean?” Sir Franklin asked George Otto Bird. “Yes, and you and your men will too,” George assured him.

Do you think we’ve seen the last of the Conke’la?” Tim asked Eddie as they walked the children toward the old airplane hangar.

“I don’t know,” Eddie said looking up at the stars. They seemed brighter without the strange lights. “Space is an awful big place.”
“But not this year, not before Christmas,” Tim said hopefully.
“No, not before Christmas,” Eddie agreed.

THE END.


Sunday, December 13, 2015

ARMAGEDDON part 3

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.


ARMAGEDDON
Part 3

By R. Peterson

 “And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Zion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.” Revelations 14/1

Doctor Dickens made the initial cut for the cesarean section. The first baby ever born-of-man was about to be delivered high on the rocky crags of Mount Hood. Artillery shells exploded into the sides of the besieged ancient volcano and shook the ground. Anesthesiologist Spenser Boyington, P.A. Charles Bloom and three nurses wearing surgical robes watched in silence. The most significant medical event in history unfolded, as the cries of wounded soldiers in the cots next-door mixed with the sound of tremendous rock-slides outside the tent.
A sodium light-tube burst showering the surgical area with ignited argon and neon just as the doctor pulled the fetus through the abdominal incision. “We need another light here … Now!” P.A. Bloom yelled. Three paramedics who had been treating the injured soldiers stood up and gaped about in awe. The glow from the burning argon and neon particles should have dissipated but instead it grew in volume and intensity. Brilliant rainbow beams from all the spectrums of light flashed upward, mixed, and filled the tent with ethereal brilliance.
A pillar of colored light rose from the mountain into the upper reaches of the stratosphere, bands of colored carnival-light entwined for a world plunged into darkness. The soldiers at the base of the besieged mountain paused in the fighting to stare at the sky. Never before had the world witnessed such a spectacular display of color and light.
High above the Earth, Expedition 46 crew members took a break from mission assignments to photograph the new brilliant beam of painted light swirling inside the misplaced aurora borealis ascending from North America and continuing into deep space. Ukrainian Cosmonaut Sergio Volkov gasped as he watched from an International Space Station window. “Це так красиво” (This is so beautiful) he said.

-------*-------

At the base of the mountain many of the militia soldiers fighting for White dropped their weapons when they saw the new light. “This is bullshit,” A National Guard Captain from Idaho said, “first some kind of light shield that we cannot penetrate … and now this. We are supposed to be fighting to rid the world of evil … but what God demands that we kill a child for his glory?”
“You’re right,” others under his command said. “This looks more like heaven we’re attacking … not Hell.”
General Lemont Hicks and a squad of handpicked loyalists were quick to snuff out the rebellion. “There will be no dissention,” Hicks screamed as he cut the retreating men down with automatic gunfire. He stomped on a moaning soldier’s face and broke his neck. “There is only one rule in my army,” he said. “Do what I say … or die!”
Hicks ordered the bodies to be mutilated and then shipped to Salt Lake to be used in a propaganda film against Amna.
            “How are we going to get past these defenses,” A Citizen’s Militia lieutenant from Georgia asked as he reloaded his smoking and previously illegal AK47.
            “The shields will come down.” Hicks told him as he stared at the mountain. “We have people working on it.”

-------*-------

A nurse named Madeline Folger wrapped the newborn in a blanket and took it to Amna. “He looks so innocent and so normal,” she said placing the baby in his arms. “Not something to start a war over, where thousands upon thousands are being killed.”
            “All children are born innocent,” Amna said. “It is the world and the people in it that teach them to fear.”
            “I try not to hate others,” Madeline told him. “But if we do not kill those who wish to harm us … then the world and this child are lost.”
“You can’t stop hate and violence with more hate and violence,” Amna said. “We must trust God.”
The room was filled with exotic and often expensive gifts and toys that strangers had brought for the first child born of man.
Amna picked up a very soft stuffed Pooh Bear and then sat in a chair and was rocking the child when the baby first opened its eyelids. The old man was surprised by the brightness and clarity in the sky blue eyes. “Welcome to the world, my little one,” he said. “Don’t ask me where your mother is … for she never was.”
The baby, whom many were already calling Parousia which in Greek means arrival or presence, did not cry, but sucked hungrily on an infant bottle filled with formula.
            Madeline held the bottle until first the baby and then Amna were asleep. She felt herself getting drowsy. Madeline lay on an empty cot and was soon asleep.
            The ground outside shook and there was a rustling in the stack of toys and gifts in the corner. A Learning Journey helicopter fell from the pile and a red plastic number six stood upright on the floor.
A small wooden box with faded numbers in colorful paint began to play a tune as a tiny crank on its side turned. Amna and Madeline both snored. It was the baby whose eyelids fluttered as the tune reached its climax.

“Half a pound of tupenny rice,
 Half a pound of treacle.
 That’s the way the money goes,
 Pop! goes the weasel.”

The lid opened and a ragged puppet in the shape of a rapscallion sprang out of the box and bowed toward the child. Black protruding jelly-bean eyes gaped at the newborn. Drops of real blood dripped from claws made from carved deer antlers as the puppet seemed to dance.

Amna was right; the infant stared at the goblin but displayed no fear even when the toy hissed as it slowly descended back into the box. The lid closed on the toy, right before the Jack-in-the-Box caught fire … and the baby the world would call Parousia … closed his eyes and slept.


-------*-------

“And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.” Revelations 15/3

Dani looked behind her until she was away from the camp and then she concentrated on the hazardous trail. The lights were pretty, but all she could think about was her mother. Carla Garafalo had not always been the best parent, but Dani obeyed her. When her mother asked her to remove the stone and come down to her Dani knew she had to do as she said. Most of the guards around the compound area were busy looking at the new light expanding upward toward the stars. It was easy to slip past them.
Her mother had taken Dani and a friend to a skating rink for her fifth birthday. It was her most precious and wonderful memory. Dani and Tim had glided around the ice on rented skates while her mother and two others drank from bottles hidden in paper sacks. She didn’t know what started the fight but she left with her mother before he police arrived. Her mother’s nose had been bleeding. Tim’s father had dragged him away screaming. Dani remembered the broken glass on the ice and the torn paper bag but also the magical lights and the Christmas music playing over outdoor speakers. Maybe this time her mother wouldn’t drink. Maybe this time she wouldn’t be so mad about everything.
Light radiated from the white stone at the top of the needle-like spire in the center of the ancient crater but the crude steps carved by lightning were still in the rock sides. Dani had a feeling that Amna would not wish her to remove the stone. She knew it was placed there for a purpose, but she also wanted to obey her mother. Dani thought about skating as she climbed the stairs; it helped push away the feelings of guilt. She could almost hear the music and feel the cold air on her cheeks as she glided around the frozen rink. Of course they would go there … and also to the park … with all the glistening snow.
In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend he's a circus clown
We have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman
Until the other kiddies knock him down

Dani jumped and took two steps back. She thought at first it was a giant-sized man standing next to the white stone at the top of the spire, but the massive figure was made of snow and wood. Who had been here besides her? A hood made from an upturned hollow tree stump with ten roots was pulled low over unblinking eyes made of chunks of coal. Seven golden rings glistened on the ends of the wood. A long twisted carrot, dry like last year’s produce pulled from a cellar, jutted outward and down for a nose. The black eyes turned and followed her. Arms made of twisted cedar limbs with ragged leather gloves thrust over clumps of twigs reached for her. A mouth made from a row of white pebbles opened and the stones fell like lost teeth. The coal-eyes ignited as the snowman spoke.

            “Remove the stone and give it to me,” the creature said. His voice was like gravel being crushed. “And I’ll guide you down the mountain to your mother.”
            “Who are you?” Dani moved away from the outstretched branches.
            “My name in Hebrew is called Abaddon,” the snowman said, “but you can call me father.”
            “I never knew my father,” Dani told him. “But I don’t think he was made out of ice.”
Abaddon was blocking the last flight of steps and he moved aside so that Dani could reach the stone. “Remove the stone from the spire and place it in my hand,” he said. The snowman thrust out a gnarled cedar branch with a leather glove covering the end as Dani climbed the stairs.
            “My mother said to bring the stone to her.” Dani paused for a moment, because she was afraid. She closed her eyes and then reached out. The ethereal lights spreading outward and down the sides of the mountain were extinguished and the ground began to shake as Dani lifted the stone from the top of the spire. The snowman was looming over her as she tried to push past him.
            “Give me the damn stone,” the creature demanded.
Dani pushed with the hand holding the stone against the dry branches that reached for her like fingers. The dormant wood burst into flames. The coal eyes in the snowman’s head were now blazing like huge embers. The seven balls of snow that had been crushed together to make the creature’s head were beginning to melt. “Place the stone in my hands!” the creature ordered. Dani stared as the two leather gloves reached for her. Both the snowman’s arms were burning.
            Dani slowly stretched the hand holding the stone toward the leather gloves. At the last minute she jammed the stone into the hollow tree trunk with the ten dangling roots and the creature burst into flames. She jumped sideways from the last stair and moved around the screaming beast trying to beat out the flames.
            “You are not my father,” she said.
And then she ran.


“And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.” Revelations 15/15
           
The top of Mount Hood was burning. General Hicks answered the cell phone on the second ring. Reverend Jason White’s voice was filled with heavenly triumph. “The shields are down,” he screamed. “Attack now while you have the chance.”
            “The child has not returned with the stone,” Hicks said. “She might be lost in the attack.”
            “I will bring the mother to the base of the mountain,” White said. “Kill all who protect .the child and then bring the infant down. The girl will kill the son of man with the stone … to save her mother.”
Hicks switched off the phone and then ordered the attack. Six armored divisions supported by infantry moved up the mountain from four sides. Rocket fire from a dozen AH-IW Cobra Helicopters lit up the sides of the mountain. The steady burst of automatic rifle fire interspersed with bombs sounded strangely like thunder and rain in the night.

-------*--------

            The snow on the mountain was melting too fast. Dani slipped on the muddy path and was swept over a ledge and into a stream of raging water. The ground was smoking everywhere as if heated from within. Dani struggled to keep her head above the water as the stream twisted and turned as it raced down the mountain. She was nearing the camp of Amna where the baby had just been born.
            Just to the east of the camp, soldiers from The Nevada National Guard launched several incendiary grenades into a rocky depression occupied by Amna’s followers. Dani watched as men and women rose screaming and on fire from the defensive positions and then were slaughtered by gunfire from the guardsmen. She grasped a branch as the stream swept around a bend in the rock channel, and pulled herself out. Amna’s compound was lit up like daylight as the bombardment continued. She watched from inside a clump of willows as hundreds of men were blasted from behind sand-bagged defenses and the guardsmen advanced.

“And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.” Revelations 15/16

Amna had just lifted the baby from a cradle made from a gun crate when a blast of fire tore away the sides of the tent. He handed the child to Madeline and then stood in front of her. A dozen men with automatic rifles rushed inside. Conner Wilson was cut in half by machine gun fire as he rushed to his friend’s side. John Bingham turned away from the soldiers and stared at Madeline. “Let me see my baby’s face,” he said.
Madeline removed a blanket covering the baby’s head and the child stared at the man who had become its mother. “He has your eyes,” Madeline smiled at John.
John opened his mouth to speak just as a burst of gunfire turned his head into an explosion of blood, brain and bone.
            “The voices of God have always become martyrs,” Amna said. “But if any of you touch this child you will die!”  He stood proudly without fear.
            “We’ve already considered that,” General Lemont Hicks said. He moved to the left of the tent so that Amna no longer blocked Madeline and the child. “You were right all along,” he told Amna. “The first time I saw you outside the revival meeting you were holding a sign. What was it the sign said … The end is near? … Well it is it is very near.” Hick’s smile broadened when he saw the slightest quiver in Amna’s hands. “It’s too bad we don’t have time for a cross … we could make this thing a lot more fun.”
The thirty millimeter shells flying from the rifle cut the old man’s legs into several pieces before his body struck the ground.
            “Carry the baby out to the truck,” the Lieutenant ordered Madeline just as another tremor shook the ground. “It feels like this whole damn mountain is going to explode.”

-------*--------

From her hiding spot in the willows Dani watched as Madeline carried the blanketed baby and then climbed into the back of an HMMWV (Humvee). Soldiers were already starting to clean-up after the carnage. A group of men dragged the corpses of men and women into a trench formerly used as a latrine. Others brought cans of gasoline and drenched the bodies. The fire started as a huge flash of light and the horrible smoke burned her nose.  Dani waited until the armored truck went around the first bend in the road and then she followed. The white stone was still clutched in her trembling hand.  

“For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.” Revelations 17/17

“We need that God Damn stone!” Jason White paced the floor inside the makeshift barracks at the base of the mountain. “It is the only thing that can destroy my rival.” Madeline Folger and Carla Garafalo were huddled in a corner of the tent along with the baby. The church leader’s former angelic looks had deteriorated over the last two months; General Hicks almost didn’t recognize him. The skin on White’s face appeared to have darkened and was cracked and peeling in places. The pupils of his eyed appeared red from broken blood vessels. Hicks attempted to placate his anger with good news from the more than thirty war fronts.
“We just received word from Riyadh.” Hicks said. “Both Israel and Saudi Arabia will accept the leadership of The New World Church of  Divine Light as the new legitimate negotiating power in America and Europe. We should be able to extract substantial concessions from them the way we did the #%$&@# Chinks.”
“China and Indonesia won’t stay subservient for long,” White said. “As soon as we have the computer viruses in place that will shut down their nuclear retaliation capabilities, I want LGM-30G Minuteman strikes against Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin. Vaporizing about fifty-million of those slant-eyed bastards should help scatter the sheep.”
The Earth shook below their feet for the third time in less than an hour, more violent than any tremors they had felt before. Instead of lessening after a few seconds the earthquakes increased. A swaying florescent light hanging by chains from the canvas ceiling broke and sent a shower of electrical sparks across the wood-plank floor as the fixture shattered. The explosion from the top of the mountain was deafening, the crack of doom that followed devastating. Blazing trashcan-sized balls of molten rock fell from the sky, tore the tent in half and started the canvas on fire. The wood planks on the floor buckled and then splintered as a huge fissure opened in the ground and swallowed Hicks and a table covered with maps and plans for world conquest.
The inside of the command barracks at the base of Mount Hood was a doomsday cloud of heated dust, shredded canvas and burning embers when Dani Garafalo crawled toward her mother and the woman holding the newborn infant. The sound of running soldiers trying to escape the carnage mixed with the screams of the dying and forced Dani to place her lips right next to her mother’s ear for the dazed woman to hear her. “I’m here momma … I did like you told me.”
Carla Garafalo’s eyes cleared for the first time for what to her felt like decades. “Oh Dani, you were always the best daughter any mother could ever hope for. I am so sorry that I’ve never been there for you.”
            “We’re together now momma and that’s what matters isn’t it?” Dani’s face was bright and hopeful as she looked in her mother’s worried eyes. Falling ash made the sky black as midnight. Light reflecting from flames was the only illumination.
            “Dani, it will take a miracle for any of us to get out of this alive,” Carla whispered.
            “I still have this …” Dani held up the white stone. Bendable light glowed from within the rock and covered the faces like a soft blanket. “Amna said that it was some kind of magic.”
The face of a monster suddenly appeared out of the darkness. Jason White’s head was a mass of bleeding sores and hanging skin. “That belongs to me,” he said. “It was the prize Wormwood offered for the delivery of the Earth’s souls!” He reached out and grabbed Dani’s arm, digging jagged fingernails like claws into her skin.
            Carla Garafalo sprang on Jason White before Dani had a chance to cry. Her strength was that of the supernatural as she tore at White’s face with her fingernails and bit his flailing arms. It was all he could do to hold her and try to push her away. “Not my daughter … not my daughter,” Carla screamed as the rolled across the floor. Just before Dani’s mother and the man who promoted himself as the Savior of the World disappeared into the smoking fissure, Carla turned and looked at the best thing to ever happen in her life for one last time. “I love you Dani,” she said. “I will never stop loving you.”


“And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.” Revelations 22/5

It was three years, two months and eight days since the explosion of Mount Hood. Dani, Madeline and the son-of-a-man journeyed across the burned corn fields and ravaged towns of Iowa. Paper money littered the roads, now useless garbage that no one would pick up. A doctor, in what was left of Denver, said that Parousia had been born with autism. A muddy stream, littered with floating debris and an occasional corpse, identified by a bullet-riddled sign as the Skunk River caused all three to hold their noses. “Boy did they ever get that name right,” Dani giggled.
A barking dog near a crumbled shack on the edges of a turned-to-rubble town called Brighton caused the three to stop. Parousia slipped his fingers from Madeline’s hand and ran to the starving animal. The canine was nothing more than skin hanging on bone secured to a scorched fence post with a rusty chain. Parousia knelt on the parched ground and smiled when the dying dog licked his face. He looked hopefully toward Dani and Madeline, he never spoke words, and after a moment they shrugged their shoulders and nodded.
The three-year old hugged the animal and the rusty chain dissolved from its neck. There was a light around this new child-of-man and the animal was instantly restored to a robust bounding health. Parousia was happy, but this was not unusual. He smiled again as he brushed soft fingers across the burned post that had held the animal captive. Rain began to fall washing the air. Light from another realm, from a distant mother galaxy, radiated from the man child into the wood and swept across scorched rows of dead weed and thorns. Wildflowers grew and spread across the borders of the fields in vibrant rainbow colors to delight even the most pessimistic of eyes. Grains of all types became golden ocean waves rolling across the land. Blossoms sprang from fruit trees as charred bark fell like thick black paint from the trunks. That which was lost in the World would now, forever, and into eternity be born once again.
Dani, Madeline, Parousia and the dog journeyed on.  The world would need to be re-created for the kingdom to come. There was the entire east coast of America to be restored and then onward to Europe, Africa and Asia …
And the one-hundred forty-four thousand and growing survivors of mankind followed them … just seven days behind.


THE END?

If you liked this story, please check out my newest book of short stories ... CRAYON MONSTERS available from Barnes and Noble or from Amazon with this link http://www.amazon.com/Cloverdale-CRAYON-MONSTERS-Volume-3/dp/1517660068     Thank you for being the reason that I write.