The Wrath of God

by Jim Balzotti

  The men walked silently side by side into the main camp. One of Lawrence’s men was chatting with an attractive woman, her hair more silver than grey, flowing down her back. They were leaning in close to each other, giving an air of intimacy, her laughing at something he said. When the soldier noticed Lawrence, he straightened up, with an undeserved guilty look on his face. Lawrence just nodded and walked past the couple. Another soldier was sitting on a bench with one of the settlers, taking apart a rifle, cleaning it, and working the action until it moved fluidly. Two of the other soldiers were kicking a ball in a pickup game of soccer with some of the kids. Lawrence felt a pang of guilt at the thought of taking his men away from this respite from the war. A war they couldn’t possibly win. A war that would only bring about their deaths.

  Matt and Lawrence made their way to the communal dinner table as food began to appear. Someone unseen rang a dinner bell, bringing the rest of the settlers and his soldiers to the table. The two men began to pick up the metal dinner plates that were set on the table, bringing them to where a haunch of deer roast was still being turned slowly over the now dying fire. While one man continued to turn the spit, another began to cut slices of the juicy red meat and place them on the individual metal plates. A small bookish woman, her hair tied in a loose ponytail, placed a bowl of fresh greens mixed with blackberries at the center of the table. Children filled the pitchers of water from the stream, walking around the table filling the blue speckled enamel cups. When everyone had their food in front of them, Matt began the prayer.

  “Please bow your heads. Lord, thank You for the bounty of food we are about to eat. We thank You for Your eternal love and daily blessing. We especially thank You today for bring Lawrence and his friends to us safely, and ask that You keep them from harm and convince them through the Holy Ghost that they should remain with us and live in peace. Amen.”

  The group murmured “amen” together, and the conversation grew loud, the members eager to hear what the soldiers had seen. Previously Lawrence warned his men not to discuss operations, as these people were not soldiers but had in fact sought to escape the Chinese to worship God in peace. Their war stories might upset them.

  “I’m afraid there is little good news to report,” Lawrence began. “The Chinese have completely taken over North America and it’s just a matter of time before they attain world domination. They have collapsed the dollar, so the rest of the world’s currencies folded with it. The dollar was the lynchpin that held the rest of the world’s economies up. But I think you’re safe here. You are pretty deep in the woods with no real access. The Chinese have too much on their plates to want to bother with you.”

  “What about other countries’ militaries? What are they doing? Are they fighting?” asked another.

  “Well, initially there was some pushback from Europe, but China detonated a few nukes and threatened complete annihilation unless they agreed to a complete surrender, no different than what happened here in America. I’m hearing that Israel, Iraq, and Iran have joined together to resist. They may worship God differently, but those differences are miniscule compare to the Chinese wishing to abolish religion entirely. So far the Chinese have left them alone, but that won’t last forever.”

  “The Chinese didn’t collapse our dollar. We did that all by ourselves.” Heads turned to a small, tidy, bespectacled man sitting down the far end. “As most of you know, I was a banker before the great collapse of America. I used to be a vice president of Chase Bank in Boston until my wife died and I wanted to move back to Millinocket, back to my roots, if you will. I was raised in Maine and felt fortunate to have done so. The people from this state tend to be plainspoken, straightforward, and politically conservative. Did you know that Maine has the highest percentage of personal income saved than any other state? We tend not to buy something unless we can pay for it or need it. You won’t find too many Jaguars or Porsche car dealers up here. Not too good in the snow, too expensive to fix, and you can’t haul a lot of wood or put a deer in the trunk,” he chuckled.

  “So you’re saying it was our fault we got in this mess?” someone asked.

  “Indirectly, yes. Let me give you an analogy. John’s a plumber, married with two kids, both in grade school. Let’s say his wife doesn’t work to keep it simple. So John makes $35,000 a year gross. He pays taxes, and say gets to keep $30,000 of it. That money goes to pay for his mortgage, kids’ clothes, maybe a car payment, a night out for pizza with the family—well, you get the picture. He puts $5,000 away for the kids’ college, maybe for braces. So now he’s living on $25,000. If you ask John if he’s going to buy a sports car, he’d just laugh and say, ‘Well, I’d like to, but I just can’t afford it.’ If you ask John if he’d like to give $4,000 to a Red Cross relief fund, he might give ten or twenty dollars, but that’s all he could afford. Simple math, right? You don’t have to have a PhD in economics from Harvard to understand that you can’t spend more money than you earn.

  “Now equally simple, but on a much, much bigger scale, is our federal government. Except they don’t go to work to make any money. They don’t fix broken pipes like John here. They just receive money from people by way of taxes. With this tax revenue, they are supposed to fix the roads and bridges, maintain a military for our safety, fund some higher education in schools, and make sure the meat and vegetables we buy are safe to eat. Well, you get the picture. So let’s say the government receives a nice round—I’ll make it low—income of say one hundred million dollars. They didn’t earn it. That’s due to the hard work of John and millions like him. That’s the number, one hundred million, they have to work with, or raise more money through taxes. But instead of living within their budget like John has to, they overspend. Each senator and congressman in their district wants to build their own bridge to nowhere so they can say they are doing something for their people and get reelected. They get perks that are the envy of every working man and woman. The other congressmen and senators go along with it because they will want their own pet projects, which we can’t afford either. They treat the treasury, which has our money, like one big piggy bank they can rob for anything they want. Wall Street became another Las Vegas.

  “So now the one hundred million is not enough. So rather than cut out the frivolous spending of our money, or cutting back like all of us had to at one time or another, they borrow money from other countries, which are glad to lend it to get a piece of America. Now for the really crazy part, not only do we borrow money—lots of it—to waste in our own country, but we give it to other countries! That would be like John needing a new car and borrowing the money for one, but rather than buying it for his own family, giving it to some guy in another state! The US, before the great collapse, was trillions of dollars in debt, yet borrowed more money just to give it to other countries! And the worst thing of all…we let our politicians do it! What right did our government have to give our hard-earned money—money we earned through our sweat and labor—to either waste or give to someone else? Let the other countries take care of themselves. It’d be like some politician showing up at John’s house saying he needed to borrow $10,000 to give to someone in another part of the world or buy a new sports car. You know what John would do, right? He’d throw the bum out of his house. And in summary, that’s what we should have done with our politicians. Thrown them out! I mean, how is it even possible to get nineteen trillion dollars in debt?” The banker’s comments set loose a flurry of opinions from those sitting around the table.

  “Wow,” someone said. “They always said charity begins at home, home being America. I heard a lot of the money we gave other countries just went into some dictators’ pockets anyway.”

  “I remember reading about all the perks Congress used to get. The best health care is paid for by us, of course. Gym memberships, massages, free food, limos, trips around the world, free haircuts where the barber would come to them, and the best pension plans. No one ever offered me a free haircut. I wish I had those perks.”

&n
bsp; “You know something funny? When George Washington was elected president, Congress wouldn’t even pay for his horse. They figured it was his horse, therefore his bill. Look at all the things we used to have to pay for, for these elected officials.”

  “One thing I never could understand is how in DC, even in the shadow of the White House, they had one of the highest murder rates and poverty levels. They couldn’t even take care of the problems in their own back yards!”

  “I guess it was partly our fault. When we heard those stories out of Washington we’d just shrug our shoulders like we couldn’t do anything about it. We began to spend more time watching television and being distracted by these so called celebrities falling off the wagon than paying attention to what our own government was doing.”

  “Our politicians’ desire for money and power far outweighed their commitment to God.”

  Matt spoke. “Jesus died to give us hope and show us the way to heaven. Only our faith and love for God can lead us through death and into eternal life. We will all appear before God, even the Chinese. They will know that the lake of fire is the ultimate destination of everything wicked. Yes, we lost America, but the kingdom of God is not a visible earthly kingdom. Know this: whether you end up in heaven or hell is not God’s plan or choice, but your own. Okay, enough gloom and doom talk. God wants us to be happy and enjoy life. Rick, why don’t you break out your fiddle and let’s have some good music to go along with dessert!”

  Far overhead, unseen and unheard by Matt, Lawrence, and the rest, a Chinese drone flew searching for them.

  Fall 2028

  White House

  General Pengyou summoned Colonel Lam, the officer in charge of the Black Tigers, to his headquarters.

  “I want drone surveillance expanded over this area immediately. Make sure the aircraft fly above ten thousand feet. I want them to be virtually invisible from the ground. The target is a guerilla unit that has been attacking our remote outposts with impunity.”

  Pointing to a map, General Pengyou continued, “Present intel suggests that they may be in this wooded sector. Premier Chang wishes them taken alive. We have reason to believe they are operating out of a support settlement located in the same area. Once the drones have located the camp, we’ll fly the WZ-10s in, then deploy our troops, blocking any possible retreat. The soldiers are to be taken alive. There will be civilians as well. The orders are that they are to be terminated. This mission is of the utmost importance and failure will not be tolerated. We launch the drones tonight with infrared cameras. I want pictures on my computer screen when they find them. Even hidden, the heat sensors should pick up their location within a few days. Once the group is located, we’ll deploy immediately from here. Have your unit ready to assemble at a moment’s notice. I will be accompanying you and your men. We go regardless of the weather. Rations for one day only. Dismissed.”

  With Colonel Lam gone, General Pengyou again reviewed the information on this mission. He had to admire this rebel leader who led his soldiers. Obviously he was a highly skilled military man to operate so effectively and so long in such an unforgivable environment. He wondered what motivated him when everyone else surrendered. He hoped to have a chance to interrogate him before Chang crucified him.

  Fall 2028

  North Woods Maine

  The men, women, and children danced under the rich blanket of the night stars. Matt and Lawrence sat contentedly, a rare state of being for either of the two men. Soon the warm fall wind will have come and gone, replaced with the frigid air of winter, but that was later. Everyone learned to live in the present, enjoying each little bit of happiness that should stumble their way. Matt leaned down and picked up a forest fern, noticing its perfection, every little delicate detail. The moon had risen now and provided a shimmering silvery light off the nearby mountains.

  “I’m beat,” Matt said to Lawrence. “I think I’ll start moseying along to my cabin. There’s plenty of room, so why don’t you stay with me? This time of year tends to get a little fickle…might even rain. I have plenty of room, and I can even brew you a cup of tea if you’d like…with leaves from the forest, unfortunately. We ran out of tea bags and coffee some time ago. The leaves make a bitter brew, but you get used to it.”

  “Thanks, but I’m going to head down the trail head,” he said, not wanting Matt to know that he constantly worried about the Chinese following their trail, no matter how careful they were. “I kinda like sleeping outdoors. My men really appreciated the clean clothes and wanted me to thank whoever scrubbed them.”

  “No problem. But seriously, I do want to speak to you about staying longer. Your men are exhausted, and if you were human, you would be too. We’re safe here. Stay, rest, get your strength back…”

  “No, but thank you. The truth is, the Chinese are looking for us and I’m afraid they won’t stop until they find us. By staying here, tempting as it is, we are only putting you and your people in danger. I can’t allow that. We’ll stay here a day or two more, and then we’ll push on. It might be a good idea if we don’t meet again. I was thinking of crossing over into Canada—if we still can call it Canada, I guess. It’s even more remote, and the Chinese don’t have enough assets to adequately cover that amount of square miles yet. We’ll be safer there.”

  “All right, if I can’t change your mind. I certainly don’t want to interfere in your business. Any of your men are more than welcome to stay, but I must ask you for a favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have a young man by the name of Tom who’s itching to join up with you and get back at the Chinese. I’m afraid he’s influencing some of the other boys…”

  “I already spoke to him. I told him there’s no way either he or anyone else is joining our team. We are all professional soldiers. He’d only get killed, and probably us along with him. I expressed to him how important it was for him to remain and safeguard your camp. He was disappointed, but I think he’s found a new purpose.”

  “Thanks, Lawrence. Good night. I’ll head to my cabin and see you in the morning.”

  “Good night, Matt. Sleep well.”

  Lawrence shouldered his rifle and, checking his compass, went off the trail, heading toward the nearest mountain. There was a full moon out, making it possible to navigate through the forest. The sounds of nightly predators began to make their presence known—coyotes on the prowl, and birds of prey in the air. Lawrence hiked for a mile or more without breaking a sweat. He occasionally came across a deer, but standing still he became invisible even to the animals in their own habitat. The night hours crept along as he made his way first to the base of the mountain and then began his ascent. He climbed steadily until he reached a vantage point where he had fairly good visibility of the forest beneath him. Some smoke trails still rose from Matt’s camp, which gave his stomach a nervous rumble. He heard an owl perched in a tree nearby, and it was only by chance, turning his head in that direction, that he saw the drone silhouetted against the moonlight. He watched the ultimate predator cruise by his position, heading for the lights of the campfires of the settlement. He slipped off his rifle, holding the scope up to his eye, and he could see that it was a Chinese drone, no mistaking it. He could only hope that the drone’s operator was asleep or not paying attention to the images the drone was sending back, but when it passed over the campsite, then turned for another pass, that slight hope vanished. An icy finger curled around his heart as he realized that the Chinese had found the camp. He and his men could escape into the woods, but it would be impossible to move that many women and children to safety. He quickly repositioned his rifle back on his shoulder, tightened his backpack firmly against his body, and proceeded to march double time through the woods back to the camp to sound the alarm. The thought that he had led the Chinese to their encampment lay heavy on his mind.

  As Lawrence was hiking through the woods to reach the mountain, Matt went back to his cabin. He sat out on the front porch, now one side tipping heavily toward the g
round, and put his butt down on the top wooden step. He undid the laces on his well-worn boots, letting them fall to the ground. He sat alone with his thoughts. It had begun to rain softly, and he watched the raindrops begin to drip silently off the roof of his cabin. Each tiny raindrop would take a moment to fall, hanging on to the roof as if fighting the inevitable plunge to the ground. When it could no longer hold its weight, it slipped off the edge. How like us, Matt thought. The years adding to our weight until it became time to let go. The motion of the raindrops, slowly forming and falling, mesmerized Matt, putting him into a fugue state. Somewhere off in the distance he heard his name being called, not in the direction of the village, but deeper in the woods. His eyes searched for the sound until off in the distance, through the towering and wide pine trees, he saw his father.

  “Dad?” he called, shaking his head, his eyes not believing what they saw. “Dad? Is that really you? But how…” He stepped off his porch, so fixed on the vision in front of him that he didn’t feel the rocks pinch the soles of his naked feet. He walked to his father, who was looking at him, smiling but motionless. He appeared to be backlit by a shimmering bluish white light which enveloped his body. Matt rubbed his eyes not knowing if this was a dream. When he was within feet of his father, he stopped. The experience was so disorientating, he froze.

  “Son, you must listen very carefully to me. At dawn tomorrow, when the sun rises over the mountain, you must lead your people out of this place. You must take enough food for forty days and forty nights, but no more. You must not take any weapons, only tools and provisions to sustain you. You will head west on a path that will be revealed to you. You will come to an old abandoned mine. The sign resting on the rusted iron door will say Iron Mountain. The door will be locked and rusted shut, but when you touch it, it will open. You must lead your people into the mine and then shut the door. You must stay within the cave for forty days and forty nights. Do not leave until the door opens, then all will be revealed to you.”