by A D Jordan
Apocalypse When
By AD Jordan
Copyright© Alison Jordan
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Prologue
The strange vibrations started sometime around three in the a.m. the witching hour, as it's known to be called. For some it was the rumblings of an earthquake, some felt tremors like that of an impending avalanche, and to yet many others it seemed odd for construction workers to be drilling in the streets at such an uncommon hour. None expected the source of the strange phenomena, how could they, no one knew, no one.
The earth had been groaning, yes groaning was an apt word here, for some time now. Sometimes the eerie sound would last all day sometimes just a few hours. Scientist explained it away as some sort of seismic shifting, science was full of shit or at least that's what the inhabitants of the earth came to realize after that dreadful day.
Without warning the cosmos opened up it seems like and hell was revealed, a little dramatic yes but there was no other word to describe what transpired. The horrors that befell humanity or what was left of it by that point; for many had shed the trappings of civility long before this horrifying happenstance. There had been mayhem in the streets for quite some time now; murders and seditions were the norm. The sidewalks of major cities all over the earth could usually be found littered with the remains of some less fortunate soul who'd run into something stronger than he or she had been.
The civilized or rather more conscious of beings stayed indoors, as much as that helped them. There really was no escape; all were subject to the whims of those who wielded power.
The rights of mankind had been steadily infringed upon for sometime leading up to the earth's demise. Social norms were swept aside for the more draconian habits of the powers that be.
Some had seen it coming and had sounded the warning, but to no avail; no one wanted to believe that such a thing could happen. That the ones put in power to oversee the welfare and relative safety of their subjects would so completely misuse that trust.
After that day when the world was awakened from its slumber to the beginning of its destruction things had gone from bad to worse. There hadn't been any slow progression from one reality to the next, seemingly overnight things changed and even the most hopeful among man learned to doubt.
Chapter 1
A strange wind blew across the plains as the lone figure hunkered down behind the rotted carcass of an old barn. Beads of sweat sizzled across the sun darkened skin of his forehead before gliding uncomfortably hot towards his neck and beyond. It was the summer of 2020 and hell had come to the earth with a vengeance some three years before.
No that's misleading, hell it would appear once having made its entrance eons ago had set up shop and had never really left; It had simply been biding its time like a coiled serpent waiting to unleash its fury on mankind; its sworn enemy.
The experts had been wrong after all, no one had seen this coming; not the hypocritical bible thumpers whose only real agenda had been to separate sheople from their money, nor the scientist who collected billions of dollars over time to study and seek ways to protect the planet from the influences of outside forces.
Had anyone suspected this was our future? Was there an inking, a foreboding? Had some wizen soul perchance deciphered and unlocked the mysteries of what was to come? If so how did we miss the warning?
Hell was real and it had a face, and when it was finally revealed without warning of any kind upon the human population of the earth in one night there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There were no little green men with one-eyed foreheads to fight, no freakish beings with distorted enhancements, no deformed beasts from the belly of the planet's uninhabited regions.
Hell evolved right before the eyes of men, what started out as a systematic enslavement of the bottom rung of humanity by the elite of the earth, morphed into a horror not even they perceived. Hell was no foreign place with levels to climb; hell was one conglomeration of destruction that once entered could never be escaped. Many had fallen victim to the widening vortex in the last three years; still many more had somehow evaded its grasp only to find a hell of their own in the fear of when?
Chapter 2
David Mann watched as the Jin traipsed across the fields with no concern for the heat that even now seemed to be cooking the cells under his skin, if they didn't leave soon his arm would probably become partially cooked. The agony was almost unbearable but he concentrated on his breathing keeping it as shallow and inhuman like as possible. He hadn’t had time enough to find a better hiding place once he'd been alerted to their presence. The dreaded Jin were usually man's last encounter on this earth before he was dispatched to the hereafter, unless of course you'd paid homage to them and accepted their terms.
In the beginning many had gone along with it and for a time seemed to prosper but to the discerning eye or the more enlightened spirit, it wasn't hard to recognize the strange light that entered them after just a short time under the care and protection of the huge manlike beings that now ruled the earth.
No one knew where they'd come from; they'd just appeared in the midst of all that earth shaking noise that fateful day. No one knew what they were really; they appeared to be men, just unusually tall men who spoke a different language, much like any other conquering tribe must have appeared to their conquest in days of old.
The strange beasts that accompanied them were a different manner, winged beast that when not flying through the air with their raucous earsplitting cries could be seen walking on cloven hoofs as men. Their iron like beaks alone was enough to drive fear into the stoutest of hearts.
Something must've set them off to his presence because there was no one else around for miles, hadn't been since the Foster family had eaten their young before turning on each other. He'd come across the leavings of the carnage only days earlier his stomach turning as his head swam with the knowledge that soon he too might have to acquire a taste for human flesh; he'd fought it off this long while keeping himself safe from the dining table of some other stronger soul.
There was no longer the sound of birds chirping, no slithering message of a small creeper in the charred earth, most of that had finally ended almost six months ago and since the government had made it illegal two years prior to the onslaught to plant crops outside of their designated plots and had done something to the rest of the land to make it nonproductive, there wasn't so much as a chewable weed to be had.
Resentment burned in his chest at the recollection of the deception that had been used with all subtlety to lure unsuspecting humans into the trap in which they now found themselves. Who knew hell could've been outwitted through belief? That all it took was firmness in oneself? Too late now for some, Europe had been a barren wasteland for a solid year now they'd been the first to show signs of the infiltration. Scenes of their people on the streets, their mouths stuffed with the entrails and blood of their own had been horrifying to the point of bowel loosening.
The borders had been shut giving false hope to the citizens of the greatest nation that ever was. Citizens who had still believed in their elected officials, members who still, if they thought of it at all believed that if there ever was an invasion they would be protected; after all trillions had been spent to see to such matters or so it was believed at last call.
Feeling safe in the hands of the new peaceful leaders who had calmed the wars and uprisings off the face of the earth they had shut their eyes and ears to the warnings of the few who saw terror coming, men and women who searched the volume of the book for answers and came away with dreadful omens.
Now the masqueraders sniffed the air in all four directions one last time before climbing back into their vehicles and departing; the emaciat
ed shell of the once brawny specimen could move without fear once more but not too much, the senses of the enemy seemed to be above that of natural man.
David picked up his few meager belongings as he readied himself to find other solace. In the unbearable heat in the wide-open plains there really was none to be found but he knew it wasn’t wise to stay. He'd give anything for the cool shade of a skyscraper and an ice-cold beverage. Almost all standing structures had been razed to the ground except for those used by the Jin. What the man made earthquakes and other so-called natural disasters that were not the workings of The Most High hadn't destroyed, the army of the Jin had. The earth really was just one barren wasteland of nothingness, it was enough to make one stark raving nuts.
Chapter 3
The little nifty device he'd lifted off the body of a Jin who'd come up against something more forceful than itself said the temps were now in the high hundred and eighties, if anyone had told him that it was even possible to survive in heat this intense he would've laughed in their face and called them a liar. He'd pleaded, begged, sworn and threatened for death too many times to count but to no avail. Each time he thought the blessed end was near and he'd end up either between the teeth of a fellow being or at the wrong end of the enemy's eyes something or someone had stepped in the way.
Like just then, it hadn't been his wish to hide from the fearsome nemesis, no, he'd relished the end, but alas his sometimes companion who only surfaced when he was just at that point of giving up had arrived and sternly reinforced his will and his right to live.
Always after one of their little encounters he questioned why he ever listened, why did it seem he could do no less? But mostly he wondered who his cloaked visitor was. This being that spoke to him so softly, and with such kindness in a world where there was none to be had?
The presence alone was calming, while conversing with the one he had come to call Yash for some unknown reason, the power of the heat receded, hunger was assuaged and fear was nonexistent. In fact he could live in relative comfort for weeks after a little one on one with Yash.
"Yash are you here?" He whispered less his voice carried to the subhuman ears of the Jin who were most likely still within twenty miles.
"I am."
"What now?"
"Now you carry on to the place I showed you."
"Are you sure this place exists? I mean..." He trailed off, as he knew from experience that Yash never answered this type of question. In the beginning Yash would quirk a brow as if to say do you doubt me? Yes Yash did have a certain way about him; it was almost regal if David had any sense of what such a thing was. In his mind that's what it was though, the bearing of majesty.
Sometimes Yash showed himself, well not really, there was always the shrouded cloak even in this abominable heat, not even his hands were visible. The one time David had dared to look or at least tried to look behind the hood he'd gotten the worse case of vertigo and had been sick for days after. He'd learned his lesson then and never tried that trick again.
Other times like now Yash was just a whisper on the wind, but still a calming presence nonetheless.
"Have you sustenance enough for your journey?"
"You should know you gave it to me."
David felt more than saw the raised brow and censoring look of his invisible companion and knew what was coming next.
"Your tongue grows sharper by the day young David, then again you've ever been one to have a way with your words."
"Why do you call me that I'm almost thirty years old you know?”
That got a laugh out of Yash, a rarity in itself as the other man, being, whatever he was wasn't prone to showing emotion though he did emote peace and a sense of.... joy, without word or motion.
"What's so funny caped one, or should I say cloaked one?"
"I know how old you are in every life you've ever lived down to the second."
"Why do you keep saying that you know I don't believe in that stuff and while we're on the subject why won't you let me just hang it up already? We must be the only two people left, well one person and whatever you are."
"I am that..."
"Don't start that mess again because I don't know what it means, now tell me again about this place that's behind God's back?"
There was a slight change in the atmosphere and David hitched his small sack across his shoulder in apprehension as he glanced in the direction the voice had come from.
"Sorry, forgot."
"It's forgiven and to answer your impertinent question nothing is behind His back. Another laugh, this one sounding like it came from the gut.
"Wow you're in some mood today what gives?"
"Never you mind young David."
Just then there was another shift in the atmosphere this one followed by a sifting of the blackened dust of the earth as if fast moving feet had gone by. He didn't know how he knew but his friend was most definitely talking to someone or something else.
"David follow the course I have set for you I will find you again before the next going down of the sun; fear not young David you will not be entirely alone and all will be well."
"So you say." He felt the sigh that time and almost found a smile of his own; sometimes he felt like a small child needing guidance and instruction from the other...being.
"Always you tax me young David, a more wearying child I have yet to meet."
"I thought you were leaving already?"
"Do not fear the enemy you're well shielded from their wiles."
"How did you...?"
"I know all." And with that Yash was gone.
David carried on in the twice wrapped sole less trackers he'd been wearing ever since he'd escaped his former home in the dead of night that long ago day. Had it only been a year and a half? Somehow it felt like decades had gone by since he'd awakened to the rummaging sounds of his flesh-eating neighbors trying to break down the reinforced door he'd only recently installed. He'd had only enough time to grab the shoes he'd discard not twenty minutes earlier on his return from scouting his little area. Everyone was gone, his family, he didn't want to think about what fate had befallen them, by the time he'd reached their home when the madness had first begun it had been too late. There hadn't been so much as a footprint left behind nothing, just an empty house with a table that had been set for a sparse meal. Knowing his mother she'd held out hope till the end; he comforted himself always with the thought that they'd been together, his mother and father at the end.
Now he traipsed across the barren scorched earth a little high from his last encounter with the cloaked one. His belly felt full though it had been a while since he'd eaten of the strange yet sweet floury substance Yash was always providing him with. At first he'd thought it was a drug, after all that's how the government had trapped the masses; it had been man's one weakness that had been used against him in the end. The drugs that so many sought to bring escape and surcease in fact had been their prison.
That first night he'd awakened to the strange figure sitting not too far away: fear had tied his guts in knots, for all his wish to be quit of this forsaken planet his survival instinct had kicked in and he'd reached for the now rusted and corroded knife he'd been carrying for protection.
"Be still young David."
Those were the first words Yash had spoken to him; the voice seemed disembodied somehow and yet still there. The cadence was like nothing he'd ever heard before and the feeling of peace was unlike any he'd ever experienced even before the madness.
"Who are you, how do you know my name?" He'd scrambled into a siting position the better to protect himself in case something should go awry; he'd been evading the large statured men who'd been plaguing the earth for the last two and a half years. Somehow he always seemed to know which places to avoid or when they were going to make an appearance. Almost like being two steps ahead though they'd been times when they'd been too close for comfort.
"That's neither here nor there young David, we have work to do, be up and ab
out it."
"What I just fell asleep for the first time in days are you nuts I'm not going anywhere." Of course all remnants of sleep had long fled, it had been yeas after all since he'd felt safe enough to engage anyone in conversation, there was no real way to tell the flesh eaters among his brethren, not until you found yourself under them with their unusually sharpened teeth aimed at your jugular. After the third or fourth time he'd learned his lesson and just avoided anything that moved. Even the animals when they'd been any left had fallen prey to the strange phenomena, turning against their owners and caretakers with a vengeance. Before everything had gone dark and the few underground stations were still able to broadcast the news had been harrowing. Nothing but chaos and carnage, lawlessness abounded as men turned against each other in the most despicable ways to be imagined.
"Arise, let's go."
David though he muttered and swore under his breath found himself doing as he was told.
"Here eat this it’s been some time since you've had sustenance."
"What is it?"
He'd looked at the cream colored substance that resembled tiny flakes of some form of cereal suspiciously. One of the last reports that he'd been privy to had revealed the fact that the governments of the world had been feeding the world population a substance that had the sole purpose of turning them into what they'd become. Who hadn't consumed it through victuals had ingested it into their systems through the use of recreational drugs. The legalization of marijuana hailed by many as a step in the right direction proved to be the beginning of the end for some. Not that there was anything wrong with the weed itself no, it's what they'd introduced into it that had done the trick.
After a while the revelations had become too much, the deceit, the blatant disregard for basic humanity had made him soul sick and weary to the bone. He'd stopped believing in hope, he'd shut down every emotion he'd ever had over time until not only his body but his mind too was a mere shell of the man he'd once been.