The Second Seal

by Sean Deville

  The RA-115 had been deployed as a failsafe, a means to punish the Americans if they were ever foolish enough to attack the Iranian homeland. It was never meant as a first strike weapon. Farrokh and Mohammed were acting on orders passed down by a man whose body had been usurped by a demon intent on devastating the world. Asmodai was unleashing fire and brimstone onto the countries of the world, not caring that the nuclear fire would likely rain down on the city he temporarily lived in.

  Farrokh looked around at the surrounding traffic anxiously. This was rush-hour, hundreds of people eager to get to wherever it was they were going. Many of them wouldn’t reach that destination today, not if Farrokh had anything to do with it. Concentrating on the road, he saw the tail lights ahead almost too late. He managed to avoid crashing into the car in front, but only just.

  Farrokh had wanted to leave the city earlier, but Mohammed had insisted on being there when the bomb was armed and activated. The countdown could only be set so long in the future, and those minutes were ticking away. He didn’t want to be trapped here when the bomb went off. Down in the Holland tunnel, they would be safe from the blast, but not the lockdown that would happen to New York. The Americans were slow to spot the threats that had gathered amidst them, but when they were angered, they responded with devastating efficiency.

  “Is the traffic always like this?” Mohammed asked. The traffic in Rome had been bad, more chaotic. This was worse though, despite the streets being more ordered and logically laid out.

  “Not usually heading out.” Car horns began to blare behind them as well as in front. New York, it was such an angry place. That was something else Farrokh had noticed when he arrived here. So many people living on top of each other seemed to generate such resentment and animosity. No matter, they would have something to jointly mourn shortly.

  The traffic began to crawl forward again. Farrokh looked at the clock on the car’s dashboard, the minutes decreasing faster than he would like. Surely, they had enough time to make it out of here?

  ***

  Fox was more than happy to have the FBI involved even though it was partly Fox’s intelligence that had borne fruit. The cell number and address acquired from Farrokh’s girlfriend had allowed them to identify Farrokh. They knew where he lived, what he looked like, where he worked, where he chose to shop. His phone acted like a tracking device, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that anyone with the correct technology could track. With a face, they could follow him in real time and search through recordings of the past. The problem was they had only now started looking for him. If that face didn’t show up, all the technology in the world might be for nothing.

  Over the last few days, the phone trace showed that he had gone from his job to his home with the occasional visit to his girlfriends. Fox’s intelligence had told them that yesterday, Farrokh had made an impromptu trip to Central Park, returning home with the armed man who his girlfriend stated was a stranger. This did not match with the cell phone data. Presently Farrokh’s cell phone was still pinging off cell towers close to his home address.

  Normally, Fox’s intel wouldn’t have been enough to rouse the response now searching the city. Fortunately, the FBI had their own source. Mossad had contacted them to state one of their informants was certain New York was going to get hit. Today, and hard.

  That, and what Fox reported, got the FBI’s attention.

  There was another piece of disturbing news. An illegal entrant caught on the Canadian border had refused to talk under interrogation. Well, that wasn’t totally true. Whilst not revealing his name or nationality, it was reported he had gloated about how America was going to be brought to its knees.

  Standing in the main Manhattan offices of the FBI, Fox watched the operation unfold. He had done his part, had gathered the intelligence that had started the immense snowball of US law enforcement rolling. For once the system created after nine-eleven had worked the way it was supposed to. Homeland Security had phoned the FBI, who had begun the hunt for a man who might be dangerous. The links were thin, but there was enough concern to take whatever threads were handed to them. Nobody wanted to be the agent in charge who missed a chance to stop a terrorist attack.

  All Fox could do was wait.

  “Got something,” one of the FBI agents stated. “Traffic camera spotted Farrokh entering the Holland tunnel. There’s another unsub in the van with him, looks like our guy. Tracking the vehicle’s number plate now.” Farrokh had ditched his phone, but with a number plate they could track back where Farrokh had been today.

  “I want that tunnel sealed off,” a special agent in charge ordered. “I want those men in custody.”

  Fox was there to see his world change. The room he was in was large office space with enough desks to accommodate fifty agents. On the far wall was a trio of TV screens. Across the room, phones began to ring in unison, text messages arriving as an emergency alert was sent out. It hit Fox’s phone too. As he read the text and his blood ran cold, the live news broadcast on one of the TVs went to breaking news.

  A nuke had indeed been unleashed, but the first place hit wasn’t New York City.

  53.

  Philadelphia, USA

  The nuke exploded on time, the man sitting with it in a bedroom of the hotel being vaporised instantly. Within seconds most of Arch Street was eradicated, Philadelphia City Hall disappearing from the map. Out to a radius of nearly three hundred metres, twenty psi of overpressure severely damaged or demolished most of the buildings, even those made of concrete, skyscrapers falling over as the blast made their existence non-viable. Within that radius, fatalities approached one hundred percent, although there were some unfortunates who were shielded by the blast in the underground transit concourse that riddled that part of the city. They would never be dug out and would die a slow and painful death.

  Outside that to a radius of half a kilometre, the damage diminished although most residential buildings collapsed. Fatalities were high, few people surviving unscathed. Fires erupted. For months, the agony of those people caught outside would haunt Philadelphia’s hospital burns wards.

  The Liberty Bell as well as some of Philadelphia’s most historic buildings ceased to be.

  Most of the deaths wouldn’t come from the initial blast, as high as the death count was. It was the subsequent radiation that would bring the highest death toll, the radiation expanding over most of Center City, Queen Village, Fairmount and Point Breeze, delivering a fatal dose to the survivors of the nearly four hundred thousand people caught in the blast.

  The demon Asmodai had struck the first blow against the most powerful country in the world. The retribution would be swift and decisive.

  The war to end all wars had finally begun.

  54.

  Silicon Valley, USA

  Stone was once more consumed by sleep. He would have liked to think it was the one escape he had left from the world, but even here, he was hounded by the nightmares that were now relentless.

  Once again, he sensed something was about to change.

  Unusually, the air around him was calm, the red sky surprisingly cool. Standing on the cliff edge as he always was in these dreams, Stone looked down at the ruined city, the towers of concrete ripped apart, not a single voice to be heard from within the devastation.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” the voice of evil said.

  “What have you done?”

  “Me. I’ve told you, this isn’t my doing. This is the world you now live in.”

  “No, we can fight back.” Did he believe that? Did mankind have any kind of a chance against the forces of Satan that were being unleashed? Of course, they didn’t. Those who would survive had already been chosen by a god who was more than happy to sit back with his feet up and let all this unfold.

  When you thought about it, you quickly came to the realisation that it wasn’t Satan that carried the blame. None of this could occur without God’s blessing.

  “Yes, you can fight back, country against country, man
against woman. The great war is coming, what you see below is only the start of it.” A face tried to form in the dust that hung around him, lips red with the spilt blood of the slain. Stone watched the lips as they spoke. “It won’t do you any good, though.”

  “We have to try,” Stone insisted.

  “What is this we? You are here to help the new age in. You are its prophet, a traitor to your species.”

  “I don’t have any choice,” Stone insisted. He felt himself lifting off the floor, the world rotating as the great golden throne once more came into view.

  “You always had a choice, but your own weakness stopped you seeing it. You could have said no to Horn. You could have told him where to stick his book.”

  “That’s a lie,” Stone cried, although his voice sounded broken and weak. “I would have faced torture.”

  “That’s still a choice. You could have faced your punishment through gritted teeth, howling your defiance in the face of your abuser. Instead you acquiesced, you became complicit in the coming death of billions.”

  “Please, I don’t want to hear it.” The earth around the throne began to churn, rocks, dirt and the remnants of charcoaled trees forming into four immense figures.

  “Get used to it, because when all this is over, the choices you made will haunt you for all eternity.” The formation of the immense figures was finally complete, their countenances terrifying. Such things shouldn’t be able to exist, and yet here they were before him. They all had bodies that rippled with corruption, the muscles almost fluid within thick transparent sacks of skin. Their arms were tipped with great talons that could cleave a building in two. On each of their backs six wings sprouted, caked in indescribable residue that made them useless for their purpose. Some of those wings hung loosely, others jutted out as if in some sort of defiance. It was obvious that these creatures would never fly.

  “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,” the four creatures mocked. They spoke not in English but in a language Stone didn’t know. And yet, in this dream world, he knew the words.

  The four each had a different face, but all had numerous eyes that seemed to float and coalesce, moving in a hypnotic randomness. The first face resembled a lion, although the fur was matted with thick blood, the teeth too big to be contained by the being’s mouth forcing it into a perpetual yawn. The fourth resembled an eagle, the beak twisted and rotted through in parts, feathers stripped to expose diseased bald spots. The third gave the appearance of a man, the neck thick, the veins protruding. The nose was gone, replaced by thick worms that slithered in and out of the gaping hole.

  The second, the one with the face resembling an ox, sported horns that had grown too long, twisting so that they came back and penetrated the being’s skull. Its breath forced its way out of immense nostrils, caustic mucous dripping to the ground where it burned away the already charred soil. With one of its withered arms, the ox pointed at Stone.

  “Are you the one who was, and is and is to come?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

  “Well, answer the wretched beast,” the voice demanded.

  “You are the lamb for you were slain,” the ox continued.

  “No, those aren’t the words,” Stone demanded. The Lamb was Jesus Christ, surely that was the interpretation of that part of the Bible.

  “Worthy is the Lamb to destroy all that is right,” the ox continued, bastardising the words that Stone knew. It came forward, sniffing at Stone, inhaling deeply. Stone felt the wind pouring past him. “You smell of fear and cowardice, as I expected you would.”

  “I don’t understand,” Stone begged. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “What is there to understand?” advised the voice. “Accept your fate and go with the flow. Because you know what’s coming next.” An invisible vice gripped hold of Stone’s jaw, and he felt his neck turn. There was no resisting it, for the muscles and tendons would have ripped themselves free. “Behold.”

  He was looking up an immense hill, the sun rising over it even though it was already in the sky. A figure he knew all too well sat astride its white horse, the golden crown glinting with its brilliance. The scene felt magnified, the face of Horn horrifically visible.

  “Come and see,” the ox roared loudly behind him. With those words a second horse with a red mane materialised next to the one Horn sat on. The rider of the second Horn was also familiar to Stone, for he had seen it several times in the news that had been delivered for his research. This was the second horseman, and the man who resembled the Iranian Minister of Defence held aloft a mighty sword that dripped blood and burned with the evil encased in it. The second horseman, the one who represented war and the slaughter of whole kingdoms, had arrived.

  “Do you see how the pieces slot into place?” the voice asked. Stone felt the vice on his chin increase, the skin splitting, the bones fracturing. He cried out in pain, a thousand voices suddenly cheering at his anguish. “You should have found a way to kill yourself,” the voice chided, “because now you are truly lost.”

  “I tried,” Stone said through the pain. A tooth fell from his mouth, a reminder of how he had been so easily beaten.

  “And you failed. And now the whole world is going to burn.” The voice was right. Stone had failed, and that failure would continue until there was nothing left of his sanity.

  Hierarchy of Hell

  Satanael

  The Fallen - Lucifer, Belial, Azazel, Leviathan, Mammon, Belphegor, Asmodeus

  Kings - Baal, Paimonia, Beleth, Purson, Asmodai, Vine, Balam, Zagan, Belhor

  Dukes - Amdusias, Agreas, Valefar, Barbatos, Gusion, Eligos, Zepar, Bathin, Saleos, Aim, Buné, Berith, Astaroth, Focalor, Vepar, Vual, Crocell, Allocer

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  ALSO BY SEAN DEVILLE

  Have you read them all?

  The Necropolis Trilogy

  Cobra Z (Book 1)

  What if one day you find your world suddenly torn apart? Entranced by your daily routine, you hear the terrifying news that makes your blood run cold. A devastating man made virus has been unleashed on the world, a virus so lethal that it rapidly turns everyone it infects into rabid, blood crazed killers. Maniacs so devoid of humanity that their only goal in life is to rip the flesh from your very body, and kill or infect the people you love the most.

  Would you panic? Would you rush from your desk in a frantic attempt to save your children? Would you hunker down, and hope
the infection somehow passes you by, praying to whatever god you think will help? And what if the very people you care for so deeply are the ones clawing at your door, their blood smeared faces screaming for the destruction of your soul?

  How would you survive in such a world? And would you even want to?

  Buy it here

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  The Lazarus Chronicles (a five-book series)

  The Spread: Book 1

  Scientists told us the dead would never walk the earth. They were wrong.

  They call it Lazarus. A virus so deadly that it kills and resurrects virtually everybody it infects. Bangkok becomes the first city to fall to the unstoppable army of the undead…but this is only the beginning. By the time the news channels are reporting on the devastated Thai capital, the virus has already spread around the globe.

  Growing, infecting…spreading.

  One by one reports come in from other countries. The dead are getting back up… and they’re killing everything in their path.

  In the UK, clandestine government agent Nick Carter and his team find themselves faced with their deadliest enemy yet as they are forced to deal with the countries first outbreak.

  Yet in the depths of this tragedy, they find a glimmer of hope. A woman, a single survivor from the outbreak, someone whose blood might hold the secret to defeating the virus. Could she be humanities only chance of salvation?

  Or is it already too late?

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  Another apocalyptic short story from Sean Deville

  Table of Contents

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