by Mark Goodwin
By the time Everett was cleaned up, the sun was down. He had to traverse the trail back up to the cave by flashlight. His stomach growled. He was famished from the long day and the gruesome battle. No one had the strength to cook. Everett ate two MREs and a box of cookies before turning in. Unlike many of Tommy’s men, Everett was alive. He was safe, and he was tired.
As he slept Wednesday night, Everett dreamed of the vicious attack on the Global Republic compound. Fear and anxiety caused him to toss and turn in his sleeping bag on the hard floor of the cave. He could hear screaming. It was that of a woman. His mind imagined the horrible things that must be happening to her. He looked around the vivid dreamscape of the raid. “Where’s Courtney? Is that her screaming? Oh, God, please don’t let it be Courtney!”
The shrill-pitched cry grew louder, piercing through his sleep. His eyes opened wide to the utter darkness of the cave. The screaming continued. Everett swept his hand across the ground next to him where he’d left his flashlight. “Why didn’t I leave my gun next to me?” He found his flashlight and clicked it on, shining it toward his rifle leaning against the cave wall, ten feet away. “I have to get my gun before the threat gets to Courtney or me.” He stumbled out of the sleeping bag as he darted toward the weapon. He switched on the light which was mounted on the rifle’s hand guard and scanned the cave.
Sarah was sitting up in her sleeping bag, kicking with both legs and screaming at the top of her lungs. By now, Kevin was out of his sleeping bag, flashlight on and holding Sarah.
Courtney awoke and crawled over to her. “Shhhh. It was just a dream. I was having them too.”
“No! No! No!” Sarah sounded frantic. “It’s not a dream!”
“What’s not a dream, baby?” Kevin kept his arms around hers in a futile effort to keep her still.
Elijah stooped beside her with his flashlight on as well.
Sarah cried out. “My legs! My legs!”
Everett watched as Kevin and Courtney shined their lights on Sarah’s legs which she had kicked out of the sleeping bag. She continued to kick. Everett stared closer. He’d never seen her sleep with her prosthetic on before. And he’d never had trouble distinguishing the real leg from the artificial one. Everett furrowed his brow and looked closer. “I must not be totally awake yet.” He murmured to himself.
Everett raised the rifle and pointed the light toward the cave wall. There stood Sarah’s prosthetic, right where she’d kept it every night since they’d moved to the cave. “Hmm.”
Sarah calmed down to some degree. “I’d always felt tingles or an itch in my missing leg.” She whimpered for a moment to catch her breath. “Even though I knew it wasn’t there, I’d scratch the bed, or the couch, or my prosthetic, or whatever was in the space where my leg belonged.”
She gasped for breath. “I was asleep and felt an itch. I reached down to scratch, and there it was!”
Everett turned his attention back to the beams of Kevin and Courtney’s flashlights. Sarah had two legs. She had two feet, with five toes each that she was wiggling. She ran her hands up and down both legs, touching her knees, her calves, her ankles, the balls of her feet, and finally her toes.
Kevin ran his hand across the leg that wasn’t there the night before when they went to sleep. “I don’t believe it! How can this be?”
Elijah chuckled with his arms crossed.
Courtney shined her light up at the old prophet.
Elijah looked at Kevin. “And that is why you don’t see many miracles. Because you don’t believe. Even after all he has done for you. Bringing you back to the land of the living. How quickly you forget the blessed works of the Almighty.”
Sarah’s tears turned from shock to an expression of joy. She looked up at Elijah. “Thank you.”
“No, no, no.” He shook his finger. “I haven’t done anything. Thank your Heavenly Father and his holy Son, Yeshua. Give glory to him in whom we live and move and have our being!”
Sarah wiped her tears and looked toward heaven. “Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, God!”
Kevin held her close and stroked his fingers across her legs. “The bullet hole is gone also.” He bowed his head. “Thank you, God. Forgive my unbelief.”
Elijah rested his hand gently on Sarah’s shoulder. “The Scriptures say that in the last days God will show signs in the heavens above and wonders in the earth below. Surely, you will have trying times, and you will be pushed to the very ends of yourselves. But hold on to these precious memories, when the God of heaven has revealed himself to you. Savor these expressions of his mercy and grace. Recall them to your mind when your faith is tried.”
Elijah stared directly into Kevin’s eyes. “And do not discount them as having another explanation. I know what the enemy has been whispering in your ear. He tells you that you were not truly dead, but merely unconscious. He says that your experience in the underworld was a figment of your imagination. And he causes you to conveniently forget your bullet-riddled torso. Where did your wounds go? How did you heal so quickly?”
Kevin’s mouth hung open. “I . . . I don’t actually think that. I know it was God. But you’re right. Those thoughts, they cross my mind from time to time. Exactly the way you explained it. How did you know?”
Elijah nodded. “The enemy’s strategy has always been to discredit or explain away the miracles of God. Pharaoh’s priests mimicked the miracles performed by Moses. They cast down their staffs and they too turned into serpents. They struck the water, and it too turned to blood. The evolutionists convinced the entire world that over billions and billions of years, the universe came to be, on its own, and out of nothing. And trust me, you will see Angelo Luz perform great miracles, signs and wonders, in keeping with his father’s method of deception.”
Courtney smiled. “Thank you for praying for her, Elijah.”
“It was you who suggested that I pray for her leg.” He chuckled.
“I meant for you to pray for the bullet hole in her shin.” Courtney looked down at Sarah’s new leg with an expression of amazement.
“Well, fortunately for Sarah, you weren’t more specific.” Elijah returned to his sleeping bag and reclined onto his back.
Courtney hugged Sarah. “Do you want to try to walk?”
Sarah dried her eyes. A tremendous grin stretched from one side of her face to the other. “Yeah.”
Kevin stood on one side of Sarah and Courtney on the other. Each of them helped her up to stand on her own two feet, for the first time in years.
Sarah pulled her hands away, standing on her own strength. “I’m fine. I can walk perfectly. My leg is just as good as it was before I lost it! Maybe better.” Sarah walked around the cave.
“When God moves, his work is complete.” Elijah crawled inside his sleeping bag. “He formed the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars, most of which are much larger than our sun, all from nothing. Restoring your leg is quite a small thing in comparison.” Elijah rolled over as if he were going back to sleep.
“It’s not small to me.” Sarah put a pair of long pants over the shorts in which she’d been sleeping. She grabbed her jacket. “You guys can go back to sleep. I’m going for a walk.”
Kevin kissed her and held her close. “Do you mind if I tag along?”
“Not at all.” She smiled and ran her hand through his beard.
“You guys be safe.” Everett got back into his sleeping bag, next to Courtney. Despite the excitement, he was back to sleep in a matter of minutes.
Everett awoke Thursday, unsure of the time. He looked at the beam coming from Courtney’s flashlight. “What time is it?”
“Afternoon, sleepy head. Everyone else has been up for hours.” She knelt beside him and gave him a kiss.
“Have you been outside?”
“Yeah. It’s gorgeous. Other than looking like a moonscape that is. The sky is bright and blue. A mild breeze is blowing. The temperature is probably around seventy. Much warmer than the cave. Get dressed and come on out.”
&n
bsp; “Okay. I’ll do that.” Everett’s body felt sore from the previous day’s activity. He stretched out some of the stiffness and got dressed. He put on his sunglasses as he exited the cave. Even so, he had to squint at the abrupt change from absolute darkness to daylight.
Sarah had managed to build a fire. “Good morning.” She fed some twigs into the flames.
“Courtney said it’s afternoon.” He shielded his eyes with his hands.
“Whatever. We haven’t been back to sleep yet. So, for us it’s getting ready to be bedtime.” She laughed.
“It’s nice and dark in the cave. Your eyes will never know the difference.” Everett poured water from a jug into the metal percolator and placed it on the grate over the flames. “How did you manage to get a fire going?”
“Kevin and I scrounged up some lightly-burned charcoal from the base of some trees. We pulled dead branches around the creek which weren’t burned and used them for tinder to get the charcoal going.”
“The dead branches weren’t wet?”
Sarah pointed at a plastic bucket full of wood shavings. “We whittled them down to where they were dry. These are drying out. We’ll be able to use them in a day or two.”
“What did you guys eat for breakfast?” Everett inquired.
“Eggs, oatmeal, toast and jelly.” Kevin repositioned each of the solar panels to line up with the sun.
“Toast? Who made bread?” Everett asked.
“Elijah. We saved some for you.” Courtney passed a small bundle wrapped in a clean towel.
“Thanks. Where is Elijah?” Everett pulled back the corners of the towel, revealing a small loaf of bread.
“He walked to his barn to feed the goats and chickens.” Courtney placed the pan on the grate and cracked two eggs for Everett.
“By himself?”
“He took Samson and Delilah back to the barn. Danger went with him. I offered to walk with him, but he said he wanted to pray while he walked.” Courtney stirred the eggs with the spatula.
Everett asked, “Did he have a gun?”
“He took his old shotgun,” she replied.
Everett poured some of the warm water from the percolator into his bowl of instant oatmeal. “That’s something I guess.” He topped the water off and filled the inner basket of the percolator with coffee.
Kevin looked at Courtney. “My batteries are almost recharged. You should give me yours to charge next.”
“Thanks. We should take advantage of the sunny days when we get them.” Courtney unscrewed the cap on her flashlight and handed the batteries to Kevin.
“Yeah, winter will be here before you know it.” Everett set his oatmeal to the side and removed the batteries from his flashlight. He handed them to Kevin.
Sarah rolled her eyes in disgust. “Oh. Don’t talk to me about winter. It was bad enough being cooped up in the cabin all winter.”
Courtney held her hand up in the air. “Stop it! I can’t even think about that right now. At least we had windows and a fireplace last winter.” She tilted the pan and moved the eggs out onto a plate with the spatula. “Enjoy!”
Everett took the eggs, soft-scrambled the way he liked them. “Thank you.” He took a bite with his bread. Small comforts like fresh eggs and homemade bread were the only things he had left to remind him that the world was ever anything more than a menacing nightmare.
He finished eating and poured himself a cup of coffee in the metal canteen cup. Everett took a sip and looked down the path that had been created by their footprints in the ash. “What is Elijah carrying?”
Kevin peered down the hill. “I don’t know.”
Elijah held two clear plastic bags with what appeared to be meat inside. “Stoke up the fire,” he said as he arrived at the makeshift campsite just outside the cave entrance.
“What do you have there?” Everett tried to identify the meat.
“Goat. What else?” Elijah passed one of the bags to Everett.
Everett inspected the meat which had been cleaned and skinned. “I’m sorry you had to kill one of your goats.”
“That is why we have them.” The old prophet handed the other bag to Sarah. “I separated out the heart, brain, kidneys, and liver. I know you girls aren’t very fond of the organs, but I assure you, Danger and Sox will be much less picky about what part of the goat they are eating.”
“Oh.” Sarah’s nose crinkled, the corners of her mouth turned down, and she passed the bag of goat organs to Kevin. “Can you do something with this?” She looked away as she held her arm out to him.
Kevin looked slyly at Elijah as he took the bag. “Sure thing.” He set the bag down and entered the cave. “I’ll grab some pots and be right back.”
Danger sniffed the bag as soon as Kevin turned his back.
Elijah bent down to open the bag and cut a few pieces off with his knife. He let Danger eat them from his hand.
Sox returned from exploring over the hill. As his name suggested, the cat had four white feet that looked much like socks or booties which went up to the joints of his legs. The sides and bottoms of his feet were no longer the pristine white color they had been. Like everything else in this world, they were stained black by ash and soot. The cat sniffed around Elijah’s hand, rubbing up against the prophet’s leg.
Elijah cut a smaller piece from the bag of organs. “You must teach these humans to be grateful for what the Lord has provided.”
Courtney’s eyes looked worried. “It wasn’t Samson or Delilah, was it?”
“No child.” Elijah emptied the organs into a pot. “It was one of the unnamed goats. You don’t name livestock that you plan to eat. I shouldn’t have named Samson nor Delilah. Their day may come, but they will be the last to go. And if I’m not here when that day comes, promise me that they will go together. They won’t be happy without each other.”
Courtney nodded. “Okay. Aren’t you trying to grow food for them?”
Elijah nodded. “I’m going to take wheat over to the plot this afternoon. It’s late September. The first frost could be as early as next week. Or, God could be gracious and give us another month. Regardless, the corn will not have time to mature. The wheat may perform better. It should stay green until winter, providing food for the animals. Then it should reemerge in the spring and develop heads a couple of months later.
“Of course, this is assuming that the judgments don’t wipe out everything.”
“Including us.” Kevin set the large Dutch oven on the grate and opened the bag of goat meat.
Elijah chuckled as he walked into the cave. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
Sarah put her hand on Courtney’s shoulder. “I’m okay with going home. This world isn’t very enjoyable anymore. But, I hope we can all go together.”
“Aww. That’s so sweet!” Courtney held Sarah’s hand.
Kevin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, just like Jones Town.”
“Shut up, Kevin.” Sarah stood. “Wash that meat off your hands and come inside the cave. I need you to help me stay warm. I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“If you insist.” Kevin winked at Everett. “Do you mind keeping an eye on the cook pots?”
Everett smiled. “Not at all. You guys get some rest.”
“Thanks. Your batteries should be charged in about half an hour. The charger is right inside the cave entrance, so you’ll be able to see to retrieve your batteries. Bring the panels back in when it gets dark.” Kevin washed his hands with a small amount of water from the jug and followed Sarah into the cave.
“Good night.” Courtney waved.
“I could use a little help with getting the wheat in the ground.” Elijah looked at Courtney as he emerged from the cave with a one-gallon plastic zipper bag of wheat.
“Sure. Do you mind, Everett?”
“Go ahead. Take a radio, a rifle, and at least four magazines. I doubt many people are going to be out and about today, but if they are, they’ll be the most desperate sort you’ve ever
seen.”
“Okay. We’ll bring Cupcake for back up.” She collected her things and blew Everett a kiss as she followed Elijah down the hill. Courtney patted her leg. “Come on, Cupcake!”
Everett waved and reached down to scratch the cat which had taken a seat near his feet. “It’s just me and you, Sox.”
Everett retrieved his Bible which he had placed near the door of the cave. He turned to Revelation chapter eight to review the next phase of tribulation. “And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!”
“Do you hear that Sox? Woe, woe, woe to the inhabiters of the earth. He’s talking about you and me. We’re the inhabiters. Have you ever had anybody give you three woes in a row?” Everett stared at the cat as if he actually expected an answer.
Sox looked away from Everett and began licking his back leg.
Everett smiled and watched the small animal groom himself, without a care in the world. “You’re lucky that you can’t understand me. You’d be freaking out right now.”
Everett read the passage over several more times. Afterward, he looked at his Jewish calendar which he’d lined up with the Gregorian calendar to know where the feast days fell. “Sukkot starts at sundown tomorrow night. I hope the third angel can give us a little more time before he sends Wormwood.”
Everett checked the goat meat stewing in the large pot then replaced the heavy cast iron cover. Even though the landscape appeared bleak and miserable, he took in the fresh air and time outside in the sun, knowing that he would soon be cooped up in the cave. “Wormwood or not, winter is right around the corner.”