Battle Siege (The Battle Series Book 3)

by Mark Romang

  “I agree wholeheartedly. It took us forever to get the antenna up into position and hung from the tree. We’ll have to rig up some camouflage to cover it.”

  “You guys can figure that out later. I want to hear Tanner speak,” Brooke said. She sat in an Adirondack chair close by.

  Tanner took a deep breath. “I’m nervous about this. What if my voice cracks?”

  “You’ll do fine,” Brooke reassured him. “We’ve already prayed over you and your words.”

  “Yeah, you are going to knock it out of the park, bro,” C.J. added. “I got confidence in you.”

  “Okay, here goes nothing.” Tanner grabbed the CB microphone and held it up to his mouth. He pushed in on the talk button. “To the people of Earth who are listening to this channel, and to those who haven’t taken Henrik Skymolt’s GPS chip. I applaud your bravery and pray that your resolve won’t weaken the least little bit, even though life on this planet is about to get much worse.

  “If you have made it this far into the Tribulation without taking the chip, you have already survived many of God’s seal and trumpet judgements and Henrik Skymolt’s horrible persecution. You are to be commended. I encourage you to continue to stand strong. If you are tempted at this moment to get chipped, don’t do it. The sixth trumpet judgement is about to commence. It could happen at any moment.

  “What is the sixth trumpet judgement, you ask? Well, let me tell you about it. The sixth trumpet judgement is the second woe. When the angel sounds the sixth trumpet, four demonic angels will be released from the Euphrates River to kill one-third of mankind. These four evil angels, or demons if you prefer to call them that, will lead an army of two-hundred million demons. The targets of these four demons and their vast army is not who you might expect.

  “This vast demonic army will target only unrepentant people who will never accept Christ and those who have taken the mark of the beast. Believers in Christ and in his saving grace will not be touched. So what should you do in preparation for this awful sixth judgement?

  “The first thing you should do is ask God to forgive your sins and to seal your soul with his Holy Spirit. Believe that Jesus paid your penalty of death by his crucifixion, and that he rose from the dead to give you eternal life. Whatever you do, do not take Henrik Skymolt’s marking chip and do not worship his image. Pray that God will sustain you through the rest of the Tribulation. Never give in to the Antichrist. He looks like a man, but the devil lives inside him. You cannot believe anything he says. His mouth is full of poison. He speaks only lies.

  “Henrik Skymolt calls me a rebel, and anyone else who refuses to worship him and take his mark, he also calls a rebel. If I am indeed a rebel, I am a rebel for Jesus. And if I am a rebel, I say ‘To hell with Henrik Skymolt and to hell with the devil who lives inside him. Until you hear my voice speak again, I am Extreme Snowboarder One, the voice of the resistance.” Tanner released the talk button and hung up the microphone. He slumped in his chair. C.J. immediately turned off the propane bottle.

  Brooke clapped her hands wildly. “Way to go, Tanner. That was awesome. You were great.”

  “Not only are you a crunchy guy, Tanner, you are the number one rebel in the world in my book,” C.J. said.

  “But you didn’t say your name,” Brooke pointed out. “You used a call sign.”

  Tanner nodded weakly. “For obvious reasons. I don’t want to start a manhunt by stating my name.”

  C.J. turned to Brooke. “Did you like the part where Tanner said to hell with Henrik Skymolt and to hell with the devil who lives inside him? I wrote that part.”

  Brooke nodded. “I figured you wrote that. It has your signature all over it.”

  “Do you think anybody even heard what I just said?” Tanner asked.

  “Oh yeah, I’m sure it was heard by countless people, maybe tens of thousands all over the world,” Brook said. “And you spoke plainly so people could understand. Those that heard…they have no excuse now.”

  Tanner stood up. “Come on, C.J., let’s get the radio antenna hidden.”

  “But it’s dark now. No one can see it anyway.”

  Tanner sat back down. “Right, we’ll hide it at dawn.”

  “While you guys figure out what you’re going to do in the morning. I’m going to prepare supper,” Brooke said, getting up from her chair.

  “What are we having?” C.J asked with a grin.

  “You know, the usual: Spam and beans. I’m going to keep fixing it until you go hunting or fishing and bring me back some fresh meat.”

  “Sis, you’re a practical joker just like Pops,” C.J. said.

  “When it comes to all the Spam and all the cans of beans, I’m not so sure Dad was being a practical joker. I think he was simply being a cheapskate,” Tanner commented.

  C.J. giggled. “Whatever he is, Pops sure got the last laugh on us.”

  Epilogue

  Babylon

  Inside the meat locker’s freezer hold, Lucifer exited Henrik Skymolt’s body like a snake shedding its skin. The long-dead Viking warlord slumped to the floor. “Sorry, Henrik. I guess you never will rest in peace,” Lucifer said as he stepped over the corpse.

  Unfurling his wings, Lucifer rolled his muscular shoulders and strode out the freezer hold and shut the door. He walked through the empty meat locker Vito Abbadelli recently purchased for him, bypassing bloodstained meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. The obscure meat locker worked perfectly to hide and preserve Skymolt’s lifeless body.

  Lucifer sensed a dark energy approaching the meat locker from outside. And then a moment later Zarkien appeared in front of him.

  “Master, why have you left your host body?”

  “Henrik Skymolt is a great burden. Sometimes I just need to get away from my body of death, even for only a few hours,” Lucifer explained. He studied his top general’s face, reading his thoughts. “Zarkien, your face is a paradox, an odd mix of distress and elation.”

  “I have some news you will enjoy hearing, Master, and other news you will not.”

  “Let’s start with the good news, shall we?”

  Zarkien nodded. His dark mane flopped across his eyes. He pushed aside the black locks. “Nathan Banks has been apprehended and is currently working on fixing the glitch in the drones’ navigational systems. He should be finishing his work soon.”

  “That is good news. Tell me the bad news as we leave the meat locker,” Lucifer said and started walking.

  Zarkien walked by his side, only several feet away so their wings wouldn’t rub together. “Do you recall the two snowboarders who traveled from Alaska down through British Columbia—Tanner and C.J. Mason?”

  “You refer to the twin brothers who vandalized my chipping kiosks and urinated on my image.”

  “Yes, Master. They are up to no good again. They have acquired a HAM radio. Tanner Mason just broadcasted an evangelical message heard by nearly one-hundred thousand people. He said some unflattering words about you. I fear more broadcasts will follow unless we do something.”

  “Where are these brothers now?”

  “They are hiding on the Olympic Peninsula, not far from where Nathan Banks lived.”

  “You are right in your assessment, Zarkien. We obviously need to deal with these brothers. We don’t want them to develop a following.”

  “But this poses a challenge, Master. We currently have a shortage of troops. The demons who just fought in Heaven are in no shape to do anything. And all your remaining troops are being called up to carry out the sixth trumpet judgement.”

  Lucifer and Zarkien left the meat locker, walking unseen through the glass storefront as if it didn’t exist. “There is one legion left, Zarkien. Have you forgotten them?”

  “A whole legion? From where will they come?”

  “Do you recall when Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee and entered the country of Gerasenes? As soon as Jesus stepped out of the boat a man who lived among the tombs came down to greet him.”

  �
��I do recall the incident. The man was possessed by many demons. Jesus cast out the demons and they fled into a large herd of swine. The pigs became frightened and ran into the sea and drowned.”

  Lucifer placed a hand on Zarkien’s shoulder. “These demons are available. We can use them.”

  “Are you sure, Master? They’ve been roaming dry and dusty places for so long.”

  “The demons haven’t traveled far. They live near the deserted ruin of Jerash. I want you to round them up and give them a message from me. Tell them their time of banishment is over. Tell them I have a new purpose for them. Tell them I have found them a new host.” Lucifer paused and smiled cruelly. “Tell the demons their new host is Tanner Mason.”

  To be continued…

  Thank you for reading Battle Siege. I hope you enjoyed it. I admit I ended the book on a cliffhanger. Just in case you are angry with me I have included the next few chapters of the fourth and final installment to the Battle Series. The sample starts on the next page. Enjoy.

  Visit my website for more information on my books. http://www.markromangbooks.com/

  Battle Sky

  By Mark Romang

  Copyright© Mark Romang 2016

  Kindle Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Robin Ludwig, Inc.

  Prologue

  Downtown Seattle

  The homeless woman went by two different street names: Crazy Mary and Scary Mary.

  They were cruel labels to be sure, but Mary didn’t mind the disparaging monikers too much. Although her dirt-smudged face, uncombed hair and mismatched clothing certainly added relevance to the hurtful names, deep down she knew she was only down on her luck and not crazy.

  Peculiar? Yes, but not crazy.

  Mary pushed her battered shopping cart along the deserted street from body to body. Her eyes—gray and distant—flitted from corpse to corpse. The view before her was like an end-of-the-world movie scene.

  The dead littered Seattle like wind-scattered trash.

  They were once ordinary people who came from all walks of life. Some were rich, some were poor, and some were destitute. They were lower class, middle-class, and upper-class, and they represented multiple ethnicities. But now they served as nothing more than buzzard food. Carrion feeders gorged on bloated corpses, while more buzzards circled the sky, others perching on streetlights and signs, anxiously awaiting their turn to feed.

  A massive clean-up was underway all over the city. Bodies had already been removed from neighboring streets, but not this one. Soon though, a bulldozer would come and push the dead into a pile. A flatbed trailer would then arrive to transport the bodies to a landfill to be burned. Another homeless person Mary knew told her this is what the city was doing. This person also told her the same thing was going on all over the world.

  Mary wore a dirty handkerchief over her face to help block the stench. She was sure she emitted a terrible smell herself. She hadn’t bathed in months. But her smell was perfume compared to the stench wafting from the corpses.

  Occasionally she would stop pushing her cart to retrieve an item off a corpse. It was dirty business what she was doing today, but profitable. Her wardrobe and jewelry collection had increased dramatically over the last several hours.

  Now she could use the jewelry to barter with other homeless people who had food.

  Mary approached the last body she’d yet to check. This corpse lay halfway on the sidewalk and halfway on the street. A businessman attired in a natty suit by the looks of him. He might be wearing an expensive watch, Mary thought, her interest peaking.

  Although there were UWC officers lurking about and overseeing the cleanup, Mary didn’t pay them any mind. Nor did they pay her much mind. She was just a homeless person, dirty and unkempt, a piece of living trash, some would say. For that matter she was practically invisible. And she liked it this way. She didn’t have the Skymolt marking chip implanted under the skin on her wrist or forehead, had never even bothered to acquire it.

  But then she never had been one for obeying rules or mandates.

  Maybe this is why she’d always been an outsider looking in.

  Like Sinatra, she had to do it her way.

  Mary squatted down by the dead businessman. She swatted away some buzzing flies and pulled up on the suit sleeve of the man’s left arm. A gold sport watch looped around his swollen wrist. Mary slid the watch off the corpse’s wrist and pocketed it inside her flannel shirt jacket. She would wait until later to see if the watch still ran. But she was sure it did run. And it looked like a top-drawer model. It might even be a Rolex.

  She briefly looked at the dead man’s face. No burn marks were visible on his decaying skin. And his suit, though dirty, wasn’t damaged. The smoke must’ve killed this one, she thought quickly. Some of the other corpses died from sulfur burns. This was obvious because these corpses were charred black like roasted hotdogs.

  It had been two days since the mass killings.

  What killed so many people simultaneously all over the world remained a mystery. Government scientists under Henrik Skymolt’s employ blamed the billion-plus deaths on global warming, or holes in the polluted atmosphere that allowed solar flares to reach all the way to Earth.

  Mary wasn’t so sure about the global warming or the solar flares explanation. She had an acquaintance who said the purging of humans was a judgement from God—the sixth trumpet judgement to be precise. Mary tended to agree with her acquaintance. He’d shown her the passage in Revelation that talked about the sixth trumpet judgement.

  The scripture passage scared her. It talked about an army of two-hundred million demons unleashed on Earth to kill a third of mankind with sulfur, fire and smoke. Strangely enough, the dead all shared a common denominator: they all had taken the Antichrist’s marking chip. Even more bizarre, not a single unchipped person had died in the mystery genocide, or even been affected.

  Jacob Ackerman told her all this. Jacob was a Jew, and he claimed to be one of the 144,000 witnesses sealed with a mark on his head by an angel and anointed by God to preach the Gospel to the whole world. Jacob was homeless like her, and lived with eleven other Jewish men who were also witnesses belonging to the 144,000.

  Jacob was an exceptional speaker, so exceptional that he led her to Christ. And now despite her frumpy clothes, dirt-smudged skin and lowly position in life, Mary knew her distant future was not only a bright and lofty one, but an eternal one. She’d been adopted into the family of God; she was a co-heir with Christ.

  But still, her present situation couldn’t be bleaker. She needed food and water, and had nothing in her shopping cart to eat or drink.

  Mary left the dead behind her and turned down a side street. She headed east. A Safeway sat a few blocks away. She assumed the grocery store had been looted like most of the other businesses in the city. But there might be a few scraps left behind to get her by. She didn’t need much. And at this stage even dog or cat food sounded appetizing.

  She felt guilty about stealing. But living in the Tribulation was so incredibly hard that it skewed her views on right and wrong. Her morals that were once either black or white had bled together into a dingy gray color.

  These were the Earth’s last days, and she did whatever she had to do to survive, legal or illegal. It was really that simple.

  Chapter 1

  Olympic Peninsula—41 months later

  “It’s worse this time. Isn’t it, Tanner?” Brooke Mason asked her brother as they ran as fast as their legs would carry them down a dark mineshaft, fleeing an evil presence they couldn’t see but could feel all too well.

  “Yes, they’re more determined than ever,” Tanner panted, holding a hand out in front of him to knock down cobwebs. The smell of sulfur—the stench given off by demons filled the mi
neshaft and seemed to follow them.

  Their headlamps cast bobbing splashes of light onto the mine walls and floor, adding dancing shadows to their macabre setting. “What are the demons saying?” Brooke asked with difficulty. She and Tanner and C.J.—Tanner’s twin brother—had been living in an abandoned goldmine for over three years. Their father, a Christian man with prepper interests, had purchased the property a year before the Rapture happened and converted it into a bunker, stocking it with nonperishable food and water.

  “You don’t want to know what they’re saying, Sis. It’s not repeatable.”

  “We should stop running then. The Bible says we need to submit to God, resist the devil and he’ll flee from us.”

  “Easy for you to say! The demons aren’t trying to possess you.”

  “This is silly, Tanner. We can’t outrun them. One of us is going to get injured running like this,” Brooke shouted. Ever since Tanner had started making Christian broadcasts using a HAM radio, otherworldly things had been happening in the mine. Little by little the incidences grew in intensity and frequency. Tonight it all hit the fan and they were neck deep into spiritual warfare.

  “Okay, okay. When I grab your hand, drop to your knees with me. I’ll start praying. Maybe they’ll leave.”

  “When we bind them with the power of the Holy Spirit they will leave.” Brooke shouted. She felt Tanner grab her hand almost at once and dropped to her knees like he requested. Rails that once transported ore cars dug into their knees.

  Tanner draped a protective arm over his sister and with his other hand lifted up a small crucifix he’d fashioned from tree branches. As soon as he lifted up the homemade crucifix a powerful wind entered the mineshaft and whipped around them, trapping them in a tornado-like vortex. Dust blew into their faces, burrowing into their eyes.