Intervention

by Rob Mclean

  “I think he might like me,” admitted Angela, as much to herself as to Chelsea. She felt a flutter of happiness inside her chest at the thought and was immediately cross with herself for letting her thoughts go in that direction. She knew she shouldn’t entertain any thoughts of another man, even one as gorgeous as John, while she and Zeke were promised to each other.

  “Like a lovesick puppy,” said Chelsea wistfully. Angela wondered where Chelsea’s thoughts were going with John and felt strangely jealous. Chelsea didn’t have a current boyfriend and didn’t seem too worried about getting one either. She ran her hand along Angela’s arm and said, “And why wouldn’t he be? You’re a hottie. Zeke’s a lucky guy, you know.”

  “Perhaps you had better tell him them,” Angela said, the annoyance she felt towards Zeke seething into her words.

  “Zeke loves you, Angie. You know that, sister.” Chelsea’s voice had a similar mellow coerciveness as her brother’s. “Whatever’s the problem at the moment, don’t forget you’re his chosen.”

  Angela wanted to believe it was true. It would make her life so much easier if Zeke really did want her with all his heart, but it had been such a long time since she had felt that she was truly special. She tried remembering some of the fun times she had spent with Zeke, but they were usually doing things that he wanted to do with her tagging along. She recalled feeling like she was some sort of personal cheerleader, whose job it was to idolize him.

  “He really does care for you,” Chelsea said. “I’ll be the first to admit that Zeke is a bit spoilt and needs to grow up- a lot, but underneath it all, he lives for you.”

  “But it’s been almost four years, Chelsea. Four years of waiting for him to get his head around the whole commitment thing. He’s been using me for his own fun for years now. He knew he had me from the start and it’s all been one way. It’s not right. I hate being used like that. He’s promised to do the right thing, but he’s not keeping his word.”

  “I know,” she said, “he can be difficult sometimes and he does think of himself first, but hooking up with Mr. Glove Puppet won’t help things, you know.”

  “I know, but it might make Zeke take notice.”

  “Maybe,” conceded Chelsea. “What church does he go to? I haven’t seen him around.”

  Angela smiled and simply said, “He doesn’t.”

  “He doesn’t go to a church?” Chelsea couldn’t hide her surprise. “Does he have faith? Is he a Christian?”

  “No.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Chelsea said. “Your rumspringa thing with Zeke is one thing; I mean, you’re both Christians, so that’s okay. But this guy? He’ll bring you down and you’ll burn.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, but don’t worry. Nothing’s going on between us. He’s just a bit keen, that’s all.”

  “I know it’s flattering,” Chelsea said, looking towards the shop door in case John returned. “After all he is rather gorgeous, you know…”

  “And he’s really sweet,” Angela added. “He listens to me and is interested…”

  “The only thing a worldly snake like that is interested in, sister, is getting his…”

  “Maybe,” Angela interrupted with a raised hand, “maybe not. Anyway, he’s not going to get the chance, especially if Zeke does the right thing, you know?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Can you make sure Zeke does?” Angela hoped her mother’s plan would make Zeke take notice and do the right thing. ‘Sometimes they need a little push,’ she had said. She hoped she was right. If Zeke didn’t act soon, Angela could see herself falling for John and his flattering attention, heathen or not.

  “Don’t worry, sister, I’m looking forward to being the bridesmaid and organizing the doe’s party,” Chelsea smiled.

  Angela returned her smile truthfully. She too had always anticipated the wedding and had planned it thoroughly in her head many times over. She just hoped her dreams weren’t in vain.

  Her daydreams were interrupted by John returning with three cappuccinos in takeaway cups, followed by the waiter with an extra chair.

  Chelsea smiled flirtatiously at John when he gave her the coffee she had asked for. She put her hand on his forearm and thanked him profusely for his services. Angela cringed and rolled her eyes. Chelsea smiled secretly at her and winked, letting her know it was all a game.

  John sat down, shifting his chair away from Chelsea as he pulled it in. “Sorry I was so long, getting the coffees, but I was watching CNN. That alien envoy guy has just said that they won’t be recognizing the United Nations. They’ll only be dealing with the countries and regions that have rejected religion.”

  “What? No way!” said Chelsea.

  “They’re saying that provinces, counties or even local councils that have renounced religion can become members of a new United Nations and benefit from their alien technologies.”

  “Far freaking out!” Chelsea said. “Who the hell do they think they are?”

  “Pastor Greg says that some people are saying that the alien envoy is the AntiChrist,” Angela said.

  John scoffed, “The what?”

  “The freaking Anti-bloody-Christ,” Chelsea said. “Can’t you see? Even a Godless heathen like you can see it, can’t you?”

  John stiffened as if he had been slapped. The hatred and fear he heard in her voice struck him to the bone. ‘That’s how these Christians see me,’ he thought. He looked to Angela to gauge her opinion, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Sorry if I am not up with all the details of your fairytale, but what is an AntiChrist?”

  “You don’t know what the AntiChrist is?” Chelsea asked, making no attempt to hide her scorn and disbelief.

  “I’m the heathen, remember?” John said, trying to reign in his anger. “Enlighten me.”

  “Sorry.” John could see her visibly trying to calm herself by taking deep breaths, yoga style. “I just can’t image anyone being so…”

  “Ignorant?” John prompted.

  “Worldly is a better word,” Chelsea said. She had calmed down and was now almost sounding pious. “But still, I find it hard to believe there are people in our country that don’t know about the AntiChrist.”

  “I didn’t have much of a religious upbringing,” John said with a shrug. “My folks didn’t go for that sort of stuff.”

  “Well, it’s never too late.” With a quick change of mood, she smiled and touched him lightly on his chest with her fingers. “We might make a Christian out of you yet.” She looked him in the eye and smiled suggestively as she took her coffee from him and sat down.

  He dragged his gaze from the vampish goth, wondering all the while what sort of game she was trying to play with him, especially in front of Angela. Did she actually think she could seduce him away from Angela? Or was she trying to show her how fallible and easily manipulated worldly men are? He tried to keep his puzzlement from showing as he followed her lead and sat himself between the two women.

  Angela cleared her throat, by way of deliberately ignoring Chelsea’s play and proceeded to tell him of the book of Revelations in the Bible and how it was based on the dream of John the disciple. She told of the AntiChrist and how he would lead people astray in the Last Days, proclaiming world peace, while persecuting God’s people. She told of the battle of Armageddon, the End of Times and the second Coming of Jesus. He listened as Angela spoke, her voice mechanically reciting a well-memorized story. He could not hear any of the emotion that Chelsea had when she interrupted Angela to add her own embellishments.

  “Wow,” said John when they had both finished, “that’s quite a story. All of it was from one guy’s dream?”

  “God spoke to him in a dream. It was prophesy,” Chelsea said with a finality that told him that there was no questioning it. Her eyes blazed with a fiery determination that defied him to challenge her.

  John felt as though he would be talking to an impenetrable wall if he were to try to argue with her. He was also aware
of the difficult position he was in if he wanted to not offend Angela and to keep seeing her. He didn’t want to put anymore of a distance between them because of religious differences.

  “Well okay, if you say so.” He turned to Angela, who had remained quiet and withdrawn.

  “Angie and I must be getting back to the shop,” Chelsea said. “Thank you Mister Glove Puppet for the coffee. It was… enlightening meeting you,” said Chelsea. She didn’t wait for a reply. She stood and took Angela’s hand, but Angela remained seated.

  “I’ll be along in just a moment,” she said.

  “Hmmm, okay, but don’t be long, now,” Chelsea frowned. She took her coffee and looked John over once more. She then whispered to Angela, but easily loud enough for the next table to hear, while she gave John a mischievous smile, “He’s cute; let me know when you’ve finished with him.”

  They watched her walk away.

  When she was far enough away, John asked, “What’s she on?”

  “Don’t worry about her. She’s only playing with you,” she said, “and probably me too.”

  “I can‘t work her out,” he said. “Look, I know you have to get back to work soon; you’re probably busy…”

  “No. It’s been really quiet,” she said, “except for the graffiti.”

  He smiled his encouragement and support. “One of the reasons I wanted to see you today is I wanted to say that I had been thinking about your father…”

  John saw Angela’s expression change at the mention of her sick father. “… and I wanted to pay you the cost of the tablets.”

  “Oh, that’s very generous,” she said. Her brow creased into a frown. “I don’t know if I could take your money though.”

  “It’s sort of my fault that you lost the tablets in the first place,” he pointed out.

  “Zeke should be the one paying,” she said with a tone of righteousness that made her sound more than a little angry. “He was the one who lost them.”

  “But do you think he’ll pay up?”

  “He should,” Angela protested, but her conviction changed as she thought about it more and she added, “But he probably won’t.”

  “Then take my money,” John urged. “It will help me sleep better.”

  She smiled. “That’s sweet, but no. Let me at least try to get Zeke to do the right thing.”

  John nodded. They finished their coffees and John left a tip. They made their way back to her shop. He wanted to hold her hand and feel her soft skin on his, but was worried that Chelsea would give her a hard time. He made himself be content to be simply walking with her and breathing in her perfume and listening to her talk. To the entire world it would look as if she were with him, and that alone was more than enough for now.

  On the outside of the shop John could see the faint remains of the graffiti on the window frames and brickwork. It had come off the glass entirely. They had done a good job of removing it, as he hadn’t noticed it on the way in and only saw it now as he knew what to look for.

  “You know, I could rig up some security cameras and surveillance signs out the front of your shop if you want,” he offered.

  “You probably could,” Angela agreed. “You’re the security guy after all.”

  A wicked gleam flashed in her eyes. “But you would have to ask you new girlfriend first.” She grinned as she teased him.

  “You mean Chelsea?” He recoiled involuntarily.

  “You could have her, you know,” Angela said. Her gleeful smile had an underlying darker, more sinister look about it. “I could see you two together…”

  “I don‘t want her…”

  “She wouldn’t care that you’re not a Christian,” Angela continued, ignoring him and looking inside to see if Chelsea was in sight.

  “I don’t want anyone…”

  “In fact she would probably enjoy the challenge of turning you into a good Christian.”

  “I only want you,” he said.

  She stopped looking inside the shop and turned to face him. All playfulness was gone. Her features were slack with surprise as she looked into his eyes.

  He held her gaze and could see that she was in turmoil. Flashes of pure joy wrestled with darker indignation and outrage. Hope fought with fear.

  He held her forearms in his upturned hands. “It doesn’t matter to me what our differences are. I only want to be with you,” he repeated.

  She shook his hands away and turned to go into the store. The automatic doors opened. Before she went in she turned back to him. Her eyes were rimmed with tears as she said “You can’t have me, John Hunter.” Her voice a mixture of anger and sorrow.

  “You can’t just turn up in my life and say you want me like I was some sort of Christmas toy…”

  “But…”

  “You can’t buy me off with your money and things…”

  “Hey, that’s not what I meant.”

  “You don’t know me,” she cried. “You don’t know what my life is like. It would never work.”

  She rushed inside the shop before John could say anything. He stood there on the sidewalk staring through store window, debating with himself as to what to do next. ‘Do I go in there and tell her how I feel?’ he asked himself. ‘Already tried that,’ he answered himself.

  ‘Give her time,’ his father’s voice said. John knew what the advice was right. He had asked too much of her already, and it was true that he didn’t really know that much about her life. He wondered how he ever would if she didn’t want to see him.

  As he stood there grappling with his thoughts and feelings, the shop doors opened again. He looked hopefully, only to see an irate Chelsea.

  “You had better be going,” she said.

  John said nothing, just turned and went.

  Chapter 25

  Admiral Schwartz, Commander of US fifth fleet, had just finished a teleconference with the other Unified Combatant Commanders.

  He sat in his L.A. office with his trusted deputies. His encrypted link through to the San Diego Naval Base kept him in contact with his fleet that patrolled the Persian Gulf and the rest of the US command.

  He quietly fumed about the pointlessness of the meeting. No one knew what these Godless aliens were capable of, so to his way of thinking the meeting had been a total and complete waste of time. It seemed to him as though the aliens were orchestrating everything, although to what goal, neither he nor anyone else could guess.

  The news of the day had been the ‘gift’ the aliens had given the Chinese. One of their hover-discs, similar to the one the alien envoy had used in Cairo. It was seen as reward for leaving the ‘old’ United Nations and declaring itself an atheist state. They, along with Vietnam, North Korea and Mongolia, were the first nations to join the ‘new’ United Nations, or the ‘New World Order’ as it was being called in the intelligence circles. All of this was still not general knowledge, but it wouldn’t be long before it was and it would really put the pressure on the President then.

  He scowled. The thought that those Godless Chinks could, this very minute, be pulling it apart, reverse engineering it, to see how it worked made his skin crawl.

  On the plus side, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and India had all publicly rejected the Alien’s offer. The Admiral smiled grimly to himself. At least the damned Alien had brought peace to the Middle East.

  There had been a lot of Egyptian arm twisting going on from the western powers. They had been desperately trying to dissuade Egypt from outright rejecting the Alien’s offer. So far they had been successful. They didn’t want the Egyptians to reject the Alien, as they feared that it would move to Beijing. At the moment they had unfettered access to study the alien vessel. If it moved to China, that access would be lost. Not that it had done them a lot of good. The damn thing wasn’t giving up any of its secrets to their probes; in fact it was invisible to radar. So far they hadn’t used any high energy gamma or X-ray probes, although there had been unconfirmed reports that some of the good citizens of Ca
iro had taken to shooting at the alien vessel.

  They had spent over two hours speculating about the unknown alien technologies. No one had much of a clue about the Galactic civilization the alien claimed to represent, but it hadn’t stopped every Jack one of them from putting in their two cents’ worth of useless speculation. Most of it came straight from Hollywood science fiction and ranged from doomsday gloom, on one hand, to rosy utopian future golden eras on the other.

  He couldn’t see the logic behind either of those outlooks. Clearly they weren’t overtly aggressive- at least not at the moment. If they were hostile, it would be much like the U.S. and N.A.T.O operations in Libya, Syria and both of the Iraqi wars. Allied troops wouldn’t set foot on the ground until the enemy had been pounded back to the Stone Age. He was sure it would be the same with them, alien or not.

  Nor did he blindly believe that the aliens had travelled across the vastness of interstellar space, at a huge energy cost, just to spread goodwill. Not that energy would necessarily be a problem for them. They probably had some wonderful technology that derived energy from anti-matter or some fool thing, and a hop to our star was no more effort for them than flying to Bermuda was for us.

  The whole thing just seemed so pointless. These Godless aliens would do just what they wanted, and there was precious little anyone could do about it. What was generally agreed was that there was only one alien spaceship. Some sort of scout-ship or emissary. They had their own agenda, which to mere humans appeared obscure, but to the aliens and their higher order thinking was perfectly logical. It burned the Admiral up to think that they were playing everyone along, including his beloved, God-fearing U.S of A.

  He had argued for a wait and see approach, based on firm Biblical precepts. A ‘hope and pray for the best, judge them by their actions, not their words, and all the while get ready to smite them from the face of the Earth’ type of approach. It had not gone down too well with the politically correct, desk-bound career officers, especially that tree-hugging freak from Seattle. How the hell he had gotten a uniform, let alone an invite to the teleconference, he didn’t know.