by James Somers
“Elizabeth!” Jacob screamed. He plunged into the flames after her neither feeling the heat nor being singed by flames devouring his bride of fifteen years. However, his best efforts were in vain. Jacob could not stifle the fire raging all around them. In moments Elizabeth moved no more.
Jacob began to weep, even as the charred walls crumbled around him. His tears evaporated from his cheeks, yet his skin remained unblemished by the inferno. How could this happen? Why his family? Then he remembered them asleep in their beds.
Screams reached Jacob from the adjoining room. Not my babies, he thought. Jacob ran through the adjoining bathroom, still untouched by the fire, only to find the door unwilling to open. It had swollen into the frame. Smoke poured through the space at the bottom. He hit the door with his shoulder, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Janet!” he screamed. “Tiffany!”
“Daddy!” their voices howled in chorus.
Jacob backed away ten feet then threw his one hundred and seventy pounds at the door. It gave way, smashed to charred kindling. His twins were surrounded by the flames already. They threw off their bed covers as the fire reached out for them. “’Daddy!”
Ignoring the roaring blaze sweeping through the children’s room from floor to ceiling, Jacob grabbed his daughters up from their beds. He started for the door, but a wall of fire awaited them. The window had already blown out, and the flames had followed the oxygen, engulfing their escape in black smoke and searing heat.
His heart sank, realizing it was a three story drop. Jacob had no choice. “Hold on, girls,” he said. He rushed through the open doorway toward the hall. Everything beyond was consumed already. Jacob could hardly see. Everything had gone bright yellow to white in his vision. Still, he never felt the fire. Perhaps he had already been burned so badly that his nerves no longer functioned. He didn’t care. He had to save his girls.
Two flights of stairs later, Jacob descended to the living room on the main level and the front door beyond. The fire hadn’t managed to engulf this room yet. Jacob smiled. He paused only a moment to reassure his daughters. Even though their mother had been lost to them, they would make it. Life would go on.
They had come through a raging inferno. Jacob had used his last ounces of strength to get them this far, but neither of the girls responded to his voice. Great, bubbling blisters covered their faces. Their hands and feet had been blackened somewhere along the way. Despite his best efforts they were gone—sacrificed to the inferno of his own lust for power with the Master.
Twenty minutes later, when the city fire department broke down the door, they found Jacob sobbing next to the bodies of his adolescent children. The entire living room was engulfed in flames. However, when they pulled Jacob screaming from the nearly collapsed house, he didn’t even have the smell of smoke on his clothing.
The religious community had proclaimed his ordeal, though tragic, a miracle. Jacob had used it to great degree in order to travel the channels through the higher echelons of power. Status had its rewards. Jacob found all doors opening to him and his research into human cloning. Where he had failed before, he now succeeded. Impossibly complex scientific hurdles had been easily deciphered, seeming elementary to his newly enlightened mind.
Staring out over the vast army he had created through his research, Jacob wondered regretfully if his sacrifice had really been worth it. Then he looked at his hands, thinking of all he had been given since that time and all the Master had promised him for the future. Jacob Stein smiled. Yes—he had made the right choice.
ARISE
September 15, 2095
Drunken revelers slumped against the walls of businesses in the streets of Jerusalem. Crowds had remained even after the sun had grown hot above them. Such a party had rarely been seen—a world wide celebration for those who had endured three and a half years of plagues due to the religious zealots who proclaimed themselves as prophets of the true God. Their glorious ruin had come three days ago at the hands of the New Eden Alliance’s High Representative, Oliver Theed.
Theed had accomplished, in mere moments, what no one else had been able to do since these so-called prophets had arrived on the world scene, leaving religious lies and devastation in their wake. Theed had killed both men with a simple handgun. Now the world wondered at the man who had, in those few days since, proclaimed himself to be the true Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world.
In one swift motion, he had subdued Jerusalem and all of Israel, placing them under his authority. He had calmed the confused masses and brought joy and celebration to their hearts and lives. He had rid them of the ones chiefly responsible for plagues of drought, pestilence and fire. The elusive peace, so long mankind’s dream, finally appeared to have come—embodied in this god-man named Oliver Theed. Was there anything he couldn’t accomplish?
Joshua Cohen stepped over a couple still lying unconscious on the sidewalk leading to the Wailing Wall where he had been stationed on guard duty for the past two days. Formerly a member of the IDF, Joshua had found himself part of a defunct organization with one proclamation from Oliver Theed and one stroke of his pen. Now he held the rank of Corporal in the newly organized New Eden Alliance Corp. At least the pay was a little better.
He spotted the guard post, a small ten-by-ten shack which only housed a cooler for ice and water and a large window fan. A bright orange porta-potty sat behind it. Deluxe accommodations for what had to be the worst post in all of Israel. How he had drawn this short-straw assignment to watch over the bloated three-day-old corpses of the world’s most hated men, Joshua had no idea.
Even worse, he had ended up with the worst shift of the day—noon until the streetlamps came on. The stench had really set in yesterday when the temperature had topped one hundred degrees. If only he had had family connections like his friend, Caleb.
Caleb had been handpicked to join up with Theed’s special branch, called Babylon. While he was stuck here, keeping the vultures and sight-seers away from the wall and the dead prophets, Caleb was off hunting down Christian terrorists. The Christians had become the strong arm for the prophets, spreading their message of faith in the man called Jesus who had lived over two thousand years ago. He had been put to death by the Roman government which held power in Jerusalem at the time. The prophet’s claimed that this Jesus person had actually risen from the dead after his crucifixion.
Joshua laughed under his breath as he approached the guard shack. “Utter nonsense. Only an idiot would believe that garbage,” he said to himself.
He reached for the door on the shack. Timothy, the soldier Joshua was relieving, snatched it away from the inside first. “It’s about time you got here, Cohen. I’m frying in this thing.”
“At least you get to go home,” Joshua said. “I’ve got to sit here in the heat for the rest of the day smelling those stinking dead guys while they rot in the sun.”
Timothy walked out of the shack as Joshua unslung his Shalom 700-C1 Peacekeeper and set the automatic rifle inside the door on the gun rack meant for its keeping. Timothy turned back and smiled at Joshua, “Hey, you’re right, Cohen. I feel better now. You have fun with the vultures, buddy.” Timothy shot him a mock salute then turned to walk away from the post, whistling as he went. Joshua leered after the man then went inside the shack and slammed the door.
The main window had a perfect view of the Wailing Wall’s massive white limestone blocks towering over the guard post. The bodies lay where they had fallen three days before. Sonic pulse generators had been set up in a thirty foot perimeter around the corpses with the hope that they would provide enough of a deterrent to the carrion feeders to keep them at bay. Still, the birds circled and sat high upon the wall, watching, waiting and hoping for an opportunity when the irritating sound would dissipate to allow them a feeding frenzy on the carcasses.
Joshua dialed in a news broadcast using his cell. He scrolled through several broadcasts available from his network, bypassing those featuring speeches from Oliver Theed. H
e had grown bored of hearing the man. Bitterness over the takeover and his present predicament hadn’t been resolved, yet. Soon his unit would come up to receive the New Eden Alliance implant. As far as Joshua was concerned, it was just another way for Theed to throw his weight around. But he would do whatever he had to in order to keep his job and support his wife and two kids.
Horrendous squawking interrupted his news surfing. He looked out the main window. The vultures, ravens and other birds had stirred into a panic of flapping wings and screeching. The sonic generators weren’t supposed to do that—they hadn’t done it over the past two days since setting them up.
Joshua’s eyes roamed around the plaza before the Wall until they fell upon something strange—something that hadn’t been before. He noticed that one of corpses had its right arm raised into the air, as though the dead man was reaching for the sky. Joshua blinked. Yes, it was still frozen in that position.
Joshua vaguely wondered if rigor mortis could cause such a thing. He remembered hearing one time that bodies had been known to sit upright during funerals because of some postmortem tightening of the muscles. Maybe this was the same thing. At any rate, the birds had obviously been freaked out by it.
Joshua gathered up his assault rifle and stepped outside the shack into the heat. The cacophony of birds made him want to either put his hands over his ears, or shoot the crazy things. The scene reminded him of an old Alfred Hitchcock movie he’d seen one time as a boy.
Scanning the area, he still found nothing out of the ordinary other than the outstretched arm of the dead prophet. Joshua drew nearer, holding his breath against the stench that would soon assault him. However, as he came closer, he noticed that the smell had disappeared. Upon closer examination, the bodies didn’t appear bloated or discolored the way they had before. “That’s weird,” he muttered.
Then the fingers on the outstretched hand curled inward and flexed out again. The arm vibrated with what Joshua could only discern as life. His rifle came up instinctively, leveled on the prophet’s moving form. Very quickly, the entire body shuddered and moved. The body of the second prophet had begun to do the same.
The two dead men stood upon their feet and shook the dust out of their garments as though they had only been taking a three-day-nap. They examined each other, the dark bloodstains on their clothing and the bullet holes then laughed with each other as they said, “Praise the Lord,” in unison.
Joshua’s gun shook uncontrollably, his hands trembling with fear. He wanted to speak, but found himself hyperventilating instead. The prophets turned to face the young soldier and frowned when they laid eyes on his weapon. One of them spoke. “Joshua Cohen, your parents were of the tribes of Dan and Benjamin. Why have you not put your faith in the Son of the Living God?”
Their voices resonated unnaturally, reverberating off of the wall and every nearby building. Joshua had no idea what the man was talking about or how on Earth a dead guy could be speaking to him. The prophet reached out to him, taking a single step. That was enough.
Joshua’s panic resolved with his training. His finger pulled the trigger on his rifle. Hot lead exploded from the vented barrel toward the recently deceased prophets. Joshua screamed as he unleashed death like a caged lion upon the two men. But they only stared at him.
The bullets seemed to pass through the men, impacting against the limestone blocks behind them, sending sparks leaping away like startled fireflies. The two prophets looked down at their own bodies then at each other before turning back to Joshua. His ammunition clip was soon expended. Silence fell upon the square as the last echo of gunfire lingered a moment longer then died.
Soldiers stationed nearby, who by now had heard the gunfire, came running toward the courtyard before the wall with their guns ready. Once they saw the two dead prophets standing upon their feet gesturing toward Joshua and his smoking assault rifle, they all opened fire. The soldiers, many of whom had seen their fellow recruits burned alive by these prophets over the past few years, weren’t taking any chances with the walking dead.
The line of soldiers launched everything they had in hand at the two prophets. Bullets, tear gas canisters, even several grenades from launchers mounted on their machine guns tore through the square and across the limestone blocks of the wall. However, when their munitions were spent and the smoke cleared, both men of God remained standing, unharmed by the best the soldiers could throw at them.
PANDAMONIUM
Steel clashed with steel as Jason circled his opponent. “Give it up, old man,” he said, grinning. “I beat you once. Don’t make me do it again.”
“Don’t you mean I went easy on you then because you were only a kid?” Solomon Gauge parried a strike, returning his own, only to find his sword blocked again.
“Watch out, gramps, the Nightstalker is closing in on you,” Jason warned, as he dashed around Solomon trying to gain ground. But he was still unable to get past the older man’s defense.
“You look more like a Lite-stalker to me—give it up,” Solomon said as he batted away another lunge.
Jason back flipped over a particularly aggressive strike, landing to block the next. He tore into Solomon—lunge, parry, thrust—relentlessly. He found a moment of weakness, baiting the trap with a grin. Solomon, ever observant, caught it. As Jason blocked the older man’s sword, he delivered a kick at Solomon’s bad knee. Solomon had anticipated it and lifted it slightly, leaving his weight momentarily balanced on his other leg. Just as Jason had planned, he bounced his foot off of the inside of Solomon’s protected knee and swiftly back inside the other at calf level to sweep his weight baring leg out from under him.
Down Solomon went, realizing his mistake too late. Jason lunged forward and batted the sword out of his hand. Solomon lay there defenseless with Jason’s katana leveled at his chest. Jason smiled. “Gottcha, old man,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
Chloe appeared at the doorway of the training room where they had been sparring. “Hey, you guys, you’ve got to see this!”
Jason turned to her while Solomon took advantage of the distraction by scissoring both of his legs around Jason’s. He flipped sideways and hit the floor hard. By the time Jason realized what had happened, Solomon Gauge was holding his own sword to his throat. “Who did you get again, boy?” Solomon asked.
Jason turned to give Chloe an exasperated look.
“What can I say?” she said. “Never turn your back on my father.”
The room where the members of their underground group assembled, stood full to the brim, surrounding several old flat screen monitors they had managed to salvage from a devastated portion of Old Jerusalem. On one monitor, a reporter was speaking with the self proclaimed Messiah, Oliver Theed, while another held erratically shifting views of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. An apparent firestorm was in progress as reporters tried to work around several lines of soldiers who were pounding away at the limestone blocks with every weapon they had.
“What’s going on?” Jason asked as Chloe led them through the assembly in order to get a closer look at the monitors.
“Is it the witnesses?” he said. “I knew it would happen!” The excitement was apparent in the room.
Jason became anxious at hearing about the two men who had done so much to convince him of his need as a sinner. But the last he had seen of them was when they were both gunned down in cold blood by Oliver Theed before the white limestone blocks of the Herodian Temple’s retaining wall. He vaguely remembered something Chloe had tried to tell him at the time, but they had been so busy running for their lives that he hadn’t really been listening.
“God has raised his two witnesses from the dead, exactly as he promised in Revelation: chapter 11,” Chloe said.
Solomon smiled as he watched the soldiers wasting their efforts on Michael and Jeremiah. “And after three days and a half, the Spirit of life from God entered into them and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them who saw them,” Solomon quoted.
; Jason stared open-mouthed at the monitors. “Quite amazing, isn’t it, sir?” Alfred had walked up next to him while Jason remained transfixed on the unfolding drama in Jerusalem miles and miles away. “You could say that,” Jason managed, never removing his eyes from the broadcasts. “Solomon, what happens now?”
In Jerusalem, the soldiers had begun to spend their efforts. The square before the Temple retaining wall grew quiet as the soldiers waited to see what the risen prophets would do. Up until now, they had shown only mild interest in the soldiers wasted efforts. Michael and Jeremiah turned to face the east expectedly.
Thunder pounded down from a sunny sky as turbulent clouds formed above the prophets. No wind had brought them over the city, yet a maelstrom of puffy white water vapor churned and grew. Within moments, a pillar of cloud had descended all the way to the ground inside the square.
A voice erupted from overlapping peals of thunder saying, “COME UP HERE,” in the Hebrew language.
The soldiers looked to the heavens—some of them who had served in the former IDF and spoke Hebrew even understood the words echoing off of every building in Jerusalem from the clouds. Michael and Jeremiah stepped within the pillar of cloud then turned back toward the soldiers and thousands of onlookers filling the streets. The pillar retracted skyward like a massive arm, carrying the resurrected prophets into the bubbling cauldron of clouds above, out of their sight.
For three days, the world had crowed its victory from every housetop. The revelry had been heard throughout the streets of every nation. Many had become so joyous at the demise of the two prophets that they had declared the time an international holiday, even going so far as to give gifts to one another in celebration. The festivities had just come to a grinding halt midway through the fourth day.