The Coming of the Prophet (The Death Prophecies Book 1)

by Saxon Andrew

  “I believe I do but I have you to do it.” Graylin shook his head and ran out of the Oval Office. “I do hope he knows what he’s doing?”

  “Even if he doesn’t, the word is spreading and the violence around the planet had come to a stop. It appears there is a tremendous level of curiosity about him.”

  “Was calling him the Prophet’s Apostle a good idea.”

  “The Muslims don’t like it but haven’t really demonstrated all that much anger. I think they’re doing it because it’s expected.”

  “Then let’s shorten it to the Apostle.”

  Whitehall nodded, “That should work.”

  “See if there isn’t anything you can do to help Graylin. I’m sure he can use any help you can offer.” Whitehall nodded and left the room. Hodges wondered why Connor wanted to speak from the United Nations. He thought about asking him but decided against it. That poor man didn’t need any more pressure put on him. But why the United Nations?

  • • •

  Word went out and everyone on Earth knew the man that was going to speak to them. He was the one the Alien had called sane. Did that mean everyone else at those meetings was insane? Billions of human argued about what it meant and their arguments spread the word about the coming presentation faster than any announcement. One side said that the Alien meant that he was the only one sane and all their leaders were crazy. The other side said that the Alien said he was the sanest in the room. Either way, the people of Earth wanted to see the human that was different from all their leaders. The word spread like wild fire across the planet and the extra day had it reaching places that didn’t have access to news channels announcing it. Millions around the planet began moving toward the places where they could hear what was said. The world leaders watched and worried. This was going to be a global event. The fall out was completely unpredictable and many feared the violence would escalate out of control. Within four hours of the announcement, the world leaders began arriving in New York.

  There was a pitched battle between the networks to get one of their crews into the Main Room to broadcast the event. Graylin finally settled the issue by telling every news agency that the government would provide a live feed from inside the chamber to everyone who wanted it. The satellites were called into play and it was agreed to beam the meeting around the planet. The various news agencies agreed to take the feed and provide interpreters for every country and provide different feeds when a country had more than one language.

  That task appeared impossible but it was done. Graylin didn’t understand how everything fell into place at the last moment, but it did. He realized that remarkable things could happen when everyone worked together.

  • • •

  A marine colonel stepped in Essay’s room and said, “Fifteen minutes until we need to leave.”

  Essay nodded and looked at his family, “Are you sure you want to go?”

  Jim rolled his eyes, “Are you serious? We’ve done everything together. How could we miss this?” Essay saw Stella and Michael nodding. “Ok. I think I can use the support.”

  Michael pulled his blanky away from his mouth and said, “Tell them the truth, Daddy.”

  They all laughed and Essay nodded, “I’ll certainly try, Son.”

  Michael tilted his head, “But you always tell the truth. It should be easy.” Essay shook his head and picked him up and hugged him.

  Emily smiled, “We should go.” Essay nodded and stepped out of his room. He handed a large stack of paper to Jim, “Carry this for me.”

  Jim looked at it and saw his father’s handwriting, “Is this what you’re going to say.”

  “It is, so don’t get the pages mixed up.” Jim nodded and followed his family out the door. The Marine led them down the hall to the elevator that took them to the roof. The same helicopter that took them to Washington was there with the rotors turning slowly. The Marine escorted them to the helicopter and they boarded and took their seats. The news crew filming their departure sent the feed out to the main line. The billions watching recognized Essay’s face from the recording the Alien had broadcast. The excitement began to build. The Apostle would be speaking shortly.

  The helicopter flew over Times Square and Essay looked down and shook his head. There were hundreds of thousands of people pressed in watching the huge monitor where the ball dropped every New Year’s Eve. Every display on the vast square showed the same picture of the helicopter flying by overhead. The crowd roared when they saw it pass. They landed on top of the United Nations Building and Admiral Whitehall walked out and greeted them. “Follow me. I’ll take you to the stage in the Main Hall.” Essay handed Michael to Emily and took the papers from Jim. He followed Whitehall over to the steps that led down into the building. It was twenty minutes until nine. They took the elevator down and Whitehall led them to the area just off the stage where the main podium was located. They arrived off stage and Essay saw the President of the United States walking toward center stage. He arrived at the podium and looked at the huge camera at the rear of the room. There were numerous cameras scattered around the room that could view the speaker from any angle. One of them swept his camera across the stage and saw Essay standing offstage with his family. He moved the view in closer and held it there.

  The Director of the event saw the image of the family and said, “Split screen. Put it beside the President. Every screen on the planet suddenly showed the President talking to the assembled world leaders on one side and Essay with his family in the wings. No one paid attention to the President. They watched Essay as he bent down and hugged each of his children. He went to a pretty young woman with brown hair and kissed her on the cheek. The children ran to him and hugged his legs.

  Silence dominated the world as they watched this very personal moment. It was clear, the Apostle didn’t know he was on camera. Finally the President turned and said, “This is the one you’ve been waiting to hear.” He pointed to Essay and he bent down and gave his children a group hug. He stood up and walked out with his papers in hand.

  The world leaders leapt to their feet and cheered. Essay’s face turned red and it was clear he wasn’t comfortable with the adulation. He put the papers down on the podium and raised his hand. It still took more than ten minutes for the crowd to settle down and the room to become silent. It was clear that Essay was extremely nervous. He cleared his throat and forced his eyes to the papers in front of him. He started reading, “Thank you for inviting me to…” Then he stopped. The room waited as Essay was silent. The world wondered what was going on. Essay looked off stage at his family and saw Michael smiling from ear to ear. The camera’s showed what he was looking at and then Essay turned back to the giant gathering. He lifted the papers and threw them over his shoulder; they scattered and flew across the stage.

  Essay looked at the room and his face softened. “Thank you for being here. As we were leaving the hotel to fly here, my older son asked me what the large stack of papers I was carrying was. I told him it was my speech. I asked him to carry them and to be careful not to get them mixed up. My youngest son, Michael, looked at me like a six year old does and said, ‘Just tell them the truth, Daddy.’ I responded that I would try. He looked at me with his head tilted and said, ‘You always tell us the truth. Why do you have to try?’”

  Essay looked out at the room and said, “The truth is painful and telling it doesn’t always remove the pain associated with it. The truth is that an aggressive alien species is coming to conquer us. I can dance around that truth but it doesn’t change. You have all seen the recordings of this species and you know what we’re up against.” Essay paused, “I asked if you know what WE are up against. It’s not just my country or yours…it’s all of us. Every human on the planet is up against this truth. It doesn’t matter what your skin color is, what religion you practice, whether you’re a good or bad person. All of us are in this together.”

  Essay looked to the right at his family and then looked back out at the assembly. “L
et me tell you what I cannot get out of my mind. I love my family. I would give my life to keep them from harm, and most of you listening to me now would do the same thing; there are things that are more important than my own survival.” Essay paused, “Since the meeting with the Prophet, I’ve come to realize something that I wasn’t really aware of before then. I look out at those here and realize that your families are also important to me. I look at you and know that you feel love for your children, spouses, and parents. That love is what I recognize as something that connects me with you. Sure, I know we have many things that make us different from each other. But there is one thing that all of us have in common. We have within us the capacity to love; even those that sometimes don’t deserve it.

  “This aggressor is coming to kill our families.” Essay paused and shook his head. “I don’t know about you, but I want to stick a dagger in the heart of every one of them for what they’re going to try to do. I wonder if you feel like me. But there’s more than that, I want to kill them for wanting to extinguish all of us. I know we’re not perfect. But we feel bad when those among us suffer. We feel the pain of children who are undernourished. We hurt for those whose pain we can’t remove. Inside of all of us is a heart that feels for others.”

  Essay lowered his head and shook it. “I’ve spent the last two days reading about the violence that’s been happening since the meeting.” He looked up, “Most of that violence has been directed toward people who are different from each other. Look around you. Wherever you are, look at those around you. They are so much more like you than the clawed monsters coming to take our planet. If you feel the need to attack something different from yourself, I think those aliens would be a good place to start. The people around you are there to help you defend the ones you love. All of us, every one of us, is needed to confront the coming danger to us all.”

  Essay leaned on the podium, “I know when I requested that this meeting be held at the United Nations Building, no one understood why. I’ve learned that no meeting has taken place here since the meeting with the Prophet. And that’s appropriate. I’ve heard that many of you have called for the armies to be disbanded and the governments abolished. That’s the only way to prove we can live together.” Essay’s eyes narrowed and he glared at the camera, “YOU ARE WRONG!”

  Silence dominated the room and the Chinese Premier looked at President Hodges. He winked and Hodges smiled.

  Essay stepped out from around the podium and looked at the world leaders, “If you know you’re going to be attacked and killed, do you disband your armies? Do you abolish your leaders? NO! YOU DON’T! You go out and recruit as many warriors as possible to fight against your attackers. You choose leaders to direct your efforts into a common cause. The United Nations was doomed from the start. Nations will never unite in a common cause. They’ll always look to take care of themselves first. Look inside and you’ll know I’m right. It’s boundaries that separate us and cause us to fight each other. Those boundaries have to be removed and here is how we can do it.”

  The entire planet held its collective breath. “All of us. Every one of us without exception, are warriors fighting to save our human family. There will no longer be armies; there will only be one army and everyone is in it. Every man, woman, and child will be in it doing everything in their power to prepare us to face this coming foe and, when the time comes, to fight them to the death to ensure mankind survives.”

  The room rose up and cheered along with billions watching the event on televisions and monitors around the world. After a few minutes Essay raised his hands. The room slowly grew silent and he stared into the camera. “We will no longer kill each other. Every one of us that is killed by our own hands is one less to face those demons. You will not work with the demons against us. If you feel you must kill, then be patient and we’ll send you out in the first wave against them. This is a fight to the death and all of us are in it.” Cheers interrupted him again and he waited patiently for them to die down. When it did, Essay looked at the leaders gathered in the room. The billions around the planet saw fire in his eyes.

  “You are leaders of various countries. After tonight, you will not be leading a country. All of you will come together and draft a plan on how everyone, and I do mean everyone, on the planet can contribute to our efforts to defeat our enemy. Forget your borders. Forget how you were chosen. You know how to organize large groups. This building will be called the One Planet Building from this day forward and you will bring all of us together. You will direct our efforts to produce the food and clothes we’ll need to feed our fighters and arms producers. You will not send delegations, you will direct our efforts personally. If you can’t do it, we’ll find those that can. If you can’t look around this room and see your brothers and sisters in arms, then get out of the way. We have to be ready when the Prophet returns in less than a year to have a planet prepared to build the starships to defeat the Traugh. For that to happen, we have to feed the planet and organize mankind to work together.”

  Essay looked at the camera, “I don’t know how many are hearing me. But this I can tell you. I will give my life to defend you. All of you are a part of my family. You are human. Are you willing to do the same for me?”

  The room exploded and there was no stopping them. The world saw their leaders dancing together in the aisles and the billions around the planet joined them. Essay had more to say but never got the chance to say it. The World Leaders rushed up to the stage and carried him around the room. Many of them felt their lives would be over after this event but now they had a reprieve and a new focus. The world was changed in a dramatic way.

  The cameras moved around the room and one of them captured the Soviet and Chinese Leaders walking over to the American President. The dancing in the street paused as the three leaders of the world’s most powerful nations came together. The dancing began in earnest when the three embraced each other and started dancing. The American President did a pretty good wolfhound dance with the Soviet Premier. The camera zoomed in and the world heard the Soviet say as a directional mike was pointed at him, “My people have always enjoyed a good fight.”

  The Premier laughed, “Well, we have a good one coming our way.”

  Times Square was a mad house with as much hugging as dancing. Every major city had their populations in the streets. For the first time in more than a year, depression gave way to resolve. Fear gave way to laughter as strangers felt a kinship for each other. The old Kindred was right; words are the most powerful thing in the universe.

  Essay finally made it back to his family, who were sitting on the edge of the stage eating popcorn. He smiled at them from the floor below them and said, “How did I do?”

  Jim smiled, “I read that speech on the way over here and I didn’t have the heart to tell you that it was really bad.” Essay stared at him for a long moment and Jim burst out laughing, “You had a lot of the things you talked about in it but it would have bombed if you stood there and read it.”

  Stella said, “OOOOOOOOOOOOO BOOM!”

  Essay looked at Emily who was holding back her laughter. “Not you, too?”

  “Michael was right. Just tell the truth. You can’t go wrong doing that. I am so proud of you.”

  “Proud enough to marry me.” Emily put her hand on her throat and Michael looked at her, “Now is when you have to tell him yes.” Emily looked at him and he said with a very serious expression. “Whenever a prince asks a princess to marry him, this is when they always say yes. Right?”

  Emily hugged him and looked at Essay, “Yes, I’m was proud enough before you stood up there to marry you.” Essay pulled her down to the floor and kissed her hard. Michael put his hands over his eyes as Jim and Stella said together, “OOOOOOOOOOOO.”

  Chapter Seven

  No one knew why it started but the next day as the world leaders were meeting, the police in Chicago found a giant pile of handguns and assault weapons in the middle of the street in South Chicago. The news teams showed
up and the huge pile of weapons was broadcast on every news channel. The reporters questioned several gang members and one of them said, “The Apostle said that borders make people fight. We call borders turf. Those wicked aliens are coming after the largest turf of all, our world. We will come together and see if we can’t persuade them to stay off our turf.”

  Soon, huge piles of weapons began appearing in more places. People across America began taking their firearms and throwing them into huge piles in every city in America. When the reporters questioned one of those throwing away their handguns, he said that they were useless against the Traugh. Perhaps the planet could use the metal in them to build weapons that would kill them. In a matter of days, every soldier around the world threw away their rifles and volunteered to farm, work in factories, or do any other task that needed doing. People looked around and saw that everyone had a smile for each other.

  The Israeli Prime Minister contacted the Iranian President the next day and said, “We are going to start sending our food surpluses to the Palestinians. We will remove the fences between us and welcome any one to come and help us work to meet the Traugh. We are going to expand our farms and ask that they join us in producing crops for all of us.”

  “I will tell the Palestinian Leaders.”

  “We are also destroying our missile defenses. Our tanks will be stored and we open our doors to anyone who chooses to pray in Jerusalem.”

  The Iranian President went to his leaders and their shock was instant. One of them said, “They are wide open to attack.”

  The Supreme Leader smiled, “The Jews are good fighters. I would like to see them fighting these aliens. They would be protecting the Faithful.” The Leaders stared at him and he said, “What do you really think would happen to us if we did attack them and it became known about their offers?” The Leaders looked at each other and he nodded as they thought it through, “The Faithful would have new leaders soon after. We will have to see where this leads us.