The Days of Noah, The Complete Box Set: A Novel of the End Times in America

by Mark Goodwin

  Noah looked around the room. No one said a word. Even Cassie, who had been monitoring the rise of the New World Order for years, sat speechless. A wave of hopelessness swept over Noah as he thought about the future that lay before him. Today marked the end of freedom on this earth. Lacy would never have the opportunity to grow up in the same carefree world he had. That world was gone forever. He forced himself to focus on heaven and eternity with Christ the King. He sighed and prayed silently to himself. God, I know we’ll live with you forever, but this world is all I know. I’m afraid; afraid for Lacy, Cassie, and myself. I don’t want to be, Lord. Grant me courage. And please don’t let my family suffer.

  David grabbed his cane and used it to help himself up from the couch. Without speaking, he walked into the kitchen with his head hung low.

  Noah figured that David must have been feeling the same emotions as himself. He looked at Cassie, who, while not at all happy, didn’t appear the least bit surprised by the announcement. Noah kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be right back.”

  She nodded and forced a smile. “Okay.”

  Noah followed David into the kitchen. “You doing alright?”

  David filled his glass with water and took a sip. His face was red. “No. Not by a long shot.”

  Noah exhaled deeply. “Just when we thought it couldn’t get any more miserable.”

  David stared out the window. “Yeah.”

  Noah wasn’t sure if he was helping matters with David or making things worse. He stood silently for a moment, then, when it seemed David had nothing more to say, Noah turned to walk away.

  “This changes everything,” David said before Noah had a chance to leave.

  Noah turned. “I know.”

  “I hate it for Lynette. I wish she didn’t have to live in such a place. This is the stuff of nightmares. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  Noah put his hand on David’s shoulder. “We are going to persevere until the Lord calls us home. We don’t have any other options. But we’ll do it together. You and me, and Jesus.”

  David seemed to have found a glimmer of hope in the statement. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly as he repeated it like a mantra. “You and me, and Jesus.”

  Elliot walked in the room. “Bad news, huh?”

  Jim came in close behind Elliot. “So, what’s the plan?”

  David looked at Noah like he was expecting him to answer. Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “The plan?” David pensively rubbed his forehead for a second. “The plan is, we’ll go back to Sevierville. We’ll get some semblance of law and order re-established, and then we’ll start building a militia.”

  Noah looked up at David. “I’m in, but you know we’ll never defeat the antichrist, at least not until the King returns with the armies of heaven.”

  David snarled one side of his mouth. “That may be, but if Angelo Luz thinks I’m going to sit back and sing “Kumbaya” while I wait for his New World Order to come round me up and kill my family, he better think again. I’m not going out without a fight!”

  Jim nodded in agreement. “We should think about establishing an underground economy as well. If we don’t take the pledge, we don’t get access to the new monetary system; we are completely cut out of the marketplace.”

  Elliot glanced at Jim. “Are you talking about the flea market barter fairs like we saw popping up?”

  Jim scratched his head. “Not exactly. Those are great in the beginning, but there’s a limit to what you can do with a primitive barter system. If you have eggs and need soap, and I need eggs but only have coffee, I have to run around and find someone who has soap and is willing to trade it for coffee in order to buy your eggs. If we really want people to be able to operate outside of the system, we have to have an underground currency.”

  Elliot said, “After the currency collapse, I doubt that people would ever use US dollars anymore.”

  Jim nodded. “You’re right. If we could foster a system that would reinstitute silver and gold as a currency, that would be great. I think people have an instinctual understanding that gold and silver should be used as money. If we get the ball rolling, I bet the idea would catch on fast.”

  David looked confused. “But how could we get the system started?”

  “We’d have to set up some type of trading post. If we got a few folks to sell us some things for silver or gold, we could resell it for silver or gold,” Jim answered.

  Noah shrugged. “Like what?”

  “Like milk, eggs, butter, cheese, second-hand clothing, extra tools, ammo, and equipment. When the first crops start coming in this spring, folks can sell their excess lettuce for someone else’s peas.” Jim raised his eyebrows. “If you provide a doorway for commerce, it will find a way. It’s the natural order of things.”

  Elliot snapped his fingers. “The Kettle would be the perfect place to set up shop. Do you guys think Sharon would let us use it?”

  David laughed. “Great idea! Since you thought of it, you ask her.”

  Elliot’s face lost the look of excitement. “Noah, maybe Cassie would be better suited to talk to Sharon about the matter.”

  Noah winked at David. “Okay, Elliot, you can ask Cassie to talk to Sharon.”

  Jim waved his hand. “I’ll ask Sharon. It’s a great idea. If it gets to be too big for the Kettle, she has a nice big parking lot for it to overflow into.”

  “And what about when the census offices start popping up in Sevierville?” Noah asked.

  David grinned. “We’ll sabotage them. Whatever it takes, we’ll fight them off as long as we can. I’m sure Luz won’t let that go on for too long. I’m sure he’ll send in the heavy hitters once an area is identified as a problem. We’ll get organized and fight them, too. As long as we have breath, we’ll fight.”

  Cassie wandered into the kitchen while David was still talking. She leaned against the door frame. “The ladies will do whatever we can to help. It will be tough, but know that we’re proud of you guys.”

  Noah took her hand and looked into her eyes. “Thanks.” He was not looking forward to being separated from her again to wage another war. But, for now, he was determined to make their time together count.

  Elliot looked at Cassie. “Don’t you think it’s odd that the globalists are killing off most of the Americans that would have gone along with their plan while the ones who are surviving tend to be the ones that are going to fight back?”

  Cassie said, “I don’t think that was necessarily their plan. The people who live in the cities with the highest die-off rates tend to be more dependent on government and infrastructure systems. The folks in the rural areas are the more conservative, Christian, and resilient. I’m sure they figure on that being the case. I think they were hoping for a complete die-off in America, so they could reclaim it as a sort of continental gated community for the mega-elite—a place they could call their own. The stubborn sort, like us, who just won’t die, are an inconvenience to the grand scheme.”

  David half-smiled. “We are the stubborn sort aren’t we?”

  Cassie winked with a nod. “Indeed we are.”

  The group did the best they could to stay positive over the weekend. Monday morning, Noah and the other men loaded up his Ford to head back to Sevierville.

  Lacy carried a small brown bag of food out to the truck. “Two weeks, you promised!”

  Noah grinned from ear to ear and picked his little girl up in his arms. “I said I promise that I’ll try. We’ve got a lot of work to do back in town. As soon as it’s done, you and Mom can come out. We should have it done in two weeks. Is that fair?”

  Lacy squeezed his neck. “Yes, but try really, really hard to be done in two weeks.”

  “I will, sugar.”

  Cassie stood nearby. “Ditto.”

  Noah nodded, put Lacy down, and gave his wife a big hug. “I’m sure we can have things ready in two weeks.”

  Sharon stood near Jim and Sandy. “Nine a.m. and nine p.m.”


  Jim smiled. “That’s all you have to remember. Switch on the power and push the button to talk. Benny is usually not too far from the radio, so if you have an emergency, just give us a shout.”

  “I think I can handle that,” Sharon said.

  Sandy kissed Jim. “Be safe.”

  “I will.” Jim gave her one more tight embrace.

  David said goodbye to his family as did Elliot, and the men loaded into the truck. All waved and blew kisses as they drove off.

  Once on the road, Noah glanced in the rearview to look at Jim. “Good job on training Sharon to operate the radio.”

  “Yeah, she’s come a long way. The radio is a good job for her. She’d never be as comfortable with a rifle as Sandy or Caroline, and certainly never as proficient as Cassie. With her filling that position, it allows the others to focus on security. It’s good for everybody. She picked it right up; she’s a fast learner.”

  David was sitting up front, next to Noah. He turned to look at Jim. “And did you get the all-clear to use the Kettle for our trading post?”

  Jim held up a set of keys and jingled them. “She said if there’s anything left of it, we are welcome to use it however we see fit.”

  “Good job,” Elliot said. “But, you know I would have asked her.”

  The guys all got a chuckle out of Elliot’s comment.

  They continued to chat and speculate what they were in for. All agreed that it would be much tougher to regain law and order than it would have been to maintain it, but they’d had no choice but to hide out until DHS fell.

  Noah hadn’t been thinking about the shootout at the checkpoint, and his heart skipped a beat when he came around the corner and saw the deserted TSA vehicles. He took a deep breath and kept driving.

  When they pulled into the drive, they were greeted by a rough looking animal, which barked persistently and somewhat ferociously.

  Jim said, “Elliot, since you took a pass on talking to Sharon, I’ll let you have the honors of getting out and dealing with the dog.”

  “Just give him a second; he’ll go away,” Elliot replied.

  About that time, Kevin walked out on the porch and whistled. The medium-sized dog that was obviously a mutt of some kind immediately quit barking and trotted up to the porch. The good Lord hadn’t seen fit to bless the poor beast with a handsome face nor regal stature. On top of that, it appeared to have had a rather rough existence.

  “Are we safe?” Noah slowly opened the door.

  “Safer than you were before Danger came along.” Kevin bent down and rubbed the animal’s neck.

  “You named him Danger?” Elliot closed his door and grabbed a bag from the bed of the truck.

  Kevin continued to show the dog attention by pulling its ears, which it seemed to enjoy immensely. “Yeah, Sarah wanted to name him Cupcake, but I wanted him to have a name that gave him a sense of purpose.”

  Jim came around the truck and cautiously approached the animal. “Danger definitely fits better.”

  Kevin kept petting. “We got lucky the other night when Benny heard the tires hit the gravel. If they would have approached on foot, I don’t think I’d be standing here talking to you. Then the next day, completely out of the blue, Danger showed up. We started feeding him, and he just naturally began defending the house.”

  Noah looked up at the sky and smiled. He knew it was more than coincidence that a guard dog happened by. Noah walked up to the dog and patted him on the head, and Danger energetically wagged his tail. “He’s so ugly that he’s cute.”

  Sarah walked out on the porch. “I see you’ve met Cupcake.”

  Kevin rolled his eyes. “By the way, the power has been out since yesterday.”

  Noah shook his head. “So much for the antichrist restoring power.”

  “The what?” Kevin asked.

  Noah stroked Danger under the chin. “The antichrist. Angelo Luz fulfilled some very specific prophecies last Friday when he made his big announcement.”

  Sarah smirked. “Benny was telling me about that. I guess it makes sense, but we’ve had some pretty mean people in this world over the years. Hitler, Mao, Stalin—heck, I remember people thought President Clay and even Obama could have been the antichrist.”

  Noah just nodded. “Remind me later, and I’ll point out some Bible verses that allude to the one world government, the new Global Republic identification accounts, and even the treaty itself.”

  “Sure.” Sarah didn’t look too interested.

  Jim asked, “How is Benny running the radio with no power?”

  Kevin fought back a chuckle. “He’s about to go into information withdrawal. He’s got the inverter hooked up to the TWRA truck. He runs the engine for about twenty minutes every morning and every evening, then gets on the ham until the battery is about to peter out, which isn’t very long.”

  Benny walked out. “Welcome home, guys.”

  “Hey, Benny. Kevin was just telling me about the power situation.”

  Benny pursed his lips. “Yeah. I’ve probably got enough gas to keep this system going for about three weeks. We need something more sustainable.”

  Jim rubbed his forehead. “I doubt there’s a lot of gas left in the motor pool tank. I wonder if we could rig up a windmill using an alternator from a car.”

  Benny was quiet as he looked around the yard. Seconds later, he said, “Maybe. But you’d have to get it up above the treetops. I guess we could salvage enough stuff to build a mount on top of the barn. It sits a little higher than everything else around.”

  Elliot said, “Mr. Davis has an old steam engine out at his place. It should run fast enough to generate electricity from an alternator.”

  Jim pointed at Elliot. “That’s a really good idea. Maybe we can talk him out of it, for use at the sheriff’s office. Why don’t you take a ride with me? We’ll stop by the motor pool and see if there’s any gas left, then spin by the Davis place.”

  Noah grabbed the rest of the things out of the back. “You guys can take my truck if you like.”

  Jim patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks, but the Wildlife Resource Agency truck looks a little more official if we’re trying to get someone to give up their prized antique.”

  David sat down on the top stair of the porch and leaned his cane against the rail. “Why don’t you take some of Isaiah’s silver coins in case he isn’t convinced that it’s his civic duty to hand it over.”

  Jim nodded. “Maybe some gold coins as well. I’m sure he paid big money for an operational steam engine.”

  “I’ll dig some out for you. Be right back.” Noah was glad that Isaiah’s coins would be going to a good use. He retrieved a small garden trowel and dug up one of the PVC pipes he and David had buried the day before they left for the holidays. He brushed the dirt off of his hand and took the pipe to the barn to saw off the end cap with a hack saw. As he positioned the pipe on the work bench, he remembered when he had prepared Isaiah’s body for burial. Noah’s heart filled with sadness, and he took a deep breath. “I’m glad we were able to bring you home and get you cleaned up, old friend. I would have hated to have had to leave without you. We miss you. Sharon really misses you, but she is really making an effort to be strong. We all are. It will never be the same here without you.” Noah finished sawing off the end cap and looked up. “But I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other again real soon, one way or the other.”

  Noah left the coins in the pipe, as there were several pounds of silver in the pipe along with a couple ounces of gold. He returned to the house and handed the pipe to Elliot. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  Elliot winked. “Then you better hope I don’t drive by an arcade with a pinball machine.”

  Jim shook his head. “We’ll be back soon. Benny, fire up the radio in about an hour. I’m going to see if I can get the radio going at the station.”

  David picked up his cane and used it to point at Jim. “You guys make sure you’ve got a couple extra rifle mags nearby
and keep your head on a swivel.”

  Elliot grabbed his rifle. “We’ll do. See you soon.”

  Noah waved as Elliot and Jim pulled away. He considered all the work there was to be done. As he had mentioned to David, Noah knew that the rising Global Republic would soon lay waste to their efforts, like a child kicking over a sandcastle. Nevertheless, they would persevere and press on. Noah recalled the parable told by Jesus in Luke 19. The King in the story instructed those he left in charge to “occupy until I return.”

  CHAPTER 10

  I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword. When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!” When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

  Revelation 6:2-8

  Everett sighed to express his exasperation as he lifted one of the venison hams out of the trunk of his BMW. “Please, try not to get any blood in my trunk.”

  Ken fought back a smile as he carefully picked up the other ham. “I offered to drive up here in the Camaro. You insisted on taking the Beamer.”

  Everett exhaled, blowing deeply. “I know. I don’t want the tires to dry rot or the battery to go dead from sitting too long. We always take your car to town to blend in. I thought this would be a good opportunity to run the engine for a bit. Don’t pay any attention to me. I don’t know why I’m letting it stress me out. It’s just a car.”