by J. Thorn
He plays a little guitar on the side...just for fun...and makes up any excuse to either go trail hiking or strolling along his favorite place...Cannon Beach. He answers all his emails sent to twbrown.maydecpub @gmail.com and tries to thank everybody personally when they take the time to leave a review of one of his works.
The Seventh Seal
By J. Thorn
"...an edge-of-your seat apocalyptic adventure full of twists and turns. I couldn't put it down!"
Vicki Keire
Author of Worlds Burn Through
"A new and refreshingly believable handling of an old story concept. I totally enjoyed the characters who were well rounded out to show the good and bad and sometimes pure evil in the human condition. .Apocolypse with a twist of humanity"
Gayle from Amazon.com
"It makes you gasp at every turn...J. Thorn does an amazing job of flipping every preconception on its head!'"
Jack D. Albrecht Jr.
Author of Osric's Wand
"Very enjoyable, hard to put down, some late nights till finished."
Mate from Amazon.com
The Seventh Seal
Sixth Edition
Copyright © 2011 by J. Thorn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Illustration by Kate Sterling
Edited by Robert Reed, Katy Sozaeva, Laurie Love and Rebecca T. Dickson
For more information:
http://www.jthorn.net
[email protected]
Note to reader: The Seventh Seal is the J. Thorn version of Sons of Anarchy meets Die Hard with a radical Christian as the bad guy. It is a fast-paced, dark fantasy thriller full of violence, intended for mature audiences only. In addition, please do not purchase The Seventh Seal if you are a religious person and find a story with violence committed by members of the Catholic Church offensive. The Seventh Seal requires the same suspension of belief as a zombie apocalypse tale or a story about sparkly vampires.
For Adam, my first reader and cohort in crime.
And the smoke of their torture goes up for ever and ever, and they have no relief day or night, those who worship the beast and the image of him, and anyone who takes the mark of his name.
--The Revelation of John, Chapter 14
Take the cup and sip the wine
Until you see the cursed line
--“Paris Green,” Threefold Law
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Acknowledgments
Other Works
About the Author
Chapter 1
Every strand of Sarah’s hair shocked John Burgoyne like a current from downed electrical wires. The drugs told him he needed to be in her, envelop her. The room glowed through the darkness. The hypnotic guitar of Threefold Law’s “Old Dominion” pulsed through the speakers on tentacles of golden vibrations, surrounding and stifling the other sounds in the house. The Halloween party continued upstairs while John and Sara were in the basement. She was dressed as a French maid and he came to the party as a priest.
The hidden pill Sarah dropped into John’s beer dissolved in his stomach. The beer settled at the top of his throat and he fought the acidic burn. The drug made him dizzy and ripe for Sarah’s revenge. She would get him in a compromising position and then take a picture with her phone. Sarah never forgave John for their breakup. She could not accept that he simply did not want to be with her anymore, even though John moved on and married Jana. John wrecked Sarah’s life and she was going to do the same to him.
Sarah pushed him back on the couch and unbuckled her black leather belt, laughing as she imagined him trying to claim rape. John spilled the remainder of his warm beer, dropped the bottle to the floor, and – moving his hands to her hips – slid down the garter straps. He pushed the miniskirt up to reveal the tops of white, fishnet stockings. John’s body slid beneath hers and into a familiar position. His vision blurred and Sarah’s words took on a wavering quality, as if she was speaking underwater. He felt her hands tugging at his underwear and he saw black pants at his ankles. His cell phone slid from his pocket and hit the cement floor.
Sarah finished with John and rejoined the party. She turned the deadbolt on the door and locked John in the basement. She didn’t want to see his face again.
***
John awoke shivering. His chattering teeth pulled him from a fitful sleep. The stench of vomit and piss pulled at the remaining contents of his stomach. He sat up and glanced at the black plastic through nauseous double vision. John picked up the phone and flipped it open, expecting the screen to come alive. He squinted to prepare for the bright shock of a compounded headache. When it didn’t happen, he fumbled for the on button, bringing the inanimate object to life. The smudged LCD screen finally lit but John dropped it to the ground as rays of pallid green bored through his skull like a rusty drill. Shrill beeps emanated from his phone in rapid succession. John rubbed his eyes with sweaty hands, his body convulsing before looking down at the display.
What the fuck?
He forced his eyes to focus on the screen, struggling to read the characters. John held the phone outward and turned in a slow circle. Bits and pieces of memory raced through his head. John loosened the white collar hanging from the button on his black shirt. The cheap plastic of a dime-store rosary cut into his throat. The air felt cold and damp, weighed down with silence. Opposite the steps, John ran a hand along the wall and found the light switch. He flicked it up and down several times, failing to dispel the inky blackness. Stumbling over empty beer bottles, he crawled to the circuit panel. Using the weak light from his phone’s display he saw all of the breakers faced right, locked in the “on” position. So why didn’t he have power? More beeping shot from the tinny speaker on his phone. John navigated the basement furniture and tried climbing the stairs. He reached the solid oak door and listened.
Nothing.
Flies crawled under the door and buzzed around his head, an unusual occurrence for late October in Ohio. A sour stench forced John to heave again. The door leading from the basement to the kitchen was locked.
“Hey,” he said. ”Is anyone there?”
John pounded on the door with his right hand until it was
numb. He kept reassuring himself that his best friend Reggie would throw open the door at any moment and everyone would have a hearty laugh at his expense.
He waited.
He sat on the top step, straining again to focus on the phone’s display. His eyes chased a floater from the edge of his vision as the letters on the screen materialized. He pushed the envelope button, which retrieved the first three subject lines from the inbox.
whr r u
johncall
help
***
Jana, like the rest of the city, was in dire need of help. The secret underground society of the Holy Covenant began its offensive by declaring martial law and then systematically killing the sinners and heretics. Using government records, the Holy Covenant identified the heathens and sent military killing squads into the streets to eliminate them. Led by a radical fundamentalist known as The Father, the militant religious group was a powerful yet hidden spur of the Catholic Church. The group spent decades bribing government leaders and five-star generals with gold horded in the Vatican after centuries of conquests. Father was about to begin the war to end all wars, an event he’d planned for years. The Holy Covenant wanted to rid the planet of evil in preparation for the Second Coming and the Thousand Year Peace. They were prepared to fight a new Crusade by murdering the non-believers and bringing civilization back to its most primitive state through the destruction of the country’s infrastructure. The Church commandeered the grid as well as all law enforcement agencies through bribery, promising the faithful within the existing government a place at God’s side upon his Second Coming. The new militia destroyed an unsuspecting, apathetic and unprepared populace in a new apocalypse. Cities would be emptied and left to rot while the church returned as the epicenter in a return to feudal society.
John would come to realize how lucky he was to be wearing a priest costume to a Halloween party on the night of the First Cleansing, the first night of martial law and murder. The Holy Covenant believed a new prophet would help them destroy the infidels. That prophet’s name was John the Revelator. The leaders of the Holy Covenant demanded Father find the prophet and eliminate the non-believers. God showed Father the prophet in a vision and that was when Father knew John Burgoyne was John the Revelator. Father would go to the ends of the earth to find the prophet and usher in the Thousand Year Peace.
At least John would have a fighting a chance, an opportunity to lead a resistance. Having his ex-girlfriend slip him a roofie was only the beginning.
Chapter 2
Jana had sent the text messages October 31 at 10:30 p.m. Today was November 1st, according to the date on the main screen. John pushed the wrong button, retrieving his sent texts folder.
wish u were here
Sent to Sara at one in the morning. John selected the message and noticed three pictures attached to it. The hourglass spun on the screen while retrieving the first picture. Although dark and grainy, he had no difficulty recognizing himself in the photo, lying on the couch in Reggie’s basement. John’s head tilted up at an angle, his mouth was covered with a wide grin and his eyes stared at a naked woman. Sarah stood to the side, smiling and also naked.
He gasped and scrolled down to the second picture. Long, blonde hair fell down to the top of her waist. She sat astride him looking up at her phone while she took the picture. Based on the severity of his hangover John suspected Sara slipped him something.
Oh, Jana. Samuel thought. Sara drugged me.
Using the phone as his flashlight, John staggered back down the steps. He collapsed onto the couch at the opposite wall to avoid the smell of his own vomit. He wiped tears from his cheeks and his thumbs moved across the phone’s keyboard before he recognized the “No Service” icon on the display. He shut the phone off and back on again.
“No Service.”
John walked back up to the top of the steps and held the phone high above his head.
“No Service.”
Who locked me in the basement?
He hoped someone in the house would be waking soon. They would hear him, find him and everything would be fine. But John didn’t believe that lie even as his mind formed it. He tried to open both closet doors but the locks refused to give. John considered launching a shoulder into the door but knew his collarbone would snap before the wood budged.
He took a quick inventory of the room using the light filtering in from the glass block windows. Two couches, a treadmill, a TV, a chair and a stack of board games on a shelf. His stomach rumbled and grinded with a low moan and his lips began to crack at the corners.
The pictures and the text kept tumbling through his thoughts. Although they were sent, Jana did not reply. Her text messages arrived before his with cryptic, desperate phrases.
John spent many hours in his best friend’s house but he was unfamiliar with the overall layout. Reggie’s basement had glass block windows making it difficult to determine the time of day. John looked at the top of the steps and saw a thin, gray line appearing at the bottom of the door.
He opened his phone and pointed it at the chair, aware of one less bar on the battery indicator. He angled the screen to the floor to provide enough light to get to work. John turned the chair over and unscrewed one of the legs. The wooden spindle gave way and he repeated the process with the other three legs.
He climbed the steps and tried to shove one of the legs under the door as a wedge. The tight gap kissed the ceramic tile, not giving him any leverage. John took one leg and brought it down hard on the glass doorknob. The handle shattered but the brass innards remained intact, keeping the door locked. John climbed back down the stairs and decided to try his luck on one of the closet doors. He helped Reggie build a deck the summer before and John knew his best friend kept his tool chest in there. If he could get into it, his chances of getting through the kitchen door would improve.
John brought the chair leg up and struck the door with it. Shards of wood shattered and flew across the room but the door held strong.
John slid down the wall. He thought of Jana and reread her fleeting text messages. Visions of Sarah and her drug-induced revenge made John’s head hurt. He thought about his wife and the blurry memories of the party.
Headaches pounded the inside of his skull while cramps wracked his stomach. John felt like someone was slamming a ball peen hammer on his forehead. He shivered from the cold damp rising out of the basement floor.
Chapter 3
“All clear.”
John froze at the sound of the voice and felt the cramps gripping his muscles like a hawk’s talon.
What the hell is going on?
“Sir, there appears to be a basement.”
“Then secure it, Private.”
John dragged himself behind the couch on the opposite wall. He heard the crack of wood and saw the gray November light hit the landing near the kitchen. Gleaming black boots crushed the remains of the glass doorknob as they crept down the steps. John took a deep breath.
He watched as two sets of legs hit the bottom step. Red pinpoints from the rifles’ laser sights raced around the room. They flashed over him a number of times but never remained long enough to reveal his position. John bit into his tongue trying to ignore the cramps.
“Clear.”
A blast rang through the air followed by the acrid taste of burning gunpowder. Before the reverberations faded, a second gunshot followed the first. John heard the boots smash each of the closet doors open.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
The two men kicked beer bottles around the floor, pointed their flashlights around the room and walked back up the steps towards the kitchen. John exhaled as tendrils of smoke danced in the air.
Chapter 4
Natural daylight poured through the open kitchen door and climbed high on the wall until it disappeared completely. John listened from behind the couch, still unwilling to chance exposing himself. When the light faded to dusk, he crawled out.
Two black holes stoo
d where the closet doors used to be. John flipped the cell phone open but did not hear the customary start-up chime. A ragged crack ran the length of the screen and the battery came loose from the clip on the back. He’d landed on top of the phone while trying to hide. John shoved it into a pocket and felt his way toward the nearest closet.
A smeared glass block window provided enough of a glare for John to recognize the flashlights on the shelf. He grabbed one and flicked the switch. Nothing. He slammed it to the ground and grabbed another. The torch blasted the room with blinding light. John stumbled over the shards of the door as his eyes burned before becoming accustomed to the brightness. He swept the beam around the cramped work room until he noticed a toolbox. Grabbing the gym bag off a low shelf, he emptied its contents on the floor and swung the empty bag over his shoulder. Old baseballs and street-hockey balls rolled under the shelves. John collected a hammer, screwdrivers, a hand ax and plastic wrap and shoved them into the bag.
He turned off the flashlight and crept toward the steps. He shivered from the approaching chill of night while climbing the first step toward the kitchen. The wooden plank of the step sagged under his weight. John’s palm felt the ruddy surface of the textured wall as he climbed the steps. He felt his heart slamming against his rib cage.
The door to the kitchen stood wide open. John saw broken glass scattered on the tile floor. The duffel bag on his shoulder swung with each movement, the contents poking into his ribs. He set the bag down on the top step and waited. He listened. Convinced of the emptiness, John stepped into the kitchen and out of his old life forever. The Holy Covenant began the First Cleansing in Cleveland and John was about to see the aftermath.