by Amber Wyatt
After the public excoriation and global condemnation of his actions in the documentary, social media observers note that flamboyant billionaire PHILIP BEHNKE has disappeared from the public eye, presumably too ashamed to face the widespread disapproval of his actions. Behnke Group insiders say that he continues to run his companies remotely from a private and discreet location.
GINA AN and DWAYNE WILLIAMS moved to Oahu together. Shortly afterwards, Gina announced her retirement from the music industry, and the couple married four months later in a small private ceremony, which was also attended by both Rob Serjeant and Mark Wilkins. Gina has been helping her husband to work on his first R&B album. The album release date is timed to coincide with the birth of their daughter.
MARK WILKINS recovered from his injuries and returned to his family in England as a hero. He reconciled with his grandfather, who passed away peacefully in his sleep two weeks later. Mark has appeared on several British evening talk shows, and is currently in discussion with a handful of agencies keen to sign a book and film deal regarding his secret family heritage and subsequent adventures in the quarantine zone.
A Japanese production company signed a deal with the family of HANA SUZUKI to produce a fictional, action drama series based loosely on her adventures within the zone. The same company also franchised and opened up several outlets throughout Japan of Takumi Taktical, a camping and tactical store, that also sells merchandise from the TV show.
ERIC ‘CUTTER’ FINKELSTEIN is semi-retired and works part-time on a case by case basis for the FBI as a forensic accountant. He sees a therapist once every fortnight who counsels him about his online gambling addiction. His internet access is monitored by an AI and restricted to a short list of approved websites and social media.
DAN MILEA retired from the Bureau of Prisons, citing mental health reasons, and was awarded a full pension. He spends his days working on his golf handicap, and his weekend evenings playing saxophone in a jazz bar near Las Olas Beach.
ECOSSE LAMOUREUX took a nine-month sabbatical in which he studied for his MA in Viticulture and Enology. He returned to the prison service to act as deputy warden for the newly built Rahat Husain Federal Penitentiary in north Fort Lauderdale.
ROMESH INDIKA’s biotech research company, Veil Laboratories LLC, wholly owned by a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands, has recently announced the invention of a new, cheap and generic vaccine against malaria. The company’s founder has refused to give any interviews, but a senior executive within Veil, who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the company and spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the company has several more exciting and ‘game-changing’ products in the pipeline.
The crash site of COLUMBUS 754 was comprehensively destroyed with incendiary bombs over the course of a two-day bombing campaign consisting of over thirty sorties by USAF F-35 Lightnings from Eglin Air Force base. The World Health Organization and the NSA both confirmed through examination of satellite and aerial imagery that the area could now be confirmed to be clear of any trace of the Lyssavirus.
After the destruction of the IDRC, the National Guard, supported by Fort Lauderdale police tactical units, carried out methodical, successful sweeps of all ‘no-go’ districts within the quarantine. Since then no further infected incidents or sightings have taken place. A motion has been passed in the United States Senate to consider lifting the quarantine zone from Fort Lauderdale if there are no further infected sightings in the next three-year period.
HUGH WILLIS closed his garage and runs the flagship outlet of Takumi Taktical in Fort Lauderdale. The Japanese production company also pays him a retainer to stay on as the face and brand ambassador of the franchise. He has turned down numerous requests to appear in a cameo role from Fort Lauderdale in the television series. Other than buying Hana’s old house, next to his own, Hugh’s newfound wealth and fame has not changed his lifestyle. His neighbors describe him as pleasant and quiet, and he is often seen in the evenings, sitting on his back-porch, beer in hand, deep in thought, and staring out across the blank concrete of his new backyard.
Author’s Note
The Arma Christi
In 1432 Jan van Eyck completed one of Europe’s most famous works of art, Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, comprising twelve enormous oil paintings describing the Passion of Christ. They were displayed in the cathedral in Ghent, Belgium, with the final work, a huge oak panel the size of a barn door and weighing about two tons, serving as the altarpiece.
In 1942, after the Germans had occupied Belgium, the Nazi’s specialist art unit went to the cathedral in Ghent and seized the altarpiece under the direct orders of the Führer. Hitler was obsessed with the work and immediately ordered his Ahnenerbe organization to analyze it. The Ghent altarpiece, as it was known, was rumored within its complex details, to contain a coded map to the Arma Christi. These were around twenty of the most magical and powerful occult items which had been hidden in secret locations by the early Catholic Church. They include the Cross on which Jesus was crucified, the hammer and nails used in the crucifixion, the wooden plaque inscribed ‘King of the Jews’, the Crown of Thorns, the Spear of Destiny and, of course, the Holy Grail.
Ahnenerbe teams had already spent years searching around the world for occult artifacts in the hope of providing a paranormal advantage to the Nazi war effort. Locating and retrieving one of the Arma Christi would have been a huge success for them. However, no matter how hard they tried, they were unable to decode the secrets of the painting.
An outspoken professor in the organization claimed that the reason for their failure was that one of the other twelve paintings held the key to decoding the secret map. After all, it was unlikely that the Vatican would go to the trouble of producing a secret map to its greatest treasures, just to put it on display in plain view. However, this key painting, ‘The Righteous Judge’ had gone missing many years before. The professor’s theories and complaints proved too unpopular with his superiors, and he was arrested for attempting to subvert the war effort. He was assigned to a penal battalion and sent to the Eastern Front, where six months later he was killed in action at the Battle of Kursk.
The Righteous Judge, the bottom left hand painting of the altarpiece, went missing in 1934 and has never been found since. Nearly ninety years later, it is still regarded as an unsolved case by the Belgian police. What modern day visitors see, when viewing the altarpiece now, is a copy which was painted before the original disappeared.
Of the Arma Christi, many of them have been present throughout European history and are proudly displayed by the Catholic Church in various locations. However, it has become obvious that many of them were frauds and hoaxes. Individual thorns, plucked from the crown of thorns, were given to chosen individuals as rewards for outstanding service, or even as wedding gifts to royal families around Europe. A comprehensive audit revealed that if all the supposed thorns were collected in one place, they would add up to a veritable forest of thorn bushes. Similarly, enough alleged fragments of the one true cross exist to build several ships, and enough pieces of the spear of the centurion Longinus, to arm a Roman legion.
Enthusiasts and historians, as well as Vatican officials, have confirmed the locations and repositories of many of the officially recognized Arma Christi (such as the crown of thorns in Notre Dame cathedral) although no independent, scientific verification has confirmed either their genuine provenance, nor any evidence of their supernatural attributes. However, most of the Arma Christi never came into the possession of the Church, and simply vanished into history.
Two of these instruments, the Veil of Veronica and the Holy Grail, were supposed to be able to heal all wounds, cure any ailment, neutralize plagues and poisons, and even to bring the dead back to life.
Neither has ever been found.
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