by Reed, N. C.
FIRE FROM
THE SKY
BOOK eight
FIRE FROM THE SKY: BOOK 8: HELL FIRE
by N.C. REED
Published by Creative Texts Publishers
PO Box 50
Barto, PA 19504
www.creativetexts.com
Copyright 2019 by N.C. REED
All rights reserved
Cover photos used by license.
Design copyright 2019 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC
The Fire From the Sky Logo is a trademark of Creative Texts Publishers, LLC
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual names, persons, businesses, and incidents is strictly coincidental. Locations are used only in the general sense and do not represent the real place in actuality.
Kindle Edition
FIRE FROM
THE SKY
BOOK eight
N.C. Reed
This book is dedicated to my nephew, the model of sorts around which Jake Sidell was built. Part of the original Wrecking Crew, and one of the reasons I bothered getting up in the morning.
We will always miss you, Jake.
Nothing will ever truly seem right again without you, Big Country. A gentle giant until roused, a good soul and brave heart, always there to lend a hand, taken without rhyme or reason far sooner than should have been.
We will miss your laugh, your smile, your steady voice and giant presence among us. The hole you leave was scarcely large enough for the soul that filled it.
May the angels carry you swiftly to your new home, where I hope the mud is deep, the tires are tall and the fish are biting.
When you see the Ranger, the Clerk and the Chef, give them a hug for us.
NCR
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PROLOGUE
The Worthy Ezekiel Talent walked with sworn and dedicated purpose down the deserted highway. He idly wondered why more travelers didn't still use these monuments to the decadent civilization God had destroyed just months ago, and if their lack of use meant that the Utmost Worthy's message was being heard and heeded. The irony of using a monument to the decadent society that the Message he carried preached against so vehemently to carry that same message was lost on the Worthy traveler.
Not that it mattered to him. All that mattered in his world now was the next town ahead and the pack on his back. It was Worthy Talent's job, his mission, to carry the word of the Utmost to all places, large and small. In his pack were small receivers and solar power cells that would allow every corner of the nation to hear the words that had guided Ezekiel Talent to the road he now joyfully traveled.
His name before the Cleansing, as the Uttermost Worthy often referred to it, had been Dale Roberts. As that now dead personification of decadent evil and debauchery, Worthy Ezekiel had been just another lost animal, grazing on the goodness around him with no thought to the damage he did or the to the harm he brought to others through his carelessness. His only concern at the time had been to further his career as a business executive and to make still more money to waste on the frivolities that the decadent world offered to one who could afford them.
The Cleansing had brought an end to that. He had been celebrating some meaningless event on a rooftop bar with people he had thought of as friends when the sky seemed to light up from horizon to horizon. For the first few seconds everyone gasped in wonder and awe, some clapping in delight at 'the show'. Then the lights had gone out.
Everywhere. The lights in the sky had not faded, but every other source of light within sight had vanished, extinguished like a candle having been snuffed out.
At first, the man known then as Dale Roberts had given little thought to the 'blackout', other than the inconvenience it would surely cause him should it last for very long. Unable to pay his tab with his credit card, he was forced to borrow the cash from a 'friend' to settle his bill before heading home, the party now effectively canceled. It was a group of tipsy, stumbling people who bumped their way through the dark to emerge on a dark street. A few flashlights were visible, but otherwise there was nothing.
Dale Roberts knew where he had parked his car and felt his way to where it should be, muttering about the lack of emergency lighting and threatening the air around him with a lawsuit should he fall and be injured.
It wasn't until he reached his car that Dale Roberts began to realize that something more than a blackout had happened.
First, his remote would not activate his lights or unlock his doors. Cursing the gadget's obviously dead battery, he used the key to gain entry. In his anger he didn't note that the interior light didn't activate, nor did the dashboard systems. He merely pushed the button to start the engine.
And got no response whatever.
He fumbled again for the key, inserting it in the ignition after multiple attempts in the dark with the unfamiliar action, and turned the key.
Again, there was nothing.
Cursing again, Dale Roberts emerged from his useless automobile to try and catch one of those 'friends' and ask for a lift home. He could call a garage in the morning and have them come and take the car to the dealer for repair. It was still under warranty after all.
It took him a minute of studying those around him to realize that his car wasn't the only one that wouldn't start. In fact, he saw only three vehicles that were running, and all of them seemed to be in a hurry to depart. Left in the dark again, Dale Roberts reached for his phone, thinking to use it as a light to find a way home.
To find his phone completely dead. He muttered yet another curse and was about to fling the useless appliance away when he heard someone shout. He couldn't see them, but he heard a yell of “look!” and another of “oh, my God!”. Turning, he saw a gout of flame shoot toward the sky from the direction of the airport.
A consensus of those 'in the dark' was that the lights going out had caused a plane to crash on landing. Dale Roberts thought something wrong with that decision, and after a minute of steadily sobering thought, he mentioned it.
“Doesn't the airport had backup generators for that kind of thing?”
No one replied. No one knew how.
Other fires could be seen now, in different places, but the one thing missing was sirens. There were no sirens. No fire trucks whizzing by on their way to combat the blaze. Where were the firemen?
After thirty minutes of no answers and too many more questions, Dale Roberts was growing cold and returned to his car. He could only assume that things would be straightened out in the morning. There was nothing he could do and his buzz was making him sleepy, so he climbed into his dead car, locked the doors manually and reclined the seat, using his suit coat for a blanket.
He was asleep in two minutes.
-
The Worthy Ezekiel Talent shook his head slowly at the memory of that night and the next morning. The stunned dis
belief he had shared with so many others as they realized the enormity of the disaster the night before. None of them realized as yet that this was a long term, permanent change in their lives. It was at this point merely a massive inconvenience, and one that had obviously led to significant loss of life.
There was no radio or television reports, no twenty-four-hour news cycle to update them, nothing to provide information of any kind. In the absence of real information, rumors and speculation began to feed fear and even outright terror among the people milling around in the street.
Dale Roberts decided he wasn't going to hang around until things turned into some kind of riot or worse, so he grudgingly began walking home. His condo was only three miles from where he stood, and in normal big-city traffic he could actually walk it faster than drive, at times. Certainly, today was such a time, as he had yet to see another moving vehicle.
Arriving at his building without incident, he climbed eleven flights of stairs to stagger to his front door. Nothing in the building worked, including the elevators. Once inside his apartment he stripped off his dirty clothing and stepped into his shower, intending to clean away the grime of the day before and a night of partying and sleeping in his car. He twisted the handle that would activate his wall shower and waited for the water to wash over him.
And waited.
No water came. He heard a few hissing sounds of air traveling through pipes, but no water ever appeared. Cursing once more, he shut off the valve and climbed back out of the shower. He hated to put clean clothing on without a shower but his suit from yesterday had seen a lot of difficult mileage, so he dressed and walked into his living room.
He had a decent view of the city from his building and used it now to look over the landscape. Fires were still burning in dozens of places, judging from the smoke. A sudden thought hit him and he went to his closet and got a pair of powerful binoculars that he used on occasion. Using the glasses, he scanned the city, focusing on finding the source of some of the smoke to see what kind of fire it might be.
The first he managed to get a look at was a tenement building that was perhaps two or three miles away. He traveled by it on a regular basis on his way to work. Now he could see flames coming from the upper floors, flickering from almost every window. What he didn't see was fire engines. No one was fighting the fire. It was out of control.
The next fire appeared to be around the remains of a small airplane that had crashed into the city. He frowned at that, remembering the blast from the direction of the airport the evening before. Had the lights in the sky interfered with the planes in some way? For that matter, now that he was sober, Dale Roberts wondered for the first time if the light show they had seen had put the lights out. He remembered that it was only a few seconds maybe, certainly less than a minute, from the time the aurora appeared until the city was left in the dark.
The sky had been filled with light, he remembered. What if this problem, this phenomenon wasn't local? What if it was more widespread than that? Until that thought had struck him, he had unconsciously assumed that this was a local problem and that help would be arriving today to set things right again. Yet, if that were true, wouldn't that assistance have arrived by now? FEMA, National Guard, Red Cross, all the organizations that served in times like this should have been here by now.
But they were not. No one was fighting the fires or trying to clear the streets of the hundreds of dead automobiles that now sat useless throughout the city. No one was doing anything other than milling around in the streets, probably wondering the same things he was. Such as what the hell was going on?
Surely help would be coming.
-
Hours turned to days, and help never came. The man known as Dale Roberts had remained in his condo for three days, avoiding the growing unrest on the streets, until his small store of food and water had been exhausted. He had avoided venturing out onto the streets for another week by raiding the empty condos on his floor and taking food and water that his absent neighbors weren't using. He promised himself at the time that he would reimburse them for what he had taken, but looking back, he had realized it was an empty promise. He had known even then, at least in his subconscious, that there would not actually be a chance to replace the things he'd taken.
When even his purloined food and water had run out, Dale Roberts had realized that like it or not, and he didn't, he was going to have to leave his condo and go in search of sustenance. It was cold outside, he knew, because it was cold in his home. He had stayed warm by dressing in layers and staying under covers as much as he could. At night he had burned a small candle when he needed light, but had used it sparingly. He had a flashlight but the batteries had been low and hadn't lasted past the first night.
Dale Roberts had again raided his neighbors, looking for warmer clothing than he had ever bothered with and taking anything he thought he might need. One of his neighbors had owned a handgun that he had taken, and another a shotgun. Dale Roberts knew how to shoot, had learned as a boy, but as he had grown older had never bought into the need to own one himself. He was rethinking that policy now, after over a week of watching violence on the streets below his window. He was honestly surprised that the violence hadn't spilled into his own building and assumed it was merely a matter of time. He decided to be gone when that time came.
He packed everything he could think of needing into a fancy backpack he had taken from a neighbor and made his way down the stairs and into the street. He carried his flashlight in hopes of finding batteries, but didn't really expect to after so long. He had already decided that staying in his home so long without trying to gather supplies had been a mistake, but he couldn't correct it now.
The lobby of his building was deserted, thankfully. He feared confrontation after watching the violence on the street, so the empty lobby allowed him a few more seconds of peace. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door, and took the plunge out into the cold.
-
In the days and then weeks that followed, Dale Roberts did many things he had never imagined himself doing. As the New Year came and went, things did not improve, but in fact turned much worse in some cases. Dale Roberts saw many terrible things, and did some terrible things himself at times. He told himself it was just to survive and that meant it was alright, but he knew he was just lying to himself.
At first it bothered him, but as time wore on, nothing phased him anymore. Any guilt he had felt initially melted away beneath the crushing weight of fear, starvation, anxiety and the crippling sense of helplessness that seemed to hover around everyone and everywhere.
And then, at his lowest point, he heard a Message.
“... afraid? Do not fear, for if you are worthy then nothing can harm you! Will
you see hardship? Yes. Will you see pain and suffering? Of course! But we would
have seen and experienced those things anyway! This world, this sinful world that
for so long has kept us wreathed in sin and suffering has been cleansed of the
tools of Satan that have enthralled us and enslaved us! We are now free! Free to
inherit this world made, no... remade! Remade for us! The Worthy!”
It was like a hypnotic balm to his psyche. Dale Roberts had listened until the Message ended, and then followed the instructions it gave to find his salvation.
In the weeks that followed, the man once known as Dale Roberts was remade, changed, just as the world he had once been so proud to be a part of had changed so drastically. He had been broken completely when he found the Worthy, but they had lifted him up. They had fed and clothed him, given him warmth, and taught him the Way of the Worthy. It had quite possibly been his proudest moment when the Utmost Worthy Boaz himself had pronounced him fit to serve, and renamed him The Worthy Ezekiel Talent. A man remade who had the skill, the talent, to carry the Message to others. The ability to serve as a Messenger of the Uttermost Worthy himself in this new world.
To carry the Message warning of the destr
uction to come to all who resisted the armies of God in their cleansing of the land that God had granted to them by lighting the heavens.
The Worthy Ezekiel Talent smiled as he placed one foot before the other, following the path set before him. He would not shirk it nor stray from it.
For he was Worthy.
CHAPTER ONE
“Why would I want to do something like that?”
“I'm not saying you do or would,” Greg Holloway stressed as Talia Gray looked at him questioningly. “I'm just telling you the opportunity is there. We're always looking for talented people. You're fit, you're smart and you're able. Qualities we're always on the lookout for.”
“I'd think you wouldn't want anyone else on the farm,” she said, looking at him with open curiosity.
“Well, you'd be wrong about that,” Greg told her firmly, though not unkindly. “It's true we're limited in how many people we can support, especially when we're trying to support so many others elsewhere,” he motioned to the town around them, “but that doesn't mean we aren't always looking for people that would make a good addition to our roster.”
“You want me to be a soldier?” she frowned.
“That's what we're looking for,” Greg admitted. “People who can serve as part of our security forces. While everyone on the farm shares in defense duties, you've seen that we also have duties away from the farm. Like coming here to help repel the attack on the town?”
She nodded slowly in understanding.
“I'm just not sure I'm the right kind of person for that work,” she admitted.
“Well, that's okay,” Greg assured her. “Like I said, it was a thought. If you're not comfortable with it then you shouldn't do it, especially if you're comfortable in the position you're in now. If you decide you want to give it a shot, just send me a message through someone from the farm that's visiting and I'll get back to you.”