The Lord of the Zephyr II [2013]

Conclusion story, please read part 1 first

5

While moon gazing, we sip on our coffee for a few more minutes out on the deck. We go back in to warm up. We spend the next hour reminiscing about our youthful days. We have twenty years worth of memories to share, so kicking them around for an hour didn’t take a Herculean effort.

At this point I tell her how terrified I am about letting her and the kids down.

“What if I fail you, what if I can’t protect you from the dangers we face?”

She leans in and gives me a gentle kiss on the lips. “I have faith in you,” she says. “I woke up this morning to a nightmare. I was terrified, and you’ve already made me feel so much better. I know you’ll do whatever you have to do for me and the kids.”

God, she's so beautiful.

“I love you, Jill,” I say. It’s all that needs to be said.

The light of day enters our windows, yet our candles are still needed. It’s a dark sunrise. We walk back onto the deck to see.

The wavelength of light from the sun is being diffracted from the ash clouds, which causes a visual display that’s simply breathtaking. The clouds swirl across the sky, and behind those clouds we see the great ball of fire. It’s darkened so that we can look right at it. The spectacular sunrise is filled with bright gold, fiery orange and blood red hues.

Simply amazing.

“It’s beautiful,” Jill says.

“Yeah,” I agree. An unexpected awareness overtakes me. Suddenly, it isn’t the fear of dying that worries me anymore. It isn’t the president’s death camps. It isn’t the marauding gangs. It’s isn’t the helpless, powerless feeling one feels to the awesomeness of the sun. No, it was my family that mattered and nothing else.

All the signs of the apocalypse from the bible were being fulfilled, and now I told myself that if this were God’s plan, then so be it. All that I needed to do now was embrace my wife and kids and stay close to them.

Many signs had come to pass in the weeks leading up to this morning. There were the freak super storms, meteor fireballs falling from the sky, waters of the oceans turning blood red, nations uniting in war against Israel, and now, earthquakes, volcanoes, the moon turns to blood and the sun turns to darkness. It was becoming more and more clear that this was biblical.

It’s chilly so we decide to go back inside. It had been so warm for this time of year, but with the ash cloud, temperatures are falling.

As we turn around I glance out to the corn fields in the west, the direction of the Cities, and I see what appears to be a family. They are walking towards Crawdad.

“Oh my gosh,” Jill says as she notices them. “It’s a family, Jack. They have children with them.”

“Yeah, there’s five of them,” I say, the same size family as my own. She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to say more.

“What?” I ask, but I know what she’s thinking.

“No, Jill, there isn’t anything we can do,” I say. “It’s dangerous. We don’t know who anyone is out there and what they’ve been through.”

“Jack, they have small children.” The kids look like they are all between the ages of five and ten.

“What do you think we should do,” I ask.

“I don’t know, maybe check on them and make sure they aren’t hungry at least, or freezing,” she says.

We decide to wait and see how close they come to us first. I’m not willing to take a chance on approaching the man and startling him. He’s most likely in the same mind set I am…protect the family. He won’t have any idea what my intentions are. He may have a gun. I also have no intention of inviting him into my home. We don’t know how long the power will be out, we don’t even have enough food for ourselves if we have to bunker down for the rest of the winter, but Jill is right. We can’t just let those kids go hungry if we have something to offer. We have plenty of winter clothing, so we’ll offer them something if we need to.

Jill rummages through the cupboards and comes out with a box of granola bars. Good enough.

They are a block away as they leave the field into the set of homes just east of us. I holler out to them asking if everything is alright. The man doesn’t answer but looks, so I wave him over. Reluctantly it appears he heads our way.

The Finstead family, we learn, told us how they drove out of the Twin Cities the day before and driving on back roads ran out of gas about two miles from here. He tells us they slept in their car until just before dawn and then started walking.

Yes, they greatly appreciated the granola bars and no, they didn’t need anymore warm clothing.

It’s what he tells me next that drops the bomb. About ten miles before they ran out of gas, they encountered a gang of about 20 men, all carrying guns, and headed this way.

6

I jam the family in our GMC Envoy and head down to Tim’s to let him know. Tim lives just off the highway that runs along side of Crawdad. It’s a small town and all we have is our gas station and a saloon next to the highway.

I pull up and decide to give a toot on the horn. He peeks out the living room window from behind the curtain. Paranoia has taken over this town. I jump out of the truck so that he see’s it’s me.

He comes out.

“Tim, I gotta tell you, there was a family just came by from the Cities. They ran out of gas two miles out on the county road. They said they passed a gang on the road about ten miles out. The man said that they were off the road in a field and as he was coming up the road, he noticed them all start running to the road to intercept him.”

“He said they were heading this way,” Tim asks. I nod. “Hell, there are a lot of roads out there and Crawdad’s just a small town, they could end up anywhere.”

Pop, pop!

We hear two gunshots off in the distance coming from the direction of the highway as it comes into Crawdad from the Cities.

We both sort of duck in quick surprise. Instincts take over and I run back to the SUV. Tim starts to head back into his house but instead follows me.

“What do you think?” he asks as I climb into the vehicle.

“Gunshots,” I say. “They’re coming and that’s not good. Has Patch been on duty at all?”

Patch is our local police officer. Crawdad is a one-horse town void of a single stop light. Patch is our only police officer and works directly for the village board. When Patch isn’t on duty, we depend on the county sheriff’s department. I’ve been living here for a year and I’ve never seen a county squad in town.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since the day after the lights went out.”

“I have a little bit of gas left, enough to get my family out of here,” I say.

He looks at me for a moment before asking, “What about the town?”

I have no answer. I’m not prepared for any of this. I don’t even have a gun. I feel so helpless.

“I have my family, Tim,” I say. “I just don’t know. We don’t even have time to organize a response of any kind. I think its best at this point to hide out.”

“No, I have guns. I’m not letting these thugs come and ransack our town.”

Continued

Without warning we are surrounded by several men who look like they haven’t had a shower in weeks. They have this look about them like they’ve been waiting for this SHTF scenario all of their lives, waiting to prey on the defenseless.

What will I do? I must do something but they have rifles slung over their shoulders.

“Ah, what’s up guys,” I ask to no one in particular.

“That’s a nice truck you got there,” says the one closest to me. He’s still walking up to me from the gas station. “How much gas you got in there?”

“Gas,” I ask?

“Yeah, dumb ass, how much gas you got?”

And then it happens. A loud metallic roar pierces the entire sky that increases in decibels for about fifteen seconds before slowly decreasing to silence. The noise resembles the sounds that have been recorded throughout the past couple of years all over the globe. Everyone is frozen for a moment. Crawdad had been so quiet until the trumpet blast.

7

We all just stand there, speechless, in utter disbelief. We survey the sky. I know that we won’t find the source. It came from everywhere, yet it came from nowhere. It’s prophecy being fulfilled and our judgment day has arrived.

And again, the trumpet roars throughout the land. From one end of the sky to the other, the sound reverberates. It doesn’t actually sound like a trumpet. It’s more like a wind blowing through some sort of metal structure causing a freaky, scary, bone-chilling resonance.

I almost feel like a minnow swimming around in a whale tank and they are angry. They are letting me know with the sounds.

Jill steps out of the car and she is weeping.

“Jack,” she says, her voice trembling, as she takes hold of my hand. We forget all about Tim and the thugs that surround us. We don’t care anymore. We both kneel down and look up awaiting our judgment.

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” I recite Matthew 24:27.

One of the thugs tells me to shut up. He is scared, I can tell, but he must deal with it somehow. He yells at me again as he steps in to hit me but the other thug who stands closest to me stops him. He doesn’t say a word, just keeps looking in all directions for some sort of answer. He needs vindication now for all that he’s done. He thought he was justified in taking what he wanted by force, like it was necessary in this kill or be killed new world, but now he apprehends that the ultimate judge will decide his fate.

Five more times the trumpet roars. We are counting them out loud now. By the seventh roar, we are all on our knees. People have come out of their homes and they are also on their knees weeping. Waiting. Hands clenched. Praying.

Jill and I pray.

After the seventh trumpet sounds, sure enough, out of nothing in the sky, a cloud begins to form and within seconds it’s swirling and growing immensely. It’s the second coming.

And then, just like that the cloud disappears and the sky is filled with a static noise like what you hear on a radio dial without the station. It clears and a man’s face appears in the sky. He has a scraggly beard and wears glasses that rest upon his oversized nose. He has long, curly dark hair. He looks to be about mid-thirties. His head covers a quarter of the northern sky.

Thump, thump.

A loud noise rips across the sky like someone hitting a microphone to test it before speaking into it. The man looks to be very nervous. He then looks out across the lands and begins to speak in a rushed and whispered voice.

“People of the world, I only have a minute before they break in here. I will be killed for this, but I’ve locked myself in the control room of the HAARP command center in Alaska so that I can stop this madness now. When I first signed on to this they told me it was for the good of the earth, to stop our destruction of the planet and global warming. But it was all wrong. After seeing the destruction of our planet they have caused with the earthquakes, volcanoes and the fear they have put into everyone, I just couldn’t let it go on any longer. The X-Class never happened. It started with images that we broadcast.

“People, right now I am supposed to be broadcasting to you images of God. I’m supposed to be speaking to you about judgment day and the idea was to bring all the world under one religion to stop wars and to take control with a one-world government, but there’s been too much dying already.”

He clears his voice. You can hear the fear in his voice vibrating across the tree tops.

Continued

“After it was realized what HAARP could do by projecting images across the sky, implanting sounds, controlling the weather and igniting volcanoes, a plan was formulated,” he began to slow his speech now, his own fate becoming more clear to him. “It’s the greatest hoax ever played on mankind. It’s called Project Blue Beam. You see, religion has for centuries kept man apart. This plan was to unite us all under one God and at first it seemed like a noble cause to help the environment and save our planet from us.

“I’m sorry that I ever had anything to do with this. They are getting through the door now and this transmission will stop. It’s all over people, the ashes will clear the skies within a few months and the world you know will be restored. Take back your lives and make those responsible for this pay dearly.”

The sky went clear. The image was gone as were the trumpet sounds.

I fade away into my own thought cloud where shock and awe can’t even penetrate. All the things that have happened over years leading up to these days weren’t real. We had been duped on an unimaginable scale. As I take my next breath I realize all the tension is released like a pinhole in a helium balloon. I feel deflated. It’s a feeling of relief that soon turns to anger.

“Project Blue Beam,” Tim asks with a look of utter disbelief.

All I can say is, “What the…”

The next morning Jill and I step out onto our deck just after the moon has set and night turns to day. As we watch the ash-cloud sunrise with all its brilliance; swirling bright gold, fiery orange and blood red hues, we hold hands. Once again, I give Jill a great big hug.

The End

WoW! Awesome story. It had everything! Thank you for the incredible read.

You sir have a talent. You'll notice a distinct trend here at ATS - generally the length of the post is usually inversely proportional to the amount of attention it seems to get.

But if your simply writing for the love of it (which you clearly are) then I guess who really cares right? At any rate I read both parts and it held me to the end (and now I want to know more!!).

Great work.

Originally posted by 1littlewolf
You sir have a talent. You'll notice a distinct trend here at ATS - generally the length of the post is usually inversely proportional to the amount of attention it seems to get.

But if your simply writing for the love of it (which you clearly are) then I guess who really cares right? At any rate I read both parts and it held me to the end (and now I want to know more!!).

Great work.

I was a little worried about the length, but once I got to rambling, just couldn't stop. I did enjoy creating the tale though and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks.