Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages Read online

  “Don’t dawdle,” the woman called out. “We’re on a TV

  schedule, you know.”

  Chloe shook her head. TV people. They expected even the condemned to play team ball.

  “I’m putting a fresh jumpsuit on the sink! Tell me when you’ve changed!”

  Chloe changed but said nothing. When she came out, the woman said, “You were going to tell me when you were ready.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Let’s go back in there so I can use the mirror.”

  “Feel free. I don’t need it.”

  “Come on! I have to get you ready.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Wait, stop! Hold still.”

  Chloe looked the woman full in the face. “Do you not see the absurdity of this? It’s not bad enough that I’m to be put to death?

  You have to make a spectacle of it?”

  “I have a job and I’m going to do it.”

  “Then you’re going to do it right here and right now.”

  The woman bent to set her bag on the floor and rose with a comb and brush. She worked vigorously on Chloe’s hair. Then she used a wetnap to wash Chloe’s face and dabbed rouge on her cheeks. When she produced mascara, Chloe said, “No. Now that’s it. No mascara, no lipstick. We’re done.”

  “You know, you’re really quite an attractive girl.”

  Chloe arched an eyebrow. “Well, thank you so much. When I look back on this, that’s going to be the highlight of my morning.”

  What a comforting thought. I have a chance at having the best-looking head in the Dumpster.

  When Chloe was delivered back to Jock, he said, “Do I need to cuff you, restrain you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  She gave him a look.

  “Nothing personal,” he said. “I’m just doing what I have to do.”

  “Then make sure I get a few last words.”

  “If it was up to me—”

  She spun and faced him. “It is up to you, Jock, and you know it. Anybody who could tell you what to do is thousands of miles away. Take responsibility once, would you? Make a decision here.

  Announce that I’m going to speak and then let me. In the end I’m gone, and you’re headed for your promotion. What’s the harm?”

  Jock avoided her gaze. He led her up the stairs and into the morning sun. She shielded her eyes. Not only was the Carpathia-run press out in full force, but stands had been set up and apparently the public invited. Chloe wondered what all the noise was about until she realized the crowd apparently recognized she was the main attraction and was applauding and cheering.

  The other prisoners, mostly men, were already in their respective rows, waiting behind the tables. Some bounced nervously. Others seemed to hyperventilate. Officials sat at each table, one with a mark applicator. What was the point? At this stage, even the ones who took the mark still endured the blade. Did they think the mark gave them some sort of an advantage in whatever afterlife Carpathia offered?

  Cross-legged on the ground around each guillotine sat

  prisoners in dark denim. These, Chloe realized, were the lifers Jock described as collectors. They would dispose of the remains. They looked excited, smiling, joshing with each other.

  Jock led her to the back of the line at the middle table. “Well, I guess this is it,” he said, and to Chloe he sounded apologetic. “You can still—”

  “We should have made it a bet yesterday,” she said.

  “Ma’am?”

  “You were sure I would be making last-minute pleas about now.”

  “You win that one,” he said. “You’re a strange woman.”

  Chloe was aware of lights on high poles, scaffolding that supported cameras and cameramen, technicians wearing

  headphones running here and there, people checking their watches.

  In line at the table to her right, a middle-aged man bearing Carpathia’s mark—which meant he had been sentenced for some other capital crime—had fallen to his knees, shuddering and sobbing. He grasped the pant legs of the man in front of him, who laid a tentative hand on his shoulder and looked ill at ease.

  An older woman, yet another line beyond, stood with her face buried in her hands, swaying. Praying, Chloe assumed. In every line were Jews, identified with stenciled Stars of David or wearing self-made yarmulkes, some made of scraps of cloth, some of cardboard. The people were wasted, scarred, having been starved, beaten, sunburned.

  Chloe knew enough from Buck’s research and the inside stuff from David Hassid and Chang to know that Carpathia wanted these to be tortured to within an inch of their lives but not allowed to die before their public beheadings.

  Chloe had been as alarmed as anyone when television had gone from bad to worse and from worse to unconscionable. The worst possible perversions were available on certain channels twenty-four hours a day, and literally nothing was limited. But when studies showed that by far the most-watched television shows every day of the week were the public executions, she knew there had been one more far corner for society to turn after all, and it had turned.

  The bloodlust was apparently insatiable. It had come to the point where the most popular of the live-execution shows were those that lasted an hour and included slow-motion replays of the

  most gruesome deaths. When guillotines malfunctioned and blades stuck, victims were left mortally wounded and screaming but not dead. . . . This was what the public wanted to see, and the more the better.

  Each execution was preceded by a rehearsal of the misdeeds of the recalcitrant. The more sordid the past, the more satisfying the justice, the logic went. Chloe knew what kinds of stories circulated about her. She could only imagine what was said about the truly guilty.

  Chloe watched Jock make his way back toward the stands and a single microphone. What appeared to be a stage manager quieted the crowd, waited for a cue, then signaled them to applaud while he read from a script, introducing Jock Ashmore. He called him one of the Global Community’s crack lead investigators, single-handedly responsible for the capture and arrest of Chloe Steele Williams, the highest level anti-Carpathian terrorist apprehended to date. The people cheered.

  “Thank you,” Jock began. “We have thirty-six executions to carry out for you today—twenty-one for murder, ten for refusing to take the mark of loyalty, four for miscellaneous crimes against the state, and one for all those charges and many, many more.”

  The crowd cheered and shouted and whooped and whistled.

  “I am happy to say that though Chloe Steele Williams did not in the end agree to accept the mark of loyalty to our supreme potentate, she did provide us with enough detailed information on her counterparts throughout the world to help us virtually eradicate the Judah-ites outside of Petra and put an end to the black-market co-op.”

  The crowd went wild again.

  “But more on her when she becomes today’s thirty-sixth patient of Dr. Guillotine.”

  When the crowd finally settled, Jock said, “We begin this morning in line 7 with a man who murdered his wife and two infant sons.”

  Chloe caught a glimpse of a monitor where the mutilated bodies of the boys were shown in ghastly detail. “God, give me strength,” she said silently. “Keep me focused on you.”

  A woman directly in front of her, pale and sickly and with no mark of loyalty, turned suddenly. “Are you Williams?” she said.

  Chloe nodded.

  “I don’t want to die, and I don’t know what to do!”

  Thank you, Lord. “If you know who I am,” Chloe said, “you know what I stand for.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your only hope is to put your faith in Christ. Admit you’re a sinner, separated from God. You can’t save yourself. Jesus died on the cross for your sins, so if you believe that, tell God and ask him to save you by the blood of Christ.”

  “I will still die?”

  “You will die, but you will be with God.”

  The woma
n fell to her knees and folded her hands, crying out to God. A guard pointed to a collector and then to the woman, and the man jumped up and ran toward her. Just as it appeared he was about to bowl her over, Chloe lowered her shoulder and sprang toward him.

  Her elbow caught him flush in the mouth and snapped his head back. He flopped in the dirt, screaming and spitting teeth and blood. The woman continued to pray. Finally she stood. The man made a move toward the woman again, but Chloe merely pointed at him and he skulked away.

  “I prayed,” the woman said, “but I am still scared. How do I know it worked?”

  “Let me have a look at you,” Chloe said, and she saw the mark of the believer on her forehead. “What do you see on my forehead, ma’am?” Chloe said.

  “A mark, as if in 3-D.” She reached to touch it.

  “I see the same on you,” Chloe said. “Only the children of God are sealed with this mark. No matter what happens to you today, you belong to God.”

  The crowed roared as collectors dragged the first man to the guillotine by his hair. He dug in his heels; he kicked and screamed.

  He let his legs go limp and had to be carried into position. The man squirmed and fought so much that extra collectors were called in to hold him down. When the executioner made sure everyone’s extremities were clear, he pulled the cord and the great blade fell.

  The rusty thing, blackened by blood, flipped at an angle just before it bit into the victim’s neck. Chloe recoiled as it sliced only halfway into the man, causing him to lurch and pull back, flailing at the collectors who tried to hold him.

  He somehow broke free and spun and staggered, flinging blood and gore. The collectors ducked and laughed and made sport of him as the executioner quickly banged at the blade, straightened it, and raised it again.

  Two collectors grabbed the man and pushed him headlong into position again, whereupon the cord was pulled yet again and the job done right this time. The reaction of the crowd showed they thought it was the perfect way to start the day.

  “Next,” Jock said, “we begin with the first of ten in a row who refused to take the mark, minus our guest of honor, of course, as we save the best till last.”

  But before he could say anything else, Caleb appeared in all his brightness in the middle of the courtyard, between Chloe and Jock.

  He appeared fifteen or sixteen feet tall in raiment so white that

  when Chloe turned to see the crowd’s reaction, it was clear it hurt people’s eyes.

  They shrieked and froze. Chloe saw Jock turn to see what scared them so. He fell, holding the microphone, and stared, seemingly unable to move.

  When Caleb spoke, the ground shook and a wind blew dust about. Chloe was sure everyone wanted to flee, but they could not.

  “I come in the name of the most high God,” he began.

  “Hearken unto my voice and hear my words. Ignore me at your peril. ‘Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!’

  “For He satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness. You who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death are bound in affliction because you rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High.

  “Cry out to the Lord in your trouble, and he will save you out of your distress. He will bring you out of darkness and the shadow of death and break your chains in pieces.

  “Thus says the Son of the most high God: ‘I am the

  resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.’

  “But woe to you who do not heed my warning this day. Thus says the Lord: ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

  “‘And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.’”

  FOURTEEN

  CHANG SAT deep in the bowels of the tech center at Petra, finally understanding the Western expression about having one’s eyes glued to the TV screen. He was prepared to take over the broadcast, to yank it off the air before anyone anywhere saw Chloe’s execution.

  Yet the appearance of this messenger of God, warning the undecided against taking the mark, pleading with them to receive Christ—this was something the globe needed to see and hear yet again.

  For months reports had come from around the world that angels were showing up at mark application and guillotine sites.

  Some accounts were hard to believe, but Tsion Ben-Judah said they fit perfectly with the loving-kindness he knew of God.

  Chang glanced over to where the elders sat before a big screen, and beyond them, hundreds of computer keyboarders awaited instructions. The fading late-afternoon sun cast slanted rays through the door a hundred feet from Chang, and he was moved nearly to tears by the gently falling manna. Providing food for his chosen, protecting and thrilling Chang, comforting Chloe, and sending messengers with the everlasting gospel . . . God was the ultimate multitasker.

  A phone rang and Naomi answered. Chang read her lips as she leaned close to Tsion. “It’s Buck for you.”

  “Cameron, my friend! How difficult this must be for you. . . .

  No, I am sorry, son. I know of no instance where the bearer of the everlasting gospel has intervened in the sentencing. . . . Yes, of course God could miraculously deliver, but I caution you to be prepared for either result. . . .”

  ________

  Rayford second-guessed his decision to be in the air during the broadcast. He put the jet on autopilot and watched, but he dreaded the moment that was surely to come and wondered when he would recover enough to trust himself with the controls. Well, he decided, he had no choice. Maybe this was the best therapy. Unless he was willing to see Chloe and Buck and himself die the same day, he had to stay disciplined regardless.

  Poor Buck. On the phone with Tsion and apparently not

  hearing what he hoped. Rayford wanted to comfort him, but Buck was not the type who took soothing until well after a crisis was over. Right now he was arguing his case. As the messenger of God stared down at the apoplectic crowd and saw the nine remaining undecideds on their knees, weeping, Buck pressed Tsion.

  “But he has his man right there, Doctor! How hard would it be to intervene? Why can’t he just sweep her out of there and deliver her back to us? You know he could! He could have arranged for us to get word of where she was too. What have I done or not done that makes me so unworthy of a little consideration?”

  ________

  Chang turned back to the screen to be sure he didn’t miss anything, but he could still hear Tsion earnestly counseling Buck.

  “Cameron,” Tsion said, “that is your emotion talking. You know as well as anyone that this whole period, the entire Tribulation, is not about us individually. God has a master plan. It is the culmination of the battle between good and evil that has spanned millennia. He is reconciling his people to himself. We should be grateful we have been included. He has a bigger picture

  in mind, but it is also evidence of his eternal love for us. Trust him, my friend. Trust him no matter what.”

  ________

  Chloe felt as if she were already in heaven. Caleb’s glow had blocked from her vision the hideous death of the first victim. She watched Jock struggle to his feet and dust himself off.

  “Please, people, no one leave. We have had reports of these apparitions at other sites, though this is the first visit we have had here. This is a trick perpetrated by the spiritualists within the camp of the rebellion. Perhaps we should ask permission of the intruder if we may proceed with our program.” He turned to look at Caleb, pretending to be even mor
e afraid than he was. Chloe could tell he had not persuaded the crowd that this was other than real.

  “Kind sir,” Jock said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “may we continue?”

  Caleb’s voice, louder than ever, resounded off the prison walls.

  “You have been tried and found guilty for your crimes against the most high God. That you bear the mark of the evil one condemns you to death. Nothing you do can improve your fate. Because you have worshiped the beast and his image and received his mark, you shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God. You shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And you shall have no rest day or night.

  “That which the Lord God even thinks shall surely happen, and what he decides shall never change, for as the Scripture says, ‘The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying, “Surely, as I have thought, so it shall come to pass, and as I have purposed, so it shall stand.”’”

  Jock stared up at Caleb with brows raised, then looked back at the crowd with a shrug. “Ask a simple question . . . ,” he said, and they laughed nervously. “I’ll take that as an indication that we may

  proceed, because, hey, bottom line, if he’s right and God’s got us in his sights, he can pull the trigger anytime he wants. But look who’s dying here today. Huh? Are you with me? Who’s dying? Let me hear you!”

  No one responded.

  “The so-called people of God!” Jock said. “The ones who chose him instead of the real god and our supreme potentate, Nicolae J. Carpathia! Come on, people, don’t be intimidated by big, shiny, transparent ghosts. Yeah, he’s scary. But all he’s done is interrupt a TV show and—get this—make it better! Is this great theater or what? The enemy shows up to rattle his saber, but he hasn’t changed a thing! You came to see heads chopped off, and that’s what you’ll see. These people can cry and pray and beg all they want, but they’re still gonna die!”

  Chloe was thrilled to see the formerly undecided nine rise and find that six of them had the mark of the believer on their foreheads. Something within them must have confirmed this, because they lifted their hands and smiled despite their impending fate. The other three looked miserable, and Chloe assumed they were among the hard-hearted who may have been desperate to change their minds but had waited too long.