Behold Darkness

by L C Champlin

  Stillness extinguished the noise around him. Silence, like when he clung to the radio tower in the dark and the cold. No thunder from Heaven answered him—not that he expected it to. He’d merely made a request. No atheists in foxholes.

  Mom believed in God. She’d said she prayed for him. Did you answer her, God? What did she pray? Did it do any good?

  I’m alive.

  He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Splinting his ribs, he took a deep breath. Pain bled through the drugs.

  I’m alive.

  Chapter 110

  The Sermon

  On My Own – Ashes Remain

  With a snarl, Nathan pushed from the truck.

  A respectful distance away Albin waited, avoiding looking at his employer. Nathan shook his head as he passed the blond, who frowned.

  Nathan returned the phone to the DHS officer. “I need some fresh air.”

  Weaving through the vehicles and personnel, the group headed for the southern end of the lot, toward another garage. An empty flatbed trailer and its tractor cab sat to its right.

  The skyline absorbed most of Nathan’s attention as JP began to relate his adventure. “When the shooting started, Officer Jordan told me to run. I didn’t need a second invite. I thought I’d gone down a dead end, but the door was unlocked. It was a hall to the back of the building by the cargo lift. I hid in the hall until the shooting and, um, noise calmed down. Then I came out to explore and saw the lift sign.”

  “It was pretty handy for us, too,” Josephine remarked.

  “I used the keycard I found in Marcus’s office—”

  “When did you get that?” the reporter interjected.

  “When we went to check on that Birk guy’s coworker. It was on his desk. I also found a set of keys on the floor.”

  “Keys?”

  “They were for one of the cars in the lot, which as it turned out belonged to Birk.”

  The two’s voices faded to a hum. Reaching the flatbed, he hauled himself onto it. About as graceful as a seal using a jungle gym, but it did the job. Getting to his feet, he stood tall.

  A glance behind showed his adviser ascending with leopard grace. “Look at that hellscape, Albin.”

  “A marvel, sir,” he agreed as he came to stand beside his employer.

  Smoke rose in columns to join the smog that blotted out the sun. Sirens wailed far off, souls mourning their damnation. Choppers circled like birds of carrion waiting for a starving victim to fall in the desert. Hot asphalt, burning rubber, and chemical smoke polluted the air. All this from a distant ground-level view. From a God’s-eye perspective it would be writhing in pandemonium.

  Calm strength filled Nathan. They were witnessing a monumental crisis, the likes of which his generation and that before him had never seen. He lifted his chin. “Utter chaos. All the sheep out there without a shepherd. All the wolves prowling the streets.” He shook his head. “They’re going to need an alpha.”

  “Ordo ab Chao.”

  “The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. Are you ready, Albin?” Nathan flashed a fierce grin at his friend, who responded with a cold smile.

  “One wolf does not desert the other.”

  Behind, reporter and economist scrambled onto the holy ground of the flat bed.

  “They had the right idea,” she remarked. “You can see better up here.”

  “See what?” Marvin asked, brushing off his hands. “I’ve seen enough of that cluster for one lifetime, thanks. I’ll be seeing it in my nightmares as it is.”

  “The airport, of course.” Josephine squinted in the direction of SFO, which lay half a mile to the northeast.

  “Why?” Marvin gave her a longsuffering look. “Since the lockdown on air travel, only military planes are flying.”

  “There!” She pointed to a four-engine cargo beast that lumbered into the air. “I talked to some of the officers, Nathan, and they said you’d be on that if it wasn’t for your injury.”

  JP eyed it. “It’s one of the big bruisers.”

  “It is a C-130 Hercules,” Albin confirmed.

  Nathan sighed. His heart tried to work itself into frustration and rage but only made it to disappointment. They could fly out of this nightmare right now if not for . . . for everything. Damned traitorous lung, taking the whole ship down with it.

  Engines roaring, the aircraft gained altitude. Two thousand feet, three-quarters across the Bay—

  BOOM! One of the engines exploded.

  BOOM! The nose section, the cockpit.

  The Hercules stalled, began to descend as the remaining three engines carried the aircraft onward. Black smoke streamed as the bird plummeted.

  The earth shuddered under a peal of thunder when the forty tons of metal and fuel detonated across the Bay. A tower of smoke billowed to Heaven from the pyre.

  Nathan locked his knees to keep from falling on them. “That could have been us.” He tried to breathe, couldn’t. Black fogged the edges of his vision. No. The others needed him.

  Albin stared at the scene as if turned to stone. Josephine held both hands over her mouth in horror. Marvin sat on the edge of the trailer bed, face in his hands.

  Nathan managed a breath at last. If not for his blessed lung, Albin and he would—The darkness pressed in again. Jonah the prophet, thrown overboard, eaten by a fish, vomited into a hostile nation, all for a reason.

  The boy, sworn to the darkness, consumed by the amarok, reborn as the hunter in a strange land, all for a reason.

  The Melville poem his mother taught him years ago played in his mind:

  I saw the opening maw of Hell,

  With endless pains and sorrows there;

  Which none but they that feel can tell—

  Oh, I was plunging to despair.

  In black distress, I called my God,

  When I could scarce believe Him mine,

  He bowed His ear to my complaints—

  No more the whale did me confine.

  My song for ever shall record

  That terrible, that joyful hour;

  I give the glory to my God,

  His all the mercy and the power.

  Evolve. Attack. Dominate.

  Not a prophet but a conqueror. Judgment fell on Nineveh, but far be it from God’s gift, the son of the right hand, keener than a wolf at dusk, to shrink from his duty. The country received the leaders it deserved. In a land of shadows and deepest darkness, the one who saw them as light reigned.

  “From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night.”

  The time had come to live up to his names.

  CAESURA

  You made it through. Congratulations! Thanks for taking the time to read this book. If the story made you feel something, or at least killed some time, support your local author by leaving a review on Goodreads or Amazon.

  Thanks! That helps other people find the book and encourages me to write the next chapters.

  Want to know what happens to Nathan, Albin, and the terrorists? Curious about the terrorists’ master plan, and how it involves the cannibals? (The correct answer is yes.)

  The hunt continues with book 2, out 2018 on Amazon.

  To keep up to date on its progress, as well as get blog posts about villains, weird science, and more, visit my site lcchamplin.com

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