Grim Reaper: End of Days

by Steve Alten

  “True that.”

  Brent altered the Reaper’s course, banking to the southwest, keeping the drone four hundred feet above the Hudson River’s eastern shoreline.

  Kyle scanned the four screens mounted above his control console. As the drone passed the George Washington Bridge, a large wake appeared on his Synthetic Aperture Radar, a remote-sensing device that used microwave electromagnetic energy to create two-dimensional images that pierced both dense cloud cover and the night.

  “Got something, partner. Big-ass bow wake and two wave trails. Come to course two-three-three. Target is 3.7 kilometers south of the bridge, moving south at twelve knots. Way too big to be a cutter. Drop us to five hundred feet so I can get a thermal reading.”

  Brent homed in on the coordinates, reducing his airspeed as he maneuvered the Reaper on a steady descent. “Forget it, it’s just a garbage scow.”

  “A garbage scow… loaded with people! Dude, check out the thermal imager. We hit the mother lode!”

  Eric White climbed out from his station console to take a look. “You’re out-of-bounds, girls. The Hudson’s no-man’s-land until 2300 hours.”

  “Ignore him, Kyle. What’s your body count?”

  Kyle scanned the data scrolling across his thermal scan. “Two hundred and twenty-eight people… along with seventeen dogs and a few hundred rats.”

  “Man your weapons, partner, it’s time to toast vermin.”

  Kyle typed in commands on his monitor, his pulse racing. “Locking and loading one Hellfire missile. Been waiting all night to launch one of these babies.”

  “Twenty seconds. Hurt so good… c’mon baby, make it hurt so good. Here we go, sweetheart… Four… three… two—”

  Kyle grinned. “Time to light the night.”

  Hudson River, Manhattan

  10:54 P.M.

  There was no telltale sound of engines, no warning, simply a white-hot blinding phosphorescent burst of energy that ignited night into day, followed by a thunderous explosion that unleashed a blast wave of heat across the river, expanding in all directions.

  Patrick collapsed to his knees and covered his head. Purple blotches clouded his vision, his eardrums rang as he was consumed by a wave of intense heat—

  — followed by a blistering hail of shrapnel. Scalding hunks of garbage sizzled as they struck the Hudson’s tainted waters, charred lumps of human flesh plopping down on the melting snow around him like burnt marshmallow spewed from a roaring campfire. Not until the debris stopped sleeting did he dare raise his head to gaze at the sinking island of fire.

  The flame’s diminishing glow revealed another spectator standing to his left. The Grim Reaper tilted its robed head back, the creature’s bony arms spreading its wing-like cloak wider, as if the supernal being were inhaling the souls of the incinerated passengers.

  The Reaper turned slowly to face him. Death’s once-vacant eye sockets were now filled with hundreds of fluttering eyes. The curved olive green blade of his scythe dripped fresh blood.

  Shep’s throat constricted in a vise. His muscles locked up.

  A gust of foul wind cooled the soggy earth. A crack of purple lightning rippled across the spinning heavens.

  Darkness reached for Patrick Shepherd, pulling him toward Hell…

  Lost Diary: Guy de Chauliac

  The following entry has been excerpted from a recently discovered unpublished memoir, written by surgeon Guy de Chauliac during the Great Plague: 1346–1348.(translated from its original French)

  Diary Entry: May 17, 1348

  (recorded in Avignon, France)

  The Angel of Death walks among the living, sent by God to destroy us. That these are the End of Days, I have no doubt, for I have borne witness to the very evil that has summoned the Reaper to oversee our demise.

  To what evil do I speak? The murder of innocent children. The burning of thousands of victims at the stake. The inhuman slaughter of an entire sect of people.

  The blasphemy of our actions is as audacious as our denial of the sin.

  That I am recording these thoughts to paper endangers my being as much as my daily exposure to the pestilence itself, yet I am compelled to render the words, if only to save my own soul from the Hell that awaits.

  History has not been kind to the Jew — a resilient yet despised people who have been abused and slaughtered since the time of the Pharaohs and through the subsequent rise and fall of the Roman Empire. During the seven centuries that followed, hatred demonized itself into a new kind of persecution — the pogrom. In what can only be described as an almost erotic form of massacre, Christian crusaders would raid Jewish communities in the middle of the night, dragging innocent men, women, and children from their homes by the hundreds. Family members were forced to watch the mutilation and burning of parents and siblings — acts so horrendous that some Jewish men chose to kill their own wives and children rather than see them face the horrors that awaited them outside.

  Unable to travel freely or acquire land, Jews turned to the profession of money-lending, an act restricted by canon law to Christians. High interest rates brought more hatred upon the Jews, who were forced into alliances with kings, bishops, and governing councils for protection. In France, this hatred was manifested by the Parisians’ infamous “Trial of the Talmud” in 1240, the mass expulsion of Jews in 1306, and the pogroms that followed the Great Famine, an era that preceded the plague we now face.

  It was around the time of the Great Famine, in the spring of 1320, that a band of shepherds, the Pastoureaux, assembled in southwest France along the banks of the Garonne River. Desperation breeds fear, fear manifests into hatred, and the Jews were easy targets. Recruiting more pagans and peasants, the shepherds marched to Toulouse, killing every Jew they could find. When the movement’s leaders were captured, they were set free by the monks, who pronounced their escape “divine intervention.”

  The killing spree continued, the evil spreading like plague. When it was finally over, the Pastoureaux had wiped out over one-hundred Jewish communities in the south of France, Spain, and Catalonia, brutally murdering more than ten thousand innocent people.

  Though the Pastoureaux were eventually arrested, the crops continued to fail and the populace to starve, bringing more hatred upon those who had acquired the financial means to survive. In 1321, a rumor spread about an alleged plot involving the use of lepers to poison the wells in southern France, an attempt to overthrow the crown. When word reached Philip V, the king ordered mass arrests. Lepers who confessed were burned at the stake, those who pleaded their innocence were tortured until they confessed, then they, too, were burned at the stake.

  Naturally, the lepers’ wealth was confiscated by the crown.

  If the vast treasures accumulated by the lepers made them enticing targets, then so, too, did the wealth of the Jews. By Holy Week, conspiracy rumors had expanded to include the Jews as coplotters, and eventually the Muslims.

  The killing began anew. In Toulon, one-hundred-and-sixty Jews were marched into a bonfire. In Vitry-le-Francois, another forty Jews slit their own throats before their Christian torturers could reach them.

  On April 26, a cosmic event took place in France that sealed the Jews’ fate. Over a four-hour period, the afternoon sun was blotted from the sky as if engorged in blood. (Editor’s note: solar eclipse) Convinced the day of doom was upon them and that the Jews were to blame, another series of pogroms was unleashed, with every Jewish soul living in France either exterminated or imprisoned.

  I was but a young man during the Great Famine, my early years spent on my parent’s farm in Languendoc, pushing a plow. The violence that spread through southern France was appalling, still I turned a blind eye to it, for what else could I do, other than thank the Almighty that I wasn’t born a Jew.

  Then one day, as fate would have it, I witnessed a young noblewoman tossed from her horse. The wounds were severe, her left leg broken. I was able to stop the bleeding and set the bone so that it healed properly. Months later
I was paid a visit by her father — a moneylender and Jew. In gratitude for saving his daughter’s leg and perhaps her life, her father agreed to pay for my medical education. I immediately enrolled in Bologna, where I studied anatomy and surgery… my course in life having been significantly altered by an act of kindness, my indifference to the plight of the Jews — and any oppressed people changed forever.

  All of which brings us back to the plague.

  It came as no surprise when blame for the Black Death was eventually assigned to the Jews. In point of fact, one of the reasons I have worked so feverishly to find the cause of the mortality was to forestall this inevitability.

  Though expected, the ferocity of the attacks on the Jewish community has left me sickened and stunned.

  Like the pogroms of the past, the first massacre occurred during Holy Week. On the night of Palm Sunday, April 13 past, the Christian locals in Toulon raided the Jewish quarter, dragging family members from their beds. Homes were torched, money and valuables stolen, the Jews butchered in the streets, their naked bodies dragged through the village.

  From Toulon, the pogrom spread as fast as the plague. Massive bonfires exterminated entire Semitic villages. In some cases, Christians offered to spare Jewish infants by baptizing them, but their mothers refused to turn against their faith and leapt into the fire, clutching their children in their arms.

  By Easter, a new “fear” was spread throughout France, this one stating that Jews had caused the plague by poisoning the wells and springs. Though similar to the stories of 1321, the rumor was given further validity when it was reported that authorities in Chillon, Switzerland, had tortured confessions from a few of their Jewish villagers, linking a local Jewish surgeon and his mother with creating the plague poison.

  As I pen this entry, a terrible cycle of evil runs rampant throughout Europe. By blaming the outbreak of plague on the Jew, the populace has acquired a Satanic sense of empowerment. Instead of feeling helpless, they feel proactive, believing their village might be spared if every Jew in the region is butchered. That Jews are also dying of plague makes no difference to these angry mobs, for even if innocent, the death of a moneylender carries with it the added benefit of erasing the killers’ debt.

  Three hundred Jews were murdered just last week in Tarrega, dozens more in Barcelona. New tortures are being invented every day, the latest being the violent placement of a crown of thorns upon a Jew’s head, the object then mashed into the skull using a blunt object until the prisoner is dead.

  And so the pestilence has unleashed an orgy of not only death but immorality, our fears and hatred bringing forth the very worst attributes of mankind. My soul is sickened by the conduct of my own species, and I have voiced as much to Clement VI. In response, the Pope recently issued a papal bull stating that it cannot be true that the Jews are the cause of the pestilence, for the plague infects them as well.

  Still, the slaughter goes on.

  Meanwhile, the Pope has left the papal palace for his retreat in Etoile-sur Rhône with Cardinal Colonna, swearing to me that he will keep the chamber fires burning to cleanse the air.

  I have refused Clement’s invitation to escape to the countryside. As chief surgeon, my rightful place is in Avignon, but there is another reason I have turned down my Pope’s request–

  — I, too, have been stricken with the mortality.

  — Guigo

  Fourth Circle

  Avarice

  "It was squandering and hoarding that have robbed them of the lovely world, and got them in this brawl. I will not waste choice words describing it! You see, my son, the short-lived mockery of all the wealth that is in Fortunes' keep, over which the human race is bickering; for all the gold that is or ever was beneath the moon won't buy a moment’s rest for even one among these weary souls."

  — Dante’s Inferno

  December 20

  Hudson River Shoreline

  Northern Manhattan

  11:04 P.M.

  (8 hours, 59 minutes before the prophesied End of Days)

  Patrick Shepherd opened his eyes. The human sleet had passed. The cloud cover overhead yielding to blotches of starry sky.

  “Are you all right, son? You fainted dead away.”

  He looked up at Virgil, the old man kneeling by his side. “What happened?”

  “Something destroyed the barge, probably a military drone. The blast wave must have knocked you out.”

  “All those people—”

  “They died as they lived… only for themselves.”

  Shep’s memory came flooding back. “Virgil, I saw him. He was standing on the shoreline, just before the explosion.”

  “Saw who?”

  “The Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper. He’s been following me since the chopper crash!”

  “Calm down—”

  “It’s not the vaccine, Virgil, I’m not hallucinating this! You have to believe me.”

  “I believe you.”

  Patrick saw the look in the old man’s eyes. “You’ve seen him too, haven’t you?”

  “Not tonight, no. But the souls of the wicked call out to him. We need to hurry if we are to find your family. Can you walk?”

  Patrick stood, feeling light-headed. He couldn’t remember his last meal. He could barely remember his name. He looked around, unable to get his bearings.

  The shoreline was littered with smoldering debris and the remains of the dead. Arms and legs and upper torsos and parts rendered unidentifiable. Scorched beyond recognition.

  To the south, Manhattan’s skyline was cloaked in darkness, the outlines of its buildings blotting the horizon like a towering alien mountain range. The neighborhood to the immediate east was aglow in sporadic patches of orange light, its elevation above the banks of the Hudson making it difficult to discern the source. To reenter the city they must again ascend the gauntlet of highway overpasses and exit ramps, a task that seemed impossible.

  “Virgil, I don’t think I have the energy to climb another exit ramp.”

  “I know a better way.” Virgil handed him the polished wooden box. “Don’t forget this, your loved ones will need it.”

  Gripping Patrick’s right elbow, he led him back toward the Henry Hudson Parkway and a stretch of sidewalk that intersected with Riverside Drive West.

  Chinatown

  11:09 P.M.

  Thumpa… thumpa… thumpa.

  The rhythmic pounding was relentless, baiting her consciousness through the blackness like a fish to a bobbing worm.

  Thumpa… thumpa… thumpa.

  So annoying… just let me sleep.

  Thumpa… thumpa… thumpa.

  Gavi Kantor opened her eyes, the teen lost in a sea of delirium.

  Bare bulb. Bare mattress. The heavy stench of sex. People talking gibberish.

  Thumpa… thumpa… thumpa.

  She stared like a fascinated kitten at the IV bag dangling high above her head, her dilated eyes tracing its plastic tubing down to her forearm even as her drugged mind fought to gain a foothold on reality. When it did, she could only manage a moan.

  “Help. Somebody please… hello?”

  The sound echoed in her brain, hollow and distorted. She attempted to sit up and was introduced to the restraining straps around her ankles and wrists.

  And that was when the dream is shattered, her captivity rushing at her so fast its gravity drained the blood from her face, and she bellowed a hyper-ventilated, anxiety-induced scream, “Oh my God… oh my God… help! Help me!”

  She cried and thrashed about until her captor showed herself.

  The Mexican woman was in her fifties. The fatty deposits on the back of her arms quivered as she coldly injected the elixir into Gavi’s IV bag and adjusted the drip. “Go back to sleep, Chuleta. We’ll tend to you shortly.”

  The thumpa… thumpa… thumpa of the industrial washing machine faded into blackness as the thirteen-year-old sank back into the depths of unconsciousness.

  Governor’s Island, New York<
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  11:17 P.M.

  The MH-60G Pave Hawk soared over New York Harbor, its pilot having taken a circuitous route from New Jersey to avoid the Hudson River’s no-fly zone. The medium-lift combat helicopter contained two GAU-2B machine guns mounted along its side windows and a pair of.50 caliber machine guns situated just inside the cabin’s two sliding doors. A pilot, copilot, and flight engineer were stationed in the cockpit, eight heavily armed US Army Rangers in back… along with one exhausted and slightly intimidated Army Reserve medic.

  David Kantor felt like a field-goal kicker among defensive lineman. His insides recoiled as the airship lurched into a dizzying turn and descent, landing with a bone-jarring thud. The Rangers methodically checked their gear and disembarked before the twin engines were switched off.

  Alone in the cabin, David closed his eyes, gathering himself mentally. Why am I here? There must be a reason. Forcing his exhausted leg muscles back into action, he regained his feet and jumped down onto the frozen lawn.

  An MP stood by a jeep, signaling him over. “Captain Kantor? Come with me, please.”

  David climbed in the vehicle, gripping the edge of his seat as they accelerated across the frost-covered lawn, then over a dry moat’s one-lane bridge into the harbor fortress.

  Fort Jay’s ancient quadrangle had been turned into a twenty-first-century command post. Rows of generators and a seemingly endless entanglement of heavy-duty cables crisscrossed the compound, providing power to portable banks of computer consoles and satellite dishes. David was led into one of four brick barracks, the interior illuminated using portable lights, the heat provided by kerosene furnaces. At the center of the room was a seven-foot-by-ten-foot map of Manhattan, spread out over a Ping-Pong table.

  The commanding officer was a large man wearing an orange Racal suit, the upper torso of which hung tied off around his waist. He was yelling over the phone, his voice hoarse. “No, you listen! There are no exceptions to a Level-4 quarantine, I don’t give a rat’s ass what arrangements the senator made.” The man’s complexion changed from red to purple. “I don’t care if your V.I.P.’s the king of Siam! And if you ever try to end-run me again, I’ll personally fly down to DC, toss you and the senator in an Apache helicopter, and drop both of your asses in the middle of Times Square, you got that, maggot!”