What the Hand: A Novel About the End of the World and Beyond

by Stockwell, Todd

  Figuring the Jewish people for the bigger claim, the British assigned the whole area to be Jewish Palestine. Word got out, and Jews from all over the world began to return to their homeland and another Bible prophecy was fulfilled.

  And wouldn’t you know it—things began to grow again, the area thrived. That’s when local Arabs finally took an interest. They wanted the newly flourishing land for themselves and began pouring into Jewish Palestine in droves. Did the Jews throw them out? No, they welcomed them.

  Then, under pressure from neighboring Arab countries, the British divided the area again with seventy-five percent to be deemed Arab Palestine, leaving only twenty-five percent now to the Jews. This was yet another strange decision involving the fate of the region.

  But the Jews didn’t complain. They accepted this unreasonable proposal, even allowing the Arabs and Muslims living in their twenty-five percent to remain as friends and neighbors. And many did.

  Still, none of this created the mythical country of Palestine. The Arabs took their seventy-five percent and most of that land became the country of Jordan.

  But the Arabs and Muslims weren’t satisfied. I guess they figured there must be something great over there in that twenty-five percent if they accepted the offer without a fight. Anyway, sensing weakness and opportunity, they attacked like rabid dogs, massacring Jews on both sides of the dividing lines.

  After lying down throughout the Holocaust, the Jewish people had had enough. They fought back with a vengeance, driving off the hostile Arabs and the pro-Arab Brits.

  Finally, the British also had enough, giving the matter to the U.N., who then made another incredible, satanically influenced decision. They now decided to divide up the Jew’s remaining twenty-five percent, handing another twelve percent of Jewish Palestine over to the Arabs who already had seventy-five percent of the whole enchilada.

  Once again, the Jews accepted the compromise. But finally, in 1948, they declared their own Jewish State. Immediately, seven neighboring Arab armies attacked.

  Warned of the attack on Israel and the intended annihilation of its Jewish citizens, those Arabs, living peacefully in Israel, fled town in a hurry without bothering to pack. They figured they’d be moving back shortly after the slaughter, and to claim their Jewish friends’ and neighbors’ property as well.

  Lo and behold, the expected annihilation didn’t happen. The little nation was surrounded, outgunned and outmanned, yet the Arabs were soundly defeated.

  God had promised that once the Jews returned and established their own nation again, they would never be forced to leave it again. And they never were.

  What happened to all the disappointed Arabs who had left to wait out Israel’s predicted defeat during the first attack? They hung around the area that would later become Palestine, complaining about how they were forced out of their homes by the Jews.

  Why? Because their Arab brothers wanted nothing to do with them. Instead of inviting them in to settle or offering them a little bit of land from their massive countries for their own nation, the neighboring Arab states thought it better to use them as pawns, portraying them as victims robbed of their land by the evil Jews, and the Middle East Crisis was born.

  ***

  The reestablishment of Israel also started the Biblical prophetic clock. Although Jesus said no one would know the exact moment of His return, He gave a pretty startling prediction regarding the generation living during the reestablishment of the Jewish Nation. He said, “...that generation would not pass” before His return. Latest that put it was maybe 2048, and, of course, He came back much earlier. It couldn’t have been any clearer. “Hello,” He was saying, “I’m coming very soon, George. Wake the heck up, Buddy!”

  ***

  I was a slow learner. I was already too late for the Rapture and now this Antichrist guy was starting to take over the world, and still, I was just beginning to embrace Christianity.

  I knew what was coming from what Charlie had told me, but I wanted to know more, so I picked up every Christian book I could find concerning the end-times, which wasn’t easy. The day after the Rapture, the Illuminati-run government had stripped all the bookstores and libraries of prophetic books. Still, after hitting up a dozen bookstores, I was able to purchase a few that had been missed.

  It was amazing how right these modern day “prophets” had been regarding the events that were to come. They had the Rapture, Antichrist, and one-world government business nailed. If they were right about the rest of what they were writing, I remember thinking at the time, things were about to get scary real fast.

  ***

  If I had it to do over again, I would have stood in the middle of Times Square, preaching the Word of God until they carted me off for torture and murder. But, though I was reading the Bible and praying more, my faith was still pretty weak, and I was nowhere close to becoming a martyr.

  I mean for a long time after Sophie disappeared, I thought I wanted to die. I was numb enough to risk injury trying to help after the plane wreck, but that wasn’t the real me. I had always looked out for number one, and that hadn’t changed. So after the numbness wore off, my survival instincts kicked in, and I realized I was as scared of dying as I had always been, and so began planning my escape.

  I soon discovered there were a whole lot of websites and books dedicated to sticking round after an apocalypse. The first thing I wanted to know was where the best place to hide would be. There were many choices, mostly in other countries, but that wouldn’t do. I was going to stay where I was until the last possible moment, so I needed someplace drivable, preferably in California, as I thought it would also be more difficult to get out of the state once the crap hit the fan. I was right, but it would be much worse than I thought. After the Mark of the Beast was imposed, it became difficult to leave even the city.

  I eventually settled on an area of lava pits in Northern California just below the Sierra Mountain Range and close to fresh water. The place was teeming with wildlife and had plenty of caves. I drove up a few times until I found the right cave, deep enough for hiding but with a view of the valley and road below.

  I used to watch this television show about a guy who would walk into the wilderness or desert someplace, wearing practically nothing but his underwear and carrying only a pocketknife and a length of rope. He’d stay out there for about a week eating plants and bugs, and the occasional fish or rabbit, at least until he’d manage to trap a pig or something. So I figured with some knowledge of the wilderness, guns and plenty of ammunition, a ton of food, sleeping bags and blankets, a generator, traps and fishing poles, firewood, flashlights and batteries, a stove, and a bunch of other junk, I might be able to survive.

  I mean I wasn’t completely ignorant of the outdoors. I had been a Boy Scout and had gone on my share of bivouacs in the Army. Still, I wasn’t about to go unprepared. I read and researched, and gathered everything I would possibly need. And twice a month, I made the long drive north to stash more goods in my new hideout. Eventually, I decided I was ready, and so I waited.

  ***

  According to my books on Christian prophecy and what I remembered from my conversations with Charlie, the Antichrist was going to solidify his power by forming a world government and religion. Then he would require everyone to have some sort of mark on their body if they wanted to participate in the economy—and by participate I mean eat. The mark would require the bearer to denounce God and pledge devotion to the Antichrist. Weak Christian or not, that path, I knew, was a one-way ticket to the pit. On that one I had heard Charlie loud and clear. “Even if it means death, never take a mark to buy or sell.”

  ***

  After the North American Union was formed, things moved surprisingly fast. Victor Talley was adding a country a day to his European Union, which they were now calling the New World Order. He had already annexed most of Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East, and the only real holdouts were in Asia and the North American Union. The pressure on those countr
ies was relentless. Everything the Antichrist touched turned to milk and honey. All the countries under the flag of the New World Order were peaceful and booming, but everywhere else: unrest, unemployment, food shortages, and the like. Canada, Mexico, and the U.S legislative branches all urged President Newton to give in, and it wasn’t long before the dire economic situation left him little choice.

  ***

  At first, Talley set himself up as the democratic president of the New World Order. Under him was a senate made up mostly of former leaders of the countries he’d annexed. Talley worked with these guys to establish one currency, one huge army, and a central government located in Iraq. There, a city called New Babel was built practically overnight. New Babel rivaled the city of New York in size, but with purely modern construction and an obscene opulence.

  How did they build it so fast? The aliens helped them.

  ***

  The revival of Babylon was predicted in the Bible. Babylon was the largest and most advanced empire of the ancient world, but full of demons, giants, and miscreants of every kind. Such mayhem and depravity existed that it put to shame the worst days of Rome.

  An arrogant king named Nimrod, who would eventually become possessed by demons, once ruled the Babylonian empire. By brute force, he had conquered the known world and created the first one-world government. Nimrod, a direct descendent of Noah, then rejected God in favor of worshiping the fallen angels and their legends. The seat of his empire was the great city of Babel, built to honor those false gods.

  The Bible story was that the Babylonians became full of pride and decided to build a tower up to heaven in order that they might be on the same footing as God. Again, what the storytellers couldn’t relate with and didn’t pass along was the science and technology involved in the construction of the so-called Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel wasn’t a tower at all, and even the original Greek translations of the Bible suggest a “gateway for gods” rather than a tower. But the storytellers couldn’t fathom a means by which heaven could be reached without building straight up to the clouds.

  Well, what was it then? It was an attempt at building a stargate, a portal used to transcend space and time to travel the universe. The Illuminati provided Nimrod and his architects with the blueprints and materials, and the Babylonians were off and running.

  God, however, had other plans. He could never allow such a pathway that would expose humans to even more demon and alien activity, so he confused the languages, preventing the Babylonians from communicating effectively enough to finish the stargate. It worked. So well, in fact, it broke up the whole of civilization into what would eventually become the modern world with its many borders, cultures, and languages.

  ***

  That is, until the Antichrist began bringing everyone back together. The countries of Eastern Asia, mostly controlled by China, were the largest holdouts. China was a beast unto itself, a vast communist empire that at the time of the Antichrist controlled Japan, North and South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. China also had the largest army ever seen, and a nuclear arsenal large enough to wipe out the rest of the world a thousand times over. They weren’t about to succumb to any one-world government unless it was to be run by them. Their resistance would eventually lead to a great battle in a Middle Eastern valley known as Armageddon.

  ***

  As soon as the Antichrist set up shop in New Babel, he dismantled the Senate of the New World Order. Those few Senators who wouldn’t go quietly began to resign or die under mysterious circumstances. Soon, the New World Order president became the New World Order supreme leader.

  ***

  In a large room in the city of London, a wall of computers had been gathering information about every individual on the planet since the early 1980s. These computers, nicknamed the Beast, were doing essentially the same thing that a fictional computer of the same name was supposed to have been doing since the 1970s. The fictional computer was from a novel about the end of the world.

  In the novel, the Beast was three stories tall because that’s how big the author thought a computer would have to be to store that much information. But this was a great exaggeration even by 1970s computer standards. By 1980, just one of the real Beast computers, about the size of an average door, could handle the job. Still, more were added to speed up the information gathering.

  The real Beast was owned by a company called Vester. This Illuminati-run company had supposedly set up the computers to gather customer information for marketing purposes. The information was sold to other companies for this reason, but the genuine work of Vester had always been preparation.

  ***

  My name and Social Security number were entered into the Beast when I applied for credit cards on my first day of college.

  ***

  Credit card companies on the Old Earth would routinely set up little booths on college campuses, where they would hand out credit cards like condoms to unsuspecting students. These credit cards had interest rates and limits that would shame a Mafia loan shark. American Express offered students a card with unlimited funds. Several banks offered students Visa Cards with interest rates over twenty-five percent.

  ***

  I accepted an American Express Card, three Visa Cards, and a MasterCard for good measure. By the time I turned twenty, I carried $42,000 in credit card debt, which I couldn’t pay, so I didn’t. My credit was ruined for seven years. The Beast duly noted that I was a bad risk.

  The Beast not only tracked each purchase I made with the credit cards, debit cards, and checks I used, but also my movements. The Beast knew what I ate, what I wore, where I traveled, the movies I watched, the bands I went to see, the gifts I bought, what my hobbies were, the schools I went to, where I worked, how much I made, the Internet sites I searched, and on and on. The Beast knew me better than I knew myself.

  The Beast knew something else about me, too. The Beast knew I would run.

  10

  There is, of course, something humbling about cave life. Staring for hours at the visiting rodents and crawling things softens the ego as one begins to realize the smallness of life. This was the beginning of my salvation, as I would have to change, to be reborn before I could enter the kingdom of God.

  ***

  Before Danny and her party happened upon me, I spent my days staring at creatures, praying, and gathering food. I also read quite a bit and listened to the radio, but infrequently, as I was limited on gas and batteries.

  ***

  I had stashed away about fifty books on various subjects, including a Bible my mom had given me because she was worried about my soul. She was right to be worried. The Bible would have helped me to avoid a lot of anguish had I bothered to open it with any frequency before the Rapture.

  ***

  The Bible is eternity, life, and the true bread on the table. The answers to all needs, problems, worries, heartache, and anguish are in the Book. You have only to pick it up with an open heart. Even the birds were content, “...fed and housed,” the Bible teaches, “yet so much more precious is a man or woman to God.”

  Reading the Bible with an open mind and heart—not for an hour here and there, or a few consecutive days—but embracing it; letting it become the start and the end of each day; honoring its greatness and importance, even for a time, feeds like nothing else, so when you become distracted, when you leave it, you never forget its nourishment and long for it consciously and subconsciously.

  ***

  Did I begin each day with the Bible? Did I embrace it? Did I honor its importance? Did I read it with an open heart? Not really. Even after the Rapture and all I’d seen, I was like most people on the Old Earth with their heads on the ground. If they had nothing, they were thinking about how to get something; if they had everything, they were thinking about how to get more. But something and everything was usually close by, wasting away on a shelf, in a drawer, in a box in the garage, or in the corner of a cave.


  So like most, I read the Bible when I was hungry, troubled, depressed, or lonely. After I read and prayed, the food would come, the fear would go, I’d feel better. But once satisfied, I would ignore the Book for a time. Still, God never held it against me. God was a good guy like that.

  ***

  I had a calendar where I marked the days in my first cave. On the 127th day, the Minions of the Antichrist found my SUV. It wasn’t the first encounter I’d had with the men in the black jumpsuits. These men could not be reasoned with. These men had no compassion. These men were brutal and relentless. If I didn’t do something soon, they would find me.

  Now there were only three of them, so I probably could have picked them off with my rifle before they reached the cave, but I knew if had, the New World Order would send a small army to look for them. It was time to leave.

  I was already prepared for this possibility—a cycle that would repeat itself often—and I had a large backpack ready. I would have to come back for the bulk of my supplies later. I threw on the pack, stuffed a pistol in my belt, grabbed my rifle and headed up the mountain to find a new home.

  ***

  The Minions were the Antichrist’s version of Heinrich Himmler’s SS, the infamous Nazi paramilitary organization responsible for beatings, torture, and the mass murder of millions. Like the SS, the Minions were handpicked for their brutality. And like the SS, the Minions would drag people out of their houses in the middle of the night to beat or cart them away, often never to be seen again.

  ***

  Many times, I had stood by and watched as the Minions harassed my neighbors. Each time, I vowed afterwards to jump in, but I never did. I knew it would mean at least a severe beating and possibly death, and I was afraid.

  Late one night, before I left my home to live in that first cave, I awoke to the sound of Wiley barking and the Minions pounding on my front door. It was my turn. I knew exactly what they wanted. I had been to all their stupid movies, listened to Victor Tally’s redundant speeches, checked in at the local New World Order office, received my new identification card, accepted my ration slips, had even been assigned a surgery date. Except the date came and went, and I hadn’t shown up.