Apocalypse Rising (Episode 1 of 4): A Christian Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Thriller (Ichthus Chronicles Book 5)

by J A Bouma

  “Dzhoshie!” Nia cried out above the din of the club.

  What he did know, though, was that the fella looked a bit young for Nia, who was now fully enveloped in the man’s arms. Looked to be half her age, maybe a little older, mid-twenties.

  The man cried out with something in what sounded like Nia’s Muscovia tongue before embracing her. Mystery Man took off his hat as Ford, Sasha, and Lucy walked up, plopping it on Nia with a laugh, the two continuing in their foreign tongue. The man nodded toward the trio who looked on, Nia seeming to introduce them and continue carrying on in a Ukrainski rush.

  Sasha looked on, face fallen and sad. Like he’d suddenly realized any chance he had with the Ukrainski chickadee was doomed by having to compete with the man in black.

  “Looks like Nia’s got herself a man,” Lucy said.

  Ford elbowed the poor guy in the ribs. “Little young don’t you think, doc?”

  He heaved a breath and sighed. “Da.”

  “But you can take him. No problem. I’ve got your back.”

  The band finished their number and got a resounding round of applause. Mystery Man slid into the booth with Nia at his side.

  “Come, sit!” She gestured for the trio to take the chairs opposite the group.

  Ford went to the chair nearest Nia; Sasha sat on his left with Lucy at his side. Before he sat, he stuck out his hand toward Mystery Man. “Joshie, I presume?”

  The man chuckled and gave a sideways glance to Nia, who giggled as well. He took the hand, giving it a hard shake.

  “Joshua is fine.”

  Ford nodded and sat. “Pleased to meet ya.” Then he leaned toward Nia, adding: “So what’s he? Boyfriend? Husband?” Thought it made sense to get it all out in the open at the start.

  Nia twisted up her face, leaning back and looking at Joshua before busting out with a laugh. “Nyet! Moy syn!”

  Ford turned to Sasha for a translation, whose face had suddenly brightened some. Must be good news.

  “What’s she babbling about?”

  “He is being her son,” Sasha said.

  Ford turned back with a raised brow. “Well, there you go. Didn’t take you for the motherly type, but—well, there you go.”

  Sasha chuckled. “Yeah, you’re also looking far younger than—” he stopped, then started again: “Well, from what I would be expecting of…well, someone such as yourself.”

  Poor guy was blushing redder than a tomato. Ford leaned over and said, “I’ll take that shovel of yours back now.”

  Sasha muttered something to himself, shaking his head.

  Nia giggled. “It is being fine. I know what you are saying. I am being used it when people think I am being too young to have a twenty-five-year-old.”

  “Twenty-five?” Ford and Sasha both exclaimed.

  “Da. I had him when I was fourteen, before I committed myself to Jesus Christ and was becoming part of Ichthus.” Her smile faded, and she looked up at the stage as the band readied their next song. She continued, “Nearly sent him to an exposure pile, too, had it not been for a kind couple of women who said they would help offer food and clothing for my little malysh.”

  She paused to take a breath. Glancing to her little Joshie, her smile returned and she drew a hand to his face. “And now look at you, Dzhoshua. The head of the North American Resistance and chief of station for Blake Ridge Outpost.”

  Ford whistled. “Head of the North American Resistance and chief of station for Blake Ridge?”

  Joshua chuckled and nodded, dipping his head before giving his mama a look that all kids give their parents when embarrassed at the show of pride.

  “Well, bravo. Nice joint you’ve got here, kid.”

  The man held his head up and puffed his chest out some. “Thanks. It was originally another research station that morphed into a mining operation,” he explained, his accent far more polished than his mama’s. “When the ridge gave up its last minerals, the Ministerium purchased the place for Ichthus business. Using it as a place of ministry training, a place of furlough for missionaries and whatnot. Then when the Purge started, we transformed it into a hub for Resistance activity.”

  “Makes sense why you’d wanted us to meet up,” Ford said to Nia. “And saying hidey-ho to your boy was an added bonus, I’d wager.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Yes, well, we needed to be adding more fuel to our hydrocraft anyway, so it was being no trouble.”

  “Just hope the Republic didn’t follow us here,” he said with a chuckle.

  Joshua’s face fell, and he leaned forward with narrowed eyes. “Why would you say that? Why would the Republic be following you?”

  Ford’s face slid, and he glanced at Nia. “No real reason, other than they’d sicced some Stingrays on us a few days ago. But far, far from here. Back in the Mediterranean before we docked at Nia’s joint.”

  “And then you left there to come here a day later, with no trouble?”

  “Exactly! See, no biggie.”

  “How did you evade the Stingrays? They’re the Republic’s finest underwater tracking vessels. Much like the Tracker drones up top, but manned. And armed.”

  Ford shrugged. “We just sort of lost ‘em. Out maneuvered them and outfoxed them.”

  Joshua leaned back and folded his arms, then scoffed and shook his head. “You don’t out maneuver and outfox Stingrays, friend. I hope you did not bring them to our door.”

  “Do not be worrying, Dzhoshua,” Nia said. “They didn’t follow us.”

  “How can you be sure? Solterra has been trying to track us down for months.”

  “I can assure you, partner,” Ford added. “The Republic ain’t gonna pull one over on me. We made a clean ride.”

  Joshua went to keep pressing when Nia intervened, offering some more Muscovia that seemed to shut the kid up. He sighed and leaned back, taking a swig of his drink.

  “Now, what news do you have from the front?” Nia asked.

  The man threw back another swig and shook his head. “Not good. Everyone is pretty much on the same page that the events of recent days are connected to the Book of Revelation. They’re just not sure what they mean, or what to do with them.”

  “What do you mean by that, partner?” Ford asked.

  “What I mean is, many believed that Christians weren’t supposed to endure the apocalypse. That Jesus would rapture Ichthus away before the Great Tribulation, before God poured out his wrath.”

  Ford snorted a laugh. “Yeah, I was brought up on that version of the end times, as they call it. Suppose if I didn’t know any better—which is really only thanks to Father Jim—well, I’d wonder if I was truly saved after the finer points of John’s Apocalypse started manifesting themselves.”

  “Exactly. That’s what’s happening in many of the communities. To the point that some believers are actually ending their lives in a state of depression, their minds and souls breaking with reality at the dearth of clarity on the subject.”

  “Golly, that’s sad,” Lucy said, sitting back and shaking her head.

  “Oy…” Nia exclaimed, shaking her head as well. “What a tragedy.”

  “Yes, Mama,” Joshua went on. “And now with the Republic ratcheting up the Purge, dismantling less prepared Ichthus communities and dragging them off to reprogramming camps as Unfits…” He trailed off, draining his drink and adding: “I’m afraid we’re coming to a precipice in short order.”

  “And that’s why we’re here, partner,” Ford said. “To hopefully bring some of that clarity.”

  “In what way?”

  “We made contact with one of the Remnants of the Order of Thaddeus.”

  The man seemed to perk up at the mention of that. “Really. Where?”

  “Noramericana. The Georgia province. We’re fixin’ to get some boots on the ground to not only see for ourselves what’s gone down, end times style. But also connect with an asset that had some intel to pass along to the Order Master who was with us—”

  “Order Master?
” Joshua exclaimed above the din of the crowd, the band striking up the next tune now. He looked past Ford into the club. “Where is he? Is he here?”

  Ford shook his head. “Should be about two thousand years in the past right about now.”

  Joshua stared at him dumbly.

  “Don’t worry about it. Point being, we’re hoping the Order can fill in that knowledge gap you’re talking about and get some solid answers about what’s been happening.”

  “Good. Because knowledge and understanding about the nature and extent of the apocalypse is exactly what Ichthus has been missing.”

  They chatted some more, mostly Nia and Joshua catching up. Soon Ford and the crew were heading back to the docking sector of the outpost. The mother-son pair embraced and said their goodbyes, then they descended back into the hydrocraft.

  Ford navigated their PSV out of the docking bay, leaving behind Blake Ridge Outpost and aiming for the Hinesville Hydroport, the main port into southern Noramericana after Savannah and Brunswick were submerged beneath the flood waters of Armageddon, the catastrophic climate change event from the middle of the 21st century. Which he found a little ironic, since they were headed to the province after the place was torched during the start of the apocalypse. Go figure.

  He announced, “Setting our cruising at a comfortable one fifty hundo miles per hour and at a cool depth of two hundred and fifty feet. Should get to shore in no time. An hour tops.” Then he engaged the autopilot and went to fix himself a drink at the minibar in the back. They were riding in style with this hydrocraft!

  “And in kilometers and meters, for us non-Noramericanan people?” Nia asked from behind in the passenger seats.

  He twisted up his face. “How should I know?”

  “Just over two hundred and forty kilometers per hour and just under eighty meters deep,” Sasha said proudly next to her.

  Ford rolled his eyes as he poured some whiskey in a tumbler. Show off. But he supposed the lad had his work cut out for him. “All that matters is we’re on our way—finally. And we should reach shore in just over an hour. So settle in for the ride. But keep your seat upright and trays stowed in case we encounter some turbulence.”

  “I just hope your friends are being able to retrieve the sounds and images of the past with that cockamamie invention of theirs. Because if what Dzhoshua says is true, then we are needing the truth of the past now more than ever.”

  “They’ll pull it off,” Ford said. “No worries there.”

  “It is being my invention, by the way,” Sasha said. “I can share more about the cockamamie invention, as you are putting it, if you like.”

  Trying a bit hard, but points for trying. Ford returned to his seat and settled in for the long haul.

  Nia shrugged and yawned, stretching and settling in for the ride herself. “Sure. Why not?”

  Sasha grinned and rubbed his hands together, the fella clearly relishing the opportunity to school his new chickadee in the finer art of time travel. He said, “Most people think of objects as having length, width, and height, right? Think of a book, with length and width, then the spine is being the height.”

  “You are speaking about an object taking up space, da?” she asked.

  “Da! But what most people don’t realize is that the book also occupies a place in time. Which I am calling phasement.”

  He lifted his hand upward and traced an imaginary line downward. “Which means you can travel along this line down into time. When you are taking a book from the bookshelf, that’s one phase. Then when you are placing it on the couch, that is being another phase in time. The fourth dimension is recording this placement along time in the past, just like the x, y, z dimensions record its occupancy of space in the present. We used to be thinking that solid, liquid, and gas were the only kids on the physics block. Not anymore. A new phase of matter called time crystals was discovered.”

  Nia scrunched up her face. “And what is being this…time crystal, as you are calling it?”

  “A totally new state of matter whose atomic structure repeats through time as regular matter repeats in space—or even changes, which is where things get remarkable.”

  She stared back at him blankly.

  Lucy leaned over and said, “Don’t worry, sister. Went right over my head the first time I’d heard it, too. And I’ve got advanced degrees from Stanford!”

  Sasha waved his hands in the air. “Let me try this. At the normal state of water, it’s a liquid. Add energy to it, and you have steam. Reduce the amount of potential energy, you are having solid ice. So three states of matter and its placement in space. But a professor from California theorized that if you could move the atoms from their original position in some way, then it would break time-translation symmetry and transform its phasement as well.”

  “And it wasn’t until the good ol’ doc here—” Ford gave Sasha’s knee a good slap, “—that the technology finally got small enough to harness the time-travel capabilities of mankind into the belts Alexander and Rebekah are donning in Nicaea. He’s not only a looker, the man’s a doer to boot!”

  Sasha reddened and laughed nervously. “Yes, well, it wasn’t all my doing, requiring me to combine the insights of a few more theoretical physicists. But in essence, a fusion reaction inside the device unleashes enough energy to open a wormhole in the space-time continuum—warping a local region of the continuum with an electromagnetic field.”

  “A wormhole?” Nia asked, brow furrowed. “Is this guy being for real?”

  “As real as a hamster with wings…” Ford muttered.

  She leaned forward with wide eyes now. “And how does this…electromagnetic field thingy work?”

  Seemed to be getting into it now—and getting into the good doc. Go Sasha!

  Sasha flashed a grin and leaned forward as well. “Well, my baryshnya, the electromagnetic field not only transforms the matter of the host into a new phase of matter that transcends the continuum, but also envelopes them inside the warped region of the continuum, the wormhole—a thin tube of space-time that flattens the phases of history into a next-door region you can just zip into through to the other side.”

  “Iznik 2125 to Nicaea 325?” she asked on an in-awe breath.

  “That is being correct! Using a highly sophisticated algorithm, the belt warps the local region of the space-time continuum by focusing the energy stored in the belt onto a single point. Like folding a piece of paper and punching a hole through the center, bringing the two dots from two locations along the plane of the paper into one single phase.”

  “What about the return trip home?”

  Suddenly the hydrocraft trembled, cutting off his answer.

  Ford swung his attention toward the instrument display, his glass rattling now and confirming what he felt wasn’t an illusion.

  Their hydrocraft was trembling under the ocean.

  Something was making their hydrocraft tremble under the ocean.

  Shucky ducky!

  Now what…

  Chapter 17

  A right angry rattlesnake is what it was.

  There’d been plenty of those menaces around Ford’s peanut farm as a youngster on the plains of Noramericana. Timbers, cottonmouths, copperheads, pygmys, corals, diamondbacks—and those were just six of the forty-one varieties making the Georgian province of Noramericana their home that were venomous! There had seemed to be an especially high explosion of them after Armageddon, the catastrophic climate change events of the 21st century that ratcheted up the temps and the sea levels. Rattlers were especially beholden to such climate variables.

  And now it felt like they were riding the back of one after being scared crapless.

  The tremors continued, picking up pace now with a deeper tremble than the one they had felt at the Ministerium’s DSS outpost, ratcheting through the cotton-pickin’ thing with such a shudder Ford thought his teeth would fall out.

  “What is happening?” Sasha said with a squeak.

  Ford resumed manning
the PSV as it continued its antics, latching on to the control wheel in order to wrest the hydrocraft under control. It was no use. The thing kept shuddering and now it was bobbing and weaving and dipping something fierce!

  Nia looked over his shoulder. “Yes, what is happening?”

  “Haven’t a clue! But it’s like that earthquake we experienced on your submergence outpost over in the Mediterranean.”

  “Earthquake?” Sasha squeaked again.

  “Thing’s rocking this way and that, like something’s got a hold of it. Can’t imagine it could be anything but.”

  “Submarine earthquakes, they’re called,” Lucy said, leaning over Ford’s shoulder.

  Ford turned toward her and smiled. “That’s right, sassafras. Sounds like you’re in the know.”

  She shrugged. “Not all us Californian chicks are valley girls.”

  He laughed and returned to the controls. “Anyway, these sorts of things rumble and tumble down at the floor of a body of water and can produce powerful waves. Tsunamis even.”

  Another Sasha squeak: “Tsunamis?”

  Nia said, “You sound like you are being an expert or something.”

  Ford shrugged. “I might be a Noramericana peanut farmer hick, but at least I’m a well-read one.”

  There went another shudder ratcheting through the fish, the bolts feeling like they would pop right out of the dang thing! He clenched his jaw and held onto the controls with tight, taut muscles as he tried to wrestle the fish from its drunken stupor.

  “It’s like the thing is being possessed or something,” Nia muttered.

  Ford shook his head. “Not what we need right now, Negative Nancy. Besides, I think I’ve got the hang of it now and getting it under—”

  The PSV dipped at a wicked angle, nosediving toward the seafloor and sending everyone shouting with frightened protest—as if the tentacles of some sea monster had latched onto the rig and were dragging it to Davy Jones’s Locker.

  Maybe Davy Jones himself!

  Ford’s face slammed into the controller from the force of it all, blood blooming from his nose.