by Justin Price
“The tribulation?” she asked puzzled.
“Yea. That is how they refer to the final seven years before the return of Christ to earth to set up His Kingdom”, he said.
“That’s some pretty heavy stuff. Everyone here just seems so sure of it. How could they ask men and women to not have kids though?”
“It was a suggestion, not a command. There were a few that still did. They understood that they would have to deal with the natural consequences of having a child during this time in history.”
“What do you guys base this off of?” asked Maggie.
“I have some of it memorized. It’s the words of Jesus himself. He said, ‘Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon the people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations.’ It was bad enough already. We knew that when the evil one appeared, it would usher in even worse things. Nobody wants to see a child go through this.”
“It makes sense”, said Maggie. “What a hard time it is for anybody. I really admire the courage of everyone here to stick to their beliefs in the face of such horrible persecution. I am nearly persuaded myself to become one of you.”
“Maggie, you are in the same boat as us now. You might as well give in and allow yourself to know Jesus. He can at least give you peace, joy, and direction in times like this. The most important is that he came to give you eternal life with Him. That’s really the only thing we have to look forward to it seems.”
Just as she was about to answer, they heard cheering up ahead. They had finally come to the opening of the sewer where they could stand up and walk the rest of the distance.
“Thank God”, she said.
CHAPTER 11
John woke up in a dark padded cell. He was still cuffed, but he had apparently been changed into prison clothes. His head was throbbing as he struggled to sit up against the wall. His disorientation gave way to the realization of where he was and what had happened.
In his waking moments, he had hoped that everything was a bad dream. Maybe he would wake up with his wife at the believer’s base or better yet, maybe he would wake up with her at their own home. He could almost feel the soft sheets against his skin and the warm embrace of his wife.
There was nothing more that he longed for than this. Knowing that he would experience nothing like that again grieved him. There was a terrible, deep sadness and despair that overwhelmed him as his eyes adjusted to the solitary cell.
‘God have mercy on me’, he prayed silently. ‘I just don’t think I can take any more of this and I don’t want Maggie suffering or hurting because I’m gone again. I’ve never asked you for anything, but if you are there, I need you now. I need you to come into my life.’
As he was praying, the door opened and light flooded the dark room. All he could see was a silhouette of a man standing there. He pulled back into the fetal position as the man walked toward him. The door closed behind him with a bang.
John looked back up just as the guard grabbed him by the shirt. “Get up! You’re mine now”, the guard said.
“I…I can’t”, said John, “I am still dizzy”.
“There aren’t any excuses here Robertson. You are coming with me. We will see if you are ready to talk.”
John was pulled up on his feet and he stumbled around, trying to gain his footing. He saw the guard’s uniform as he pulled him up. His name tag said “Rollands”.
“Where are we going Rollands?” asked John.
Rollands suddenly jerked him towards him and said, “You will call me sir. You haven’t earned the right to call me anything other than that. You got it?”
“Yes sir”, said John with exasperation and fatigue in his voice.
They went out into a hallway that seemed to lead them back to the area he had first been when they brought him there. John could barely look up due to the hall swaying back and forth. ‘I would have been throwing up by now if I had eaten in the past twenty-four hours’, he thought.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been unconscious, but it had to have been long enough for them to clean him up a little and change his clothes. They finally came to a door that looked familiar. He was taken in and made to sit down on a chair.
“Alright, John”, said a familiar voice. “We are going to try something else.”
Adnan Bahar emerged from the shadows in the corner of the large room with his hands behind his back and his chest stuck out like he had just won an award.
“With you being a soldier, I am sure that you are familiar with some of the techniques that are often employed to get the information that is needed from terrorists. If you aren’t ready to give us some information on what resources they have and the identity of the leadership, then you will get a taste of this yourself.”
“I don’t care what you do”, said John.
“I think you will change your mind sooner or later. You act so brave, but on the inside is a scared little boy. You were a big war hero, but now you’re nothing. You aren’t even a memory to the public. The only one who still cares if you are alive is your wife. Speaking of Maggie…I wonder if she survived the bombing of the base earlier today. Not likely…”
John hung his head and then looked up and spit directly in Bahar’s face. “You are lying”, he said. “You are only trying to break me. We said things like that to the enemy all the time to work on their psyche.”
Bahar wiped the spit off of his face and didn’t say another word. He just turned around and walked out as the guard strapped John’s hands and feet down and placed a cloth over his face.
“I’m really going to enjoy this”, said Rollands.
He pulled John’s head back and began to pour cold water all over the cloth. He panicked and gasped for air. He wanted to be able to move his arms and legs. ‘If only I could get this cloth off of my face’, he thought. There just wasn’t any way out of this except to give them the information that they wanted. ‘If I give it to them, I won’t be of any further use to them’, he thought.
The pitcher of water was emptied and Rollands took another one off a nearby table. He poured it over John’s face again until he thought he was going to drown. He was panicking as he tried to draw a breath through the icy cold water that was now soaking the cloth, causing it to stick to his face and partially close off his air passages.
“I won’t give you anything”, he managed to say as he once again lost consciousness.
―――――
“You are the father”, nurse said to Charles. “I just informed Abbie as well.”
Charles sat back in his chair for a moment to take in the news. It wasn’t a big surprise to him. When Abbie appeared at his doorstep claiming that he was her father, he immediately knew that it was probable. As with everything, he needed that hypothesis tested. Now that it was one-hundred percent certain, he could react accordingly.
“Alright…thank you”, he said with a hollow voice.
‘I’m going to have to tell the girls now’, he thought. ‘I wonder how they are going to handle this’.
Charles didn’t delay. He immediately started down the hall toward the girl’s rooms. About the time he got there, he heard the doorbell ring. He stopped in his tracks and wondered if he should even answer it. Whoever it was…this just wasn’t a good time. He put his hand on the bedroom door and the doorbell rang once more.
“Pretty persistent aren’t you?” he said as he turned and walked toward the front door. In his frustration, he didn’t even care to see who was there before he opened the door. It was none other than Susan Clark; one of the last people he wanted to see.
His first instinct was to shut the door in her face and walk away, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wanted to talk to her and question her himself. He needed to find out why she allowed him to go through life never knowing that he had a daughter and why she let Abbie think that he just left them like a deadb
eat dad.
“Come in”, he said begrudgingly.
“Appreciate it”, said Susan.
“Come on in to the living room. We have a lot to talk about”, said Charles. ‘
“Yes we do”, said Susan.
They both walked through the large foyer and into the living room where they found a seat. Neither one of them knew exactly where to start, even though they had both rehearsed this in their mind a dozen times.
Susan began the conversation. “Look Charles, I know that this has come as quite a shock to you. I also know that you are probably upset, even angry that I have twisted the truth for so long.”
“Why did you do it?” he interrupted. “You know that I would have taken care of my responsibility. You just acted like you lost interest in me and never called me again. I have had a daughter that I never got to watch grow up and she grew up thinking her biological father never cared about her. That is a pretty sick and twisted thing to do to us Susan.”
Susan put her face in the palms of her hands and started to cry. After a few moments, she looked up with tears streaming down her face and said, “I did it for you.”
“You did it for me? How did that benefit me?” asked Charles.
“I saw that you were better than the small town in Arkansas that you left. You had things inside of you that most people from back home could never even dream of. I found out I was pregnant the week after you left for New York. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you or even expect you to be here. A baby is a very time consuming responsibility and I knew that if you were to ever live up to your potential as a doctor and scientist that you would need all the focus you could get during your school years. And well… look what you did Charles. You found the cure for cancer. You may have never done that if you had to be a father at eighteen.”
Charles shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “I understand a little more as to why you did it”, he said, “but it was my responsibility.”
“You feel that way now at middle age Charles, but you may not have felt that way then.”
“Why didn’t you ever contact me?” he asked. “You know that I had the resources here to at least help you financially.”
“I never wanted to be in the picture. I knew you had started over and I had started over as well. I never wanted to tell Abbie because I knew that if I did, she would want to try to contact you. I couldn’t have that and I didn’t know with you having a wife and kids already if you would reject her. I couldn’t put either one of you through that.”
“You knew that we would eventually find out though right?” he asked. “It was inevitable.”
“Yes. I knew it would happen, but I knew that if I kept my mouth shut then she would be an adult. Now, you are a widower…and I am sorry for your loss…I just feel like I need to tell you that. Both of you are in better position now to build a relationship if you are willing to do so.”
“The first thing I need to do is tell my daughters. I just heard the confirmation that I am her father from the clinic and I was headed to their room to break the news to them when the doorbell rang. This is all still very new and my family and I need time to process the information and figure out what we want to do with it.”
“I understand completely”, said Susan. “Take all the time you need and when you are ready, our door is always open.”
“Thanks”, he said.
“I will see myself out. Thank you for talking to me. I really hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me for the way I handled the situation. It was never my intention to do harm to either one of you. I was just wanting to protect you in my own way.”
“I know. I appreciate the gesture. I’ve done a lot with my life, but now I need to figure out how to start this new chapter the right way.”
“Goodnight Charles”, she said as she walked out the door and to the car waiting on her.
“Goodnight Susan”, he said. ‘She is as beautiful as she was over twenty years ago’, he thought.
―――――
The Secret Service agents on either side of President Cain immediately picked him up and carried him back into the oval office. He was unconscious and quickly losing blood. They laid him on the floor and the White House doctor came in immediately to attend to him.
“He is going to need surgery immediately”, he said. “We are losing him fast. His lungs are filling up with blood. Where is the rest of the medical team?
“They are on their way”, said one of the secret service agents. “Probably about five minutes out and the emergency medical room is being prepared at the White House.”
“Alright…let’s get him on this stretcher and wheeled over there now. We don’t have much time.”
They gently picked him up and placed him on the stretcher. Blood poured from his back as he was lifted off the carpet. Meanwhile, Speaker Bernhart stood in the corner in a daze. His heart was still pounding from the initial shock of the bullet ripping through the President right in front of him and wondering if he would be next. Now, he was watching a friend, colleague, and fellow believer bleed out on the floor of the oval office.
The heart monitor that the doctor strapped onto President Cain showed the decline of his beats per minute until it was very faint. His breathing was shallow and rattled as he was drowning in his own blood.
“His respiratory system is failing and he is losing too much blood”, said the doctor as they wheeled him through the doors to perform emergency surgery.
The surgeon, two assistants, and the anesthesiologist were already waiting for them when they got there. The doctor updated them on his condition and where the wound seemed to go through.
“Please go ahead and get started. He doesn’t have long if something isn’t done. I’ll wash up and get my scrubs on and join you by the time you are ready to begin cutting.”
The scene was pure chaos as they tried to keep the president alive while prepping for surgery. The two secret service men left the room and stood outside in a daze. Their shirts were covered in blood. They didn’t know what else to do but to stand outside the doors. Their job wouldn’t stop until the President was confirmed dead.
Speaker Bernhart walked up to them and asked, “Is he still alive?”
“Yes sir”, said one of the agents.
“Barely holding on sir”, said the other.
“Alright. Thank you. I’m going to go see if I can find out if they have the suspect. Thank you both for your service. I know it would mean a lot to the president.”
William walked off and headed toward the situation room, where he felt like he would get some answers. He walked in to the room and saw Vice President Donnelly talking with the head of the Secret Service and a couple law enforcement officers.
He walked over and said, “Mr. Donnelly, may I have a quick word with you?”
“Oh, sure William”, said Donnelly. “What’s the latest word on Liam?” he asked.
“He is fighting for his life right now”, said William gravely. “Have they apprehended the suspect?”
“Yes, one of our snipers actually took him out right after the shot. If it wasn’t for that, he probably would have gotten off another shot and went for you or one of the Senators.”
“Oh, good. That’s good to hear”, said William. “Do we know anything about him yet? Do they think he acted alone?”
“We don’t know much right now except that he was a former military sniper who came back from World War 3 and defected to the Christian faith, so he was likely part of a domestic terrorist cell.”
‘Doubtful’, thought William. ‘Christians don’t go out and kill people. There is something more to this story than meets the eye.’
William spoke up and said, “Where does this intelligence come from?”
“He had been on the NSA watch list for some time and had been watched by the Department of Homeland Security due to his known mental issues and disappearance from the grid.”
“Alright”, said William. “Just keep me updated o
n that situation. I’m going to go back down and check on the President.”
“I’ll come with you”, said Donnelly.
The two walked down the hall together and headed toward the nearest elevator to go down to the medical suite.
The Vice President turned and said, “You know Speaker Bernhart, I am in shock that Liam has gone to your way of thinking as much as the rest of the world probably is. He had so much potential in him to lead this country in the way it needed to go and now, the country is going to be in shambles due to his decision to act with you and your cohorts without even consulting members of his own party; including me.”
“Jay…,” William said sternly, “now is not the time to be discussing politics. The President of the United States is in there fighting for his life. Show a little more respect than that.”
“I wouldn’t wish death on anyone William, but I can tell you that if he doesn’t pull through this and I am named president, then I will make sure that this fantasy of throwing the United States back to the twentieth century will be eliminated immediately. You can take that to the bank”, he said as he walked off the other way.
William didn’t know what to do now. He didn’t have the authority to keep things calm and there was a possibility that the new president would be Donnelly, who was still very much a supporter of Assad and the World Council.
As he entered the waiting area outside of the surgery room, he looked up at the screen on the wall. There were cameras lined all across the front of the White House as they reported on the shooting along with reports of the man who did it. The split screen revealed riots and shootings throughout the country already.
