by Mark Romang
C.J. briefly entertained scaling the hemlock, and then using the cable to cross over the gorge using a hand over hand technique. But he disregarded the thought. He was already gassed, and would never reach the other side.
He looked behind him. The first snakes had arrived. The serpents were no longer knotted together like they were back in their nest. Now they slithered in tidy rows, evenly spaced and in synch like a marching band on a football field.
The biggest garter snakes were maybe four feet in length. But they were boiling mad.
And they came right at him.
C.J. edged to the precipice and looked down. A sheer cliff tumbled down to meet a forested valley floor. The tops of the tallest trees were maybe twenty-five feet below him. If he jumped into them, maybe he’d survive.
Then again, maybe he wouldn’t.
He looked back at the snakes pouring over the ridge. Their fangs were bared, and their intentions were clear.
C.J. peered into the gorge once more. Before the Rapture took place he had been an extreme snowboarder. He used to perform high-risk, aerial stunts all the time. He and Tanner even performed at X-Games qualifying meets. But leaping into the trees would be his craziest stunt by far.
He took a deep and quavering breath. Do I really have to do this? He looked over his shoulder at the snakes. The serpents were no more than ten feet away and advancing fast. I have no choice, he determined.
C.J. leaped.
He plummeted in a hurry, like he’d jumped feet first from a high dive. The treetops rushed up at him. His arms wind-milled. A guttural scream bolted out his mouth.
And then he hit.
He became lost in greenery. Branches snapped under his impetus. Fir boughs cuffed him in the head. C.J. grabbed at the branches blurring by him, desperate to slow his terminal descent. But the Douglas fir trees at this elevation were scraggly. He blew right through the slender branches. Fir needles entered his eyes and ears, and penetrated his nose.
C.J. bounced off one tree and slammed into another tree, and then another. He finally managed to grab a sizeable branch, but the branch snapped under his weight. He wasn’t that big, was mostly skin and bones and didn’t weigh much, but velocity from falling added pounds to his frame.
He neared the ground, and prepared himself to crash-land, but the hood on his jacket snagged a branch and jerked him to a rapid halt. The branch juddered up and down under his weight like a diving board. And then the branch fractured in half. C.J. dropped over a story to the ground, landing on his back and shoulders.
His head banged against the earth.
Morning light turned dark as midnight.
And he lay as still and silent as a tipped over tombstone.
Chapter 21
When Andrew Maddix and his warriors arrived on the ridge overlooking the gorge, the snakes instantly transformed back into demons and grabbed for their swords. The sound made by three-thousand swords drawn from their scabbards at the precise moment caused icy chills to race up Maddix’s neck.
Yet he was the leader of both men and angels; he couldn’t show fear, not even apprehension. “Depart this region at once! Resist us and we will send you to the Abyss!” he shouted fiercely.
The demon nearest him snickered. “We outnumber you by a wide margin, Andrew. If anyone should depart it should be you and your pathetic little army.”
Maddix waggled his Eden sword enough to make its flaming blade double in length. “You have chosen poorly. Now you must eat from the fire of God’s wrath,” he said and lunged forward, thrusting his sword upward at the tall demon’s chest.
The demon jumped backward to avoid the fiery thrust. The demon’s defensive reaction caused him to bump into several demons behind him. Some of the demons toppled over, but others took flight.
Although he operated in his own personal battle zone where distractions were not welcome, Maddix saw his warriors engage the demons in his periphery. Battle cries filled the air. The repulsive smell of evil and the gratifying scent of justice collided violently. Neither scent complimented the other. The two were incompatible. Everlasting enemies.
The demons attempted to scramble to their feet. Maddix sprang forward before they could, unwilling to give them a chance. He waved the Eden sword—a weapon hardly resembling a sword now. Maddix held a conflagration in his hands, and he used it with a lethal purpose.
The Eden sword’s tip slashed across the demons’ chests, igniting each into a screaming fireball. The torched demons crackled and snapped in the flames and quickly melted into silvery-black dross.
Maddix felt no guilt, no niggling qualms for inflicting such ferocious agony upon the demons. He was an instrument of war in Elohim’s hands, meting out righteousness on fallen angels who should’ve known better than to throw their lot in with Lucifer.
They chose wickedness and rebellion. Now they must reap the consequences.
Maddix pivoted, swiveling his head to defend against a sneak attack, and also to look for his next foe. He didn’t have to search long. A demon wearing charcoal-colored body armor rushed up at him. The demon swung a war hammer. The giant, curved head on the hammer looked like it could pulverize a boulder with only one swing.
The war hammer had a handle several feet long, allowing the demon to swing it from a safe distance away. Even with the Eden sword flaming up to up to six feet, Maddix had to close the gap to land his kill thrust. Unfortunately, two more demons joined the fight and complicated matters. Each demon brandished a flail—a bludgeoning weapon consisting of a spiked ball attached by chain to a wooden handle.
Three on one. Lousy odds.
But I still hold the advantage. I have the Holy Spirit living inside me. They don’t.
The demonic trio closed in on him, hatred burning in their reddish-orange eyes. Maddix still hadn’t figured out why some of the fallen angels had coal-black eyes and others had reddish-orange eyes. He could only speculate that there was a ranking of evil, and that eye color designated the corresponding wickedness. Or then again, maybe the demons came from different tribes and regions.
These demons made up the Legion that Jesus cast out from the man living among the tombs. But they could’ve easily come from all over the earth before they entered the man.
Maddix cleared his head. Unnecessary thoughts weakened his focus. So he zeroed his thoughts onto tactical moves, both offensive and defensive. Maddix bent his knees, shifted his weight evenly onto his toes. He could move easier this way, could spring to either side and lunge forward or backward with greater speed. He wanted to move with the dexterity and grace of a fencer. In and out like a champion boxer. And in the end, if he had trouble being deft and elusive, he would simply brawl, counting on God and the mighty Eden sword to vanquish his opponents.
Maddix didn’t blink. He didn’t dare. The flails whipped the air around him from opposite directions and at blinding speeds, causing a shrill whistling sound to wage war against his mind. The whistling flails also seemed to have a strange, hypnotic effect to them. Maddix quickly shifted his attention to the demon with the war hammer, something he could follow more easily. He had a plan in mind. If it worked out, he could defeat all three demons at once.
The plan—simple yet insidious—hinged on the demon with the war hammer.
Maddix lowered his sword slightly. He didn’t want the flail balls to whip around the blade. If that happened the demons would try to rip the Eden sword from his hands. Maddix made a small feint to the flail-wielding demon to his left, but then altered his attack and halfheartedly lunged at the flail-wielding demon on his right.
Distraction was crucial for his plan to work.
Keep engaging the demons with the flails, and pretend to ignore the one with the war hammer, he told himself. Maddix pivoted on his left foot and reversed his sword thrust toward the demon on the left. The demon stepped back, but still swung his flail over his head like a cowboy poised to lasso a steer.
Maddix shot a glance back toward the demon on his right. Out of
his periphery he saw the demon with the war hammer take a big stride forward and chop his hammer down like an axe toward Maddix’s head. It seemed like a suicidal thing to do, but Maddix mustered all his courage and strode forward, directly toward the descending war hammer.
As soon as he advanced, both the demon on the left and the demon on the right brought down their spiked flail balls. At the penultimate second before his head would’ve been splattered by the war hammer and flail balls, Maddix pulled back his head. Additionally, to complete the charade, he brought his sword tip up as if to block the blows. But he made sure not to bring the blade up too high.
Maddix heard the crackling sounds of flail chains wrapping around something solid. Both flail-wielding demons sneered confidently and jerked back their flails. Surprise registered in their ugly eyes when they realized their spiked flail balls had wrapped around the long war hammer handle, and not the Eden sword.
The flails and the war hammer locked together, rendering all three weapons useless for the moment. Maddix jumped on his opportunity. He took a long step forward and slashed the Eden sword from right to left, low and across the demons’ knees. The Eden sword’s razor-sharp, double-sided blade amputated six legs cleanly with surgical precision.
Screaming, the demons dropped instantly onto their stumpy legs, losing significant height. Maddix immediately supinated his forearms and hands and performed a shoulder-level, forehand slash from left to right. The reverse sword slash decapitated all three demons. Their torsos pitched forward to the ground, while their heads bounced and rolled into the melee, and were soon kicked around and stepped on by angels and demons alike.
Maddix had never decapitated a demon. He had always ended battles by plunging the Eden sword into his foes’ chests. When he was first given the Eden sword it had been explained to him that plunging the sword into a demon’s chest neutralized them until after the millennial reign ended. At this time, they would rejoin Satan’s army and participate in his brief and doomed uprising.
Maddix didn’t know what would happen to this trio. And he didn’t really care. He had more important things to consider. He turned his head and looked for another enemy to engage. But instead of locating a foe, his eyes settled on an endless barrage of arrows raining down on the demons, every arrow finding their mark.
His immediate assumption was that Vallen had returned from Seattle with his small army. But assumptions rarely prove trustworthy. Maddix felt his heart swell with pride when he determined the archer’s identity. The archer was none other than Spencer…his son.
****
When the battle started Spencer quickly realized his eagerness to fight demons alongside his dad was a bit misguided. The demons making up the Legion were fierce and powerful warriors. And they seemed incapable of tiring. But that made perfect sense. Just because they were fallen angels didn’t mean they’d lost any strength or stamina during their freefall to Earth.
Spencer wasn’t so naïve to think that the Legion had misplaced their battle skills while banished into a herd of pigs. Even before the Legion entered the man from Gadarenes, the demons had fought in hundreds of supernatural wars over several millennia. It was a no-brainer the infamous demons were still proficient in every fighting style known to man. All demons study humans relentlessly, especially military commanders, and are quick to adopt their best warfare strategies and combat tactics, making them their own.
Spencer had only fought demons in a physical manner one other time. And that had been during the War in Heaven when he stood atop the wall and shot his arrows from a safe distance away.
He found himself in a far different scenario now. He stood in the middle of harm’s way. Danger came at him from every direction and angle. This was his proving ground, and frontlines had a way of separating true warriors from only pretenders. Even more so for him. He was the son of Andrew Maddix, a legend in the spirit realm.
Yet he didn’t fight for his earthly father. He fought for his heavenly Father. And it was all the motivation he needed.
Like a machine, Spencer loosed arrow after arrow. An armor-piercing arrow left his string every two seconds, sometimes less. Demons fell in great numbers. He didn’t worry at all about running out of arrows. Vallen gave him one of his own quivers, a special quiver that never empties and continually resupplies itself.
So he kept drilling the demons, one after another after another. Like an expert sniper he shot them one at a time with cold efficiency. But unlike snipers who typically hide in a shooting nest far from danger, Spencer was right out in the open. Exposed and vulnerable.
He locked onto another target: a large demon who was clubbing his way through the angels, pounding them with a giant mace. Spencer was about to release his arrow when he heard his dad cry out a warning. “Watch your six, Spencer!”
With his bow at full pull, Spencer whirled 180 degrees. He inhaled sharply when he saw four demons closing in on him. He shot the nearest demon in the neck, dropping him in his tracks. Spencer immediately reached over his shoulder blades and pulled an arrow from his quiver. His retrieval was a blur, but the demons were equally as fast. They closed in on him before he could even place the arrow on his bowstring.
Menacing and reeking of sulfur, the three demons towered over him by at least four feet. Momentarily paralyzed, Spencer shivered at the sight of their reddish-orange eyes. The ugly orbs looked as big as billiard balls.
As the nearest demon reached for him, Spencer tried to move, but his feet seemed set in stone. He couldn’t budge. And if he couldn’t retreat, he was going to have to somehow fight off these brutes. A difficult task made impossible by the fact he didn’t carry a sword. He was an archer, and knew nothing about sword fighting.
That left his fists.
Spencer managed to shrink back a step. But it wasn’t enough. He could feel the demon’s rancid breath waft onto his face. And at that creepy moment he knew his fists were never going to cut it. Fortunately, it didn’t come to a one-sided fistfight. Both his dad and Coleton Webb came charging in to his rescue.
Spencer could only watch in awe like a spectator on the front row of a championship prizefight. The terrible violence on display before him made the ground quiver and shake. The demons fought desperately with all the strength and aggression they could muster. But it wasn’t enough. His dad punished a pair of demons with repeated slashes and thrusts from his Eden Sword, searing the demons little by little until flames took irreversible hold, charring them into an ash pile. And not far away Coleton Webb slashed his twin scimitars in rhythmic fashion. Like a sculptor chipping away excess, Webb artfully sliced to shreds the third demonic warrior.
A lump formed in Spencer’s throat. He’d always looked up Coleton Webb and his dad. They were his heroes. And now he was witnessing their mindboggling fighting skills up close and personal. The wrath of God clearly flowed through both one-time Navy SEALS. For sure God’s spirit lived within the hot flames billowing off the Eden sword. Spencer could tell his face glowed hot from standing so close to the flames.
In that instant he became aware of the Lord’s presence. Spencer felt the hair on his arms stand up. The ridge became holy ground under his feet, and the sensation caused him to briefly philosophize about Jehovah’s provision. Anyone who thinks God only sits on His throne and watches from afar is sadly mistaken. God is active and battles for his people with unbridled passion.
Spencer stared at the arrow in his hand. Courage began to flow back into his limbs. I should do something besides stand here, he thought. He started to reload his bow, but stopped when a hand gripped his shoulder.
“Spencer, you must keep your head on a swivel at all times in battle. The enemy is sly and treacherous. They’ll ambush you if you don’t stay alert,” Maddix said sternly.
Spencer nodded. “I lost sight of the enemy. It won’t happen again.”
Coleton Webb joined them. “Don’t worry about Spencer, Mad Dog. I got Junior’s back,” Webb said. He turned to face Spencer. “You just keep shoo
ting those arrows, Junior. Bury your shafts in their smelly hides. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll protect you while you shoot. Think of me as your armor-bearer.”
“Thank you, C-Dub. That will work out fine,” Maddix said.
“Is the original plan still a go?” Webb asked.
Maddix looked all around, on alert for another attack, his gaze intense. “Yes, we drive the Legion all the way off the Peninsula. We won’t stop until they’re swimming in the ocean.”
Webb chuckled. “Demons hate the water. And now that the ocean is defiled with blood, they’ll be doubly repulsed.”
Chapter 22
Eastern Syria—that same moment
Galizar stood straight and tall in the river’s middle. Muddy water lapped against his shins and flowed around him. Holding a bowl in his hands, Galizar watched the endless procession with curious interest. His cobalt eyes took in everything. Not far away war machines great and small took turns rumbling across a bridge.
Galizar watched the tanks and armored personnel carriers, supply trucks, SSM missile launchers and rocket launchers creep across the bridge. Diesel fumes filled the evening air. It was quite the parade of military might.
Armies from all over the world would soon join them, but right now war machines from China, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Pakistan rolled across the bridge spanning the Euphrates River. The war machines were headed for the Megiddo Plain, the most famous battlefield in all the world, and a site located in northern Israel.
Galizar remained unimpressed by the parade of mechanized death rolling slowly by him. Mankind feared these things, and rightly so. But the war machines were no match for Jesus. He would easily destroy them when the time was right. And that fateful moment was about to toll even sooner now that Galizar stood in the river with the sixth bowl.
