The Warriors' Ends- Soldiers of the Apocalypse

by Keith T Jenkins

  Now there are lots of people staring at her, wondering where all this is coming from; and how does this buxom moppet know?

  “For a couple thousand years there have been smart Bible doctors arguing about whether there is a Rapture or not – a transporting of the believers out of the world for a time. Those who believed that there would be a Rapture, well, they were divided into those who thought it would be Pre-Trib, Mid-Trib, or Post-Trib, meaning before, during, or after the seven-year Tribulation period. But it turns out that it is all three.” She looks around for some sense of assurance, and she finds it in some of the youngest of her original bus crowd, as well as some behind Mike. There are now four others standing right behind her, one with her hand on Rita’s shoulder. “There was the First Great Disappearance, then the Second. Get it!?! The first was nearly seven years ago, and the second was three and a half years later. Get it? Three and a half years, almost to the day! The seven year mark is coming up in a few weeks.”

  “You’re serious?” asks Mark. Rita nods. “You knew about this when we met?” Rita nods again. “And you didn’t think it was important enough to tell me before?” Rita shakes her head, slightly in shame for keeping a secret from her bashert, partly in pride from the knowing. “Why not?” he asks.

  “I wanted you to love me for your whole life, regardless of how long or short that would be. I didn’t want someone to love me enough to last just a month or two. Any asshole could love me long enough to get laid for a few weeks.”

  “That’s just a little bent, but I get it,” says Mike.

  Mark is just walking to her for a kiss and a hug. By this time, all of the bus people have gotten out, and are standing behind Mark and Rita. “I love you Rita. And I would take you for a month or a thousand years.”

  “Yeah, well, we will have to talk about that thousand years’ part in a while though,” says Rita. Turning to Mike, Rita says, “You look a lot younger than I thought you would.”

  “Well, I am a bit more innocent than I was when I worked with Schwarz, back in the day.” She looks to the rear of the caravan, where she sees something unusual. “Why is that last coach on fire?” asks Mike.

  It isn’t physically on fire, but the exterior colour display has been reset to display active burning flames, flickering down the sides of the bus. The coolest part is that, the accelerometer causes the flames to sweep back when the bus is in motion. Mark and Mike dash to the last bus to investigate. Teague is at the wheel when they arrive, and Boot is in the RIO seat.

  The door opens and Mark asks, “Why is this bus flaming?”

  “What the hell?” shouts Teague, bounding out of the coach to see what they mean.

  “Dun it!” says Boot. “Is it pretty?”

  “Dun it?” asks Mark. “How?”

  “Pokes n strokes!” says Boot.

  “Show me!” says Mark, almost demanding.

  Boot puts three fingers on the screen, taps a couple of keys and he is in a Command screen, writing commands for the coach. With a simple key combination, ending in a ‘G’ he strikes ‘enter,’ and says, “Look.”

  The flames transition to a collection of green flames, still beautiful. “Pretty?” he asks.

  “Yes! More?” Mark asks. Combination strokes and ‘R,’ the flames go red. Ending in ‘B’ for ‘blue’ – but then ending in a ‘CTRL N’ and all the coaches are flaming blue as well.

  “Happy?” asks Boot.

  “Stop please,” says Mark.

  Just then, a Freightliner motorcoach pulls up to the rear, forty feet long, strong as a jumbo jet, skidding slightly to a stop, and emerging from the dust cloud are Sylvia and Carlos. As they come to the front of the coach, they clasp hands like school kids, headed straight toward Mark. “I made it, Sarge, and look who I brought.” Carlos releases his grip on Sylvia, and she gives Mark a powerful hug, picking him up, spinning around, telling him she’s glad to see he’s not dead, and to know that this place is more than just a fantasy. “She decided that she could do worse for a husband than me, boss. What do you think?”

  “I think she is right, Carlos. And you could have done far worse.”

  Sylvia is still a handful, still a sassy, sexy, pistol, and still a joy to behold. Her hair is in a long French braid, reaching down deep between her shoulder blades. On the day when she let it all down for the first time, untying it from bottom to top, she shook it loose, turned around, looking at Carlos, and he knew he was done. It was a wild mane, flowing in the gentle breeze, but like a hurricane through his soul. She has a way of reaching up, putting it in that braid, still going on with life, and it takes about five minutes to get it done. At this time, her hair is in the braid, she is back in soldier mode. Today, she is also in friend mode. “Hey! I like the light show!” Looking at Mark, she asks, “Can you do ours?”

  Over the past six-plus years, Carlos has managed to teach Sylvia everything he ever knew about being a downrange operator, and she has become as good a partner as he ever expected, but she is also the ultimate babe of his dreams. When the guns are laid aside, her hands and heart are as tender toward Carlos as a mother’s toward her newborn babe. She just loves him, for everything he is and does.

  They had been traveling together for about four months, stopped on the roadside, laying in a hammock one day, when Carlos says to Sylvia, “You know you love me too . . . don’t you?” She ignored him, or seemed to. He said it again, about ninety-nine times, as the months flew by, until, one day, she says, “Of course I do.” On that day, his world became the happiest place he had ever been. He knew that she was the one he never knew he had always hoped for.

  “Heads up, boys and girls!” says Mike. “You’re not the only ones coming in.”

  Pulling into view is the grill of a Freightliner with a box for a home behind. As it swerves around, finding a position in which to park, there are others visible behind. The first one stops beside Mark’s bus and the rest file in behind, still lining the road outside the clearing. All of the drivers exit their vehicles, and along with each is a passenger or more. Apparently, when their commitments to the military ended, they all decided to have a family life, such as one can. For three of them, it meant returning to find their wives and kids. For two it meant getting a girlfriend and persuade them into taking the promotion to wife.

  These transitions didn’t take place overnight. No sir, the conviction that was necessary to bring that change about did not come along right away. For the first couple of years, the group traveled around as a caravan, Lundt as the de facto commander of the lot, leading them in a foraging campaign, even getting each coach a wagon for stores to drag behind.

  Each of these units is a separate and independent household, free to come and go as they wish. In the past few years, they have been separate, but in the past few weeks, they met up again on their way to this place. On the windshield of each of the coaches, while it was in motion scrolled the word “invite” and a longitude and latitude – nothing more. Though many miles apart, they began heading in the direction of that location.

  Three met out west of here and two met up northeast of here, and about a hundred miles north, they found each other, and the sixth. It is at that final meeting, where Griff’s wagon met the other five, that’s where Griffin’s women decided they wanted to be a married family. They all spent a couple days in getting reacquainted, sharing beers, and telling stories of the road. With over four years apart, there are many tales to tell.

  Griffin had picked up his waitress girlfriend when the caravan was first traveling together. Her place was where he lived, that is, when he was not on deployment somewhere. After the First Disappearance, with the realization that a lot of predictions from church people were about to come true, and her soldier losing his job, being a waitress didn’t seem that important. Besides, they had always talked about touring the country in an RV, though they had talked about a rented one.

  Patrick Griffin had grown up in Consternation Falls, Utah. He was raised by a family that hunted th
eir own meat, all the time, gardened whenever it was possible, and handed down those traditions. His great-grandfather had established the city, if you could call it that, about eighty years ago. It was a spot in the middle of nowhere, at the intersection of two minor state highways, with not a creek or river in sight, but excellent belowground water. He was a well driller, “Great Gramps,” and a man of adventures. But Consternation Falls was his last adventure, so to speak. In deciding to build the place, there were no falls, and no consternation, but he liked the ring of the name.

  At the intersection, he put a gas station, diner, hotel, and small amusement park for kids. His final adventure was to be a papa to seven kids. The house he built was originally about two thousand feet, but it expanded as the family grew, eventually becoming a 4500-foot puzzle of a thing with several different examples of architecture. People who saw it would say it was either wonderful or hideous, but no one said it was ordinary. The house was what later became called “an etcetera house.” They built it for the family and as the kids came, they built a little more, and a little more, and a little more, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

  Although he grew up in the middle of Mormon territory, surrounded by LDS and FLDS, the Griffins never took up any religious affiliations, until lately. Griff had become a born-againer about a year back, and his girlfriends soon followed. A few weeks ago, they decided to make it official – as official as it can be anymore – and have a ceremony. So, when the others turned up, they stood up in front of friends, and promised to be each other’s for the rest of their lives.

  It seems as if there has been a lot of marrying lately, at least among this crowd. There were those who were already married reuniting, and whether they had an influence on the others, or if them being men of honor made the difference; becoming a Christian seemed to tip the final scales for some.

  They did peregrinate as a disconnected whole, and wandering has been their lives. Today, they all stand in Zarephath, the settlement established by Mike as a place for refugees to come, to be productive, and to find relative safety. She called it Zarephath because of the city in the Bible, whose name means, a smelting place, or a foundry. She knew somehow that, in the end, this would be where the hammer meets the anvil, and she prepared to make the anvil as hard as she could make it.

  “Damn glad to see you, Lundt!” says Mark. “This is Mike,” he pauses to gesture in her direction. “She runs things around here.”

  “Well, Mike, what is it that you run?” asks Lundt.

  “I don’t run that much, but we have a few toys around that help us keep an eye on the world, and you should see how it has changed in the past couple years.” Turning away, she curls two fingers at Mark to follow. “Take a look at the tech.”

  On the hillside, facing the valley to the west, there is a sixty-foot fan with twenty plus blades, a windmill, with a rudder to see that it catches the wind from any direction. It only needs about thirty degrees of wiggle room though, because the winds are almost always rising from the valley. “This mill drives a small collection of generators that power several dozen raw marine batteries; twenty-four volts, which power everything here.” She points up above the barn, “and we have a water tank of about three thousand gallons, which supplies all our needs, and yours, if need be.” All the while, she is walking toward the staired entry to the bunker. As she descends, a young man comes to take her arm.

  “Mike!” he is rather insistent. “Do you think we should be showing these people everything?”

  “Relax, Tommy!” she tells him. “These people are me,” sweeping her hand in the direction of the ex-military contingent, “and those people are you.” She points beyond them to their families. “Besides, did you hear the girl?” He turns his head like a dog, listening for a clue. “She said there wasn’t too much time left anyway.”

  “And you believe her?” Tommy asks.

  “Yes,” she says, bowing her head a little, “I am afraid I do.”

  “You’re afraid?”

  “Yes, Tommy. What is coming is far worse than what we have known so far. But, it will soon be over, I think.” She puts her left hand through Tommy’s right arm, as if they were walking into prom, and they stroll through the entrance of the bunker.

  The stairs go down about thirty feet, then up five, and at the bottom there is a grate with a drain. If it rains onto the stair, the water drains out on the hillside to the west. The last five steps going down and the long five steps going up are all under the cover of the ground. There is no door to close, only a hard steel rim around the opening. There is a blast door, slid into the stone face, but it is not seen if it is not closed.

  As they enter the bunker, and their eyes adjust to the light, they can see that this is as tech as any place they have ever seen.

  “How the hell did this get here?” asks Mark.

  “Well,” says Tommy, “Jeremiah had put a bunch of it together, but he also left a ton of plans from conspiracy websites, mechanical engineers, and stuff.”

  “And whatever he hadn’t built, or told others to build, we scavenged, scrounged, and pilfered, to complete. Some of the plans needed some serious upgrades, because Jeremiah had come up with the ideas almost three decades ago, and the tech has changed a lot since then. He had kinda given up on the dream, having had his life destroyed back in the day.”

  “From here I see a radar scope array, a satellite tracking system, a tomahawk firing system, and a lot of stuff that I don’t understand. So, give us the ten cent tour; what do you say?” suggests Mark.

  “Well, there are about a dozen complete systems, which include those mentioned,” says Mike. “The Tomahawk systems control a rocket bank in each of the peaks to the north and south. They are in sheltered and shielded bunkers of their own. They also have the ability to tap into your motorcoaches and bring systems online that you didn’t even know were there.”

  “I don’t know,” says Mark, “I was trained to know all about those systems.”

  “Did you know they could be daisy-chained together to become a fortress of their own? Lundt! Did you know that your coaches could to the same? In fact, Otto, did you even know that the coaches are weaponized?”

  “No. I didn’t,” says Lundt. “But I never got the training on these things that you apparently have.”

  “It is not training,” replies Mike, “but that we hacked into the Pentagon and have recovered the original plans for those machines, wiped the servers for a great many things, and have learned a lot in the past few years. And now, well, it appears as though these weapons of mass destruction are about to become our ultimate defense.” She looks around, spotting Rita, points to her and says to Mark, “What do ya say, Schwarz?” she begins, then concludes with a computerized sounding voice, saying, “Shall we play a game?”

  “Global Thermonuclear War?”

  “Well it ain’t tic-tac-to,” says Mike, harkening back to an old film that she and Mark shared a few dozen years ago. “Based on what that little woman said, I think we should attack the enemy on several fronts.” She realizes that she is being stared at by everyone in the room. “What?” she cries out. “I think we should attack them to make them attack us.” Some of the people drop open their mouths in disbelief.

  Shall We Play a Game?

  But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.[28]

  E-Day Minus 3 Weeks

  “We can’t just reach out from the middle of nowhere to touch someone in Moscow! Can we?” asks Mark, more than half expecting a negative reply.

  “Yes,” says Tommy. “We can actually touch almost anyone in the world from here.”

  “Really?” says Rita, full of childish glee. Mark and Lundt say the same thing, at the same time, but with severe trepidation.

  “Really!” says Mike and Tommy, with factual bluntness, and a little pride.

  Tommy says, “I was a covert drone operator for the Army before
. . .” Everyone can sense his pain and regret. “What I know is that we have managed to tap into every military and government access point we can find, and it has rewarded us with almost unlimited information about everything in the world.”

  The new people seem to be in shock at this revelation, as Mike continues, “We know a great many things that the world does not know. Apparently, you are unaware that the coastal regions of the old US are back online again, almost fully operational, but under government command from Russia.”

  “I had heard of the Russian influence,” says Mark, “But I didn’t think it mattered to us.”

  “Well, it matters to everyone else in the world, so it should matter to us,” retorts Mike. “The worst of it is that Sasha Smotritel is not in charge – at least not in any real sense of things. There is an Ayatollah Rashid something, who pulls his strings, and as near as we can tell, Smotritel hates the Ayatollah, but can’t find a way around him.”

  “Does he want different things?” asks Rita.

  “No, global power is the same goal for him.”

  “Then, he is still the enemy, no matter his other affinities and affiliations; don’tcha think?” she says, in reply.

  “Yes,” says Mike, “I gotta say, he is just as bad a bad guy as Rashid, even if he is not a Muslim. But with them enslaving everyone to Islam, either as a convert, a forced believer, or a slave . . .” they could smell the anger rising from her pores “. . . something has to be done, and I vote we do it.”

  “Are we voting now?” asks Tommy. “Cause, we never voted on anything before. You run the show, Mike, and we follow.”

  “Yeah, well, there seems to be enough dictatorship in the world, without me being one.”

  “I’m in!” says Rita, raising her hand.

  Hands go up all over the place, and Tommy asks, “How long does it take to become a citizen here? Can she vote already?” He looks her up and down, then asks, “How old are you anyway?”