Mia laughed, “Well you sure wouldn’t be able to tell it.”
“Exactly. That’s between God and me. Christ even said, when you go pray, not to raise your arms in front of everyone putting on a show, showing people that you’re praying. He says to go to the privacy of your closet and talk to God privately. That was Christ himself that said that.
Now, that doesn’t mean we should never pray in public, but I think you know what he’s saying.”
“See, this is why I wanted to talk to you because you make things so clear. I got more understanding from this talk than…. Heck, I don’t know when.”
“But remember Mia, you can get a person’s opinion, but you need to learn it for yourself. Most of what God commands is common sense. He’s a loving, caring God and every law he makes is to help people to be happy and successful. You need to study it for yourself though Mia. Don’t take my word for it. Remember, I am just a man and a very sinful man at that. Who you want to avoid are those that act like they’re not sinners. God says we all deserve death due to our sins, but Christ died for our sins so that we won’t face permanent death. But, a person truly has to repent and try to do their best to love one another and serve one another and obey the common sense laws of God.”
Mia leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek, “Thank you, Vince. I hope we can have a lot more of these talks.”
“Anytime Mia.”
Then after a long pause, I remarked, “Now, if you're up for that threesome…” and I grabbed her and started tickling her. She screamed and started laughing and fighting me off, begging me not to tickle her.
Kim mumbled, “Well, it doesn’t look like I’m going to get my full thirty minutes so I might as well get up.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry Kim. That was my fault. I shouldn’t have screamed.” Mia responded.
Kim smiled, “No, I needed to get up anyway. I’m just giving you guys a hard time.”
Mia got up, “Thank you again, Vince,” and opened the door and left.
“Sorry babe. That was really my fault. I started tickling her. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. I was listening to everything you said. Thank you.”
I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not, so I asked, “Thank you for what?”
“For taking the time to talk to her. That’s what I think you should do. That’s what I was telling you the other day. When people ask, answer them. You have a way of making people understand and give them the desire to read it for themselves. I knew Mia had a lot of questions, but I can’t answer them in the way you can.”
I laughed, “So you think the next time Mo asks me a question on the subject, I should lay down with him, let him put his head on my chest and then afterward, start tickling him?”
Kim started rolling laughing as though she could see it, “Well, I think you may want to change your technique a little.”
As we got up we continued to laugh off and on and then we raced to the bathroom; Kim beat me to it.
When I walked out of the bathroom, I could hear that Lulu and Santiago’s girls were in Mia and Brandy’s bedroom watching a DVD. Brandy and Mike were walking out of the kitchen, obviously flirting with one another and Wit had apparently fallen asleep on the couch as you could tell he was just waking up.
After I had grabbed a cup of coffee, I walked out to the car shed that Santiago and Tag were working on. As they were showing me everything that they had done, we heard a big clap of thunder. I hadn’t even noticed that it was cloudy. Within minutes the wind was blowing about 40 miles per hour, and the clouds were boiling.
Everyone went running into the house, including Mo and Angela that had been out in their bus. I got on the radio and called the checkpoints and told them to take cover even though it took a couple of tries as the storm was affecting the radio transmission.
For 30-minutes, I watched the sky as I was scared we’d have a tornado because the clouds looked really ugly at times.
Kim came up to me, “Well, it looks like the weather machine that your body has turned into was accurate again.”
I laughed, “Anymore, it doesn’t fail. It seems like about two days ahead of time; the weather machine turns on.”
Soon it had turned into all rain as the rougher part of the storm had passed. The women had started dinner and all us guys were sitting around BS’ing.
Then we heard Angela asked in an amazed voice, “You’re kidding?”
Kim came walking around the corner, “Vince, tell them about the tornado you were in when you were younger.” Everyone showed a great deal of interest, so I began with the story.
“It was back in, I think, April of 1975. I was on my first leave after basic training and was visiting my folks in Neosho, Missouri, which is about 18 miles south of Joplin. I borrowed my dad’s car, and a buddy of mine and me decided we wanted to go fishing in a nearby river. So we ran to another friend of ours that lived about two miles to the west of Neosho on old 60-highway. He was married and had three kids and lived in the country but it wasn’t a farm.
He told us he couldn’t go fishing because he had to plant potatoes in his garden, so we agreed to help him. Later, his wife came out and said that they were reporting on television that there was a large tornado in Seneca, Missouri, heading straight east. Well, old Highway 60 went straight into Seneca about 15 miles or so to the west. You have to understand that detecting tornados wasn’t up to what we’re used to, well before the EMP hit anyway.
Now, there was a blue sky with just some broken clouds. If it was forecast the day before, they would’ve called it mostly sunny.
Anyway, since the area the house was in was really flat, and you could see for miles, we walked out into the road and looked towards Seneca.
Then one of them said, “Oh my God! There’s the funnel!”
A couple of us looked, and we couldn’t see it. All we could see was a bunch of turbulent clouds. Then, like a light switch being hit, Bam! The tornado just appeared, and you could tell it was huge, even though it was still miles away.
All of us ran back in the yard, and my buddy and I both said, “Come on, let's get out of here!”
Well, Butch, that was his name, said, “No, you're not supposed to try and run from a tornado in a vehicle.”
“That means when it’s close, not when it’s this far away. We have time to get out of here.” I said.
“No, we have our own plan for a tornado. You guys go if you want.”
We looked at each other and decided we would. So we jumped in the car and drove to 71 Highway which went north and south. We were safe, but we felt guilty and decided to drive back. That will give you an idea how much time we had. We pulled into their driveway and ran into the house.
“Ok, what’s your plan?” I asked.
Butch said, “Well, we put mattresses on the kitchen table, and we get underneath it.”
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME? That’s not going to do any good if it hits the house!”
So that’s what we did. They had one full mattress laying on top of the kitchen table, and we all crawled underneath it as now it was too late to leave. We put the kids in the middle, and we all laid on the outside trying to protect them from debris. Butch and I were the last to lay down. I laid down, and Butch went to the west door to see how close it was.
All I could hear him say was, “OH MY GOD!” and he jumped under the table.
We found out afterward that what he saw was the tornado coming straight down the highway, almost as though it was driving on it and every time it hit a transformer on a power pole, he would see the transformer explode.
The roar was deafening. Do you know how they say it sounds like a train? That’s so true. But it's not the train sound like when you're sitting at a crossing waiting for a train to go by but more like the roar you hear from a train when maybe you're listening from a half mile away but it is intensified by about one hundred times.
Anyway, we decide for the kid's sake to sing, “Row, Row
, Row Your Boat,” as the kids were crying up a storm. Now, no need to say that I was doing some serious praying. I’m sure they were also, but I don’t know. It was probably the most sincere prayer that I had ever said at that time of my life.
As we just started singing, all hell broke out. The sound was deafening, the house sounded like it was falling apart and since I was laying lengthwise trying to give as much protection to the kids as possible, I was being hit in the back with glass, boards, everything in the house. I really expected to be impaled with something, because the pain was intense.
Now, you have to realize that it was reported afterward that this tornado was a strong F-4 and had a ¼ mile to ½ mile base. Well, for a few moments it seemed like the debris just stopped, even though the sound was still there. So I turned to be able to see out from under the table and looked straight up, not realizing that there was no ceiling or even a roof.
As I looked up, I realized that I was looking at the inner wall of the tornado.”
“Oh my God!” Angela said as everyone else sat there with a look of amazement.
“I then spotted about 100-feet or more in the air, an old console type television. I don’t know if you guys have ever seen them but they use to make the television in a big wood console, and you lifted a lid on top, and there was a record player on one side and a radio on the other. Well, that’s what I saw floating around right next to the inner wall. But it was so strange as it seemed to be moving in slow motion and counter-clockwise. Whether it was or not it seemed to be making a jerking motion every time it moved. That may have been the way my brain just saw it; I don’t know.
When I saw all of this, I said out loud, “We’re Dead!” and covered my head again, and the debris started all over again, being hit with everything you can think of. I really expected to die.
Then as all hell broke out again, we heard Butch’s wife scream and say, “Butch, I’m being pulled away!” He said later that he had to grab her and he could feel she was actually being pulled away.
Then I remember hearing what sounded like an incoming artillery round and it hit right next to us, without the explosion, of course. What it turned out to be, which we discovered later, was a full 55-gallon drum of oil that came flying in and missed us by about five feet.
So the hell continued, and then it just stopped, and the roar slowly started losing its volume as the tornado moved to the east.
When we got up, we discovered that the entire house was completely blown away, except for the kitchen table that we were underneath.”
Mo asked, “Was the mattress still there?”
“Nope.”
“Was this some heavy duty steel table or something?” Tag asked.
“Nope, it was some flimsy wood kitchen table that we barely fit under. Now understand, I don’t mean that the house was knocked down, it was blown away. Basically, all there was left was the flooring that was built directly to the cement slab, which is like a cement floor that the house sat on. It didn’t have a foundation.
Mia spoke up, “That’s the third time I’ve heard that story, and it amazes me each time.” She laughed, “You know, this time I was listening to hear if you changed the story at all, just to see if you were exaggerating, but you told it the exact same way. That proves to me that it’s absolutely true.”
“I give you my word, that’s how it all happened. You know that was the first time in my life that I knew without a doubt, that God was real and he did hear our prayers. When I got up, I expected my back to have cuts and wounds, but I didn’t have a mark on my back. I didn’t even have a bruise afterward. No need to say, after that, when I’d hear someone say that God was a myth, I just laughed in their face. I think that’s when God became real to me.”
Everyone sat there in amazement and finally Tag asked, “Did the tornado pull up after it hit the house?”
“No, it went on for miles. When it got to Highway 71, there was a long strip type motel that just got destroyed. The woman that owned it was killed. Then when it actually got into Neosho, there was a huge trailer park that was just destroyed. I think two died there. The only reason more weren’t killed there was because they had a big community storm shelter.
Also, Neosho is built basically on tall hills. When the tornado went through the town…. well you know how most tornadoes jump from hilltop to hilltop? The pressure from this one was so strong the tornado actually went up and down the hills. Afterward, the aerial photos looked like a giant lawnmower went through the town, mowing up and down the hills.”
Angela, then shocked me. When we first met her, she got mad when I started talking about God, but this time she said with an amazed look, “You guys had to have been protected.” She then chuckled, “You know, there may have been a Guardian Angel standing right there stopping all the stuff from killing all of you.”
MO’s mouth dropped open. Mo believed in God, but Angela always looked at things like science taught. In the past, she basically believed in evolution.
Wit spoke up, “That’s the most amazing story that I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe you’ve never told us that story.”
“Well, I was a young pup then and I didn’t meet you guys until years later.”
I started laughing, and everyone asked, “What?”
“I was just thinking about when I had to face my dad. Remember, I told you that I had borrowed his car?”
Brandy smiled “Oh no.”
I laughed, “Well, the car was still there but the passenger side that was on the side the tornado approached from was completely caved in. It apparently had been hit by a bunch of those same drums of oil that were from this gas station that was two or three miles to the west of Butch’s house. Both passenger side tires were flat, and the tornado did something with its pressure as it took three of us to be able to take off the lug nuts and dad had one of those big four-way lug wrenches.
My buddy and I had to get in on the driver's side and half way home the car just died. Luckily, even though we were taking back roads, we got a ride. When the people dropped us off, my folks and some friends of theirs were sitting in the living room talking about the tornado.
I walked in, and all I said was, “I was in the tornado, and your car’s totaled out.”
Everyone started grilling us with questions, except dad who stood there with his mouth open. When we got done telling the story, the only thing dad asked was, “My car’s totaled out?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said. “Dad, I was almost killed.”
I never heard him complain about the car after that.
Everyone had a sympathetic laugh and was talking about the shock my dad had to be feeling, first for hearing that I was in the big tornado and then learning that his car had been totaled.
Mia walked up to me. “More and more, I’m starting to understand why your faith is so strong. You’ve seen so much in your life to prove God is there for us if we just believe and search him out.
You have so much faith, but at the same time, you don’t try to prove to everyone that you do, and you sure don’t try to shove it down other people’s throats. You keep it between you and God, and that’s one of the main reasons I listen to you when you do talk about it. ”
Chapter Fourteen
The KSK Kommando Spezialkräfte is an elite special forces military unit composed of special operation soldiers handpicked from the ranks of Germany's Bundeswehr and organized under the Rapid Forces Division.
They had received very confidential orders from the Generalinspekteur der Bundeswehr. They were to board a transport that was part of an EU Naval Task Force that was scheduled to patrol the Persian Gulf. On a specific night, during the dark of the moon and with the aid of multiple landing craft, move onto Iranian soil along with four specially designed mobile missile launchers capable of launching medium-range nuclear ballistic missiles that were built from stolen schematics of Israel’s Jericho III IRBMs. Once they were unloaded, the landing craft would return to the task force, and
they would continue patrol of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
At that point, the unit was on their own until they received orders to launch the missiles, which would have pre-designated launch coordinates, which the unit had no knowledge of. They were responsible for concealing the weapon systems and were under orders that if they were discovered, they would immediately destroy the launching systems and missiles completely with very high yield explosives and they were on their own to make it back to Turkey for extraction. If the mission was successful, they would be picked up by submarine.
These orders were known by only a small handful of people, which included Chancellor Kohl. It would be reported through top-secret intelligence files that it was confirmed that Iran was responsible for the attack on America and that there was evidence that Iran had plans to carry out attacks on members of the EU. This information would, of course, be shared with President Hatch and they would request that the U.S. use their Ohio Class Subs for a joint nuclear strike on Iran.
Johnson Farm:
After the thunderstorm, the wind came roaring out of the north at an average speed of twenty miles per hour. Along with the wind came a temperature drop down to 40 degrees and it wasn’t night yet.
We decided that the next day we’d make it a priority to search the abandoned homes and hopefully find some propane or wood-burning stoves as we wanted to find a couple for the carport that Santiago and Tag were converting into two separate sleeping quarters.
That evening, I had decided to go to bed early as the cold temperatures that came in brought a great deal of pain. I knew that if the cold stayed for a while, my body would adjust but if it was short lived, my body would once again turn into a weather indicator, and I’d go through another episode of up and down pain. I guess we could use it to our advantage. The pain level would inform us of future weather changes, but I was the one that got to experience the pain. I guess a price had to be paid for the ability to know when a major change of weather was coming.
Into the Apocalypse Page 21
