A Great Tribulation Read online

  ALSO BY MARC SERAPHS

  The Alien: A Letter to Future Self

  Dance of Camps

  Ancient of Days: End of Perfection

  Hermit Kingdom: The Purple Immortal

  A Great Tribulation Copyright © 2016 by Marc Seraphs.

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For inquiries please contact Marc Seraphs at www.marcseraphs.blogspot.com

  @marcseraphs

  Dedicated to every peacemaker and to those who use truth and love as their guiding north star through life

  —however bleak now—

  great things await the peacemakers.

  PROLOGUE

  I have thought deeply about all that goes on here under the sun,

  where people have the power to hurt each other.

  —Ecclesiastes 8:9

  CHAPTER I

  Washington DC

  “War is the lesser Jihad!

  To triumph over temptation...

  To live rightly by love and truth—that is the greater Jihad! As it should be of all religion because the constant in the equation of all religion is love!” Professor Mohammad Khan concluded after a crafty and carefully thought out speech that had gone on for about an hour about being a noble Muslim to his audience of young Islamists. "Any questions?"

  'Yes. How would you like a very public lashing?'—Israfel Ibn Minyar G., a member of the audience thought not out loud. He was outraged and instantly understood why his superiors wanted the stout, gray-headed professor who looked to be in his mid-sixties done away with.

  “Young man?" the professor called a fellow who had his hand raised and proceeded to ask, “what if the machine makes living rightly...as the Christians say...'a living hell,' what then?”

  “What is your name?” the professor asked.

  “Does it matter?"

  “All right, Mr. Does-it-matter, I'll tell you...”

  The audience specked with a few stifled laughs.

  “A wise man who was no stranger to battle once said...” the professor continued. 'The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.'”

  “Gandhi proved him right. Five decades after the seed of civil rights was sowed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We've had a black president. If they both won their battles with nonviolent movements, why chop heads off, bomb mothers and children, especially when we have Allah, my boy?” The professor asked rhetorically. “They say time is like a stream...picture it as an orbicular flow that goes around and comes around. Therefore, we must look to the past to proceed forward,” the professor concluded when there were no further questions.

  Israfel left the mosque, starting for a ten-mile trek to a tent camp for the homeless. He had a date with an associate. As he walked, he pondered over the words from the lecture, wondering whether the professor was putting on a show or being serious. Perhaps his long walk would give him enough time to decipher the professor.

  His arduous walk was purposeful. Not for the exercise his muscled physique of five'11 and 180ibs didn't need. However, to make sure his arrival in the United States wasn't picked up by the NSA—better known as the National Spying Agency—or the other several surveillance factions. If he was being tailed, his tail would be sympathizing with the snail by now or sweating like a hog if afoot. This was his sixth day in the United from Syria and so far so good. He intended on being a ghost for as long as possible.

  Camouflage tent with a black flag, he recited in his head for the umpteenth time when he reached the camp where his contact waited. So far, he'd spotted about ten camouflage tents with a patriotic flag, but none with the flag he was looking for yet.

  He strolled through the camp coolly looking and strutting as cautiously as he could manage. If only those who referred to America, the Great could see these: people living like pigs. Of course, they could defensively say those here had mental disorders—a point he'd counter for excessive gorging on cheeseburgers and bacon. After all, you are what you eat.

  The air in the camp was strong with garlic from unwashed bodies. The smell of marijuana added to the effluvia from the nearby sewers. It was one rowdy assembly of busy bodies: sitting or running around, dealing and what-have-you. The most conspicuous of them was a gold-tooth man with dreads screaming at the top of his voice. He was preaching a sermon or so he thought until he discovered the fellow was talking about a prostitute...

  "Get out of her, my people!" the gold-tooth man cried out fiercely.

  "If you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues. For her sins have massed together clear up to heaven, and God has called her acts of injustice to mind. Repay her in the way she treated others, yes, pay her back double for the things she has done...a double portion for her. To the extent that she glorified herself and lived in shameless luxury, to that extent give her torment and mourning. For she keeps saying in her heart: ‘I sit as queen, and I am not a widow, and I will never see mourning.' That is why in one day her plagues will come, death and mourning and famine, and she will be completely destroyed—”

  It was a harangue of continuous nonsense, Rafel thought.

  Camouflage tent with a black flag, Rafel reminded himself once more as he continued his search. After walking around the camp for another twenty-five minutes, he stood still to get a better look at his surroundings. All indications pointed he was in the right place: a big drum fire surrounded by musicians improvising with buckets for drums and strings on wood for guitars and playing for dancers twirling in a deranged fashion. One, a fellow he noticed had an extra kick to his head bobbing—from Parkinson's he presumed—to the surprisingly all right music considering the instruments were improvised.

  Fatigue was creeping in, even for him. He stood for a breather, chancing the moment to make sure he wasn't walking around in circles. Not before long he spotted a black flag. This was it.

  Israfel started for the tent anew with vigor, but stopped short when he felt somebody vying for his attention. Turning to the young girl who looked no more than sixteen with lips rife with signs of methamphetamine addiction.

  “Need an escort to the commode?” She asked.

  “What?”

  “I'll make it worth your while,” she said coyly.

  Then he understood. “No thank you.”

  “Your loss.”

  “Well, thank you for your generosity,” he said with a smile that instantly turned cold, before continuing on his way to the tent.

  “Hello?” he said when he reached the tent.

  A welcoming voice answered him, but the source of the voice when he opened the tent—a Mohawk-haired man in his forties with tattoos—gave him second thoughts about being in the right tent. Whoever this fellow was, he wasn't his contact, Aziz also-known-as the Camouflage.

  “Sorry, wrong tent,” he concluded out loud, turning to leave.

  “Rafel? Israfel Ibn Minyar Gaddafi.”

  Rafel was taken aback. How did this Skinhead fellow know his name...his nickname and last name as well?

  “As-salamu alaykum.”

  “Wa-alaykum as-salam.”

  Montana

  Eustace Grimes was engaging in his predawn sky-watching ritual from the steps of his humble log home in the backwoods of big sky country, Montana. Thi
s morning brought “Chime” the hawk. He'd named the bird so because the hawk's presence chimed winter wasn't far behind, but more ominous in the sky was the red moon, shimmering like brimstone as it sunk behind the high mountains.

  “Another red moon?” He heard his wife, Diane, for twenty-five years say. “Strange...”

  He raked his finger through his overgrown graying beard that cascaded down his chest like a mini-tank-top. “I know...the fourth in two months.”

  She handed him a fresh cup of coffee. “What do you think?”

  He inhaled the coffee with delight before taking a sip. In his many years living in the wilderness as a mountain man, Eustace knew most things about this part of the Rockies, but not this. “I have no words for it.”

  “How about what you have planned for today?”

  “Check the traps with Hunter, and later take the furs to the fur buyer.”

  “Don't we have enough meat and fur already?”

  True, they had that aplenty. Thanks to the booming season, but “it felt strange not having to set any traps this time of the season, so I did anyways. We could always save the fur for next year in case we aren’t so fortunate then.”

  This had been the easiest summer Eustace had in many years. If not ever. He'd accumulated more fur than an otter on its back. His earnings would be quadruple his income from the past year with half the hard work and time from a very giving season. While it was good news for his pocket, something didn't feel quite right. It was like a fairy-tale season of stupendous tidings—like the idea of a Santa Claus coming down the chimney with good tidings...

  What or who was compensating? He wondered.

  And now the frequent red moons...

  Not to mention the macabre… “something in the air is making my neck hair bristle.” It was spooky. And his instincts were rarely wrong.

  “Maybe shave your beard,” Diane poked. “Or at least, trim it.”

  “And how many times have I told you I'm the only one allowed to grow a mustache in this house?” he rebutted.

  Diane felt her upper lips with a realization that came with a twinkle of embarrassment before she retreated into the house in defeat.

  Eustace donned a victorious smile. “Love you, hon,” he called after her.

  “Good morning, daddy.”

  Eustace looked down the porch to see his daughter, Caroline. He frowned at her. “Come here.”

  “What now?”

  “How are you going to find a man with a hair like that? You are nineteen—look pretty and do pretty things like nineteen years old do, not look like a Rastafarian.”

  Caroline pouted, twirling a finger in the frisky, blonde lock of her hair that looked more like dreadlocks than braids.

  "Maybe I'll do better in that aspect if we weren't in the middle of nowhere," she muffled under her breath. "As if men come wandering into the great unknown."

  He completely ignored her credible point with an order to “go gather the fur into the truck"—those he'd prepped for the fur buyer— “Now!”

  CHAPTER II

  With a basket on his back and an arm filled with a rifle, Eustace started out with his husky, Hunter, to check his traps. The black spotted, white fluff pounced forward with determination, well acquainted with the trap-line, howling and barking as he went ahead of Eustace along the Yaak River.

  Mornings like this along the trickling river with nobody and nothing, but greenery and his furry, elusive neighbors in sight in their natural orchestral of bustling calls made Eustace’s transition from an urban gentleman to a mountain man worth it.

  The bliss.

  The peace.

  The solitude.

  Here, he was in symmetry with nature. There was nothing like living off the land. The challenge of taking on nature in all of its omnipotent glory. Testing his limits, and the euphoria that coursed through him when he succeeded—one he'd become a junkie for. He knew where his food came from and where the waste went. The water tasted pure. The grime and gore of skinning and gutting his game, and harvesting his food with his bare hands made for a glorious and appreciated meal.

  He inhaled the clean air with satisfaction...

  He would never return to urban life.

  Hunter had come to a halt in the distance by the river with a familiar calling howl. When he got close, his guess was true. The trap was alive with game— “we caught a beaver,” he said, ruffling Hunter, before unraveling the trap. “A big one...” about fifty pounds, he estimated as he put the critter in his basket.

  And they were on to the next one when suddenly Hunter went off the trap-line, sniffing the air towards the bushes as if he'd caught a whiff of something peculiar; then came the howl and the subsequent barks before Hunter plunged into the brush.

  “Hunter!?” Eustace called, readying his rifle before following suit to where Hunter had come to a stop where the shrubs became woods. “What is it?” He looked behind him to see a wrecked raft on the riverside...

  Someone or something was afoot.

  Hunter barked in reply to the contrived spot under a tree in the distance within a few feet away.

  “I see,” he whispered, looking into the scope of his rifle to the distance of whatever it was under the tree...

  There was movement.

  He was ready to shoot when a slim figure stepped out from behind the tree—with hands in the air—three more followed.

  “Please don't shoot,” a terrified voice pleaded. “My name is Michael.”

  Eustace lowered his rifle, stalking forward. They were teenagers—about the age of his daughter—three boys and a girl. He was baffled. There was more chance of running into a Leprechaun than strangers out here—four at that. On this part of the Rockies, there were about three people per square mile and these weren't them. “Aren’t you all a little far from home?”

  Michael devoured his plate of sausages and pancakes sopping with syrup like a ravening wolf, washing it down with a swig of milk to the jaw-dropping astonishment of his hosts. He didn't notice how bad he must have looked until he lifted his head to see the rest of his pack, Marty, Donald and his once ever graceful sister, Keira...

  They hadn't eaten in days.

  “Here,” Eustace who had found them in the woods, offered his plate. “Looks like you need it more than I do.”

  Michael knew he ought to have politely turned down the plate, but the greater calling of his stomach had the better of him. He accepted it with a shameless “thank you.”

  His wife and daughter offered theirs to his three friends as well.

  “What will you all eat?” Michael asked.

  “Don't worry we have more,” Eustace said. “Tell me more about this Martial Law and turmoil in the city...”

  “They are calling it the beginning of the end,” Michael said.

  “The Great Depression of this generation,” Keira chimed in.

  Eustace sighed. “The signs of the times.”

  "Christian and Muslim extremist groups, Native Americans and skinheads are carving out their own turf in some states," Marty added.

  "In all the states?"

  "No, just a few states like Montana."

  “Strange you haven't heard about any of these. I know you're far-off from the city...don't you have a radio or TV?” Michael inquired.

  “They haven't been turned on since Caroline was born.”

  Caroline: Eustaces' daughter, Michael gathered. “Really! Why?”

  “The television is the one-eyed demon.”

  “How so?”

  Diane got on her feet with a deliberate distracting noisiness. “Here we go again.”

  “It's a long story...” Eustace said evasively, before exiting the room.

  He re-emerged in new clothes by the time they were done eating—a black cowboy hat on his head, a rifle in hand.

  The boys and Keira were startled to see Eustace with his rifle again.

  “All the boys come with me.”

  They responded reluctantly.


  “Relax. We are going to the fur buyer. I don't trust you with my family yet, not to say Caroline and Diane are not capable of handling themselves...” Eustace said blatantly before turning to Caroline. “Did you load the truck like I said?”

  “Yes.”

  "Good."

  Eustace's truck clicked when he tried starting it. “Common, Hilbert,” Eustace urged, turning the key in the ignition once more, and the engine revved. “Hiya! Good boy, Hilbert.” And they were off.

  “Hilbert?” Marty said with a puzzled expression.

  “Yep, ol'Hilbert, here is an old, strong truck.”

  They rode through a dusty path that cut across a vast wilderness with nothing but greenery and vegetation in sight for eight miles until they began to see a buzz of activity in the far distance.

  Eustace put on his glasses, squinting into the distance. “That's new...” there was an unusually high count of people and automobiles parked in front of the fur shop—all camouflage trucks.

  The boys noticed something else that sparked horror in their expression: the crimson armbands on the arms of men in the front of the fur shop.

  “Oh, no,” Michael said. “It's the Ehud Brotherhood. They are here.”

  “The Ehud what?”

  “It's a religious sect named after the biblical judge, Ehud. They want to boycott Congress and Wall Street,” said Marty.

  “That's just putting it lightly 'off with the heads of the fat cats' of Congress and Wall Street is their actual slogan,” Michael interjected. “We should turn around, Mr. Eustace.”

  “Have some pride, boys, this is free-country,” he disregarded their warning pulling up.

  "This is a bad idea," the boys tsked collectively in their own words.

  Still, Eustace ignored their pleas. He got out the truck and walked up to the nucleus of men who were beginning to steer towards him on arrival.