The Beginning of the End by Lorana Hoopes (readict txt) 📕

shoulders and downcast eyes. The man had obviously lost people close to him. Could he be right? Could it have been the rapture? Gabe remembered Melinda talking about it, pleading with him to believe so he wouldn’t be left behind, but he’d thought it, like a lot of the things in the Bible, was something taken out of context. There were so many rules that couldn’t really be requirements in the culture of today which had led him to believe that the Bible, while it may have been important to the people of the time, held no relevance in today’s society. But had he been wrong? Had he been left behind?

3

Two months later

“Are you sure now is the time, sir? The economy is just starting to recover after the rapture. This could throw it into chaos again.” Samael bowed his head to avoid looking Daman directly in the eyes. It was not in his nature to question his lord, but the timing did not seem appropriate to him.

“Chaos is exactly what we need, Samael.” Daman rose from his throne and paced the dark room. “After the rapture, the churches were empty, the people blamed each other. We were this close to an all-out war.” He held his long, pale fingers less than an inch apart. “But now they are beginning to fill again,” he said with disdain. “People - these hapless creatures God created - are searching for meaning again. We must shut that down. Turn them back to things of the flesh. If we can strike fear into them again, they will be desperate for a savior.”

“A savior like you, sir?” Samael lifted his face slightly now that it seemed Daman was not angry.

A sinister smile pulled at Daman’s lips. “Indeed. A savior like me. Once we infect the world with this virus, we can sow dissent, fear, hate. Get the people in power to spread the fear and keep the people locked inside. Then, I can emerge with a cure that will end the misery.” He spread his arms wide. “They will trip over themselves in the race to save themselves, to return to normal. They will clamor to appoint me ruler over all. By the time we are done with them, few will pause long enough to consult scriptures that have mostly been forgotten anyway.”

Samael swallowed audibly. “But what of those who do, sir? What will we do about them? If the virus does not take them?”

Daman’s dark eyes twinkled as he steepled his hands together. “Don’t you worry. I have plans for any who may resist our cause. They will be examples, useful if they do emerge. Now, do we have a patient?”

Samael nodded. “We do.” He crossed to a door that lay nearly hidden in the room. Only a slight line indicated that the wall was disturbed. With a deft touch, he opened the door and rolled the man out. The man, having been tied to the chair and locked in the room for hours, had little fight left in him and said not a word, as if he thought what awaited him outside would be better than the dark solitude of the room. Samael almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

After placing the man and the chair in front of Daman, Samael returned to the hidden room and grabbed the vial from the fridge. He held it up to the light, swishing it slightly as the men had told him to do. Then he grabbed a syringe as well before returning.

“How long will it take?” Daman asked as he watched Samael fill the vial.

“The scientists were unsure of a specific timeline, but they believe between twelve and twenty-four hours for the virus to take hold. However, he will be contagious long before he begins showing symptoms which will facilitate the spread of the disease.”

Daman rubbed his hands together. “That will be perfect. And he won’t remember this?”

Samael shook his head. “No, the scientists assured me that he will have no memory of today at all.”

“Wonderful. Proceed.”

Samael stuck the syringe into the vial and then injected the liquid into the man’s arm. A slight twitch and a grimace was all the man could muster, but that was understandable considering the ordeal he had been through. “Don’t worry. For you at least, this will all be over soon.”

When the syringe was empty, Samael summoned an attendant to return the man to his work. The attendant would then be killed, but it was a small price to pay to make sure nothing could be traced back to either himself or, more importantly, Daman.

When the man and the attendant were gone, Daman returned to his throne. A look of pure malicious delight twisted his features. “And now we wait. Let the fun begin.”

Candace took a deep breath to calm her nerves as she approached the building. After poring through her Bible for the last several weeks, she’d realized three things. First, there was still a lot of it that she didn’t understand, and she needed to talk to someone who could help her understand it. Second, she had to discover the truth. Was the rapture really the cause for Phil’s disappearance? And if it was, that led to question number three. What was coming next? She remembered Phil talking about the book of Revelation and what it said about end times, but she hadn’t been listening at the time. Not really listening anyway. Like with most things, she’d nodded and acted as if she understood while her mind had been a million miles away.

But she was listening now, and that had led her to her computer and to a website named Truth Seekers. At first, she’d just poked around the site, reading the belief statement and watching the videos that were uploaded each Sunday - after all, she couldn’t be caught talking about the rapture in her line of work. It was not considered science, and the people who had dared to speak out about