Morningstar/Alignment by Keith Trimm (people reading books txt) 📕

Far off in the distance Pastor Rhine could make out the sounds of police sirens breaking over the horizon. His heart was now a humming bird in his chest. The bags were tossed haphazardly in the back seat and the three of them entered the car.

To his right the Pastor saw the Inn clerk dash out of his office waving his arms and shouting incoherently. "Forgive me Lord," he said out loud, put the car in reverse, and stomped on the gas pedal. He then threw the car into drive and took off out of the parking lot watching the clerk in his rear view mirror through the dust.

"What’s going on?" Emily yelled to Jack as little Tony began to cry.

"I will explain later!" Jack yelled back keeping his eyes glued to the road ahead.

The scenery zipped by at 70 mph as the cool October wind blew in through the open window. Keeping an eye in his rear view mirror he saw the tiny flashes of police lights and the faint sounds of sirens racing from behind him.

By this time they were clear of Denton Kansas and were well on their way out of the county. Still the city police pursued him.

"What did you do?" Emily yelled. "Why are they chasing us?"

Pastor Jack looked over to his wife and son and said, "I found something."

"Is this about Seth?"

"Yes. That’s all I can say for now."

The four-door sedan was at top speed at 85 mph. The police behind him made up for lost time and were in the process of overtaking him any minute.

"What’s that up ahead?" Emily asked, pointing out the front windshield.

Pastor Jack squinted as he peered down the road at the two specks on the path ahead. "It’s a roadblock!" he shouted and slammed his hand down on the steering wheel. He applied the breaks and brought the car down to 35 mph until he was about fifty feet from the deputy’s cars blocking his path. It took only seconds for the city police to pull up from behind and block his retreat.

Sweat dripped from Jack’s forehead. He looked to his wife who was holding Tony tight to her chest and clenched his jaw. He spun his head around looking for a way out mumbling to himself.

"You’re scaring me!" his wife said.

The deputies in front of him exited their vehicles and approached the Pastor and his wife with pistols drawn. The police in the rear were coming from behind, shotguns in tow.

Jack gripped the wheel, and with his eyes closed raised his head to the heavens above and said, "Lord, if you can hear my prayer. I ask thee for thy divine assistance in our time of need."

Pastor Jack Rhine’s young son reached out and touched him on the arm. Jack looked over to the boy without saying a word and a calm came over him. The look in the three-year-olds eyes took the fear from his heart, and for the first real time felt the presence of his Lord God.

"Daddy," the young child said. "I hear you."

Like the parting of the Red Sea, the two patrol cars blocking their path separated, shooting off the roadway like toys to a child. Flying end over end, the patrol cars landed in the pasture hundreds of feet apart, in a cloud of dust.

Without hesitation Pastor Jack Rhine spun his tires and charged the men before him. His confidence restored by the power of his God, he drove down the centerline as the deputies unloaded shot after shot into the car. Glass broke, steam shot out from under the hood and pieces of metal flew off the car with each blast, but the car sailed on past out of reach of the lawmen.

Chapter 15

Sunday, October 24, 1973

"The body of Christ," Pastor Rhine stated, holding the host before the parishioner.

"Amen," the woman said, accepting the sacrament on her tongue. She turned to the right, and walked away, allowing the next person in line to accept communion.

"The body of Christ," he stated again, receiving the same response from the man standing before him. Holding out his hand, the Pastor placed the host on his palm and the man stepped to the side placing the host in his mouth.

"The body of Christ," Pastor Rhine said to the woman before him.

Then a loud commotion from the fifth row disrupted the ceremony.

"Help!" shouted a woman from the left side of the church. More voices raised, and people began to stir uneasy. From the other side of the church a man yelled "Somebody call an ambulance!"

Pastor Rhine stepped off his pulpit, running to the front pew, leaving the line unattended. Holding the plate of host’s in his hand, he scanned the crowd watching people collapse and fall, before his eyes.

By this time, the church was a mass of confusion and fear. The line waiting for the sacrament dispersed running back to his or her perspective seats, looking to see if anything was wrong or anyone was hurt.

Pastor Rhine darted to the other side of the pulpit and looked out onto the other side of the church. He spun his head around and looked to his deacon who was as dumbfounded as he.

"My husband!" someone yelled.

"My daughter!" a voice shouted above the crowd.

The front doors of the church opened as parishioners ran out the building terrified of what was going on inside. A group of men lifted a woman to their shoulders and carried her down the isle, out the front door into the bright sunshine outside.

Pastor Rhine ran back up to the altar and looked down to the host’s in the chalice he was holding in his hand. Fearing he had somehow poisoned his parishioners, in a panic he tossed the host’s onto the tabletop spilling them, knocking some to the floor. He stopped, dazed and confused, looked at what he had done. The deacon ran to him and grabbed his arm.

"Pastor! Are you alright?" he asked the confused clergyman.

"Mike, what’s happening?" he asked the deacon.

"The people are getting sick Jack!" he stated. "I’ll call for help!"

"No! Let me," the Pastor said in a daze, and ran through the side door to the prep room. He picked up the telephone and spun the dial, calling the police department. The phone rang, then again.

"Philips police department," the voice on the phone stated.

"This is Pastor Jack Rhine, the pastor of Trinity Church. I need an ambulance here. Something has happened."

"One moment, hold the line," the voice stated and the phone went silent.

Pastor Rhine stood with the phone to his ear listening as people shouted and screamed from the main hall just outside the prep room. It felt like minutes passing as he held fast to the silence on the line.

Deacon Mike Vostler ran to the doorway and stood panting, trying to catch his breath.

"What is it Mike?" the Pastor asked trembling.

"People are dying Pastor!" he shouted.

Pastor Rhine set the phone down, running past Mike to the altar. He looked out upon the small group still left in the church, seeing bodies lying in the isles. Running down from the altar, he scanned the pews moving towards the back of the church. In his mind, he did a quick count and added up more than two dozen dead, or dying people.

"Pastor!" Mike shouted from the doorway to the prep room. "The police are on the phone. They want to talk to you!"

Pastor Rhine turned, running back up the aisle, robes flowing in the wind, jumping onto the raised platform of the altar in one leap. He darted into the prep room and picked up the receiver.

"Hello?" Pastor Rhine asked with the phone to his lips.

"Pastor," the unfamiliar voice addressed him. "This is a little reminder to keep your mouth shut!"

The phone went dead. Then a dial tone. He did not know if the voice on the phone was the police or someone else he did not know. It did not matter now, for he needed to call his wife, who was home with their son Tony.

He dialed his home phone number and let it ring. Four, five, then six times it rang. Nothing. He quickly put the phone back down on the cradle and bowed his head. Placing his hands on the table top, he grit his teeth and squinted his eyes. He was in shock.

"Pastor!" Mike shouted from the altar outside. "Come quickly!"

Pastor Rhine ran out of the prep room to the altar, and looked out to where Mike was pointing.

Standing at the back of the church, holding their son, was Emily covered in blood. The Pastor took off in a sprint running to his wife, adrenaline pumping through his veins like a steam engine. He stopped a few feet short and reached out to take the young boy from her red blood stained arms. The Pastor used his white robe to wipe blood from Tony’s face and he set the boy on the carpet.

He stood up and looked his wife in the eye. She was in a daze. "Emily?" he asked.

"Jack," she said staring off into space.

"What happened? Are you alright?"

"They told me. They told me to tell you."

"What Emily? Tell me what."

"Not to tell the secret," she replied, then fell to the floor limp.

"Emily!" he yelled and dropped down to his knee to help her.

"Jack, please do as they say, for Tony," she whispered, blood bubbles coming from her lips.

"I promise Emily, I will tell no one."

A smile came across her face, then she was gone.

Chapter 16

An array of halogen lights glared down from the forty-foot ceiling, brightly illuminating the open bay in the secret US government research facility. The building was sectioned off into different investigation departments with laboratories; offices and field experiment areas set aside inside to test ideas and theories. Dr. Tony Rhine was assigned one of these areas and was leaning back in his chair sipping his coffee with one hand and tapping a pen on is desk with his other

Twenty feet from him sat what resembled a train boxcar. The ends were cut off and a plethora of wires and electronics ran in all directions meeting up to a single snake conduit. The snake connected to a large terminal, which in turn connected to his personal computer on his desk. His office consisted of this open area set up with no walls; doors or windows, and he loved the freedom of movement and space it provided him to work in.

He was working on a time portal based on his theory that time travel was a naturally occurring event brought about by sudden charges of electricity. He was trying to duplicate in the laboratory, what had happened on the recording using a safe area and controlled conditions. He theorized that all areas struck by lightning were altered time wise, and that over the billions of years the Earth was pock marked with small areas of time shifted matter. In theory, the Earth was not one consistent age, but was many billions of different ages separated by tiny variations, depending on the power of the lightning strikes.

Tony had given up his job at the university in order to study the phenomenon for the US government full time, biding time until the his true purpose would be realized. The Pacific Airliner is due to disappear in a few months and Brinkman informed Tony that he would be a part of the research team assembled to investigate the event when it occurred. The last date recorded on the airliner was June 14, 2001. They found various timepieces among the possessions of the passengers and were able to correlate the date to that day. He did not