The Second First Man

THE SECOND FIRST MAN

by

Gary Michael

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Published by:

Gary Michael on Smashwords

Copyright © 2010 Gary Michael

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any similarity to any real person living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Cover by Sagit Costa – website – sagit-costa.com

ISBN 978-1-4357-3549-1

Dedication

I dedicate this book to three groups of people. To my wife Barbara, our son Larry, his wife Ann, their four children Paul, Christopher, Ryan and Danielle, and to our son Marvin, his wife Sagit, their son Roy, and to my sister Mary Ellen ( Merle) and her children Robert and Karen.

Next, to my wife’s relatives who welcomed me into their family.

I also dedicate this book to those that have lived through tragic world events and have wondered why something could have and should have been done to prevent them.

Gary Michael

Contents

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER 1: CATASTROPHE

CHAPTER 2: CAPTAIN SUTHERLIN

CHAPTER 3: RABBI AARON ROSEN

CHAPTER 4: TRAVEL PLANS

CHAPTER 5: DIAMONDS

CHAPTER 6: SHABBAT

CHAPTER 7: THE POPE

CHAPTER 8: MABEL

CHAPTER 9: JILLIAN

CHAPTER 10: DISCOVERY

CHAPTER 11: BONNIE LASS

CHAPTER 12: DENTISTRY

CHAPTER 13: CONTINENTAL

CHAPTER 14: AMANDA

CHAPTER 15: GETTING ACQUAINTED

CHAPTER 16: THE WASHINGTON ZOO

CHAPTER 17: THE BALL

CHAPTER 18: INTIMACY

CHAPTER 19: SOCIETY NEEDS

CHAPTER 20: LOS ANGELES

CHAPTER 21: WONDERFUL NEWS

CHAPTER 22: EDUCATIONAL THEORY

CHAPTER 23: THE PILOT

CHAPTER 24: PREPARATION

CHAPTER 25: HOPE

CHAPTER 26: A YEAR

CHAPTER 27: ISRAEL

CHAPTER 28: JERUSALEM

CHAPTER 29: MOUNT SINAI

CHAPTER 30: REFLECTIONS

CHAPTER 31: GEORGE

CHAPTER 32: LAKE KINNERET HOME

CHAPTER 33: PREGNANCY

CHAPTER 34: DNA

CHAPTER 35: CONFIDENCE

CHAPTER 36: SARAH'S ADVICE

CHAPTER 37: DAVID

CHAPTER 38: BORIS

CHAPTER 39: ANOTHER FAMILY

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER 40: REVIEW OF BOOK ONE

CHAPTER 41: CONTINUATION

CHAPTER 42: AFTER THE BALL

CHAPTER 43: THE VOYAGE

CHAPTER 44: CHINA

CHAPTER 45: RECAPPING THE YEARS

CHAPTER 46: RETURN TO KINNERET

CHAPTER 47: GETTING ACQUAINTED

CHAPTER 48: GAZELLES

CHAPTER 49: THE FIRST WEDDING

CHAPTER 50: DISCONTENT

CHAPTER 51: CONTINUATION

CHAPTER 52: ELI'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT

CHAPTER 53: NEVO

CHAPTER 54: THE ASSIGNMENT

CHAPTER 55: DOING GOD'S BIDDING

CHAPTER 56: THE END? or THE BEGINNING

EPILOGUE

*****

CHAPTER 1: CATASTROPHE

Traffic was considerably lighter than normal as Eli drove from his home in Maale Adumim to work in Jerusalem, Israel. It was a sunny Tuesday morning, July 9, 2010. He had just dropped his wife, Rachel, off at the municipal swimming pool and was eager to get to work. The climb up the Judean Mountain was steep; nevertheless his car quickly covered the 560 meters of altitude differential from his city to the nation's capital. Black goats were clinging to the sides of almost perpendicular cliffs, feasting on the dried plants that randomly had grown in and around the rocks. A young Bedouin woman wearing a black dress and a black head covering had just crossed the road back to her large tent leading three donkeys each laden with green and yellow plastic containers of water. He had seen this woman two or three times a week ever since he had taken the job at Luz Industries. As his Hyundai Getz climbed higher and closer to Jerusalem, the number of Pine and Cyprus trees increased. For Israel it was another lush forested area planted by the Jewish National Fund; for Vermont, his prior home just six years ago, these relatively small and sparse trees would have been ignored as a minor over grown pasture. Of course these lands had not been pastures in the true agricultural sense since Roman times. Yet to Eli the trees were very much appreciated as his city was established at the beginning of the desert along the road leading to Jericho and on to the Dead Sea. The Maale Adumim city council had planted palm and acacia trees along every street and in parks throughout the largest city in Judea. They boasted of a population of 35,000 people of which at least 16,000 were children under the age of thirteen. Practically every other woman resident was obviously pregnant.

As he passed the neighborhood of French Hill, he began a gradual descent into a little valley where he would normally see the distant neighborhood of Ramot. Both French Hill and Ramot were constructed since the June 1967 Six Day War when the Israeli Army drove the Jordanian Army across the Jordan River. Ramot’s location on top of yet another of the many mountain tops in Jerusalem commanded a magnificent view of the central section of the new city. Today only part of Ramot was visible as a low hanging cloud was resting on the valley floor and reclining on the mountain side ascending to Ramot. Eli had often seen this cloud phenomena during summer months particularly when the nights were considerably cooler then the days. The preceding evening the temperature dropped to seventeen degrees Celsius and today it was expected to hit thirty degrees Celsius by noon.

Being a Certified Public Accountant he liked to mentally manipulate figures like converting the temperature from Celsius to Fahrenheit. Today the predicted temperature was 30 degrees Celsius which would be 86 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale; warm but not oppressively hot, as the humidity in Jerusalem was almost always comfortably low.

He arrived at 7:20 a.m., ten minutes earlier than his usual punctual 7:30 a.m. arrival at the Luz Industries administrative and production building. The building was not the typical style for Jerusalem. It was an ultra modern building clad mainly in glass hung from thin metal structural supports painted bright red with meter square Jerusalem marble strategically placed here and there, like clothing, to conceal the vital parts from the stare of on lookers. It was Eli's normal practice to get to work early before the building filled with the confusion and noise of over four hundred engineers, researchers, economists, lawyers, other accountants and production workers. Eli was proud to be a part of Luz's efforts in building solar electric generating stations around the world. Thus far fourteen major installations had been built in California, Brazil, India and one in Israel and others were under construction in Australia and Spain. Every three months when it was time to prepare the quarterly financial statements and the projected year-end financial statements for the board of directors. Eli and his colleagues were under heavy pressure to produce meaningful financial information within a very tight time schedule. They had another three working days to wrap up the June 2010 statements. It looked like everything was falling into place according to plan. He arrived at work early in order to be able to return home at a reasonable hour to be with his wife, Rachel. They had made Aliyah, or climbing up, to Jerusalem six years earlier from the rural state of Vermont which is located in the northeastern part of the United States. Most of their relatives lived in Ohio and Michigan, the states of their birth, but their two sons and four grandchildren were living in Vermont.

Upon parking the Getz, he methodically enclosed it with a specially prepared fitted canvas cover to keep the sun's rays from destroying the light blue paint and drying up all of the rubber and plastic parts of the car. He wished some of the other early birds at work the Hebrew greeting boker tov and good morning in English to others. At that point he realized why traffic had been so light allowing him to arrive at work ten minutes early. David, the religious payroll accountant, was not at work because it was the fast day Tisha B'Av, commemorating numerous terrible events that fell on this date of the Hebrew calendar over the millennia; starting with Moses breaking the tablets inscribed with the ten commandments, the destruction of the first and second Temples as well as the passing of the Nuremberg laws marking the beginning date of the Nazis war on the Jewish people. Most observant Jews did not work on this sad remembrance day as they prayed and fasted from food and drink.

Since he was a secular non-observant Jew, he filled the electric water kettle to heat water for his first of a normal five cups of Chico, an imitation coffee drink made from chick peas and wheat without caffeine. Coffee machines were available but he preferred to avoid caffeine. In an instant his IBM computer jumped to action ready to respond to his every command. He called up his Excel program and buried himself in making adjusting entries to the trial balances of several of the eight corporations that made up the Luz Group. He had built his financial file in a manner which would automatically move adjusting entries to the appropriate accounts of the various corporations when the command recalculate was entered and all of the mathematical formulas updated the affected accounts of individual company statements and concluded with the consolidated financial statements and notes which were the planned final product.

A little after eight o'clock some of the accounting staff began to enter the section of the first floor that was assigned to the controllers department. Eli became aware that the newly installed air conditioning was too cold and blowing directly on his back. He called to Gil, a tall red headed, red bearded native Israeli who worked next to him behind a five foot sound muffling room divider wall, to help him reduce or redirect the flow of the air from the central air conditioner. Help wasn't the right word as Eli was too short to reach the ventilator control lever even when standing on a chair. Gil stepped on the chair and easily made the adjustment. Eli thanked him and Gil nodded acceptance of the thank you while wondering why Americans felt compelled to say those words.

About an hour later while sipping his second cup of unsweetened Chico without milk, Eli became aware that the office was unusually quiet. The normal chatter from the secretaries just beyond the divider wall in front of him was silent as well as the chatter from the two data in-putters behind the parallel wall marking the end of his office. The music from a nearby radio had stopped and had been replaced by static. The air conditioning blowers were making their normal noise but there were no ringing telephones and no one was calling other workers with instructions to answer a phone or to bring a file to someone. He saved his computer work and decided it was a good time to walk to the men’s room and see what was happening. The rest rooms were located next to the legal department, about 200 feet away and up a half flight of stairs.

As he rounded the corner of the space dividing wall he glanced into Gil's area. Gil was slumped over his desk holding a pen that had made a long dark line across the printout he was reviewing. Eli called out Gil as he instinctively put his left index finger against Gil's neck on an artery just next to the point where the red whiskers that formed Gil's red beard stopped growing. There was no pulse! It was apparent that Gil was dead, perhaps from a heart attack or a stroke. What a shame he was only twenty eight years old and had a wife and a cute two year old daughter. Eli quietly, but quickly walked back past his office to the secretaries' room. There was no need to make a scene and alarm everyone at this time. The secretaries could call Magen David Adom, the equivalent of the Red Cross, to send an ambulance. Eli had felt a sense of surprise, but not shock when he saw Gil's body.

The sight of both the English and the Hebrew secretaries slumped over their word processors, obviously dead, not only put Eli into a state of shock, but filled his whole being with fear and panic. He immediately concluded that gas or something had entered the entire area through the air conditioning ducts and had killed these people. Since he had Gil close the ventilator over his desk he had luckily been spared. He closed his nostrils without taking in any more air and ran faster than he ever had, to the end of the accounting department and out of Luz's main entrance doors and on to the security guards' enclosure at the parking lot gate before he allowed himself to breathe again. The intention was to tell the guard what had happened and to get the building evacuated before more people were injured. He could not see if any others of the accounting staff were affected as the divider walls had been set up to give visual privacy in addition to muffling sound. In an excited loud voice he yelled to the guard in his basic, immigrant level Hebrew that people were dead in the accounting area and to call for help. The guard did not respond! He too was dead!

How was this possible? There's no air conditioning outside of the building? Eli looked down the street to the intersection of the main road to Ramot. No traffic was moving. What is going on? he asked himself out loud. Have we been attacked? He allowed his heart to slow down from its rapid beating before he returned to the building. People were dead in the legal department, the economics department, the executive wing, in the purchasing department and in the production departments. Eli dialed 101 to get Magen David Adom but did not get an answer as the phone rang and rang. Similarly the police and fire departments did not answer their phones. In a daze Eli slowly walked out of the building. Suddenly he became sick to his stomach and threw up in the parking lot.

He had left his wife off at the Maale Adumim swimming pool on his way to work a little before seven o'clock. By now she must have finished her self imposed mandatory 40 laps, of twenty five meters each to swim a full kilometer, and must be on the way home without her cell phone. Eli uncovered the Getz and drove to the parking lot gate. Of course it was closed and with the guard dead, Eli drove up on to the sidewalk and around the barrier to get to the road. He was panicked. What could have happened to everybody? Why weren't any cars moving on the roads? Why was he spared? How was Rachel?

Apparently drivers had died at their wheels and their cars, trucks and buses continued in the straight direction their masters had last established before dying. As a result the vehicles drove mindlessly straight, indifferent of highway islands, bends, turns or intersections. Cars had driven off the road and wrecked into stone walls or into other vehicles. He traveled as fast as possible within the confines of wrecked cars on and off the roadway. The traffic light was red at the turn off from the Ramot road to the Maale Adumim road and Eli brought his car to a controlled stop out of force of habit. Subconsciously he knew that he would have a two to three minute wait. Traffic lights in Israel are red longer than in the United States because only one direction of traffic goes at a time, first the northbound then the west bound followed by the east bound and finally the south bound. For Israel it was a good system as a green light allowed cars to go straight, turn left or turn right as their drivers pleased without concern for any oncoming traffic. Israeli drivers as a whole had correctly earned the reputation of being rather poor and overly aggressive. The traffic light system prevented a lot of accidents and trained drivers to stop whenever the lights switch from green to yellow and conversely start when the lights switch from red to yellow. No one would ever stop on red or start on green as yellow was the signal of coming change. Suddenly he realized that there was no traffic and no need to stand at the red light. He put the car into gear and drove through the red light. He only hoped that the automatic camera would photograph his car breaking the law and someone would develop the film and give it to the police to send him a summons to appear in traffic court to explain his actions. The thought that tens of thousands of people had been killed was slowly sinking into his brain.

Once past the intersection his attention was drawn to bus number forty eight en-route to the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev. The bus was standing at its regular bus stop with the engine still running. All of the passengers were in their seats motionless. Some people were lying in the door well where they had either been entering the bus or descending from it. Further on there was a dead donkey on the side of the road with large black ravens standing on it pecking away at their breakfast. The car came to a stop at a point where a flock of goats and sheep had started to cross the road but only the leader had succeeded in making it all the way across before death found all of them and their Arab shepherd. They had died in an elongated pattern like so many bowling pins, although in this case there were enough sheep and goats for four or five lanes of bowling. A car had gone out of control and cut a path through some of the animals after they had died. Those hit by the car were strewn about like loose firewood. He barely looked at the sheep with their insides exploded out of their skins by the force and weight of the automobile. Their white wool had turned crimson. He broke out in a cold sweat even though the day was warming fast. What was happening? Why were people, donkeys, goats and sheep dead while birds were alive?

He practically flew down the steep hill to Maale Adumim. Because of the curves he braked the car; normally he merely let the engine run in a lower gear at a controlled speed as he descended. Maale Adumim was quiet. No traffic, no playing children, no building sounds from the numerous new apartment buildings under construction. Slowly he turned onto the street of the swimming pool and he searched for his wife walking home. She should be home by now so he hoped he wouldn't see her until he got home. Several people were dead on the sidewalks.

Then his worst fear materialized. Rachel was on the sidewalk in the shade. It looked like her legs had buckled under her as she lost consciousness and died in a heap with her swimming knapsack still grasped tightly in her right hand as she fell. Tears flowed from his eyes. He hugged the body that once housed his wife of forty years and he cried and cried. Why, why, why? he shouted, while looking up to the heavens. No answer came back to him. He had not expected an answer but had to cry out.

He had seen enough death to subconsciously realize that normal burial societies would not be available for Rachel. Eli gently picked his wife up and put her in the back seat of the car. He then drove to a construction site and took a hand held digging tool that laborers used for mixing mortar and cement. It was in the shape of a standard hoe with a large steel head and a short wooden handle. He then drove to the city's large central park and carried his wife to a grassed area near a large palm tree. Returning to the car he picked up the tool and the canvas cover that he had used just a few minutes ago to protect the Getz from the sun. Now the canvas would serve to protect his wife from the darkness of the earth he was about to put her into. Coffins were not normally used by Jews in the Jerusalem area. Dead people were merely wrapped in shrouds and placed in the ground. There was no need to go home first to get a sheet as the canvas would do the job, besides he did not think he could go home and have the internal strength to come back to face the job of burying his wife. It had to be done now. With each bit of earth removed the grave became deeper and Eli cried more. He did not know where all the tears came from. Soft top soil quickly gave way to native earth that was more rocklike than earth. He dug down about three feet and quit from exhaustion. The canvas was spread open and Rachel placed in the center. Eli gently kissed his first and only love good bye. The canvas was neatly folded over her from the right side and then the left side and then from the top and bottom. Some canvas remained which he tucked around her small frame. With deliberate care he very gently placed her into the ground on her back facing Jerusalem. Then came the hard part shoveling the earth over the canvas until his wife was completely buried and the soil made a light mound. He made the area as neat and clean as possible and then threw the shovel as far as he could.

The trip from Maale Adumim's first cemetery to his home took only two minutes but it was like stepping from one life to another. There was no way to know what this new life had in store for him. Certainly the old life ended in a most despicable manner with the burying of his wife with his own hands.

Eli had trouble deciding whom to call first to deliver the terrible news that Rachel was dead. Should her parents be called first or their sons? He dialed the number of his oldest son in Burlington, Vermont. With daylight savings time in both countries it was seven hours earlier on the east coast of America than in Israel. That would make it about 2:45 a.m. What a terrible time to wake his son and tell him that his mother was dead. Then again no time was good and at this hour he must be at home. There was always a delay of about fifteen seconds after the last of the fourteen telephone codes and numbers were entered into the push button telephone. During this time he tried to formulate what his first words would be. The technique of establishing the first sentence or sentences in his mind had been developed over nineteen years of lecturing at the University of Vermont. Once the beginning was in place the rest of the lecture always fell into place for him.

He heard ringing much like the ringing he had heard when he called the emergency authorities in Jerusalem earlier this morning. Finally there was a break in the ringing as the answering machine kicked in. The recorded voice of his daughter-in-law announced that they were not able to answer to phone right now but if you left a message they would return the call as soon as possible. Then the voices of his two older grandsons piped in We promise to call soon. After the obligatory beep, Eli said Alice and Louis please call me as soon as you wake up as I have something very important to tell you. Don't worry if I am not at home I will call you at five in the morning your time. Louis left for work every morning at that hour like clockwork. In that regard the old adage like father like son applied. Perhaps his son had disconnected the telephone in the bedroom and could not hear the ring of the phone elsewhere. Eli could not call his younger son, Martin, as the boy had just changed apartments near his college in Johnson, Vermont and had not yet installed a telephone.

By default Rachel's parents would be the first to learn the tragic news of their oldest daughter's death. Again the delay while the radio telephone system made its hook up to the States. Ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing...when would they pick up the telephone? Eli let the phone ring twenty times before hanging up and repeating the call. A second time there was no answer. He was not aware of their leaving home for a mini vacation but it was possible. He would call back after he talked with Louis. Perhaps his son would know where his grandparents went. Hopefully neither of them was ill or hospitalized. Although they were elderly they were in good health.

Eli went outside of his second floor apartment onto the attached balcony. From the balcony he stared almost in a trance due east to Jordan and the Dead Sea. Was it possible that Jordan had attacked Israel with a new secret weapon? Would her army be waiting to march up the road to his city after any danger to soldiers had passed? But Jordan had signed a peace treaty with Israel years ago. Besides Jordan would not attack alone; perhaps they could be in partnership with Iran. Iran’s president had been threatening to destroy Israel for years. Also Iraq was still unpredictable after America and allies defeated Sadam Hussein and left the country in chaos. Could an atomic device have been dropped on Jerusalem? Not likely as there was no property damage. Even a so called clean bomb would certainly cause some damage when the shock and sound waves hit the city from the above ground detonation. There had been no noise and no flash of bright light. Besides he knew that radiation took days to kill people. Perhaps a chemical or biological weapon had been delivered by Syria or Iran. That was a better probability.

It was so peaceful with the bright sun shining strongly, one would never contemplate that so many people had died today. Out of habit he took out the hose and watered the variety of flowering plants his wife had planted and his personal lemon tree which was just a meter and a half tall. Next year it would bear fruit. Some water missed the potted plants and washed the marble faced wall where a salamander had been sunning himself. A three member family had been living on the balcony for years. The salamander scampered quickly up the wall to avoid the water.

Eli felt the need to know how extensive the disaster was. He called numerous retired friends who should have been at home. None of them answered his calls. Perhaps something was wrong with the telephone system itself. In times of sorrow Jews often went to the Western Wall for consolation. That's where he would go right now to find other living souls and to say the traditional prayers for his wife on the occasion of her death.

Since making Aliyah he had not taken the direct route to the old city through the neighboring Arab towns of El Azaria and Bethany because of the risk of being hit by stones or burning bottles of gasoline. Today he would take the direct way and save ten minutes travel time. All along the road were dead people and sheep. Today there was no danger from stones thrown in defiance of the Israeli government as a much worse situation had taken center stage.

He drove past the Church of All Nations with its beautiful mosaic pictures on its wall facing the old city walls of Jerusalem. The car doubled back along the city wall until he arrived at the Dung Gate. He drove through the open gate and onto an area reserved for buses near the Western Wall. From this point he walked through the security check point with its dead male and female soldiers waiting to inspect any packages carried to the Wall for possible bombs. Several tourists were lying on the stone plaza which leads to the holist Jewish site. Many men had been praying at the Wall because of Tisha B'Av. Death found them on this the saddest day of the Hebrew calendar. Dead women and men were at their separate sections of the wall. Eli realized that he left his kippa in the glove compartment of his Getz so he took a cardboard kippa, skull cap, from the box at the entrance to the men’s section and walked to the Western Wall as he had done so many times in the past.

Whether or not God existed, had always been a question in Eli's mind. Perhaps he had existed at the time the universe was created; but he could not be certain that God existed in modern times. Where had he been during the Holocaust? In the past he had placed his hands on the wall about shoulder width and leaned in slightly with eyes closed and tried to communicate with the God that he really did not know existed or not. He obviously wanted to believe but had not come to that state of mental readiness to believe. This day he assumed the position that he had always taken but could not keep his eyes closed. Tears filled his eyes, flowing down his checks and soaking his shirt.. "Why did you turn your back on the Jewish people again? Haven't we suffered enough over the nearly six thousand years of our relationship with you? Why did you allow my beloved Rachel to die? He continued to vent this frustration in a strong, yet emotional voice, until he just ran out of words. At that point, he picked up a pray book and read kaddish the mourners prayer for the dead. Rachel would have been pleased that he took this final action for her.

*****

CHAPTER 2: CAPTAIN SUTHERLIN

After his one sided conversation with the God that may or may not exist, Eli slowly backed away about ten steps while still facing the large square and rectangular Herodian stones. Turning away he walked to a nearby water fountain and splashed water on his face and hands. He rinsed his mouth to get rid of the remaining bad taste from when he had thrown up in the Luz parking lot, and he drank a lot of water from his cupped hand. It was common sense, in the summer, to drink a lot to prevent dehydration and this day he was feeling the heat. Although his world was falling apart all round him he subconsciously knew that he had to hold on to his life.

Eli desperately needed to learn how wide spread the Catastrophe had been and to find other survivors. From the Dung Gate he drove around the city walls, turned left on to Hebron Road and traveled to Gilo the southern neighborhood of Jerusalem. All along the way he experienced the same conditions, wrecked vehicles, dead people, dead dogs and dead cats that he saw in the northern section of the city and in Maale Adumim. He could have continued south two miles to Bethlehem but instead he decided to go the population center of Tel Aviv on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The steep winding main route from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv surely would be plugged with wrecked vehicles. He could see thin columns of smoke rising in the air to the east directly over the road’s location. No doubt gas tanks had burst into flame when the cars went off the edges of the cliffs. The route by Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital would be easier and besides the sooner he got out of the city the sooner he hoped he would be away from death.

Kibbutz Palmach Tsova lay between Hadassah Hospital and the Tel Aviv highway. Rachel and Eli had spent many happy times with their Kibbutznik friends, Sarah and Aaron, since 1991 when they first met while Eli was on a year's sabbatical leave from the University of Vermont. Upon arrival at the Kibbutz he stopped the car in front of the heavy gate made of iron poles as it was closed. He entered the Kibbutz on foot. No one was about as everyone should all be work at the glass windshield factory or the barns. As he walked into the center of the Kibbutz he passed his friends home which was locked as no one was home. Oh no he shouted as he saw the bodies of the small children and their teachers at their nursery school. Running to the central dining hall he found more bodies. Several men and women were dead in the barns. One had been milking a cow which had died on top of its dairy worker. Since only the workers blue jean legs were protruding out from under the cow Eli did not even know if the worker was a man or a woman. Although the cows were dead the chickens, strangely, were alive.

He had seen many birds in the sky but this was normal as Israel is the land link from Europe and Asia to Africa and many species of birds are constantly migrating to or from one continent to another. Chickens of course were in the same animal kingdom sub-family. The Salamanders on his balcony were also living. He could see many flies in the barn. Could it be that only mammals had been affected leaving reptiles, birds and insects alive? He made a mental note to check out the Mediterranean Sea or a fishpond for signs of sea life.

Stop and think Eli, he said to himself, where can people be alive? Underwater with air tanks or in airplanes were two possibilities. A third possibility would be in areas beyond the affected area however big that may be. There was no practical way he could locate people under the surface of the oceans, even if there were people there, but he could easily find people in airplanes. In time they must land at airports. Ben Gurion International Airport was just forty kilometers down the Tel Aviv highway. With that thought in mind he raced to his car to drive to Ben Gurion airport.

The drive was not bad at all. Most of the vehicles had driven off the road. At the intersection of the road to Beit Shemesh he discovered the source of the biggest plume of smoke he had seen from Jerusalem. Apparently a Subaru and a Fiat were refueling at the gas station on the north side of the highway when the Catastrophe occurred at the same time a Volvo was coming off the roadway to pull in to buy gasoline. The moving Volvo with its dead driver could not stop and crashed into the refueling cars knocking them to the side and breaking the gas pumps. The accident caused the gasoline to explode and burn. At the time Eli passed the gas station the underground storage tanks were still providing fuel to the fire. Fortunately the Jewish National Fund forest stopped a couple hundred meters from the station and a rock outcropping protected the forest from the flames. Hopefully the fire would burn itself out before late afternoon when the desert winds always began to blow. Surely no fire department was about to respond to the fire.

The three lanes of traffic arriving at the airport were forced to form one lane so that security personnel could make a visual inspection of the cars' occupants and stop any suspicious car in order to ask