The Seventh Plague Vessel: The Fall of Earth

Contents

PART I

BIO-SERVICES

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

PART II

THE FALL OF EARTH

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

EPILOG

THE DINNER COMPANION

To my brother Walter, even when things seem totally out of

control, someone, somewhere, has a plan.

PART I

BIO-SERVICES

CHAPTER 1

"I was a prosecutor for the city of Ft. Kent, Maine. I had a wife, Margie, and five kids: Jerry, age 10, Trisha, age 6, Eric, age 4, Derek, age 2, and two month old Connie. We lived in a rambling old Victorian house with fourteen rooms. Which meant that each child got his or her own bedroom. That is until more children came along. Both Margie and I planned to continue having children, at least three more. Ft. Kent was a quiet town and I was the only prosecutor. I planned to keep the job for my entire life. I was going to run for mayor one day, but since that was a part time job paying practically nothing, I planned to remain prosecutor even while holding down the job of mayor. Life was good, if financially stressful. Both my wife and I had credit cards and were not afraid to use them. We used them so often that we were paying more on bills a month than I made. Which meant we had to continue to charge just to keep up. That was when the first domino fell in the chain of events that would destroy my life.

A local man was being prosecuted for delinquent child support and alimony. He was one year behind. The total he owed only amounted to six thousand dollars. We had already established he had more than enough to cover the back payments. We were going to ask for the back payments and a fine that would cover the cost of the prosecution. It was all very simple until he showed up one day without his lawyer.

I want to make a deal, he said. Your lawyer should present any deals to me. No, this is just between you and me. Can we go into your office? Sure, I guess so. Being a small town where everyone knew everyone we

tended to be more informal than normal. That was my first mistake. So, what do you want to offer, I asked him. Ten thousand dollars. "No, that will only cover the delinquent payments and the court cost,

not the fine."

Not to the city, to you. Ten thousand dollars, drop the charges and I will give you ten thousand dollars cash. I was shocked, Is this a bribe? "No, of course not, it is my payment of a fine, with the condition that

the charges are dropped and my record stays clean. You see, I have some business deals, real estate deals that would be jeopardized by a conviction. Even something as minor as this."

It infuriated me. The man would rather pay me ten thousand dollars than give his ex-wife and little boy six thousand. Having five children myself I couldn’t even imagine being that cold toward your own child. Get out of my office.

Everyone in town knows you need the money, and everyone in town knows you want to be mayor. Why don’t I just make it a donation to your mayoral campaign fund and we will call it even.

You’re trying to buy me, I screamed. In this particular small town the prosecutors office, the police station, and city hall were all in the same building. As I continued to scream at the man Bobby Crabtree, the sheriff, came busting in.

What’s going on here?

Arrest him for trying to bribe an officer of the court. Make sure everything is by the book. I’ll have the charges and my statement ready by the end of the day.

You just made the biggest mistake of your life. I’ll get you for this, the man screamed as Bobby led him away. I ignored him and opened a new case file. Turning down a bribe and prosecuting the man who offered it would go a long way to electing me mayor, and the extra money for being Mayor of Ft. Kent would help pay the bills. I worked all day on the case. I got statements from each person in the room and Bobby go the perpetrator’s statement. Margie had the Suburban so I was either going to have to walk home or wait for her to pick me up. I decided to wait, but then Bobby and I decided to go out and celebrate. I drank two, too many beers. By the time Margie got the office, found my note, then found me I had had a six-pack with nothing to eat. Despite my honesty and my love for my family, I was a moody drunk. I got in the car as happy as a clam. Margie was happy too.

I have some great news, she said.

You won’t believe what happened to me today, you know that guy I’m prosecuting for child support? He tried to bribe me. Can you believe it? He offered me ten thousand dollars. Margie’s face dropped when I said that but I was too drunk to notice. What’s your good news?

Well, a man, a lawyer, came by today. He gave me a check for, she was quiet for a moment, for ten thousand dollars. It was made out to your mayoral campaign fund. He said it was a one-day offer. I had to cash it that day or lose it. Then I couldn’t get a hold of you and you didn’t return any of my calls.

And?

I cashed it.

You idiot, I screamed. Derek and Connie started to cry. Shut up, I continued screaming. How can you just take money from someone like that? What are you, two years old? Your smart enough to know that there had to be some string attached.

Yes but,

Yes but nothing. You knew better. By that time every child in the car was either crying or whimpering. Margie was just trying to hold the car on the road with tears streaming down her face. I was in full-blown rage, fueled by beer. I will probably lose my job over this, maybe even go to jail. Officially, I took a bribe. Even though I’m prosecuting the man who gave you, not me, but you, the bribe, I screamed waving my hands.

Your acting like a child, Margie cried.

Acting like a child, I’ll show you acting like a child, I threw my seatbelt off and slid over until my face was only an inch from hers and screamed, this is acting like a child. The movement and the noise scared her so much that she jerked the wheel to the left, directly into the path of an oncoming semi. Since we were in town both vehicles were only doing about thirty-five miles an hour, in opposite direction, so we hit at seventy. I was the only person in the Suburban that was unbuckled and I went straight out the windshield. I remember flying backwards through the air as the Suburban receded from me. I remember thinking that I was going to die and that the last thing Margie was going to here from me was that vile display of anger. Then I saw the Suburban explode, and I heard Margie, Jerry, Trisha, Eric, Derek, and even Connie cry out in terror and pain. Then I hit the side of the semi-trailer, glad to be dying with them.

The trailer hit me but it’s wheels missed me, sparing my life. However, my wife, my children, and the driver of the semi were all dead. My parents came up from Jamestown, Tennessee the day after the accident. My father took care of the funeral arrangement for my family. No man should ever have to arrange for the burial of six of his children and grandchildren all at once. The funeral had been bad, six closed coffins and the specter of an entire family being wiped out. Well, nearly an entire family, I was in a coma and not expected to come out of it, the remaining survivor and unknown cause of the accident. I did finally wake up two months later in the hospital. My parents were still there. They looked as if they had aged twenty years. After they told me what happened I cried for two days. They were thankful for my life and thanked God that I was still alive. The night after day I stopped crying I was left alone in my hospital room. I got up best I could which only amounted to a crawl. I drug myself into the bathroom, broke the mirror, and tried to commit suicide by slicing my wrist. I was still weak from the coma so the cuts into my wrist were shallow and I passed out before I was able to cut deep enough. The nurse found me the next morning. They discovered I was still alive, cleaned me up, and put me back in bed. From that point on I was put on suicide watch and given a powerful anti-depressant, lithium. My father, who had been handling my finances applied for my wife’s life insurance, $250,000. The trucking company also offered to pay my hospital bill, provided I didn’t try to sue them, even though it was our car that had crossed the yellow line. The bloody windfall allowed my father to pay off all the credit cards, car loan, funeral expenses, and the house loan. The combination of physical rehabilitation and psychiatric therapy kept me in the hospital long past the point I could have gone home. I was finally given a clean mental and physical bill of health and allowed to leave the hospital six months after the death of my family. However, when they wheeled me out of the hospital I couldn’t get in the car. It looked like a demon from hell, waiting to torment me, by safely transporting me where I needed to go and keeping me alive to suffer. My mother pushed me home in the wheel chair. It was a small town and our house, my house, was only two blocks from the hospital. Still, when I got there I just couldn’t cross the threshold. I stood up, backed away, then practically ran to the town’s only motel and spent the night there. My parents insisted on staying there in the same room because they were afraid to leave me alone there. The next day I put the house up for sale, advertised an estate sale in the local newspaper, and hired an auctioneer. I didn’t go back to the house. I sent my mother in to collect all the pictures in the house. My father and I went out to my hobby shop. I was an amateur painter and sculptor. My favorite subjects had been my children playing. I felt the shroud of the murderer I was fall on me as I walked into the studio. I stood there for a full five minutes. Then I picked up a can of paint and threw it at a half finished painting of Jerry, Trisha, and Eric swinging on a tire swing. My father jumped, as a grabbed a bat that happened to be in the corner where Jerry left it. I hit a clay bust of Margie, shattering it into a thousand pieces. My father couldn’t reach me because of the swinging bat and his words were blocked by my rage. He finally began grabbing what he could and putting it in a corner behind the half size bronze statue of my wife giving birth. When I finally turned my attention to the corner my father stood between the pieces and me. Stop!

I did. I dropped the bat, dropped to my knees and began crying again. My mother found us there an hour later, my father cradling me in his arms and me curled in a ball crying. They took me back to the hotel. My father stayed with me while my mother went back to the house and met with the auctioneer. She cleaned out all the personal mementos out of the house and studio and gave the rest to the auctioneer to sell. Most of the items in the house were old but not antiques. The sale didn’t clear much, only about nine thousand dollars after expenses. I didn’t attend the sale but my father did, my mother stayed with me. After the studio incident the doctor had put me back on suicide watch. My mother insisted that I not go back to the hospital so my father and she kept a 24-hour a day watch on me. Finally, I couldn’t take the guilt anymore and I went down to the office.

Clovis Middleton had taken over my job as a temporary replacement and was now the full time prosecutor. I walked into his office, leaving my parents outside. I can’t take it anymore, I’m here to confess to the murder of my family and that truck driver.

Clovis stopped whatever it was he was doing, and how did you do that, he asked?

I explained the entire incident.

You weren’t driving?

No.

You didn’t grab the wheel?

No.

You didn’t grab her?

No.

You just yelled?

Yes.

You didn’t murder your family. It was an accident. I can’t legally blame you because you yelled at her anymore than I can legally blame the man who sent your wife the ten thousand dollars trying to set you up.

Seven counts of manslaughter. I’ll confess, it will put you in good with the people of the town.

No, it won’t. The people of this town love you and each and every one of them feels your pain. If I prosecuted you they would consider me the meanest man alive. If I convicted you they would run me out of town on a rail. Personally and legally, you are not responsible for your family’s death.

As the days passed my depression did not ebb and my guilt at being the cause of my family’s death, though not punishable under the law according to the State of Maine, still haunted me. My parents decided to take me back to Tennessee. We were all at the house with the real estate agent making the final arrangements for the sale when I went around to the back, walked into the Maine woods, and disappeared. I could here them calling my name but I never answered.

It was winter in Maine, cold, twenty-five degrees, but the snow had not started falling yet. I had decided to walk into the woods, get lost, and die. Despite the fact that the leaves had fallen from the trees, I disappeared before my parents even realized I was gone. Less than an hour after I walked away, and before the sheriff could organize a search party to go looking for me the snowstorm that was coming in from the Atlantic hit. The storm laid over two inches of snow on the ground in the first hour. A year before I had been the city prosecutor and probably the next mayor. Now, I was just that poor crazy man who lost his wife and children in a terrible car accident. Although the entire town felt sorry for me, most were not willing to risk their own life in a blizzard to find me. Some even secretly believed it might be best for me to just freeze to death and be spared the misery of life without my family. My parents were not among that group. Bobby Crabtree had to literally lock my parents in a cell in the town jail to keep them from going out in the storm to look for me. He told them that after the storm was over he would get a search going. He also told them it was easier to search for one missing, presumed dead person, than for three. My parents cried themselves to sleep in the cell that night in each other’s arms.

I looked up and saw the snow begin to come down and knew I was on my last journey. Little did I know how long that last journey would be. I looked back to the path in front of me and continued to walk without breaking stride. My mother had seen to it that I was dressed warmly before we left for my old house so I was still warm when the snow started. I was determined to walk until I froze to death. So I walked on through the trees and over the bed of leaves that had covered the forest floor in preparation for the long winter. Within fifteen minutes of seeing the first snow flake the ground had a thin soft white glaze covering it. I looked behind me and noticed that I was leaving a trail. I didn’t try to hide it. I just noticed it and continued on my way. By the end of the second hour the snow was beginning to get heavy. Now, for the snow to be heavy in the Maine woods the way it was, there had to be a solid blanket of snow coming down in town because even without the leaves the trees help break up the snowfall considerably. I was sure that would prevent any serious search parties from coming out and completely cover my tracks before the storm was over. I didn’t expect to be found until next summer, after the spring thaw. That is, assuming that the wolves didn’t get to me first. At the end of the third hour the snow was almost six inches deep and I realized that I kept looking at my watch to see what time it was. I took the watch off and dropped it on the ground exactly three hours and one minute after I walked into the woods. Dead men don’t need watches in hell, which was what I was and where I was marching. After I dropped the watch I couldn’t keep track of the time. All I knew was that a little while later, or maybe a long while later, I’m not sure which, it got dark. The cloud cover had made the entire day gray, but now it was dark. I could barely see my hand in front of my face. It also got colder. But the snow kept coming down. It was now up over my boots, which meant that snow was now falling into my boots, melting from the heat of my body, running further into my boots and getting my socks wet. Wet socks made wet boots. Wet boots let the heat from my feet out quicker and my feet began to freeze. It had started.

I don’t know how long it took but the numbness that began in my toes slowly worked it way into my feet, around the ankle, up my calf to my knees. The numbness and the snow both reached my knees at the same time. From there, the speed of my heat lost increased. I could feel my ears begin to freeze. My fingers no longer moved and my legs were numb all the way to my hips. That was when I fell, face first into the snow. I rolled over on my back so I could breath and just lay there. I did-n’t have the will power to get up and start walking again. After all, this is what I had been trying to do for the past year. I closed my eyes but immediately felt a hand grab mine and it pulled me up out of the snow. It was still dark and I couldn’t see anyone, but I could feel the hand holding mine. It felt warm against my skin. Then I realized that I was wearing mittens. Even if someone were holding my hand it wouldn’t be flesh to flesh. I decided that I must have been hallucinating. My mind was telling me to get up and go but my body is still lying on the ground. Sounded good to me. I was freezing to death and that was fine with me.

You are freezing to death, however, you are not laying on the ground,

a voice said. I must be laying on the ground. There is no one out here in this blizzard to help me up.

I’m here. Oh, but you’re a hallucination. So you’re not really here at all. "I’m not a hallucination, and you’re not on the ground. You are up and

walking and following me. Where are we going then hallucination? I am not a hallucination, I am an angel, and we are going over to this

cabin. You must get warm if you are to live."

I do not want to live hallucination, so leave me be and leave me on the ground. God has told me it is not your time to die, and I am telling you. So, God sent a hallucination to save my life.

God sent you an angel to give you a chance to live. You can choose to die, against God’s will, if you like.

I do like.

That means that someone else will have to die in your place when your time to die comes.

That makes absolutely not sense whatsoever. As we talked the hallucination with the not quite male but not quite female voice continued to pull me forward. But since I was really laying on the ground freezing to death I saw no reason to resist the hallucination.

You are one of the few people on Earth who have a set time to die. Your time to die is in the last year of Armageddon.

I jerked my arm back and screamed, that is not funny. The hallucination’s grip never left my hand.

If you are not in that spot to die then an thousands of innocent children who will otherwise survive Armageddon, will die.

This is the wildest hallucination I have ever heard of.

There, ahead of us, see the light? It’s the cabin. Now do you believe?

The mind can play a lot of tricks on a person. Even more I suspect, as it is about to die. The hand lead me onto the porch, but the voice had fallen silent. On the snow covered porch was a lone rocker. There was a light on in the window. It was an oil lamp. The hand holding mine raised my arm and pushed the door. It was unlocked and swung open. I walked into the one room cabin, ignoring my surroundings and fell on the floor face up. The wind slammed the door shut and an explosion in the fireplace ignited the logs. I fell asleep on the floor in my frozen clothes, convinced that I was still outside in the snow, and convinced that I would never wake up.

I don’t know how long I slept, but when I woke up the morning sun was in my eyes. Based on the fact that it was still snowing when I fell asleep, it had to have been at least 24 hours. One more piece of evidence was that the clothes I was wearing were still on me, still closed, and completely dry. Dried from the outside in from the fire the hallucination had started. That thought brought me suddenly and completely awake. I had gone to sleep in the woods, in the snow, already half frozen. How did I get in here? Either I walked here under my own power or someone brought me here. I nearly snapped my neck frantically searching the cabin. In the corner was a bunk with someone laying in it. Whoever it was must have brought me here. Excuse me, I said. No response. I said it again, only louder this time, still no response. I got up, I was stiff but I could move. I walked over to the cot, but before I got there I could see the person in it was dead, and had been dead for several months. Well, one thing was for sure, he or she wasn’t the one who had brought me here. I looked around but there was no sign of anyone else there. In the window was the oil lamp that I first saw, still burning, as was the fire in the fireplace. The thought of God having a plan for me sent a chill down my spine. That plan was for me to die, not here and now but at some time in the future. Now everything dies, that wasn’t the scary part, the scary part was God had a time all picked out. Which meant he probably also had a place and method also picked out. Sort of like his plan for Judas was to betray Jesus, then take his own life. It wasn’t a revelation, a burning bush or even a full angel. It was only a voice and a hand. I decided to not believe that God had a plan for me, but just to be on the safe side, and not annoyed him, I also decided to not try and kill myself, today.

The one room cabin had a table and chairs, the bed my dead roommate was using, a simple kitchen, but no running water and no bathroom. I didn’t know who my terminal roommate was so I looked around for some identification. I found some bras, which meant he was a she, at least I hoped that was what it meant because I also found boxer shorts. I couldn’t find anything that told me who the dead person was so I named him/her Kim, a gender-neutral name. There was no electricity, no television, no radio, no books of any kind except for a Bible on the nightstand next to the bed. The pantry was completely stocked; potatoes, rice, dried milk, some canned meat, canned vegetables, and canned fruits. And, unlike the cat in the cartoon that was locked in the house while his family went on vacation, there was a can opener there. I had all the water I needed in the form of snow outside. All I had to do was bring it in and melt it in a pot. After a couple of days of just banging around the cabin I finally got bored enough to pick up the Bible and started reading it. It was more than just boredom that encouraged me to do this. The first reason was to stop thinking about my family. The second reason was the fact that the fire in the fireplace had continued to burn for at least three days without me adding more wood to it. I resolved that problem by assuming the fireplace was a gas fireplace and the logs were fake. I tried to ignore the rational part of my mind that asked if there was no electricity, why would there be natural gas. The last thing was the oil lamp in the window. It continued to burn long after it should have run out of oil. Again I rationalized that I just didn’t understand the consumption rate of oil by fire.

So, I read the Bible. Starting in Genesis with the creation of the world. I discovered that if you crossed God, at least the Old Testament God, you paid with your life, the life of your family, or both. When I finished the book of Job I wondered if God and the Devil had some bet placed on me. If they did I couldn’t imagine what it was because I wasn’t a devout believer of God the way Job was so why test my faith. I thought about that one for an entire day. Now don’t get the impression I sat down and read the Bible straight through. When I got tired, I slept, and when I got hungry, I ate. After I finally finished the Old Testament I started the New Testament. I read the four Gospels, paying particular attention to the betrayal of Christ. I looked for some indication that Judas had a choice in what he did, but I found none. I felt sorry for the guy because I thought I knew exactly how he felt. The books after the Gospels were basically a bunch of history, as were most of the Old Testament, and then I reached Revelations. It made my blood run cold and my temper flare. If God was going to do all of this, why was he doing it the hard way? It was like The Walls of Jericho. God could have sent down Gabriel with his trumpet to blast the walls once and let the looting begin. Instead he has the Israelites march around the city for seven days blowing trumpets to create the sonic disturbances that finally brought down the walls so the looting could begin. If he wanted me to die somewhere, why didn’t he just tell me when and where? Instead he let me kill (I killed) my entire family just to get my attention.

I stood up and threw the Bible in the fire. The fire went out before the Bible could even be singed. I walked over and picked the Bible up, the fireplace was as cold as ice. The fire did not come back. I looked over at the oil lamp, it had gone out too. I guess it’s time to go, I said aloud. I took some potatoes, a couple of cans of Spam, and all the matches I could find then rolled them up in the sleeping bag I had found and had been using. I slung the make shift bedroll over my shoulder, picked up the hunting knife that I had been using for everything, and headed out the door. You keep this Kim, I put the Bible on the body, you will probably need it more than me. I left even though it was early afternoon and I had no chance of reaching anyplace that day.

The snow was still deep and hard to travel through. I looked around and decided to head south. I probably only got a couple of miles before twilight came. Now was the time my Air Force survival training was going to come in handy. I found a small evergreen tree. I took the hunting knife and started cutting and breaking off the smaller branches. I took each branch and stuck it into the ground. After about an hour I had hundreds of branches laid out and rolled my sleeping bag out on it. I didn’t bother to start a fire. I just lied down in the bag, cut off a piece of potato for my supper and went to sleep. The next morning I got up and drank the water I had melted the night before. I rolled up my sleeping bag and started walking south again. The temperature was well below freezing, however, the sun was out and the wind wasn’t blowing. Still walking was hard and while the outside of my coat froze, the inside was coated with sweat. I was thinking about stopping, laying down, and freezing to death when I came across another cabin in the woods. The place was deserted no dead body this time. It was unlocked and it had a fireplace. I started a fire, ate a little, melted snow to drink, and dried out my clothes. The next morning I got up when I woke up. I was warm again, so I repacked and headed south again. Everyday went pretty much the same. I would walk until I was ready to give up and die. Just as I was about to give up, I would then run across a deserted cabin in the middle of the woods. I would start a fire and spend the night. Every night there was a cabin, deserted. After days and days of walking I finally hit Maine highway 2 between Bangor and Pittsfield. I hadn’t seen a single living person, or for that matter a signal living creature for the entire time I was in the woods. I headed south along the highway towards Pittsfield. Travel on the highway was faster than it had been in the woods. Just before dark I approached a small motel called the Pittsfield Hotel. It looked a lot like the Bates Motel to me but I went in anyway. I would like a room.

The clerk looked at me, this is not a shelter, it’s a real hotel. You have to pay for rooms here.

I looked at him and decided then and there that I would never let a petty bureaucrat bother me again. I pulled out ID and put two twenties on the counter. I intended to pay.

The guy was surprised. He gave me the room without saying another word. I went down to the room and put the do not disturb sign on the door. I threw all my stuff on the floor and stripped off all my clothes. I took a shower, the first one I had had in I didn’t know how long. Probably forty days and nights, if God followed his usually pattern. I ran the shower until I had used all the hot water. I dried off and crawled into the bed and slept for two days.

I was asleep in the bed when a loud knock at the door shook me out of my coma.

Who’s there?

The manager, are you OK in there?

Yea, fine, is that why you woke me, to ask me how I was, I asked from the bed?

According to the maid you have been asleep since you got here and according to the night clerk you have been here for two nights. So yes, I did wake you to ask you how you were.

I looked around realized it was dark out. Is it morning?

No, its about 7 PM. Do you need a doctor?

No, I apologize. I must have been more tired than I realized. I’m fine, do you mind if I stay one more night?

I heard some mumbling from the other side of the door then the manager spoke again. Sir, do you mind if I come in and look around?

Just a minute. I did mind but I thought that it would do no harm. I got up, got dressed, and let him in. The clerk and a man I had never seen before but assumed to be the manager came in. They looked around and when they were satisfied that there were no dead bodies in the room or that I hadn’t set up a drug lab they finally spoke. Of course you can stay another night, provided you pay for last night and tonight now.

Of course, how much?

One hundred dollars.

It was $36.95 for the first night.

The manager looked at the clerk. Fine, then $74.00.

I handed him the money. I’ll be leaving in the morning, could you give me a wakeup call at 8:30 AM?

Of course, anything for our guests, the manager said. What he meant was anything for our respectable guests, which men without cars and carrying backpacks were not. They left and I went back to bed. I ordered a pizza and watched a little television. Rather, I flipped through the channels for four hours. Nothing held my interest. I eventually fell asleep with the TV on. I woke up to the morning show on some local independent channel. The weather was going to move up above freezing with clear skies for the rest of the week. I showered, shaved, and got dressed. I put on my coat and my backpack and walked out of the hotel.

I headed south through Pittsfield. As I was walking through the center of town I passed the Salvation Army Store. I glanced in the window, the same way I had been glancing through every store window I passed, and I saw a flute. It was just sitting there with its case open among the second hand kitchen utensils. I couldn’t believe they had done something like that. I went in and looked at the instrument. The case was in good shape, all the parts were there, the pads were all there and in good shape, and they only wanted $25 for it. I took it up to the clerk, is this price right, I asked.

Yes it is.

Do you have any more musical instruments?

"No just the one. Someone donated it and we put it out. In the five years I’ve worked here this is the only musical instrument I’ve seen in here. We didn’t even know how to price