Tribulation: An Apocalyptic End-Times Thriller (Kingdom of Darkness Book 1) Read online

  Mackenzie kept the barrel of the shotgun pointed at the man. “We’re a triage unit. We’re assessing the damage. Emergency responders are on the way. You have to let us do our job.”

  Emilio increased his gait as he addressed the man. “Organize your neighbors. Start looking for survivors. If you can get them out, do it. If not, at least make a note of their location so you can tell someone when rescue crews arrive.”

  Once they were out of ear shot of the man, Mackenzie said, “We’re going to have to keep up this charade until we get out of the city.”

  “More like the entire way home,” Emilio corrected. “But you did well back there. I’m impressed by your new-found grit.”

  She kept an even pace. “Like I said, prison will do that for you.”

  CHAPTER 2

  I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle. And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment.

  Jeremiah 25:10-11a

  Emilio looked at the brick apartments and rowhomes to his left. Many seemed almost undamaged except for caved-in porches. Yet, the front walls of others had completely given way, exposing the catastrophic scenes of destruction inside.

  A woman came running out of one of the houses. She had dust caked on the blood which was smeared all over her face. “Please! You have to help me! I can’t find my children!”

  Mackenzie quickly held the shotgun up at her. “We’re a triage team. Help will be here soon.”

  The woman stepped back at the threat of the weapon. “But my kids! They’re somewhere inside the house!” Tears ran down her face, mingling into the bloody mud on her cheeks.

  Emilio sucked in a deep breath, trying to deal with the horror. He pulled Mackenzie to the side. “It’s children, Mackenzie. Ten minutes. We go in, help her find them, then get back on the road.”

  She looked into Emilio’s eyes. “Don’t you get it? The kids are gone.”

  “You don’t know that. They could still be alive. We have to look.”

  “No, I mean gone, as in raptured. Jesus took the kids. My dad was sure of it—and now I am, too.”

  “But…” Emilio looked at the distressed woman still pleading for his help. “How can you be sure?”

  “Of all the people we’ve passed on the street so far, have you seen one person that was under the age of thirteen?”

  Emilio looked back. “No, but we’ve only come seven blocks. That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It’s more proof than I need. You can go help her if you want, but I’m going to keep moving.” Mackenzie ignored the woman’s continued begging for assistance and increased her pace to a slow jog.

  Emilio stood torn between the two for a brief moment but then grunted, breaking into a sprint to catch up with Mackenzie. Next, they reached College Avenue. Emilio paused to look north. The interstate overpass was collapsed. He pointed down the dead-end street to the east. “This looks like the place where I-65 turns. I think we should head south on College.”

  Mackenzie looked down the main thoroughfare. People were on the street, crying, screaming, and yelling. “We’ll be walking into complete mayhem, but I don’t know of a better route.”

  They crossed Massachusetts Avenue where the debris from a partially-collapsed five-story brick building littered the road and sidewalk below. A red Toyota was trapped in the rubble, but the driver was determined to get out of the mess. He gunned the engine and the tires spun, pushing the pile of bricks beneath the bumper farther under the vehicle.

  More people yelled for help. An old man questioned, “Where’s the fire department?”

  A young woman screamed at them, “We need a rescue team!”

  Emilio glanced down at the badge around his neck. “I’m starting to think we might be better off taking our chances with the peacekeepers than dealing with the public.”

  Mackenzie kept her shotgun ready. “I don’t know about that. Peacekeepers shoot back. So far, all we’ve had to deal with is some frustrated malcontents.”

  Emilio conceded, “Yeah, I’ll take that over a firefight any day of the week.”

  Then all of a sudden, screams from up the street traveled toward them like a wave. Next, Emilio felt the sensation of the cracked pavement turning to water beneath his feet. He swayed and grabbed hold of Mackenzie’s arm. “Get down!”

  The two of them lowered themselves to the shaking earth before they were forced to the ground by the undulations. They moved toward the rubble of the structure which had already collapsed to get out of the way of the glass and debris raining down from the building that was still standing. The shaking continued for nearly a minute.

  “It’s coming down! Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!” Emilio began crawling over the mounds of rubble and exposed rebar to escape the wavering five-story brick building that was cracking like an egg as it began shedding gargantuan chunks of the upper wall. Each piece that broke off fragmented like a grenade when it struck the ground.

  Mackenzie slipped as she tried to traverse the precarious hill of wreckage. “Ahh!”

  Emilio turned back to offer his free hand. “Take hold of me. We have to get out of here!”

  She grabbed his forearm and he lifted her up to the crest of the pile. The building collapsed, spewing a cloud of dust all around. They pulled their shirts up over their mouths to filter the befouled air. The two of them carefully navigated down the ruins and finally reached terra firma.

  “Is it over?” Mackenzie used her shirttail to wipe powdered mortar from around her eyes.

  Emilio brushed the fine gray substance from his arms and hair. “I hope so. That was a really big aftershock.”

  “We could have more of them,” said Mackenzie.

  Emilio looked east. “We should get to the other side of the interstate. The buildings will be shorter the farther we get from downtown.”

  “I agree. It should be less densely populated also.” Mackenzie limped along behind Emilio.

  “Are you hurt?” He looked at the small blood stain on her lower leg.

  “I scraped it on some rebar coming over the rubble.” She squatted to roll up the leg of her jeans. “It’s just a scratch. I’ll walk it off.”

  Emilio knelt to examine the injury. “Yeah, not bad, but we still need to get it cleaned up and bandaged when we get a chance.”

  The two of them traveled through the alley to the interstate. They navigated through the shrubs and unkempt trees. They climbed the short hill that took them up onto I-65. All the cars were stopped. Several had been involved in a multi-vehicle pile-up. The occupants of the automobiles and trucks were out on the pavement—at least the ones who could still walk. Many of them were severely injured. Emilio froze for a moment as his brain tried to process the surreal scene before his eyes.

  “Come on.” Mackenzie tugged his arm. “We need to keep moving.”

  He forced himself to turn away from the carnage. “Okay.” Emilio led the way down the hill from the disfigured roadway. Passing through another hedgerow of weeds and overgrown bushes, they reached the train tracks. The long steel lines were broken in multiple places. The railroad ties beneath the tracks were no longer parallel to one another. They looked as if they’d all been tossed on the ground haphazardly as opposed to being precisely set in a uniform fashion.

  “Let’s follow the tracks as far south as we can.” Emilio traversed the uneven path.

  “A pedestrian walkway is about all these are good for now,” Mackenzie commented.

  Emilio added, “It’s going to be a while before any trains can travel through here again.”

  Four blocks later, the tracks began to turn west. “They’re going back toward the interstate,” said Emilio.

  Mackenzie paused and looked left, then east, up New York Street. “They probably run right into a collapsed overpass.”

  Emilio turned right and headed away from I-65. One bl
ock later, they resumed their southerly trek past wood-framed houses, which had mostly all been demolished by the quake. At each intersection, they looked over to make sure they were maintaining a course parallel to the interstate.

  The cross street ended on Washington Street. Mackenzie sat on the curb of the heavily traveled thoroughfare and observed the carnage for a moment. “How long do you think we’ve been walking?”

  “More than an hour.”

  “How far have we come?”

  Emilio shook his head. “Three miles or less.”

  She ran her hand through her jet black hair. “At this rate, we’ll never get there.”

  “Once we’re out of the city, it should get easier. We’ll be able to follow I-65 because we won’t have a fallen overpass every two or three blocks.” Emilio looked at a city bus lying on its side. The vehicle had jumped the curve and was blocking the sidewalk while the front extended all the way into the parking lot of the adjacent repair shop. “Let’s go check out that bus.”

  “Emilio, we don’t have time for any side missions to rescue people.”

  “That’s not what this is.” He began walking toward the wrecked transit vehicle. “Besides, anyone still inside is probably beyond the rescue stage at this point.”

  She seemed unenthusiastic but followed him anyway. “Then why are we wasting our time?”

  “I want to see if they have a paper bus schedule.”

  “I’ll give you the 411 on that. All services have been suspended until further notice.”

  “No. Not for that. Those schedules usually have a rudimentary map. Even if it’s just the main transportation arteries, it might help us get around the city faster.”

  “Okay. I can go along with that.”

  Emilio reached the sideways bus. He knelt to look inside the roof hatch which had most likely been the avenue of escape for the survivors. He frowned at the sight of three dead bodies lying motionless on the bottom windows. He crawled through the emergency portal.

  Mackenzie held his rifle and stood guard. “Be careful.”

  Emilio walked toward the front of the bus. The shattered glass of the windows crackled beneath his boots. He found no paper maps in the holder. The driver was still buckled into his seat. The man was dead. A phone lay on the side of the bus below the man.

  Emilio picked it up. He walked toward the back, finding a black backpack, a jute-colored purse, and an individual-sized, zip-up cooler. He carried the items out the roof hatch. He poured the contents of the purse on the ground.

  “Did you find a map?” Mackenzie inspected the makeup, wallet, bubble gum, small bottle of hand sanitizer, and other contents of the purse.

  “No. But I found a phone.” Emilio swiped the cracked screen.

  “What good will that do us? I can’t imagine service is available.”

  “I’m hoping the map program will be available.” Emilio clicked the icon and enlarged the area.

  “Is it working?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean?” Mackenzie looked on.

  “It says our location is on English Avenue and St. Paul.”

  “Where’s that?”

  He looked at the street signs and located their current position on the map. “About a mile away from here. I guess the quake was so big, it shifted the coordinates.”

  “You mean like the poles?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea how widespread this thing was.” Emilio scrolled away from the spot where the GPS had them and enlarged the intersection they were actually at. “But we can still use the map to get around the city.”

  Mackenzie began putting the makeup back in the purse.

  Emilio shook his head. “All that stuff stays here. We’re only carrying the essentials.”

  She frowned. “I’ll probably never see another tube of lipstick or an eyeliner pencil again.”

  “Okay,” he consented. “But keep it light. We’ll need as much room as possible to carry food.”

  “What food?” Mackenzie tossed aside items deemed to be useless and placed the others back into the purse.

  “The food we’re going to find before we get out on the open road.” Emilio removed a stack of manila folders and a note pad from the backpack. He tossed a pair of headphones to the ground and pulled out a gray cardigan. “This is too small for me but it might help keep you warm tonight after the sun sets. It’s October. It’s going to get chilly.”

  She tied the thin sweater around her waist. “Thanks.”

  Next, he unzipped the cooler.

  “What’ve you got?”

  “A sandwich, chicken salad maybe.” He took half out of the Ziplock baggie and gave it to Mackenzie. “Two mini-bags of chips, Lays sour cream and onion, and Cheetos.”

  Mackenzie swallowed the bite of sandwich she’d been chewing. “Can I have the Cheetos?”

  “Sure.” He tossed them to her and rummaged through the rest of the contents. “Bottle of water, energy drink, king-size Snickers, a meal replacement bar, and an orange.”

  “Aren’t those items sort of antithetical to one another?”

  Emilio cracked a smile and opened his chips.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “You were in prison long enough to make you a stone-cold killer, but you managed to still come out sounding like someone from academia.”

  She licked the orange, synthetic-cheese powder from her fingertips. “Academia is a pretty big word for a cop, isn’t it?”

  He furrowed his brow. “Federal agent, former…federal agent.”

  She polished off her sandwich. “Are we going to eat everything now?”

  “We can split the orange. I recommend keeping the candy bar and the meal replacement bar for later; in case we don’t come across anything else to eat for a while.” He gave her the orange.

  She began peeling the skin off of the fruit. “I can live with that.”

  Emilio rummaged through the side pockets of the cooler while he ate. “This must have been a woman’s cooler.”

  She rolled her eyes and snarled. “Oh! Because the owner had a meal replacement bar and a Snickers, they’re erratic. Obviously, it had to be a woman.”

  “Slow your feminist roll there, sister.” Emilio held up four Wet-Naps. “Guys don’t carry these. We just wipe our hands on our pants. Every time someone points out the difference in the sexes, it’s not necessarily an insult.”

  She didn’t withdraw her sarcastic defense, but neither did she add anything to it.

  Emilio waited for an apology which didn’t come. “I guess you can take the girl out of Berkeley, but you can’t take the Berkeley out of the girl.”

  Her brows snapped together and set hard like granite. “We’ve got a two-hundred-mile journey ahead of us… on foot. Are you sure this is the tone you want to establish before we’ve even gotten started?”

  Emilio ignored the comment and opened one of the Wet-Naps. “Roll up your pants leg. Let’s get that scrape cleaned up before we get back on the road.”

  She stared at him for a moment before complying with the order. Finally, she rolled up her jeans and let him wipe the blood off of her cut.

  He pointed at the purse. “Hand me that hand sanitizer, will you?”

  She retrieved the small bottle and gave it to him. “This is going to burn.”

  “Not as bad as the hot butcher knife we’ll have to use to cut your leg off if gangrene sets in.” He squirted it on the open wound and hid his smile while she winced. Emilio folded a paper towel that was inside the side pocket of the small soft cooler. He placed it over the wound. “Hold this.”

  She did as instructed. Emilio proceeded to take off his boot. He removed his crew sock and cut the top section off with the knife he’d taken from Agent Combs. He placed the bottom part of the sock back on his foot. It looked like an ankle sock that had been chewed up by the dog. The top portion, he slid over Mackenzie’s foot and up onto her leg. It held the paper towel in place perfectly.<
br />
  She inspected the makeshift bandage. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Emilio put his boot on, slung the pack over his shoulder, and put the cooler strap around his neck. “Let’s get a move on.” He held his rifle at low ready.

  Mackenzie adjusted the purse to be out of the way of her shotgun. “Let’s go.”

  Emilio consulted the map on the phone. “We’ll cut over to Rural, then follow it until we get down to Keystone. That will take us almost all the way to the bypass. Keystone is a main artery. We should find some opportunities to get some supplies before we get out into the cornfields.”

  “Are we still calling them cornfields, even after the locusts destroyed them?”

  “Okay, fine,” he said. “Wastelands.”

  She grunted. “Let’s stick to calling them cornfields. I don’t need to be reminded that I’m stuck in the Great Tribulation.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.

  Ezekiel 35:4

  Following Keystone Avenue, Emilio approached the short bridge which had given way. “Looks like we’re going to have to get wet.”

  “Great.” Mackenzie looked up and down the road running parallel to the waterway.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but we could spend an entire day looking for another place to cross.” Emilio walked to the edge of the caved-in concrete where the bridge ended. “It’s just a creek.”

  Mackenzie looked over the side. “It’s like fifteen feet across. That’s more than a creek.”

  “I’m guessing it’s less than a foot deep in most places. We can take our boots off, wade across, and be no worse for wear when we come up on the other side.”

  “Unless we step on a chunk of broken bridge or a piece of busted glass while fording the creek. Then, wet shoes won’t seem so bad.”

  “You’re right about that.” Emilio grimaced. “We’ll go upstream a few yards. I doubt anyone could chuck a bottle over the bridge that far.” He led the way to a somewhat open area where they didn’t have as many weeds and bushes obstructing their access to the creek. They took off their shoes and crossed over without much trouble.