Apocalypse Burning Read online

  Dropping the assault rifle, Goose swept his M9 pistol from his hip, thumbed the safety off, and aimed at the nearest fallen Bedouin, who pulled a pistol from beneath his robe and pushed himself up.

  Giselle Arnaud lay on the asphalt. Ropes bound her wrists and ankles. Blood trickled down her hands, evidence of her struggles to free herself. A gag tied around her head prevented her from crying out, but tears spilled down her cheeks, leaving tracks on her dusty face. Her bruised and dirty features were twisted with fright.

  Goose looked away from the woman, locating his targets. He put a bullet through the nearest Bedouin’s face. He followed up with two more through the man’s chest as he fell. Near the woman’s head, the other Bedouin rose with a pistol in his hand, firing as he stood.

  Bullets slammed into Goose’s chest armor. One of them caught his helmet, bouncing his head to one side. He remained on task. He wasn’t dead and he had a job to finish. He fired the M9 at the Bedouin, hitting the man’s chest and working up in case the man wore body armor beneath the robe.

  As the Bedouin fell away, Goose spotted Sergeant Clay and his Ranger squad coming down the alley, throwing themselves forward and taking up positions as the men behind raced up to move into new positions.

  Gunfire opened up behind Goose, letting him know the two men farther down the alley weren’t dead. He dropped and covered the kidnapped woman with his own body, lending her the protection of the body armor he wore as Clay and his men reached the alley mouth.

  The M-4A1s blazed on full-auto for a few seconds. When they stopped, Goose doubted any of the Bedouin remained alive. Clay ordered his men into new positions, securing the alley in a standard two-by-two deployment.

  Looking down at the woman, Goose knew immediately that something was wrong. Her face was slack and still. Fear still showed there, but nothing moved. He saw his own reflection in her glassy eyes.

  “No,” Goose said hoarsely. Over the past few days, he’d seen too many dead not to know what he was probably looking at. He pushed himself up.

  The woman didn’t move.

  “Goose,” Clay said, striding toward him.

  “Giselle!” Arnaud called from the alley’s end. “Where is my wife?” He continued in French.

  Stunned, Goose gazed at the dark spot in the center of Giselle Arnaud’s red blouse. The spot was not spreading. She wasn’t bleeding. That meant her heart no longer pumped.

  Laying his pistol down, Goose tore the woman’s blouse open. The wound was a jagged mess of torn flesh, but—

  “There’s no penetration here,” Clay said as he hunkered down beside Goose. “She caught a ricochet. The bullet was too spent to break through her sternum. Deflected from bone.”

  “She’s not breathing,” a young Ranger said.

  “The bullet stopped her heart,” Goose said, stripping his helmet off. “Impact caught her between heartbeats, stopped her heart. She’s got a chance.” God, please let there be a chance. “Help me start CPR.”

  “Giselle!” Arnaud called, sounding closer. “Mon Dieu! What has happened to my poor wife? What are you doing? Sergeant? Sergeant, answer me!”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Goose spotted Arnaud only a few feet away now. “Corporal,” Goose ordered, “keep that man back.”

  The corporal stepped forward to block Arnaud. The man tried to fight his way past him, but the corporal wrapped his arms around the man and prevented him from walking closer.

  Clay tilted the woman’s head back and opened her airway. “No obstruction.”

  Ignoring the biting pain in his knee, Goose straddled the woman and put his hands, one on top of the other, over the bloody wound. He leaned forward and heaved, applying pressure in short impacts, rolling his shoulders to use his weight.

  “All right,” Goose said, “breathe for her.”

  Clay did, putting his mouth over the woman’s, ignoring the standard operating procedure of using safety gear to prevent spreading possible disease. The woman’s life hung by a thread and they knew it. They had no time to drag out the gear.

  Arnaud wept in the background, calling out his wife’s name.

  “Break,” Goose said.

  When Clay pulled back, Goose curled his right hand into a fist and struck the woman’s sternum, hoping to create enough shock to start her stilled heart. Then he settled into the rhythm again, putting his shoulders and his weight into the effort.

  “C’mon,” Goose said, keeping count in his head. “C’mon. You can do this. You aren’t gone yet. You’ve got a lot of living to do.” But he wondered how much time had passed since her heart had stalled. After four minutes without a heartbeat, brain damage usually occurred.

  He leaned back and let Clay breathe for her again, barely managing the panic that filled him. Everything swirled in his mind, running together in a blur that threatened to overwhelm him. Chris was gone. He was stranded in a war-torn country with no true hope of survival. He would probably never see Megan or Joey again. And this woman whom he’d risked so much to save wasn’t breathing.

  It was more than Goose could bear.

  This woman was going to die on him, caught by a ricochet that should never have happened.

  Clay broke away. Goose straddled the woman again, locking his hands together over her heart and pushing, hoping to revive that fistsized clump of muscle that was the engine for the human body.

  If God had raptured the world, if He had taken the children, then why had He left so many other people behind? Why would He take all the children? Why would He take Chris?

  God wouldn’t, Goose told himself. God hadn’t done those things. The God he believed in wouldn’t do something like that. Someone else caused the disappearances. Someone else took Chris. If God had done those things, there would be some kind of sign, some—

  Miraculously, Goose felt the woman’s heart suddenly flutter under his hands. In disbelief, he drew his hands back and pressed his ear to her chest.

  Her heartbeat was erratic at first but quickly settled into a strong rhythm.

  “Hey,” Clay said excitedly, “she’s breathing! She’s breathing on her own. You got her back, First Sergeant. You got her back.”

  Tiredly, giving in to the pain in his knee, Goose moved away from the woman and stood. He stared down at her.

  A moment passed before she opened her eyes and tried to sit up.

  “Easy,” Clay said, restraining her with a hand to her shoulder.

  “Let me go!” Arnaud demanded, struggling more fiercely now. “Let me go!”

  Goose nodded to the corporal, who released Arnaud.

  The man dropped to the ground beside his wife. “Ah, Giselle! I thought you were lost to me!”

  The woman looked at her husband, then at Goose. “I thought I was. I’m sure for a time I was dead. I was outside my body, standing here in this alley looking down at myself and you and these men. I was so scared. I was screaming for you, but you could not hear me. I thought I would never see you again. I felt like I was drifting away. Like fog giving way to the morning sun.” She shook her head and smiled. “Then I saw the angel.”

  “Angel?” Arnaud seemed startled. “There was no angel.”

  “There was,” the woman insisted. “There is. I saw it. The angel was at the sergeant’s shoulder as he worked to start my heart. The angel told me everything was going to be all right, that it wasn’t my time yet, that the sergeant was going to save me. Then the angel leaned down and touched my heart, and it started.”

  Goose didn’t believe a word of it. The woman had gone through considerable trauma. It wasn’t surprising that she’d imagined the angel.

  But she looked at Goose with wide, awestruck eyes. “It’s true, Sergeant. Believe it or not, but you have an angel at your shoulder. I saw it. I see it still.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Goose said politely, but he knew the woman must have been hallucinating. There could be no other explanation. Accepting that an angel had stood at his side meant accepting the supernatural. And that meant
accepting that the Rapture had taken place, that everyone left on the planet was doomed to seven years of war and death, that a newly elected Romanian president named Nicolae Carpathia was the Antichrist even now rising to power to bury the world in deceit and treachery.

  And that Goose would never see Chris again.

  Goose couldn’t believe any of that. He wouldn’t allow himself to believe that.

  Because if he believed it, it meant that his son was lost to him.

  Hazel’s Café

  Marbury, Alabama

  Local Time 0915 Hours

  Eating breakfast in Hazel’s Café was like stepping back in time.

  Chaplain Delroy Harte got a definite feeling of déjà vu as he sat across the table from Deputy Walter Purcell in one of the back booths. The rustic decor, cobbled together from farming and ranching equipment; from NASCAR’s licensed hats, mugs, and posters; and from local high school sports equipment, looked exactly as it had when he’d eaten there with his father when Delroy had been first a boy and later a young man.

  At a few minutes past nine in the morning, the café held mostly late starters and farmers and ranchers who’d already put in a half day’s work and wanted to take a break in each other’s company for an hour or two before getting back to the full day’s work waiting for them. The smell of fried sausage, ham, and beefsteak mixed with the scents of fresh-baked rolls, plain and sweet, eggs done a half-dozen different ways, and grilled onions.

  But many of the people gathered here had come so they wouldn’t be alone. Their need for company resonated within these walls. Fear etched their faces and kept their conversations to a bare handful of words thrown among them as they watched the two televisions, one on each side of the café. Both sets were tuned to news stations.

  Delroy’s heart went out to the frightened people, but he knew he had no words of comfort for them. He made himself look past them. They would be all right. Either they would help themselves or someone would help them. He had no business feeling like he could.

  Not after the way he’d spent last night.

  Delroy had arrived in the graveyard outside Marbury where his son was buried. Lance Corporal Terrence David Harte had died in action five years ago and had returned home to be buried here. After following Captain Mark Falkirk’s orders to leave USS Wasp, Delroy’s ship, and making the trek to speak to the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon regarding his belief that God had raptured the world, the chaplain had requested leave to attend to personal business. With the confusion going on regarding military action and the need to defend the United States, Delroy’s request had received authorization.

  In the cemetery last night, Delroy had started digging up his son’s casket, wanting to discover if Terrence’s body had been taken to heaven, if he had truly known God in his short life. Or if—like his father—he’d been left behind. Before he’d reached the casket, Delroy had realized that if he dug his son up and discovered the truth, his faith would be in jeopardy. If Terrence’s body was still in that hole in the ground, Delroy didn’t know if he would ever be able to believe again. And if Terrence’s body was gone, true faith would be impossible because Delroy would know that God existed.

  And people were supposed to go to God in faith. That was one thing Delroy’s daddy, Josiah Harte, had taught him.

  Overcome by doubt and fear and frustration, Delroy had turned from digging and been confronted by the demon he had first seen in Washington, D.C., days ago. They had fought, Delroy and the demon, and it had shown him the unforgettable image of Terrence—his body torn and broken by the conflict he’d died in—trying in vain to break out of the coffin.

  When at last the demon had disappeared, Delroy had passed out, unable to leave the cemetery where his son and his daddy lay in their eternal slumber. Deputy Walter Purcell had found Delroy lying in the rain and mud. The big deputy had taken Delroy to the hospital in Marbury and little more than an hour ago got him released. Now he was taking Delroy to breakfast.

  “Lotta memories in this place?” Walter stirred grape jelly into his scrambled eggs, then spooned the mixture onto a biscuit.

  “Aye,” Delroy answered. They’d only gotten their food a few minutes ago. Getting out of the hospital had taken longer than expected. With a third of the patients and more than that from the staff disappearing, the hospital struggled to get everything done. Even with the disappearances, the hospital still needed to bill the insurance companies.

  “You grew up here.” Walter blew on his coffee, then took a sip.

  “Aye. That I did.” Delroy waited for the other shoe to drop. From his observation of Walter, he knew the man wasn’t one to beat around the bush for long.

  The egg-and-jelly biscuit had disappeared, but Walter was just getting started. Like a craftsman, he cut his ham into sections. The metal knife and fork rasped with quick strokes. His plate was piled high with sausage gravy and biscuits, fried onions and hash browns, bacon, and pancakes.

  “Are you going to drop the other shoe?” Delroy asked. “Or are you going to just let it hang there?”

  Walter chewed his ham, swallowed, and washed it down with coffee. He eyed Delroy directly. “You been around Yankees maybe a little too long. Too direct. Maybe you’ve forgotten how to maintain a conversation before you get to the ugly parts of it. Around here, we kind of take things a bit slower. Use conversation and a meal to get to know each other a bit before we get down to it. That way you can still seal a deal with a handshake.”

  “I was just wondering what you had in mind, Deputy.”

  Walter wiped his mouth with his napkin. “My ulterior motive, you mean.”

  “That’ll do,” Delroy said.

  Narrowing his eyes in irritation, Walter asked, “You always been this suspicious?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, you should get away from it. It ain’t becomin’.”

  Embarrassment stung Delroy and turned his face hot.

  Walter returned his attention to his plate. “I say anything to you that makes you think I got some ulterior motive?”

  “Not yet.”

  The deputy shook his head. “I ain’t got but a couple things I want to make sure of.” He counted them off on his thick, blunt fingers while maintaining his hold on the knife and fork. “One: that you ain’t gonna hurt nobody in my county.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Well, now since I only just met you—and not under the best of circumstance, I might add—I don’t know that, do I?” Walter’s gaze was fierce.

  “I’m not going to hurt anyone here.”

  “I found you at your son’s grave site,” Walter went on. “You wasn’t exactly plumb on the bob when I found you. You looked like you’d been beat near to death, and that’s the flat-out gospel.” He mopped his plate with a biscuit, picking up bacon grease, jelly, eggs, and gravy. “Then I did some checking around. Found out you were from here. Found out your daddy was a preachin’ man. Found out he was killed—”

  “He was murdered,” Delroy said, and was surprised at how hollow his voice sounded in his ears.

  Walter nodded. “They never caught the man who did it, did they?”

  “No.”

  “But they figured they knew who it was.”

  Delroy remained quiet and still. His chest suddenly felt so tight he couldn’t breathe.

  “Man named Clarence Floyd was the man Sheriff Dobbs thought killed your daddy,” Walter said.

  “Where are you going with this, Deputy?”

  “Walter. Call me Walter. I told you that.”

  Delroy waited.

  Walter sighed and shifted his equipment belt. “Ain’t no way but the hard way with you is there? Shoulda known that from all them knots on your face.”

  “Now who’s being unbecoming?”

  Frowning, Walter said, “I blame you. Yes, sir, I do. It’s like you bring out the worst in me.”

  Delroy let the accusation hang between them. Anger stirred restlessly within him. He force
d himself to breathe out. Give me patience, Lord. This here’s a good man, and I’ve got no cause to make his life any more complicated than it already is. Slowly, the anger fizzled out. He broke the eye contact with the deputy and reached for his fork.

  “I’m sorry,” Walter said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s all right. I’m pretty sure I had it coming.” Delroy broke open a biscuit, added butter and grape jelly, and ate.

  “Biscuits still as good as you remember?” Walter asked.

  “Melt in your mouth,” Delroy answered. For a time, they ate in silence.

  Delroy watched the news and saw fitful bursts of information regarding the military effort in Sanliurfa. More interviews with Nicolae Carpathia, the Romanian president scheduled to speak at the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City, spun across both televisions.

  “Reason I asked you about Clarence Floyd,” Walter said.

  Delroy looked at him.

  “Three years ago,” Walter said, eyes level and steady, “Floyd moved back to Marbury. He lives here now.”

  The news slammed into Delroy.

  “You didn’t know that, did you?” Walter asked.

  Delroy didn’t try to lie. He knew his angry disbelief had been too strong. “No.”

  “I didn’t think you did. But if you’re gonna stay here a couple days, chances are you’d probably find out once folks in town figure out who you are.”

  Delroy sat quiet and still. His father’s murder had happened over thirty years ago, but the grief and anger over the act had never truly dimmed. If he hadn’t been so worn out emotionally from last night, he didn’t know what he might have done.

  “Why did he come back?” Delroy asked when he could talk again.

  Walter studied him, then scooped up more jelly and scrambled eggs to spread on a biscuit. “He just come home. Like you, I suppose. Wasn’t nowhere else to go, maybe. His life, it ain’t been like yours. He doesn’t have no navy career, no calling to keep him busy. He’s just a mean seventy-three-year-old man who’s afraid of dying.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “Not today,” Walter said. “But I have. I take a look through Sheriff Dobbs’ cold-case files from time to time. When Floyd moved back into his folks’ home, I looked him up.” He ate the biscuit. “Wasn’t nothing ever brought up against him regarding your daddy’s murder.”