16 b
Wormwood.
There are names from history that will evoke a sense of dread and Sandy marveled she now stood on the precipice of that singular introduction of one of the most feared events anticipated by man since penned by John late in the first century of Christ. She supposed there were ancient names mostly meaningless today, names ancient tribes shuddered to hear. From the first century, however, only a few were anticipated with dread. Hitler, Stalin, Mao… all much despised names, but they went the way all men eventually return; into the ground.
Antichrist, Armageddon, Wormwood… All names concerning the times in which they now found themselves. All dreaded names, a man, a place, an object. Something didn’t feel right to Sandy though. She’d missed something. She hurried back to the International and flipped on the dome light to see her Bible. She had a map in chapter 8 of Revelation because if you can learn the news in advance, maybe it’s an advantage. Or maybe not, because much of life is beyond our ability to anticipate or change. Revelation chapter 8:
6 Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them.
7 The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth. And a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.
8 The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. 9 A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
Okay, so the Seventh Seal was finally opened and the order sent out the seven angels with seven trumpets of judgment. One thing she notices was all these judgments destroy on a level of thirds, where the Seals were only a fourth.
Only? She shook her head.
“What are you looking up?” Nathan asked from over her shoulder, startling her. She looked up and saw everyone had come over.
“It’s just. I don’t get exactly what’s going on. I mean, the Seals were some events, then it took some time for them to play out, which makes sense, I guess. People don’t starve overnight and diseases from corpses take some time. But listen to this…” She read the same portion of scripture before commenting, “So we definitely have lots of fire, I get that. Now we’re flying down the highway, full tilt and see Wormwood? That’s like, the Third Trumpet. That’s verse ten. So what happened to something like a great mountain burning with fire, thrown into the sea so it became blood? It wipes out a third of ships and sea life. What am I missing?”
Andy frowned as he thought. Then he looked at Gary, “What do you think? I’m thinking something big happened somewhere else in the world we haven’t heard about yet.”
Gary nodded. “Yeah, I mean, I’m with Sandy. I wasn’t thinking in terms of rapid succession either. I guess I thought there would be clear breaks between events.”
Nathan added, “A couple things are pretty clear. One, this ain’t T.V. with neatly laid out events so a viewer can watch things all in a row, one after the other, with commercial breaks.” Everyone nodded at this as he spoke.
“And the second thing?” Sandy asked.
“Oh. Yeah, Bible prophecy ain’t all about the good ol’ USA.”
“Both good points,” Andy agreed. “Maybe we need to listen in on the chatter, see what’s what?”
Sandy set the radio to scan. Immediately, they found themselves awash with frantic chatter. Radio protocols were out the window. People were simply jabbering over one another and sounding like feeding time at the kennel.
Andy said, “Try commercial.” By which he meant, the regular AM/FM radio.
First thing Sandy heard was sirens. Not the emergency vehicle type, but the big, wailing ones you would associate with tornados, tsunamis or maybe giant flaming meteors. The voice was not of the particular timbre and quality one would expect from a trained and seasoned news reporter. Sandy bumped the volume up.
“…any more of it. That’s all I can see folks. I mean, black smoke. Our affiliate in southern California tells us it is ash as far as the eye can see. Now, I talked on the phone to a producer there who in turn spoke to a producer out in Oakland. There is not much Oakland left, let alone San Francisco. Let me just say, sadly, the iconic Golden Gate Bridge is only partly up. Not drivable by any means. And that double stacked Bay Bridge that partly collapsed back in, what… Was it the nineties? Well, that one’s completely gone. It almost went when Yellowstone went, but once Mammoth Lakes popped off…”
“What!?” Sandy said.
“Did… Did he just say Yellowstone?” Nathan asked.
For the next few minutes all anyone could do was exclaim disbelief and incredulity. They paced nervous energy as they listened. Eva climbed into the back seat of the International and drew her knees up and hugged them. Andy had a large world map out, scratching his chin as he looked at it.
“Etna,” Andy said. “Did he just say Etna?”
“I think so,” Nathan said, turning the radio up more. “Since Etna blew, was what I heard him say. When did that happen?”
“Birth pains. Lots of birth pains a quaking,” Sandy said.
“Okay, so we have re-entered the path of that asteroid and either Wormwood was the asteroid or part of what was dragging behind, I don’t know,” Gary recounted. “Everything we are hearing is the Ring of Fire is coming unscrewed, plus Etna blew her top well and truly this time.”
“And tossed that mountain top into the ocean?” Andy wondered.
“Could be. That or a different one. Nothing would surprise me. Plus we had that massive caldera in Yellowstone blow…” Something like panic crossed Gary’s features.
Sandy asked, “What? What does that mean?”
“Dang!” Nathan said. “That’s right!”
“What!”
“I almost forgot,” Andy said, tracing on the map with is finger. “The Jetstream.”
“Please!” Sandy was exasperated. She felt as if the guys were speaking another language.
Nathan squared his shoulders at her. “We may be many hundreds of miles from Yellowstone, and thank God for that, but all that tossed up in the air goes into the Jetstream and gets carried probably all the way around the earth.”
“So,” she wondered, “Are we talking Ice Age or something? That’s not in the Bible, is it?”
“Not only is it not in the Bible, but don’t forget, the earth such as it now is, will not continue long enough for an ice age. Especially since it’s not finished burning.”
Andy’s words she found astounding. Sandy felt not just one step behind trying to keep up, but maybe about, oh, four or five steps behind.
Eva said, “Hey, guys?” And everyone looked toward the sound of her quiet voice. Funny how that amid the clamor and chaos it was a soft and still voice that cut through.
She stirred a little with everyone looking at her expectantly. “Where did you say we are headed?”
“Did I say?” Andy shook his head. “I’m sorry. I guess maybe I said East Tennessee. Why?”
“Isn’t that like on the other side of the Mississippi River?”
Sandy looked at Andy as his eyes flew wide open and he said, “Yeeess…?”
“That guy on the radio just said something about, let me see,” Sandy could see Eva concentrating on what she wanted to recount. “New Madrid, and Mississippi River flooding. He even said something about Memphis, Louisiana, and most of the middle of the U.S. now pushed into the Gulf. That sounds kind of bad.”
No chatter this time, but rather stunned silence as each of them shared wide-eyed looks. Andy shook himself off and consulted the map. Nathan paced and walked in circles, kicking at stones before walking over to Andy’s Mystery machine with his arms raised and pounded on it.
“Easy there,” Andy said.
“Sorry,” Nathan said, but he clearly was still rattled and responding out of habit. “I feel like, maybe this is what PTSD must be. It’s too dang much at once. I can’t wrap my head around…”
Sandy saw the same hangdog look on everyone’s faces. Maybe she wasn’t so alone after all. PTSD. Why not? And they had thus far stayed out of the main of it all, only riding on the fringes, either behind it or in front. Now, no matter where they went, this mess would always be around them. What must those people in the middle of it all the time feel like? Well, before long if not already, literally half of them are dead. If not yet, they soon would be. Satan and the Antichrist haven’t even gotten started yet, from what she could recall from Revelation.
Then her mind reluctantly went to the Johnsons and their grown kids and their families still out there in California. She’d been trying to avoid thinking about them. She had prayed and given their case over to the Lord. Was it a sin now, a lack of faith that caused her to worry? Should she not worry? Especially with all those California fault lines, fires, tidal waves, volcanos, fires, meteor showers… And she supposed now, lots of dead sea animals would be washing up on shore. What turns a sea into blood? Is it because of all the now dead sea life? She had learned in school that most of the planet’s life was in the ocean, up to three fourths of better.
“Okay,” Andy said. “Eva, good looking out. While the adults are out here freaking out, you had your ears on. We need to figure out which way to go. We can’t sit it out here. We need a couple sets of ears in the van, plus a couple here. Give it ten, fifteen minutes. All we’re looking for is word on where the destruction is and is not, if there is such a place. Everyone
move!”
Everyone moved. Andy and Gary ran back to the Mystery Machine and Nathan joined Sandy and Eva in the International. Nathan had a pair of ear buds so he jacked in to the CB and scanned while Sandy and Eva listened to commercial radio. The difficult part of the task was sorting through the hearsay and conspiracy nonsense, while listening for facts. The rumors she put in her proverbial back pocket in case the same rumors kept popping up from different sources, indicating perhaps viable information. Gripping though some personal stories were, she had to suck it up and keep turning the dial. The personal stories were gut-wrenching stories of lost loved ones, destroyed and burning memories and personal loss on a level sure to drive her mad should she settle on a steady diet of them.
The news was, not surprisingly, horrific and still developing. Next thing she knew Andy had returned and Gary with him. Was the time up already? She felt on one hand like she’d just got started, which was odd, because in another way, the events felt decades long somehow.
“Who wants to go first?” Andy asked.
“I can,” Sandy said. “Um. First of all, the personal stories…”
Everyone alternately shook their heads and also nodded, acknowledging they’d heard some horrors of their own.
“Aside from that, the news stories are about, as we know, the west coast is toast, including San Francisco, and it looks like much of the west coast unzipped along the San Andreas and pushed some of California out there like a new island. Yosemite went kablooey at roughly the same time as Yellowstone went up. Not much news is coming out of the Northwest, you know, Idaho, Utah, Washington, Oregon or Wyoming. I also heard about the New Madrid fault that went up in the eighteen-hundreds looks to have hit a new high. The rumor mill is that a way crazy amount of the Great Lakes sloshed out or washed out or whatever, much of it slamming down the Mississippi River.”
Andy’s eyes flew open and he asked, “Did they give a time, or how long ago? Anyone get news of how Memphis is now, or… What about the water? Where is the flow now?”
Too many questions. Sandy said, “I… they only said maybe a couple hours ago. Why?”
“Okay, let’s see,” he seemed to be calculating. “That’s what… About seven-hundred miles or so from Great Lakes to Memphis, as the crow flies. How fast would water like that flow?”
Gary shrugged, “A tsunami out in the ocean might reach a couple hundred miles per hour or so, but that’s unhindered ripple. It would slow down once it hits land. Are you wanting us to outrun a Mississippi Tsunami?”
“Wait. What?” Nathan said.
“That’s crazy,” Sandy laughed entirely without humor.
“Think about it,” Andy said. “Assuming, yes, the water already down this way sloshed around a good deal, probably some river bank failures and yeah, some bridges. Okay, and I admit I know nothing about the terrain between here and there. But assuming we can get there and find a bridge, we could haul our backsides across and get clear and bug out toward East Tennessee before the flow hits.”
Sandy was pretty certain if the world were not burning and falling, burning trees were not crashing in their general vicinity, that she would be hearing crickets right now, so quiet was their little troupe. There was no punch-line to be delivered. No ‘Just kidding’ followed. Andy was serious.
“Look, even if the sluice or sludge or whatever was washing down at two-hundred miles per hour, we’re just… Well, let’s see. Not that far from Memphis. I say we go for it.”
“Easy for you to say,” Eva remarked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re one of those witnesses guys, right? You make it through okay, but what about us. You have a handy force field bracelet you can whip out of your pocket to shield the rest of us?”
“That’s actually a very excellent point,” Nathan observed.
“Let’s pray,” Sandy said, and they all turned.
“Now, there’s a novel idea,” Gary cracked.
“Forgive me my insensitivity, guys,” Andy said. “I don’t mean to sound cavalier and uncaring at all. I am hesitant too. You think I haven’t wondered whether a witness can be replaces so that the 144,000 number remains to the end, but maybe not all the same ones who started out? I know, it probably doesn’t work like that, but that doesn’t mean I can be reckless. It means I need to not in my hubris tempt God. I have to remain on mission and not presume upon Him. Besides, I really do love each of you and I would never intentionally put you in harm. And standing here for the duration is so not an option. Am I right?”
“Sandy, want to lead us in prayer, since you brought it up?”
No was what she wanted to say, for she still felt so awkward and new at public prayer. These friends were family though, so, here goes. “Father God we need you. You are sovereign and all things are in your hands. If you are not sovereign, it has been said, then you are not God. This is your very words you are working out. Your prophecies from ages past. None have ever failed. God, if you chose us before the foundations of the world, then that means we cannot surprise you or ruin your plans. Neither can these events. This is, after all, your judgment, Lord Jesus, upon a rebellious world that had rejected you.
“Lord, please protect your people. We understand some die for their testimony and this glorifies you. Some watching will turn to you because of these testimonies spoken unto the very death of these dear saints, we understand. But God, it seems a waste for me for your children to die pointlessly in a fire or a river, but what do I know. I know we know so little that we need your wisdom, gracious Lord. We need wisdom and ask you to unblock our path. Guide our way. Clear anything that would impede us in accomplishing your will for us and those with whom we are supposed to meet and may you be glorified rather in that. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
“Thank you,” Andy said. “Okay, if it is to be, it will be. Let’s consider options. What have the rest of us heard?”
Nathan said, “Wormwood. That sucker must’ve been really big because I thought it was lower when it went overhead, but it kept going and looks to have slammed into the Himalayas somewhere. Not much news coming out of Russia and China at the moment. After that, much speculation and not much else.”
“Same,” Gary said. “Other than that, the world is burning and shaking and folks are praying and cursing. Before we drive off to wherever we are driving off to, I’d like to read the rest of the passage, you know, for context of what is going on. I think the rest is mostly the results of what we’ve seen so far.” He caught everyone’s eye, and then read:
“’11 The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.
“’12 The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night.’
“So what I think, for what it’s worth, is that the volcanos are spewing ash that is being caught up in the Jetstream and will be carried around the world, diminishing all light, from stars, sun and moon, by a third. Also, whatever Wormwood’s composition, it may have been cometary. “
“Which means what?” Nathan asked.
“Unlike many meteors, comets are frozen chunks of debris, but lots and lots of ice. That thing swung a good way around the planet before it came down. Who knows what the composition of the ice was as it burned and melted off, seeding over the entire world.”
“Wow, that’s a good point,” Andy nodded. “Something that is poisoning the water. That means only bottled or otherwise filtered water from now on for us. Good catch.”
“Thank you. So with that I’ll just say, if we’re going to go, let’s head out now. Reason being, the final verse in Revelation 8 says,
“’13 Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!”’”