Times of Tribulation: Christian End Times Thriller (The End Times Saga, #7) (10 page)

“Priestess, would you like the beheadings in a more fitting environment? Say a stadium, perhaps?” asked one of the security men.

“You know that might be a good idea. I’d suggest AT&T Stadium in Arlington, but we don’t have enough people in this entire region to fill it up, and I’m not sure if it’s structurally sound after the earthquake. Oh well, I guess we can use Kyle Field for the executions. I need you have your men find loyal citizens in the area who can at least make it look like there’s some kind of crowd in the stands. Send the equipment there and that’s where we’ll film the beheadings. Let’s get to work.”

While walking towards her Humvee to be driven to Kyle Field, which was Texas A&M’s football field, Edwards heard the angry protest of Jeff Michaels, “You can’t do this to us. My wife and I assisted you with this, you owe us. What about our kids? You can’t deprive them of their parents!”

“We don’t owe you anything. Besides, I think anyone who so easily turns on others isn’t to be trusted, so your use to me is no longer needed. As for your kids, they’ll be taken care of by the global community and will become good little members of the community when we’re through with them.” Then she turned to a sergeant and ordered, “Sergeant, I’ll be investigating the location for the beheadings, so inform me when the drones are ready so we can begin the hunt. Can you do that?”

Saluting her, the sergeant replied, “Yes, ma’am!”

As the church began to be engulfed in fire, she said aloud, more to herself than anyone, “Looks like this will be a great week for the Union of United Earth.”

Chapter 10

After checking out Kyle Stadium, which had no discernable earthquake damage from what Edwards could see, she had her people setup the guillotines. Once a large enough audience was rounded up to sit in the stands, the executions would begin. Next up was the survival hunt. Edwards researched ways they could make the hunt more interesting, but decided that equipping the hunted with weapons and making them kill each other instead was out. She didn’t think that it would make for very interesting television, since they’d probably not even try to kill each other, or if they tried, it would probably take too long, since the global community wasn’t known for their attention spans. Besides, she didn’t want to give people ideas that they could resist the global community by turning the hunt around to kill the ones who the U.E. used to conduct the hunts. Instead, Edwards decided to follow an old story she once read in high school about people being set loose on an island by a rich game hunter. The hunter, bored with hunting animals, hunted humans instead, for sport and because humans were more creative than animals.

Priestess Edwards faced a camera shortly before she started the hunt, and said, “Greetings to the North American television audience. I want to welcome you to the first ever Global Community Hunt. We bring you this new event to show you the power of the Union of United Earth and what happens to those who refuse to join us in peace and harmony. These women you see on your screens were given a chance to recant their illogical ideas so they too could join us, but they refused. The rules for this are simple. The hunter will hunt these women down, one by one, and eliminate them using whatever means he feels necessary. The women are to be as creative as they can be while trying to avoid the hunter, but in the end they won’t succeed. You will follow them as they try to survive their last day on Earth. Now, it’s time to begin.”

The Priestess turned to face Lindsey and the nine other women, and said, “You will get a head start of fifteen minutes. We will give you nothing to defend yourselves with, you’ll have to improvise. Camera drones will follow you everywhere, so you’ll always be on TV. The hunter won’t have access to these cameras, so he’ll find you based on his own skills, and he too will be followed by cameras. Your goal is to survive as long as you can and once you’re found, my hunter will decide how you die.” Edwards wore a wristwatch, so she glanced at it, tapped on the watch’s face, and said, “Clock’s ticking, ladies.”

The ten scrambled away towards trees and bushes, some slower than others because of their age. Edwards figured the ones over forty would be easiest to target, while the women who were thirty and under would make it harder on the hunter.
I hope the women make the hunt interesting enough to make this a regular event on TV for the next few years,
she thought to herself.

Turning back to the camera, Edwards said, “If you’re at home and care to bet on this hunt, a phone number to text your bet and a website link will pop up on screen. Text who you think will win or visit the website to vote on who you think may be the last to survive the hunt. On the website, we provide autobiographical information on each woman so you can vote based on who has the best chance according to your reading. Now, let’s watch as the women try to avoid the hunter.”

Knowing they had fifteen minutes before the hunter came after them, Lindsey gathered the other nine women together, and said, “I think we ought to take a moment to pray before we go our separate ways. What do the rest of you think?”

They were in agreement, although one asked, “Shouldn’t we stick together or would doing that just get us all killed all at once?”

“I don’t have a problem with it, but ten women aren’t exactly going to be quiet, you know. Okay, so let’s pray.” The women joined hands and became prayerful. “Heavenly Father, thank you for coming into our lives to save us from our sins. Please help us to maintain a Christian attitude while we run from the government and the person who they sent to kill us. Since we have a television audience, please help us to have our wits about us so we can attempt to witness and show the people that with Christ, there’s no need to be afraid. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

As they began to go their separate ways, Lindsey asked them to remember to talk about Jesus and how He died on the cross for people’s sins so they could go to Heaven because they’d have cameras recording everything they did. None of them knew if attempting to witness this way would work, but they figured it wouldn’t hurt to try.

The hunter was one of the biggest men in the security force sent by Administrator Davis and was considered one of the deadliest soldiers when it came to combat. He was equipped with a military rifle, wore head-to-toe combat gear, and even had night vision goggles in case the hunt lasted into the night. He was also carrying a laser scope for the rifle, a hand gun, a hatchet, a Bowie knife, and a Taser. The audience at home could tell that the authorities meant business when they said that the hunter would find them and kill them. It was daylight, so the hunter kept his night vision goggles off as he began to track the women, completely focused on his task, and not noticing the drone camera following him.

Within thirty minutes, he found one of the women. She was hiding in an abandoned 7-11, behind where the drinks would normally be refrigerated when the customers bought one, but the refrigeration had failed and there were no more drinks to be found. It was a terrible hiding spot because the hunter spotted her immediately and went for his Bowie knife. The woman had nowhere to run as the hunter methodically made his way back behind the refrigerated drinks.

Instead of being frantic like he expected, the woman was calm, and said to him, “I accept that you’re going to kill me, so I won’t plead for my life. I know where I’m going when I die and I’m happy I get to see my Savior when I do,”

Grimly, the hunter replied, “While I have no problem slicing your throat and ending this, you should really put up a fight, give the people what they want,”

Instead of replying, she began to pray, “Heavenly Father, please let this be quick and painless. I pray that the people watching eventually see the light and I forgive this man for what he’s about to do. Thank you for dying for my sins. In your name, amen.”

The hunter, not expecting her to be submissive or to suddenly start praying, became angry. He didn’t think killing her when she wasn’t going to fight back was sporting, but he was getting paid to do a job, so he was going to do the job. He grabbed her, sliced through her neck, effectively beheading her as strong as he was, and she died almost instantly. The hunter dropped the body to the floor and walked out of the convenience store, beginning his search for his next target.

The hunter found his targets in various locations, all were clumsy at trying to hide, but the way they reacted to him caused him to think they were purposely not trying very hard to hide or even run. Each woman remained calm, mostly, each said a prayer, and then let him kill each woman with barely a struggle. He had two more to go, but found that he was getting bored with the whole thing, and wondered if there was an audience at home still watching on their TV’s.

Checking his weapons, the hunter began thinking,
I wonder why these women aren’t as frightened as they should be? What makes them so calm? If the government keeps doing this, they’re going to have to make the stakes higher or something so people will be as frightened as they should be, but I wonder how that could happen. It’ll be getting dark soon and I should finish the hunt before then. Where to next?”

Less than an hour later, he found the last two women, sitting at an outside picnic table at an abandoned Dairy Queen. Neither seemed like they were anxious to hide or run, and he recognized one of them from when she questioned the guy who turned them in. He stayed in the shadows trying to decide how he would finally finish the two off. The hunter really didn’t feel like facing the two, mostly because he was tired of hearing various prayers and seeing their eerily calm attitudes before he disposed of them. He had the rifle scope and his rifle was powerful enough to shoot two birds with one stone, so to speak, so he moved to a location where he could kill both women at the same time. He adjusted the scope and fired. Seconds later, both women were slumped over the table, dead as doornails.

Turning to a camera drone, he wearily said, “All right, it’s done. I hope everyone out there has been entertained.”

What came next was completely unexpected. He took hold of the barrel of his weapon, then swung it like a bat at the drone, destroying the drone and camera. The destroyed drone hit the ground with a clatter and the hunter walked away, headed back to where the rest of the security forces were located.

Priestess Edwards watched most of the hunt on Kyle Fields’ video board, annoyed with how the whole hunt turned out. The hunter slowly seemed to become disenchanted with the hunt, while the hunted put up barely any resistance at all, and the hunt barely lasted seven hours. The attempts by the women to try to convince the viewing audience to follow their deity while they were being hunted was infuriating, since she believed in her all-inclusive world religion that said there was more than one path. One or two of the women who tried to suggest that the Patriarch was evil and would bring destruction to the planet and its citizens made her angry. Killing these malcontents would be enjoyable and the faster the global community was rid of them, the faster the planet would enjoy peace, harmony, and unity.

If those above her decided to make this a worldwide event, then something would have to change, but she didn’t know what or how it would be done if the hunted weren’t afraid for their lives. As it were, those decisions were above her pay grade. At the moment, she was preparing for the next event, the beheadings of those found at the church.

One thousand citizens had been rounded up in the previous six hours, all were loyal to the Union, and each had both marks. Eighty malcontents would be executed, including Jeff and Diana Michaels, and twenty guillotines were setup along the fifty yard line. Ten yards away, a platform had been constructed, with folding chairs setup, for the important people of North America to watch this first mass beheading in person, including Administrator Davis. Now that the hunt was over with, the beheadings would begin.

Facing the cameras, Edwards began, “Ladies and gentlemen of North America, we bring you yet another special event today. We have a group of malcontents that we’re going to behead live on television. They refuse to accept the authority of the Patriarch and refuse to join the global community in peace, harmony, and unity. We’ll show them the power of our Patriarch. Bring out the condemned!”

The security forces escorted the condemned out onto the field, while the sparse crowd in the stands began booing the poor people being condemned. While the condemned didn’t look very happy with their predicament, not a one of them looked frightened by their upcoming demise, with the exception of Jeff and Diana Michaels, who had looks of absolute terror on their faces.

Twenty believers were put onto the guillotines with hardly any fuss, while the Michaels’ struggled, but they were put onto the device and strapped in anyway. Because the believers were new converts, they didn’t know any of the songs pre-raptured Christians knew, so the condemned had to stay in constant prayer to stay calm in the face of such evil happening around them.

When she was certain the condemned were ready to behead, Edwards said, “We’ve given them every chance to recant, so this is their punishment. Guillotine Masters, drop the blades!”

For some, the heads being separated from the bodies seemed almost anticlimactic. The bodies were removed as quickly as possible so the next twenty could be beheaded. This continued for another two times until all eighty were beheaded. The crowd, as sparse as it was, could be heard through televisions across the region cheering each beheading. When the bloodshed was accomplished, Priestess Edwards came back on camera, “We hoped you enjoyed this special event. Coming up in a few days is the trial of four who were captured alongside these we just beheaded. They get to explain to us why they choose to defy the Patriarch. Stay tuned for that. We’ll also bring you more beheadings as we find more malcontents. I wish peace and blessings on you at home. Good day.”

As the guillotines were being cleaned up and the stadium slowly cleared of spectators, Wayne Davis came over to Priestess Edwards, and said with a smile on his face, “That was great, Joyce. You handled the executions ruthlessly, and I hope you continue to show the same attitude when more are scheduled. You didn’t let those malcontents’ beliefs sidetrack you, which is commendable. I’ll give High Priest Josten and Patriarch Karimi a glowing report of your work here today. Now, for more personable business. Would you care to join my staff and me for dinner?”