Disaster Among the Heavens - Don E Peavy Sr (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

be heard above the crowd as the evangelicals and the fundamentalists beat upon the wall which had been built to separate the kingdom of God from government – but the liberals strengthened the wall and this caused the fissure of secularism to exhale a wind that began to move gently over the land at first but then turned into a violent storm during the Sixties.
“All was well until the ocean swelled and another giant emerged in Europe and beckoned the world to war and again the people went and the liberals’ voice was silenced because their God had not protected us from the giant and the Day of Infamy. It was on the beaches of Normandy that the world’s masses learned the eternal truth that to war against America is to war against God for America is the City of God so prophetically envisioned by Augustine. An assault on America is an assault on God. On that blood drenched shore did the people come to learn that as the cannons roared, Heaven trembled.
“Then the war ended and the people returned to discover another giant had been born out of the war effort – women’s liberation. This giant could not be isolated or slain because it had fathered children among the people and these could not be easily identified and so the people called for a prophet to protect them from the giant who threatened the orthodoxy of their great Book. It wasn’t long before Youth for Christ gave birth to the prophet Billy Graham who again sought to awaken the people to the glorious light of the Kingdom of God.
“Just as he was about to conquer the times, the fissure of individualism gave a violent tremble and caused an earthquake that caused the war in South-east Asia and thus the people awoke to a truth that the kingdom was far behind the wall they had erected and they wondered if God was dead. The Time said he was.
“But then someone found Jesus and the people were happy again but not the same kind of happiness as before for now the evangelicals’ voice was heard above the crowd. Yet the wall was ever higher for as the people fought in Vietnam the fissure of secularism sent a storm of atheism that took the people to court and forced them to remove their God from school and other public institutions. Still the people were happy when peace came even though the kingdom was now hidden behind a wall. Thus, like Jack and his mother, they sat down in their houses to a warm evening meal. But unlike Jack and his mother, this was not the end. It was a new and dreadful beginning.
“Despite their errors and the giants slain along the way and treasures taken, always the people have had their eyes on God. They have ever been motivated by doing their part to bring the Kingdom of God to earth. Tough choices have had to be made. Sacrifices have had to be given on the bonfires of the vanities. Tough choices will have to be made in the future and lives sacrificed on the altar of democracy. With each new storm, with each new fissure, when hard and difficult choices were made, there was always a new beginning. With each new beginning the Kingdom of God has come closer to earth in this place called America! Thy Kingdom come – earth to Heaven, Heaven to earth.”
. . .
John heard neither the sermon that The President heard nor the desperate pleadings of The General of the Air Force. All he heard was his own heart pounding in excitement as he saw the opened silos and the missiles whose noses pointed towards the heavens.
No wonder then that he neither heard nor saw the black bird which now positioned itself before him as the early morning rays bounced off its metallic surface. He and his fellow travellers had their eyes fixed on the ground as flashcubes flickered inside the airplane unaware of the Phantom of the morning which let off its own flash. The ensuing explosion tore the lightweight plane into a million pieces. The pieces had hardly touched the ground before the nation’s news wires began to hum out the headline:
SON OF INDUSTRIAL CZAR AND THREE FRIENDS KILLED IN EARLY MORNING PLANE CRASH IN COLORADO MOUNTAINS.
The details of a heavy fog and an attempted military rescue would follow. In three days, another headline would capture these same wires:
INDUSTRIAL CZAR WINS MASSIVE GOVERNMENT CONTRACT.
. . .
There was no sun peering through a window to alert Fredda and Diggs that morning was at hand. They did not need it for the Doctor’s fear had returned and he now sat on the side of the bed. He looked around the room and then fixed his gaze on two rooms: one with a star on it and the other one labelled — “Peevey’s Latrine.”
He rushed to the latter and fell to his knees over the toilet, emptying his discomfort into it. After a few minutes, assured that more was not forthcoming, he flushed the toilet, stood up next to the metal sink, washed out his mouth before throwing a little water on his face which he dried hurriedly with a paper towel, and returned to the bed where he laid beside Fredda.
“There is something I need to tell you,” he said.
“Please, don’t say anything,” pleaded Fredda as she turned to face Diggs. “Don’t spoil what we had last night with talk.” She too now worried about what would happen next as she recalled the discussion about Hammer Head.
The Doctor took her into his arms and she resisted slightly. She soon relented. This lover in the bowels of the earth was no Mary McCarthy and the Doctor was not wearing a Brooks Brothers’ shirt. It was not an act of charity for her to give herself to him again as morning breath met morning breath and they tried to forget about Hammer Head. They knew as they lost themselves in each other’s arms that soon the radio would be blaring and they had better have a plan. They had none. All they had they now shared with each other. Hammer Head faded from their consciousness.
. . .
Hammer Head was perplexed as he watched The General of the Air Force walking towards the command post with a M16 in one hand and a grenade launcher in the other. The General was about a hundred yards away when he fired off a volley of grenades that blew open the door and blew out the windows. Hammer Head dived under a nearby table for cover as the remaining hostages, some wounded, suffered additional injuries and his two soldiers were killed instantly. Hostages ran, crawled and leaped towards the open door. Hammer Head got up and ran behind them until he was at the door. He allowed the last hostage to exit before he emptied his clip into The General, throwing the limp mass about fifty yards backwards.
A group of soldiers then exited the replacement Command Centre and rushed toward him. He pulled the trigger again and heard only a desperate click. He threw the gun at the running hostages and then ran for the door leading to the bunker below. He opened it as hot lead tore through his back.
The hot metal invading his body did not startle him as did the realization that in his panic he had forgotten to disarm the booby trap he had set to prevent an overthrow of the Command Centre and a breach of the underground sanctuary.
A wry grin covered his face as the force of the ensuing blast severed it from his shoulder and threw it as well as many of the soldiers behind him a thousand ways to death. A thick, black cloud escaped into the morning air. Suddenly the sun disappeared.
The cloud caused the captain of the Tereus to take evasive action which elicited loud outbursts of cursing from his two passengers. All of them fought at the misty fallout on their windows that prevented their being able to see immediately what the explosion was they had heard and from whence had come this cloud which they had not been warned of. Soon, the pilot would know and then his passengers would. They would all learn that the disaster which was heaven bound was not nearly the tragedy of the one on the ground.
. . .

Chapter 10

The officers from Chicago and the Wife heard the explosion which rocked the room in which they lay sleeping and tossed them from their beds onto the floor. They jumped up and dressed in less than three minutes and ran the almost hundred yards to the makeshift Command Centre.
Upon their arrival, they got a quick glance of the mayhem outside and heard the cries and moans of the injured and dying before they were grabbed from behind and carried away from the scene by military security officers. They were taken to a room without windows, thrown in with the door slammed in their inquiring faces. Each in turn beat upon the door and screamed expletives which are not germane to our narrative and thus are not repeated here.
. . .
It could have been a scene from Grand Central Station on a Monday morning. Perhaps even a chapter from Kafka’s “The Castle,” or a scene from the epic war adventure, “Hell is for Heroes.”
Instead, it was the aftermath of a most destructive explosion. The stench of death and dying pervaded the air and mixed with the agony of seared flesh. Medics busied themselves with the injured while a disposal detail identified and sacked the dead. A priest, a rabbi, and a preacher gave last rites to the dying. All of them worked in and out of the nearly half-mile deep and two football fields in circumference crater left by the blast. Those who entered the crater had to wear special nuclear contamination resistant clothing.