NEW BOOK--WITHIN DARKNESS BEYOND-DEATH OF A WORLD

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A weekend at the cabin becomes a journey into a nightmare of inexplicable horror for fourteen young adults and college students who unwittingly breach the veil between our world and another of unspeakable evil. Here they must confront the hideous entity of this realm, lest the world that they know ceases to exist, lost to the heart of chaos and oblivion…

Soon the world itself is infected by the darkness, monsters and demons are released upon the world—mastered only by one man, who was previously a member of a Fundamentalist Cult; a wedding, and pool-party are interrupted by Monwodai—shadow demons, that turn the festivities into a massacre by bodily tearing apart the guests. The authorities are at a loss, for the demons leave only ash and the smell of brimstone to mark their passing. A would-be rapist learns that there are forces more foul and dangerous than himself. And a writer with a house full of young women board themselves inside and fight off Nhei’hari—demon wasps, that can enter the mind and distort reality.

Soon the East Coast is overrun by devils and ghouls. Cities and towns fall before the onslaught of the daemonic creations. A special unit known as the U.S. Special Tactics is sent to investigate towns in Maine , before the infection of demons can spread to New York . A wraith-like entity emerges from earth in the town of Sanford , either destroying or infecting all that it touches. And the more it comes in contact with, the larger it grows. A church is attacked by Nhei’hari and Monwodai, and the members believe that they are truly living in The End of Days. The ground opens up, swallowing a handful of soldiers from the U.S. Special Tactics, and translating them to a realm beyond their darkest imaginings. While those that remain, fight for their lives and the lives of the survivors of the infected town, struggling against demons, ghouls, and subterranean abominations.

New York is finally hit, and weather of apocalyptic proportions rips through the city, even as another crater opens in the earth, spilling out more demons amidst the populace.

While chaos reigns, the fourteen young adults—translated to another realm--find themselves pawns in a game between two insane god-like entities that want to turn our world into a living nightmare. They are forced to compete in a war, where the victor will lay claim to the Earth.

WITHIN DARKNESS BEYOND
DEATH OF A WORLD

 

 

With slow deliberation the thing that was Alacha’ rose from the pool of darkness beneath its throne. A shapeless bulk of immense proportion, horrifying and preternatural. An unutterably hideous mass of amorphous putrescence, which filled the throng that was standing and watching with a sensation of unimaginable terror and helplessness.  It was slimy, morbid, ghoulish. Seething, surging, stewing forth; with long tentacles and grotesquely twisted appendages that moved with a repulsive kind of writhing, protruding from its horrid bulk of potted pustules that glittered sickly with a diabolical light of dark imaginings. A collection of eyes, some sunken and suppurated, others floating on stalks that wriggled and undulated horribly, covering almost the entirety of the vile epidermis of the abomination in a multitudinous presentation—looking, peering, seeking, in multiple directions simultaneously, and glistening with a certain kind of malefic glee. While many mouths filled with fangs separated by spiny teeth and serpentine tongues, babbled with the voices of the damned, screaming with torment and sanity lost.

16

T

here had been two girls, dressed in leather, one with straight hair of blond that would have fallen in a cascade down past her bra-strap—had she been wearing a bra; the other girl was a brunette, whose hair was cut short in an exotic fashion. Both girls wore designer sunglasses, making it difficult to determine their age, let alone their eye color. They had been standing less than ten feet from Nathan when he was seized. When the tentacles came back up out of the pit, the girls grabbed each others hands.

            Now it has been documented that a shark will sometimes swim past a group of swimmers in order to attack a lone swimmer beyond them. And scientists each have their hypothesis as to why this is the case. However none of them really know for certain; sharks are as unpredictable as bears. Most ocean scientists will argue the point and say that it depends on the shark in question; what it smells, what it might consider a threat, and what it might consider to be easy prey. Other scientists won’t be drawn into the debate, but will smile and say, very unscientifically, “When your number is up, that’s it; end of story…”

            These scientists would have probably said the same thing concerning Corbin Cooley, who was a CEO of Matrix Games and Electronics. After all, Corbin had been living the sweet life since his Junior year in High School. He had good looks, even in as much as to earn himself several places in the Greenwich High School annual Hall of Fame in his Senior year; not only was he voted The Most Likely to Succeed, because of his RPG that had been picked up by Wizards of the Isles Games; but he was also voted as having the Best Legs, and took a picture right next to Natalie King; he was further voted as having the Best Body—Corina Anthony had the best body on the girl’s side. And Corbin had fucked both Natalie and Corina; it was the sort of thing that was expected from the kids when you looked as hot at Corbin—courtesy of the Coach’s 200 Club and Power-Lifting.

            Corbin, in his success as a straight-A student, earned himself a scholarship that was his ticket to Harvard. On Prom Night he earned the King’s crown, while Jennifer Marcus earned the Queen’s. And Corbin had fucked Jennifer as well. Corbin was a member of the elite Senior League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, instigated by the youngest of teachers in the school, Paul Jennings, a man twenty-eight years of age, who owned his own Cessna, and was responsible for seducing more than a dozen girls in the Senior class.

            So now essentially we’re getting down to brass tacks, ladies and gentlemen. Corbin wasn’t as polished as everyone made him out to be. He had been responsible for shoving a tube of Crest up more than a dozen Freshmen asses, and duct-taping their cheeks together. He made the same number of Freshmen drink from a bottle of ipecac. He set up dates, where Junior and Senior girls would ask Freshmen to hotel rooms for a party, then catch them on video with their pants down around their ankles—it was too easy; Freshmen boys were so stupid and gullible and conceited; to actually think that a Junior or Senior girl would actually have the hots for a dweeb Freshman, what audacity!

            It was rather unfortunate that Kyle Peters had taken the prank at the hotel a little too seriously; no one but Corbin was aware that Kyle had left a note behind to mark his passing, and Corbin never came forward to reveal the note to anyone, showing that it had been left on his doorstep, which also just happened to be the Governor’s mansion as well. Corbin received the letter addressed to him from Kyle Peters before anyone in the house saw it. The letter consisted in its entirety of seven words: I Guess you got the Last Laugh…

            Corbin burned the letter, and contributed Kyle’s suicide to four factors: he was a sore loser; he couldn’t take a joke; he was bipolar; and he was trailer trash.

            Before Corbin’s graduation there had been two other “accidents”, one involving Dennis Straub, the other involving an extremely bright kid, Jack Cohen.

            Following a performance of the Senior League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where Corbin sang George Thoroughgood’s Bad to the Bone, Dennis—who everyone knew was a Corbin wannabe’, ran to congratulate Corbin on such a bitchin’ performance. Doug Masterson, another member of the SLEG had been with Corbin at the time, and both had rolled their eyes at the approach of Dennis in the school parking-lot. But they recovered their composure quickly enough when they both decided to pull a prank on Dennis. It went as follows: Corbin pretended to be genuinely interested in Dennis, even in as much as to invite him to a party. And when the attention of Dennis was focused entirely on Corbin, Doug Masterson knelt behind Dennis. And, following a push from Corbin, the wannabe’ tumbled backwards over Doug.

            Now c’mon, boys were just being boys; no one could foresee that Dennis would chip a tooth following the fall, or that the fall itself would elicit a hairline crack on the back of the skull of the poor wannabe’ Dennis; it had been an “accident”.

Not unlike the “accident” that occurred over at Morgan Frasier’s house.

There had been a party.

Everyone from the “cooler” of Freshmen to Seniors had been there. One of the Freshmen boys, Jack Cohen, had actually been dating Corina Anthony at the time of the “accident’. And Corbin didn’t care too much for that at all. But had it been enough to make Corbin mad enough to break Cohen’s Jaw, and then throw him down a flight of stairs? Whereupon following the fall, Jack broke his right arm.

Only Jack claimed that Corbin had sucker-punched him, and threw him down the stairs. Everyone else—with the exception of Corina, said that Cohen had been so piss-drunk, that he tripped and fell down the stairs, resulting in his unfortunate condition. Corina hadn’t seen what had happened. But she had her suspicions. Jack wouldn’t have lied to her; he didn’t have anything against Corbin until that moment.

But, in either case, everyone received a slap on the wrist for the party, and concerning both “accidents”, Corbin’s daddy made sure that there were no sever legal penalties forthcoming to tarnish his boy’s status. And Governor Cooley also insured that his boy’s scholarship stayed secure.

And what did Corbin learn from all of this? He learned that money talks, and bullshit walks, and it’s a dog-eat-dog world, where the spineless commit suicide. And he applied his philosophies during his climb up the corporate ladder; stepping on fingers as well as toes during his rise to success, and stealing the ideas of others when he knew that he could get away with it.

Now at age thirty-eight, Corbin was a CEO of Matrix Games and Electronics, and was good buddies with Wizards of the Isle. He owned a Dodge Viper, a 62-foot Cabin Cruiser, and he had his own private Lear-jet. Imagine his surprise then, when he looked down to find a tentacle encircling his waist like some mutant-twisted octopus, the appendage was thicker than both of Corbin’s forearms put together, and the pressure on his gut was pretty incredible. The tentacle wrapped around his body twice, then came up between both legs to rest at his crotch. Corbin had been standing almost ten feet behind the two leather-clad girls, so why did the tentacle single him out? Call it Fate. Call it Karma. Or just plain and ordinary do-dah bad luck. For whatever the reason, Corbin was soon joining Nathan, and his screams were louder and more strident than any Freshmen’s had ever been.

17

F

ollowing Corbin’s untimely departure, those that had been standing around observing the pit, had decided then that taking pictures up this close wasn’t such a good idea after all. And the most prudent of actions right now was to get the fuck gone.

Some people of course were able to run faster than others. And as the old saying goes: I don’t have to outrun the predator; I just have to outrun you… So naturally the stragglers were the most open to the subject of attack. The demons were upon those that took up space in the back of the small throng as it moved away from the pit. The devils took down the stragglers before they made it thirty feet.

One of the monsters, looking like a combination Sasquatch and Tasmanian devil, tore into the side of a woman’s face with its teeth, as she tried to reach the ruins of the Whittaker Building . The woman looked to be in her thirties, with blond hair cut short and prim, and wearing a black skirt and white blouse. With a cry of agony, the woman went down, busting her chin against a jutting stone slab. Three teeth left her mouth in a light spray of blood, however that was the least of her problems. The woman’s death did not come quickly.

Nor did the death of the man who was trying to get around the hapless woman. He looked like he was probably in his late twenties, a little heavy-set, not much of a runner, wearing black jeans that were two sizes too small in the waist. The creature that moved against him was similar to the monsters that he had seen in that Vin Diesel movie—Pitch Black, the difference was that it had three eyes to either side of the area where the blind-spot should have been. The demon tore a good size chunk of meat out of the man’s back and neck. If he were lucky, he would bleed to death quickly following the severing of the carotid artery. Luck unfortunately was not on his side. And he discovered that a lot can happen in the two minutes that it took to die. Following the first attack, the demon jabbed and thrust a hand—with keenly sharp claws, into the man’s back. In the next moment he was spewing crimson, as the devil grabbed his left lung and pulled it swiftly from the wound that was made in his back. Blood and gore came free in a liberal fashion. The man tried to scream, but all that came from his mouth in a flurry of blood that sounded remotely like anything verbal was, “Na-plimmmpphhh… Na-plachhh…!” Then he was spinning haphazardly around in a dazed manner, his legs betraying him, he fell hard on his back in the street. The demon crouched close to the man who was flailing at it with his arms. The creature proceeded to remove the dying man’s eyes. One at a time.

The devil’s brethren charged past in a great wave of bodies. Some clearing the ruins of the Whittaker in a solitary leap. Landing on the backs of those who sought to escape. Bringing them to the ground, pinning them, and tearing them to pieces.

The reports from assault rifles and rail guns echoed in the dimly illuminated darkness provided by the latent glow of billboards that still functioned. A SWAT team with a M115 Armored Personnel Carrier waited beyond the ruins of the Whittaker; a trio of carriers was now in position north of 7^th, and east and west of 42^nd Street . The 30-foot carriers had their doors open, and the SWAT teams did their best to cover the knot of escaping people who managed to outdistance the demons, trying to motion them into the carriers. Less than half of the remaining survivors, instinctively ran into the safety of the 30-foot armored dinosaurs. The remainder were to distraught, filled with panic, and not thinking straight; these were the ones who passed the M115s, and were soon cut down by the charging demons.

18

I

n the next instant Time Square became a frenzy of activity, a bloodied, and ocherish pageant produced by bullets challenging tooth and razored talon. Officer Ellory Fradis compared it mentally to a scene in an epic motion picture; where action moves too quickly for the eye to follow the camera. Wearing night specs, he marked his targets, which were blurring tracers before his eyes, he fired—aiming for the head of the monstrosities; that seemed to put them out of commission in the quickest fashion. But there were so damned many of them, demons of all shapes, sizes, and physiognomies. The term Legion quickly came to mind, screaming, braying, howling, with glee and malevolence, and Ellory wondered how long the team would be able to stand before they were forced to pull back. Already he was sweating profusely under the battle armor that he wore, and the CIG-559 in his arms seemed more alive than it had ever been.

Sometimes during a fire-fight, there would come to Ellory, moments of superb clarity, where everything around him actually seemed to move in slow-motion. However that wasn’t the case at the moment. The officer was having to look in six directions simultaneously—to see what was directly in front of him, what might be sneaking into his peripheral vision, and what lay beyond his peripheral that was calibrated by intuition and/or instinct.

He turned to his left and saw Antoly Williams dodging one of the misfigured creations—bowing to allow the monster to fly over him. When the officer raised his head again, a towering devil of spines crouched over Williams, the fucking thing must have stood at least nine-feet tall. As it raised its right arm to swipe at Antoly, Ellory swiftly took it down with a spray of bullets.

Aaron Butler hadn’t been so fortunate. His high-piercing howl was heard over the din of the demons’ charge; one of the creatures using its large horns to gore the man—punching a hole in his gut through the battle armor.

Between Nicola Fox, Tom Andres, and the rail gun mounted on the left side of the APC, the devil was torn apart under a hail of slugs.

Then James Davidson screamed. His cry was cut abruptly short, as one of the monsters with natural body-weaponry resembling scythes on its arms, decapitated Davidson. Then the monster disemboweled Gabriel Léger, chopped the left arm from Steve Colin’s shoulder, then came back—and before it could be taken down, the demon severed the heads of both officers from their shoulders.

There fell another scream from Robert Rieckerman, the man suddenly appeared to have met with a wheat-thresher head-on. If only for a brief second.

And that is when the moment of superb clarity hit Ellory.

He looked about him while he still fired his weapon on the enemy. Several demons were doing a frenetic shuffling death-dance, as 80 slugs per second slammed into their twisting bodies. One of the beasts was literally cut in half by the fire-power of the rail gun mounted on the right side of the APC; brackish filth spewed out of its mouth, as its upper portion was separated from the lower portion in an explosion of more brackish gore.

The demons were all around Ellory, and for a time that seemed to stretch on into forever, he felt trapped. However most of the bastards were running passed him to seek other prey.

Duncan Chadwick was knocked out of his boots by the force of a head-bowed juggernaut with wide horns, crashing into the officer with the force of a bull-rhino, and sending the man tumbling heels over head through the air above and over the creature’s rampage. His ribs had been shattered, subsequently puncturing his lungs. Duncan didn’t land on the ground behind the beast; instead he landed on the shoulders of the multitude. Bouncing around briefly, borne aloft, like someone crowd-surfing in a concert. Before he finally disappeared somewhere in the midst of the masses.

A demon’s face disappeared in a spray of ochre, tissue, and teeth. It spun to the side, was quickly knocked down by its onrushing brethren.

A creature with the structure of a large jelly-fish floated through the air, Paris Morrin spotted it and fired as it came into her sights. The slugs from her CIG-559 seemed to pass through the monster, its physiognomy being more ethereal than solid-mass. However the kinetics from the velocity of the bullets warranted its attention, attracting it toward the source, and it flew over to Paris . She felt a surge of panic as she realized that her shells were having no effect on the amorphous entity. Then it was on her face, and she could feel it. Stinging her, like a man-o-war. The pain was exquisite. And if Paris had been able to scream she would have.

Nhei’hari surged forth in a swarm from the crater, followed by Monwodai, Ghouls, and Satah’narhrei.

Two more misfigured creations ran forward, Antoly and Tom opened fire, and in the next instant, the insides of the monsters were leaving a trailing wake behind them, as their backs burst open explosively from the rounds of shells hitting them in the chest and stomach.

Lorena Oprea was stung by a Nhei’hari, and let loose with a blood-chilling scream.

Aimee Finn hesitated a second too long to inform her backer—Angelo McCarthy, that she was out of ammunition—the sight of the surging demons instigated awe. She cried out a moment before one of the Ghouls ripped out her throat.

The order to “fall back” came quickly after that. At the same moment that an eruption of crimson spilled from Aimee’s neck.

The team didn’t turn to run. Rather they kept their sights on what was before them, and slowly backed their way toward the doors that would slide open upon their approach to the APC. Four officers covered the doors, as well as those that made their way toward them.

Cory Garrison backed into a body that was splayed out in the street. He almost fell over it, not seeing it behind him. He didn’t know if it were human or otherwise. He managed to step over it carefully, only to discover that when it was finally in front of him--and moving away with each step that he took backing toward the APC, that it was in fact human; it was the inert and bloodied body of John Kramer.

So many dead…in so little time…this is insane! How can this be happening? How the fuck can this be happening!?

Jana Coyote took a slash to the face but still came back shooting, taking out the demon that challenged her.

When the doors to the APC slid open, a knot of monsters tried to force their way inside. They were repelled by the four officers that covered the hatch.

One by one the members of the SWAT team worked their way over, climbed onto the landing-steps of the carrier, disappeared beyond the doors.

Christine Becker was the first to enter the APC, followed swiftly by Angelo, Dianna Morris, Nicola, and Tom Andres.

Smoke from gunfire obscured the vision of the officers currently outside.

A Ghoul was shot in the left eye, taking half of its nose and the entire side of its face, where it was possible to see the workings of its jaw moving, minus the teeth.

Tamara Stone had little time to scream as a Monwodai ripped through her like a wraith. Monica Garcia, with the back-up of the rail-guns on the APC, saw to the demon’s demise.

Slugs blew apart the chest and groin-area of another devil, that clutched at the air before it went down.

Charles Marcus and Peter Dandel entered the APC next.

Another beast—catching a hail of bullets in the area over its right luminescent eye, lost the top of its head, as if flew apart in a flurry of what passed for brain and tissue, that scattered in all directions in a dark and slimy expulsion.

Ellory was the second to the last in line, before the four officers that guarded the doors to the APC. Antoly followed close behind. Williams had one foot on the landing, and one foot in space, when the ground rumbled and shook tremendously, rocking the carrier furiously. Ellory lost his balance and stumbled backward, however he regained it just in time to grab Antoly about the wrist of his left hand, even as the officer began to pitch to the side, his CIG-559 was gripped in his right hand and pointed toward the sky. Ellory couldn’t see the look in Antoly’s eyes, as relief flooded through him. In the next instant Ellory was struck dumb with mute fascination and horror, as he realized he was holding a bloody stump in his hand. The loss of weight that used to be Antoly was gone. Ellory fell backward into the body of the carrier.

A fur-covered demon, standing ten feet in height, tackled Antoly, even as the four officers fired upon it. The slugs however seemed to have little effect on the hulking beast, and it threw Antoly around like he was a rag doll. Blood flew all about the area, spraying the officers.

The ground shook again. And then burst apart explosively, twenty feet from the crater. A geyser of liquid fire, wrapped in lattices of yellow-green lightning or electricity, rose into the air for about fifty feet, with a radius of thirty feet. Hitting the sky, the lava dispersed in a cloud, which began to rain a million drops of liquid fire down upon the surrounding area. The demons were unaffected by the geyser, however the four officers that had been outside, melted like tallow, emitting a horrid chorus of howls and screams of agony.

The APC was magnetically sealed. The drops that fell, bounced off the shielding, and hit the ground nearby, hissing like snakes as it burned the pavement.

When the geyser was gone, a large, bat-like form—with a wing-span of about twenty-five feet, flew from the hole that had recently been made in the street. It trailed a serpentine tail behind it.

  KLNR Channel 4 ran back the footage of the demons’ exodus from the pit. Utilizing the video-cams that they tapped into around Time Square, in order to provide coverage of the unfolding events. Their chopper was already in the air, and soon they would come back with clearer footage of what was happening in the Square. What feed they did have they played back in some areas in slow-motion, to try to more clearly define to their viewers what was taking place. They saw the two men snatched by tentacles and pulled into the pit. They caught the massacre of the SWAT teams and those victims that weren’t swift enough to outrun the blasphemous charge.

But soon the news team was treated to something else.

Apparently there wasn’t enough room for the next invaders to squeeze through the collection of bodies that currently poured from the pit. Evidence of this was shown in the appearance of three separate holes about one hundred feet from the clamoring demons, as the street erupted with the force of a wrecking ball in each area. Then a trio of geysers, looking like molten lava wrapped in a lattice of lightning, spewed from the newly formed pits.

This activity was followed by three winged forms of significantly large size—like bats with serpentine tails, that launched themselves from the holes in the street and into the night sky.

What rose from the pit next was more form than substance. An Elemental of smoke and flame. It might have been an Efreet or some other monolithic devil of fire from some dark myth. But it was real just the same. The demon was the color of coal, interdispersed by what appeared to be hairline cracks and fissures, fractures glowing with the lambent illumination of lava. All materials with an igniting level of 451-degrees Fahrenheit or less, burst into flames twenty feet from the giant. All materials with a combustion level of 902-degrees Fahrenheit or less similarly ignited within a ten-foot radius.

300 feet in the air, Chopper-4 was getting great footage of the living monolith as it rose from the pit, as well as scenes from all the other unfolding chaos taking place in Time Square.

The shoulders of the fiery titan stretched thirty feet across, it was a hulking manifestation that showed muscle and a barreled chest intermittently as smoke moved around it in tendrils, seeming to distort the reality round about the Elemental. Its head—what could be seen of it, was a sloping dome atop its shoulders, and its maw was filled with teeth like spears; while its countenance was like a chiseled sculpture of stone, with two horns of gold, like a massive bull, protruding from either side of its head. Its eyes burned like the sun, or the heart of an active volcano. As the beast pulled itself from the pit, its height was fully realized; it stood from cloven hooves to crown no less than seventy-five feet tall.

The driver of the APC could see the hulking monolith through the glassteel view port of the carrier. He signaled to the gunners, and the 80mm. rail guns thundered to life once more, even as the driver glanced at the rearview monitor and saw that all was clear.

Well…no, that wasn’t entirely true. There was still the matter of the demons that clustered all about the area, clamoring, climbing atop the APC, trying to tear it open with their claws. But Nick Holms assumed that most of the demons could be run down. So Holms threw the carrier in reverse, and at 40+ mph, the APC drew back—just in time to avoid the fiery fist that slammed down on the pavement, ten feet in front of the armored-transport, shaking the ground enough to topple another billboard.

“Holeeee-shit!” Holms exclaimed.

19

F

our hours later, following his abduction by the Monwodai at the back-stage exit of the Union Gospel Church , Buck Norris sat in a chamber, aboard the ship, that was not unlike a radio-station control-booth, equipped with several microphones and cameras, and a comfortable swivel chair. Buck was ready to go on the air. The technicians and Bobby Baxter showed him how to run the control booth. His declaration would interrupt most—if not all broadcasts across the nation and Canada , in order to reach an adequate number of viewers and listeners—but especially with the intention of reaching the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Canada. Buck felt no apprehension in what he was about to do. The Crystal-cocktail made the man feel good about himself and what he was intending to do.

Now and again he could still feel Lorine’s lips on his cock, and that sensation made everything as right as rain and cream and peaches. Buck was feeling real good about the turn of events. Admittedly Buck could not deny that the past couple of hours were as wonderful as they were exhilarating. Bobby Baxter turned out not to be such a bad guy after all. Buck was satiated and gratified, and ready to say whatever he felt that Bobby needed him to. His further hope was that Bobby Baxter would give him another Crystal-cocktail when the broadcast was over, and the technicians told Buck that it was more than probable that could be arranged. Oh—yes, indeed, Buck Norris felt great. The drugs in his system made him very agreeable. And why shouldn’t they? They were merely breaking down barriers that shouldn’t have been there in the first place

Inside the control-booth, in addition to the microphones and cameras, there were monitors that would show the preternatural activities of the demons on the East Coast. The technicians showed Buck how he could translate the feed to his broadcast if and when it became necessary to do so.

Currently endorphins rushed and spilled down through Buck’ anatomy, eliciting gratifying stimulation when his mind advertently or inadvertently requested such sensations.

Soon Buck was seated and ready to broadcast his message to the nation. He had since discarded his suit, and now he wore a red silk shirt with black slacks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, some of you know me as Pastor Buck Norris of the Union Gospel Church .” A momentary pause and Buck continued, looking directly into the camera. “I profess to be pastor of the church no longer. Instead I address you tonight as a citizen who knows full well what is currently transpiring.” He turned on the monitors that came to life behind him. “I know the scope and magnitude of the situation. Furthermore, I know that some of you can be saved—not through prayer, tithes, and offerings; but instead by something as simple as recognition. If this avenue is refused, you will either die by your omission, or at the hand of the government—who even now seeks to eradicate the unstoppable by obliterating the states which are currently overcome by darkness.

            “I’m here to tell you that it need not be this way. All you need to do is recognize that there is indeed a way to stop the madness and chaos. But the choice must be made by you. No one can make it for you. I made a choice, which is why I live and am able to offer this message to you. If you make the same choice as I have, you will live as well.

            “What you all need do is recognize that a one Bobby Baxter has your best interests in mind.

            “I say again: Bobby Baxter has your best interests in mind.

            “He is here to cleanse the world of all its corporeal impurities. And as you have so recently seen, Bobby Baxter has the capacity to make true his intentions.

            “You can either profit by this understanding, or you can be destroyed. There will be no negotiation.”

            It was at this moment that Bobby Baxter stepped into the studio, followed by Calach.

            “Hel-loooo, folks.” Bobby waved to the audience, addressing the camera. “Buck is tellin’ it straight. I’m not fuckin’ around here. As the saying goes: you are either for me, or against me. And if you choose to be against me…” Bobby stated, slowly shaking his head. “I cannot guarantee your survival. Now…understand this clearly, you cannot lie to the demons, they have an inherent capacity to know who is being honest, and they will know incontrovertibly, who it is that you stand for. They cannot be reasoned with, and they will show no mercy. Now, I know what some of you are thinking; but I don’t profess to be the Antichrist. Still and all it wouldn’t really matter if I were—anymore than it matters what you might think of me; I am the only one that can save you while there is still time to do so.” 

Bobby Baxter looked down at his watch, looked back up at the camera. “In less than four hours the government is going to drop nukes—specially designed nukes mind you; ones that separate before impact. The devices are designed so that following separation, the first bomb will hit with the force of 15 megatons—you do the math on what that will do; subsequently the second halves of the bombs will yield only 5 megatons, however they will disperse into the air what the government quaintly calls N2—or liquid nitrogen…” Bobby gestured for one of the technicians to bring him a wine-cooler. “Now, don’t ask me how I know this. All that matter is that I do. And people will die. A lot of people will die. Will it stop the demons…?”

Bobby Baxter opened his wine-cooler that the technician handed to him. “It’s possible. But more of them will come. And the government can keep trying its tactics until there is no more life on earth—save for those tucked safely away in EM Bunkers, or… they will recognize my power and authority, and learn to play nice. It’s really that simple. And…it is up to you to convince the men in power that they are in fact powerless to stop me and the minions of Alacha’gellion Bala’chi… Again, they will show no mercy—save to your children, which, with satisfaction, they will leave fatherless, motherless, or otherwise without a guardian.

            “I don’t ask you to fall down and worship me—I don’t have a god-complex like some employers I used to know, who—by the way, I can honestly say to them: Your hours are numbered people—the demons are coming for you….” Bobby Baxter laughed for a full fifteen seconds. Then continued again. “Bit I digress. The minions of Alacha will have their way.

            “I don’t ask for blood-sacrifices—enough blood has been spilled already; besides, that’s God’s department, not mine. I don’t ask for tithes or burnt-offerings. But what I do ask for is that you turn from your self-righteous sanctimonious fools who would have you believe that the only one that can save you is them—by putting money in their pocket, or through the power of God Himself.”

            Bobby Baxter took a swig from his bottle. “I ask you tonight, have any of you seen the intervening hand of God at work in the last twenty-four hours? If you have, I would like you to point it out to me; because I’m apparently too blind or too insane to recognize it. And I don’t profess to be either.

            “Still, you shall be judged according to your integrity—as some already have—and those who would commit crimes, or harm falsely in my name will be met with hellish ramifications.

            “The days of man murdering, raping, stealing, or even bearing false witness, are over. And trust me when I say that you don’t want to put my words to the test.

            “The rich and the famous will willingly give to those who have nothing—or they will die… People without proper insurance will be taken care of in a manner that suggests that they have the means to do so. There will be no taxes. And there will be no need for the military and law-enforcement. That is…of course…if…you can convince your government to heed my words. The government will have no other choice but to listen…for if they refuse your pleas—in my name—they will be utterly destroyed—including those in the EM Bunkers.

            I am…Bobby Baxter… And this…is the Beginning of my Revolution and Revelation…”