Bernard Weisman held the curtain aside and looked outdoors.  A dozen cars had just pulled up in front of his house.  He was expecting them...but dreaded their arrival nonetheless.  He let out a short sigh and let the curtain fall back in place. 
     “I’ll see them in the study,” he said.  His wife nodded and touched his arm lightly as he passed.  She stood by the door and waited for the bell to ring.
     Out of long habit, Lydia Weisman smiled as she opened the door.  Then, remembering the situation, she immediately frowned and stepped to the side.  A deluge of people poured in.  She recognized most of them. Even if her husband hadn’t been who he was, she would have known them still, because she watched Meet the Press every Sunday morning, and she read the newspapers.  She would have recognized most of them, even if her husband had been a bus driver or a chiropodist. 
     “Come in,” she said, as the group poured inside, “Terrible what’s been happening. I feel so sorry for those families.  Everyone is so worried. We’ve been trying to reach our grandson.  He’s in the service and we can’t reach him...”
     One of the men coming inside was a soldier, a man one step short of being a general.  In the short time remaining, he very much wanted to become a general—not for the change in pay scale, or for the prospect of a better retirement—he just wanted to reach his goal before the world came to...well, more of an end than it already had. Because he knew Mrs. Weisman was about to become the First Lady, and because he knew how politics worked, he pulled a small notebook from his pocket.
     “If you’ll give me his name, Mrs.Weisman, I’ll see if I can find out something for you.”
     Meanwhile, the rest of the group was filing into the study.  It was a very spacious room, and the walls were lined with expensive books.  There were two couches and four tall windows and a dozen chairs and a huge fireplace, and at the other end of the room, almost hidden, was a desk; and standing behind the desk: Bernard Weisman, Postmaster General.
     He gestured to the chairs and a few of the senior people sat.  They were exhausted from driving around the capitol all morning and half the night trying to follow procedure.  Those with some energy left crowded around the desk.  The security guards, who had entered along with the crowd, moved back out of the way, taking up positions near the doors and windows.  Some of them looked out the windows and then turned back to face the proceedings.
     “I suspect you know why we’re here?”  It was a well known senator speaking.  She was used to asking questions.  She was used to receiving answers.
     Bernard nodded.  He looked very wise and very wary.
     The senator continued. “We’ve been working our way down the chain of command. It seems that even people who call themselves ‘deciders’ are having a problem with this one,” she said, “A dozen good American politicians have declined their duty to protect the constitution—as they’ve sworn to do—and as a result they have been impeached.  A little faster than most of us would have liked, but they have been impeached.  I should tell you this: at the very next level we already have what we need.  I’m just telling you, that if you decline or refuse or excuse yourself in any way, what we require will be done anyway.  I just wanted you to know, we don’t need your permission, but we do want to do this as it is prescribed by law.”
     Bernard ran his fingertip along the surface of his desk. “I appreciate that.” he said.
     She gestured to the people standing behind her. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but this represents a quorum.  Both the House and Senate are represented, both sides of the aisle.  Our number has been greatly reduced of late, but we still represent the will of the people.  It seems this is the time to really see who among us counts themselves as Americans.”  Some of those standing behind her were nodding in agreement, some were shaking their heads in dismay.
     “How bad is it?” Weisman asked.
      One of the minor military men stepped forward. “We’ve already lost contact with most of the European Union,” he said.  “We’ve heard they were one of the main targets.  Satellite imagery shows open water from the south of England all the way to North Africa.  Smoke obscures a lot of the destruction but I can tell you most of France and most of Germany are gone.  Bodies have been seen floating down every major river.  Animals are dying; birds are falling out of the sky.  Gluttons are being force fed foie gras until they explode, and the lustful piled together on a bed until they’re crushed. At one site in the Middle East there is a creature, an alleged angel, putting people in a huge vat and then trampling them to death.  It’s been reported that blood covers the ground four feet deep and in a circle about a half mile in radius.”
     Weisman seemed to shrink.  “Germany and France...Gone?  How is that possible?  Even nuclear weapons don’t have that kind of power.”
     The military man continued.  “With this enemy, anything is possible.”
     “Enemy.” Weisman whispered the word.  “Who could have imagined such things?” He shook his head. “How can someone we’ve known as good, become an enemy?”
     The military man opened a folder and placed it on Weisman’s desk.  There were two pictures inside: one showed Hitler wearing a military cap; the other was of Jesus wearing a halo.  The military man pointed at Hitler’s picture. “Some of our intelligence community has been likening this current crisis to the years prior to World War Two.  Back then we had Hitler’s plans and ideas all spelled out for us.  He wrote many an evil thing in his book, but politicians at the time ignored it, calling it bluster and bile, bilge and bravado, written to appeal to the disaffected masses.  Mein Kampf was printed and placed on a lot of coffee tables and forgotten or ignored, until it was too late...and then it took an awful lot of blood to kick that demented drug addict off his throne.”
     “You’re comparing Mein Kampf to the Bible?”
     “When inside you find plans for the destruction of most of the human race, yes.”
     “Have we any hope of prevailing?”
     “Probably none.  But would that have stopped you from confronting Hitler?”
     “What if, after Hitler, there really was going to be a thousand years of peace?”
     “That didn’t make him any less deranged.  Even had his ascendancy ushered in ten generations of peace, would it have been fair to make the rest of Europe pay for his ambition?”
     Weisman said, “The End Times are here, and you want me to send out tanks to stop the process, fight some angels and shoot at people blowing trumpets.  You’re asking me to go down in history as the Anti-Christ.”
     “We’re asking you to protect the people.  We have information about the Anti-Christ, and you don’t fit the description.  We’ve brought a Bible expert along with us, he can explain.”
     A man stepped forward out of the crowd. He looked like Jerry Falwell, only he couldn’t have been Jerry Falwell because Jerry Falwell was dead.  He fiddled with his tie as he spoke.  “We’re pretty sure you aren’t the Anti-Christ, or we really wouldn’t be here bothering you.  For instance, according to the holy scriptures, the Anti-Christ is a great horned beast that rises up out of the sea, ridden by the Whore of Babylon, the drinker of the blood of saints…Whereas, you were born in Arizona, and your wife has written articles for Good Housekeeping.  Also, depending on how the scriptures are interpreted, the Anti-Christ has the power to beguile the people by working great miracles—which doesn’t fit you at all, otherwise your public career wouldn’t have topped out at Postmaster General.”
     “A lot of people think I’ve done pretty well for myself,” Bernard said. But he said it rather quietly, and as this was the first bad news that affected him personally, he sat down in his big leather chair. “What, exactly, do you want me to do?” he said.
     The senator pushed a piece of paper across the Postmaster’s desk.  “We’re asking you to authorize the use of nuclear weapons.  We're asking all of the major religions of the world—the Christians, the Muslims, the Jews, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the secular humanists, the Wiccans, and the Scientologists—to join forces with us.  In short, we want you to allow us to oppose the Second Coming.”
     “How can I do it?” Weisman said.  “Doesn’t the very fact that He has returned on a cloud mean I’ve been living on the wrong side?”
     “You mustn’t think of it that way.  If you have to think about it at all, try to think of it like this: if you’ve ever committed one sin, stolen one pencil, tapped in one uncounted putt, driven too fast or moved the mail too slow—if you’ve done any of those things, He’s come back intending to put you in a winepress and squeeze your blood out onto the streets.  He wants to feed you and your friends to the vultures.”
     “The Bible says all that?”
     “It does.”
     “Gee…Do you think our army can protect us?”
     “No.  But it will be their duty to try.”
     Bernard bit a finger.  “It just seems like an awfully big decision for one man to make…” He looked up hopefully.  “What about States’ rights?  Maybe we should let each state decide on its own how to handle it!”
     “With all that blood on the ground, eventually, even the blue states will turn red.  Do you want that?”
     “No.  No, I suppose not.”  Weisman pulled the order closer and signed it.
     Though the discussion had reached its conclusion, the Jerry Falwell look-alike couldn’t stop himself from commenting.    “You know, the book of Revelation wasn’t going to be included in the Bible, at first.  The people who decided what was going to be included in the King James Version were hesitant to include it; they were afraid it was going to inflame people and lead to every nutcase and his brother predicting that the end times were at hand.  Later, in a compromise, the Revelation of St. John was relegated to the very end of the book, where it was supposed to have been easy to overlook.”
     The Postmaster General looked about.  He hated to see all those serious faces.  One of the reasons he had never made it far as a politician was because he liked to be amicable and light-hearted.  He tried to lighten the mood. “Well, now that the fate of the world has been sealed…How about we call it a day and go fishing?” he said.
     Someone said, “Better hurry.  Soon, the waters will turn to Wormwood and the surface will be littered with the bodies of the dead.”
     Bernard looked to his wife Lydia, standing stricken and devastated beside his chair.  He reached up and touched her arm. “Hon, if you don’t mind, will you pack my fishing gear?  It should be easy.  I’m being told all I’ll need is my net.”
     Nobody laughed.
     Finis.

Tom Smith
...has been published more than 100 times with stories appearing in: "Nightmares" "Lullaby Hearse" and "Scared Naked Magazine."  The story he wrote called, "White Kangaroo" (a story about a contest between balloon animal artists), was nominated as best web fantasy story in '03. Tom has three grown children: Jamie, Scott and Rebecca. All are accomplished, talented and sensible, traits they share with their mother, the beautiful, Mary Ann.
 
Says Tom: "This story came into being after talking to another person in my writing group.  We were asking people what kind of question they thought might be very difficult for the current crop of Presidential candidates.  One of the group suggested asking one of the people who profess a belief in Bible, 'What would be your responsibilities if the Second Coming was really happening?  Would you find yourself trying to keep the world rolling along, or would you just leave all the decision making in God's hands?'  I thought it was a very weird question, until I started thinking it over..."

Anathema Home