Posted for editing purposes until 6/7/15
The strong well-manicured man hands played upon the thickly varnished white oak desk lazily, without the hurried tempo one might suspect of a fanatic observing the flowering of the cacophonous weed he had planted so deliberately, and nourished so single-mindedly.
It was 10:30 a.m., a mere ninety minutes after the Thanatos Plague had been unleashed. The audio infection of humanity had been timed for peak effect at 9:00 a.m., on an autumn Monday, as every good materialist grubbed around in the nether-parts of the Godless economy for more money and credit with which to defile both this nation’s celebration of thanksgiving to God, and the earthly incarnation of that very God, celebrated ironically enough on the day the ancients believed that the world died.
The Thanatos Trajectory had been projected as rising in three peaks: 20 million dead by 10 a.m., 140 million by noon, and then a final withering cull through the afternoon with peak violence at dusk, for a total U.S. death toll of 280 million.
But their wildest dreams had been far exceeded; the world more rotten than they knew. Thanatos One had remained on executive alert at the listening post expecting to monitor the fall of this earthly garden of sin through media feeds. By 10:01 a.m., the only operational feed was coming out of Atlanta, from the CNN desk, to which a big bearded cameraman was currently nailing the neck of the stunning blonde news anchor with a broken gaff, using an unabridged dictionary as a hammer.
This node secure, his baffling filters snug, Thanatos One, former assistant director of the federal agency most feared by the other federal agencies, assured that every Pure Agency asset was busily recovering the Innocent and extinguishing the Complicit, found himself…unnecessary, and without purpose.
“Yes, a reading,” he spoke to the wall of alternately blank and static monitors.
The sound of his words retuned to him as Morse Code through his audio baffle array, and so he would receive his reading. He had mastered the code at age 18. But, with six days of streaming and culling ahead, he judged that the best use of his time at this point, would be reading to himself, so that when reports came, his cognition would not lag.
Thanatos One took one last look at the twitching beauty dying on her desk under the weight of her lowly cameraman—his improvised spike tragically bent in his hands—put the iniquitous image from his mind with a blink, and opened the only book that mattered, the only book he dearly hoped, that would remain to guide a revived mankind.
The strong well-manicured man hands held the book like an ark, the crisp white cuffs of the creased shirt sleeves offsetting the cream page and burgundy binding, a reverent thumb turning to the page one turns to when returning from gibbering oblivion to the Plain Truth, page 1, Genesis:
“1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was a vast waste, darkness covered the deep, and the spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water. 3 God said, ‘Let there be light, ‘and there was light; 4 and God saw the light was good and he separated light from darkness. 5 He called the light day, and the darkness night. So evening came, and morning came—”
The tone that broke through his reading was received unbaffled by design. The single flat note, extending for 18 beats, signaled the eradication of the United States presidential line of succession, down to, and including, the lowliest Secretary, his onetime “superior,” no longer washing his hands at the Well of Guilt.
The book closed with a thudding clap.
“And morning came.”
