The War After Armageddon

Montfort sank back onto the fouled mattress. But he refused to do more than sit. He had to be strong now. To clutch back the pieces of his soul that seemed to be exploding beyond his grasp. He understood that one clear thing: He had to remain strong.

“How bad?”

The chief of staff seemed to shrink as Montfort watched him. “Bad. We don’t know. Communications… We can’t talk…”

“How bad?”

“Sir, they must’ve had ten or a dozen nukes hidden… They hit us… they hit us everywhere…”

“Where? Where’s ‘everywhere,’man? Be precise.”

“Across the front… all across the front… and the crossing sites… Jerusalem…”

Al-Mahdi had betrayed him. He’d been a fool. An ass. A dupe. But instead of worsening his condition, the chief of staff’s news jolted Montfort back into command of himself. He already saw the first things that would need to be done.

“I see a betrayal in this,” he said, his voice a perfect combination of self-righteous anger and confidence in his own judgment. “Don’t you see it yourself, man? General Harris is behind this. He’s been conspiring with al-Mahdi, with the Jihadis, the infidels. To stop us. It’s obvious.”

“Yes, sir.” But the chief of staff seemed unsure, weak.

“This could never have happened without Harris’s complicity. That much is plain as can be. Why didn’t al-Mahdi use his nuclear weapons on Harris and his Philistine Army? Why save them for use against us? General Harris has made a deal with the dev il. And we needn’t keep it a secret.” Montfort straightened his back, overruling the cramps in his abdomen. “Listen to me: I want you to do everything in your power to find out how bad the situation is, the condition of our units. They must keep fighting. We can’t stop.”

“Sir… The only reports we have… The attacking units appear to be combat in effec tive… the level of destruction…”

“Initial reports are always exaggerated. We’ll reorganize. The Jihadis will pay. This is the work of the Anti christ, a sign that we truly are in the final battle. The Lord will not abandon us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go and do as I say. And send in my doctor. Wake him if he’s asleep.”

But when the chief of staff had gone, shutting the door behind him, Montfort slumped. Unsure if the nausea he felt arose from his sickness or from the shock of the news.

How could God let this happen? Hadn’t he been doing the Lord’s work? Why had God blinded him to this treachery? Why had He permitted His armies to be shattered?

Why had he let himself be fooled? Imagining that his own schemes must prevail? Putting his trust in an infidel. Was he being punished for his pride?

Montfort forced himself across the floor to the portable sickroom toilet positioned just beyond the foot of the bed. Unsure whether to kneel and vomit, or sit down on it. The energy he had summoned in front of the chief of staff was all gone now, replaced by an unreasoning terror. Had all of his exertions, his sacrifices, come to no more than this?

He settled himself on the flimsy apparatus, sulfuring the room with his waste. And then, when he was sick and empty and broken in spirit, he saw.

Simon Montfort had a revelation. He understood, with wrenching power, that God had chosen him, even as the Lord had seen fit to warn him that he must rise above all weakness of the spirit. God, not al-Mahdi, had sent this sickness to him. Had the mortal flesh not kept him here, he would’ve been forward with his Christian soldiers, consumed by the Hellfire of Satan, slain in a nuclear inferno.

But God had kept him here. Because the Lord had chosen him, and because he was chosen of the Lord. He had been saved in body as in soul so that he could continue to labor in the bloody vineyards of Midian.

But the Lord had warned him as well. Punishing him with the destruction of his army. For bartering with al-Mahdi, consorting with an agent of Satan. The Lord was telling him that he’d been too meek, a creature of too little faith to put his trust in the Lord. Instead, he had put his faith in men and allowed himself to be soft.

Had Joshua’s Israelites spared the inhabitants of Ai after the Lord commanded their destruction? Joshua had obeyed his Lord, but Simon Montfort had let Harris protect the infidels in Nazareth.

“For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out his spear,” Montfort quoted to himself, “until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai… and Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap forever, even a desolation until this day.”

The enemies of the Lord God had to be exterminated from the Earth to purify it. Harris had embraced abomination. And this abomination was repugnant to the Lord.

Nazareth would only be the beginning. Now was come the Day of Reckoning, the final battle at the End of Days.

His doctor came in, followed by two orderlies. Montfort looked up from the corruption of his body and said, “I need to speak to Vice President Gui.”

TWENTY-TWO

ASSEMBLY AREA, 2-34 ARMOR, VICINITY AFULA