The War After Armageddon

I was rewarded. For a time. I ended my career as a black-cross col o nel. Despite my good services, I had suffered too much contact with General Harris and his acolytes to be trusted with a higher rank. When I took off my uniform, I applied for a teaching position, for the young have always been dear to me. I then learned that I was not to be trusted with the education of our Christian youth. I had been contaminated by association. So I took a secondary degree in accounting, a discipline that offered no chance of my being put down as a heretic. I kept good books. As the years went by, I consoled myself that there would be a great accounting one day.

Of course, I was far luckier than the others who had contact with General Harris. Even before III Corps redeployed to the United States, all of its officers who held the rank of col o nel or higher were taken into custody. “For their own protection,” the newspapers reported. We were assured that the good Christian people of America wanted to lynch them for their treason. One lieutenant col o nel, Patrick Cavanaugh, was also arrested. He was charged with the premeditated murder of a Christian Heritage Advance Rescue Team in Nazareth.

The old U.S. Disciplinary Barracks on Ft. Leavenworth were reopened to receive the III Corps officers. Before any of the detainees could be absolved or reeducated, an accidental fire swept the prison. The system of electronic locks short-circuited. None of the quarantined officers could be saved.

Later, their names were erased from the chronicle of the Holy War, along with any mention of III Corps, the U.S. Army, or the Marines.

General Harris’s wife, Sarah, proved to be an unreasonable woman, a menace to herself. She refused to stop making public allegations that her husband had been the victim of a plot. She had to be institutionalized. For her own good. It is said that General Mont-fort, an old acquaintance, visited her in the asylum out of Christian charity. To their enduring regret, the doctors charged with her reha-biliation made no progress, and she died, still in restraints, a few years ago. So rumor has it.

Rumor also holds that her surviving daughter became an alcoholic and an immoral woman. But no one can testify to the truth of it, nor is she known to be alive and among us.

General of the Order Montfort fared better. The hero of the first stage of the Holy War, he was chosen by President Gui to serve as his vice president and Generalissimo of the Order. Thus began a long and fruitful age, we are assured, with President Montfort succeeding President Gui when the latter’s final term ended — although our Great Prophet continued to assist President Montfort with guidance until the prophet’s soul soared upward. In a state of grace, our Christian Congress acceded to the public’s demand that the Constitution be amended to allow President Montfort to serve an unlimited number of terms in office, with future elections to be held in church, on Sunday, by a show of hands. It was only last April, during his fifteenth year as president in Christ, that the Lord called the Dear Prophet home. We are told that he passed over in perfect peace while reading Scripture. And yet, he did not reach the four score years and ten predicted for him.

Of course, the Army was disbanded, as was the Marine Corps, their missions assumed by the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ. The Air Force went next — believing to the end it would be spared — then the Navy received its new dispensation. By the end of the Holy War, we were a unified people in every respect. We praised God for it.

General Harris was right about one thing: It was difficult to kill a billion people. But it wasn’t impossible. After their cities had been destroyed, all of their images and records obliterated and the names of those cities removed from every map and book, we still had to launch the seven Great Hunts — one for each of the Seven Seals foretold — to finish the job. Even now, we hear tales of Deobandi and Naqshbandi fanatics praising Allah in the nuclear deserts.

There was, of course, the dispute with the Chinese Messiah over the radioactive fallout from our nuclear offerings. But our Chinese brothers and sisters were exhausted by their civil war. And Christians were not yet ready to fight Christians. The Chinese eventually aided us in the last several Great Hunts.

At home, we enjoyed an age of sacred glory, albeit with a spike in cancer rates. But we must not question God’s purposes.