Judgment by Tom Reinhart Read Free Book Online

began Joe, “I don’t know what those fucking things are, but they’re killing everyone they can get their hands on. It would be nuts to try to go anywhere right now.”
     
                  “I’m sure by the morning somebody will be doing something,” Steve added. “The police, the military, the government; somebody will get control of this.”
     
                  “Nobody is going to do anything,” answered Margie defiantly. “This is bigger than that. Those aren’t terrorists. They’re not even human. This is…this is something religious, biblical. This is bad. Really bad.”
     
                  Joe was still steadfast in his atheistic stance. “Look lady, I respect everyone’s right to believe in what they want, but I ain’t buyin’ it. What happened to ‘love thy neighbor’? Or ‘turn the other cheek’? Those things aren’t from Heaven, they’re fucking murdering people.”
     
                  “Have you ever read the bible?” she asked him. “Noah’s ark? The great flood? The plagues and pestilence? Hell and damnation? I’ve got news for you; Heaven isn’t run by the girl scouts.”
     
                  “I’m sorry sister. I just don’t believe in any of that. The bible is just a book written by mortal men. Religion is used for control and profit. Christianity is the biggest hoax ever played on mankind. The Bible, real? I could bury a copy of The Hobbit under my house, and two thousand years from now when somebody digs it up, they’ll think it’s the history of the world and Bilbo Baggins was the fucking Messiah. It’s all nonsense.”
     
                  “That sure as shit isn’t nonsense out there right now,” I blurted out, joining into a conversation I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in. “There’s definitely something abnormal going on. Those things freaking fly, and they turn people to ash. And it’s not just here.” I glanced momentarily at Jennifer, who seemed to be showing signs of shock. “We saw news reports from the office before this started. It was happening in other cities, other countries. It’s global.”
     
                  “It’s fucked up,” added Steve.
     
                  “It’s the end of days,” Margie insisted again.
     
                  Joe just shook his head as he lay back onto the desk, no one saying anything else. We just sat for a long time, no one knowing for sure what to say, or what to do next, the minutes dragging by like hours. As the night wore on, the sounds from the streets above seeped steadily into the room. No more trains came through, and in the silence of the tunnel the sounds of the city had become strange whispers drifting through the darkness.
     
                  In the quiet stillness we could hear them, faint but terrifying. As we huddled in the dim light of the storage room, death was moving swiftly through the city. Street by street, building by building, on mighty unearthly wings it came. Eight million people in New York City, one by one being hunted down and cremated into a million tons of ash. Car crashes, gunfire, explosions, and the pleading of millions all warned of the religious apocalypse occurring just above us, it's sounds drifting lightly through the subway tunnel like a dark song of fate and biblical retribution.
     
                  Slowly throughout the night I watched the others fall asleep one by one. Sooner or later, the exhausted need sleep, no matter what’s going on. Eventually I must have succumbed to my own exhaustion, because the next thing I knew I was startled awake to the sound of the desk scraping along the floor. Joe was pulling the desk away from the door. My watch said it was 7:12am.
     
                  Jennifer had fallen asleep leaning against me, her head settling on my shoulder. The rest were stirring, slowly dusting themselves off, the looks on