Pierced by a Sword (49 page)

"You're such a spoilsport
Nathan, why don't you–" Denny cut himself off to adjust the throttle as they hurled over another dip and the tires of the jet rumbled across a crack opening in the tarmac.

It's this next slope or never,
he thought to himself. Then he did something he had never done in an airplane–he asked for help.
Dear Jesus, don't let me crash this sweet little lady...

As it approached the moving crest of the
next wave of runway, the nose of the Citation lifted and the jet left the ground.

Wow,
Denny thought,
this baby's got power. I want one of these!

Open-mouthed, Nathan felt the G-force of the climb press his body to the seat. Then he threw up.

"We're okay now," Denny calmly informed his copilot. "No thanks to you," he added amiably.

"Where's the medicine?" Nathan croaked.

"In the barf bag under
your seat, buddy."

5

Sunday Morning
16 June
South Bend, Indiana

The flight home took less than two hours. When Denny radioed ahead to the air traffic controller at Michiana Regional, permission was granted for landing because of the unusual nature of the unauthorized flight. Denny asked the controller to get someone to call his parents. With an impish smile on his face he also asked the controller
to call the local newspaper. "It's all part of a plan," he confided to Nathan.

A reporter and a photographer from the
South Bend Tribune
met them on the tarmac. The story was picked up by the wire services and Denny Wheat had his fifteen minutes of fame. Photographs of Joanie hugging Nathan, with Denny in the background next to the Citation, made the front sections of newspapers around the country.

The offices of Streamline Jets had indeed been destroyed in New York City, but a member of the board of directors who lived in Shreveport was quoted in the papers the next day. He refused to press charges and thanked Denny for saving a company asset. Streamline Jets had five Citations before the earthquakes. Three were destroyed at Kennedy Airport.

The FAA made some noises about suspending Denny's
license for violating over thirty regulations, but the investigation was dropped after a few days. Denny Wheat was a hero. The FAA had more pressing problems at the numerous airports destroyed or damaged by the Quakes, as the two earthquakes came to be called around the country.

+  +  +

Everyone, including Denny's family and the reporters who had made him an instant hero, assumed that Denny had
given up his Cessna to rescue his family and friends. Two days after the flight home, Denny left for New Jersey at three in the morning with Huey Brown in Huey's Cessna 150. No one else was aware of this second trip. Late that afternoon they returned separately–Huey in his 150 and Denny in his 172.

In order to retrieve the 172, Denny had been forced to land Huey's 150 on an access road in a huge
industrial park near Essex County Airport. He came close to crashing during takeoff on the churned-up grass next to the same runway he had used two days earlier. Denny swore Farmer Brown to secrecy, and the press never discovered anything about this second daredevil trip.

The only one who wasn't surprised when Denny landed in Tom Wheat's backyard was Nathan Payne.

+  +  +

Slinger bought the jet
from the bankrupt Streamline Jets at forty cents on the dollar one month later and gave it to the Kolbe Foundation. Denny now had a Citation in his fleet.

6

From
Dark Years History
(New Rome Press, 31 R.E.)
by Rebecca Macadam Jackson

...the second great New York earthquake obliterated any chance the United States might have had to avoid slipping into a depression. When the Quakes destroyed the
financial capital of the world, the nation was already mired in the worst recession since before World War II...

...happens in times of severe economic uncertainty? Within a week of the second quake, several major insurance companies declared bankruptcy because they couldn't cover their policy holders in New York. Banks from around the world called in notes for businesses based in the New York
region. Runs on banks began on the East Coast and spread across the country. Foreign banks, alarmed by the falling dollar, called in their outstanding notes. When some of those notes were not paid, the dollar went into free fall...

...Wall Street was physically gone. Along with the buildings and computers (and almost a quarter of the professional workers in that sector), the Quakes also destroyed
the "institution" that existed in investor's minds. Money could not be entrusted to it. Millions of transactions had occurred there every day. Now it was a ghost town. Apart from Wall Street, banks in the region processed over seventeen percent of all the checks and electronic financial transactions which occurred in America every day. Accounts all over the country were in sudden and complete
disarray. Lawsuits were filed in courts all over the...

...the Market was temporarily "transferred" to Chicago, using the information stored on "earthquake proof" Wall Street backup computers. The Market dove long and deep and hard the day it reopened. The president of the United States declared a national financial emergency and called a "banking holiday." The Market was closed down for over
two months. Publicly held companies around the world came to a standstill as business decisions were delayed, pending the opening of the Market...

...the financial details are chronicled elsewhere. Our concern is to convey what happened to the so-called "average American." In the absence of a gold standard what was the real value of a dollar? Economists would answer by stating that the value of
one dollar is the amount of goods or services a person is willing to exchange for it. A week before the Quakes, the average person was willing to work one hour in exchange for an average national hourly wage of fourteen dollars. One week after the Quakes, the average worker was willing to work one hour for less than three dollars.

The average person living in the New York region sat in his damaged
home and said to himself: "Hard times are here. Money is going to be scarce. My stocks are valueless. My job is gone because my building is gone. My business's customers are gone. My insurance policy on my damaged home is worthless. My mail won't be delivered tomorrow and maybe not for months. My utilities are gone. There are not enough police to protect what I do own. I have to conserve what
I have, so I will buy less starting right now."

This is deflation. Consumers are less willing to part with dollars. Retailers drop prices to stimulate demand. Buyers buy fewer goods and services to preserve their dollars. Fewer goods and services are produced because demand is radically lower. Therefore fewer workers are employed to produce goods and services.
Fewer
workers are able to buy even
less and prices drop again–and more workers are laid off. Workers become desperate for work and are willing to work for less; and employers are desperate to lower costs to stay in business; by mutual agreement workers and employers both take a pay cut. And so on...

...and so the damage the Quakes caused was unprecedented. In monetary terms the Quakes were fifty times more costly than any previous
American natural disaster. New York effectively ceased to exist as a living city. Over two million people died in three weeks. All the tunnels to Manhattan Island were destroyed in the first earthquake. All the bridges collapsed by the end of the second earthquake–except for the Brooklyn Bridge. Rescue workers and the National Guard were forced to use boats and helicopters to reach the island
which had split in half (the 42nd Street River is a grim monument to the Quakes). The effects of the Quakes in terms of human devastation were horrifying. In one building alone, over three thousand people perished when a gas main blew...

...was tremendous devastation for thirty miles in every direction outside of the city. One of the largest ports in the world was closed indefinitely. Rioting
on an unprecedented scale took place, and tens of thousands were killed in street fighting. At first the riots were motivated by the criminal element taking advantage of the confusion and lack of law enforcement. Soon riots began to break out over scarce food and water. Eventually, United Nations "peace-keeping" armies were called in to restore order...

...meanwhile, more natural disasters struck
the world every month, confirming Marian prophecies which predicted that "America will be brought to its knees by natural disasters." A huge earthquake practically destroyed half of San Francisco, but the damage and loss of life paled compared to the Quakes. Thirty percent of the buildings in Tokyo were severely damaged in a large earthquake four months after the New York earthquakes. The most
bitter winter in recorded history wracked the country. Severe autumn floods on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers spilled over levees weakened by floods earlier in the decade. Canada was also devastated by freezes, minor earthquakes, floods, depression...

...within three months the United States became the last industrialized country to join the World Depression. Unemployment rose above thirty-five
percent as the depression spread across the country. Riots broke out in almost every major city. Armed groups of thugs began to leave the cities to prey upon the better pickings available in the suburbs. The president declared martial law and begged Congress to join the newly-formed European Union of States, in order to stabilize the dollar and to restore peace. After the United States surrendered
its sovereignty, the European Union was renamed the World Union of States. The World Union operated under the aegis of the United Nations and several levels of regional bureaucracies...

...when southern and western states balked, the Second American Revolution (SAR) began. At the time, it was known as the Conflict for Peace in America–a euphemism no doubt conjured up by a bureaucratic committee.
At first the SAR didn't seem like a war. States simply began ignoring the increasingly burdensome and tyrannical taxes levied by the bankrupt federal government. The taxes were supposed to pay for the national disasters and the enormous debt now "owed" to the World Union. These taxes were part of the New Constitution, which was ratified by Congress and signed by the president. The New Constitution
was never sent to the states for ratification...

...The United States effectively became a socialist state with over seventy-five percent of all income turned over to the World Union. (In our day and age of taxation below three percent, a seventy-five percent rate is no doubt beyond comprehension for many readers. Refer to Appendix D: Overall tax rates in the early 1990s were a whopping fifty
percent! A seventy-five percent tax rate to appease the World Union was considered reasonable by many politicians in the months following the Quakes.) The New Constitution was a requirement for entering the World Union...

...and established a new currency, called the World Dollar (WD). Europeans were already accustomed to the new cashless system which promised to save that continent from economic
disaster. Shell-shocked Americans in eastern states accepted a universal debit card with little protest. Plans for an identity chip (to be implanted in every person's hand at birth, and already in use in Switzerland) were unveiled when counterfeit debit cards became widespread in the "test state" of Massachusetts...

...in western and southern states, millions of people struggling to make ends
meet during the World Depression simply stopped paying their World Union income taxes. Many refused to use the debit cards. Bartering and the black market flourished. The shooting started when relatively prosperous Texas declared itself an independent nation. Russian and German armored divisions were sent to take over Austin. According to the World Union, this First World Union Army (under United
Nations command) was purportedly in the former United States to help with disaster relief and to quell periodic rioting in the cities. When the invasion of Texas failed miserably, a rash of other states declared independence or formed confederations with neighboring states...

...exploits of the Lone Star Army, under the command of General William Williams, became known to every revolutionary in
the former United States through the information network of short wave radios, the Internet, direct TV, and satellite cellular phones originally established by SLG Industries and augmented by Resistance Movements as the regional wars dragged on. The World Union was never able to incapacitate all the satellites which enabled the system. The satellites were controlled from Houston at the former headquarters
of NASA...

...the Red Death added salt to an already wounded world. This new virus literally ate the flesh of its victims from the inside out. Death rates in Europe reached ten percent. No one knows how many died in China–perhaps hundreds of millions. The name came from the physical state of the bloody victim at the end of the three-week cycle of death. To this day, no one knows where the Red
Death came from, why it spread, or why the Red Death passed over most baptized Christians and Catholics, especially those consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary...

...In the midst of this political and economic confusion, the Great Schism was barely noticed. The antipope Casino continued to force orthodox bishops into retirement and replaced them with members of the Society of Builders or
ignorant dupes of the Society. Society priests were raised to the office of bishop or cardinal in a matter of weeks. Religious congregations and orders loyal to the universal teachings of the Catholic Church were brutally suppressed. Women flocked to seminaries to become the first crop of female priests. Confession and weekly Mass were suddenly declared "optional" sacraments. Use of artificial contraception
was declared a matter of conscience. Even abortion was condoned by new schismatic clerics as a necessary evil in a world torn by war, poverty, and depression...

...many were converted by the astounding Eucharistic Miracle of the Quakes–not one Catholic church in the entire metropolitan area where Jesus was in the tabernacle suffered any damage. In some areas, the church was the only building standing,
and a natural locus for relief activity. This mass miracle was highly publicized in the Marian Movement. Marian apostles were filled with hope. These tangible Eucharistic signs served to foreshadow and prepare Marian apostles for another major development lost on the secular world: as prophesied, authentic Marian apparitions around the world stopped on the day of the second earthquake...