The Camouflaged Cross: Tales Of Christian Preppers In The End Times (Just Run Book 1) (2 page)

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” David broke the silence. “You don’t just go through life in a normal, you know,
non
-End Times world, and then begin what looks to be the End Times, and not talk about it. OK, I’ll bite. What do you miss, Sean?”

“All-you-can-eat buffets.”

“Yes, I can imagine. You are a very big, what are you, sixteen, seventeen years old?”

“Fifteen. And I can eat a lot.”

“I’m sure of it. If you weren’t being homeschooled, you’d probably be on a football team right now, being recruited by college teams. That kind of thing.”

“Every once in a while my mom would let me take a long lunch during my homeschooling, and she would bring me to lunch at a restaurant that had an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. She would just sit back and watch me eat. She would talk about how the restaurant felt bad about letting me in there because I ate so much. She worried that the restaurant would go under or something because I showed up.”

“I can imagine.” David chuckled. “It was probably a sight to behold.”

“Since all this started happening, we’ve eaten a bunch of vegetables and stored food, and some eggs here and there. And I haven’t really been full for a long time.”

“Same here, now that you mention it.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate the people here who cook our food. Jose has been pretty good about killing deer and hogs and preparing it all for us to eat. But I really miss that feeling of being totally full of food. Completely full. Nothing more could fit in my stomach. Sometimes I would almost be in pain I was so full of food. It was a good pain.”

“You’re in pretty good shape. You’re blessed that you can eat so much and not get fat. As for me, now that I am in my 40’s, I can’t just eat and eat and eat like I used to, when I was your age. If I did I would get pretty big. You need to watch the old waistline when you get my age, you know.”

“That’s what I hear.”

A gust of wind blew the trees outside. Both Sean and David looked down onto the dirt road and watched a cluster of leaves get blown across the road in front of a roadblock made of tree branches and trash. There was another silent pause.

“Well, I miss a few things, that’s for sure,” David said. “I miss coming home from work and sitting in front of the TV or a fire with my wife, drinking some cabernet and eating some nice cheese and crackers. And olives. It was all so relaxing.”

“I never did like wine.”

“You will someday. Well,” David paused, “that’s what I would have said before all this started happening. Nowadays, who knows if you will ever have any wine?”

David changed the subject. “By the way, has anyone checked in with the other group over there?” He nodded to his right.

“Not in a while,” Sean said, “but the old school bus is there like always.” They both looked to their right and further up the dirt road. An old school bus, painted dark green, was barely visible in the trees on top of a hill nearby.

“Not exactly a great hiding place to listen and observe.”

“Yes, that is one of the things Jesse did right on this property, setting up these ‘el-pops.’” Sean banged on one of the metal legs that held up the dark green metal roof above them.

“Well, I for one feel like I am doing some good listening at this observation post.”

“Same here,” Sean smiled. “And observing, too.”

“Oh, yes, constantly observing. Maybe someday we will listen or observe something from this listening and observation post. That’s always possible. Right from under this car hood that Jesse had some welder turn into a roof for us.”

“If I have to spend a lot of time in a car, I would rather it be in the Whale,” Sean said, nodding uphill.

“What do you mean, a whale like in the book of Jonah?”

“No, the Cadillac that made it to the far back of the property.”

“Oh yeah, I heard about that. One of the families who made it up here drove up in their old Cadillac convertible. A restoration project. And I hear that the ground clearance of that car was pretty bad, but they kept driving up the hiking trails and made it to the very back end of the property, then the car got stuck. I guess they didn’t want the car being visible from the valley below. Remember all the talk of camouflage and all. If I recall, that’s a red car.”

“It’s a really cool car,” Sean said. “People go to it and run the engine and charge their flashlight batteries and Kindles. It has cigarette lighters even in the back seat, for charging stuff.”

“Oh yeah. That car was made in the early 70’s. Everyone smoked a lot back then. And cigarette lighters were next to every seat, even the back seats. People certainly didn’t want to get caught unable to light up.”

“Apparently, the car has a great alternator. And while they charge the batteries they crank the CD player and turn up the AC or heater. It’s actually a fun place to hang out. Like a little vacation”

“Listen, that alternator will probably be taken out someday and hooked up to a wind turbine or something. You have to admit, it is a waste of gas to idle a big engine like that.”

“Yeah, I know, you’re right. But the last time I was at that car, someone cranked up the old music and Justin jumped in and acted like he was playing the drums. It was pretty funny.”

“Yes,” David said, “Justin was the drummer in some band in high school, or at least that is what I heard. There are some pretty funny photos of him out there, trying to act like John Bonham. But who knows, we’ll probably never see those photos again. They would have been great blackmail material.”

Sean smiled. “John Bonham?”

“Drummer for Led Zeppelin,” David answered. There was a pause.

“Oh, I see.”

*****

“But back to what I miss,” David said. “I guess there is more to it than drinking wine and eating cheese, although I miss that too.”

“What, were there all-you-can drink wine bars or something?”

David smiled, then looked serious. “No, it’s not that. I just miss the detachment of it all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we would go to church, back when church was open, and we would hear a sermon on the Book of Daniel or Matthew or Revelation, or other books of the Bible. And I never really,” David paused, as if looking for the right words. “I never really thought it would apply to me.” Sean nodded slightly, in agreement.

“We would read Matthew 24, and the whole book of Revelation, and I never thought I would be around to see all that stuff happen. I always thought it would be something that would happen to my grandkids or their grandkids, or,” David paused. “What I was reading was pretty scary, you know, Christians getting killed off, and I just wasn’t scared. I believe the Bible, of course. I just never thought I would be here when it all happened. For me it was so hypothetical.”

“Kind of like ‘ignorance is bliss.’ Or taking the blue pill.”

“Yeah, I guess. I was just so … I guess I was at peace, that there was just too much between our world and the times described in the Bible. I just thought there was so much that had to happen before you could look into the Bible and notice that the End Times were right here. I miss that sense of peace. That sense of ‘it won’t happen to me.’ The sense that I didn’t really need to worry about it. Of course it is good to know, and the book of Revelation says a special blessing will be given to those who read the book…”

David continued. “Now I feel pretty stupid. Just look how fast everything changed. I always thought that there was way too much that needed to change before we got to the stuff that happens in Matthew 24 and Revelation. But it seems just like, ‘poof,’ everything got into position and here we are. The gay marriage thing, for example. Only a few years ago, gay marriage was just a joke. Even gays didn’t take it seriously. Nowadays whenever someone opposes gay marriage they lose their job and practically get run out of town on a rail. And in some places, if you are a heterosexual man and woman, you are not even allowed to get married. I remember thinking, ‘Boy that was fast.’”

David looked at Sean. “Oh, I’m sorry. Your parents probably don’t want you talking about those things. I keep forgetting that you’re fifteen years old.”

“It’s OK. My parents have told me all about it.”

“Well, the point is, that the days of thinking this will apply to others is long gone. Long gone. And I was ignoring all the clues. I was busy with my job, keeping up to date with the company’s new product line, new ways to speed up financing, that kind of thing.”

“I never knew what kind of job you had,” Sean said.

“I was a sales rep for a dental equipment company. For this whole tri-state region. And I was a good sales rep, too. I would visit dentists’ offices and either try to get them to buy new equipment or update their old equipment.”

“You mean like drills and stuff?”

“Yeah, but it was a lot more than that. And for those who wanted to buy, I would line up financing. It all kept me pretty busy.” David paused. “And I was ignoring all the clues that were right there in the news. Right in front of me. In front of us all. Sure, I knew there were bad things going on in the world, and there was some talk of the new government requiring people to get some kind of faint bar code on their foreheads. Sharia put in place in certain parts of the country. Stuff like that. But I still thought the End Times were far, far off. Nothing to do with me. I guess that’s it for me. That’s what I really miss.”

“After my dad got laid off we lost our cable TV, so I was also ignoring the news. We couldn’t watch it at our house. In fact, we were about to lose our house.”

David shifted in his seat. “Your family was never going to lose your house. I know it never came to that, but several of us from church were going to pitch in and bring your family current with your mortgage. We weren’t really looking forward to it. At least I wasn’t. I admit that. But you guys were not going to lose your house.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. A little, too-late-to-matter reassurance for you there.” David smiled. “Who knows what is going on at your house nowadays? In fact, who knows what is going on in the world nowadays?” David looked out into the valley, then back to Sean. “But the point is, if this all wasn’t happening, you and your family would still be in your house.”

“That’s really nice of you guys.”

“That’s what a church does.” David looked into the valley below. “Give the glory to God.”

*****

David continued, “What finally woke me up was when I read about the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“I missed it,” Sean said. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know what the Nobel Prize is, right?”

“Sure, I’ve studied that.”

“Well, one of the Nobel Prizes is for promoting peace in the world. It is called the Nobel Peace Prize. This one was a totally outside-the-Bible clue for me. Like God was banging me on the head, trying to get me to notice some clues of the End Times coming. They just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the religion of Islam. All those terrorists who kill people, and in fact Muslims have been killing and enslaving people for hundreds of years, but they insist that they are one big ‘religion of peace.’ They finally got the Nobel Prize committee to buy it. I just couldn’t believe it. It totally floored me.”

“Yes, my parents talked about that.”

“I know, the Nobel Peace Prize started getting a little tarnished through the years. In the 90’s once it was awarded to Arafat, who showed up to accept the prize and his check, in between killing people.”

“You get money when you win the Nobel Prize?” Sean asked.

“That’s what I hear. And then a few years later the prize was given to Al Gore because of his yammering on about global warming.”

“Oh yeah, that was a joke.”

“But the Nobel Peace Prize always had some legitimacy. Something to make you take it seriously. And then they went and awarded it to Islam. And not any one or two Muslims, or to a group of them, or a country or anything. They awarded it to the whole religion.” David paused. “That is when I sat up and took notice that things in the world were starting to get really screwed up. The Bible says that ‘truth gets traded for lies’ and ‘the wise become fools,’ and that’s what happened. At first I couldn’t understand how people could be so stupid. Could people even hear themselves talk? But the Apostle Paul wrote that God will send a strong delusion. And I got news for you, if God allows you to be deluded, you are going to be deluded. That’s all there is to it. So that has to explain all the stupidity out there, beginning with the Nobel Peace Prize getting awarded to Islam.”