Page 107 - Hunter - The Vigil

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The Long Night
Th e L o n g N g h t

T
The Tribulation Militia
T
M
M

Brother Uriah did not stand at the pulpit. He didn’t bang the Bible and spit and hol-
ler as he did so. No, he sat on the edge of the stage, his legs dangling over. The guitar lay
across his knees, and in his hand, a microphone. His voice was quiet, but hard. It was, as
one woman had described it just yesterday, “comforting.”
He looked out over his flock. Almost two dozen now. It filled his heart with warmth.
“Listen,” he said, his voice echoing out from the pair of guitar amps that flanked him.
“This is a pivotal time, for us. For humankind. The end of this covenant —” he held up the
Bible and gestured with it, “— is drawing near.”
Their eyes, wet with tears, watched him. Hung on his every word. Smiling.
“You’ve all seen the earliest signs. The doors have blown off the bottomless pit and
all manner of awful things have come crawling out. Mary, you felt the touch of a witch and
her diabolical magics — your own daughter, God bless, how horrible that must feel for you.
Ted, you were in the hospital for — what was it? Two weeks? In and out of the coma because
that thing drank so much of your blood you could no longer stand?”
Ted held up a fist, nodding, biting back tears.

“Soon the sun will grow dark. The moon will wink out. And it will seem like it’s all
ending. But that’s not true, is it? It’s just the closing of one book and the opening of an-
other. For soon we shall see the sign of the Son of God in the Heavens above us, and he will
come galloping forth on his white horse and he will lead the way to a new land!”
The congregation cried “Praise Jesus!” as one.
“That’s a beautiful thing. But first, we are mired in the Tribulation. The darkness has
settled upon this earth and the Devil’s army waits in the shadows. If we want Jesus to come,
his big ol’ horse needs a road upon which to run, which means we have to clear the way. Are
we going to clear the way for Jesus the Son?”
“Praise Jesus!”
“I said are we going to clear the way for Jesus the Son?”
Louder, this time: “Praise Jesus!”

Uriah smiled, and eased his guitar off his lap. He replaced it with a Remington 700,
the rifle fitted with a Leupold scope. Others in the pews brandished their guns, too, hold-
ing them aloft. Ted didn’t have a gun, he had a fire ax, but that was okay, too.
Praise Jesus, indeed.

The world is going to end soon. God is going to snatch that’s not going to happen (though some fear this has already

away all the True Christians, and the unworthy are going happened, and the still-significant population remaining are
to suffer under the rule of the Antichrist until Jesus comes those too wicked to be allowed entry into the Kingdom). No,
back and ends it all in blood and fire. Because Jesus loves you. this is the Tribulation. This is the war. It’s the battle of righ-

Right? Wrong. teousness, Armageddon. It’s between the righteous and the
Well, some of it is wrong, at least. That part about the wicked, between the forces of God and the armies of Satan. A
Rapture, where God will pluck all his righteous children man cannot rely on the Rapture to come and claim him. He
from the earth and carry them to the cradle of Heaven, well, can only rely on his Bible, his voice, his fi st and his gun.
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