Apocalypse Coming Read online

  Apocalypse Coming

  (Revised Edition)

  A Novel of Tribulation and Survival

  The Tears of Ephraim: Book One

  Cindy and William Dunaway

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by William S Dunaway

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher,

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Dedication:

  To my wife, Cindy, who not only was a co-author of the story but who stood behind me, encouraged me and even pushed me when I was weak. When I took a year’s break from writing, you motivated me to get started again. Without you, we would have never completed it. I love you with all my heart.

  To our sons, Mike, and Matthew, who weren’t scared to tell us when something we wrote needed improvement. Thank you for all your technical knowledge, suggestions, and ideas.

  To Mia and Carmen: Thank you for your contributions and for letting us use part of our lives with you for inspiration.

  To my army buddies: Calvin, Kevin, Michael, and Greg:

  Many of our real-life adventures with you helped inspire many of the storylines of the main characters.

  PROLOGUE:

  America was blessed with choice land and an abundance of gold, silver, and minerals. What made us unique though, was our American spirit.

  We became the beacon of freedom and the land of opportunity. Through the years many people around the world have dreamed of coming to America, and other countries turned to us for our friendship and our protection.

  We soon became a superpower and leader of the free world.

  Over the years though, as our power grew, so did our arrogance. We've become self-absorbed and take our riches for granted, and we've become servants to greed and self-satisfaction.

  Many teach their children that everything is owed to them and nothing is wrong as long as it makes them happy. Sadly, they no longer teach them right from wrong and that someday they will be held accountable for the decisions they make.

  Politicians quit serving the people and are only serving their party and themselves. They stay in office by buying votes through government assistance, free cell phones and offers to someday make a college education free. They use these programs to control groups of people and even try to indoctrinate them into the belief that they will all be taken care of if they stay loyal and keep their party in office.

  Due to these programs, America's national debt is approaching twenty-one trillion dollars.

  Our previous President drastically reduced the strength of our military, and it will take years to rebuild it.

  He gave in to our enemies and betrayed our allies. Our allies learned not to trust us, and our enemies no longer feared us.

  ****

  Today, there is a great split in our nation. Those that love our country and are proud to be Americans. They try to live their lives by the motto ‘God, Family, Country.’

  Then you have those that feel that everything is owed to them and they have the dream of transforming our country into a secular socialist society with open borders.

  We are now at a crossroads in history. Do we stay the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’ or do we become another self-serving secular socialist society that is controlled by extremists and the mob mentality?

  Our four-book series shows what could have happened or might happen in the future if we ever decide to accept those secular socialist philosophies.

  This is a story of a family, a unique group of friends, and a small group of combat veterans that served together years earlier. They are somehow brought back together, just at the right time, as there is an

  Apocalypse Coming.

  Special Dedication

  This four-book series is dedicated to our active duty military, our veterans, and our law enforcement officers. You constantly put your lives on the line for those that can’t defend themselves, and unfortunately, many times for the ungrateful. Without your dedication and sacrifices, there would be no freedom.

  Chapter One

  My name is Vince Johnson…. So much has happened so quickly. So many good and bad people are gone. I had to make so many decisions. So many people depended on me and I tried my best to protect those that I love. I try to remember our successes, but I must live with my failures.

  I know in my heart why all this is happening. I should be overjoyed, but will I have to answer for the decisions I made and the actions I took?

  I feel I need to write a record of how it all happened, and even my thoughts and what I was told at the time…. I don’t know why. It isn’t as though I can use it in defense of my bad decisions; he already knows. Maybe I’m just doing it for my own sanity.

  Whatever the reason, I need to go back to the day that I remember that everything started to snowball.

  July 24th- Johnson Farm: 11 miles east of Harrisonville, Mo.

  I woke with intense pain in my right shoulder. It felt like a hot, sharp knife was sticking right through the joint. I opened my eyes, and it was dark. Wiping the sleep out of my eyes, I strained to see the alarm clock.

  “4:10 in the morning. Not again!”

  This wasn’t new to me though. Pain waking me up was a usual occurrence.

  After serving seventeen years in the Army, I started experiencing a lot of pain and it seemed to get worse day after day. Finally, when it got to the point that it was intolerable, I forced myself to go to sick call. After several tests, x-rays and an MRI, the Army doctor finally told me the nickname for my injury was “Aviator’s Syndrome.” It’s what happens to some helicopter pilots because of the constant vibration. It wasn’t a helicopter that did it to me, even though I’ve flown in my share of choppers. It was the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

  After taking a one-year break from the Army, when I rejoined, I decided to make a change and I obtained the MOS of Cavalry Scout; A 19 Delta-Armored Reconnaissance Specialist. When my body wasn’t being beaten up by the foot recons, I was putting thousands of miles on a Bradley. After two years of this, that’s when my body turned on me.

  At the time, the Army basically put me on a profile and sent me to several sessions of physical therapy, but they said there wasn’t too much more they could do at the time. Finally, it got so bad that I had to take an early medical retirement. My plan on being a thirty-year man had been destroyed.

  Over the last several years, the injury deteriorated, and arthritis prematurely started spreading to what seems like all my upper joints.

  The VA hospital performed surgery on my back five years ago, but it didn’t end well. After the operation, I felt good. Probably too good, which made me want to start working it sooner than I should have. I was restricted from lifting over 10 lbs. for a month. Kim, my wife, had to stay on my butt about that because I’m not the kind that can just sit around doing nothing.

  Two weeks after the operation, Kim had come home from the grocery store. When she pulled into the driveway, I went out to help her unload the car.

  “You just go back inside; I’ll unload it.”

  I grumbled, “I can carry the bread, surely.”

  She rolled her eyes while saying, “Just let me do it!”

  Of course, I chose to ignore her.

  We both carried a load in, and Kim started putting the cold items into the refrigerator. About that time, I noticed it had s
tarted to rain. So, I ran to the car, reached into the back of the trunk and picked up 3 gallons of milk at the same time. As soon as I lifted them, I felt something slip.

  From that point on, it’s like the hip bone is riding right up against a nerve. It never did heal right.

  I went back to the VA hospital several times, and finally, the surgeon said that the only thing that was left was a major operation and that he didn’t recommend it unless I got to the point that I couldn’t walk. Even then, he said the success rate would only be about 50/50. What convinced me just to live with the pain was when the surgeon told me that if I had the surgery, I would be in the hospital for several days. I was out on that.

  I had to accept the idea that I would have to live the rest of my life taking pain pills. I hate taking them but besides quarterly steroid shots, I don’t have much of a choice.

  I’m able to do some work on the farm, but when I must get something done that my body doesn’t like, I know the next day I’ll wake up in severe pain. I’ve just had to learn to live with it.

  I climbed out of bed trying not to wake up Kim and grabbed the pain pill I had to take every morning. After my morning trip to the bathroom, I grabbed my coffee, headed to my recliner, and turned on the news.

  They were talking about the recovery effort in and around San Francisco. Two months earlier, there was a series of major earthquakes that destroyed the entire San Francisco/Oakland area. The largest earthquake was an 8.4 on the Richter scale. This single earthquake by itself would have been devastating, as the epicenter was only 17 miles to the east of San Francisco. But the destruction didn’t stop after the one earthquake. The reported aftershocks were almost as strong and continued off and on for five days.

  Many feared that the “big one” was about to happen in California as each aftershock’s epicenter was farther south each time. Plus, the U.S National Seismograph Network reported that what was being reported as aftershocks, were completely different earthquakes and that the shock waves were S-waves, which meant the waves were slower but much larger than a normal quake.

  The damage caused by the earthquakes wasn’t restricted to just California as there had been several Tsunamis caused by the quakes that hit Hawaii, Alaska and even parts of Canada. The Tsunamis themselves were estimated to cause over one billion dollars’ worth of damage and killed 346 people. They had Tsunami warnings, but after a couple had come through and weren’t very large, people started disregarding the warnings and going back to the low-lying areas.

  The stock market tanked after the 3rd day. It lost close to 1700 points the first day before they shut down trading and it lost 10% of its value each day for the next four days. The market slowly started to recover though, when the quakes just stopped as suddenly as they started.

  Even though the market started coming back slowly, manufacturers, corporations, and even small businesses started laying off employees. As people were laid off, consumer spending started tumbling, causing more companies to start laying people off.

  In a short time, federal and state government spending increased sharply due to a sharp increase in government assistance and unemployment. This increased our deficits significantly which lowered the value of the dollar on the world markets.

  The left always loves to attack Wall Street and corporations, but what they don’t seem to get is that the corporations that Wall Street invests in, either directly or indirectly, provides most of the jobs across America and it directly affects the retirement of so many from the middle class. Fifty-five million Americans have a 401K and thirty-five million have invested in an IRA. When the market tanks, so does the retirement plans of those in the middle class.

  Then of course, when Americans quit spending money the way they normally do, it will cause a chain reaction around the world.

  Kim was split on whether she liked me getting up before her. She loved how I’d always have her morning soft drink waiting for her, but how talkative I’d be, was based on what was on the news.

  When it was just normal news, I’d barely talk. The last thing I wanted to do that early in the morning was gab. But lately, with all the garbage that was going on in Washington D.C., the news on Iran and North Korea and how the administration was doing very little to stop them. Then, add all the talking heads on the news trying to tell us what and how to think, I’d be all fired up, and she would hear all about it. It’s not as though she didn’t want to hear about it, but not at 5:00 in the morning.

  The thing that outraged me the most were the attacks on police officers. Our law enforcement officers were being assassinated by radical nut jobs and many of our government leaders, including our president, always seemed to make excuses for these criminals.

  ****

  We live on a 90-acre farm, about 45 miles to the southeast of Kansas City, Missouri. Kim worked on the other side of Kansas City and drove about 110 miles round-trip every day. That always worried me.

  For years, I tried to get Kim to find a job closer to home. But she loved her job, and it did have some very good benefits as well as excellent pay.

  The way I looked at it though was, with her driving that far every day, five days a week, eventually, the odds of some other driver doing something stupid would catch up with her.

  It’s ironic; when I proposed to Kim, I told her she wouldn’t have to work any longer because my retirement from the Army was a lot more than I expected. How it turned out though, was I got to stay home, and she continued working. That’s something that she will occasionally remind me of. Most of the time it’s in fun, but occasionally, she’ll bring it up just to get her way.

  The truth is, I hated sitting at home all the time. Before my injury took a turn for the worse, I was always active.

  When I got out of the army, I became a police officer for five years. It was just natural to me and something I always wanted to do.

  I had a reputation on the streets as someone that would treat you with respect, if you were straight with me and it wasn’t too serious, I’d cut you a break any way I could. But if you lied to me or had an aggressive attitude, I’d do my best to “hang you out to dry.” That reputation spread, and it sure came in handy. Even a lot of the repeat offenders started being upfront with me.

  I stayed on the job for about five years, even though the pain from my injury continued to get worse. I loved being a police officer, but I couldn’t stand the politics and the judicial system. So, after the city had gone to a no pursuit policy and serious arrests were being plea bargained down to a slap on the wrist, I threw in the towel. The courts have always been that way, but lately, it’s turned from bad to worse.

  Soon after that, I met Kim. We just clicked when we met. Maybe it was because of what we had both learned from being in previous bad marriages or maybe it was that we’re both more mature. But we have the type of marriage that a lot of couples dream about. Not only are we best friends but we’re truly one.

  A good friend told us that we have the kind of marriage and relationship that Anthony Edwards (Goose) and Meg Ryan had on the movie, Top Gun. We’re a team in everything we do. No lies, completely in love and no jealousy. Jealousy is the cancer of any relationship. If one of you is controlled or obsessed with jealousy, that jealousy will start eating away at that relationship until the relationship dies.

  When we first got together our friends were shocked as we were so much different. I’m basically a rough and tumble country boy that’s served my country most of my life. Even though Kim was born on a farm in Iowa, she turned in to quite the city girl, even though she isn’t anymore.

  In my prime in the army, I was six feet three inches tall, about 200 pounds and in very good shape. Now, due to my injury and the inability to get around like I used to, I’ve climbed to 220 pounds.

  Kim is only five feet two inches tall, about 115 pounds and has short reddish-brown hair. Our friends used to laugh when we would walk hand in hand as I towered over her. But we became best friends as well as a couple.

 
We also talk to each other like best friends do. For example, when I’d see a hot girl on some TV program, I’d kid around with Kim and say, “I’d do her.” She wouldn’t react except to glance up to look at the woman and then respond by saying something like, “You may not say that if you got to see her without her professionally airbrushed makeup applied.”

  Some people don’t understand kidding around with your spouse that way, but odds are, the ones that can’t, aren’t in the happiest relationships and for the most part, they probably just tolerate one another. In my opinion, if you can’t tell your spouse all of your thoughts, there’s a problem. I can’t imagine not being close enough to Kim to be able to talk to her exactly as most people do with their best friend.

  At the same time, Kim has always had a thing for Matthew McConaughey, especially when he was younger. I remember the first time she watched the movie, Magic Mike, where he played a stripper, and after she had watched the movie, she was all frisky and almost attacked me in bed. Do you think it was the sight of me that made her so frisky? No, but why would I care? I got all the benefits.

  Now, when we see him on a commercial or something, I’ll say something like, “Now don’t get too excited, it’s only a thirty-second commercial.”

  And we don’t hesitate to rib one another about anything and everything. That’s just part of our everyday conversations. The best way to describe our marriage is best friends and “one flesh.”

  Now, this wasn’t always a complete fairy tale type relationship. We went through, what we call the “hell years.”

  Both of us have two children from our previous marriages. My children, just like me, were rough and tumble country boys, while hers were pure city kids. So, no need to say, they didn’t develop a close bond with each other.

  Also, Kim’s ex, Richard, who we call Dick because he is one, just didn't seem to understand that he was no longer a part of her life. I had a real problem with that after a while and he’ll never realize how close he was to experiencing my training first hand.