A Premature Apocalypse Read online

  When the Arab mob had closed in on him that morning, Yosef had accepted the inevitable conclusion. Rabbi Emden was right; Yosef was the Second Messiah.

  He had resisted the idea at first. Yosef didn’t want to die. And why should he? He was a simple neighborhood rabbi with a pitiful past. A recovering alcoholic didn’t belong in the hallways of Knesset, never mind at the vanguard of the cosmic drama. But when hundreds of innocent lives had hung in the balance, he could not stand down.

  “In a place where there are no honorable men,” the Sages of the Talmud said, “be an honorable man.” The police commissioner had ignored his warnings, and so Yosef had stepped up. The act might cost his life, but perhaps this was his fate. And if his destiny was to depart this world early, he’d rather perish while saving lives than cowering under his bed.

  And God had blessed his path. Not only had he prevented the catastrophe, but—thanks to Ahmed of all people!—he had survived the Arab lynch mob. Then, Elijah the Prophet had sprung from the pages of the Bible. The Divine guidance he craved had arrived at last. His every cell trembled with joy. Everything would be all right. The Redemption was here!

  And then everything went terribly wrong. After following Ahmed, Elijah, and Alon into the black mouth of the box-shaped structure at the Sultan’s Pool, the trapdoor had snapped shut and plunged them into darkness. He heard a scuffle, felt a sharp blow to the back of his skull, and woke up bound and gagged at the foot of the black stage.

  Mandrake, the crazed magician, strutted across the stage in his tuxedo. The villain had abducted Moshe on Election Day. Now he would murder Moshe before their eyes. And Yosef was helpless to stop him.

  This can’t be happening! Yosef belonged on that stage, not Moshe. Yosef was the Second Messiah; he must die so that the Moshe could usher in the World to Come.

  Yosef struggled against his bonds to no avail. He cried out—”I’m the one you want! Take me!”—but only muffled groans reached his ears.

  Just when he thought he’d reached the peak of anguish, a new character had descended the metal staircase and proved him wrong—Reverend Henry Adams!

  As Yosef stared in disbelief, the reverend joined Mandrake on the stage and took charge. A sudden, desperate hope sang in Yosef’s breast—Adams had swept in to rescue them from the murderous madman. Then Adams spoke, and the song fell silent.

  From the start, Yosef had felt uncomfortable dealing with the clergyman. Sitrah Achrah, the sages of the Great Assembly had said of the resurrected Israelis—the evil Other Side. Yosef had ignored their warning and accepted hefty checks from the Evangelical Christians. But the reverend’s money had helped the Society, and Yosef had made peace with the situation.

  Yosef’s instincts had not deceived him after all. But he had misunderstood—and far underestimated—the threat. Adams was no man of God; quite the opposite. And Yosef knew his real name.

  Armilus!

  Rabbi Emden had whispered the name as though the word’s mere mention might attract misfortune. Yosef had not taken the myth seriously. Judaism rejected dualism. God reigned supreme. No archangel could challenge His authority.

  But Adams was no demon. Who needs supernatural devils when we have human beings? This particular human being embodied all the evil and suffering in this world, and he had won.

  “The stage is yours,” Adams said to Mandrake. Then he turned to the captives and apologized for his colleague’s theatrical flair.

  Mandrake raised his sword.

  Alon and Elijah shuffled and moaned on their chairs beside him. The three men—the Second Messiah, the head of Moshe’s security detail, and Elijah the Prophet himself—would watch helplessly as these human monsters killed the Lord’s anointed.

  No, not anointed, for Elijah had missed Moshe by minutes. Yosef had spent months searching for the Messiah. All along, the Scion of David had sat right in front of his nose. He had slept in Yosef’s home. They had toiled side-by-side at the Dry Bones Society, and later, mere meters had separated their ministerial offices.

  Yosef should have focused his efforts on finding Elijah the Prophet, the man who had sought him out on the Mount of Olives on the second day of Moshe’s new life.

  Today, as with that failed first meeting, tragedy had struck at the critical moment. This time, instead of shipping Elijah off to the hospital, they would both watch, their hands tied, as murderers snuffed out all hope of redemption.

  “Wait!” Moshe cried from his vulnerable perch.

  But Mandrake swung the blade, severing the rope his assistant had tied to the stage floor.

  Moshe’s body dropped into the water and sank to the bottom. He struggled in the straitjacket, bubbles of precious air escaping his mouth. Adams and Mandrake stepped up to the glass to watch his final moments.

  You can do it! Yosef willed Moshe’s bonds to open, for him to slip free and rise to the surface. The escape wouldn’t put him out of danger, but the reprieve would give them all another chance. While there is life, there is hope. Yosef had said that much to Moshe in the dark depression of his first day. Yosef had believed that then, and he clung to those words now.

  Chapter 87

  Irina stared down the barrel of the gun in Alex’s hand. He wouldn’t shoot her, would he? She knew him. They loved each other. He was serious about leaving his criminal past. He had pushed her to leave sooner. She should have listened to him. But now, regardless of what he wanted, did he have a choice?

  She tried to divine her fate from his eyes, but she found no twinge of indecision or hesitation. He had made up his mind.

  His eyes shifted sideways, a secret instruction for her to jump out of the way, then he turned the gun on the thug in the armchair.

  A loud click echoed in the silence.

  A smug smile spread over Boris’s face. “Traitor,” he jeered. “I knew it!”

  Then Boris reached for his belt, and Irina knew he had another weapon.

  “Run!” Alex cried. She stared at him. “Get out of here!” He lunged at Boris, slamming his fist into the seated slave driver’s face and knocking the second gun out of his hand. This gun would not be empty.

  With a deep roar, Igor lumbered toward the two men and pulled Alex off his boss by the shoulders.

  Her first instinct had been to rush to Alex, to help him fight off the goons, but she had no delusions about her ability to tackle two hardened killers. She slipped behind the giant, rounded the kitchen wall, and ran for the front door.

  As she pulled the handle toward her, an arm in a tweed coat slammed against the door, shutting the only exit. Boris snarled at her, his face uncomfortably close and murder in his eyes. Blood from his nose and upper lip had drenched his mustache, painting it red.

  Irina fell backward into the entryway, then scrambled to her feet and finally, she followed Alex’s advice. She ran.

  Behind her, Alex gasped and grunted as he wrestled with the hulking thug. She fought back tears. No man stood a chance against that mass of muscle. A scrape of metal on the tiles told her that Boris had retrieved his gun, and his footsteps followed her.

  “Go on,” he said, “run.” He was taunting her, taking his time. “There’s nowhere to hide.”

  Irina wasn’t sure about that. She dived into Alex’s bedroom and locked the door.

  She slid open the window. The cracked pavement stared back, two flights down. If it didn’t kill her, the drop would break her legs, and she’d abandon Alex to fight off both henchmen alone.

  No! It can’t end this way! They had snuffed out her first life; she would not let that happen again. She dashed toward the closet and opened the doors. He’d discover her in a second.

  A loud crash made her turn around. Boris stood in the doorway, panting. The doorframe splintered where the bolt tore through the wood. He had kicked the door in, and now he raised his arm and aimed the gun at her head.

  His nose rumpling with malice, he said, “Time to die. Again.”

  Chapter 88

  “Where is Prime Minis
ter Karlin?” the President of the United States demanded.

  Good question, Shmuel thought.

  After setting his plan in motion, Moshe had run off to confront Isaac Gurion, while the rest of his cabinet followed the operation from the safety of the Prime Minister’s Residence.

  In the bunker below the Residence, Shmuel sat at the conference table of lacquered wood and put on a brave face for the camera, while world leaders stared him down from the mounted television screen.

  “He had to attend to an urgent matter of life and death,” he said. “He’ll be back as soon as possible.”

  The gruff Russian President chimed in. “We’re about to launch every nuclear warhead on the planet. What could be a more urgent matter of life and death?”

  He had a good point. “Saving a bunch of doubting, ungrateful citizens” was not the answer they wanted to hear.

  “Exactly,” the American President said, agreeing for once with his Russian counterpart. “This is his show. Either he leads, or the deal is off!”

  Shmuel knew what they feared. If Moshe had disappeared, who would stop the Zombie Armies? But he would not let them slip out of their commitments that easily. “Moshe’s instructions are clear. He told us to continue without him, and we all know how to proceed. Remember,” he added, and tried to maintain his poker face, “our Zombie Armies are already halfway to their targets.”

  The world leaders shifted in their seats. “Now, now,” the American President said, suddenly ingratiating. “There’s no need for threats. We’re here to help however we can.”

  “Yes!” the Russian said. “Yes! And we’ve pulled every string to make this happen.”

  “You have.” Shmuel exhaled a silent breath of relief. In his career as a journalist, he’d interviewed many important public figures, but he’d never had to face off the leaders of the world’s superpowers together. Moshe, where are you?

  He glanced at the countdown timer on the screen. The Time to Impact counter had dropped below five minutes.

  “Professor, at your mark.”

  Shmuel shifted over to allow Professor Stein to face the conference camera. The bunker, added as an afterthought to the older structure of the Prime Minister’s Residence, could barely contain the table, and sitting room was limited. Designed to withstand the primitive missiles of Palestinian terrorists, the bunker would not afford much protection from an asteroid strike.

  The Knesset had only recently approved the construction of a new billion-shekel government compound beside the Supreme Court in Givat Ram. The command center would include a huge underground bunker to be used by the Prime Minister in times of national emergency. Little good that did them now.

  And so Shmuel, Professor Stein, Sivan, Chief of Staff Eitan, and a few military technicians had squeezed into the bomb shelter along with Galit and Talya Karlin and their extended family. Avi Segal too. At the end of the world, political divisions no longer mattered.

  The professor pored over the calculations on his laptop. At Moshe’s request, he had devised the strategy for averting the imminent disaster, and the planet’s future lay in his hands.

  The professor looked up at the world leaders on the screen. “You all received my targeting instructions?”

  A chorus of affirmations resounded from the leaders in the smaller squares on the screen. Each square displayed the war room of a nuclear power: The United Kingdom; France; China; India. Even Pakistan and North Korea had joined the world initiative under dire threats from their mentor superpowers.

  “Good,” the professor said. “Timing is critical if we’re to change the asteroid’s trajectory. The joint blast force might not be enough to do the job, and a mistake might shift that trajectory onto any of your home states.”

  There was a commotion of whispered consultations in the war rooms and expressions of surprise and dismay from the lesser leaders. Apparently, this potential side effect had not dawned on them, and the benefits of their full cooperation became crystal clear.

  Professor Stein read out the list of countries and their sequence of launch times and missile locations. The checklist checked, the professor sat back in the padded-leather chair.

  “Switch to orbit view,” he said.

  A military technician tapped at a tablet. The pictures of command centers around the world shrank to the bottom of the display. Two other feeds took their place: a live video of the speeding asteroid and a schematic of the revolving Planet Earth. A small red dot to the left indicated the approaching asteroid.

  “The game is in play,” the professor said. “All we can do now is wait and pray.”

  Shmuel glanced around for the Vice Prime Minister. They had not managed to contact Rabbi Yosef all morning. Shmuel hoped that both he and Moshe had found a safe place to weather the storm.

  “God help us all,” Shmuel said, and every person present answered Amen.

  A cluster of small white dots rose from the schematic Planet Earth, like shotgun pellets. Dotted lines traced their trajectories toward the larger red dot.

  “China has launched,” Klein said.

  More white pellets left the turning planet.

  “India. Pakistan.” Then clusters of missiles launched from land and sea around the globe. All converged ahead of the red dot, at the point where the asteroid would pass in a few seconds.

  “All armaments are in the air.”

  The professor gripped the armrests of his chair and sweat soaked his face. Even the slightest miscalculation would cause the warheads to miss their mark.

  Shmuel glanced around the room. All eyes turned to the screen. Galit Karlin held her daughter close, her eyes watery. Avi placed a hand on her shoulder. Galit met Shmuel’s eyes, and they both smiled. He’ll be fine, their eyes said. Moshe always is.

  Chapter 89

  Moshe gulped air as he hit the cold water and went under. The weights on his legs dragged him down and clanked against the glass floor of the aquarium.

  He struggled against the straitjacket, but it was no use. Harry Houdini might free his hands and legs and break the surface, but Moshe was no escape artist.

  He needed to think outside the box. Pun intended! Gallows humor wouldn’t help him now. His lungs screamed for air, but the situation was hopeless. With his legs bound to the anchor, he couldn’t kick or shoulder the glass.

  Precious bubbles of air fled his mouth with the effort. How had he gotten into this mess? He had only tried to make the world a better place.

  A Karlin never quits.

  Since he could remember, he’d struggled. Build Karlin & Son. Escape Boris’s labor camp. Found the Dry Bones Society. Launch Restart. Every now and then, he’d had an epiphany. Work fewer hours, spend more time with his loved ones. But soon enough he found another cause and off he went, trying to save the world again.

  Why did he push so hard?

  “Not for them,” Avi had told him in a moment of anger when Moshe had tried to stop him from marrying Galit. “You did it to prove yourself, to please those old photos on the wall.”

  There was truth to Avi’s accusation. The tales of his forebears’ former glory had lodged in his brain and driven him onward.

  But he was tired of struggling. Let someone else step in and save the day. People thought he was the Messiah, but right now he needed a savior as much as anyone.

  He forced his eyes open in the water. Two murky figures watched him through the glass: Mandrake, his sadistic tormentor, and Henry Adams. If that was his name. Moshe had known his debtors would come calling, but he hadn’t realized that they were one and the same.

  A painful ball of injustice burst in his heart. Adams, his benefactor and ally, had manipulated Moshe for his own evil ends.

  His murderers would not face justice. They would fly off in a helicopter whether his plan beat the asteroid or not.

  His lungs burned. Every cell of his body cried out for oxygen.

  Savta Sarah was right. In the end, Death wins. No matter who you are or what you’ve done. Mos
he had done his best. He had helped others and risen high, against the odds. His father and grandfather would be proud; he’d have to find comfort in that.

  His lungs couldn’t take any more. He surrendered to his breathing reflex. His final breath escaped, and chilly water rushed into his lungs.

  Little Talya popped into his head. He’d never meet the young woman she’d become. He spotted Galit for the first time across the dance floor in Hangar 17 and he walked right up. “You’re late,” he said, the first two words he’d ever spoken to her. She hadn’t batted an eyelid. “I got here as fast as I could.”

  These past few weeks, they’d hardly talked. He had left so much unsaid. He’d tell her… he’d say…

  But his thoughts unraveled in the depths, and the world faded to black.

  Chapter 90

  The giant plucked Alex off Boris and flung him against the wall of the apartment. Alex slumped to the floor and stayed down. He waited for the thug to move closer so he could draw the final ace up his sleeve. Boris had disappeared from the couch, evening the odds but piling on the tension. The slave driver had chased Irina down the corridor, so Alex had better play that winning card soon.

  The giant lumbered forward and leaned over him. Alex sprang upward and buried his fist into the thug’s ample solar plexus. The larger man doubled over, expelling a breath that stank of peanuts, his eyes bulging with pain and surprise.

  The blow would not have disabled Igor had Alex not slipped his fingers into a set of knuckle busters. The steel rings around his knuckles focused the impact, while the rounded grip in his palm spread the opposing force away from his own fingers.

  After a lifetime at Mandrake’s side, Alex had learned a thing or two.

  He followed the blow with another, this time a jab to the face. The giant groaned and shifted sideways, but still didn’t fall. So Alex slammed both fists onto the cowed man’s spine, and he hit the tiles with a satisfying splat.