{"id":196,"date":"2013-07-21T12:34:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T12:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/?page_id=196"},"modified":"2013-07-22T15:30:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T15:30:02","slug":"chapter-31","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/story\/chapter-31\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 31"},"content":{"rendered":"

PART III: \u00a0DAY OF UNHOLY RESURRECTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapter 31<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Darkness came over the whole land\u2026\u00a0 Jesus cried out with a loud voice, \u201c\u2026 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?<\/i>\u201d\u00a0 <\/b>(Mark 15:33-34)<\/i><\/p>\n

Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, \u201cFather, into your hands I commend my spirit.\u201d\u00a0 Having said this, he breathed his last.\u00a0 \u2026 It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning.\u00a0 (Luke 23:46, 54)<\/i><\/p>\n

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb\u2026 but when they went in, they did not find the body.\u00a0 \u2026 The men said to them, \u201cWhy do you look for the living among the dead?\u00a0 He is not here, but has risen.\u00a0 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.\u201d\u00a0 (Luke 24:1-7)<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Sunday, April 15, 2012<\/b>
\n12:00 a.m.<\/b><\/p>\n

Brian could not be sure what woke him up at midnight, but later, he would guess it was a creak from upstairs.\u00a0 Just the house settling, he might have thought.\u00a0 But he didn\u2019t remember thinking that.<\/p>\n

What he did remember was sitting up, looking around in confusion, and wondering what he was doing on the living room couch.\u00a0 Usually, when he dozed off there, it was during a game, or maybe one of the twins\u2019 cartoon movies.\u00a0 But the TV was off.\u00a0 The room was dark and empty.\u00a0 It was the middle of the night.\u00a0 Some husbands were banished to a night on the couch when their wives were upset with them.\u00a0 But he and Leighanne didn\u2019t have that kind of a marriage.\u00a0 They rarely fought, and when they did, they never went to bed angry.\u00a0 It was sort of a pact they\u2019d made as newlyweds, and they\u2019d managed to keep it for eight years now, he and Leighanne\u2026<\/p>\n

Leighanne.<\/i><\/p>\n

All of a sudden, Brian froze.\u00a0 His breath caught in his throat.\u00a0 His heart seemed to stop, mid-beat.<\/p>\n

Leighanne.<\/i><\/p>\n

Brooke.\u00a0 Bonnie.<\/i><\/p>\n

The last twenty-four hours crashed through the wall his groggy mind seemed to have built, and he remembered everything.\u00a0 First Bonnie had died, and then Brooke, and then Leighanne.\u00a0 His girls\u2026 his beautiful girls, all dead in their beds upstairs.\u00a0 A strangled noise escaped his throat, as he buried his face in his hands.\u00a0 He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and felt moisture well against them.\u00a0 He bit down on his bottom lip, struggling to hold himself together.\u00a0 It was a battle he\u2019d fought \u2013 and lost \u2013 all day.<\/p>\n

He couldn\u2019t believe an entire day had passed.\u00a0 In some ways, it had been the longest day of his life, and unquestionably the worst.\u00a0 In others, it seemed to have passed in a blur, hazy and dreamlike, as if it were some epic nightmare from which he might soon wake up.\u00a0 But though he\u2019d drifted off into restless fits of sleep and awoken several times, the reality had always come back into sharp, unforgiving focus.<\/p>\n

His family\u2026 his entire family\u2026 dead.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d been dead for some twenty hours, and normally, by now, he\u2019d have called his family, and Leighanne\u2019s, and started making funeral plans.\u00a0 He\u2019d performed enough funeral services, counseled enough grieving families, to know how that worked.<\/p>\n

But although time had passed, the world seemed to have stopped, and it wasn\u2019t just Brian\u2019s grief that made it feel that way.\u00a0 The power was out, and the phones were down, and even before that, no one had answered his calls anyway.\u00a0 Not the paramedics, or the coroner, or the police.\u00a0 Not his parents or Leighanne\u2019s, not his brother or Leighanne\u2019s sisters.\u00a0 No one had answered, and so no one had come to take care of the bodies, or of Brian.\u00a0 He\u2019d been utterly alone in the house with his dead wife and daughters for almost a full day, and there was no one around to notice or to care.<\/p>\n

Something truly horrific had happened, and its effects seemed to extend far beyond the walls of the Littrell house.\u00a0 How far, Brian did not know, but he was beginning to fear the worst.\u00a0 The rest of his family, spread along the east coast from Kentucky to Florida\u2026 were they gone, too?\u00a0 Was he the only one left?<\/p>\n

It was midnight, but Brian was suddenly wide awake with worry, wondering what to do.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t lie around in this house for much longer.\u00a0 Something had to be done.\u00a0 If there was no one to take care of his family, then he would.\u00a0 He would have to.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t just leave them lying there in their beds to rot.\u00a0 They deserved much more than that, a proper burial and funeral, at the very least.<\/p>\n

He struggled to his feet, grabbed his flashlight, and paced a circle around the living room before making his way toward the stairs.\u00a0 He heard a creak as he started up, not from the stairs, but from somewhere overhead.\u00a0 Just the house settling<\/i>, he thought.\u00a0 He remembered thinking it that time.<\/p>\n

He passed the closed door to the twins\u2019 room and stopped outside his own.\u00a0 He took a deep breath before turning the knob.\u00a0 When he entered the room, he shut off his flashlight, not wanting to look just yet, but the fragmented moonbeams streaming through the window blinds provided enough light for him to see the shape of his wife, lying on her back, as he\u2019d left her, in the center of their bed.\u00a0 He flicked the flashlight on again as he went to the night table on his side of the bed and opened the drawer to retrieve his Bible.\u00a0 Then he sank down into the armchair in the corner of the room, the Bible in his lap, and aimed his light at its worn, leather cover.<\/p>\n

Brian owned several Bibles, one from his Confirmation into the church as a teenager, another from his graduation from Bible college, one a gift from his congregation, which he used during his sermons, but of all of them, this was his favorite.\u00a0 It was the one he kept at his bedside and read from before turning in at night.\u00a0 Its pages were dog-eared, its spine creased from being cracked open so many times.\u00a0 It had belonged to his mother, hers since her own childhood, and she had read to him from it when he was a child, and prayed over it in his hospital room, when he was five years old and seemingly on his deathbed.\u00a0 She had passed it on to him a few years after that, and though still very much a child, Brian had listened in earnest as she\u2019d explained its significance to him.\u00a0 \u201cTake care of it,\u201d<\/i> she\u2019d told him, \u201cbut use it.\u00a0 It\u2019ll give you strength.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0 And he had, and so had it.<\/p>\n

Now he opened it slowly and turned not to the twenty-third Psalm, the most classic of funeral readings, but to First Corinthians.\u00a0 He would do two separate services, he decided then, one for his wife and one for his daughters.\u00a0 For his daughters, he would read from Ecclesiastes, the passage that begins, \u201cFor everything there is a season\u2026\u201d<\/i>\u00a0 But for his wife, for Leighanne, no passage fit better than First Corinthians, chapter thirteen, verses four through eight.<\/p>\n

Though he turned to this passage, faintly highlighted by his mother in her young adulthood, Brian did not need his flashlight to read the words.\u00a0 He did need to read the words at all.\u00a0 He knew them by heart, had recited them at countless wedding ceremonies and heard them spoken at his own.\u00a0 He turned his light now onto Leighanne, and when the ring of golden light encircled her face, brightening the gray pallor of death, washing out the lesions of disease, she looked somehow beautiful again.<\/p>\n

The light wavered in his unsteady hand, and his voice shook as he cleared his throat and began, \u201cLove is patient\u2026 \u00a0Love is kind\u2026 Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.\u201d\u00a0 <\/i>He paused, swallowing hard, and then he continued thickly, \u201cIt does not insist on its own way.\u00a0 It is not irritable or resentful.\u00a0 It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.\u201d\u00a0 As he found strength in the familiar words, so did his voice, and it was clear and steady as he finished with conviction.\u00a0 \u201cIt bears all things\u2026 believes all things\u2026 hopes all things\u2026 endures all things.\u00a0 Love\u2026 never ends.\u201d<\/p>\n

He drew in a breath and held it for a few seconds before releasing it slowly.\u00a0 Then he stood, closing the Bible in his hand, and crossed the room to the bed.\u00a0 He set the flashlight down on the mattress, still on, and the circle of light it projected onto the wall behind the bed brightened the room enough for him to see.\u00a0 He leaned down and kissed his wife\u2019s dry, cracked lips.\u00a0 \u201cI love you,\u201d he whispered, and he sank to his knees beside the bed, clasping his hands together, squeezing his eyes shut.\u00a0 Poised in prayer, he began to recite the twenty-third Psalm by heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.\u00a0 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.\u00a0 He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name\u2019s sake.\u00a0 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The mattress creaked, but Brian assumed it was just his elbows, bearing down, and continued, \u201cFor thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The bed moved again, and this time, Brian opened his eyes and looked up.<\/p>\n

Leighanne was looking back at him.<\/p>\n

He gasped and rocked back on his heels, blinking in shock.\u00a0 Surely, his tired eyes were just playing tricks on him.\u00a0 He looked again.\u00a0 No\u2026 he wasn\u2019t just seeing things.\u00a0 Her eyes were open.\u00a0 Only they didn\u2019t look like her eyes.\u00a0 Even in the dim light, he could see that they were vacant and cloudy, no longer blue.\u00a0 He looked away with a shudder and released the breath that had caught in his throat.<\/p>\n

Just a spasm of some sort.\u00a0 Nothing to get upset over.\u00a0 He swallowed hard and forced himself to look back, extending his thumb and forefinger to close her eyes again.\u00a0 He wanted to remember them the way they had been in life:\u00a0 vivid blue, like the sky on a clear day, sparkling along with her smile.\u00a0 A lump of sadness clogged his throat once more, as he realized he would never see her smile again.<\/p>\n

He reached out to touch her face\u2026<\/p>\n

In a violent thrash of covers, he saw her arm fly up off the bed.\u00a0 Her hand, stiff and hooked like claws, latched onto his wrist in a grip that was shockingly strong.\u00a0 He cried out in disbelief and horror as his dead wife raised her head from the pillows, an animalistic growl expelling from her chest.\u00a0 Instinctively, he tried to pull away, as her vice-like grip wrenched his arm towards her mouth, which was wide open, her teeth bared.\u00a0 He struggled and finally yanked away from her grasp, falling backwards with the force of the pull.<\/p>\n

He got quickly to his hands and knees, then scrambled to his feet.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t able to think clearly, as adrenaline took over his body, but somewhere in the back of his mind, the voice of reason seemed to say, This is a nightmare.\u00a0 This has to be a nightmare.\u00a0 Wake up!\u00a0 Why won\u2019t you wake up?<\/i><\/p>\n

He hesitated just long enough to see Leighanne stumble out of bed, lurching toward him with her arms outstretched, fingers splayed, and then he ducked into the bathroom, slamming the door shut in her face.\u00a0 His clammy fingers fumbled with the lock, slipping off the brass several times before finally securing it, effectively barricading himself in.<\/p>\n

Gasping for breath, more out of shock than exertion, he staggered back and sat down hard on the toilet seat.\u00a0 He doubled over, putting his head between his knees, and tried to collect his thoughts.\u00a0 This can\u2019t be real<\/i>, he thought, but even as the words formed in his mind, he could hear fists beating senselessly on the door, long fingernails scratching at the wood.<\/p>\n

With his head down, his ragged breathing sounded extra loud, and even his heartbeat was amplified in his ears, drumming out the erratic cadence of raw terror.\u00a0 The bathroom was pitch black, but for the faint glimmer of moonlight through the beveled glass of the lone window.\u00a0\u00a0 He\u2019d left his flashlight behind in the bedroom, yet somehow, incredibly, his Bible was still clutched in his left hand.\u00a0 He squeezed it, feeling the girth of its pages between his fingers.<\/p>\n

Then he stood, on shaky legs, shoved the Bible into the waistband of his pants, and faced the locked door.\u00a0 He could still hear what had been his wife pawing at the other side like an animal, trying to claw her way in.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t sure what to call her now, but that\u2026 creature\u2026 out there was not Leighanne.<\/p>\n

What exactly she was, he would wonder later.\u00a0 At the moment, the more immediate question in his mind was, What do I do now?<\/i><\/p>\n

The door rattled on its hinges as her hands thumped against it.\u00a0 If she kept at it, he feared she\u2019d force the lock, or maybe even beat the door down.\u00a0 And if she managed to get in, what then?<\/p>\n

He looked around wildly.\u00a0 There was the window\u2026 should he try to escape out of it?\u00a0 He was on the second floor and terrified of heights.\u00a0 How would he get down?\u00a0 He\u2019d worry about that later, he decided.\u00a0 He could already hear the wood of the door starting to splinter, and if he didn\u2019t make an escape route for himself, he\u2019d have to face whatever was behind it.<\/p>\n

With the burst of strength only adrenaline can provide, he wrenched the towel bar out of the wall.\u00a0 Screws clattered to the floor.\u00a0 He held the bar in his hand like a sledge hammer.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t nearly as heavy, but it was high-quality brass.\u00a0 It would be enough to break the window glass if he used the right force.\u00a0 He choked up on his grip and brought the bar back, over his head.\u00a0 With a guttural cry, he swung it with all his might, down and through the window.<\/p>\n

The cloudy glass exploded outward, showering the roof below.\u00a0 As it did, the bathroom door banged inward.\u00a0 Brian turned in shock to find that she\u2019d succeeded in breaking it apart.\u00a0 Her slack face showed no expression, triumph or otherwise, and she did not hesitate before staggering into the room, tripping over part of the door.\u00a0 Brian saw a splintered piece of wood tear into her bare leg and winced, but when he looked again, the gaping slash across her skin was bloodless.<\/p>\n

He gulped, tightening his grip on the towel bar once more.\u00a0 There was no time to squeeze out the window.\u00a0 He reacted instinctively, and when she came at him, he swung.\u00a0 The bar caught her under the chin, throwing her head back with a sickening clang as it ricocheted off her jaw.\u00a0 She stumbled backward, but didn\u2019t fall, her head rebounding quickly.\u00a0 He swung again, this time connecting with the side of her face.\u00a0 The force was enough to send her head spinning as far as it would go, but not enough to take her down.\u00a0 Again, she lunged at him, and this time, he used the bar like a stake, thrusting it forward with a jabbing motion, instead of a swing.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d meant to hit her chest, but at the last minute, she crouched, like a cat preparing to spring, and his aim proved high.\u00a0 The end of the bar soared into her face, plunging straight through one of her eye sockets.\u00a0 The force of his motion sank it so far through her head, he felt the resistance as it bumped against the back of her skull.<\/p>\n

He let out a choked cry of horror and revulsion and immediately let go.\u00a0 Without his leverage holding her upright, she toppled backwards and fell with a tremendous crash as her dead weight hit the wood-strewn floor, the towel bar still protruding from her right eye.\u00a0 She twitched once and then went completely still.<\/p>\n

Retching, Brian fell to his knees in front of the toilet and tore up the seat.\u00a0 Doubling over, he vomited into the bowl, again and again.\u00a0 Finally, only dry heaves racked his body, and eventually, those died away, leaving him weak and trembling.\u00a0 Somehow, he found the will to climb back to his feet, if only so that he could get out of the room and away from the desecrated remains of what had once been his wife.<\/p>\n

He found he was afraid to go back into the bedroom, back through the house, and so he climbed out the window instead.\u00a0 He barely felt the shards of broken glass cut into the soles of his bare feet as he hit the roof of the back porch, nor did he feel the usual fear of heights squeeze his heart.\u00a0 He felt numb, utterly numb, and the adrenaline coursing through his system made him both reckless and brave.\u00a0 He padded across the rooftop, knelt at the gutter, and lowered himself over the edge, climbing swiftly down the trellis he had built for Leighanne along one side of the porch.\u00a0 It cracked and started to splinter beneath his weight, but it managed to hold him until he could safely jump down.<\/p>\n

He skidded on the dew-soaked grass that cushioned his landing, his feet nearly sliding out from under him.\u00a0 He got his balance and paused to look around, beginning to collect himself.\u00a0 The night was cool and silent, but for the rustle of wind in the trees and the low hum of crickets.\u00a0 He crept around the side of the house, pausing every few steps to listen, his senses heightened to their full capacity.\u00a0 In the front yard, he looked up and down his street, but saw nothing.\u00a0 Deep down, he knew there was no one left to help him.\u00a0 His neighbors\u2019 houses had been dark and quiet all day.<\/p>\n

His only option was to get away, as far as he could go.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t going to stay here.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 But that would mean going back into the house for his car keys\u2026<\/p>\n

It ashamed him to be afraid, afraid of setting foot in his own house, afraid of\u2026<\/p>\n

Of what?<\/p>\n

Deep down, he knew, but he couldn\u2019t bring himself to articulate what that last fear was.\u00a0 He felt sure he\u2019d killed what had once been Leighanne, if \u201ckilled\u201d was the proper word for it, but another worry nagged at the back of his mind.<\/p>\n

He would just have to face it.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t stand out here on the front lawn, waiting and wondering, worrying about what else might come for him.\u00a0 He sprung into action, ducking back into the house through the front door, which he\u2019d thankfully left unlocked, because\u2026 well, who had he needed to lock it from?\u00a0 As far as he could tell, the rest of his neighborhood had met the same fate as his family.<\/p>\n

The same fate\u2026?\u00a0 With a shudder, he wondered how true that would prove to be.<\/p>\n

He hurried about in the house, keeping to the downstairs, collecting his keys, wallet, and an extra flashlight.\u00a0 He tucked his phone into his pocket, too, just in case, and put on shoes.\u00a0 He was wearing only a pair of pajama pants and a gray tanktop, now blood-spattered, but he was not about to go back up to the bedroom to change.\u00a0 He grabbed a windbreaker from the front hall closet and threw that on over the sleeveless shirt.<\/p>\n

He was standing in the kitchen, just about to go out into the garage, where both cars were parked, and put up the door manually, when he heard a familiar creak from upstairs.\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t just the house settling.\u00a0 He knew this sound all too well, was used to hearing it every morning as he helped Leighanne with breakfast.<\/p>\n

It was the sound of footsteps on the landing.<\/p>\n

Brian froze, torn between running on to the garage and never looking back, or going to look.\u00a0 A part of him didn\u2019t want to see, didn\u2019t want to know, but he had to.\u00a0 He had to know.<\/p>\n

Instinctively, he looked about for something with which to arm himself.\u00a0 His gaze fell to rest on the wooden knife rack, which held Leighanne\u2019s expensive set of cooking knives erect, handles up, in increasing size from the smallest paring knife to the large meat cleaver.\u00a0 With a sick feeling in his gut, he reached for the meat cleaver.<\/p>\n

He held it behind his back as he tiptoed across the kitchen floor.\u00a0 In view of the stairs, he stopped.\u00a0 Feeling faint, he stared.<\/p>\n

There, on the staircase, stood his two little girls in their brightly-colored pajamas, their blonde hair tangled from sleep.\u00a0 At least they looked like his little girls\u2026 at first.\u00a0 But as they slouched down the steps towards him, moving in a strange, stiff-legged way, he could see that they weren\u2019t his daughters at all.\u00a0 Their dead, gray skin and eyes gave them a ghostly appearance, though he was quite sure they were solid, as the woman upstairs had been.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t smile, didn\u2019t speak; their faces were utterly blank and expressionless.<\/p>\n

But they sensed his presence.<\/p>\n

He knew it in the way their shuffling feet picked up their pace, as they shambled awkwardly down the remaining stairs, their arms flailing into each other as they reached out for him.\u00a0 Brian took a few tentative steps back, trying to brace himself for what he was about to do.\u00a0 For what he knew he must<\/i> do.<\/p>\n

\u201cLord, forgive me,\u201d he whispered, and he closed his eyes briefly.<\/p>\n

After that, he shut his thoughts off.\u00a0 What happened next was pure reaction.\u00a0 When he opened his eyes, they were lurching towards him, dragging their toes on the hardwood floor.\u00a0 The creature which had been Brooke pushed ahead of Bonnie, and when she was within an arm\u2019s length of him, Brian whipped the meat cleaver out from behind his back and slashed the air.\u00a0 The sharp, silver blade cut through more than just air, and Brian felt the spray of blood as something heavy hit the floor.\u00a0 The seven-year-old body of his daughter, the body he had helped to create, collapsed.<\/p>\n

Its twin staggered over it, unfeeling, unnoticing, its cloudy, bulging eyes fixated on Brian.\u00a0 For the second time, he raised the cleaver.\u00a0 For the second time, he shut his eyes and swung.\u00a0 His aim was true, and he cringed as he felt the blade meet its target.\u00a0 It sunk in deep before the resistance became too much, and the handle slipped from his hand.\u00a0 His eyes flew open just in time to see Bonnie\u2019s body fall, Leighanne\u2019s giant meat cleaver embedded in her small skull.<\/p>\n

He spun away before she hit the floor, and when he heard the sick thump she made against the hardwood, the kind of thump that had always brought him running in a panic to see which twin was hurt, he dropped to his hands and knees and began to retch again, though there was nothing left to bring up.<\/p>\n

It took him several tries to get up, for the strength had left his arms and legs, which were shaking too uncontrollably to support him.\u00a0 Finally, he managed to climb to his feet, though he hung on to the wall for support as he dragged himself back into the kitchen.\u00a0 Later, he would not remember gathering up the few possessions he had collected, or cranking up the garage door, or even backing the car out of the drive, but somehow, he did all of these things.\u00a0 Autopilot.\u00a0 He was acting on autopilot.<\/p>\n

When the shock wore off, when he eventually came back into his right mind, Brian found himself behind the wheel of his car, weaving slowly down the freeway.\u00a0 How long he\u2019d been driving, he didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 How he\u2019d gotten out of Marietta, he didn\u2019t recall.\u00a0 The highway was scattered with cars, some parked on the shoulder, others stalled or crashed in the middle of lanes.\u00a0 Now that he was aware again, he welcomed the obstacles, welcomed the need to concentrate on the road.\u00a0 He could not bring himself to think of what he\u2019d seen and done at home.<\/p>\n

He put down the windows, letting the night wind whip through the car and lift up his hair.\u00a0 He hoped it would waft the stench of death and blood from his clothes.\u00a0\u00a0 He flicked on the interior light and saw that he was covered with it.<\/p>\n

Then he saw the Bible, his mother\u2019s Bible, resting on the seat next to him.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t remember that he\u2019d still had it wedged in his pants when he\u2019d left, that it had been pressed up against his back the entire time, but at some point, maybe when he\u2019d first gotten into the car, he had pulled it out and set it there.\u00a0 He looked at it now, and for the first time in his life, he felt not comfort or strength, but revulsion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere were You?\u201d he croaked, his voice hoarse and bitter.\u00a0 \u201cWhere were You when I asked You to bring Your children home and watch over their souls?\u00a0 It\u2019s all I asked, and where were You?\u00a0 You weren\u2019t there.\u00a0 You weren\u2019t there.\u00a0 You don\u2019t exist\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

He picked up the Bible, felt its weight in his hand, and thought about how much meaning he had once found in it.\u00a0 He had set out to live his life by this book.\u00a0 And for what?<\/p>\n

Nothing.<\/p>\n

It was meaningless.\u00a0 Everything in it, everything he\u2019d ever believed in, was a lie.\u00a0 His life, as he\u2019d known it, had been nothing but a lie.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re dead,\u201d he whispered, holding the Bible up to the window, letting the wind rustle its tattered pages.\u00a0 \u201cIf You ever did exist, You\u2019re dead now.\u00a0 Just like everyone else.\u00a0 Dead to me\u2026 dead to the world.\u00a0 You\u2019re dead!\u201d<\/p>\n

He held the sacred book, the heirloom from his mother, once his most valued possession, up to his chest.\u00a0 Then, with one, sharp flick of the wrist, he flung it out the window.\u00a0 He watched as it bounced into the gravel on the shoulder and then out of sight, shrouded by the darkness.\u00a0 Then he floored the accelerator and sped on down the freeway, never looking back.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

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PART III: \u00a0DAY OF UNHOLY RESURRECTION Chapter 31 Darkness came over the whole land\u2026\u00a0 Jesus cried out with a loud voice, \u201c\u2026 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u201d\u00a0 (Mark 15:33-34) Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":31,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/196\/revisions\/377"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}