1: Recompense

"Vengeance is Mine, and retribution, In due time their foot will slip; For the day of their calamity is near, And the impending things are hastening upon them."

- Deuteronomy 32:35






God always has a plan. Man never could let Him just do His work in peace, though. No, we always interfered for our own gain and altered for our own sinful fulfillment. Man could never just go along with His will. Few care to even listen to Him anymore.


No matter. When He has finished and brought us out of this, we’ll have to listen.


I stand at the top of the Columbia Center. I always miss the rain. I used to see it and think of the sermon Father Ivans once gave. He talked about how the Great Flood was God’s baptism for earth. He said that humanity was at its peak of sin and depravity; that we wallowed in our own moral defecation. God spared Noah of His wrath so that man might start again and claim the Christian kingdom He had designed for man.


Man does have a way with abusing His design.


When the government bombed Seattle with chemical weapons all it did was to kill those that had survived and make those who did not even stronger. The beasts roam in the streets now, shouting terrible screams of incomprehensible hatred. They bulge with the chemicals that were sent to wipe them out. They are host to two devils now.


The sky rains acid. This water that falls now is not His. It’s tainted, muddied with man’s own malice. I think Egypt would want all ten of her plagues over this cruel curse. I stand under my makeshift cover as God laughs at his creation’s poor rebellion. Holes burn through the tarp, my clothes are stained with the failings of my race. He made the monsters stronger and the sky sickening to prove that this, what we are living now, is our own doing. This is our punishment against ourselves. This is the price of our insolence.


I watch the Emerald City live up to its name. The buildings are burnt with these drops of bitter guilt. The city is a canvas of this fetid rain, green with the rotting rust of this bitter downpour. I hear the screams of the damned in the streets below. They move like animals. Yet animals have more care than these fiends.


They tear at each other and rip one another into chunks. Pieces of them lie in the road, green with the sickness. The gutters are overrun with gore. But they don’t stop. They never stop. Always death surrounds them. A rabble of hate consumed in its own destruction; they’re not unlike how they were in life.


In the midst of that hellish roar, though, I hear a sound much more human and real. Fear. Anguish. Despair. Real human emotion.


A survivor.


I run to the southwest edge of the tower. Pull up my scope. She’s on the viaduct. There’s at least ten behind her.


Safety off. Vengeance on.


I send the beasts back to their maker. If this is God’s test, then I will prove my worth.


Straight through the head.


Second through the chest.


These putrid hellish nightmares aren’t going to stand in the way of my Heaven. Or hers, if I can help it.


The third takes an arm.


Fourth and fifth stain the ground with their blood.


I take their confessions. They may be at rest now.


The sixth round carves my fury through one’s chest. There is no heart left to burn, no fear left to die. The road is red with my anger where the seventh one falls.


I envy them. They are at rest now. I have given them peace. But there is no rest for the living.


Eight and nine are laid in their place, while the tenth grabs at her jeans. She falls, tangles with it. Kicks and screams. A clawing, tearing mess of survival. I can’t get the right angle. She’s struggling too much. I see its teeth go to bite her arm.


Just need to breathe. Put trust in His design for me. For her. Trust. Close my eyes and fire.


God always has a plan.