End Times

by Dave Eberhart

Copyright ©2004
ISBN: 0-87714-866-X eBook edition
ISBN: 0-87714-333-1 PB edition

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

THE AUTHOR

A native of Washington, DC, Dave Eberhart earned a Journalism degree from the American University. Before getting underway in a writing career, however, he elected to serve as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.

After three years as a line officer, he was selected for the Funded Excess Leave Law Program, graduating from the University of San Diego School of Law.

Following a career as a trial lawyer, both in and out of the military, Mr. Eberhart returned to writing, and during a five year expatriate period penned five novels while repeating the travels of author F. Scott Fitzgerald through Europe.

After a stint as an editor with APB News in New York City, he became the veterans' affairs editor and later the news editor of the domestic edition Stars and Stripes, the nation's oldest military newspaper.

Presently, he is a writer and editor for NewsMax.com magazine and Web site.

THE BOOK

Someone or something is killing evil men in Europe. Forensics indicates that the murder weapons used are relics from the Great War. A spooked President of the United States recruits a lawyer, a priest, a scientist, and a psychiatrist to give him some answers. Have the warrior-saints of the Great War risen and are they mad as hell? Is God returning in a chariot of fire to transform heaven and earth? Is a marauding cloud of dark matter disrupting time and space? Has an American serviceman simply gone berserk?

SAMPLE

Norma Block was a VAD-a member of a Volunteer Aid Detachment. VADs were a long step below the formally trained nurses the English called "sisters," but the wounded men called any woman in white with a red cross on her bosom "sister." The twenty-four-year-old VAD had come to France early in l9l5 from Voluntary Aid Detachment, Dorset 52.

In her nearly four years of service, never before had she witnessed the carnage and chaos of the few last days. In the twilight that shone red through the shattered windows of the makeshift hospital, she moved from bed to bed, washing and dressing the wounds of the soldiers. She would find their puppy-dog eyes fixed on her face, and she knew that only some powerful inner strength kept them from crying out in agony.

When it went completely dark outside, the sister who was in charge of her floor allowed her to carry a shielded candle on her rounds.

It was Good Friday.

Norma could see the Passion enacted in each soldier. There was the same awful suffering. She bent over a boy, who had only gore where his genitals had been torn off by a hot shard of shrapnel. The horrible wound had festered and gone septic during the long hours he had lain alone on the battlefield. Her hands trembled as she placed a wet dressing across his skinny thighs.

She pictured his tin hat as his crown of thorns, the pack on his back as his cross. Like Christ on Calvary, his clothes had been removed. She thought how true must be the promise of Resurrection for the pure soul of a maimed boy such as this. His body was torn and broken, but how beautiful and clean and bright his immortal soul, and how much the Savior must love him!

His eyes followed her face, but she sensed that he was in some far-off, secret place. The corners of his mouth turned up ever-so-slightly, his eyes brightened, and he sighed. Outside, the flashes of the big guns blinked through the flapping curtains.

"All right, Norma. It's time you got out of here."

It was Captain Russ James, one of the seven surgeons attached to the hospital.

"That boy's dead, sir," she said, turning from her current patient and pointing to a long shape covered by a stained sheet. The body was on a cot by the door.

"Orderly!" the captain shouted. He jerked his thumb at the bed.

"Sir, I can't leave them," she protested.

"They'll try and move them out," he assured her. "If worse comes to worst-and I think it will-the Germans will take them in charge. They may bomb our hospitals, but I don't think even they have the heart to kill wounded men in their beds."

"Captain, I'm staying."

James knew that there was no use in arguing with the stubborn VAD. He had suspected she would want to stay. "Very well then, but I'm off."

"You're not lighting out, are you, doctor?"

"Of course not!" he said, his boyish face blushing red. "Well, actually I am leaving, but I'm going up forward-to Warloy." Warloy had been a collecting and clearing station before the German push. "They tell me that the men are just dying on the ground there. The convoys can't keep up with the casualties. There's no more room here anyway. Maybe I can be of some use."

"I'm going with you, Russ."

The doctor did not know what shocked him more-her insistence on going or her use of his Christian name. Before the breakthrough, they had broken the rules against fraternization and shared dinner once at a cafe in town. James knew from that one night and from his time with her on the wards that he was in love with this angel of no-man's-land.

"I absolutely forbid it, and that's an order," he said in a voice that he hoped resonated with command authority.

"Let me get my cape and bag," she answered, hurrying to the stairs. "I'll meet you outside."

With James at the wheel of the ambulance and Norma at his side, they drove in the dark toward Warloy. Before Norma had insisted on coming, Doctor James had it in mind to bring along one of the orderlies. Norma now replaced the orderly, who had been more than happy to remain behind in relative safety.

The scene they encountered at Warloy was out of a nightmare. A dirty, bloodstained colonel ran up to their vehicle as they pulled off the road.

"Up ahead, just outside Albert," he shouted, resting bent over with his hands on his knees. "They've been hit. The bombardment knocked out a dozen ambulances. Can you help them?"

"We'll give it a go, Colonel," James said. He saw the officer looking at Norma.

"You can't bring her, you know," the colonel ordered.

"Yes, sir, I know, but try telling that to her!" James clutched the little ambulance into gear and lurched off.

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