The Plague

Mickey Smith

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666794540
• Print ISBN:
  9781666736366
  9781666794533

A worldwide plague kills almost a billion people across the globe in an instant. This sets off a chain of events that was foretold thousands of years ago, but there are very few who draw the connection between the prophecies of the past and the events of the day. The ones who do realize that the next seven years are going to be the hardest years of their lives. This is their story.

Chapter One

It’s eerie how disasters happen on days that are calm and almost unremarkable. Such was the case back in the early twentieth century for a city in Japan.

Over 400 children went to Honkawa Elementary School in Hiroshima, Japan while adults went to work. It was a day just like any other day until “Little Boy” came to town.

In that one day over one hundred thousand Japanese men, women, and children lost their lives.

Today was destined to be another day of tragedy like that day in Japan many, many years ago. Only today would be a day of worldwide tragedy.

This day started all over the world just like any other day. In China, people would be finishing up their day in a few hours and heading home while in the central USA it was 6:30 the next morning.

Mike Reynolds was having his first cup of coffee sitting down at his kitchen table in Avondale, Georgia, located just a few miles east of Atlanta. He and his wife Julie bought this home a little more than five years ago, located in a quiet neighborhood in what he considered the perfect location. He was an EMT and worked for a company called Life Express in Atlanta, so living in Avondale put him close enough to work without having to live in Atlanta proper.

Life Express operated differently than most ambulance companies. Where most companies worked on a schedule where their EMTs would work twenty-four to forty-eight hours at a time and then have forty-eight hours off, Life Express put their people on rotating eight-hour shifts that would run a week at a time.

This week, Mike was on third shift, which ran from eleven at night to seven the next morning. Most companies called that a graveyard shift, but the people at Life Express refused to do that. Being in the profession of saving lives, no one could bring themselves to call it that, so they just called it third shift.

Mike’s wife, Julie, came into the kitchen just as he was putting his coffee cup down on the table. She leaned over and gave him a kiss.

“Good morning, Baby,” she said.

He smiled at her and said, “It is now.”

“Sarah called last night, and she’s going to come over and have dinner with us tonight,” Julie told him. Sarah was their twenty-year-old daughter who was currently in college and had been living on her own for almost a year.

“Awesome. It’s been too long since we’ve seen her.”

“Yeah, I know. I mean, today is already Tuesday, and we haven’t seen her since we were at church Sunday. That’s almost three days. I don’t know how we’ve survived,” Julie said with a smirk.

“Laugh all you want, but she’s our only child and I’m still having to adjust to this new phase of life.”

At the same time in downtown Atlanta, columnist Paige Summers was waking up to a slightly different theme.

“The sun’s up Aunt Paige! It’s time to get our day started!” Paige’s niece, Lilly, yelled while jumping up and down on her bed. Paige’s sister Amanda stood in the bedroom doorway with a smirk on her face and a cup of coffee in her hand.

Paige reached over to one of the pillows and covered her face. Speaking through the pillow with a muffled voice, she said, “Go away, Lilly. I’m hibernating.” She reached over and felt where Lilly was and tickled her in the ribs. Lilly squealed with laughter.

Amanda spoke up. “Okay, Lilly, let’s go get some breakfast while Aunt Paige gets up. Paige, I’ll have you a cup of coffee sitting on the breakfast table, so don’t take too long or it’ll get cold.” Lilly and her mom left the room and Paige rolled over on her stomach.

Amanda had moved in with Paige when she was pregnant with Lilly. She had just found out that her boyfriend had been cheating on her and wanted to sever all ties with him. Moving in with her sister seemed like a good answer for them both. Lilly was now five years old, and the boyfriend had been out of the picture since before Lilly was born. The arrangement worked out well for both sisters. With both of them working, they were able to afford a bigger apartment in a nicer neighborhood. It’s difficult for anyone who’s a single parent in Atlanta to make ends meet, but with both incomes, they were able to get along comfortably.

Paige was a journalist for a local magazine while Amanda was a nurse at Piedmont Hospital.

After a few minutes, Paige got out of bed, put on her robe, and walked into the kitchen where, as promised, a cup of coffee was waiting for her.

This was part of Paige’s normal morning routine. After coffee and breakfast, Paige would go to work while Amanda stayed home with Lilly. After Paige got home, they almost always ate together, and then Amanda would head to the hospital while Paige watched Lilly.

“So, what’s up at the magazine for you today?” Amanda asked Paige during breakfast.

“My latest column about the corruption with the election process should be back from the editor this morning. So, most of my morning will be spent sprucing it up before I send it out for production, and then I’ll start researching my next story.”

Paige was one of those rare people who truly enjoyed what she did for a living. It wasn’t just a job-- it was something she felt compelled to do.

Back at Mike’s house, the day was beginning to get started for real. Mike decided to cut the grass while his wife Julie went to the grocery store to get some things for the evening’s dinner.

The house had what Mike called a postage-stamp yard that was about a quarter of an acre. At that size, Mike could not bring himself to buy a riding mower, as most of his neighbors had done. Instead, he used a push mower that he kept in a metal shed in the backyard along with other tools. He always started with the mower on the bulk of the yard, and then when that was done, he would move to the gas-powered trimmer for the edges.

Julie had left for the grocery store before he got started, and by the time he had moved to the trimmer, he saw her car pulling back in the driveway. It took him less than an hour to get the trimming done, and as soon as he stepped out of the tool shed, he saw Julie sitting at the patio table with a large glass of iced tea waiting for him.

He smiled and walked over to where she was. “So, what did you and Sarah decide for dinner tonight?”

“I’m making homemade pizza and Sarah is bringing over cheesecake. And what are your plans for the rest of the day?”

He took a sip of tea. It felt good going down. “I’ve got some more things to get done around the house today. Once I’m done, I figure to take a shower and then maybe take a nap before Sarah gets here. It always takes me a couple of nights to get acclimated to the third shift for some reason.”

“That’s because God designed us to be diurnal and not nocturnal. This shift goes against His natural order. It’s a good thing they give you three days off between shifts, so you can re-acclimate yourself!”

The rest of the day went pretty much the way Mike expected it to go. Once he laid down for his nap, he could feel himself getting tired. Even though this was the first night of the third shift for him, he was so used to the routine that he nat...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen
• Chapter Sixteen
• Chapter Seventeen
• Chapter Eighteen
• Chapter Nineteen
• Chapter Twenty
• Chapter Twenty-One
• Chapter Twenty-Two
• Chapter Twenty-Three
• Chapter Twenty-Four
• Epilogue