The Multitude Read online

  THE MULTITUDE

  by

  J. M. Fraser

  THE MULTITUDE

  Copyright © 2019 by Joseph Fraser

  Cover art by Elle J Rossi

  Interior formatting by Author E.M.S.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing by the author.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America by J.M. Fraser

  ISBN: 978-1-946464-06-4

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  THE MULTITUDE

  Copyright

  A MODERN-DAY RESURRECTION

  PART 1: GENESIS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  PART 1I: WATER INTO WINE

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  PART III: THE RAPTURE

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  EPILOGUE

  Did You Enjoy THE MULTITUDE?

  Excerpt from FAULTY BONES

  Excerpt from THE WITCH OF THE HILLS

  About the Author

  A MODERN-DAY RESURRECTION

  April 12, 2020

  Warden Spencer, flanked by two guards, gaped at a boulder a short distance from the Subway Killer’s cell. Scrapes in the floor suggested this eight-foot ball of granite had somehow been dragged from directly in front of the cell door to its current resting place. A boulder having no reason to be anywhere near the prison compound, let alone inside of it.

  And the thin, bearded prisoner who’d pushed a woman to her death seven or eight years ago?

  Gone.

  PART I: GENESIS

  CHAPTER 1

  Far western Virtus, twenty days after harvest moon, 3414

  (September 29, 2013, in our universe)

  Quintus Laskaris peered through his spyglass at a smoking beast in the distance. White steam poured from the cylindrical metal chimney of the huge, barrel-shaped machine. The wheels beneath gripped two endless strips of metal stretching in parallel lines all the way to the shimmering horizon. The enemy’s clever inventors had come up with a way to neutralize the uneven terrain.

  If the rumors were true, ten thousand slaves had worked the project, spiking those metal strips to wooden slats every few feet over an incredible distance, beginning in this scrubby desert where Nirvana’s frontier settlements encroached upon Virtus’s rightful land and traveling west to the distant mountains and then to the sea. Many had frozen to death in the highest passes when the winter blizzards set in, but slaves were replaceable. The job got finished at that terrible price.

  Quintus shuddered. The Nirvana nation was renowned for its violence and heartlessness. Worse than his own countrymen. And they’d soon be coming in force. Several carts waited behind the beast, strung together like beads on a chain. They’d be used to transport goods, weapons, and soldiers faster than a horse and without ever tiring.

  Somewhere behind him a twig snapped, jolting him with enough adrenaline to bring a metallic taste to his tongue. He shifted from his prone position to a crouch and whipped a dagger from the sheath at his ankle.

  “Steady now.” A heavy-set, bearded soldier stepped from behind one of the scattered boulders Quintus had been using for cover. “We’re on the same side, last I checked.”

  Quintus relaxed. He and the lieutenant had a good history. “Maybe we should reconsider our loyalties, Bertramus. We’ll be outmuscled soon.” He handed over his spyglass.

  The lieutenant squinted into it and let out a low whistle. “What is it?”

  “They call it a locomotive.”

  “And you’re here to steal the plans?”

  “We’re a little late for that.” Quintus looked his dusty companion up and down, then shifted his attention to a small group of soldiers waiting on horseback just beyond the boulders. “Since when do we exiled scouts get reinforcements?”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Bertramus said. “The king sent for you.”

  An old wound on Quintus’s thigh throbbed as it always did when the weather changed or his nerves frayed or his brother tracked him down. “What could Albus possibly want with me?”

  “Come east and find out.” The lieutenant delivered the line with a chuckle in his voice, diminishing any concern the king might be up to worse than his typical random foolishness.

  “Leave my post and journey for a week? Just tell me now.”

  “He wants to surprise you.” Bertramus crossed his arms. “I’m under strict orders to keep my damned mouth shut.”

  “Wonderful.” Quintus looked to the heavens for escape. If only he could fly like a bird to a land so distant Albus would never find him. Soar to the recent comet so bright in the evening sky he could almost see a smudge of it now, there, twenty degrees to the right of the midday sun. He pointed.

  Bertramus followed his gaze and grunted. “Another day without a cloud. Will rain never come?”

  “Let’s not dwell on the weather. Aren’t daytime stars bad omens? This might be the beginning of a story we won’t like.”

  The lieutenant clapped him on the shoulder with a heavy hand. “Who can say where a story begins? Are you a scribe or a soldier?”

  * * *

  The story began here, lieutenant, sixty-eight years earlier.

  Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

  The angel Gabriella likened Asura Ito to a delicate porcelain doll. Beautiful. Vulnerable. Adored. The twelve-year-old prodigy sat on the opposite bench, across the flagstone path, with hands folded, colorful pins in her hair, the girl’s blue-and-white kimono interpreting the sky.

  While Asura seemed like an ornament stolen from the Japanese garden on the other side of the wall, Gabriella strived to be no more remarkable than a stepping stone. She’d assumed her preferred appearance as a child, darkening her otherwise blonde hair and reshaping her eyes to blend in. She wore a plain kimono. Her hairstyle didn’t sport a single pin—a simple strategy to fool the pilgrims into underestimating her as an ordinary friend, perhaps the girl’s poorer cousin, if they noticed her at all. Otherwise, they might have been unsettled by her timeless eyes. Angels, even those as amazing as she knew herself to be, were most effective when whispering their suggestions from the shadows.

  The pilgrims had already started forming a ragged line a few yards away, but Asura didn’t seem ready for them. The girl brushed nonexistent wrinkles from her kimono, traced a fingertip across the butterfly tattoo on the underside of her wrist, then moved her hands to her head and fussed with some loose strands of hair. Nerves, probably. Too many visitors seeking miracles day after day.

  “Asura.” Gabriella motioned beyond the pilgrims, farther down the path, where stone blocks had been fashioned into a circular entrance in the center of the garden wall. A great eye one might pass through, or a clock, without hands. Th
is gateway framed the fairyland of rocks, shrubs, and blossoming flowers on the other side. Koi darted after insects at the surface of a pond, creating ripples with each thrust. The scent of lilacs wafted in the breeze. “Look into the garden to calm yourself.”

  “I did, but the weight of the world’s secrets still crushes my serenity.” Although Asura delivered her odd comment with a tremble in her voice, she managed a half smile as the first pilgrim approached her.

  An old woman came forward, dropped an apple into Asura’s basket, and touched the girl’s hair. The woman moved on in deference to the others, but Asura held up a hand to stop the next from approaching.

  Gabriella probed Asura’s mind and beheld a wondrous sight, a treasure chest overflowing with impossible information—the precise locations of the world’s oil deposits, as well as its gold, silver, diamonds, and uranium. “How did you learn these things?”

  Asura shrugged as if the priceless knowledge she’d gained were no more important than an old coin found in the street. “A girl told me about them in a dream.”

  Only someone from the distant future could share such knowledge. Perhaps an angel who learned these things after mankind had fully mapped the world. An angel traveling backward through the vast, timeless World of Mortal Dreams to visit Asura in her sleep. And yet, “We messengers are forbidden from allowing our secrets to escape the deepest realm of slumber. You shouldn’t have remembered them.”

  Asura’s smile widened. Mischief sparkled in her eyes. “Is this rule carved in stone?”

  From the mouths of children! Gabriella probed deeper into the girl’s mind but reached an impenetrable wall. “What are you hiding from me?”

  “Perhaps the rules for a game.” Asura motioned another visitor forward. The line of pilgrims curved out of the wall’s shadows into the glow of the early-morning sun. An air-raid siren blared, but no one looked up. Bombings happened in places other than this.

  A gray-haired man approached and bowed his head. “I have pain in these old bones. Heal me.”

  “I am not a miracle worker. Rise above your handicap.”

  Something didn’t seem right with Asura. She was a miracle worker in the sense she knew how to trick people with remarkable illusions. Why undermine her potential dominance by claiming to be ordinary?

  A chilly wind swept out of the garden, spurring dead leaves into broken flight. Something wasn’t right at all.

  The man moved on, and a woman came forward. Asura held up a hand to again slow the homage any messiah worth her salt should have hungered to receive. “I have a ball in the garden, Gabriella. We could chalk the path for our game.”

  “You’ll disappoint these visitors. They’re your friends.”

  “No, they aren’t.”

  Gabriella had been planning to broach the subject of an alliance, but too many questions now hung in the air. “Asura, tell me about this girl you dreamed about.”

  Asura reached into the basket for the apple, pulled it out, took a bite, chewed. The gleam in her eyes intensified. “She told me I should ask you a question.”

  “Yes?”

  “What would happen if we dropped a pebble into the garden pond?”

  “Nothing. A ripple would form but fade away.”

  Asura leaned across the path and offered the apple.

  “Thank you.” Gabriella bit where the girl had bitten. Perhaps her sense of foreboding had been misplaced. She plunged ahead with her proposal. “I want to work with you, Asura. You can’t imagine how strong we could be together.”

  “Strong?” Asura met Gabriella’s eye with the unsettling expression of one who truly did know all the secrets. The breeze sharpened, stirring a murmur among the pilgrims, some of whom had to chase their hats. Asura’s face remained a mask of innocence despite the unsettling show of power she’d just unleashed. The breeze hadn’t strengthened to these gusts on its own.

  Gabriella swallowed. “I’m suggesting we could do more than stir the weather.”

  “Tell me,” the girl said.

  No. The morning had turned unlucky. A day earlier, ten minutes earlier, Gabriella might have revealed her desire to subjugate the dithering masses. After two horrible wars within forty years of each other, who couldn’t read God’s message that mankind needed better leadership? But Asura had let down her mask, revealing wisdom and strength far beyond the simple, frail saint she pretended to be. The girl couldn’t be manipulated.

  Feigned altruism was best for now. “We might save mankind, Asura.”

  A monarch butterfly landed on Asura’s knee. She puffed her cheeks and blew the insect back into flight. “My dream visitor said your pride is too great.”

  This damnable dream visitor was far too perceptive. Gabriella groped for the best response. “Perhaps it is, but a girl who can remain humble despite learning the world’s secrets might help me overcome this flaw.”

  “The question I asked has two parts.”

  Gabriella cringed but kept the smile pasted on her face. “Ask the other.”

  “What would happen if we dropped a boulder into the pond?”

  Dozens of fluttering butterflies grabbed Gabriella’s attention. They’d abandoned their randomness to form a V in the circular gateway, becoming the missing hands of the clock she imagined earlier. They followed a remarkable choreography, rotating from right to left, the long hand moving so fast it lapped the shorter one, mimicking a clock spinning backwards.

  Gabriella couldn’t imagine mindless insects flocking in such a manner by chance.

  Had God spoken to her at last? Her heart pounded.

  She’d never heard His voice. Or if she had, He’d spoken too long ago for her to remember. But she wouldn’t give up. She’d been searching the shadows for heavenly signs all her life. Anything out of the ordinary could be a message, anything mathematics failed to explain.

  A flash incinerated the butterflies, the garden, and the amazing Asura, bright and alive one moment only to melt into a shadow on her stone bench the next.

  “Nooooooo!” The blast overwhelmed even Gabriella, its flames scorching her lungs and its winds twirling her into their mighty vortex.

  Other screams lifted above the roar. Ninety thousand strong. A collective wail surely piercing the collective subconscious of every living thing.

  Then silence.

  Gabriella gasped for breath from the top of the mushroom cloud.

  This couldn’t be happening. She shut her eyes tight, reopened them…closed them again.

  How to reconcile such a horror? Yes, mankind’s long, twisting road out of Eden had been pitted by war and brutality. But she’d seen it repaved numerous times, through inventions, brilliant works of art, the births of major religions, the spread of civilization around the planet.

  All leading to this?

  Impossible.

  Hiroshima lay in burning ruins far below. An entire city. What had been the point of Abraham? Or Noah, Moses, Jesus? Why had prophet after prophet, and even a messiah, failed to steer man from the gates of Armageddon?

  Because they’d been false prophets?

  She tried to think past the rage boiling in her veins. Those incredible butterflies had delivered a message. God had spoken through them. He wanted her to set a new course.

  Or…

  Inspiration flashed through her, brighter than the atomic bomb.

  God wanted Gabriella to reset the old course. She’d travel back in time to create a butterfly effect so far-reaching the modern world wouldn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the one burning below.

  Gabriella stormed away to do what needed doing.

  CHAPTER 2

  Whoosh! From Hiroshima to the Judean Desert, two weeks after the birth of Christ

  Gabriella gazed across the sunburned plains from her position atop a cliff. Behind her lurked the castle of King Herod. A leader reviled by history.

  Heat rose from the desert in shimmering waves, interrupted only rarely by reluctant wisps of a breeze. The Dead Sea teased
her by scenting the air with the illusion of rain, but when she lifted her head, she found only dry sun. No blessed showers to wash away the stains of her angry tears.

  Enough with the crying. She needed to focus on her mission. Hiroshima wouldn’t happen for almost two thousand years. She’d left that horror behind for the moment. Or ahead?

  No. Not anymore.

  She’d traveled backward through the World of Mortal Dreams—the shared, timeless dimension all humans visit in their sleep. A place where dreams linger even after their hosts have awakened. She’d skipped from one such dream to another, leaping from place to place, era to era, until she found a dreamer at the proper coordinates, in Herod’s front yard. Gabriella had stepped back into the waking world at that point.

  Only a few gifted mortals had the ability to use the World of Mortal Dreams like a cosmic subway ride, but angels could do it with ease. Of course, they weren’t allowed to change the past. Gabriella knew such an act to be a mortal sin. Yet, God had spoken to her, had he not? She’d seen and heard His Word through the choreographed butterfly dance in the garden gateway and Asura’s odd question about a boulder falling into the pond.

  Gabriella knew just which boulder might work, but she trembled at the implications. Suppose she’d misinterpreted, allowing her rage, her grief, and the image of Asura’s burnt shadow to cloud her judgment?

  No way.

  The magnificent burst of logic bringing her to Judea had been inspired by the heavens above, not from any turmoil within her soul. God had sent her to reverse many centuries of madness.

  The world’s greatest religions had long been magnets for violence. If she could nip one in the bud by eliminating its founder, perhaps the clock would spin in a peaceful direction, avoiding crusades, jihads, inquisitions, pogroms, the development of advanced weaponry…the destruction of Hiroshima. She choked back a sob.