The Apocalypse
My name is Mark Davidson I'm a sophomore at Digipen College in Redmond, Washington, majoring in Game Design. I'm about to tell you how me, my best friend, Brady and my roommate, Joey prevented the Apocalypse from happening. It's an unbelievable story and I'm sure you'll think I'm full of something but trust me, it happened! I swear I'm going to create a game about this someday! Are you ready? Okay, hang on tight this is about to get a little wild!
It was another one of those boring Tuesday nights. You know, the nights where your last class of the day ended at noon and since then you've been laying on the couch, flipping through channels desperately trying to find something good to watch. You'd think being a nineteen year old boy living on a college campus I would be out partying and living it up but no, here I am, stuffing my face with a bag of nacho Doritos and watching reruns of Southpark. Exciting, I know. I kind of zoned out but was snapped back to reality by the loud beeping noise and a distressed news anchor appearing on the screen.
"Joey, dude, come out here!" I yelled to my roommate from my cozy spot on the couch. I heard Joey's heavy footsteps coming my way. Joey is a nice guy, he really is but he's taken advantage of the cafe's taco Tuesday. What I'm getting at is he's a bit on the heavier side. Nothing wrong with that though.
"What's up man?" Joey asked without looking over at me, his eyes stayed glued to the TV.
"I don't know, something important. I-" before I could finish my sentence, the news anchor began to speak.
"We're sorry to interrupt the scheduled broadcast, but we have important news." The man sounded incredibly stressed, even more than he looked. "This is not a test or drill Washington is currently experiencing unexplainable events, the only real way to explain it is apocalyptic." I felt my mouth drop. No way is this happening, especially in Washington. He continued "Reports began flooding in approximately 20 minutes ago of strange cloud formations and unusual flashes of lights. The tide began to rise and electricity was short circuiting. One caller reported what appeared to be a man or creature descending from the sky on a white horse. Law enforcement is requesting that everyone remai-" The lights went out along with the tv. Joey and I stayed silent, the entire dorm was silent also. No longer than two seconds later the chaos began. People yelling, cars speeding off; What did they think? Where did they plan on going? Seattle would have the worst of it.
"We should go find Brady" My voice cracked, but I covered it by coughing slightly. Joey nodded as we both stood up and walked towards the door. The door flung open and Brady appeared out of breath. He had a look on his face like he was some kind of genius.
"Guys I have so much to say and not enough time so shut up and sit down." I think Joey and I were both still in shock so we just shut up and agreed.
"Remember in our World Religions class, when we were learning about Christianity and the Four Horsemen?" I nodded, not fully understanding what he was getting at.
"This is it. This is the apocalypse and the Horsemen are coming to do their jobs before God finishes breaking the last 3 seals and lets Lucifer out." It all clicked, the white horse and the man from the new broadcast, we were about to be apart of the biggest moment to ever happen. The fight between Lucifer and God.
"Holy crap" I breathed out. "Are you sure man?" Brady had been my best friend since second grade, although he was a lot shorter and less muscular back then but he was always crazy smart. Like the kind of smart that was required for all advanced placement classes in high school, the kind of smart that made him valedictorian of our class so I'm not sure why I was asking if he was sure about what he was saying. Of course he was sure! "Weren't you guys paying attention in class when Professor Dickinson went over all of this 'end of the world stuff'?" Brady said exasperated. He knew we were slackers so I'm not sure why he was so surprised! "Remind me who these guys are again. Why is this such a big deal?"
"According to the Bible," Brady began, "Just before the Apocalypse is supposed to begin, you know the final battle between God and Satan, God breaks open the first four seals of seven total seals to send the four Horsemen to Earth. The first seal releases the Horsemen known as Conquest or Pestilence. He's supposed to bring all kinds of diseases and illness to Earth and he rides on a white horse. The second seal releases the Horseman known as War. He takes all the peace from Earth and rides on a red horse, The third seal releases the Horseman known as Famine and he supposedly takes like a quarter of all the grain or whatever. He rides in on a black horse. The fourth seal releases Death, and this guy is worse than the other three! He is given the power to kill one fourth of the Earth using a sword or diseases or famine. He rides on a pale colored horse, whatever that means. The scary thing is that these four Horsemen are just the beginning of Hell on Earth. If that's what this really is, we HAVE to try to stop this. We need to go find these Horsemen and shut it down!" Brady finished.
My mind was blown! How could I have not paid closer attention something this cool? Well, cool in the sense that it reminds me of an Xbox game that I play all the time called "Dark Siders". Not cool in the sense that the world is literally about to end and Brady thinks three college guys can stop an all knowing, all powerful God! He must be out of his mind! I grabbed the Bible that had been sitting on my nightstand since I got to college two years ago! My mom had packed it and insisted that I bring it with me, so to quiet her, I did. I'm thankful for her persistence now! If Brady is right, this Book is going to be our guide to understanding what's going on around us!
We threw some clothes into backpacks, grabbed a case of water, some snacks, our phone chargers and started down the long dark hallway that led out of our dormitory. Once we got outside, we saw people running and screaming, smoke was billowing out of a few cars that must have smashed into each other in their failed effort to make a quick getaway. Joey suggested we take my truck since we could just throw everything we had on us in the back and it would be good for off road adventures as well (we had broken a rear axle during an "off road adventure" last year so we knew just how much that Dodge Ram could handle)! I put the key in the ignition and fired the LOUD Hemi V8 engine up. It's so loud that I almost didn't hear my cell phone ringing. I looked down and saw an incoming Facetime call from my girlfriend, Gabby. Gabby was attending college in Seattle, which is only about 40 minutes from Redmond. I answered the call and Gabby was hysterically crying. "Mark, PLEASE come get me! Something crazy is going on and I don't know what to do. I don't want to be alone!" Gabby sobbed. "Where is Lexi? I thought roommates were supposed to stick together?" I asked. "She took off with Nina! I have no idea where they are and I'm alone! Please just come get me! There's some weird looking guy riding up and down the streets on a white horse! Mark, he can make people sick just by looking at them! I'm not going out there!" Gabby shouted at me! "Stay calm and stay inside! I'm on my way!" I promised.
Once I hung up with Gabby, I said, "Guys, I know where this horseman is! Gabby says he's in Seattle, so I guess we're going to Seattle!" Joey and Brady threw our stuff in the back and jumped in the truck. It took what seemed like forever just to get off campus because of all the people trying to leave and people running and screaming, as if that was going to solve anything! Thirty minutes had passed by the time we finally made it to the interstate. It was pretty smooth sailing for about the first ten minutes. That was when we saw him! A man dressed in red, riding on a red horse. Since we knew that his "power" was war, we decided not try to reason with him. I revved the engine up and it apparently got his attention. He looked straight at me and lifted what looked like a sword of some type. I wasn't about to spar with this guy! I pushed the gas pedal as far down as it would go and steered straight for him. He kicked his horse and began galloping right at us! It must have been quite a sight. My big red truck going head to head with a big red horse carrying a rider dressed all in red too, as if we were playing a game of "chicken"! He wasn't backing down and I almost lost my nerve but then I remembered Gabby, and my family back home in Maine. I had to protect them, so I pushed harder on the gas and then, "SMACK!" I had run over the Horseman of War! I put the truck in park and jumped out to make sure he was really dead! He was! I hopped back in the truck where Joey and Brady sat looking stunned. "Is he really dead man?' Joey asked choking up. "Yep, TOTALLY dead!" I laughed back. No one said anything for a few more miles, until Brady piped up and said, "I've been going through the book of Revelation in this Bible and this is some crazy stuff man! I don't know how or why they decided Seattle was the best place to start the apocalypse but I bet it's because it's always raining and thundering and lightening here so they probably thought we wouldn't even notice strange weather!" We all laughed! Joey chimed in with, "I can't believe you actually ran over War! Dude, I thought I was gonna puke when you sped up! Thank God we got out of it with just a smashed in bumper and not smashed in heads!" I groaned at the thought of that! We had traveled maybe another 15 miles when we noticed the roadway was blocked by abandoned cars. We decided to get out and try to move them! Since we were on a bridge we were hoping we could just shove a few off and into the water.
We successfully moved enough of the vehicles to get the truck through so we jumped back in and started to move when who should appear in the rearview mirror a few miles back? Exactly...the Horseman of Famine on his big black horse! His horse seemed way bigger than War's horse and much angrier looking! I assumed he had heard about what we did to his brother! "Oh, Come on!" Brady yelled. "Are we going to have to fight all four of them on this interstate with nothing but a jock, a tall, skinny kid, a short, fat kid and a case of water?" None of us spoke since we all knew Brady was just venting, although I do think Joey was offended by the "short, fat" comment! I was unbothered by the "tall, skinny kid" comment but in hopes of cheering Joey up, I looked at Brady and said, "Sorry dude, not all of us can be muscle bound freaks like you!" Joey chuckled under his breath and Brady rolled his eyes at me. At this point, Famine was charging towards us. The bridge was starting to crack under the heavy pounding of the horses hooves. "What are we going to do? Anybody? The bridge is going to collapse if we stay and try to fight him and I don't think the truck can take another hit like the last one. We need to outrun this guy!" I screamed. The truck stalled out and just like a movie scene, I could see the bridge crumbling in the distance and the horseman gaining ground. Joey and Brady offered to try to push the truck to get it rolling so I could just put it in gear, pop the clutch and start it, like my dad had taught me to do years ago! They ran to the back of the truck and the adrenaline must have fueled them because they were pushing that huge, heavy truck with all their strength. It started rolling just as the horseman was closing in. Joey told Brady to get back in the truck but Brady didn't want to leave Joey out there alone so they argued. Joey noticed how close the horseman was and knew that there was no way he could outrun that horse but he thought maybe Brady could. So, in a last ditch heroic effort, Joey shoved Brady & the truck ahead and stopped running. He sacrificed himself. He distracted the horseman long enough for us to get out of there and then died because of it! We didn't see the horseman again after that so we aren't sure if Joey managed to take him out too somehow or if he had better things to do than to chase us!
We made it to Seattle without any more interruptions and to Seattle University (S.U) where Gabby was, safely. I called Gabby when we got there and told her it was safe to come outside. Since Brady had been researching these horsemen and their powers, on the way to Seattle, he was shocked we were able to kill one of them and explained we were going to need divine help from God if we had any chance of stopping the apocalypse. Once Gabby was in the truck, she suggested we say a prayer and ask God to help us! We prayed...HARD and then peeked out of our closed eyes thinking maybe God himself would be standing there in front of us, as if he were some kind of genie and we had just been granted a wish by praying, but no such luck. God wasn't standing there and we were out of options!
The three of us decided to try to make it to a camp a friend of ours owned out in the middle of nowhere and just pray that this would be over soon enough! Gabby pulled the Atlas my dad had stuck behind the seat before I left for college. He always used to say, "If that fancy phone of yours ever stops working, you're going to need this!" I thought he was crazy but I guess he was right after all, I did need it! As we were looking down at the Atlas we felt the Earth tremble beneath us, which caused us to look up to see what it was. There before us stood the white horseman! I thought to myself, "Great, now what am I going to do? I have to keep Gabby safe and I can't afford to lose another friend today." I looked at Gabby and Brady and said, "Any suggestions?" Gabby said, "I got this!" I tried to stop her but she was already crawling threw the small window that connected the truck cab to the back of the truck. I had NO idea what she was doing until I saw her reach into her backpack and pull out a small hard pink box. When she opened it, I saw a gun! "Gabby! STOP! You're going to get hurt! Please get in the-" BANG! The gun went off and the horseman went down! I sat there for half a second in complete shock that she had just killed a horseman, by herself! A girl! I looked at her as if to say, "How did you do that? Where did you get the gun?" and it was like she could read my mind because she climbed back through the window and said, "Boys aren't the only ones who can protect mankind ya know!? My Daddy used to take me out to shoot bottles off the fence in the backyard and said I had a perfect aim! He made me bring this with me just in case and I've never taken the trigger lock off, let alone out of it out of its box! Guns are NOT toys guys! You shouldn't touch them unless you've had proper training and safety lessons ya know!?" She laughed and smiled at me with such pride that she had just saved our butts! I leaned over and hugged her and said, "Thanks for that, but can you put that thing back in the box NOW or at least put the safety on?"
We pulled out of the University parking lot and decided to head towards the camp. We were travelling down bumpy back roads and I was thankful we had agreed on bringing the truck and not Brady's little Audi A6. When we were about halfway to the camp, the truck just stopped moving. The wheels were still spinning but we weren't going anywhere. I thought we were stuck somehow so I put it in park. I looked over my shoulder and saw a light green horse without a rider. "Oh NO, Where is he?" Gabby exclaimed referring to the Horseman of Death. "I don't know but NO ONE is getting out of this truck until we figure it out!" I replied. He was the most dangerous! He wasn't going to disrupt our peace, starve us, give us a horrible disease or even want to fight us. He could just kill us and I needed time to think; We needed time to come up with a plan! Brady, Gabby and I started trying to think of solutions and ways to kill this horseman when he finally did show himself. We must have bounced around a hundred different ideas for over an hour before out of nowhere he appeared! He was standing directly in front of the truck; His horse was still standing directly behind the truck, snorting at us, as if to say, "Don't even think about moving!" We were out of options and had resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to die so we huddled together, closed our eyes and started to pray. A moment later we heard the loudest, booming voice that made the truck shake say, "Death, mount your horse and go home! It is NOT yet time!" We opened our eyes and saw Death walking back to his horse like a scolded child but did not see anyone else. Death mounted his horse and rode up into the sky and eventually out of sight completely.
I finally got the courage to ask, "Who's there? Who stopped Death?" There was no response so I asked again and again, until the fourth time, I heard, "It is I, the Lion of Judah, the Great I AM!" I responded, "God? Is that you?" He replied, "Yes!" I proceeded to ask a bunch of ridiculous questions until Brady punched me in the arm and told me to, "Shut up!" I said, "Dude I REALLY need to know WHY God stopped Death from annihilating us!" God said, "I stopped him because it was the wrong time, I just told you that!" I was so confused, "When did you tell me that?" I questioned. God sighed and said, "When I told Death that it was NOT yet time!" I still didn't understand why he would have opened the seals NOW if it wasn't time yet so I decided to ask Him, "Not that I'm complaining or anything but why open the seals to release the horsemen if it wasn't time?" God laughed and said, "My cherubs were playing in the the throne room and picked the scrolls up. They saw the date written on them and it took 14 of them to rip them open. I didn't realize what was going on until I checked my voicemail and heard all of the humans praying for help. I went to scold the cherubs but they argued that today's date was on them. I had to explain that the ink has faded over the last few thousands of years and it says 3017 NOT 2017!" We were stunned! "Sooooo…. This was all some kind of mix up? The apocalypse is still 1,000 years away?" I asked. God said, "Yeah I guess so, but don't count on that...NO ONE will know the date or time! All I can tell you is, a.) You better get right with Jesus and b.) Don't EVER try to kill my horsemen again...I removed them this time because it was my mistake but next time, I assure you, no human will be able to stop them! Nice try though!" Then God said, "I gotta go. Peace be with you!" and He stopped talking to us! It was the weirdest conversation I had ever had! When we turned around, all of the physical damage, fires, etc were gone. Everything looked "normal" again!
Brady and I dropped Gabby back off at SU and headed back to Digipen. We were exhausted and thankful that we were less than an hour away from home! We kept ourselves awake by swapping stories about Joey. When we got back to the campus, we decided to take a hot shower, then go to the cafe to get some food, we were starving, and then we planned to go to sleep since it had been such a long day. We arrived back at the dorms, got our showers and walked to the dining hall. Brady and I grabbed trays and went to get tacos in memory of Joey. As we walked around the corner, there he was, in all his glory, surrounded by tacos, burritos and mexican rice…"JOEY!" we both screamed! He looked up a little startled and said, "What's wrong with you two?" Brady stumbled over his words and said, "Ummmmm you died saving my life less than 12 hours ago man!" Joey was obviously confused and said, "What are you talking about?" I said, "During the Apocalypse? You were pushing the truck, remember?" He laughed and said, "Me? Pushing your truck? No way! That must have been some crazy dream you guys were having huh? Was I buff?" Brady and I looked at each other and said, "No, dude….this really happened!" Joey was cracking up and replied, "I just left you guys passed out on the couch with xbox remotes in your hands like 20 minutes ago and the menu screen for Darksiders was still on the tv!" Our jaws dropped! Could we have really dreamed all of that or had God done something to Joey's memories? I called Gabby to see if she remembered anything and she said, "Babe you need to stop playing so many video games, and get more sleep. I've never shot a gun in my life!" WHAAAAAATTTTTT ? She had to be messing with me! Why were Brady and I the only ones who remembered this whole thing? Then I heard it….my alarm clock buzzing loudly. It was 5:22am, Joey was asleep in his bed and I was still unshowered and wearing the clothes I had on when we stopped the apocalypse from happening! What was going on? Did it all really happen or did I have a dream inside of a dream? I still don't get it. Maybe I'm not supposed to get it! Maybe...it's just not time yet!