And the Stars of Heaven Fell

Janice M. Barlow

Description

This novel is a sequel which follows two characters from The Last Bloodline into Tribulation times, where horrific Biblical prophesies from the Book of Revelation began to materialize one after another.
Sequestered in the wilderness, seventeen-year-old Jade Greenwood and her father, Chase, must deal with the high price placed on their lives. Their unique bloodline gives them immunity to every disease, but endangers their lives. In fact, the plasma from Jade and Chase’s blood was used to create millions of live-saving vaccines during the recent Plague-21.
A sequel to the pandemic thriller, “The Last Bloodline”, “And the Stars of Heaven Fell” continues the story of Jade and her father as they embark across the Atlantic. In this chilling novel, Biblical prophecies become real, and the world is swept up in the magnitude of the horrors of the end times.

Sujets

• Religious
• Christian novel
• Sequel
• End time
• Tribulation
• Suite d'une ?uvre
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: LifeRich Publishing
• Date de parution: 23 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781489743329
• Langue: English

Extrait

AND THE STARS OF HEAVEN FELL
JANICE M. BARLOW


Copyright © 2022 Janice M. Barlow.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.
 
 
LifeRich Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.liferichpublishing.com
844-686-9607
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
 
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4296-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4295-7 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4332-9 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022914633
 
 
 
LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 08/15/2022
CONTENTS
Prologue
Part One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Part Two
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Part Three
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements

For my daughter -in-law, Tiffany, who devours books. I hope this one measures up to your high standards.

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
— Revelation 6:13 KJV
PROLOGUE
A pandemic swept the globe in 2027. The disease was 100 percent fatal. Before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was able to come up with an effective cure—a vaccine using the blood plasma of two immune people—Plague-21, named after the twenty-first century, seemingly wiped out all but around half a million people worldwide. The bacterial infection destroyed life as people knew it, and those who remained were left to dwell in a world of devastation and overwhelming loss. It turned out that many more were alive but were simply unaccounted for due to lack of communication.
In the United States, most of those who survived by obtaining the vaccine or by going to ground found they could not dwell in the cities left behind by those who had died. Corpses remained everywhere, rotting and drawing out all manner of pests and vermin. Nothing worked, because no one was around to make it work. So they fled to the wilderness, eking out an existence similar to that of the early pioneers. Fortunately, they had some modern conveniences, such as down comforters and solar-chargeable shortwave radios and smartphones, though cell towers would take a few years to function again.
Things would never be the same. The United States, after the development of the vaccine, had the highest remaining population postplague, but people lived in small groups, mostly scattered throughout formerly unpopulated areas in the western part of the nation. Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana were among the most popular states.
Some rogue folks braved the cities, where they could lay claim to whatever they wanted in property and material goods since real estate was plentiful, and there were no ownership boundaries to worry about. The partially erected wall between the southern states and Mexico was of no use. Not many people crossed the border in either direction. Life was a day-to-day struggle to stay alive.
Young couples brought together by the tragic event often said half jokingly that their reason for living was to “be fruitful and multiply.” The earth needed to be replenished. But the earth also needed to be cleansed—and that cleansing was about more than just all the corpses that lay decomposing everywhere.
As time passed, it became apparent that many more than half a million people had survived. Clusters of folks emerged from hiding in caves and underground bunkers. Others were sheltered on islands and never exposed. The plague had mutated into a harmless state, and it went dormant. An actual count of those living couldn’t be ascertained, as there was no internet, and there were not enough people to maintain an electrical grid. There was no organization. No census could be taken. Those who still feared becoming infected took the vaccine since those at the CDC were safe there and had made enough of a supply to help several million people.
Eventually, the realization came that approximately fifty million people had survived Plague-21 globally by never becoming exposed. Exposure would have meant certain death, as the bacterium was 100 percent lethal before it mutated. But fifty million people was a far cry from the former global population of more than seven billion.
PART ONE
ONE
February, year of our Lord 2037
Western Upper Peninsula wilderness, Michigan
J ade Greenwood stared at her handmade calendar as she listened to the wind roaring outside the small log cabin and rattling the windows. She could feel the icy draft despite the towels she had wedged along the bottom of the sills. She was comforted by the crackling warmth of the flames in the fireplace, which she had stoked only minutes ago.
Jade hoped she had not missed marking a day somewhere along the line over the last few years. Her father, Chase Carlson, had brought along a two-year calendar from the CDC when they made the trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan ten years ago. He had carefully marked off each day, stressing to her how important it was that they not lose track of time. If they lost track of the date, it would be one more thing the past claimed that they could not retrieve.
For a while, their solar shortwave radio had provided the date and time, but that had stopped being accurate several years ago. Now Chase turned it on only in the evenings, trying to pick up a signal of someone somewhere giving information on something—anything. Jade and her father knew of little else beyond the five-mile radius they had remained within for the past ten years.
Jade crossed off February 3 on the calendar, a Friday. She realized her birthday was only a week away. She would be seventeen years old, nearly an adult by the old standards. But Jade knew she had been living and thinking like an adult for several years. She had no one to talk to except her father. They didn’t dare talk to anyone on the shortwave, since it could give away their location to an unknown source. The Centers for Disease Control’s virology department had two members who knew where Jade and Chase were located, and in case of emergency, their information was in a sealed safe-house document at the FBI, where two agents had the sole job of guarding secret information about the locations and needs of important people.
Chase had spent five years on an oil rig, except for his vacations into the wilderness, before the world changed. He also had taught Jade, his only child, how to live without many of the conveniences of modern society. However, they were grateful for solar batteries. Jade could use her dad’s solar iPad to read the hundreds of books he had stored on it, including those he’d added right before they left Atlanta. Now nothing could be downloaded from anywhere, although she was sure that some cell towers were up and running again after those ten long years.
Fortunately, they hadn’t needed any supplies during the entire time. Their supply shed had been stocked to the ceiling with all their basic needs and more when CDC officials brought them there. But the supply had dwindled to almost nothing. Chase, who knew how to hunt and fish and had taught those skills to Jade, had improvised ways to use their environment for other needs. They had brought books on herbs and farming, along with seeds to grow vegetables and northern fruits in the summer and fall. Apple and cherry trees were scattered behind their cabin and now finally were taller than Chase and bearing sweet fruit in season. There were cornstalks that bore sweet white corn, the cobs of which weren’t wasted but buried after use in the latrine. Toilet paper had long since run out, despite their efforts to conserve it by using all paper goods that were no longer useful for anything else.
Jade knew how to recognize edible mushrooms and wild berries. She had grown up forgetting the taste of artificial sweets and unnecessary carbohydrates. Both she and her father were thin and strong, taking time to exercise daily and getting enough sunshine to tan their skin during the short summers.
Jade knew the time was coming soon when they would have to leave their haven of safety and venture out into the world of humanity again. But she wasn’t quite ready yet. What would it be like? She didn’t know anyone else alive except the people she had met at the C