The Forbidden Fruit Read online

  The

  Forbidden

  Fruit

  The Eden Chronicles #2

  S.K MUNT

  Cover by S.K Munt

  © 2015 S.K Munt all rights reserved

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  Edited by Howard Parsons, Emm Cole and Donella Brown

  To Howard Parsons, long-time book reviewer – soon to be published author. Congratulations on the imminent release of Urban Mermaid, and may the kindness you have bestowed upon other writers be returned three-fold with gracious words from your soon-to-be reviewers!

  THE CREATION STORY

  BOOK IV OF VI

  THIS TEXT IS NOT TO BE EDITED, ALTERED, SUMMARISED OR TRANSLATED INTO ANY LANGUAGE. OFFENDERS WHO ATTEMPT TO WILL BE CHARGED WITH TREASON AGAINST CALLIEL AND PUT TO DEATH.

  Religions had always insisted that God would obliterate mankind if they did not follow his rules, but God had never believed that he’d be moved to do anything so drastic until Los Angeles exploded. It was followed by Seattle, then Israel, then San Francisco, then and Tokyo, then and Paris and finally, several third-world capitals disintegrated as well. The nuclear war played out with no rhyme and millions of tiny reasons that confounded him, but made sense to the people pushing the buttons. The goal wasn’t to eradicate the largest populations, but to break hearts and yes, the people who watched the carnage unfold while unharmed on televisions in New York City and Beijing were absolutely devastated to see Miami, Melbourne, Auckland, Baku, Bristol and Dubai vaporised. Bombs were fired at New York City but divine intervention made it through in time to see it spared… for a while.

  World War four would come to be known as the shortest war ever waged, but time meant little from the moment it started. The powerful radicals attacked at random and without reprieve for three days until the man in charge in Washington D.C sent back a bomb of his own which the world hoped would serve as the final word. The antagonistic nation who had released hell on earth ceased to be after America acted, but the final word was still coming and from a much higher power than the President of The United States.

  God was not merely furious at the world- he was done with it. He was done watching people fight to have more than the other of what they’d been freely given. He was done with them taking his love and twisting it into something that was practically unattainable, and for all of his pious goodness- he was through sharing anything with Satan. Ignited to the point of detonation, he ordered his angels to go down and start looking for Satan’s minions, while he unleashed an Armageddon so vicious that she would either come out of hiding to challenge him, or have nowhere left to hide. Millions of souls were going to die but those that loved him would make it to Heaven, and those that didn’t would cease to be a burden upon the others. After, there would only be Heaven and Hell and no middle ground for them to fight over and if he played his cards right, Hell would disintegrate soon after when he smashed Satan’s spirit flat.

  The angels didn’t want to see the world ended- Miguel especially who had been there from the beginning and wept to know that his Barachiel had become a hole in the ground full of toxic waste. He had settled there first, and his people had evolved from being the kind who worshipped the dirt beneath their feet, to some of the most thoughtless and shallow of all, and he knew that wouldn’t have happened if he’d stayed, or had set a better example in the very beginning.

  Yes, the angels were heartsick, but they loved God and Heaven, and so they swooped upon the earth and used their now glorious reserves of power and energy to turn over every stone, looking for their fallen counterparts and destroying them, while God ripped chaos forth from the earth. First, he gave himself form again and then, he started eliminating all that he had created. He made the ground shake so that Satan’s buildings toppled, and he made the oceans heave and reclaim savaged shorelines for miles inland. He drew energy from the earth’s core, causing mountains and underground chambers of molten heat to explode and scald the earth, and he breathed fire and smoke, burning forests to the ground and then whipped up winds and rains to wash them clear after. The angels- both kinds- watched in astonishment as God made his power truly seen for the first time in three thousand years, and for many of the black-winged hellions, his light was so bright that they could not even turn to face him, and his ire so clear that many of them- the dark Nephilim without the power of their angelic parents especially- dropped to their knees and allowed the golden souls to best them, screaming their love for God with their lasts breaths and seeing their feathers turn white just before they were taken.

  And it was not just the supernatural beings that saw this take place- humans everywhere were shocked, appalled and awed by God’s power and as they cried out their love, he cast them up into Heaven- growing stronger with each life that he took. Some lands were unpopulated, so God let them be, but people tried to hide in others, living off the land and cowering in their homes, but God sent forth plagues of locusts to swarm and destroy the crops to chase these people out of hiding and give them the chance to appeal to him. Satan he knew, could be anywhere but she’d certainly be with people, not hiding in some cavern alone and so he was going to find her if he had to end the life of every last person on earth with his bare hands, and take his time doing it.

  Creating the world had taken a heartbeat, perfecting the world for the good of the human race had taken millions of years but in the end- destroying it took just over nine hundred days. People tried to survive, but word of God’s return spread, as well as being photographed, recorded and circulated until the humans saw that resistance was futile. Some lay down and waited for him to find them, others took their own lives and screamed their love for God first, others allowed the carnage to swallow them whole with open arms, but many fought back and God knew these were the unbelievers. He demanded their love but when they did not grant it, he left them to die or fend for themselves without wasting his time in convincing them, and he didn’t have the heart to destroy them to end their suffering. He had enough souls to fortify Heaven for an eternity, but if he wanted to wipe out Satan’s cancerous influence, he had to take out the source, not the people who were symptomatic of her hatred- those he would be able to handle all at once in the end.

  Miguel had known where Satan was at the time of her ultimate betrayal, but by the time he returned to the earth, she was gone and he found himself drawn to the edge of the wasteland that had been Barachiel amidst the carnage. He was supposed to be looking for Satan and her black-feathered minions, but someone was calling out to him, and though he could not tell who it was for the chaos and millions fleeing the epicentre of the nuclear strike, he knew that he could not leave until he had answered that prayer. And so he salvaged soul after dying soul, making the bodies of the dead vanish while taking the souls of those dying, or those who asked for his help up to Heaven. He worked and worked and though he did not find the soul screaming to him by the name Saint Michael, the way that he heard it in his heart, he found many others in equal need and this distracted him from his mounting frustration.

  But strangely, it was the survivors who he would have made a priority over the other mortals, who refused to give him the word that they loved God. Instead, they shooed him away and went back to what they were doing, determined to save and not be saved by the God they’d been told did not love them. Their actions were self-sacrificing and pious, but their hearts had hardened toward the lord long before and because
Miguel did not want to see them taken up by Satan, he let them be and worked around them, praying that they would change their minds before the very end came.

  One of the survivors was a young male trainee doctor, Korbin, who had set up a makeshift hospital in an abandoned building and was attempting to minister to over three hundred sick and dying people alone- and resented God because he’d lost his father to cancer at the age of nine and now his angel was trying to stop him from saving other children’s fathers too. There was also an elderly, ex-marine who was digging graves for the people who’d been left to rot in the earth, and he was furious to be stopped and laughed off Miguel’s pleas to love God, whom he had lost faith in, decades before during the Vietnam War. Another was an unattractive female scientist, Maryah, who wanted to stay and urge people away from ground zero to places that she believed might be safe, and when Miguel told her that there was no place safe left in the world, she spat at him and told him that she hadn’t stretched her brain to the limits of scientific exploration for her entire life, just to be told by a shirtless man wearing wings that he understood radiation better.

  ‘I know how fallout works, and where we will be safe from it too!’ she screamed. ‘Men- and religious men- you’re all the same! I suppose you’re going to try and tell me that dinosaurs never existed either, huh? Yes well, off you go!’ Miguel tried to correct her and point out the fact that his wings actually worked and that in itself was proof of God, but she started throwing rocks at him- big ones- and he left not only because he was laughing too hard, but because she was tiring herself further in her need to scare him off, and if he didn’t give her a chance to calm down, she would probably drop dead from exhaustion anyway.

  Ironically, it was the first woman he’d ever met who didn’t fall at his feet, but she would not be the last and it was during the apocalypse that Miguel finally found a cure to his only flaw- his ego- because suddenly, people were lining up to tell him how useless and unappealing he was.

  One of the girls who fought him off the most violently had run a great distance with a deceased infant in her arms, and did not think that she deserved to end up in Heaven, for having failed the child. When Miguel tried to grab her, she ran so fast away from him that in his fatigue, he could not keep up on human feet and so he sighed and vowed to find her later when he’d revived, if she survived. There was also a middle-aged man who had been building a structure to shelter survivors who couldn’t move from the acid rains and fallout that was surely coming, and resented being interrupted because he had cancer and was dying anyway, and there was an older, gay gentleman who refused to leave his deceased lover’s side. Instead, he had lain down beside him to hold onto love until the end came, believing that his way of life had barred him access to a heavenly afterlife anyway.

  But the most exceptional case to Miguel was a frazzled and scrawny South American girl aged only sixteen, who screamed at him in a foreign language when he tried to pull her and her child away from a busload of trapped senior citizens. She was intent on opening the buckled door to let them all out, but Miguel pulled her back anyway, knowing that it was seconds away from exploding, and that everyone on board not only loved God and would get to Heaven, but had lived their human lives and were ready for their end.

  ‘Come with me, before Satan feels your loathing towards God and steals your soul!’ he cried, terrified beyond measure that her hysteria would certainly trigger Satan’s notice. He wanted the dark temptress to come to him of course, but not while this girl was within reach of her, and her child too! And because he still hadn’t found the person calling out to him with a weakening spirit, he started to worry that it was a Nephilim illusion of sorts that was leading him into a trap.

  But the girl cried that Satan had already come to her but she had scared her away from her child, Rosa. Then she said that her life had forced her into becoming a prostitute at the age of thirteen, and a mother too, so God would not want her anyway.

  ‘Let me stay and be a mother, as both God and Satan decided that I must be!’ she screamed. ‘I will enter purgatory after, and deal with that as well as I have this mortal life without YOUR help!’ Miguel yanked her back at the last moment as the bus exploded, and earned himself a slap for his trouble that made him smile for the first time in years. She had Satan’s temper, but God’s bravery, which sort of made her more powerful and intimidating than any angel or Nephilim that he had ever met and now that he’d met her and saved her, he was ready to leave Los Angeles. He hadn’t found the person calling his name but the voice had silenced and that told Miguel that it was already too late to save the person and prayed that they had loved God enough to get to Heaven on their own.

  Gabriella screamed when Miguel lifted her and Rosa up in his arms and took flight, but he did not let her go to damn herself or her child. He flew north with her until he found a place where she would be safe- a place where the radiation from Seattle’s obliteration would not be carried on the raging westerly winds, and a place so elevated that the rising ocean would not drown it. A place that was close to a forest that had not been burned, and where a river with burst banks sped by so rapidly that it was pouring over the edge of the cliff and into the tide below, coming from one of the few places left on earth where the water was still unpolluted. He deposited Gabriella and her child there, and then started going back for the other brave survivors. In the end, he had eleven, and a whole lot of ruckus! The souls he had saved were furious with him, but it wasn’t until Miguel touched Raoul’s dead lover’s forehead, that they all hushed enough to listen.

  ‘He is gay, like me,’ Raoul sobbed. ‘Emilio always tried to go to church but they wouldn’t let him in because of me, so if what you say is true, then Satan has already claimed him!’

  But Miguel smiled and fingered the medallion around Emilo’s neck. Engraved into it was an image of an angel wrestling a dragon. ‘That is me, or a version of me as Saint Michael,’ he said, showing it to Raoul. ‘Your lover is the one who called me here, and if he has been dead for days as you said, then his faith and love for God was strong enough to get me to you even after his body had given up. So rest assured- he is in Heaven now, waiting for you to join him.’

  Raoul wiped at his eyes. ‘Are you saying it’s all true?’

  ‘I am saying that there is a God, and he loves you all equally, regardless of how you lived,’ Miguel ran his hands over Emilio’s body, and the corpse vanished from sight, eliciting a gasp from the others. ‘But almost none of anything else you have ever heard is true, and it is Satan who he is angry with, not the people that she tried to turn against him. Anyone who has room for God in their hearts will end up safe in Heaven, after this form of purgatory is over.’

  ‘I love this planet,’ the scientist, Maryah whispered unhappily. ‘If he loved us, he would never take it from us.’

  ‘He isn’t taking anything that he won’t return to you tenfold,’ Miguel assured her, but barely any of them look comforted.

  Raoul was the exception. He was so grateful to learn that God’s love could be extended to him despite his sexual preference, that he dropped to Miguel’s feet and gave his own love right then and there, but even though Miguel could have given him the touch and sent him to Heaven immediately, he hesitated and looked around to assess his beautiful surroundings, and the group of survivors who were now sharing it. They were sinners by their own definition, but heroes by their actions, and though the world was falling apart around them, Gabriella picked up a flower from the grass and leaned down so that her daughter could inhale the fragrance.

  ‘It’s beautiful, mummy,’ Rosa whispered, touching the petals. ‘Why would God want to ruin them by ripping apart the earth?’

  ‘To stop us from ruining it first,’ Gabriella whispered.

  ‘But I never pick flowers,’ the little girl said. ‘I wait for them to fall.’

  ‘That does not matter,’ her mother said, giving Miguel a murderous look. ‘Others have and so, we must now atone for that. All we can do
now, is enjoy it while we are still here and ask ourselves if we can love God more than we love ourselves, or each other.’

  ‘Are there flowers in Heaven?’ the girl asked him, and all of the faces turned to Miguel who looked away.

  ‘There is no need for such things…’ he answered softly. ‘What you feel when you scent and touch one is just… there.’

  ‘Oh,’ the girl said, but she didn’t look any more convinced than he felt, and Miguel was thunderstruck by this exchange. Stopping to smell the roses was a common phrase, but Miguel realised that for all of Heaven’s glory, he had not done so for thousands of years, and he began to cry, knowing that God probably had not either. Only the angels who left paradise to spend time on the earth seemed to value it when they returned. Miguel- who had been lost in a loving, oblivious embrace of his daughter’s spirit for thousands of years- felt nothing there now. No sorrow no, but… nothing.

  It’s not nothing, and you must curb these betraying thoughts! Heaven is everything! If that is now beyond compare to you, then it is you who is nothing!

  Every one of these humans was exceptional to Miguel, but they were weary and angry and hungry and the north was rapidly freezing over, ensuring that an ice age would start before God ended it all. They’d all be better off in Heaven and now it seemed like they believed enough to be willing to go, and yet Miguel was compelled to keep them alive long enough for them to meet God as they were, and show him how despite all of their flaws, they were still capable of love and prepared to fight for their lives on a dying planet.

  Perhaps, God could make them Soul Mates like me! Satan has many, and look how they fortified her! Maybe when this world is over, God can start a new one, the right way!

  Then and there, Miguel decided to abandon his plans to find Satan until he had recuperated and healed his frayed wings, and settled with his survivors for a while, ensuring that they all had food, shelter and knowledge of what God was really like. He told them stories of Eden and Barachiel and Heaven by night, and they told him their own stories after, and eventually, he began to think of them as friends and they began to love God through him. During the days, he rested, waking only to intercept whatever crisis emerged, or to melt away the frost slowly creeping across the land from the north, and once a few months had passed and snow had started to fall in the middle of what should have been a warm fall afternoon, Miguel knew that the world was dying, and that he had fallen in love with the prostitute Gabriella, and her daughter.