The Day of Jehovah's Witnesses by Walsh Rachel

Author:Walsh, Rachel [Walsh, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2013-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

THE DAY

From her vantage point at the casement window, Carla gazed out across a sea stripped of color and movement. The sun lay hidden behind a bank of angry cloud, flickering on the western horizon, but as yet the wind was still. A sluggish tide was on its way in, smothering the rocks that surfaced and submerged in the crestless swell. It skimmed across the narrow strip of sand below, obliterating its litter of lugworm casts and scattering solitary seabirds patrolling the shoreline.

On these remote islands, it was hard to imagine that across the ocean a deadly virus had swept across the land with frightening speed, wiping out human life wherever it was found. It seemed to hit everywhere at once around the globe, indistinguishable from a common cold at first, but rapidly overcoming its victims. Scarcely more than six months after the outbreak there were no survivors, bar the Servants of God. They were the sole inhabitants of this remote string of islands, protected by their self-sufficiency and isolation. It was God’s handiwork, of course; His means of cleansing the earth of all its wickedness. The judgement of Armageddon.

Or so Carla had believed, until Amy went missing.

Clara remembered the series of events as if a film was playing in her head. As reports of the rising death toll came in from around the world, Clara’s anxiety for her childhood friend increased. Where was she? Could she have gone to the mainland for some reason, and now found herself trapped there? Usually bubbly and cheerful, Amy had been acting strangely just before the virus hit. Clara asked if she had done anything to offend her, but Amy had just shaken her dark curls and told her, no, everything was just fine. Nevertheless, she had become increasingly morose, and it was painfully obvious that she was beginning to avoid Clara. Then she had disappeared. Clara was baffled.

Shortly after her disappearance, Clara searched her room for any clue as to what had happened to her, but there was nothing. A few days passed before she finally remembered that Amy had kept a diary hidden behind a loose skirting board beneath the bed. How could she have forgotten it, the one source of information that might provide her with answers! But would Amy have left it behind? Clara hurried back to the room, fearful that either Amy had taken it with her, or the room had been stripped and cleaned and the diary discovered. With a sigh of relief, she found it still tucked away in its hiding place, dusty, but intact.

What she read in that diary was the reason she was here now, in an ante-room of the Servants of God’s headquarters, awaiting the judicial verdict of the Older Men. Not that there had been a trial as such – more a kind of dialogue, in which she confronted them with her findings, and they dismissed her objections.

“Seven signifies completeness, Clara,” they had told her. “Seven servants or angels of God have

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