Day 20 (going to hit this hard for turkey weekend, but i am tired right now)

[UNKNOWN]

1.

“Jesus is here! He has come to take us home.” That’s all he heard as he rushed through the street. There was not only one crazy guy spouting it, but an army marching with signs, crosses, and a few rabbits feet thrown in for good measure. They marched. They sang their songs. They told of Jesus’ return. The rapture was coming, or so they said. Armageddon around the corner. Time to choose sides. Demons walking among men, etc, etc…

He didn’t really believe it, but it did raise questions. Many questions. If it wasn’t true then what was really going on? If it is true, who would he follow? There were two men claiming to the “the savior.” Both could perform miracles. Both could raise the dead as easily as they could raze a city. They both seemed equally compassionate. Equally nice. Equally evil. Equal is every way. There was no good rational for choosing one over the other, but if one of them was Christ, then the other had to be his antithesis.

People flocked to both leaders. Both had charisma. Both were attractive, but in different ways. It seemed that the women would choose based on looks. Some liked the bad boy look, others enjoyed the clean-cut business man look. They would say that they were just following their heart, which one felt right, but it wasn’t entirely true. Some women just like motorcycles and leather jackets. How the men chose sides was still a mystery. Regardless of the selection process, both sides were growing in equal numbers and were dead even.

Now onto the actual men in charge. One of them was the former president. It was very odd that he could actually pull the kind of numbers that he did. When he disappeared his approval rating was around ten percent. Now it seemed to be much closer to 50. his followers believed that he was the guy.

The other man used to be a videographer. A former cameraman. His name was Joe. The peculiar thing about his followers was that they seemed to accept the fact that he carried, and talked to, two bricks. It seemed he would listen to them before saying anything. It took Joe a while to accept his role, but Janice wouldn’t let it go. The fact that he had somehow managed to evade the shadows for this long was nothing short of a miracle. After many long talks she managed to convince Joe to come out and proclaim his position. She honestly believed that he was a holy figure, or at least she would say so if anyone could ask.

The future looked pretty uncertain. There was only one real safe bet. Things were going to get a lot worse before they got much better. A war was coming and it would be of epic proportions.

There was a third group that was slowly dwindling into nonexistence. These were the non-followers. Their ranks slowly started to decline as the first person decided that he suddenly believed. Then came the next, and the next, and so on, until there were very few left.

The Riders were an interesting organization as well. They stayed together as a unified group and turned control over to Joe. He tried to reject the idea, but they were able to persuade him otherwise. He left their current leader in charge so he could establish a position of plausible deniability. Joe figured that if they were going to do something he might not agree with that it was easier to sleep at night if he didn’t even know about it. There was not a single bone in Joe’s body that screamed for greatness. He was in over his head and had no idea what he was really doing, not that he would really want to know anyway.