When a shooting star plunges through the atmosphere and touches down in the Alaska wilderness, only two earthlings are present to witness the event. But they perceive two utterly different realities. What park ranger Jace Kuliak sees is a UFO and the arrival of a dangerous alien species from beyond the solar system. What Poppy Prophecy sees is the star called Wormwood, as recorded in Scripture, and the arrival of an archangel of the Apocalypse.
The thing is — they’re both sorta right.
Poppy Prophecy is the despotic patriarch of a large End-Times prepper family that is busily converting a depleted copper mine into its own private doomsday bunker. The copper mine is a century-old relic from territorial days when East Coast robber barons ruled Alaska and plundered its mineral wealth. Today the abandoned mine sits in the middle of the largest, wildest, most majestic national park in the United States. But Poppy isn’t impressed by mere earthly beauty, and he doesn’t mind bulldozing federal land when it suits his purpose.
Backcountry Ranger Jace Kuliak does mind, and he and fellow rangers confront the fundamentalist family in an armed standoff over the construction of an illegal airstrip. It doesn’t help matters when Ranger Kuliak falls in hopeless love with Poppy’s second daughter, the lovely, innocent Deuteronomy.
An uneasy truce between the Prophecys and the park service is shattered when the falling star lands in their backyard and is claimed by both sides. What is it? Who is it? Who can claim it as their own?
First Contact with earthlings was a bust for the celestial visitor, but at least it survived the ordeal.
What do reverse cyborgs want?
Now Missing One must quickly find a new human enabler to help it complete its mission. So it reveals itself to park ranger Jace Kuliak as a stock Hollywood space alien and pleads with him to help it “phone home.” In no time, the false angel’s “War in Heaven” spills over into our solar system, and Jace must grapple with the burden of deciding the fate of humanity. Or at least a major portion of it.
Meanwhile, God assigns Deuteronomy a mission of her own.
Despite the alien’s best efforts, the so-called Little Nudge has failed, and the rogue planet Pipnonia is once again on a collision course with Earth. It’s time for the “Big Bump,” the alien’s last-ditch effort to save Earth and its inhabitants from total annihilation. But first it pressures Ranger Jace Kuliak to accompany Deut Prophecy, the Thirteenth Apostle, on her mission to Pipnonia to preach to its doomed population.
Meanwhile, civil society is disintegrating around the world. Vera Tetlin, the popular governor of Alaska, and her family are on the run from agents of the Antichrist. And Doomsday Preppers from the Lower 48 are seeking refuge in the little ghost town of McHardy. Among them is a petty tyrant and racist who wants the town for himself.
Things are heating up — literally.
The Prophecy family has demolished the entrance to their End Times mountain keep with explosives in order to isolate themselves from Governor Tetlin's army of Doomsday preppers. But the army has other things on its mind — The rogue planet Pipnonia, which is on a collision course with Earth, is being torn apart by cosmic forces in the sky overhead.
Deuteronomy Prophecy, outside the mountain keep and abandoned by her family, enlists the help of Ranger Kuliak in a last-ditch effort to rescue her youngest brothers and sisters via a narrow ventilation shaft. But even if they succeed, where can they find shelter when the sky is literally falling on their heads?
© David Marusek 2022-2024
A Stack of Firewood Press is an imprint of General Genius LLC