The Last Christian On Earth Read online

  THE LAST CHRISTIAN ON EARTH

  By J O’Keith

  THE LAST CHRISTIAN ON EARTH

  J O’Keith

  Copyright © 2011

  All Rights Reserved.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Dear Lord,

  Please forgive me for I have never written to you before nor have I read a single word of your Holy Book. On this sweltering October evening, on what could very well be the last night of my life – I have been handed this brown leather journal so that I can renounce your beloved son.

  I have been told that if I renounce my Christianity and ‘admit’ that there is no such thing as a God then they will let me spend the rest of my days in prison rather than sending me to the firing squad tomorrow morning. But for me to disavow my belief in Jesus Christ would be to give away the keys to my soul, the very reason for my being.

  But if I choose to do the right thing and die for my unrelenting faith in you I will lead Christianity into extinction.

  Where should I begin? I know that you hear and see everything, but I’ve got to hope that someone somewhere reads my whole story and finds a way to resurrect your teachings, so I’m gonna detail everything I know. So I’ll start from very beginning.

  My name is Mary and I’m twenty three years old. I wish I could tell you where I was born and raised, but I’ve spent most of my life living below ground in the tunnels, hiding from the A.P.D. (the Atheist Police Division).

  Ever since the Great War ended, which I was told finished a decade before I was born; the world has been ruled by the Atheists. Not content with assuming control of every major government, they set about exterminating every religion known to man.

  By the time I was eleven, the only religions left were Islam, Judaism and Christianity. But after a series of catastrophic events over the next five years, they managed to wipe out Islam and Judaism and 99.9 percent of Christianity.

  In the last phase of our struggles, we managed to find an uninhabited island which the A.P.D. refused to visit because it had been a site for nuclear testing. Their drones weren’t nearly smart enough to find our hiding places so we lived as peaceful a life as we could while we were there.

  So we prayed and prayed, every night and every morning, for your intervention. There were those who lost faith, but they were never true Christians. We agreed to let them leave if they promised to never disclose our location. Thomas wanted to have them all killed but that would have betrayed the very principles of our good faith, so when it was his turn to pick bananas from the northern side of the island we allowed the unfaithful to leave.

  The only prayers we knew were those passed down to us from our family and community. I am told the Great War began on the Night of Unrivalled Sin: half a century after banning the printed word, all religious texts disappeared from the internet. Houses of religious leaders were searched by the A.P.D. and anyone found to be harbouring any form of religious text was immediately executed.

  My parents told me that had they foreseen such a day they would have memorised large sections of the New Testament. But by the time I was old enough to learn, they had killed all our priests and the only prayer I think I know that is right is the Lord’s Prayer. I was also taught a few Christmas Carols before they killed my parents and I swear the soothing memory of my mother singing me Silent Night to help me sleep while we were surrounded by gunfire is one of those memories of unmitigated hope that allows me to survive during these dark and troubled times.

  Thankfully, our community also left me some of Jesus’ most important teachings and I can hand on heart say that the parable of the sower epitomises everything great about our faith. I shared the parable with the court two days ago but every single judge laughed at its teachings as if I was some sort of idiot who didn’t get the joke. But it was at that precise moment that I realised I was being tried in Satan’s court and that the joke would very soon be on them.

  But before I ended up here, I was living on this previously uninhabited island with twelve other Christians who had remained on the island after the majority of people gave up their faith and returned to the mainland. These were the only peaceful days I have known, or so I thought.

  What a privilege it was to live with others who valued grace, kindness, forgiveness and the almighty power of Jesus Christ. If I am to die tomorrow, I dream of meeting my closest friends when I ascend to heaven.

  There was a boy on the island, his name was Jack and we grew extremely fond of one another. He was our leader on the island; he found the first stream, taught us how to fish, led us in morning prayers and ensured that the slightly deranged Thomas was kept in his place.

  Thomas had a deep scar that cut right across his forehead horizontally and he wore it like a medal. And while I did not appreciate the lustful glare he threw my way from time to time, his expertise in technology and his ability to lie under extreme pressure saved my life on many an occasion.

  For while I had only met Jack when we arrived on the island, I had known Thomas from when we began our great escape from America.

  We first met on the night my parents were killed. My father, who in his pre-War life had been an engineer, had organised an escape route for a thousand Christians from New Jersey. An old (atheist) friend of his owned a company that recycled all the metal of old cruise ships and was taking a ship from New Jersey to Antigua.

  My father could not have known that his friend had been turned by the A.P.D. and that the plan was to get a large group of Christians in one place and then blow up a worthless boat with us on board. We still didn’t know about the tracking devices and our desperation meant that we ignored how easy it had been for my father to make contact with his friend without being apprehended by the A.P.D.

  On the night of our impending departure I was in charge of taking a headcount of how many men and women had boarded the ship. Just as I was about to be the last person to board the bridge, Thomas grabbed me from behind, carried me on his back and ran as fast as he could.

  “Leave me alone! Let me go!” I whispered as I was unsure whether I was being abducted by a thief or a member of the A.P.D.

  “In the beginning was the Law, and the Law was with God, and the Law was God.” Thomas replied hurriedly. From a young age I had been told that this was the code for a group called the S.C.S. (Secret Christian Soldiers) who had infiltrated the A.P.D. and were now helping Christians escape mainland North America.

  My breath grew heavier as I realised that the boat was a trap.

  “My parents are on the...” I now screamed but before I could finish my sentence an explosion louder than anything I had heard before went off behind me as Thomas was forced to throw me on the ground.

  As I looked behind me and saw not only my parents, but the remaining members of my community that I had spent my entire life growing up blown into ashes and dust, I fainted.

  When I awoke I was in a hospital bed an
d saw Thomas’ hideous scar for the first time. This was only third time in my entire life that I had woken up in an actual bed. I usually slept on the floor of a cramped sewage floor with tens of fellow Christians so for a brief moment reality gave way to the hope that I had woken up to a world where Christians were accepted alongside Atheists.

  But within seconds I remembered the events of the previous night as tears streamed down my face and I got ready to scream from the grief I was experiencing. But before I could emit a sound Thomas covered my mouth and said,

  “We’re in enemy territory so you need to give them tonsils a rest. I apologise from the bottom of my heart for not getting there in time to save your parents or any of the others but I didn’t get wind of their heinous plan before it was too late. This is a new low, even by the A.P.D’s standards. But you can bet your last dollar that there’s a rat or two in our camp or that friend of your father’s is the latest in a long line of Judases.”

  “Or both.”

  “I brought you here to get the mark of Christ removed from your upper left arm. When you fainted I gave you a little anaesthetic and then hacked away at the cross until it was unrecognisable. After that I brought you here along with the dozens of innocent bystanders injured by the blast.”

  “Why did you...it was all, all I had left.”

  “You need to wake up and smell the roses my friend – what you voluntarily had branded on your arm with a burning poker to show solidarity with your Christian brethren was being used against you and would’ve got you killed. So long as we have Christ in our heart and the Holy Spirit in our souls they can never take away our freedom.”

  “What now? I’ve lost everything. Everything.”

  “Stop thinking like a human and start thinking like a Christian. Your parents, family – all your loved ones – they’re in a better place – with God in heaven and they’re gonna be looking out for you from now on.

  “Treasure those moments you shared with them. I lost my family before I was old enough to talk – I can barely sketch the contours of mother’s face in my memory. Be thankful that your parents were able to raise you for as long as they did.

  “As for now, I need you to stay here for a couple of days while I figure out how the hell they’re killing so many of us so fast. My gut’s telling me you should leave now – but I did a number on your left arm and if you walk out it’ll look doubly suspicious.”

  “Are you...”

  “...Well I gave myself away last night so yes but we’re never to talk about that again.”

  As Thomas finished his sentence the doctor entered the room and our conversation ended before Thomas left to find the perpetrator of the previous night’s bombing.

  The next two days were one of the only times in my life that I can say that I have properly questioned my faith. To lose everyone I loved in such a horrific manner shook my entire being to its very core. How could God let those who loved him the most suffer in such brutal fashion? Was this their reward for their countless sacrifices and brave decision to persevere with their faith despite the spectre of death looming over their heads during every waking hour?

  But when this torrent of anger briefly subsided, my survival deeply disturbed me. Why was I the sole survivor? I was by no means the most devout Christian in our community (back then I only prayed three times a day) and I had been guilty of sin (I had smoked twice and got into a fight with a cousin sister once too). There were members of our group worthy of beatification, yet they perished.

  There were great men and women who perished on that ship – and I believed that if any of them had survived instead of me our religion would have had a much brighter future. Instead, I am chronicling my life’s brief excursions as the last Christian alive.

  Countless questions whirled through my mind; forming a cyclone that threatened to blow away all of the beliefs I had held close to my heart. Each series of questions led towards the same unanswerable question: how could God strip me of everything I had ever loved? And each time I returned to this question I felt the ground beneath my feet give way to a looming abyss of despair.

  But my love for you is real my lord and cannot be broken. Just when I was sure I had lost my faith the memory of my mother singing Silent Night to me as a child flooded my memory and my faith rose like a phoenix from the flames, stronger than it had ever been because it had survived a trial of fire.

  In that hospital bed I composed my own prayer for you:

  ‘Jesus I love you and am in awe of the sacrifice you made for our race. And although it appears the world has turned against your teachings and kindness, there still remain many of us who will never leave you. Your love is irrepressible, irresistible for those whose heart’s beat to recognise the valour and compassion of your teachings.

  ‘My loved ones have now returned to their rightful kingdom and I know that you are taking care of them and giving them the safe haven they searched for over all these years. I will mourn their deaths until I return to them and will count every last second of this life in anticipation of seeing them, and you, at last. To be free, at last.

  ‘But for now I will fight like never before. I will never yield to their Godless ways or knowingly take another man’s life because I choose the path of Grace. I choose you – I have always chosen you.

  ‘Please forgive my ignorance of many of your teachings which have been hidden by those afraid of your all-conquering power, but know that I have loved you with every fibre of my being from the moment I was baptised my Lord.

  ‘Thank you for bringing Thomas into my life. Although I sense he is a troubled soul, he has already saved my life and I suspect is my only hope of escaping North America.

  ‘Give me the strength to endure all the pain and suffering the Atheists will inflict on me and know that I am willing to die in the name of my Lord.

  ‘Jesus I love you and am in awe of the sacrifice you made for our race.’

  To this very day, I have recited a version of this prayer before I go to bed. If this ever does get into the hands of a fellow Christian or someone considering converting to the faith: never underestimate the power of prayer. A prayer is a force-field that protects true believers in both this life and the next. But most importantly, always remember the power of repeating a prayer. With each utterance you move a step closer to God and begin to remove yourself from the bondages of materialism – and you begin to transcend the linear understanding of time and see beyond next month and next year, you begin to understand the notion of the everlasting light and the Kingdom of Heaven.

  So while Thomas saved my body from its eventual death, Jesus Christ once again saved my soul and delivered me to an unbreakable understanding of my Christian faith. And although I left the hospital without the cross that had been branded on my left arm or my entire family I knew that when I was faced with a choice between my faith and my life the former would always win. Because without my Christian faith my life would be a hollow shell of an existence and that is why I will never renounce my faith.

  The reason my family and I had remained in America for so long was because it was the most Christian nation on Earth and was the last government to fall into the hands of the Atheists. Even after the Great War, we were one of four countries who remained Christian – thanks to our democratic process our belief system could not be overthrown as easily as it was in other countries.

  But we were betrayed by a President Long, who had pretended to be Catholic, but had been trained by the A.P.D. for the majority of his life.

  There was an unfortunate shooting spree in Oakland and he blamed it on the Christian faith. At the following mid-terms, thanks to a series of copycat attacks and unlimited funding by Godless corporations, he was able to remove the majority of Christians in both Houses and force through the Atheists agenda.

  But from the moment the Great War began, my parents told me that many people of the Christian faith had foreseen the looming genocide and so began the construction of the strongest underground network
in the world. In fact, this system went all the way back to bunkers that were built deep underground by Christians who feared a nuclear holocaust.

  They had the foresight to realise that food would be as important as shelter, so the Christians who still worked for the army smuggled tonnes of imperishable foods into the tunnels early on.

  By the time President Long came into power, we had established a network that connected forty three states and stored enough food to last us three decades. We did not know of the betrayal by our leaders and the fact we had tracking devices fitted, but I later learned that these devices did not work when we were underground. Had we known this and the fact that they were age sensitive, I would never have let my parents and their generation leave, but once our network was given away and they flooded it with poisonous gases, to have remained there would have been suicide.

  Up until three months before our ill-fated attempt to escape America via ship, I had only ever lived underground. We spent the majority of our waking hours walking as we were in constant fear of being attacked.

  My mother had been a teacher and she would walk backwards while teaching us children everything she knew. The multiplication table always makes me shudder, because it was while learning the answer to seven times seven that I saw someone I know die for the very first time.

  Encountering death at such a young age shaped my upbringing. If this had been the only time I had seen it, this particular instance would have had a more lasting effect. But as the A.P.D. agents’ attacks became more regular, the piles of dead bodies from both sides, particularly theirs, became more regular. Death by gunfire became as regular as eating meat or cutting my nails, it became a natural part of our lives.

  I hope and pray that if I am ever lucky enough to have children that they do not have such a gruesome upbringing. Despite our wonderful community members constantly protecting us and promising us the time would soon come when these deaths and gunfights would be long behind us, they left a scar on all of us.