Sample Chapter: Holy Light

The Rapture occurred in 2030, when God called His chosen up to heaven and seven years of Tribulation started. Of course, no one noticed.

Seven years of war and famine and disease is not, when you think about it, all that different to how life was beforehand. These things come in waves, and humanity absorbed it in waves. As for the Rapture itself, we’ve found very little record. We suspect that the handful of Raptured individuals, waking up intact in body and mind if not soul, were simply dismissed as madmen when they tried to share the truth with others. I doubt that they lived particularly long lives after that. As we are now all too aware, a soulless person very quickly loses any sense of attachment or self preservation. We only know the date by working backwards from the end of the seven years, and the scholars still quibble about just how close the ‘year’ is to a solar year and about the specific date of inception.

The end of the seven years, of course, carries no such doubt. Not a person alive today could forget July 7, 2037. The way the sun flared with searing, holy light, burning the souls out of everyone it touched and sending them to their final resting places. The way those of us fortunate enough to be on the wrong side of the world, on the advice of the panicked emergency broadcasts from the other side, dove for any shelter we could find while there was still time. It was a long time ago, now. No one will ever forget.

My name is Claire Bartleby. I’m 173 years old. And sunlight hasn’t touched my skin for 157 years.

Nobody’s born any more. Nobody ages. People do die, sometimes, but usually only of starvation or suicide or, most horrifying of all, they get caught by God’s Holy Light, lose their souls and join the daylight wanderers. But so long as you’re careful of the sun, dying is hard. It takes real effort. So we’ll probably last a long time, I think, holding out and holding the remaining few human souls to this abandoned world. Those of us still left alive are very good at it.

I can guess what you’re probably thinking. “Claire, why are you explaining this? We know! We remember! We were all there!” And if that’s the case, then this record isn’t for you. This record is for our descendants.

Yeah, you heard me. Descendants.

The world has been in stasis since the Tribulation ended, waiting for us to die so that the next part of the prophecy can begin. But I think there’s a way to change that. To have children again, children born with fresh new souls. To give humanity a future. So if you’re reading this, and you weren’t alive to witness the end of the world… hi. I’m so happy you exist.

This is the story of us making that happen.