The Zul Enigma (57 page)

Rachael closed her eyes
again, forcing back the tears.

‘It was terrible.’

FRIDAY 21st DECEMBER 2012 – TUESDAY 25th JUNE 2013

Friday 21st December

We had a late one at La Lucciola and didn’t get back till two this morning.
Drew and Carlos were both pretty drunk and even Joseph loosened up after they
all got on the brandies. He told a couple of Jewish jokes, much to Drew’s
delight. Erika was very wobbly by the time we said goodbye and wouldn’t stop
hugging me.

Our plan was to stay up
all night making love and talking – could be our last one as physical
beings right. But the champagne and brandies put the mockers on that for
Carlos… and I was just plain exhausted. Within seconds of hitting the sheets we
were asleep.

The moment the alarm
went off we put on the TV news with pumping hearts but nothing unusual was
being reported. Poor Carlos had a bad head, what with the drinking and not
having enough sleep, so I made us a spot of breakfast and we left for the
office just after nine. Only the snow ploughs were out and the streets were
deserted. It was eerie. Since only people with Emergency Permits – Carlos
arranged mine, of course – are allowed out from six this morning until
further notice, there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

Dependable Corrinne was
already there and she popped up to see us after we arrived, which was very
sweet. I do like her. She’s a real mother hen and she adores Carlos. She even
showed me how to make his coffee the way he likes it, in spite of the fact she
knows we’ve been living together for five months.

Right now, I’m sitting
at Carlos’s desk. He’s over on the couch – his favourite spot – playing
“Dylan and the Dead”. Apart from taking the occasional call earlier and
spending a couple of hours chatting with me, all he’s done is sit there
listening to music and staring out of the window at the falling snow like he’s
in a trance.

After I finished editing
the second part of my book, I printed the whole thing out. Now I’m writing my
diary. If I make it through today as a physical being, I’d like to publish my
book, which will serve as an account of Zul’s contact. I’d like to think it
might be useful to other third density beings in the future. And if I evolve to
the next density, then I don’t know what will happen to it. Perhaps someone
will find the manuscript and think it’s interesting enough to print. Perhaps no
one else will ever read it. That’s a strange thought, having put so many hours
into it.

It feels really weird
hanging around waiting for a phone call reporting something’s happened or for
something to happen to one of us. No – excuse me – I don’t want to
beat about the bush here. I don’t want to use euphemisms. I want to say it
exactly how it is.

What’s really going on
is that everyone on this planet is sitting quietly terrified, waiting to hear
that people are starting to drop dead in their billions like ants sprayed with
insecticide. What a sick feeling it is and I detest being a part of it, because
I’ve now reached the point where I know exactly what I want to happen. I want
Carlos to be wrong. I want the sun to rise on our own planet tomorrow, just
like it has done for eons before. I don’t care about raising our consciousness.
I don’t care about evolving to the next density. I just want to look forward to
years of happiness ahead of me, with my gorgeous man and for us both to see our
baby born and bloom.

But I know this is not
how things will turn out. And so I meditate and pray for the strength to face
whatever our future brings, and am surprised to realise I am no longer afraid.
I am resigned.

Oh, my God!

Oh, my GOD!

OH, MY GOD!

I don’t know how to
write this. It’s too raw. Too AWFUL.

At exactly five past
seven in the morning New York time and five past one in the afternoon in
Vienna, the phone rang. It was Greg. He’d been at his office since midnight his
time – waiting – and he told us the thing we’d all been expecting
had happened. All the humans vibrating near fourth density evolved to the
spiritual world leaving their physical bodies behind, while those of us who
didn’t make the evolutionary leap have been transported from our old Earth onto
an identical one in a parallel brane universe. It all transpired, exactly as
Astraea said.

It is
unbelievable
.

We felt
nothing
.

And the aftermath is
horrific
.

Greg
told Carlos he started getting calls just after seven, saying many people in
New York had collapsed and died. When he looked out of the window himself,
although there was little traffic and few pedestrians on the streets, he saw
the bodies of two young people who had been struck down mid-stride as they
crossed the road. They were lying motionless in the slush.

Carlos hung up the phone
looking sick. He whispered that in spite of believing in it, championing it,
fighting for it, he couldn’t grasp that the evolutionary leap Zul predicted had
happened. I sat there staring at him, feeling like I wanted to throw up. I
couldn’t believe it had happened either. I fought back my nausea, pushed myself
up onto my feet and went to him. We held each other close while tears streamed
down our faces. We didn’t make a sound. We just clung on to each other –
desperate – as if someone or something was trying to prise us apart. All
I could find to say was that he mustn’t feel sad. Or bad. That he had to feel
proud because he’d achieved what he set out to do and if he hadn’t, then the
evolution of the whole galaxy would have been compromised.

It was little comfort.
To either of us.

Then the phone rang
again. It was the first report of deaths in Vienna. Thank God there weren’t
that many. Which surprised me. You’d think the people working at UNO would be
closer to the fourth density, having a pretty selfless mind-set, and I’d
secretly dreaded that many people at the UN would be doomed.

Emergency services worldwide have been inundated with calls and everyone is
going crazy in spite of the E-Day Emergency Plan that every nation ratified and
made public a month ago. We watched the news after Greg called, and what’s
happening is just horrific.

Usually people hold on
to their dead so they can give them a personalised, dignified farewell –
but that won’t happen today. We have to drag them outside then go back indoors
and stay there with the curtains closed and our front doors unlocked or else
they’ll be broken down and the premises searched for bodies. Film of the Clean
Up Plan in action on television and the Internet is shocking. It’s as if a
neutron bomb hit the world. No one has ever witnessed such carnage.

In some places more
people have been left alive than those who have been taken, and the survivors
there are arguing that the Clean Up Plan shouldn’t apply. After all, let’s be
honest, who wants to drag bodies of people they know and love onto the street
for bulldozers to heap up into piles of flesh that will be burned. Would you
want to do that to your family or friends. Treat them with no more decorum than
you would a dead rat.

The E-Day Emergency Plan warned us to stock up with several weeks food and
there are back-to-back broadcasts reminding people without an Emergency Permit
to stay off the streets until further notice. The only exception is Christmas
Day, and even then there’ll be a curfew.

The whole world has been
shut down, as everything possible is being done to contain the panic.

Carlos’s phone has not stopped ringing and the phone lines are overloaded as
everyone tries to check on friends and relations. All the deaths took place
simultaneously at the precise time Carlos predicted. To the split second. They
all occurred the exact moment it was the 21st December on every part of the
planet.

Reports from Europe,
North America and Australasia are flooding in, although communications with
many Asian and African countries, with South America and the Middle East, have
been severely interrupted and we’re only getting patchy news.

Private
images posted on the Internet are appalling and I can’t help but ask myself if
Carlos ever fully comprehended the scale this evolutionary leap would take and
the trauma it would impose on the grieving humans left behind. I don’t think he
did. I don’t think anyone could have. I certainly didn’t.

It’s loathsome for those
of us left. We’re locked in mayhem never experienced before. The extent of
mourning is unprecedented, although we’re all participating in isolation and
it’s terrifying wondering how we will ever build a functional future. Right
now, that task is unimaginable.

As many reporters are
pointing out, the scriptures predicted we sinners would be sent to Hell and
that’s exactly where we are right now. We are in Hell on Earth.

Saturday 22nd December 2012

Yesterday I left Carlos at the office and drove myself home, since he said he’d
probably end up having to spend the night there. I haven’t heard from him
since, but I don’t want to bother him… I can’t imagine how much he’s got on his
plate right now. I’d steeled myself, thinking I’d encounter some ghastly scenes
on the way back, but I didn’t see anyone on the streets and only passed a
couple of cars. However, in spite of having a permit, I can’t face going out
today, so I’m just sitting here, thinking.

Yesterday I was a mute
spectator as Carlos sat through a holovideo call with Greg just before I left.
Of course, they are doing everything they can to bring some semblance of order
into the chaos that is now our planet but the media, like the proverbial worm,
had already started to turn and is resuming its old habit of UN-bashing. The
press is hounding Greg and Carlos for statements, but how can anyone expect
them to comment on a world that, through no fault of theirs, has experienced
the most gigantic loss of human life – ever. An event unparalleled in the
history of mankind.

The phone lines are swamped and the Internet went down yesterday. But I know my
parents, my sister and her husband, Carlos’s parents and his sister and family
are all still alive. Erika and Drew and the boys too. Joseph as well. Yesterday
and today we received messages from many other friends. Thank God. But this
tiny fragment of good news is microscopic and I’ve been going out of my mind
trying to reach my best friend in England and other friends in India and the
US.

All I can do is sit
alone in silence. I had to turn off the TV soon after I got home yesterday and
I haven’t been able to bring myself to put it back on again. The number of dead
being reported was increasing exponentially. Yesterday afternoon it was already
in the millions... and still counting. How many scenes of stiff, heaped up
bodies wept over by grief-stricken friends and relatives can you be exposed to
before you just have to turn your eyes away. How much sorrow can we bear,
because it happened to them and not to us. How is it going to affect our
children. I think of Ash and Josh. How can we explain what happened. How can we
soften this catastrophic blow. Well, there’s an easy answer to that question
– we can’t. I try to calm my crazy thoughts.

A few hours after I got up, I heard Carlos opening the front door. He’d been at
the office for twenty-four hours straight and I hardly recognised him when he
walked in. He’d aged ten years and shrunk two inches. He looked done in…
grizzled. He carried the biting cold from outside in with him on his hair and
skin. All I could do was rock him in my arms as if he was my child and try to
thaw out his frozen soul.

I guided him into the
warmth of the lounge where we sat on the couch. After much coaxing, I persuaded
him to talk but afterwards wished I hadn’t, because I could hardly take in what
he said. In a chilling monotone he told me that billions of the planet’s
inhabitants had died. Yes… billions. But, he added, that was not the most
crushing news the world must face… the real situation was far, far worse than
anyone could have imagined.

How could there possibly
be anything worse, I asked.

Believe me, there is, he
replied, and proceeded to tell me that the scope of decimation we anticipated
as a result of Zul’s theory of evolution coming to pass, was not what had in
fact transpired. He said that as increasingly more evidence – deeply
concerning evidence – emerged yesterday, hour-by-hour, the situation
became steadily more suspicious.

He told me that it is
now proven without a shadow of doubt that it was not the spiritually advanced,
as Zul predicted, who have died. On the contrary, in Christian and Buddhist
monasteries and convents, some of the most virtuous and saintly monks and nuns
live on.

So what did happen, I
asked, the tears hot in my eyes, not understanding how anything he could say
would make what I already know any worse.

He seemed to
disintegrate before my eyes. All he could do was sob soundlessly. I touched his
cheek.

My darling, I said, tell
me. What
is
it.

Minutes of silence
passed before he sat up and stared at me, eyes wide. He looked like a madman.
At last he found his voice. Based on the reports coming in, he said, it’s
become apparent that Zul’s theory of evolution was a cover for something way
more heinous.

What do you mean, I
asked.