Prologue
Reported by Carina Alfuego (The Eschatos Chronicles correspondent in Chile). In the copper-laden mountains of Calama, a sable-skinned boy named Pichi pokes a stick at a grasshopper—one he has trapped inside a rusty toy truck.
One can only imagine him saying, Monstruo, muerte, as he giggles at the insect, which means, Die monster. Not because Pichi is cruel but because he just doesn’t know.
He also doesn’t know that behind him a building swarm of haze is scudding toward him. Daylight fades to dark when sand and earth, roiling within the wind, smudges out the sun. But innocent Pichi isn’t aware. He remains in a squat with his oily back turned from the storm bowling down upon the swatch of hardpan leading to the spot where he stoops over his insect. Dirt particles swell up off the ground as though losing gravity. The ball of filth gathers speed and grows to heights where small planes fly.
Witnesses claim they saw wings and horns in the dust. But Chileans are known for their superstitions giving weight to supernatural visions, to apocryphal sightings, and to mysticisms. What Chileans might call God, others might call Mother Nature.
The difference between God and nature is that one controls the other and nature is no match for God. Not at any time. Certainly, not this time. Nature could only stand back and watch as the first zephyr undulated over the land.
One witness said Pichi must have felt the fury in the wind because he stopped poking the grasshopper and stood. He turned—slow and deliberate—but all too late. The witness tried to scream for him to run but the monolithic wall of debris consumed him. All Pichi could do was gasp. Then he was gone.
Others spoke of the wind in Biblical terms—of thundering horse hooves, searing temperatures, and tidal waves. Survivors scoured through its toll—statues and mining equipment uprooted, homes flattened, lives taken—lives like little Pichi. They reported the wind feeling alive, that it was hungry.
Pichi’s story is one of many catastrophes occurring across the globe. A person would have blinders on not to see something far worse was at play. It seems from several other reports with similar symbolism from witnesses that these catastrophes have split open the gates of Heaven. Have carved out the cells of hell. Placing armies from Heaven and throngs of the ungodly squarely on the shoulders of earth where every living soul is at stake. Where lines have been drawn in the rubble. From which sides have been taken.
There will be a winner. There will be a loser. There will be a fight to the death.
Game on.
