All over the nation, it became clear to the Christians that the land that once was theirs had been taken away. They were treated as outcasts and renegades—enemies of society. Some had begun the trek to the place in the mountains they had learned about on satellite TV. Others believed the trouble would soon blow over, so they elected to stay behind. But they were wrong.

To be sure, things were going to get infinitely better—but before they did, there was a much worse fate in store.

Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AS THE MONTHS DRAGGED BY under the dreary gray skies, the seasons blended one into another. The ice and cold of winter were more intense than ever before in living memory, and spring and summer never came. Without the sunlight, there were crop failures throughout the world. Some varieties of food plants could grow under these conditions, but serious shortages of cereal grains developed.

Those nations that, in the best of times, lived day-to-day, experienced famine more horrible than any they had ever known. Children deprived of vitamin D from the sun developed rickets. In the absence of sunlight, bacterial organisms began to thrive, which produced, in turn, worldwide epidemics of influenza and tuberculosis.

Nuclear radiation released from the meltdown of the Japanese reactors had caused a much more serious pollution of the water supplies of Asian nations than had been originally anticipated. Multitudes of people began experiencing the growth of skin tumors, cancer of vital organs, leukemia, and other life-threatening illnesses.

Adequate food, medicine, and financial resources no longer existed anywhere on earth. It was impossible to take care of the nutritional and health needs of the vast population of the world. Without specifically saying so, President Mark Beaulieu and Chairman Tauriq Haddad were quite satisfied to see the drastic reduction in the number of people populating the planet. While their public pronouncements always professed sympathy and compassion for the suffering, privately they blocked the expenditure of any funds for medical or nutritional relief. They showed no grief when they learned that the death toll from famine and disease had exceeded one billion people.

For the anniversary celebration of his inauguration, almost two years after the volcanoes erupted, President Mark Beaulieu announced a major address to the world. He stood in the assembly hall of the Union for Peace Building in Washington, D.C., looked straight into the television cameras, and said, “The world has suffered long enough in cold and darkness. I have come to the earth that you may walk in the light, not in darkness. At my command, the clouds that have covered the earth the past two years shall be rolled away, and there shall be light.”