***
Participating in SERE, completely cut off from the world and getting my ass handed to me by my trainers – or, I should say, my captors – the world reached the point of no return. When the Pope was targeted next, by the same extremists who were involved in the massacre of Jerusalem, the entire world erupted in conflict.
Early one Sunday morning, as faithful Catholics gathered in St. Peter’s Square to hear Mass from the Pope, suicide bombers disguised as worshipers detonated charges strapped to their chests. Non-explosive in nature, these bombs emitted an invisible and odorless gas overwhelming everyone before they even knew what had happened.
It was hardly surprising that the Pope’s elite Swiss Guard had been able to eliminate the targets and move him inside to safety, but despite their best efforts, only a few worshipers in attendance made it inside as well. Perhaps by an act of God, the strong winds which usually swept through the region were unusually calm that day, containing the gas to the area around the Vatican, so few of Rome’s other inhabitants were effected.
Equipped with state of the art technology cleverly concealed by its classic façade, the Vatican was quickly sealed off, and all those inside were safe.
Those outside were not.
Any consideration that the Vatican would be the next target had escaped every western intelligence agency’s radar. Iran’s rhetoric had never indicated such a move was on the table. Lacking long range missiles and the ability to penetrate America’s very competent domestic security agencies, staging a bold attack on the Vatican had served as the most grievous of statements. The West was on notice. Thousands of Catholics were violently murdered, and with a mass of decaying corpses littering St. Peter’s Square, a call to action was demanded.
In an age where secularism was at the height of its popularity, and church attendance across faith based institutions at an all-time low, many wondered what kind of reaction, if any, would come about from the horrific attack. No one had any idea that almost overnight, sects of Christianity, from Anglicans to Charismatics, and many forms of Protestantism in between, were in support of their Catholic brothers and sisters. The situation did not progress as far as uniting all Christians under a single religious banner – as it would be a cold day in Hell, ironically enough, before that happened – but the Pope began influencing the decisions of many individuals again, not just Roman Catholics.
Compounding matters was that Russia’s involvement was no longer in question. The West could do little more than watch as Russia infringed on its eastern neighbors’ sovereignty, resulting in an outbreak of hostilities in Eastern Europe and the Balkans between Russia and member nations of the European Union. After four years, places like Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Macedonia were war zones. Their cities were devastated and destroyed, and were littered with dug out trench systems reminiscent of those used in World War I, ones that never seemed to shift or move, only run deeper with blood.
Things continued to get worse in other parts of the world as well.
The conflict simmering for decades between Pakistan and India finally boiled over. The large populations of Muslims and Christians in both nations only fueled the fire, turning neighbors upon one another in a multitude of bloody conflicts. It became a trend the world over. Wars flared up all over the world, neighbors finally finding the excuses they needed to pick up arms against one another, and most didn’t even need religion to justify their action.
By the end of the decade, the Americas became yet another victim. North America’s southern border with Mexico became a war zone when Mexico was overrun by guerilla forces led by communists and warlords who had been slowly building their armies for years, mostly thanks to Russian benefactors. Russia had finally succeeded where the Germans had failed during WWI by opening up a second front against The United States of America. As a result, Canadian and American forces were posted all along the expansive border, constantly engaging in skirmishes and pitched battles.
North Korea crossed the thirty eighth parallel quite early in the conflict and invaded South Korea. With the bulk of American forces tied up all over the world, there was little the troops garrisoned behind the demilitarized zone could do. North Korean tank divisions rolled south with little impediment to their progress and their Navy blockaded the peninsula. For the past five years, South Korea steadfastly held the southern tip of the small nation, guarding against both the land and sea invasions that were sure to come.
Their fate looked grim.
And then there was Africa. Their part in the conflict was, for once, not to fight exclusively among themselves, but to somehow put aside most of their differences and wage war against anyone who got in their way. African warlords had cut a swath across the entire continent, fighting each other and together in equal parts. It hadn’t been long before isolated coalitions had moved north toward Europe and East toward Saudi Arabia. The entire southern coast of Europe was on high alert and Spain was under constant threat, a situation which had the potential to become a horrible mess.
The one factor missing from the global war was the use of nuclear weapons. It was interesting how the threat of nukes had always had the citizens of the world on edge, always wondering if the end was just around the corner. Everybody knew that it would take only a small percentage of even one nation’s nuclear supply to bring about the end the world. Yet, nukes had been a nonfactor since the beginning of World War III, not once being employed on the battlefield.
The world’s unofficial “no-nukes” policy was hardly surprising, at least to me. Every finger poised over nuclear launch buttons around the world knew that as soon as they allowed gravity to overcome the strength of their fingers, every other button of mass destruction would likewise be depressed. No one wanted to be responsible for wiping mankind off the face of the planet. Even so, life was just as tense as it was in the 1950’s, and sooner or later, someone was bound to get antsy and initiate a chain reaction that would lead to nothing short of the end of time.
As far as I was concerned, total destruction was inevitable.