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  THE LAST DAYIS READERS’ FIRST CHOICE

  “Fascinating debut.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Kleier's narrative is exciting.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “A futuristic thriller… an original and engrossing one, packed with action and numerous topical issues.”

  —Chattanooga Free Press

  “Sizzles with bioengineering, the miraculous, and the deepest mysteries of faith. An action-packed turn on the turn-of-the-century, it starts fast and roars to a spellbinding finish.”

  —Peter Hernon, author ofUnder the Influence and Earthly Remains

  “Intense…entertaining.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Refreshing… Kleier lures us on like a Pied Piper.”

  —Dean Ing, author ofThe Ransom of Black Stealth One

  “So full of hot topics, readers might burn their fingers turning pages. … Doesn't miss a beat… as smooth as silk … a perfect touch…. Will keep readers enthralled until the very end…. Don't expect to find a millennial thriller any better than this.”

  —Booklist

  “A masterful job…. Kleier's millennial vision is entertaining as well as provocative. … He has dissected the yin and yang of the human psyche confronted by spiritual crisis.”

  —Arisona Republic

  “Action-filled…. An exciting take on the Second Coming.”

  —Macon Telegraph

  “A spine-tingling mystery/adventure of the first order … a near-future thriller that challenges the reader's concepts of theology and science and our capacity for good and evil.”

  —Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

  “A fascinating, almost unbearably suspenseful scientific thriller. THE LAST DAY will hold your attention until the last page—and beyond.”

  —Internet Writing Journal

  “Provocative … unsettling.”

  —Courier Journal (Louisville, KY)

  “A fascinating novel … a very important book. Forget that it is a good, quick read, a provocative story, and a sure-fire movie plot; it is also a significant piece of theology. Maybe even a dangerous one.”

  —L.E.O. Magazine

  “Bound to stir up some controversy…. You're going to be hearing a lot about Glenn Kleier.”

  —Herald-Leader (Lexington, KY)

  If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1997 by Glenn Kleier

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Vision is a registered trademark of Warner Books, Inc.

  Cover design by Tony Greco

  Front cover photograph by Herman Estevez

  Back cover photograph by John Lair

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group,

  237 Park Avenue,

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  A Time Warner Company

  First eBook Edition: July-1999

  ISBN: 978-0-446-93028-4

  To all who confront the peculiar

  physics of dogma,

  piety and self-righteousness.

  Contents

  The Last Dayis Readers’ First Choice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Acknowledgments

  My heartfelt gratitude to Ms. Jillian Manus of Manus and Associates for the extraordinary level of enthusiasm, expertise and intelligence with which she has so skillfully agented this project. You are a remarkable lady, Jillian. You made the entire process an absolute delight.

  Special thanks to vice president and executive editor at Warner Books, Mr. Rick Horgan, and to his superb team of professionals. Rick, your keen insights and thoughtful suggestions were dead-on accurate and fostered many a valuable refinement Senior production editor Bob Castillo and copyeditor Fred Chase, you have unfailing eyes for detail. Working with all of you was a truly rewarding experience.

  Ryan and Sean, thank you for your patience over the last several years in putting up with an often distracted dad. While it wasn't always easy typing with one or the other of you climbing into my lap, I wouldn't have had it any other way.
I miss those days; they are special memories for me. (But you still have to wait till you're older to read this book!)

  There are no words to express the debt of gratitude I feel toward my father and mother, Gene and Mary Rose Kleier. Thanks for putting up with a skinny, hyperactive, lippy little kid; and for planting inside him those core beliefs that have sustained him through all these years. I could not ask for more loving and generous parents man you.

  And I save my deepest appreciation for my beloved wife, Pam, who is hot only beautiful and brilliant but infinitely understanding. You remain the most consummate human being it has ever been my privilege to know, and without your unflagging support, patience and assistance, this little allegory would not exist.

  My love to all of you, always.

  Glenn

  1

  WNN Television Studios, Times Square, New York 4:38 P.M., Friday, December 24, 1999

  Jesus Christ!” the first man exclaimed.

  “More or less,” the second responded.

  The two well-dressed TV executives sat alone in a World News Network editing suite as a series of bizarre, silent scenes played out on the huge video wall before them.

  Towering on the screen was the face of a grinning, feverish-eyed, middle-aged man with a scruffy beard. He was dressed in a tattered robe. His long stringy hair was matted with blood that trickled from a laurel wreath of rusted barbed wire on his head. As the camera pulled back, a heavy wooden cross became visible across his shoulder. Behind him, a street sign read “Via Dolorosa.” A title font on the screen identified the man as “Douglas Bandy, former stockbroker from San Jose, CA.”

  The first executive nodded appreciatively.

  Emerging next on the large screen was a young family of five, also shabbily dressed, seated on the worn cobble-stones of what appeared to be an ancient market bazaar. The family extended their upturned palms to every passerby, and ultimately, to the camera taking the video. The font read: “The Étien Dubois family, formerly of Orléans, France.”

  The video then cut to a wide scene of a highway choked with cars, buses, bicycles and animal-driven vehicles. Beyond, the contorted skyline of Jerusalem loomed in the distance.

  “Here's where we come in with the historical material,” the second executive explained in a genteel English accent.

  Obligingly, the video screen presented sweeping footage of a beautiful, elaborately embroidered wall tapestry. As the camera moved in to slowly migrate down the full length of the mural, an epic story unfolded.

  “The Catastrophic Millennium Pilgrimages of A.D. 999,” the title font described it. The sequence began with wealthy, medieval European families giving away their belongings to the poor and setting off for the Holy Land. On their journey, the travelers soon fell victim to terrible hardships. The tapestry depicted graphic scenes of marauders waylaying, pillaging, raping, enslaving and murdering the pilgrims. Those fortunate enough to survive the trek were then shown arriving, destitute, in the forbidden Jerusalem of the Muslims, left to starve in frustrated desolation.

  “We'll add the voice-overs next week,” the Englishman commented, “and that will finish it.”

  “An outstanding piece,” his cohort acknowledged, an expression of admiration spreading across his face. “It looks like your Millennium Eve special will be a huge success. Airtime's selling well all over the globe.”

  “Was there ever any doubt?” the Englishman said, feigning surprise.

  His associate emitted a short, snorting laugh. “I'll tell you what, Nigel, when you first proposed this whole idea, a lot of us here in the States thought you were crazy. I mean, forming special news teams, sending them all over the world at such expense to chase after a bunch of religious fanatics! I honestly thought corporate was going to take a bath on this one. But once again, you've shown your knack for creating news. You developed this millenarian craze into a major international story. Hell, if things go as well as we anticipate, maybe we'll run it again next year for the real turn of the millennium!”

  “To be quite honest,” Nigel confessed, “it falls short of my expectations.”

  “What do you mean?” the fellow executive protested. “The setup couldn't be more perfect! Your coverage of the millenarian movement over the last six months—the growing insanity in the Holy Land, Rome, Salt Lake City. All the crazy speculation about what's going to happen when the world odometer ticks over to the year 2000. The TV audience can't get enough of it! You were light-years ahead of the other networks, Nigel. You had the foresight.”

  The Englishman remained unconvinced, wagging his head slowly. “The story lacks substance. These zealots may be entertaining, but they have no true credibility with our audience. They're a sideshow. A curiosity. I was hoping we'd eventually find something with a harder edge.”

  “Like what?” his associate wondered.

  “If only we'd been successful in getting one of the heavyweight religions aboard. A choice, ominous statement from the pope would have been nice. Or perhaps the discovery of some foreboding new Dead Sea Scroll. What our report needs is a jolt of drama. Something to give the evening a little more… impact.”

  2

  Mount Ramon Observatory, Negev Desert, southern Israel 11:57 P.M., Friday, December 24,1999

  At this late hour, four Japanese astronomers were hunched over an assortment of infrared monitors, spectroscopes and optical instruments, gazing skyward from the open deck of Israel's only celestial observatory. Bundled against the cold, the men were special guests of the Israeli Ministry of Science, on leave from Kyoto University, Japan. The latitude and dry atmosphere of the southern Israeli desert was ideal for studying this, the largest meteor phenomenon in two thousand years, as the earth passed tonight through the Geminids asteroid belt. Already the astronomers had recorded hundreds of encounters.

  “With all this activity, you would think a few might survive the descent,” one colleague commented in Japanese to no one in particular.

  “Yes,” another replied. “It would be exciting to collect a fresh specimen.”

  In fact, at the very foot of Mount Ramon lay the scars of several ancient meteorite craters, the only such sites in the Middle East, stretching for miles across the great rift of the Negev Valley. But the scientists were uninterested in things terrestrial. Their eyes were fixed firmly on the heavens.

  Quite unexpectedly, the most senior fellow of the group noticed in his instrument one meteor far brighter and larger than typical. Lips trembling, he rose slowly from his chair to confirm the sighting with unaided eyes. Certain of himself now, he blurted out in exhilaration, “Gentlemen, I think we have an impact!”

  He and his associates gaped with fascination as the light grew rapidly in size and intensity. It hurtled directly toward them on a flat trajectory, from approximately thirty degrees above the eastern horizon. The younger men remained spellbound only long enough for the danger to register, then abruptly abandoned their posts for the questionable cover of a nearby table. The senior astronomer, however, stood his ground, avidly absorbing every detail as the object passed well overhead.

  In its flight across the Negev, the fiery mass illuminated a large swath of craggy mountains and rambling desert valleys. Its brilliant passing scattered the livestock of bewildered nomads, frightened an elderly Bedouin couple traveling in a donkey-driven cart and roused various camps of millenarian pilgrims paused on their way to the Holy City of Jerusalem to celebrate the New Year 2000.

  Nor did the meteor elude the detection of Israeli Air Defense. Coincidental with the astronomers’ first sighting, an image was captured on radar at an Israeli military airfield, located near the southern side of the mountain.

  “God damn!” a stunned sentry shouted in alarm, jolted out of his complacency by a conspicuous blip emerging on his screen. His fellow sentries were at his side in an instant, squinting closely at the object, each finding it hard to accept that the peaceful state of Jordan was the seeming point of origin.

  “Code D, ho
stile,” a telemetry specialist made the call. But having never seen the likes of this, he couldn't identify it. “Too small for a plane,” he decided, “too fast for a cruise missile, too low to be a Scud.”

  The officer of the watch, frantically trying to determine the exact source and direction of the invader, sounded a full-scale alert, scrambling aircraft and enabling batteries of Super-Patriot missiles. But there was no time for an intercept. The object was already across the border and rapidly losing altitude.

  3

  Negev Research Institute, Negev Desert, southern Israel 11:59 P.M., Friday, December 24,1999

  Rising up stark and indifferently out of the weathered rock and red sands of a secluded desert canyon, an imposing glass-and-steel structure lay directly in the path of the meteor. As if to direct the oncoming visitor, there were two wings to the complex that converged in a large V. At their intersection sat a huge geodesic bubble, its one-way bronze glass reflecting multiples of the oncoming fireball.

  “Israeli Negev Research Institute,” the installation proclaimed itself in bold Hebrew and English signage. For years, the Israelis had professed this to be a biotechnology laboratory, but the center was known to be affiliated with the Israeli Defense Force and considered by neighboring countries and U.S. intelligence to be a major military research and development facility. Fully fenced and guarded by motor patrols, the institute was aglow with activity.

  Inside the dome was a multitiered laboratory of dazzling complexity. The huge infrastructure was composed of seven separate levels, each suspended from a central supporting shaft. Set well back from the dome, each floor afforded an open, cinemascopic view of the night sky.

  The institute was staffed by scores of preoccupied technicians tending a vast, layered network of cybersystems. Lengthy arrays of electronics at the top level fed downward into banks of computers on the next, which interacted with lower levels of endless coiled tubing. These, in turn, percolated clear fluids into an ever-descending sub-strata of processors, filters, auxiliary systems and convoluted bionetworks.

  Eventually leaching its way to ground level, the refined alchemy met up with the sole recipient of all this mass science: a virtually motionless, naked human figure, submerged in dark amber fluid in a transparent sealed rectangular vessel. The still form lay on its side, doubled up in a fetal position, legs tucked, arms drawn into its chest.