Literature / We All Fall Down (2000)

"You wanna keep saying no, then ya better find your Inch, boy. Find it and protect it. Ya can cry and scream and beg and curse. Ya can do any damn thing ya gotta do to get through it, but as long as ya don't say yes, you win. Long as ya keep yer Inch for yerself, long as ya don't pussy out and give it to [the Antichrist] or God, you win. You win and they lose."

— Stan, Jimmy's cellmate in the OWC registration center

The Christian Bible is true, the prophets were right, and Armageddon is now. We All Fall Down is a 2000 novel written by Brian Caldwell. The story centers on Jimmy Lordan, a Michigan high school teacher who wakes up on New Year's Day to discover his wife and hundreds of millions of other Christians have been raptured. Amid a nationwide traffic jam, riots, nuclear war, and the annexation of the United States by the new "One World Community", Jimmy struggles to return to his childhood home in Boston. He hopes his parents will flee to Israel with him and accept Jesus as their Lord and savior before the seven years of tribulation are up, but when Jimmy's confronted over his faith, even knowing the Bible is true doesn't mean he can bring himself to love God in light of all the devastation and suffering being inflicted around him. It only gets worse from there.

As a story set Just Before the End, the decay of human society into torture, mass executions, rape camps, and so on puts this world far on the cynical end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. Much darker than the contemporary Left Behind series.

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This work provides examples of:

• Alone in a Crowd: In the Israeli camp, Jimmy is the only miserable unbeliever in a packed mob of singing, smiling, praying Christ followers.
• Always Night: The Fourth Trumpet of Judgment causes the sun to vanish for several days.
• Apocalypse How: Starting with the disappearance of millions of Christians, moving though nuclear war and massive earthquakes, and then the Antichrist, who slowly becomes an Omnicidal Maniac.
• Assassination Attempt: Morrison is stabbed in the head in the middle of a speech. Three days later he's back on TV claiming to be the new Christ. His rule becomes much more bloody after that.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: There's a purebred golden retriever named Jack in the rape camp. The book mercifully just gives us the character's reactions to what's happening in there.
• Blackmail: George can only stay with Father Zippco when he's on the run because he threatens to tell the One World Community that he used to be a priest.
• Blasphemous Boast: Father Zippco loves having the mark of the beast, and being allowed to do as he pleases in America since the OWC just uses it as a dumping ground. "This tag makes us god."
• Big Applesauce: George is supposed to transport Jimmy from Boston to New York for questioning, and the last chapters of the book are set in what remains of the city.
• Big Fancy House: George has an apartment building in Boston all to himself.
• Book of Revelation: The end of the world unfolds just as the Bible says.
• Canine Companion: Molly, his father's chocolate retriever.
• Caught Up in the Rapture: On the morning of New Year's Day, hundreds of millions of Christians vanish without a trace, including the Pope, the President and Vice President of the United States, Jimmy's wife, and also his mother.
• Children Are Innocent: Subverted. Unlike most portrayals of the Rapture, the world's children are mostly left behind.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Jimmy swears constantly throughout the book, to the point that other characters call him out on it.
• Coin-on-a-String Trick: While they're living together, Jude shows Jimmy how to cheat the washing machine by pushing quarters into a nylon stocking. He only manages to keep one out of the five.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Jimmy's cellmate was arrested when the OWC first took control of the United States, and has refused to take the tag. For Stan's stubborness, he only had one hand with two fingers remaining, his face looked 'like a Mr. Potato Head that had been assembled by an angry three year-old.' His left eye was gone and his mouth sliced open and stitched back together. Jimmy's mind refuses to perceive it for a while. Stan represents his future if he refuses the Antichrist's tag.
• Crapsack World: Between God's Seals of Judgment and the Antichrist's increasingly unhinged rule, the post-Rapture world (and America in particular) is reduced to a depopulated ruin in just a few years.
• Defiant to the End: When OWC soldiers come to his house, Jimmy's father takes a shotgun and demands they get off his property. It doesn't end well for him.
• Despair Event Horizon: When George forgives Father Zippco but not Jimmy, and wants to take him with them to Israel, Jimmy kills Zippco and gives up on going to heaven.
• Dirty Old Man: Anthony Zippco was George's old parish priest. He secretly envied the people he took confessions from and, when the Rapture left him behind, Zippco devoted himself to a life of sin. "They were living. I just got to hear about it."
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Jimmy's father worked hard his whole life for his family, just so everyone could leave him. His wife wanted a divorce, and knowing that God took her away before she could leave on her own doesn't make him feel any better.
• Empty Eyes: Jude is a broken, abused shell by the time George and Jimmy break her out of Trump Tower.
• Evil Stole My Faith: Jimmy starts off resigned to give himself to Jesus, eventually; but as he sees the world sink deeper into evil, and all the innocent people suffering and dying - knowing they're going to hell, he can't bring himself to accept Jesus.
• Fallen States of America: The President and Vice President are raptured, and nuclear war a month later leaves the southern and western US uninhabitable. Amid riots in the northeast, the Antichrist's One World Community sends soldiers in to pacify and annex what's left of the United States.
• Fascists' Bed Time: When the One World Community takes over Boston, they impose a 7pm curfew.
• From Bad to Worse: The Antichrist's already totalitarian rule becomes much worse after his assassination attempt and self-proclaimed resurrection.
• Genre Savvy: When Jimmy wakes up in an empty bed on New Year's Day and learns hundreds of millions of people have vanished without a trace, he immediately knows the Rapture has just occured and that the Antichrist is about to take over the world. He isn't even phased when Little Green Men appear to everyone and claim the Christians were abducted.
• Girl in the Tower: The reason Jimmy returns to America from Israel is to convince Jude Gaunt, his ex-girlfriend, to come back with him. She's being held in New York's Trump Tower.
• God Test: In the prologue, Jimmy and his future wife ponder what it'd be like if the world really ended like in the Bible. "If one morning you woke up and half the population disappeared and they were all Christians and then the rest of Revelations started happening, then you'd finally know. All the questions would be answered. Is there a God? Yes. is the Bible true? Yes. ... Everything would become clear."
• Happy Fun Ball: The tagger is a simple black box on the outside, with an opening for a human hand. Jimmy expected to see a goat's head in a pentagram or something Obviously Evil pastered across its surface. He compares what he sees to the plainness of Auchwitz.
• Hates Being Alone: After being raped, Jude is terrified of Jimmy breaking up with her.
• He Knows Too Much: Jimmy spots Mark in the bar, the guard and former student who beat him earlier. Drunk, he decides to walk over and beat him back. George and Jimmy aren't supposed to be in Boston, so George has to shoot Mark or he'll rat them out. The witnesses in the crowded bar don't even care.
• Hearing Voices: After the earthquake of the Sixth Seal destroys the OWC registration center he's being held in, Jimmy's 'inch' takes the form of a voice guiding him to Logan Airport. By obeying this voice, Jimmy is able to hide in a bathroom stall until the airport reopens, and he's able to steal a boarding pass to fly to Israel. The voice leaves him when he arrives there.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Years after killing Mark to protect himself, George laments that he's no better than Father Zippco. "We're all the same, Jimmy."
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Father Zippco hasn't been sober in three years, but near the end of the book the distribution center runs out of vodka. He's devastated.
• In Medias Res: The Prologue is set years before the Rapture, but Chapter One picks up with Jimmy already in Israel, in the middle of the tribulation. Chapter Six goes back again, to the morning after the Christians disappear.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: The message of The Celestine Prophets is that Christians were inhibiting mankind's development as a species, so they were taken away. Now mankind needs to come together to solve its problems. Jimmy recognizes this as the Antichrist's Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story.
• Just Before the End: There are seven years between the Christian Rapture and the end of the world. Sir Richard Grant Morrison, the Antichrist, becomes more unhinged as the years go by, using his One World Order to slaughter 'Christ-freaks' and anyone else who may oppose him before he runs out of time.
• Knight Templar: Louise Toth wants to "save" Jimmy and help him to heal. He needs to better himself by taking the Antichrist's tag, and she'll use torture to break him so she doesn't have to kill him. "Why does a doctor cut, a mother spank, or a dentist drill?"
• Mind Rape: Louise cuts a large hole in Jimmy's abdomen, without anesthesia, and moves her hand among his ribs and organs while they verbally abuse each other. She can violate him any way she wants and he can't do anything about it.
• Monumental Damage: The One World Community rebuilds the Statue of Liberty, now holding a globe rather than a torch.
• Mugged for Disguise: Jimmy steals the uniform of a dead OWC soldier when he goes to Logan Airport. When flights resume after the earthquake, he forces a passenger to give him his clothes and boarding pass.
• Must Have Nicotine: George gives Jimmy all the cigarettes he wants after he returns to America. He hasn't had any to smoke since he left.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Father Zippco, sober and fully aware of his sin for the first time in three years, recognizes Jude from the Rape Camp he frequents. He begs her and God for forgiveness.
• Nay-Theist: Jimmy knows that God and the Bible are real as soon as the Rapture happens, but he can't bring himself to accept God's terms for salvation.
• New Era Speech: Sir Richard Grant Morrison gives a televised address to America the day that his One World Community takes over what's left of it. Jimmy's father isn't impressed with him.
• Number of the Beast: The OWC requires everyone to have a tag implanted inside their hand. There's a random '666' tossed among hundreds of other numbers on its microchip.
• Obligatory Swearing: Jimmy shouts and uses foul language constantly, to the point other characters call him out on it. This clearly wasn't written for the christian bookstore.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Jimmy's little brother, Scotty, died when he was a child. His parents keep the room set up with his Peanuts bedspread.
• Pistol-Whipping: Israeli soldiers, just two baby-faced kids by Jimmy's reckoning, try to knock him out this way. He actually has to coach them before they do it right.
• Post-Apocalyptic Traffic Jam: Normally, the drive home from Michigan takes thirteen hours. After he's left behind in the Rapture, it takes Jimmy over a month just to reach Massachusetts, let alone Boston.
• Practical Currency: Six years into the Tribulation, water's the only thing that's worth anything. George saves it a little at a time to buy Jude's freedom and bribe their way to Israel.
• Prison Rape: These happen all around Jimmy, mostly to the Christ-freaks, when he's in the dark hull of a huge freighter on its way to America.
• Prison Ship: How the One World Community transports prisoners to its camps in America. They simply drop them into the hull and occasionally throw food down. Many don't even survive boarding, much less the trip.
• Propaganda Machine: The One World Community airs newly-produced documentaries on TV and shows its agencies doing humanitarian work around the world. Meanwhile, they're rounding up America's vagrants and torturing them.
• Race Against the Clock: Everyone is given six months to get the Antichrist's tag, with a countdown displayed 24/7 on TV. It's not explained what will happen to those who miss the deadline.
• Racist Father: Jimmy's father is an ex-cop straight out of the 1950s and uses colorful language to refer to the various ethnic groups around Boston.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Father Zippco repents after he's forced to sober up. George quickly decides he can come to Israel with the rest of them, but Jimmy won't accept that a man as filthy as Zippco can be saved so easily. George is forced to stick with the original plan.
• Room 101: The White Room in the Registration Center, where Louise uses torture to help them "heal" and become good OWC citizens.
• Safety in Indifference: When Jimmy returns from Israel to Boston, he sees young children running around naked and eating rats. Their faces show no emotion. They don't care if they live or die.
• Searching the Stalls: OWC soldiers do this inside Logan Airport while it's shut down. Since Jimmy is wearing one of their uniforms he claims to be using the toilet and complains about the lack of privacy.
• Sex Slave: Jude becomes this by the time Jimmy and George get to her.
• Shoot the Dog: Jimmy becomes desperate to flee with his father to Israel as soon as possible. His dog, Molly, is preventing him from moving on. Jimmy tries unsucessfully to get rid of the dog and eventually realizes he'll have to kill it. This backfires when Jimmy's father spirals into a deep depression.
• Some of My Best Friends Are X: Jimmy calls out his ex-cop father for his colorful ethnic terms, and his father tells him he had a "colored" partner for four years and never had a problem.
• State Sec: Soldiers from the One World Community show up at Jimmy's childhood home to force him and his father to register for the Antichrist's ID tags.
• Take Over the World: The goal of the One World Community, in the name of The Celestine Prophets. Jimmy's father thinks they're the ones who nuked the southern and western United States.
• The Antichrist: Sir Richard Grant Morrison, chairman of the United European Community.
• The Big Guy: Amhad has to lead Jimmy and Bezalel back to Jerusalem, the day that the sun disappears from the sky. He's an Egyptian who hates all white people and scowls at Jimmy throughout the trip. They use a connecting rope to stay together and communicate. Ahmad pulls so hard on his rope he almost yanks Jimmy off his horse. He doesn't speak english and only communicates by gestures.
• The Extremist Was Right: Jimmy wakes up from his coma to see a white ceiling. He wonders if he's still in the White Room, if perhaps he never left. He imagines what Louise would say about her own death, at his hands, and about all the other deaths he stood by and watched since then. Jimmy worries that Louise was right about the despicable man he truly was.
• The Peeping Tom: Thomas is the first OWC soldier to show up at Jimmy's childhood home and encourage them to register for the Antichrist's tag. Jimmy's father, an ex-cop, remembers him peeping at an eighty-five year old woman fifteen years earlier. He brings Thomas to the verge of tears, treating him like he's still a pervy child until he leaves them alone.
• The Power of Hate: Hate's all Jimmy has left when he's imprisoned in the OWC registration center, after he watches their soldiers kill his father at his own front door, knowing that his father is now in hell for eternity. Jimmy's determined not to give Louise what she she wants. His cellmate, Stan, warns him that his anger will only get him so far in there. "Whatever yer anger's hiding, shame, guilt, weakness, it don't matter what, 'cause they're gonna tear through and find it."
• The Swarm: When George and Jimmy flee the bar after shooting Mark, they're attacked by a swarm of locusts. Jimmy spends the next two years in a coma.
• Thirsty Desert: Jimmy wanders south from Jerusalem, baked by the sun and seeing visions of Jesus Christ.
• Title Drop: As the last line of Ring Around the Rosie.
• Tranquil Fury: As they're shipped through Spain enroute to America, a British aristocrat announces to the prisoners that Morrison is merciful and that they will be given a chance to reform. His conciliatory address is punctuated by angry threats shouted through the microphone, his face becoming bright red with hatred.
• Unperson: What Christ-freaks, and anyone else who refuses the Antichrist's tag, become in the One World Community. They're rounded up and sent to America for execution.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: The One World Community tortures and executes anyone who refuses to join them by taking the tag. They claim to be building a better world, as The Celestine Prophets instructed all of mankind to.
• Viva Las Vegas!: In a flashback, Jimmy and Jude go to Las Vegas to get married, but Jimmy backs out when he finds out she's still doing heroin.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: The hull of the freighter is packed with Christ-freaks and violent criminals. A sweet looking kid named Robert tries to evangelize to the criminals. Jimmy warns him that he'll be beat and raped if he doesn't stop, and gives him advice to try and survive the trip. Robert doesn't take his advice.
• World War III: The Lord's Second Seal of Judgment causes Russia and most of America to be destroyed by nukes.
• World-Wrecking Wave: The Lord's Sixth Seal of Judgment causes an earthquake that lasts twenty minutes. Jimmy escapes the ruins of the OWC Registration Center and finds two out of every three buildings in Boston have been destroyed.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Jimmy returns from Israel and doesn't recognize the southern neighborhood of Boston that he grew up in. The earthquakes, riots, and fires have gutted everything. George describes America as "Morrison's toilet."