It’s almost Y2k, the start of a new millennium, and freshman William Sturm’s faith is withering. His eight-year-old sister has just been diagnosed with cancer, but his parents insist the best thing he can do for the family is return to his fundamentalist Christian college in the murky swamps of Florida and pray the semester away. Everything will work out. After all, He has a plan.

Some plan that turns out to be. On his first day back, Will’s roommate is impaled on the chapel steeple. Soon, more students are found perforated with stab wounds, their bodies hidden in impossibly high places. The administration hails each tragedy as proof that the Rapture is near. But when Will starts seeing bizarre stick figures dropping from the sky and roaming the campus at night, it becomes harder to believe that God is behind any of this.

As the body count continues to climb and the campus tumbles further into fanaticism, Will tries to warn anyone who will listen that this isn’t salvation, it’s a slaughter. But in a place where doubt is treated as heresy, no one is willing to believe the faithless freshman—especially when Jesus is so close. If Will can’t convince the rest of the school to save themselves, their faith might just be the reason none of them survive.

© 2027 by J. W. Ocker. ℗ 2026 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.