The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (133 page)

“I appreciate this, but really—”

“Williams, if you don’t let me do this, I’m gonna hate you for the rest of my life.”

“I sure wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.”

There was no way to sneak out. Buck put his arm around Ken and tucked his hand in Ken’s armpit. They moved as quickly as possible, but a male nurse came running. “Whoa! He’s not allowed out of bed! Help! Someone! Get his doctor!”

“This ain’t prison,” Ken called out. “I signed in, and I’m checkin’ out!”

They were headed through the lobby when a doctor hurried toward them. The girl at the desk summoned her supervisor. Buck pleaded with his eyes. The supervisor glared at him but stepped directly in front of the doctor, and he stumbled trying to avoid her. “I’ll handle this,” she said.

The doctor left with a suspicious look, and the candy striper was sent to the pharmacy to get Ken’s prescriptions. The supervisor whispered, “Being a believer doesn’t guarantee you’re not stupid. I’m making this happen, but it had better be necessary.”

Buck nodded his thanks.

Once in the Rover, Ken sat still, gently cradling his head in his fingers. “You OK?” Buck asked.

Ritz nodded. “Run me by Palwaukee. I got a bag of stuff they’re keepin’ for me. And we’ve got to get to Waukegan.”

“Waukegan?”

“Yeah. My Learjet got blown around over there, but it’s OK. Only problem is, the hangars are gone. Their fuel tanks are fine, they tell me. One problem, though.”

“I’ll bite.”

“Runways.”

“What about ’em?”

“Apparently they don’t exist anymore.”

Buck was cruising as quickly as he could manage. One advantage of no roads was that he could drive from one place to another as the crow flies. “Can you take off in a Learjet without pavement beneath you?”

“Never had to worry about it before. We’ll find out though, won’t we?”

“Ritz, you’re crazier than I am.”

“That’ll be the day. Every time I’m with you I’m sure you’re gonna get me killed.” Ritz fell silent for a moment. Then, “Speakin’ of getting killed, you know I wasn’t just calling you because I needed work.”

“No?”

“I read your article. That ‘wrath of the Lamb’ thing in your magazine.”

“What did you think?”

“Wrong question. It isn’t what I thought when I read it, which frankly wasn’t much. I mean, I’ve always been impressed with your writing.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“So sue me, I didn’t want you to get the big head. Anyway, I didn’t like any of the theories you came up with. And no, I didn’t believe we were going to suffer the wrath of the Lamb. But what you ought to be asking is what do I think about it now?”

“All right. Shoot.”

“Well, a guy would have to be a fool to think the first worldwide earthquake in the history of mankind was a coincidence, after you predicted it in your article.”

“Hey, I didn’t predict it. I was totally objective.”

“I know. But you and I talked about this stuff before, so I knew where you were comin’ from. You made it look like all those Bible scholar guys were just giving more opinions to stack up against the space aliens and the conspiracy nuts. Then, wham, bang, my head’s split open, and all of a sudden the only guy I know crazier than me is the one that had the thing figured out.”

“So you wanted to get hold of me. Here I am.”

“Good. ’Cause I figure if what the globe just went through
was
the wrath of the Lamb, I better make friends with that Lamb.”

Buck always thought Ritz was too smart to miss all the signs. “I can help you there,” he said.

“I kind of thought you might.”

It was close to noon by the time Buck came out of the ditch where Green Bay Road used to be and drove slowly over the flattened fence and around the crumpled landing lights at the Waukegan Airport. The runways had not just sunk or twisted. They lay in huge chunks from end to end.

There, in one of the few open spaces, was Ken Ritz’s Learjet, apparently none the worse for wear.

Ritz moved slowly, but he was able to gingerly taxi the thing between hazards to the fuel pump. “She’ll take us to Minneapolis and back more than once with a full tank,” he said.

“The question is how fast?” Buck said.

“Less than an hour.”

Buck looked at his watch. “Where are you gonna take off from?”

“It’s sloped, but from the cockpit I saw one patch across Wadsworth on the golf course that looks like our best bet.”

“How are you gonna get across the road and through those thickets?”

“Oh, we’ll do it. But it’s gonna take longer than flying to Minneapolis. You’re gonna be doing most of the work. I’ll steer the jet, and you’ll clear the way. It’s not gonna be easy.”

“I’ll hack my way to Minneapolis if I have to,” Buck said.

Rayford was learning joy in the midst of sorrow. His heart told him Amanda was alive. His mind told him she was dead. As for her betrayal of him, of the Tribulation Force, and ultimately of God himself, neither Rayford’s head nor heart accepted that.

Yet with his conflicting emotions and turmoil of spirit, Rayford was as grateful for Mac’s conversion as he had been for his own, for Chloe’s, and for Buck’s. And the timing of God’s choosing to put his mark on his own! Rayford would be eager to get Tsion Ben-Judah’s input on that.

It was late Wednesday evening in New Babylon. Rayford and Mac had been working side by side all day. Rayford had told him the whole story of the Tribulation Force and each of their accounts of their own conversions. Mac seemed especially intrigued that God had provided them a pastor/teacher/mentor from the beginning in Bruce Barnes. And then, following Bruce’s death, God sent a new spiritual leader with even more biblical expertise.

“God has proven personal to us, Mac,” Rayford said. “He doesn’t always answer our prayers the way we think he will, but we’ve learned he knows best. And we have to be careful not to think that everything we feel deeply is necessarily true.”

“I don’t follow,” Mac said.

“For instance, I can’t shake the feeling that Amanda is still alive. But I can’t swear that is from God.” Rayford hesitated, suddenly overcome. “I want to be sure that if it turns out I’m wrong, I don’t hold it against God.”

Mac nodded. “I can’t imagine holding anything against God, but I see what you mean.”

Rayford was thrilled by Mac’s hunger to learn. Rayford showed him where to search on the Internet for Tsion’s teachings, his sermons, his commentaries on Bruce Barnes’s messages, and especially his end-times chart that plotted where he believed the church was in the sequence of the seven-year tribulation.

Mac was fascinated by evidence that pointed to Nicolae Carpathia as the Antichrist. “But this wrath of the Lamb and the moon turning to blood, man, if nothing else convinced me, that sure did.”

Once their route plans were finished, Rayford e-mailed Buck his itinerary. After picking up Peter Mathews in Rome, he and Mac were to fly him and Leon to Dallas to pick up a former Texas senator. He was the newly installed ambassador to the Global Community from the United States of North America. “You have to wonder, Mac, whether this guy ever dreamed when he got into politics that he would one day be one of the ten kings foretold of in the Bible.”

A little more than half the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport was still operational, and the rest was quickly being rebuilt. To Rayford, reconstruction around the world already clipped along at a staggering pace. It was as if Carpathia had been a student of prophecy, and though he insisted that events were not as they seemed, he seemed to have been prepared to begin rebuilding immediately.

Rayford knew Carpathia was mortal. Still, he wondered if the man ever slept. He saw Nicolae around the compound at all hours, always in suit and tie, shoes polished, face shaved, hair trimmed. He was amazing. Despite the hours he kept, he was short-tempered only when it served his purpose. Normally he was gregarious, smiling, confident. When appropriate, he feigned grief and empathy. Handsome and charming, it was easy to see how he could deceive so many.

Earlier that evening, Carpathia had broadcast a live global television and radio address. He told the masses: “Brothers and sisters in the Global Community, I address you from New Babylon. Like you, I lost many loved ones, dear friends, and loyal associates in the tragedy. Please accept my deepest and most sincere sympathy for your losses on behalf of the administration of the Global Community.

“No one could have predicted this random act of nature, the worst in history to strike the globe. We were in the final stages of our rebuilding effort following the war against a resistant minority. Now, as I trust you are able to witness wherever you are, rebuilding has already begun again.

“New Babylon will, within a very short time, become the most magnificent city the world has ever known. Your new international capitol will be the center of banking and commerce, the headquarters for all Global Community governing agencies, and eventually the new Holy City, where Enigma Babylon One World Faith will relocate.

“It will be my joy to welcome you to this beautiful place. Give us a few months to finish, and then plan your pilgrimage. Every citizen should make it his or her life’s goal to experience this new utopia and see the prototype for every city.”

With a couple of hundred other GC employees, Rayford and Mac had watched on a television high in the corner of the mess hall. Nicolae, in a small studio down the hall, played a virtual reality disk that took the viewer through the new city, gleaming as if already completed. It was dizzying and impressive.

Carpathia pointed out every high-tech, state-of-the-art convenience known to man, each blended into the beautiful new metropolis. Mac whispered, “With those gold spires, it looks like old Sunday school pictures of heaven.”

Rayford nodded. “Both Bruce and Tsion say Antichrist just counterfeits what God does.”

Carpathia finished with a stirring pep talk. “Because you are survivors, I have unwavering confidence in your drive and determination and commitment to work together, to never give up, to stand shoulder to shoulder and rebuild our world.

“I am humbled to serve you and pledge that I will give my all for as long as you allow me the privilege. Now let me just add that I am aware that, due to speculative reporting in one of our own Global Community publications, many have been confused by recent events. While it may appear that the global earthquake coincided with the so-called wrath of the Lamb, let me clarify. Those who believe this disaster was God’s doing are also those who believe that the disappearances nearly two years ago were people being swept away to heaven.

“Of course, every citizen of the Global Community is free to believe as he or she wants and to exercise that faith in any way that does not infringe upon the same freedom for others. The point of Enigma Babylon One World Faith is religious freedom and tolerance.

“For that reason, I am loath to criticize the beliefs of others. However, I plead for common sense. I do not begrudge anyone the right to believe in a personal god. However, I do not understand how a god they describe as just and loving would capriciously decide who is or is not worthy of heaven and effect that decision in what they refer to as ‘the twinkling of an eye.’

“Has this same loving god come back two years later to rub it in? He expresses his anger to those unfortunates he left behind by laying waste their world and killing off a huge percentage of them?” Carpathia smiled condescendingly. “I humbly ask devout believers in such a Supreme Being to forgive me if I have mischaracterized your god. But any thinking citizen realizes that this picture simply does not add up.

“So, my brothers and sisters, do not blame God for what we are enduring. See it simply as one of life’s crucibles, a test of our spirit and will, an opportunity to look within ourselves and draw on that deep wellspring of goodness we were born with. Let us work together to make our world a global phoenix, rising from the ashes of tragedy to become the greatest society ever known. I bid you good-bye and goodwill until next I speak with you.”

When the Global Community employees in the mess hall leaped to their feet, cheering and clapping, Rayford and Mac stood only to keep from appearing conspicuous. Rayford noticed Mac staring off to the left.

“What?” Rayford said.

“Just a minute,” Mac said. Rayford was about to leave when everyone sat back down, still glued to the TV. “I noticed someone else slow to stand,” Mac whispered. “A young guy. Works in communications, I think.”

Everyone had sat back down because a message on the screen read, “Please stand by for Supreme Commander Leonardo Fortunato.”

Fortunato did not cut as impressive a figure as Carpathia, but he had a dynamic television visage. He came across friendly and approachable, humble yet direct, seeming to look the viewer in the eye. He told the story of his death in the earthquake and subsequent resurrection by Nicolae. “My only regret,” he added, “was that there were no witnesses. But I know what I experienced and believe with all my heart that this gift our Supreme Potentate possesses will be used in public in the future. A man bestowed with this power is worthy of a new title. I am suggesting that he hereafter be referred to as His Excellency Nicolae Carpathia. I have already instituted this policy within the Global Community government and urge all citizens who respect and love our leader to follow suit.

“As you may know, His Excellency would never require or even request such a title. Though reluctantly thrust into leadership, he has expressed a willingness to give his life for his fellow citizens. Though he will never insist upon appropriate deference, I urge it on your part.

“I have not consulted His Excellency on what I am about to tell you, and I only hope he accepts it in the spirit in which I offer it and is not embarrassed. Most of you could not know that he is going through intense personal pain.”

“I do not believe where this is going,” Rayford muttered.

“Our leader and his fiancée, the love of his life, joyfully anticipate the birth of their child within the next several months. But the soon-to-be Mrs. Carpathia is currently unaccounted for. She was about to return from the United States of North America after a visit to her family when the earthquake made international travel impossible. If anyone knows the whereabouts of Miss Hattie Durham, please forward that information to your local Global Community representative as soon as possible. Thank you.”

Mac made a beeline to the young man he had been watching. Rayford headed back toward the Condor 216 and was near the steps when Mac caught up with him. “Rayford, that kid had the mark on his forehead. When I said I knew he was a believer, he turned white. I showed him my mark, told him about you and me, and he almost cried. His name is David Hassid. He’s a Jew from Eastern Europe who joined GC because he was impressed with Carpathia. He’s been surfing the Net for six months, and get this, he considers Tsion Ben-Judah his spiritual mentor.”

“When did he become a believer?”

“Just a few weeks ago, but he’s not ready to make it known. He was convinced he was the only one here. He says Tsion put something on the Net called the ‘Romans Road’ to salvation. I guess all the verses come from Romans. Anyway, he wants to meet you. He can’t believe you know Ben-Judah personally.”

“Shoot, I can probably get the kid an autograph.”

Getting Ken Ritz’s Learjet across the ravaged Waukegan Airport to the mess formerly known as Wadsworth Road was easy. Buck rode next to Ken as he slowly taxied until a pile of rubbish or chunk of concrete or gouge in the earth had to be moved, broken up, or filled in. The tools Buck had found were not intended for what he was doing, but his aching muscles and calloused hands told him he was making progress.

The tricky part was getting across Wadsworth Road to the golf course. First there was the ditch. “It’s not the best thing to do to a Lear,” Ken said, “but I think I can roll in there and up and out. It’s going to take just the right momentum, and I have to stop within a few feet.”

The pavement had been bowed at least eight feet, so steep that a car would not have the right angle to get over it. “Where do we go from there?” Buck asked.

“Every action has a reaction, right?” Ritz said cryptically. “Where there’s a bow, there’s gotta be a dip somewhere. How far east do we have to go till we can cross?”

Buck jogged about two hundred yards before seeing a huge split in the pavement. If Ritz could get the plane that far, keeping his left wing from touching the bowed pavement and his right wheel from the ditch, he could turn left across the road. After guiding Ken in and out of the ditch on that side, Buck would have to clear a fence and shrubbery that blocked the golf course.

Ritz negotiated the first ditch easily, but being careful to stop before the upcropping of pavement, he rolled back down. At the nadir of the ditch, he couldn’t back out and had a trickier time going forward. He finally made it but jumped out to find he had bent the front landing gear. “Shouldn’t affect anything, but I wouldn’t want to land on it too many times,” he said.

Buck was not reassured. He walked ahead as Ritz taxied east down the shoulder. Ken kept an eye on the left wing, keeping it inches from the bulge of the road, while Buck watched the right tire and made sure it didn’t slip into the ditch.

Once across the road, it was down into and up out of the other ditch, Ken jamming the brakes again to miss the fence. He began helping Buck move stuff out of the way, but when they started yanking shrubbery, he had to sit down. “Save your strength,” Buck said. “I can do this.”

Ritz looked at his watch. “You’d better hurry. What time did you want to be in Minneapolis?”

“Not much after three. My source says GC guys are coming from Glenview late this afternoon.”