The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (226 page)

“It was,” Laslos said. “Stay right where you are! It doesn’t appear they saw you. They will be able to see us behind them for miles, so don’t move. We will come back when we feel it is safe.”

“I’d feel safer back in the foliage,” Rayford said.

“Better wait. They might be able to see movement. We will see if other GC vehicles are coming.”

“Why are they speeding around without lights?”

“We have no idea,” Laslos said.

Buck couldn’t remember the name of the place, but it was one spot he and Chaim had been to together where no one would expect to see either of them. It took an hour to find an empty cab, and he was informed that any ride, regardless of distance, would cost one hundred Nicks.

Buck described the place to the driver and told him the general area. The man nodded slowly, as if it was coming to him. “I think I know place, or some like it. All work same when you want get, how do the Westerners say, medicated.”

“That’s what I want,” Buck said. “But I have to find the right place.”

“We try,” the driver said. “Many closed, but some still open.”

They rolled over curbs, around crumbled buildings, through dark traffic lights, and past accident scenes. The cabbie stopped at two bars that seemed to be doing land office business, considering, but Buck recognized neither. “It’s about the same size as this one, big neon sign in the window, narrow door. That’s all I remember.”

“I know place,” the man said. “Closed. Want these, or other place?”

“I want the other one. Take me there.”

“I know is closed. Closed weeks.” He held up both hands as if Buck didn’t understand. “Nobody there. Dark. Bye-bye.”

“That’s where I want to go,” Buck said.

“Why you want to go where is closed?”

“I’m meeting someone.”

“She won’t be at closed place,” he said, but he drove off anyway. “See?” he said, slowing at midblock nearby. “Is closed.”

Buck paid him and hung around the street until the cab left, the driver shaking his head. He soon realized he was in sheer darkness, trees blotting out the clouds and far enough from the emergency action that no lights were visible. The cab lights had shown that the earthquake had leveled several buildings on the street. It was clear now that the power was out in the area.

Would Chaim have come here?
Could
he have? They had come here looking for Jacov the night he had become a believer, Chaim convinced he would be at his favorite bar, drunk as usual. They had found him there all right, and most assumed he
was
drunk. He was on a tabletop, preaching to his old friends and drinking buddies.

Buck was fast losing faith. If Chaim was alive, if he had been able to find someone to cart him around, how long would he have stayed on a deserted, dark, destroyed street? And was there really any hope that they might both have thought of this obscure establishment?

Buck pulled the flashlight from his pocket and looked around before it occurred to him that Chaim would not likely be in sight, at least until he was certain that it was Buck with the light. And how would Chaim know that? Buck stood in front of the closed bar and shined the light on his own face. Almost immediately he heard a rustle in the branch of a tree across the street and the clearing of a throat.

He quickly aimed the beam at the tree, prepared to retreat. Incongruously hanging out from under one of the leafy branches was a pajama leg, completed by a stockinged and slippered foot. Buck kept the faint beam on the bewildering scene, but as he moved slowly across the street, the foot lifted out of sight. The lower branch bent with the weight of the tree dweller, and suddenly down he came, agile as a cat. Standing there before Buck in slippers, socks, pajamas, and robe was a most robust Chaim Rosenzweig.

“Cameron, Cameron,” he said, his voice strong and clear. “This is almost enough to make a believer out of me. I knew you’d come.”

Another unlit GC vehicle raced past while Rayford lay in the dirt. All he could think of was the Prodigal Son, realizing what he had left and eager to get back to his father.

When the predawn grew quiet again, Rayford forsook caution and dashed for the underbrush. He was filthy and tried to brush himself off. Laslos and his pastor had to have seen the other GC vehicle and were playing it safe. Forty minutes later—which seemed like forever to Rayford—a small white four-door slid to a stop in the gravel. Rayford hesitated. Why had they not called? He looked at his phone. He had shut it off, and apparently the battery was too low to power the wake-up feature.

The back door opened. Laslos called, “Mr. Berry!” and Rayford ran toward the car. As soon as the door was shut, Laslos spun a U-turn and headed south. “I don’t know where the GC is going, but I’ll go the other way for now. Demetrius has a friend in the country nearby.”

“A brother?”

“Of course.”

“Demetrius?” Rayford said, extending his hand to the passenger. “Rayford Steele. Call me Ray.”

The younger man had a fierce grip and pulled Rayford until he could reach to embrace him. “Demetrius Demeter,” he said. “Call me Demetrius or brother.”

Tsion was moved and took comfort in the verse that reminded him that during this period of cosmic history, God would pour out his Spirit and that “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” The question was whether he was an old man or a young man. He decided on the former and attributed what he had felt on the floor to his drowsiness. He had apparently lost consciousness while praying and nearly slipped into a dream. If the dream was from God, he prayed he would return to it. If it was merely some sleep-deprived fancy, Tsion prayed he would have the discernment to know that too.

That the passage had gone on to reference the heavenly wonders and blood, fire, and smoke the world had already experienced also warmed Tsion. He had been an eyewitness when the sun had been turned into darkness and the moon into blood. He read the passage to Chloe and reminded her, “This is ‘before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.’ I believe that refers to the second half of the Tribulation, the Great Tribulation. Which starts now.”

Chloe looked at him expectantly. “Uh-huh, but—”

“Oh, dear one, the best is yet to come. I do not believe it was coincidence that the Lord led me to this passage. Think of your father and our compatriots overseas when you hear this: ‘And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the remnant whom the Lord calls.’ You know who the remnant is, do you not, Chloe?”

“The Jews?”

“Yes! And in Zion, which is Israel, and Jerusalem, where we know some of our own were, if they call upon the Lord, they will be delivered. Chloe, I do not know how many of us or
if
any of us will survive until the Glorious Appearing. But I am claiming the promise of this passage, because God prompted me to find it, that our beloved will all return safely to us this time.”

“In spite of everything?”

“In spite of everything.”

“Is there anything in there that says when the phones will start working again?”

Leah Rose had landed in Baltimore and pondered her next moves. Finding Hattie Durham in North America was like pawing through the proverbial haystack for a needle someone else had already found. The GC was on Hattie’s trail and clearly hoped she would lead them to the lair of the Judah-ites.

If Leah could get her phone to work, she would call T at Palwaukee and see if that Super J plane she had heard so much about was still at the airport and ready for use. On the other hand, if she could get through to T, she could have gotten through to the safe house and sent them running. Did she dare fly commercially to Illinois and rent a car under her alias?

She had no other choice. Unable to communicate except locally, her only hope was to beat Hattie to Mount Prospect. Finding the woman and persuading her to mislead the GC was just too much to hope for.

“How close can you get me to Gary, Indiana?” Leah asked at the counter, after waiting nearly a half hour for the one airline clerk.

“Hammond is the best I can do. And that would be very late tonight.”

Having misled the young man about her destination, she switched gears. “How about Chicago? O’Hare still closed?”

“And Midway,” the clerk said. “Kankakee any help?”

“Perfect,” she said. “When?”

“If we’re lucky, you’ll be on the ground by midnight.”

“If we’re lucky,” Leah said, “that’ll mean the plane landed and didn’t crash.”

The man did not smile. And Leah remembered:
We don’t do luck.

David lay in bed with his laptop, knowing he would soon nod off, but perusing again the abandoned buildings and areas in northern Illinois that might provide a new safe house for the stateside Trib Force. The whole of downtown Chicago had been cordoned off, mostly bombed out, and evacuated. It was a ghost town, nothing living within forty miles. David rolled up onto his elbows and studied the list. How had that happened? Hadn’t the earliest reports said the attack on Illinois had been everything but nuclear?