The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (240 page)

Buck was aware of sky and pavement and lights and hangars and sparks and noise and dizziness, until the G forces were too much and he felt himself losing consciousness. “Lord,” he said as blissful darkness invaded his brain, “I can recover from this. Leave me here awhile. Chloe, I love you. Kenny . . .”

Exhausted as he was, David could not sleep. He lay in his quarters, wondering why he got such joy out of tormenting Guy Blod. He couldn’t shake from his memory Rayford’s story of having tormented Hattie Durham’s friend Bo, and how Bo had eventually committed suicide. Sure, Guy was a case, and David enjoyed beating him in a battle of wits and sarcasm. But was he laying groundwork for ever having a positive influence on the man? Guy’s becoming a believer seemed remote, but who would have guessed David himself would have ever come to faith? A young Israeli techie with street smarts, he had been a skeptical agnostic his whole life. Could he start over with Guy, or would the man laugh in his face? Regardless, he had to do the right thing.

David tapped out a love message for Annie, telling her that while he agreed they should not even think about children until after the Glorious Appearing, he still wanted to marry her. Her response would determine his next move in the relationship.

He took one last look at messages and E-mail and thought he had an idea where every Trib Force member was. All absent and accounted for, he decided. By now Buck and Chaim ought to be in Greece. He wondered what Chaim was doing for identification.

With a brief prayer for Tsion, who he hoped would get back to his daily Internet studies and commentaries soon, David fell into bed. He asked forgiveness for how he had treated Guy Blod and asked God to give him special compassion for the man. Of course it would not be safe for him to declare himself a believer to a GC insider yet, but he didn’t want to shut the door to opportunities once he and Annie had escaped.

Buck’s eyes flew open, and he feared he might be going into shock. The night air hit him like a polar blast, though he knew it was not that cold. He could not even see his breath. He sat in the jagged back half of the Super J, staring straight down the runway to the front half, which faced him about half a mile away. He had to get out, get to T, make sure he was OK. T had saved their lives. What a masterful job of flying the lifeless bird!

Chaim! Buck looked to his left to find the old man still curled upon himself, bent all the way forward, the back of his head pressed against the seat in front of him. How could he have not broken his neck? Did Buck dare move him?

“Chaim! Chaim, are you all right?”

Rosenzweig did not move. Buck gently touched Chaim’s back and noticed that his own hand quivered like the last leaf on a maple tree. He clasped his hands together to control himself, but his whole body shuddered. Was anything broken, punctured, severed? It didn’t appear so, but he would be sore for days. And he must not allow himself to slip into shock.

Worried about Chaim, Buck unstrapped himself and reached for his right wrist, which was by Chaim’s foot, his hands tightly wrapped around the ankles. He could not loosen Chaim’s grip, so he forced his fingers between Chaim’s leg and wrist. Not only did he have a pulse, but it was strong and dangerously fast.

Buck heard footsteps and shouting as three emergency workers appeared, demanding to know if there were any survivors. “I need a blanket,” he said. “Freezing. And he needs someone who knows what they’re doing to get him out of here and check for neck injuries.”

“Blood,” one of the men said.

“Where?” Buck said.

“The man’s shoes. Look.”

Blood dripped from Chaim’s face to his shoes.

“Sir!” they called to him. “Sir!” Turning to Buck, one said, “What is his name?”

“Just call him Doctor. He’ll hear you.”

Someone tossed Buck a blanket, and he saw more workers sprinting down the runway to the other half of the plane. He tried to stand. Everything hurt. His head throbbed. He was dizzy. He pulled the blanket around himself, feeling every muscle and bone, and staggered out the front of the wreckage to solid ground. He stood there, swaying, assuring everyone he was all right. He had to get to T. There was nothing he could do for Chaim. If the worst he had was a racing pulse and facial lacerations, he should be all right. It was too late to tell him not to use his own name.

Buck started toward the other end of the runway, but he moved so slowly and shook so much that he wondered if he could make it. The ground beckoned and almost took him several times. But though he knew he had to look like a drunk, he kept forcing one foot in front of the other. An emergency medical technician ran toward him from the cockpit half and another came from the tail end. As they got close to Buck, he thought they were going to carry him the rest of the way. He would not have resisted.

But they ignored him and shouted to each other. The one from behind him told the other, “Old guy back there looks like the Israeli who died in a house fire last night.”

“He gets that a lot,” Buck said, realizing that neither heard him.

“How’s the pilot?” the first EMT said, but Buck didn’t hear the response.

“What’d he say?” he called after the man, who was now running for the cockpit.

“He didn’t!”

Buck hadn’t seen the man shake his head in response either, but maybe he hadn’t been watching carefully enough. At long last he arrived at the front end of the plane. No one was working on T. That could be good or bad. He heard someone call for a body bag.

That couldn’t be. If he and Chaim had survived the jolt, surely T had. He was in better shape than either passenger. One of the workers tried to block Buck’s way into the plane, but Buck gave him a look and a weak shove, and the man knew there would be no dissuading him. “Please don’t touch the body,” the man said.

“It’s not a body,” Buck slurred. They had for sure misread this one, hurriedly misdiagnosed whatever the problem was. “It’s a friend, our pilot.”

The cockpit portion had come to rest directly by a huge runway lamp, which filled the wreckage with light. Buck saw no blood, no bones, no twisted limbs. He stepped behind T, who was sitting straight up, still strapped in. His left hand lay limp on his lap, his right hung open-palmed in the space between the seats. T’s head hung forward, chin on his chest.

“T,” Buck said, a hand on his shoulder, “how we doin’, pal?”

T felt warm, thick, and muscly. Buck put a finger to the right pressure point in the neck. Nothing. Buck felt the blanket slide from his shoulders. He slumped painfully into the seat across from T and grabbed the lifeless hand in both of his. “Oh, T,” he said. “Oh, T.”

The rational part of his brain told him there would be more of this. More friends and fellow believers would die. They would reunite within three and a half years. But though he didn’t know T the way Rayford had, this one still hurt. Here was a quiet, steady man who had risked his life and freedom more than once for the Tribulation Force. And now he had made the ultimate sacrifice.

“We need to remove the body and the wreckage, sir. I’m sorry. This is an active runway.”

Buck stood and bent over T, taking his head in his arms. “I’ll see you at the Eastern Gate,” he whispered.

Buck dragged his blanket out of the plane but could walk no farther. He tried to sit on the edge of the runway but couldn’t catch himself and rolled on his back. A stiff breeze chilled the back of his neck, and he didn’t have the energy to protest when he felt a hand in his pocket. “Anyone meeting you here, Mr. Staub?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Miklos.”

“Lukas Miklos, the lignite guy?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s in the terminal. Can you make it?”

“No.”

“We’ll get a gurney out here.”

Buck watched as T’s body was lifted out in a bag. “Take care of the old guy back there,” Buck managed, pointing the other way.

“We’ve got the old man,” someone said. “Bloody nose and a jittery heart, but he’ll make it.”

And Buck was out again.

The skies began to darken in Chicago at around seven, but Rayford decided to wait until eight to venture out. He wanted the skies black and no one even looking their direction. The city had been abandoned, condemned, and cordoned off for months, and it wouldn’t have surprised him to know that not even a leftover drunk walked those streets. Radiation or not, decaying bodies littered many streets. It might be a safer place to hide out, but it was not going to be a fun place to live.

He pulled slowly from under the L platform with his lights off, hoping to kick up as little dust as possible. There would be no shooting straight into the Loop on the Dan Ryan. Nothing was as it once was.

Between separate bombing raids and the great earthquake, some reconstruction had been attempted, but these were meant to be shortcuts, two-lane roads that cut straight through the city. But only a few were even half finished, so the most direct route anywhere was as straight a line as you could point—over, under, around, and through the natural and man-made obstacles in the best four-wheel-drive vehicle you could find.

Rayford guessed he had between fifteen and twenty miles to drive, his lights off most of the way, traveling at around ten miles an hour. “I hope this is all David says it is,” he said.

“Me too,” Chloe said. “For my sake. Of course, I watched his little cybertour of the place. If it’s half what it looks like, it’s going to be as close to ideal as we can find.”

Leah was asleep.

David showed up at the statue construction site a few minutes after five in the morning, Carpathia Time. Guy started in with something sarcastic about how now they could finish their work. David held up both hands. “Sorry if I held you up. Minister Blod, a word, please?”

Guy seemed so shocked that David had addressed him with proper protocol in front of his staff that he dropped what he was doing and joined him several feet away. David thrust out his hand, and Guy, clearly suspicious, shook it tentatively. “I want to apologize for speaking inappropriately to you, sir. I trust you’ll find me helpful and not a hindrance to your work from here on.”

“What?”

“I said I want to apologize—”

“I heard you, Hayseed. I’m waiting for the punch line.”