A man with a clipboard studied the residue of the house next door. He shot pictures and took notes.
“Didn’t think insurance would cover an act of God like this,” Buck said.
“It wouldn’t,” the man said. “I’m not with an insurance company.” He turned so Buck could see the ID tag clipped to his collar. It read, “Sunny Kuntz, Senior Field Supervisor, Global Community Relief.”
Buck nodded. “What happens next?”
“We fax pictures and stats to headquarters. They send money. We rebuild.”
“GC headquarters is still standing?”
“Nope. They’re rebuilding too. Whoever’s left there is in an underground shelter with pretty sophisticated technology.”
“You can communicate with New Babylon?”
“Since this morning.”
“My father-in-law works over there. You think I could get through?”
“You ought to be able to.” Kuntz glanced at his watch. “It’s not 9:00 p.m. there yet. I talked to somebody there about four hours ago. I wanted them to know we found at least one survivor from this area.”
“You did? Who?”
“I’m not at liberty to share that information, Mr. —”
“Oh, sorry.” Buck reached for his own ID, identifying himself as also a GC employee.
“Ah, press,” Kuntz said. He peeled up two pages from his clipboard. “Name’s Cavenaugh. Helen. Age seventy.”
“She lived here?”
“That’s right. Said she ran to the basement when she felt the place rattling. Never heard of an earthquake in this area before, so she thought it was a tornado. She was just flat lucky. Last place you want to be in an earthquake is where everything can fall on you.”
“She survived though, huh?”
Kuntz pointed to the foundation about twenty feet east of Loretta’s house. “See those two openings, one up here and the other in back?” Buck nodded. “That’s one long room in the basement. First she ran to the front. When the whole house shifted and the glass blew in from that window, she ran to the other end. The glass was already out of that window, so she just planted herself in the corner and waited it out. If she had stayed up front, she’d have never made it. Wound up in the only corner of the house where she wouldn’t have been killed.”
“She told you this?”
“Yep.”
“She didn’t say whether she saw anybody next door, did she?”
“Matter of fact, she did.”
Buck nearly lost his breath. “What’d she say?”
“Just that she saw a young woman running out of the house. Just before the window gave way on this end, the woman jumped in her car, but when the road started rising on her, she drove into the garage.”
Buck trembled, desperate to stay calm until he got the whole story. “Then what?”
“Mrs. Cavenaugh said she had to move to the back because of that window, and when that house started to give way, she thought she saw the woman come out the side door of the garage and run through the backyard.”
Buck lost all objectivity. “Sir, that was my wife. Any more details?”
“None I can remember.”
“Where is this Mrs. Cavenaugh?”
“In a shelter about six miles due east. A furniture store somehow suffered very little damage. There’s probably two hundred survivors in there, the least injured. It’s more of a holding station than a hospital.”
“Tell me exactly where this place is. I need to talk to her.”
“OK, Mr. Williams, but I need to caution you not to get your hopes up about your wife.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t have my hopes up until I found out she ran from this. My hopes were nowhere when I tried to dig through the mess. Don’t tell me to not get my hopes up now.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to be realistic. I worked disaster relief for more than fifteen years before joining the GC task force. This is the worst I’ve ever seen, and I need to ask you if you’ve seen the escape route your wife might have taken, if Mrs. Cavenaugh was right and she ran through that backyard.”
Buck followed Kuntz to the back. Kuntz swept the horizon with his arm. “Where would you go?” he asked. “Where would anybody go?”
Buck nodded somberly. He got the message. As far as he could see was nothing but piles, crevices, craters, fallen trees, and downed utility poles. There had certainly been no place to run.
CHAPTER 7
“So,” Mac said, “your daughter was your real reason for finding out what happened to your wife and son.”
“Right.”
“Did you wonder about your motive?”
“You mean guilt? Maybe partly. But I was guilty, Mac. I had let down my daughter. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.”
“You couldn’t force her to believe.”
“No. And for a while I thought she wouldn’t. She was tough, analytical, the way I had been.”
“Well, Ray, we flyboys are all alike. We get off the ground because of aerodynamics. No magic, no miracles, nothing you can’t see, feel, or hear.”
“That was me all the way.”
“So what happened? What made the difference?”
The sun dipped below the horizon, and from the helicopter Rayford and Mac saw the yellow ball flatten and melt in the distance. Rayford was into his story, earnestly trying to persuade Mac of the truth. He was suddenly warm. Though the Iraqi desert cooled quickly after sundown, he had to shed his jacket.
“No closets here, Ray. I just lay mine behind the seat.”
Once situated, Rayford continued. “Ironically, everything that convinced me of the truth I should have known in time to go with Irene when Christ came back. I had gone to church for years, and I had even heard the terms Virgin Birth and atonement and all that. But I never stopped to figure what they meant. I understood that one of the legends said Jesus was born to a woman who had never been with a man. I couldn’t have told you whether I believed that or even thought it was important. It seemed like just a religious story and, I thought, explained why a lot of people thought sex was dirty.”
Rayford told Mac of finding Irene’s Bible, digging out the phone number of the church she loved so much, reaching Bruce Barnes, and seeing Pastor Billings’s DVD prepared for those left behind.
“He had this whole thing figured out?” Mac said.
“Oh, yes. Just about anybody who was raptured knew it was coming. They didn’t know when, but they looked forward to it. That DVD really did it for me, Mac.”
“I’d like a look at that.”
“I might be able to track down a copy for you, if the church is still standing.”
Buck got directions to the makeshift shelter from Kuntz and hurried to the Range Rover. He tried calling Tsion and was frustrated to get a busy signal. But that was encouraging, too. It wasn’t the normal buzz of a malfunctioning phone. It sounded like a true busy signal, as if Tsion’s phone was engaged. Buck dialed Rayford’s private number. If this worked, through cell technology and solar power, they should have been able to connect with each other anywhere on Earth.
The problem was, Rayford was not on Earth. The roar of the engine, the thwock-thwock-thwock of the blades, and the static in his headset made a cacophony of chaos. He and Mac heard the phone at the same time. Mac slapped his pocket and yanked out his phone. “Not mine,” he said.
Rayford turned to fish his out of his folded jacket, but by the time he whipped off his headphones, flipped open the phone, and pressed it to his ear, he heard only that empty echo of an open connection. He couldn’t imagine cell towers close enough to relay a signal. He had to have gotten that ring off a satellite. He turned in his seat, angling the phone to try to pick up a stronger signal.
“Hello? Rayford Steele here. Can you hear me? If you can, call me back! I’m in the air and can hear nothing. If you’re family, call me within twenty seconds to make this phone ring again right away, even if we can’t communicate. Otherwise, call me
in about—” He looked to Mac.
“Ninety minutes.”
“Ninety minutes from now. We should be on the ground and reachable. Hello?”
Nothing.
Buck had heard Rayford’s phone ringing. Then nothing but static. At least he had not gotten an unanswered ring. Another busy signal would have been encouraging. But what was this? A click, static, nothing understandable. He slapped his phone shut.
Buck knew the furniture store. It was on the way to the Edens Expressway. The drive normally took no more than ten minutes, but the terrain had changed. He had to drive miles out of the way to go around mountains of destruction. His landmarks were gone or flat. His favorite restaurant was identifiable only by its massive neon sign on the ground. About forty feet away, the roof peeked from a hole that swallowed the rest of the place. Rescue crews filed in and out of the hole, but they weren’t hurrying. Apparently anyone they brought out of there was in a bag.
Buck dialed the Chicago bureau office of Global Community Weekly. No answer. He called headquarters in New York City. What had been a lavish area covering three floors of a skyscraper had been rebuilt in an abandoned warehouse following the bombing of New York. That attack had cost Buck the life of every friend he had ever made at the magazine.
After several rings, a harried voice answered. “We’re closed. Unless this is an emergency, please let us leave the lines open.”
“Buck Williams from Chicago,” he said.
“Yes, Mr. Williams. You’ve gotten the word then?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve not been in touch with anyone in the Chicago office?”
“Our phones just came back up. I got no answer.”
“You won’t. The building is gone. Almost every staff member is confirmed dead.”
“Oh no.”
“I’m sorry. A secretary and an intern survived and checked on the staff. They never reached you?”
“I was not reachable.”
“It’s a relief you’re OK. You are OK?”
“I’m looking for my wife, but I’m all right, yes.”
“The two survivors are cooperating with the Tribune and have a Web page already. Punch in any name, and whatever is known is flashed: dead, alive, being treated, or no known whereabouts. I’m the only one on the phones here. We’ve been decimated, Mr. Williams. You know we’re printed on, what, ten or twelve different presses around the world—”
“Fourteen.”
“Yes, well, as far as we know, one in Tennessee still has some printing capability and one in southeast Asia. Who knows how long it will be before we can go back to press?”
“How about the North American staff?”
“I’m online right now,” she said. “We’re about 50 percent confirmed dead and 40 percent unaccounted for. It’s over, isn’t it?”
“For the Weekly, you mean?”
“What else would I mean?”
“Mankind, I thought you were saying.”
“It’s pretty much over for mankind, too, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Williams?”
“It looks bleak,” Buck said. “But it’s far from over. Maybe we can talk about that sometime.” Buck heard phones ringing in the background.
“Maybe,” she said. “I’ve got to get these.”
After more than forty minutes of driving, Buck had to stop for a procession of emergency vehicles. A grader built a dirt mound over a fissure in a road that had otherwise escaped damage. No one could drive through until that mound was leveled off. Buck grabbed his laptop and plugged it into the cigarette lighter. He searched the Web for the Global Community Weekly information page. It was not working. He called up the Tribune page. He ran a people search and found the listing the secretary had told him about. A warning stipulated that no one could vouch for the authenticity of the information, given that many reports of the dead could not be corroborated for days.
Buck entered Chloe’s name and was not surprised to find her in the “no known whereabouts” category. He found himself, Loretta, and even Donny Moore and his wife in the same category. He updated each entry, but he chose not to include his private phone number. Anyone needing that already had it. He entered Tsion’s name. No one seemed to know where he was either.
Buck tapped in “Rayford Steele, Captain, Global Community Senior Administration.” He held his breath until he saw: “Confirmed alive; Global Community temporary headquarters, New Babylon, Iraq.”
Buck let his head fall back and breathed a quivering sigh. “Thank you, God,” he whispered.
He straightened and checked the rearview mirror. Several cars were behind him, and he was fourth in line. It would be several more minutes. He entered “Amanda White Steele.”
The computer ground on for a while and then noted with an asterisk, “Check domestic airlines, Pan-Continental, international.”
He entered that. “Subject confirmed on Boston to New Babylon nonstop, reported crashed and submerged in Tigris River, no survivors.”
Poor Rayford! Buck thought. Buck had never gotten to know Amanda as well as he’d wanted to, but he knew her to be a sweet person and a true gift to Rayford. Now he wanted all the more to reach his father-in-law.
Buck checked on Chaim Rosenzweig, who was confirmed alive and en route from Israel to New Babylon. Good, he thought. He listed his own father and brother, and they came up unaccounted for. No news, he decided, was good news for now.
He entered Hattie Durham’s name. The name was not recognized. Hattie can’t be her real name. What is Hattie short for? Hilda? Hildegard? What else starts with an H? Harriet? That sounds as old as Hattie. It worked.
He was again directed to the airlines, this time for a domestic flight. He found Hattie confirmed on a nonstop flight from Boston to Denver. “No report of arrival.”
So, Buck thought, if Amanda made her flight, she’s gone. If Hattie made her flight, she could be gone. If Mrs. Cavenaugh was right, and she saw Chloe run from Loretta’s house, Chloe might still be alive.
Buck could not get his mind around the possibility that Chloe could be dead. He wouldn’t allow himself to consider it until he had no other alternatives.
“I have to admit, Mac, a lot of it was just plain logic,” Rayford said. “Pastor Billings had been raptured. But he’d made that DVD first, and on it he talked about everything that had just happened, what we were going through, and what we were probably thinking about. He had me pegged. He knew I’d be scared, he knew I’d be grieving, he knew I’d be desperate and searching. And he showed from the Bible the prophecies that told of this. He reminded me I’d probably heard about it somewhere along the line. He even told of things to watch out for. Best of all, he answered my biggest question: Did I still have a chance?
“I didn’t know a lot of people had questions about that very thing. Was the Rapture the end? If you missed out because you didn’t believe, were you lost forever? I had never thought about it, but supposedly lots of preachers believed you couldn’t become a believer after the Rapture. They used that to scare people into making their decisions in advance. I wish I’d heard that before because I might have believed.”
Mac looked sharply at Rayford. “No you wouldn’t. If you were going to believe before, you would have believed your wife.”
“Probably. But I sure couldn’t argue now. What other explanation was there? I was ready. I wanted to tell God that if there was one more chance, if the Rapture had been his last attempt to get my attention, it had worked.”
“So then, what? You had to do something? Say something? Talk to a pastor, what?”
“On the DVD, Billings walked through what he called the Bible’s plan of salvation. That was a strange term to me. I’d heard it at some time or another, but not in our first church. And at New Hope I wasn’t listening. I was sure listening now.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“It’s simple and straightforward, Mac.” Rayford outlined from memory the basics about man’s sin separating him from God and
God’s desire to welcome him back. “Everybody’s a sinner,” Rayford said. “I wasn’t open to that before. But with everything my wife said coming true, I saw myself for what I was. There were worse people. A lot of people would say I was better than most, but next to God I felt worthless.”
“That’s one thing I don’t have any problem with, Ray. You won’t find me claiming to be anything but a scoundrel.”
“And yet, see? Most people think you’re a nice guy.”
“I’m OK, I guess. But I know the real me.”
“Pastor Billings pointed out that the Bible says, ‘There is none righteous, no, not one’ and that ‘all we like sheep have gone astray,’ and that ‘all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.’ It didn’t make me feel better to know I wasn’t unique. I was just grateful there was some plan to reconnect me with God. When he explained how a holy God had to punish sin but didn’t want any of the people he created to die, I finally started to see it. Jesus, the Son of God, the only man who ever lived without sin, died for everybody’s sin. All we had to do was believe that, repent of our sins, receive the gift of salvation. We would be forgiven and what Billings referred to as ‘reconciled’ to God.”
“So if I believe that, I’m in?” Mac said.
“You also have to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. That provided the victory over sin and death, and it also proved Jesus was divine.”
“I believe all that, Ray, so is that it? Am I in?”
Rayford’s blood ran cold. What was troubling him? Whatever made him sure Amanda was alive was also making him wonder whether Mac was sincere. This was too easy. Mac had seen the turmoil of almost two years of the Tribulation already. But was that enough to persuade him?
He seemed sincere. But Rayford didn’t really know him, didn’t know his background. Mac could be a loyalist, a Carpathia plant. Rayford had already exposed himself to mortal danger if Mac was merely entrapping him. Silently he prayed again, “God, how will I know for sure?”
“Bruce Barnes, my first pastor, encouraged us to memorize Scripture. I don’t know if I’ll find my Bible again, but I remember lots of passages. One of the first I learned was Romans 10:9-10. It says, ‘If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.’”