Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle Of The Ages (3 page)

“Why didn’t you ask his forgiveness and accept his gift? He wanted to save you.”

She sobbed. “How can you be here and say that?”

“I am not from here.”

“You are my angel!”

“No, but I am a believer.”

“And you can see?”

“Enough to get around.”

“Oh, sir, take me to food! Get me inside the terminal to the snack machines. Please!”

Rayford tried to help her up, but she reacted as if her body were afire. “Please, don’t touch me!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just let me hold your sleeve. Can you see the terminal?”

“Barely,” he said. “I can get you there.”

“Please, sir.” She struggled to her feet and gingerly clasped the cuff of his sleeve between her thumb and fore—finger. “Slowly, please.” She mince-stepped behind Rayford. “How far?” she said.

“Not a hundred yards.”

“I don’t know if I can make it,” she said, tears stream-ing.

“Let me go get you something,” he said. “What would

you like?”

“Anything,” she said. “A sandwich, candy, water---anything.”

“Wait right here.”

She chuckled pitifully. “Sir, all I see is black. I could go nowhere.”

“I’ll be right back. I’ll find you.”

“I’ve been praying that God will save my soul. And when he does, I will be able to see.” Rayford didn’t know what to say. She had said herself it was too late. “In the beginning,” she said. “For God so loved the world. The Lord is my shepherd. Oh, God. ..”

Rayford jogged toward the terminal, stepping between ailing people. He wanted to help them all, but he knew he could not. A man lay across the inside of the auto-matic door, not moving. Rayford stepped close enough to trip the electric eye, and the door opened a few inches and bumped the man.

“Please move away from the door,” Rayford said. The man was asleep or dead.

Rayford pushed harder, but the door barely budged. Finally he lowered his shoulder and put his weight behind it. He bent and drove with his legs, feeling the pressure on his quads as the door slowly rolled the man away. Rayford heard him groan.

Inside, Rayford found a bank of vending machines, but as he reached in his pocket for Nick coins, he saw that the machines had been trashed. Enough people had felt their way here to tear the machines open and loot them for every last vestige of food. Rayford searched and searched for something, anything, they had missed. All he found were empty bottles and cans and wrappers.

“Who goes there?” someone demanded. “Where are you going? Can you see? Is there light anywhere? What has happened? Are we all going to die? Where is the potentate?”

Rayford hurried back outside. “Where’re you going?” someone shouted. “Take me with you!”

He found the woman on her stomach, face buried in her arms. She was wracked with sobs so deep and mournful he could barely stand to watch.

“I’m back, ma’am,” he said quietly. “No food. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, God, oh, God and Jesus, help me!”

“Ma’am,” he said, reaching for her. She shrieked when he touched her, but he pulled at the sides of her head until he could see her hollow, unseeing, terrified eyes.

“I knew before everybody disappeared,” she said piti-fully. “And then I knew for sure. With every plague and judgment, I shook my fist in God’s face. He tried to reach me, but I had my own life. I wasn’t going to be subservient to anybody.

“But I’ve always been afraid of the dark, and my worst nightmare is starving. I’ve changed my mind, want to take it all back….”

“But you can’t.”

“I can’t! I can’t! I waited too long!”

Rayford knew the prophecy-that people would reject God enough times that God would harden their hearts and they wouldn’t be able to choose him even if they wanted to. But knowing it didn’t mean Rayford under-stood it. And it certainly didn’t mean he had to like it. He couldn’t make it compute with the God he knew, the loving and merciful one who seemed to look for ways to welcome everyone into heaven, not keep them out.

Rayford stood and felt the blood rush from his head. And that’s when he heard the loudspeakers.

“This is your potentate!” came the booming voice. “Be of good cheer. Have no fear. Your torment is nearly past. Follow the sound of my voice to the nearest loud-speaker tower. Food and water will be delivered there, along with further instructions.”

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Chloe said. “I’ll take over the rest of the watch, and you agree that we tell every-body in the morning that we had visitors tonight.”

Buck looked to George, who pointed at him. “You’re in charge when your father-in-law is away, pal.”

“Only because of seniority. I defer to you on military stuff.”

“This isn’t combat, man. It’s public relations. If you want my advice, I’d say do what you want but do it right. Tell them, `It’s only fair we tell you people we saw GC around here last night, but as far as we know there’s nothing to be concerned about yet.”’

“Fair enough, Chlo’?” Buck said.

She nodded. “I’d rather pray and pass the ammu-nition, but yes. Treat everybody like adults and you’ll get the best out of them.”

“If you’re really taking watch, Chloe,” Sebastian said, “I’m going home and turning off my walkie-talkie.”

“Deal.”

WHOEVER
HAD
figured out how to rally the panicked souls in New Babylon thought playing music over the sound system would draw them to the loudspeaker towers.

So while Nicolae Carpathia’s right-hand man,

Leon Fortunato, spoke soothingly-“Tread carefully, loyal subjects. Help one another. Avoid danger.”-a recorded version of “Hail Carpathia,” sung by the 500-voice Carpathianism Chorale, played in the back-ground:

 
Hail Carpathia, our lord and risen king;

Hail Carpathia, rules o’er everything.

We’ll worship him until we die;

He’s our beloved Nicolae.

Hail Carpathia, our lord and risen king. 

Rayford hated that song and the infernal penchant of the Global Community Broadcasting System to play it over the radio at least every two hours. Carpathia insisted upon its performance at his every public appearance. The staged parades and rallies in his honor always began and ended with it.

Something strange was happening here, though. While the people seemed to rouse and slowly, agonizingly move toward the sound, no one sang along.

“Remember,” Fortunato intoned, his words pinched when he grimaced from his own pain, “those of us ser-vicing you, bringing you water and food, are also follow-ing the sound to the right places. Please be patient and allow pushcarts to pass. There is plenty for everyone if we all work together. Now, sing along with the chorale. This takes the place of your worshiping our supreme potentate’s image, currently not visible.”

The people around Rayford were not encouraged. “I’m not singing,” one said. “Death to the potentate!”

“Watch your mouth,” another said. “You’ll get your-self killed.”

“Carpathia can’t see any more than we can! He doesn’t know who’s talking.”

“He’s no mere mortal. I wouldn’t be tempting fate.”

“What has he done for
you
lately?”

Personnel inside the palace had a better time of it, Rayford assumed. They could at least feel their way to familiar places, including showers, beds, and refrigera-tors. Many outside couldn’t even find their way back in. Rayford could only imagine the disorientation of zero light anywhere. It was frustrating enough to have been granted even diminished vision.

“There are twelve separate loudspeaker towers,” For-tunato said, the music mercifully subdued as he spoke. “When supplies have arrived, please be as orderly as possible. State your name so our personnel can record it on audiodisc, and take your ration of food and water.”

“We want answers too!” someone shouted as if Fortu-nato could hear. “What is this? How long will it last? Why does it hurt?”

Chloe knew what Ming Toy’s response to this new dan-ger would be in the morning. She and Ree Woo would want to marry right away. Everyone but Chloe had been trying to talk them out of it, but Ming had it all planned. She wanted Tsion Ben-Judah to officiate from Petra via video cam. “I know it’s a lot to ask of such an important and busy man,” she confided to Chloe. “But I have designed the ceremony to last just a few minutes.”

“I think he’d do it,” Chloe had told her. “I would if I were him.”

The same people who urged Ming and Ree not to marry, given where things stood on the prophetic calen-dar, were the ones who had advised against Chloe and Buck having a child during the Tribulation. But certain matters were private issues of the heart. Chloe couldn’t imagine not having married Buck, despite knowing how little time they had. And she couldn’t get her mind around the concept of life without their precious little one.

If Ming and Ree wanted a year of marriage before the Glorious Appearing, whose business was it but theirs? It wasn’t as if they were unaware of the hardships. Starting a family at this stage was another thing, of course, but Chloe figured that was none of her business either, unless Ming asked.

It seemed Buck was asleep again in seconds. She assumed George was right about his wife sleeping through his leaving their quarters. Priscilla was one of the busiest people in the compound, always up before dawn and rarely fully healthy. She often appeared groggy soon after dinner and was usually in bed by nine.

Chloe was glad to stand watch, if for no other reason than to keep Buck from having to do it for the fourth night in a row. She enjoyed the routine-checking the motion detector, surveying the area with the periscope. Her daily job was hectic and demanding, spent almost entirely at the computer, contacting and coordinating suppliers and shippers of supplies and foodstuffs around the globe.

That was also her way of keeping up with the news, only the news kept getting worse. More and more of her contacts were being found out, caught by the GC in nighttime raids or at surprise checkpoints. As soon as it was discovered that these delivery people did not bear the mark of loyalty to Carpathia, they were executed.

One eyewitness reported that the Co-op driver of an eighteen-wheeler, laden with copies of Buck’s
The Truth
magazine translated into Norwegian, refused to let his cargo fall into GC hands. Distracting checkpoint guards long enough for his backup driver to escape, he set the rig to roll out of control and plunge down a hundred-foot embankment into a deep fjord. Morale Monitors shot him to death.

Chloe also heard of dissidents around the world, Jews mostly, who, rather than being put to death, were trans-ported to concentration camps where they were merci-lessly tortured while purposely kept alive.

Occasional reports of miraculous interventions came, like an angel appearing at a guillotine site to warn the uncommitted of the consequences of choosing Car-pathia’s mark. Besides the fact that by now even the last-minute decision to take the mark was futile-tardy ones were put to death anyway-the angel had pleaded with the undecideds to choose Christ and be saved. And many did.

Chloe wrapped an afghan around her shoulders and moseyed to Kenny’s room. His breathing was still deep and slow, and she draped another blanket over him. He did not stir.

Closing his door, she checked the motion detector, then sat before the periscope. With no evidence of any-one in the area, she could raise and rotate it for a full view. She rather liked having the contraption in the middle of her home. It satisfied some inner need to protect-control, Buck would have teased-her friends and loved ones, the more than two hundred who now lived underground in San Diego. All hoped to survive until the Glorious Appearing, but more than that, to also somehow make a difference from their claustro-phobic warren.

A unique feature of the periscope was that the viewer did not have to move when it did. A simple control on the handgrips raised and lowered the contraption, as well as made it scan in a circle in either direction. Chloe didn’t want to think about the series of mirrors required for that.

As she rested her forehead on the eyepiece and relaxed, letting her eyes adjust to the low light outside, she noticed that George Sebastian had left the scope at ground level and pointing west. The topside lens was camouflaged with fake shrubbery. It could be raised as much as five feet, but it was crucial to do a 360-degree scan at ground level first to be sure no one was in the vicinity who might notice.

The scan could be done all in one smooth motion at virtually any speed, but of course the San Diego Trib Force had learned that slower was better and easier on the eyes and equilibrium. Chloe’s method of choice, however, was to move the mechanism one inch at a time. With each mash of a tiny red plunger on the left-hand grip, another one-inch turn of the lens brought a new 45-degree view; thus eight moves covered 360 degrees.

Seeing nothing due west, Chloe began her incremental scan to the right. It was just past three o’clock in the morning in California.

Rayford had walked perhaps a quarter of a mile north from the terminal, easily slipping past men and women clearly younger than he but who shuffled along with the painful gait of the elderly.

“In our effort to keep you totally informed,” Fortu-nato announced, “we bring some encouraging news. While it remains true that no light is being emitted in New Babylon, this puzzling phenomenon has not affected telephone or radio transmission. Our heating and cooling systems remain functional. Your stoves even work, unless they are solar powered. Electric and gas stoves will still burn and radiate heat, though you will not see it, so be extremely careful.

“Pilots flying from New Babylon or toward her when this darkness occurred report that it is confined to the city. As we do not know how long this will last, be assured that if you can follow a path that leads you beyond our borders, you will eventually reach light.”

From all around, Rayford heard determination on the parts of the sufferers. “I’m going,” one said.