The Rapture: Evil Advances / Before They Were Left Behind Read online

  As she sat there, somehow able to cherish and admire the headpiece while missing nothing of the hundreds of thousands of judgments and rewards as people filed past the altar and the throne, Irene came to realize what her pastor had been driving at all that time.

  As thrilled as she was to be here and to feel the personal attention from the One loved and admired and exalted by all of creation, she had no more interest in her crown than she did in leaving this place. As beautiful and meaningful as it was, representing her life in Christ, she simply did not want it and could not keep it. Raymie was experiencing the same emotion; she could tell. They glanced at each other and shrugged.

  This jewelry had one purpose only, and that was to be returned to the Giver, bestowed, laid at the feet of Jesus. In Raymie’s eyes Irene saw that he was getting the same impression she was, that the 20 billion or so other saints in God’s house had come to the same conclusion. And above the din of constant praise to the Lamb who had been slain for the sins of the world and the bursts of celebration by the angelic choir every time someone on Earth was welcomed into the Kingdom, there seemed a palpable hum, a buzz of excitement and anticipation. For at some point, Irene realized, everyone there was going to cast their crowns at Jesus’ feet.

  “Mom,” Raymie said, “we don’t even have to discuss things here, do we?”

  She shook her head.

  “I mean, at first it seemed like we were on the same wavelength and I could communicate with you without words, but I wondered whether it was true, whether we were thinking about the same thing at the same time. But I don’t wonder anymore. I just know.”

  “Me too,” Irene said.

  “How much fun is this? What am I thinking right now?”

  Irene felt like smiling, only to realize that her grin couldn’t get any bigger anyway. She had been in a constant state of euphoria since she had arrived, and somehow it invigorated her, didn’t exhaust her. She wanted it to never end, and she knew it would not. “You’re wondering how much we can do all at the same time.”

  “Right.”

  “You want to study the crown, witness the judgments, talk with your heroes—old and new—sing with the choir, praise Jesus, talk with me, communicate silently with me, and—above all—you want to tour the rest of this place.”

  “I do. But I’m a little hesitant to ask. What is that? I should know by now that God knows what I want before I say it, even before I am aware of it myself. Why do I wonder if I’m bothering Him or if something is too much to ask?”

  Irene shrugged. “We have new minds and bodies, but we have memories. Maybe in a million or so years we’ll be completely free of our humanness.”

  Raymie laughed. “We already are.”

  “I know.”

  Christopher Smith was frantic by the time he finally realized the Pan-Continental 747 was within satellite communication range of the United States. For some reason the usual connections with Greenland and Canada had produced no results. He couldn’t make that compute. Had something happened in the atmosphere to interrupt the signals? Radio and TV signals couldn’t be jammed from overloading.

  A superstation out of New Jersey reached his headphones, faint and staticky and in and out at first. Finally Christopher was able to catch every word if he pressed the earphones tight, shut his eyes, and concentrated. He would let Rayford know as soon as the signal was listenable without such work. The captain clearly had enough on his mind.

  Chris’s neck and shoulders tightened and cramped as he concentrated, but suddenly, as if they had passed some invisible barrier, the signal came through strong and clear. He flipped a switch that allowed him to communicate directly to Rayford’s headphones. “Patching you through to Jersey Shore All-News Radio, Cap.”

  “Roger, thanks. Keep us on course.”

  That was Rayford’s way of saying he would listen to the radio while Chris did the work for a while. Fat chance. Chris was as curious as the boss was, and the plane was on autopilot. Chris knew how to appear as if he were concentrating on the controls while leaving the radio frequency open to his own headset.

  Once the controls were set Chris stared out the window at the strange colors in the sky. Here they were heading back toward the States at an unusual time of day, working with various towers to stay on course and at the right altitude as thousands of planes sought landing strips all over the world. How different, he thought, to have the rising sun at our backs.

  The impact of the global tragedy was transmitted directly into Chris’s ears. Depressed, terrified, despairing—that had been one thing. Now thoughts of suicide began to invade, and he knew if he didn’t talk to his loved ones soon, he might go mad. Loved ones. When was the last time he had referred to Jane and the boys as his loved ones? His women had been his loved ones, but he knew he had never loved one of them. Not even his other wife. Not even Hattie, the young senior attendant on this very flight. Of course, she had not given him the time of day since a one-night stand they had enjoyed in Spain several months before. He’d had no illusions about that. Half the time even then she had peppered him with questions about Rayford. As if she would have a chance with a dyed-in-the-wool family man like Steele.

  “Yes,” God told Raymie Steele, “you can do anything and everything you wish simultaneously.”

  “Without missing anything?” Raymie said.

  God did not answer that, which was okay with Raymie, as he knew the answer as soon as he had blurted the question. And in the next instant he was in his mansion. When first he had heard this business about a “mansion over the hilltop” in heaven, Raymie hadn’t known what to make of it. He knew what a mansion was. It was a home much bigger than the comfortable suburban house his father had provided. He had seen incredible houses on TV shows. Maybe it would be something like those.

  On the other hand, Pastor Billings had hammered home the point that Jesus had left the earth two thousand years before “to prepare a place for you,” so it would have to be something more spectacular even than the earth itself, which was created in six days.

  The first surprise to Raymie was that his name was on the door. He had been expected. And inside his seventy-five-cubic-acre estate was a stunning reproduction of Earth, a gigantic sphere suspended before him like a school globe come to life in full color, so bright and glittering that he was irresistibly drawn to it.

  There was no chair, no table, no bed—none of the necessities of earthly life. Raymie simply wouldn’t need anything like that. The question was, what did he need with this replica of Earth, big enough for him to walk around on and in it? He learned that as soon as he stepped aboard. It proved merely a trigger to his mind. Regardless of where he stepped, artifacts from various periods of history appeared, and by merely looking at them or touching them, he was instantly conveyed to that time and place and could watch as history repeated itself.

  Why not start from the beginning? he thought, and he moved toward the Fertile Crescent and found himself in the Garden of Eden. A gleaming piece of fruit caught his eye, and there he was, watching as Eve conversed with the serpent and took the fateful bite. The snake hissed in glee, Eve’s countenance fell, and Adam soon joined her.

  It had all been true, the biblical record, and Raymie could immerse himself in every incident and see as it played out. He leaped from there to Mount Ararat and saw Noah’s ark bobbing on forty days and nights’ worth of water. He would get back to this, for there was a pile of bricks and mortar and thousands of men milling about and working, building . . . what? The tower of Babel.

  Raymie had all of eternity to watch and listen and experience everything that had ever happened. He experimented with speeding ahead in time and saw the assassinations of Julius Caesar and then Abraham Lincoln. And how about that time his friends had all sworn he was out at second base, when he just knew they were wrong? He touched the base and watched the play, bursting with laughter when his friends were proved right.

  All the time Raymie was experimenting, hopping from here to
there and from this age to that, he was also enjoying the judgment of the works of the saints from the ground floor of God’s house. What could be better than this? In due time he would return and witness the death of Jesus on the cross and then the triumphant Resurrection.

  When the captain had come back on the intercom with the information about returning to the United States, Buck Williams was surprised to hear applause throughout the cabin. Shocked and terrified as everyone was, he assumed most were from the States and wanted at least to return to familiarity.

  Buck nudged the businessman on his right. “I’m sorry, friend, but you’re going to want to be awake for this.”

  The man peered at Buck with a disgusted look and slurred, “If we’re not crashin’, don’t bother me.”

  Irene soon realized that with all she had seen in what supposedly was just minutes on Earth, those “first” on Earth who were to be “last” here had finally begun. It seemed that many of the heroes of the Bible, despite all they had been through and all they had accomplished, were considered first because they had been made known to generations through the Bible.

  Irene was fascinated by the stories of many of the disciples, some of whom approached the altar from their positions among the twenty-four elders before the throne. Matthew, the tax collector, of course had none of his conniving and scheming held against him, as all that predated his experience with Jesus and his calling as one of the Twelve. Mark and Luke were lauded for their writing and their various ministries, as well as Stephen, the first martyr; the great women of the New Testament; and hundreds of others Irene had heard and read about.

  As the line grew shorter and shorter, Irene saw three more rise from the twenty-four elders, plus one more woman and two more men. She had been keeping track mentally of the Bible greats she had seen here and the ones she knew were yet to come. She was pretty sure she knew who these last six were, and she could hardly wait to find out if she was right.

  Christopher Smith felt as alone as he had ever been in his life. As he sat listening to the Jersey radio outlet he learned that communication lines were jammed all over the world, so the disappearances affected people from every continent. Medical, technical, and service people were among the missing. Every civil service and emergency agency was on full red-alert status, trying to keep up with the unending chaos. Chris had seen coverage of natural disasters and terrorist attacks and mass-transit crashes that saw hospital, fire, and police personnel called in from miles around. He could only imagine that multiplied tens of thousands of times.

  Even the newscasters’ voices were terror filled, as much as they seemed to be trying to cover it. Every conceivable explanation was proffered, but overshadowing all such discussion and even coverage of the carnage were the practical aspects. What people wanted from the news was simple information on how to get where they were going and how to determine whether their loved ones were still around and to contact them if they could.

  Chris had to flip off the news and reconnect with a tower when they were instructed to get into a multistate traffic pattern that would allow them to land at O’Hare at a precise moment, now just hours hence. Only two runways were open, and every large plane in the country seemed headed that way.

  Thousands were dead in plane crashes and car pileups. Emergency crews were trying to clear expressways and runways, all the while grieving over their own family members and coworkers who had disappeared. One report said that so many cabbies had disappeared from the cab corral at O’Hare that volunteers were being brought in to move the cars that had been left running with the former drivers’ clothes still on the seats.

  Cars driven by people who spontaneously disappeared had careened out of control, of course. The toughest chore for emergency personnel was to determine who had disappeared, who had been killed, and who was injured, then communicate that to the survivors.

  “Cap,” Chris said, “I hate to ask, but do you think we could get somebody in the Chicago tower to try to connect me—us—to our home phones?”

  Rayford shrugged. “Worth a try.” So he asked.

  He was laughed off.

  THIRTY-TWO

  WITH ONLY half a dozen saints to go and Raymie glorying in what he had found in his personal living space, Irene watched and listened as a tall dark man slowly approached the altar and fell to his knees.

  His works were tested and polished by the fire, then formed into a beautiful Crown of Life, which Jesus gave to him following an embrace and a “well done.”

  “Just as the virgin was chosen,” Jesus said, “so were you, My earthly father. This reflects your perseverance through many trials for My sake.”

  “But at first I was angry,” Joseph said. “Frustrated, confused. I did not respond as one chosen.”

  “As soon as you knew the truth, you gave of yourself for Me and My mother and treated Me as if I were your own.”

  “It always felt to me as if You were.”

  Irene enjoyed peeking in on Joseph’s life and eavesdropping on his conversations with Mary, with the angel, and with Jesus at various ages. She couldn’t wait to test the features in her mansion and physically enter the world at any place and era she wished.

  For the first time in his life, Christopher Smith understood what it meant to be beside oneself. His private agony was so acute that it was as if he had left the very presence of his body and could see himself from afar. There he sat in his usual spot behind the cockpit controls he knew so well. And yet his soul wrestled within.

  He made himself sick. Something about this horrible universal incident had forced him to shine a spotlight on his character, and he could not hide from himself. His life was a waste. He was worthless. And he was desperate to connect with his real wife, his boys.

  Why? Why now after all these years? What could Jane do? What did the boys have to offer, other than some theological treatise they had learned at church or mumbo-jumbo camp? And even if they could tell him this was indeed somehow connected with God, what would that do for him? It was too late to become one of “those.” He had traveled his own road much too long and much too far. God could never forgive what he had done, could not really change who he was.

  It wasn’t answers Chris sought from his wife and kids. It was some remedy for this enormous loneliness. Why did he feel so isolated? Had he done this to himself? Of course he had. He had made Jane in particular an emotional hostage, and he might as well have abandoned his sons. They had offered little protest, apparently not needing him. And that was okay. That helped assuage any guilt. Maybe his presence and support—being the sorry excuse for a man he knew himself to be—should not be missed.

  But now. Now. He needed them! How might they respond to such a cry of want? He knew them. They were good people at heart. Even with what he had become, they would rally round him, be there for him despite the fact that he had been so detached from their lives for so long.

  Chris didn’t know what he would do if he could not somehow reach them soon.

  “I am most unworthy,” the man said who now knelt before the altar of flame.

  “You were a doubter, Thomas,” Jesus said. “But I forgave you of that, and once you were convinced, you became most energetic and devout. See how you atoned for your disbelief! Your works have tested favorably. The stones will make a beautiful Crown of Righteousness. You were one who wanted to know where I was going, so you could be here with Me.”

  “And here I am!” Thomas said.

  “And here you are.”

  Funny how a terrifying disaster changes a man’s perspective, Rayford thought. Any thoughts, hopes, or desires for Hattie Durham now struck him as the most ludicrous ideas he had ever had. If she had thrown herself at him right then, he’d have cast her aside. Cold? Yes. Mean? That too. Rayford had, after all, been encouraging her for weeks. But what in the world had he been thinking?

  All he wanted now was to reunite with Irene and Chloe and Raymie. But deep in his gut he feared the worst: that Chloe and he would be the
only half of his family left.

  Rayford had told Hattie that he didn’t know what was happening any more than she did. But the terrifying truth was that he knew all too well. Irene had been right. He and Chloe and most of his passengers had been left behind.

  Thirteen-year-old Lionel Washington was proud of his mother, but for reasons other than that she seemed wise in the areas of forgiveness and acceptance. The truth was, with her job as Chicago bureau chief of Global Weekly magazine, she was the star of the family. Not just Lionel’s family, but the whole Washington clan. They traced their roots to the freedom riders on the Underground Railroad during the days of slavery, and many of his ancestors had been active in the civil rights movement, fighting for equal opportunities among the races. His mother was one who had proved that a person—regardless of her color or the housing project she had grown up in—could achieve and make something of herself if she really committed herself to it.

  Lucinda Washington told Lionel that she had been born and raised in a Cleveland ghetto, but “I loved to study. And that was my way out of the projects.” She said she fell in love with reporting and writing. She had graduated from journalism school and worked her way up finally to Global Weekly.

  She made good money, even more than her husband, Charles, who was a heavy-equipment operator. He was as proud of her as anyone, and secretly Lionel was proud of her too.

  But Lionel had another secret, and it caused him no end of anxiety. Lionel knew something no one else in the family even suspected. He was not really a Christian, even though the whole family history revolved around church. Family legend said his mother had taken him to church when he was less than a week old.