The Mark: The Beast Rules the World Page 3

  “Why don’t you manage your area and let us manage ours,” a doctor said, turning briefly from an ashen victim of the heat.

  “I don’t mean to criticize. It’s just that—”

  “It’s just that we’re all out here now,” the doctor said. “At least most of us. The majority of the treatable cases are heatstroke and dehydration, and most of the casualties are lightning victims.”

  “I’m looking for—”

  “I’m sorry, Director, but whoever you’re looking for, you’re going to have to find on your own. We don’t care about their names or their nationalities. We’re just trying to keep them alive. We’ll deal with the paperwork later.”

  “I had an employee stationed at—”

  “I’m sorry! It’s not that I don’t care, but I can’t help you! Understand?”

  “She would have known how to avoid sun- or heatstroke.”

  “Good. Now, good-bye.”

  “She was at sector 53.”

  “Well, you don’t want to hear about five-three,” the doctor said, turning back to his patient.

  “What about it?”

  “Lots of lightning victims. Big bolt there.”

  “Where would the victims have been taken?”

  The doctor was finished talking with David. He nodded to an assistant. “Tell him.”

  A young man in scrubs spoke with a French accent. “No specific place. Some came in here. Some were treated in that sector. Some inside.”

  David started on the cart but soon abandoned it to jog down the line of victims. This would be impossible. How could he tell who was who? Annie was in uniform, and while he was sure he could recognize her, with only shoes peeking out from sheets soaked to cool patients, he would have to check each face. And he would be interfering with the medical treatment.

  As he trotted along in the heat, David reached in his belt for his water bottle and found it empty. His throat was parched, and he knew his thirst trailed by several minutes his real need for water. When had he last taken a swig? When had he eaten? When had he slept?

  The huge screens showed Viv Ivins, Leon Fortunato, and Nicolae Carpathia moving the pilgrims along, cooing to them, blessing them, touching them. The waves of heat from the asphalt made David’s uniform cling to him like a single, damp weight. He stopped and bent to catch his breath, but his throat felt swollen, his mouth unable to produce saliva, his windpipe constricted. Dizzy. Annie. Light-headed. Hot. Annie. Spinning. Thirst. Hands red.

  David pitched forward, his cap sliding off and tumbling before him. His mind told him to reach for it, but his hands stayed planted above his knees. Break your fall! Break your fall! But he could not. His arms would not move. His face would take the brunt of it. No, he could tuck his chin.

  The top of his head smacked the pavement, the jagged asphalt digging through his hair to his scalp. He shut his eyes in anticipation of the pain, and white streaks shot past his eyes. Hands still on his knees, his seat in the air, he slowly, slowly rolled sideways and crashed onto his hip. He opened his eyes and saw his own blood trickle past his face, quickly coagulating in a pool on the baked pavement. He tried to move, to speak. Unconsciousness pursued him, and all he could think of was that he was next in a long line of victims.

  “You want me to fly while you make your call?” Albie said.

  “Maybe you’d better,” Rayford said. They switched places as he punched in Hattie’s number. She answered in a hoarse, panicked whisper on the first sound.

  “Rayford, where are you?”

  “I don’t want to say, Hattie. Talk to me. Where are you?”

  “Colorado.”

  “Specifically.”

  “Pueblo, north end, I think.”

  “GC has you?”

  “Yes. And they’re going to send me back to Buffer.” Rayford was silent. “Don’t leave me hanging, Rayford. We go back too far.”

  “Hattie, I don’t know what to say.”

  “What?!”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Come get me! I can’t go back to Belgium! I’ll die there.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “The right thing, Ray.”

  “In other words, jeopardize my life and expose the Force to—”

  Click.

  Rayford couldn’t tell whether she hung up because he had insulted her or because she heard someone coming. He told Albie the conversation.

  “What are you going to do, my friend?”

  Rayford stared at Albie in the emerging light and shook his head. “That woman has caused us no end of grief.”

  “But you care for her. You’ve told me before.”

  “I have?”

  “Bits and pieces. Maybe Mac told me.”

  “Mac doesn’t know her.”

  “But he knows you, and you talk, no?”

  Rayford nodded. “We know they let her out of Buffer, thinking she—”

  “Buffer?”

  “Belgium Facility for Female Rehabilitation.”

  “Ah, I’d better remember that.”

  “Anyway, we know they were hoping she would lead them to us at the gala in Jerusalem, but she—”

  “Excuse me, Rayford, but do you want me to set a course over the old safe house or just head directly for Palwaukee?”

  “Depends on whether I decide to go to Colorado.”

  “Your choice, but if I may say so, I expected you to be more decisive. I am just playacting, yet I appear more of a leader than you are. Your people admire and respect you—it’s obvious.”

  “They shouldn’t. I—”

  “You’ve reconciled with them, Rayford. They forgave you. Now become their leader again. What are you going to do about this Hattie Durham? Decide. Tell me, tell the people in the Strong Building, and do it.”

  “I don’t know, Albie.”

  “You’ll never know. Just weigh your options, consider the pros and cons, and pull the trigger. Either way, the old safe house is fewer than ten minutes out of the way. Start with a small decision.”

  “Let’s have a look at it.”

  “Good for you, Rayford.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Albie. We’re in a GC chopper. We won’t look suspicious anyway.”

  “But you’ve made a decision. Now think aloud about the more important one. Are we going to Colorado?”

  “I was saying, rather than lead the GC to us, she went straight there. Her family is gone, but maybe she thought she could hook up with friends in Colorado. Who knows? I couldn’t even tell you whether her confounding the GC was a stroke of genius or dumb luck, but I’d lean toward the latter.”

  “So she may be leading you to them rather than the other way round.”

  Rayford turned away from Albie and looked out the window, praying silently. It hadn’t been that many years since his lust for Hattie Durham had almost cost him his marriage. He took the blame for that, but since then she had been nothing but trouble. He and the others in the Tribulation Force had loved her and counseled her, provided for her, pled with her to receive Christ. But she would not be persuaded, and she pulled dangerous stunts that compromised the safety of the Force. For all he knew, she was the reason the GC had finally discovered the safe house.

  Rayford’s phone chirped. “Hattie?”

  “I heard footsteps. They’ve got me in a small room in a bunker about an hour south of Colorado Springs.”

  “I’m a long way from there.”

  “Oh, thank you, Rayford. I knew I could count—”

  “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, Hattie.”

  “Of course you have. You won’t leave me here to be sent back to prison or worse. What do I have to do, promise to become a believer?”

  “Not unless you mean it.”

  “Well, if you don’t come for me, you can kiss that idea good-bye.”

  Rayford slapped his phone shut and sighed. “What an idiot!”

  “Her?” Albie said. “Or you for considering what you’
re considering?”

  “Her! This is such a transparent attempt by the GC to lure one of us out there. Once they get me, they hold me ransom for information on the rest of the Force. Who they really want, of course, is Tsion. The rest of us are irritants. He’s the enemy.”

  “So your choice is between this Miss Durham and Tsion Ben-Judah? You want my vote?”

  “It’s not that easy. We want her for the kingdom, Albie. I mean, we all really do.”

  “And you think if you abandon her now, she’ll never believe.”

  “She said as much.”

  “This may sound cold, and I admit I’m new to this, but it’s her choice, isn’t it? You’re not making the decision for her.”

  “Going out there would be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. They’ve caught her, detained her, threatened to take her back to prison, and yet they leave her with her phone. I mean, come on.”

  Albie scanned the horizon. “Then your decision is easy.”

  “I wish.”

  “It is. Either you don’t go, or you consider all your resources.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There’s one it seems you’ve forgotten. Maybe two.”

  “I’ll bite.”

  “Assign David Hassid to find out exactly where they have her and have him send through an order from a bogus commander to keep her there until further notice. You call her back and tell her you’re not coming. Make her and whoever is listening in believe it. You just show up, surprise attack, just when both she and the GC think you have abandoned her.”

  Rayford pursed his lips. “Maybe you ought to be in charge of the Trib Force. But surprising them doesn’t guarantee success. I’ll still likely be killed or detained myself.”

  “But you’ve forgotten another resource.”

  “I’m still listening.”

  “Sir? Director? Are you all right?”

  “He’s out.”

  “His eyes are open, Doctor.”

  “He fell on his head, Medicine Woman.”

  “I’ve asked you not to call me th—”

  “Sorry. I don’t know how you handled fallen braves on the reservation, but this one couldn’t even break his fall. He couldn’t shut his eyes if he wanted to.”

  “Help me get him onto—”

  “There you go again, sweetie. I’m not an orderly.”

  “And there you go again, Doctor! We can let him lie here and bleed to death, or I can remind you that our patients way outnumber the help.”

  David’s tongue was swollen, and he could not maneuver it to form the word. All he wanted was water, but he knew his head required attention too.

  “Spray!” the dark nurse called out, and someone tossed her a bottle. She sprayed three bursts of lukewarm water directly into David’s face, and he couldn’t even blink. Compared to the heat of the asphalt, which he estimated at 120 degrees, the water felt icy. A few drops reached his mouth and he panted, trying to drink them in.

  The doctor and nurse gently rolled him to his back, and in his mind he was squinting against the harsh sun. Yet he knew his eyes were wide open and burning. He wanted to plead for another spray, but he felt paralyzed. The nurse mercifully laid his cap over his face, and when feeling returned, he tried not to move so as to keep the cap in place.

  If he could find his voice he would plead for Annie, but he was helpless. She was probably somewhere looking for him.

  When David was lifted to a canvas cot, the hat slipped off his face, but he was able to blink and was soon under the shade of a crowded tent. He had been assigned the last sliver of shadow. “Critical?” someone asked.

  “No,” the doctor said. “But sew that head up soon.”

  The first syringe that plunged into his scalp made his whole body jerk and shudder, but still he could not call out. In seconds the top of his head was numb. “You can do this?” the doctor said.

  The nurse said, “It’s not exactly cosmetic, is it?”

  “Give him threads like a football—I don’t care. He can always wear a hat.”

  In truth, David didn’t care what his head looked like, and it was a good thing, because the nurse quickly shaved an inch on each side of the laceration, splashed more liquid on him, and began opening a huge needle.

  “How bah?” David managed, his tongue lolling.

  “You’ll live,” she said. “Strictly superficial. Tough skull. But you really yanked the flesh away from the bone. Five inches at least, laterally at the top.”

  “Watah?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Little?”

  She quickly removed the top of the spray bottle, which had an inch of water left in it. “Open up.”

  Most of it ran down David’s neck, but it loosened his tongue. “Looking for Chief Christopher,” he said.

  “Don’t know him,” she said. “Now hold still.”

  “Her. Annie Christopher.”

  “Director, I’ve got about five minutes for you, and if you’re lucky, I’ll find an IV to rehydrate you. But while I’m sewing, you’re going to have to shut up and hold still if you don’t want to look worse.”

  “Do you see what I see?” Albie squinted into the distance.

  Rayford followed his gaze and was surprised by a gush of emotion. A black tower of smoke billowed several hundred feet in the air. “You think?” he said.

  Albie nodded. “Gotta be.”

  “Get as close as you can,” Rayford said. “That was my home for a long time.”

  “Will do. Now, you going to use every resource available? Or did I waste my money on this uniform and all the credentials?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Buck awoke at noon, Chicago time, and felt twice his age. As had been true every day since the Rapture, he knew exactly where he was. In the past it was not uncommon to wake up in a foreign city and have to remind himself where he was, who he was, and what he was doing there. No more. Even when exhausted and injured and barely able to function, somehow the self-preservation flywheel kept spinning in his otherwise unengaged mind.

  He had slept soundly, but at the first flutter of his eyelids and that initial glance at his watch, he knew. It all made sense in a ludicrous way. Buck stared at the wall next to an elevator in a bombed-out skyscraper in Chicago, heard muffled voices from around the corner, smelled coffee and a baby. Kenny had his own aroma, a fresh, powdery sweetness that Buck conjured when they were far apart.

  But Kenny was here, barricaded from the outer hallways exposed to the windows that let in the midday sun. Buck rolled to his back and propped himself up on his elbows. Kenny had apparently given up trying to climb the makeshift barrier and sat contentedly playing with one of his loose shoelaces.

  “Hey, Kenny Bruce,” Buck whispered. “Come see Daddy.”

  Kenny’s head jerked up, and then he went to all fours before righting himself and toddling to the bed. “Da-da.”

  Buck reached for him, and the chubby bundle climbed atop him and stretched out on his stomach and chest. Buck let his head fall back again and wrapped his arms around Kenny. The boy seldom had the patience to simply rest in his father’s arms, but now he seemed almost ready to nap himself. With the baby’s tiny heart beating against his own, Buck wished he could lie there forever.

  “Da-da bye-bye?” Kenny said, and Buck could not stop the tears.

  Rayford had made a decision, several in fact. After watching the old safe house burn to the ground, he instructed Albie to turn back to Kankakee, where they would fly the GC fighter to Colorado.

  “Now you’re talking, Captain,” Albie said.

  “Now I’m talking,” Rayford groused. “Now I’m probably getting us all killed.”

  “You’re doing the right thing.”

  Unable to reach David in New Babylon, Rayford left a message asking him to get back to them with Hattie’s exact whereabouts. He also asked David to inform GC personnel holding her that, should their current operation fail, they should keep Hattie there until assigned personnel could
come for her.

  David often overrode other GC systems to send such directives in a way that they could not be traced back to him. He was the one who assigned security codes to keep such transmissions from “enemies of the Global Community,” so he was also able to use the channels without detection. “As soon as you can,” Rayford recorded on David’s voice mail, “get back to Albie and me to confirm you’ve paved the way for us.”

  Before long Rayford would have to transmit his picture, with his new look and name, to David Hassid so the young Israeli could “enlist” him in the GC Peacekeeping Forces too. Meanwhile, he and Albie would put down at what was once Peterson Air Force Base, appropriate a GC jeep David would reserve, follow his directions to this bunker, if that’s what it was, and pick up the prisoner.

  By the time Albie had stalled his landing until the fighter was short of fuel, Rayford had been dozing more than two hours. Albie woke him with the news that they had not yet heard back from David.

  “Not good,” Rayford said, placing yet another call to New Babylon. No answer. “You have a computer, Albie?”

  “A subnotebook, but it’s got satellite capability.”

  “Programmed to communicate with David?”

  “If you’ve got his coordinates, I can make it work.”

  Rayford found the machine in Albie’s flight bag. “Batteries are low,” he said.

  “Plug in to the plane’s power,” Albie said. “I don’t do heavy-duty stuff on batteries anyway.”

  “Keep the power on after we land,” Rayford said. “This could take a while.”

  Albie nodded and got on the radio to the GC outpost. “GC NB4047 to Peterson Tower.”

  “You ought to know we’re now Carpathia Memorial, GC,” came the reply.

  “My mistake, tower,” Albie said. “First time here in I don’t know how long.” He winked at Rayford, who glanced up from his computer work. Albie had never been in the States before.

  “Gonna hafta take the Memorial out of our name, aren’t we, 4047?”

  “Come back?”

  “He is risen.”

  Albie rolled his eyes at Rayford. “Yeah, I heard. That’s something, eh?”